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The Almighty Buck

Game Industry Optimistic About Surviving Economic Crisis 52

Posted by Soulskill from the food-is-boring-buy-a-console dept.
CNet is running a story about how the gaming industry is looking at the recent economic troubles. Despite their status as luxury items, games and game systems have seen strong sales numbers in recent months, and that trend is expected to continue into the holiday season. Most companies are optimistic, despite the fact that many of their stock values have been hit hard and that analysts' views are divided on whether game-related purchases will be one of the first things cut from consumers' budgets. "'I do think that the video game industry is going to do reasonably well in this time of recession because video games are a pretty damned efficient use of time,' said Bridges. 'That said, the...industry has some other problems that it has been ignoring for awhile and that are creeping up on it.' Essentially, Bridges explained, he thinks that the dominance of giant publishers like EA and their general reliance on physical, in-the-box, units, can't hold up. Instead, he said, new tools, ubiquitous broadband and hungry independent developers are going to all combine to eat away at the continued supremacy of the $60 big-name title. And that could spell big trouble for the industry."
Portables (Apple)

Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection 821

Posted by timothy from the presumption-from-on-high dept.
raque writes "Appleinsider is reporting that the new MacBooks/MacBookPros have built-in copy protection. Quote: 'Apple's new MacBook lines include a form of digital copy protection that will prevent protected media, such as DRM-infused iTunes movies, from playing back on devices that aren't compliant with the new priority protection measures.' Ars Technica is also reporting on the issue. Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back? Is this a deal breaker for Apple or will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines? Is this a new opportunity for Linux? And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?"

Xbox Live Disallows Linux, Unix As Keywords 281

Posted by kdawson from the way-beyond-childish dept.
shafty023 writes "The Xbox Live online service disallows screen names like LINUXRULES, L I N U X, and other variations of these kinds. Other bloggers are reporting that variants of 'Unix' also result in the message: 'Your motto contains inappropriate language. Please try again.'" If this is an extension of Microsoft's anti-Linux campaign, perhaps it's time they gave it up.
The Almighty Buck

Science Blogger Sued for Unfavorable Book Review 588

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hope-he-countersues-and-buys-a-nice-summer-home dept.
tigerhawkvok writes "Recently, new author Stuart Privar provided Professor PZ Meyers of Pharyngula a copy of his book, Lifecode, for review. Over the course of the review itself and a few follow-ups, it became evident that the content was nonsense (including, among other things, ten-legged spiders and other phenomena strongly at odds with developmental biology). However, the common threat of lawsuits finally became a reality, and now Privar is suing Myers for $15 million. Can calling someone a 'classic crackpot' in the face of such incorrect data have any chance at making it to court, or even winning the suit?"
Power

Submission + - New Fuel Cell 2x as Efficient as Genererators (ecogeek.org)

Submitted by
Hank Green
Hank Green writes: "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel (from hydrogen to bio-diesel) that is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology both to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (up to two times less carbon-intensive than grid power.)"

Comment Has potential (Score 1) 268

by xiangpeng (#17700898) Attached to: Ubuntu Studio Announced
I think that this flavour of Ubuntu will convert quite a few people that I know if it manages to do what it advertises.

I got quite a few friends who are wow-ed by the latest advancements in the linux desktop enviroment and wanted to convert their workstations to running Ubuntu. The main reason why they're not doing so(most of them are video editors and sound engineers) is the lack of pre-installed tools for audio-visual editing. Having such flavours of Ubuntu will probably make their conversion to Linux easier :)
Music

Russia Agrees To Shut Down AllOfMP3.com 550

Posted by kdawson from the call-that-multilateral? dept.
Pro-SEO writes, "An official document (PDF), dated November 19, summarizes an agreement between the U.S. and Russia in which Russia has agreed to close down AllofMP3.com, and any sites that 'permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works.' The agreement is posted to the Web site for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It summarizes the joint efforts of the two countries to fight content piracy, an issue in which Russia and Eastern Europe figure prominently." From the document: "This agreement sets the stage for further progress on IPR issues in Russia through the next phase of multilateral negotiations, during which the United States and other WTO members will examine Russia's IPR regime."
Open Source

Sun Open Sources Java Under GPL 535

Posted by Zonk from the it-really-happened dept.
prostoalex writes "The embargo is off, and Associated Press is reporting on Sun releasing Java under GPL. Sun is hoping that this step will attract more developers, as well as extend the lifespan of Java. The article notes that this is 'one of the largest additions of computer code to the open-source community', and that Java is currently being run on something like 3.8 Billion devices worldwide." From the article: "Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hopes to turn more developers into Java programmers, who may then create additional software to support Sun products. 'The open-sourcing of this really means more — more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use,' Green said. 'The platform itself will become a place for innovation.' All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Green said. The move covers all Java technology, which includes software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers."

Did Humans Get Their Big Brains From Neanderthals? 579

Posted by samzenpus from the atook-do-calculus-then-zug-zug-lana dept.
MCTFB writes, "According to CNN, human beings may have acquired a gene for developing bigger brains from Neanderthal man. Apparently, 70% of the world's population has a variant of a gene regulating brain size, with this variant being most common in people of European descent (where Neanderthal man lived alongside ancient humans), and least common in people of African descent (where Neanderthal man was non-existent). While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions, people such as myself, who happen to be of northern European ancestry, may find it fascinating that somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and Neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia."

Wireless Sensors To Monitor Power Grids 72

Posted by samzenpus from the nano-oversight dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Major power outages like the ones which affected the New York state last month or Western Europe ten days ago are becoming more frequent — even if their causes were different. In some cases, the utility companies have to dispatch electricians all over the place to discover the cause of the power failure or simply to restore power. Engineers at the University of Buffalo think they have a better solution: deploy wireless 'nanotech' sensors to monitor the networks and to find the exact location of a failure. They also say that even if the technology is almost available, several years of research are necessary before such a solution can be used by electrical companies. Read more for additional details about this attractive solution."

Shedding Light On the Black Art of IT Management 57

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the that-web-fad-will-never-catch-on dept.
Cathy writes "An article by Harvard's Andrew McAfee tells nontechnical managers how not to get overwhelmed by the 'drumbeat' of IT projects. McAfee breaks down IT into three categories — functional, network, and enterprise — and says that this framework 'can also indicate which IT initiatives are going to be relatively easy to implement and on which projects executives should focus. In that light, IT management starts to look less like a black art and more like the work of the executive.'"

Nvidia Launches 8800 Series, First of the DirectX 10 Cards 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the by-popular-demand dept.
mikemuch writes "The new top-end GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS from Nvidia launched today, and Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has done two articles: an analysis of the new GPU's architecture, and a benchmark article on PNY's 8800 GTX. The GPU uses a unified scalar-based hardware architecture rather than dedicated pixel pipelines, and the card sets the bar higher yet again for PC graphics." Relatedly an anonymous reader writes "The world and his dog has been reviewing the NVIDIA 8800 series of graphics cards. There is coverage over at bit-tech, which has some really in-depth gameplay evaluations; TrustedReviews, which has a take on the card for the slightly less technical reader; and TechReport, which is insanely detailed on the architecture. The verdict: superfast, but don't bother if you have less than a 24" display."

Google CEO — Take Your Data and Run 116

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the web-two-point-oh-no-there-goes-our-monopoly dept.
BobB writes to tell us that Google is promising to make the data they store for end users more portable and is urging other companies to do the same. From the article: "Making it simple for users to walk away from a Google service with which they are unhappy keeps the company honest and on its toes, and Google competitors should embrace this data portability principle, Eric Schmidt said at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco."

Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a "Nightmare" 529

Posted by kdawson from the you-have-been-warned dept.
Theovon writes, "It's only been two days since the announcement of the official release of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), and the fallout has been very interesting to watch. By and large, fresh installs of Edgy tend to go well. Many people report improved performance over Dapper, improved stability, better device support, etc. A good showing. But what I find really interesting is the debacle that it has been for people who wanted to do an 'upgrade' from Dapper (6.06). Installing OS upgrades has historically been fraught with problems, but previous Ubuntu releases, many other Linux distros, and MacOS X have done surprisingly well in the recent past. But not Edgy." Read on for the rest of Theovon's detailed report.

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