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How Nintendo's Mario Got His Name 103

Posted by samzenpus from the can't-wait-for-the-origin-movie dept.
harrymcc writes "In 1981, tiny Nintendo of America was getting ready to release Donkey Kong. When the company's landlord, Mario Segale, demanded back rent, Nintendo staffers named the game's barrel-jumping protagonist after him. Almost thirty years later, neither Nintendo — which continues to crank out Mario games — nor Segale — now a wealthy, secretive Washington State real estate developer — like to talk about how one of video games' iconic characters got his name and Italian heritage. Technologizer's Benj Edwards has researched the story for years and provides the most detailed account to date."
Movies

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music 261

Posted by Soulskill from the i-think-i-saw-this-episode-of-TNG-already dept.
mbone writes "Ever wonder how Jimi Hendrix would cover Lady Gaga? Whether you do or not [I'm guessing not], you may be about to find out. Writing for Wired, Eliot Van Buskirk describes North Carolina's Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF). The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."

Google Asks US For WTO Block On China Censorship 115

Posted by Soulskill from the calling-in-the-bantam-artillery dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google is asking the US government to petition the World Trade Organization to recognize China's censorship as an unfair barrier to trade. The US Trade Representative is reviewing their petition to see if they can prove that China's rules discriminate against foreign competition. At least it's something worthwhile for the US Trade Reps to do, rather than secretly negotiating ACTA."
Cellphones

Apple Sues HTC For 20 Patent Violations In Phones 434

Posted by Soulskill from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
eldavojohn writes "Taiwanese HTC is being sued by Apple for 20 patents regarding the many phones HTC manufactures. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, 'We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.' Apple has similar patent litigation with Nokia and may be trying to scare the rest of the industry into licensing patents similar to the Microsoft-Novell and Microsoft-Amazon deals regarding patents covering Linux functionality."

Comment Re:Google Scholar (Score 3, Insightful) 161

by xkcdFan1011011101111 (#31289734) Attached to: Losing Google Would Hit Chinese Science Hard
PubMed doesn't spit out bibtex entries for papers, show how many citations a paper has, show who has CITED a specific paper, or have near the search power. Google Scholar may not have your field pegged yet, and PubMed might be an important place for your paper to show up, but Google Scholar has vital features that no other search engine has.
Security

Analysis of 32 Million Breached Passwords 499

Posted by CmdrTaco from the trust-no-1 dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Imperva released a study analyzing 32 million passwords exposed in the Rockyou.com breach. The data provides a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and an opportunity to evaluate the true strength of these as a security mechanism. In the past, password studies have focused mostly on surveys. Never before has there been such a high volume of real-world passwords to examine." Most interesting to me was that in the sample, less than 4% used any non alpha-numerics in their #$#%'ing passwords.
Communications

Analyst Estimates AT&T Needs To Spend $5B To Catch Up 187

Posted by Soulskill from the connection-lost dept.
itwbennett writes "The public's perception of AT&T's network is poor and declining, apparently because of real shortcomings when compared with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel,' says Gerard Hallaren, director of research at TownHall Investment Research. 'AT&T's capital expenditures on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009 totaled about $21.6 billion, compared with $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Over that time, Verizon has spent far more per subscriber: $353, compared with $308 for AT&T,' Hallaren said. 'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'"
The Military

Sound Generator Lethal From 10 Meters 314

Posted by Soulskill from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.
penguinrecorder writes "The Thunder Generator uses a mixture of liquefied petroleum, cooking gas, and air to create explosions, which in turn generate shock waves capable of stunning people from 30 to 100 meters away. At that range, the weapon is relatively harmless, making people run in panic when they feel the sonic blast hitting their bodies. However, at less than ten meters, the Thunder Generator is capable of causing permanent damage or killing people."
Businesses

An Artist's View of the Modern Music Biz 210

Posted by kdawson from the viral-no-more dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A member of the band OK Go wrote an interesting open letter giving an artist's perspective on the current state of the music business and how labels finance producing, distributing, and marketing music and music videos. A very insightful perspective of 'both sides': the argument that music and music videos are meant to be heard and, in the case of the latter, seen by a wide audience; and the argument that the money needs to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, the letter doesn't address the perspective outsiders have of outlandish salaries in the music labels, but it is interesting nonetheless." Their new video is not bad either.

Comment Re:Stop posting articles from arXiv! (Score 1) 650

by xkcdFan1011011101111 (#30730856) Attached to: The End Of Gravity As a Fundamental Force

In my field, the turn around time for an article to go from submission to publication in a peer reviewed journal is something like 8 months if all of the reviewers love your paper and think no corrections are required (which never happens).

arXiv lets us read the paper while we wait for it to go through the peer review process.

Also, arXiv allows the author to be able to prove that he came up with this result by a date everyone trusts. If some insensitive clod comes along later and claims they derived this result first, we can all point to arXiv and state the date that this author announced his result.
Security

Firm To Release Database, Web Server 0-Days 220

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ready-for-impact dept.
krebsonsecurity writes "January promises to be a busy month for Web server and database administrators alike: A security research firm in Russia says it plans to release information about a slew of previously undocumented vulnerabilities in several widely-used commercial software products, including MySQL, Tivoli, IBM DB2, Sun Directory, and a host of others, writes krebsonsecurity.com. From the blog: 'After working with the vendors long enough, we've come to conclusion that, to put it simply, it is a waste of time. Now, we do not contact with vendors and do not support so-called "responsible disclosure" policy,' Legerov said."
Movies

Here We Go Again — Video Standards War 2010 292

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the there-is-always-a-war-somewhere dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Think of the words 'standards war,' and if you're of a certain age you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats. Fast forward, and you'll recall we just finished another video standards war between most of the same companies, this time between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, here we go again, except this time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues are a big part of it. On the one side are five of the six major studios, dozens of cable, hardware, software, distribution and device vendors, and on the other side there's just Disney — and maybe Apple as well, and that's enough to have the other side worried."

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