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Comment Re:Legitimizing trolls (Score 2, Interesting) 33

by zyl0x (#29067489) Attached to: How <em>APB's</em> Persistent World Will Work
Please pardon my excessive optimism for a moment, but I think there's a pretty good chance that for every troll that wants to be the biggest, most annoying criminal in the game, that there would be a player who wants to be the famous hero who brings him down. There are a lot of gamers that don't want to be the rampaging criminal, and want to be the good guy instead. Personally, whenever I'm given the choice between good and evil in a video game, I always take the good path. I think being evil is usually the cheap way out of situations. I don't find it very fun. I'm sure there are many others out there like me.

Comment Re:Stupid summary (Score 1) 179

by zyl0x (#25318777) Attached to: Boston University Working On LED Wireless Networks
Obviously not speaking for the majority of horrendous drivers on the roads today, but as an excellent and safe driver, I don't trust anyone or anything other than myself driving my car. No matter how fast a computer works, it has nothing on a human brain in a life-or-death situation. Our brains are much more capable of taking in way more information into consideration than a computer. As a programmer, I just don't trust computers enough to make life-or-death decisions for me. Unintended side-effects, buggy code.. what happens if the computer is damaged in the accident or pre-accident situation, but the car isn't done moving yet? Am I supposed to now rely on damaged equipment to save my life? Seems a little shady to me.
Software

Microsoft to Open Source FoxPro 172

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the better-than-the-circular-file dept.
rah1420 writes "Microsoft has announced that it will open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS software to its CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be making new versions of the FoxPro DBMS."
Announcements

Submission + - Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex

Submitted by zyl0x
zyl0x writes: The Times has an interesting article online on the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which as survived its entire lifespan without sex. From the article:

A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
I'm not too sure about these bdelloid's, but I doubt any human being could last the first 100 years.
Television

Senators Smack Down WIPO Broadcast Treaty 100

Posted by kdawson from the read-my-lips-no-new-rights dept.
Tighthead writes "Two influential US senators want the US to support a pared-down version of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty that is still being negotiated. In a letter sent to the US delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Arlen Specter, expressed their concerns that the Broadcast Treaty 'would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt United States copyright law.' They instructed the US delegates to work towards a treaty that is 'significantly narrower in scope, one that would provide no more protection than that necessary to protect the signals of broadcasters.' The next meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee will be in June."
Biotech

Submission + - Molecular matcher could lead to 3D search engine

Submitted by Plasma Droid
Plasma Droid writes: NewScientistTech has a story about a 3D molecular search engine that is a thousand times faster than anything previously developed. The researchers, from Oxford University, developed a lightning fast way to quickly match 3D shapes mathematically. This could not only speed up searches for new drugs, but lead to 3D search engines, for finding objects uploaded to platforms such as Google Earth, they say.
The Internet

Law Student Web Forum: Free Speech Gone too Far? 264

Posted by samzenpus from the sticks-and-stones dept.
The Xoxo Reader writes "Today's Washington Post carries a front-page article on the internet message board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." The message board has recently come under fire for emphasizing a free speech policy that allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name. Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?"
The Internet

U.S. Senators Pressure Canada on Canadian DMCA 466

Posted by Hemos from the the-creeping-fingers-problem dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. copyright lobby brought out some heavy artillery last week as it continued to pressure Canada to introduce a Canadian DMCA. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins gave a public talk in which he described Canadian copyright law as the weakest in the G7, while Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to urge him to bring in movie piracy legislation."
The Courts

Microsoft Attacks Google on Copyright 188

Posted by Hemos from the how-is-blistering-is-blistering dept.
The Microsoft Corporation has prepared a blistering attack on rival Google, arguing that the Web search leader takes a cavalier approach to copyright protection. The attack, such as it were, came from Microsoft's Associate General Counsel who was giving a speech to the Association of American Publishers...who have a copyright lawsuit against Google for the last sixteen months. So, an audience ready to hear about how Bad Google is.
Space

Submission + - Black Holes Discovered as Source of Gamma Rays

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A very recent paper has been published that gives a very sound explanation for the source of gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. Objects like the Milky Way's central supermassive object (Sagittarius A*) are now suspected to be the culprit but since these are widely believed to be a black holes, little is known and skepticism is high that even gamma radiation could escape them. All that has been observed is gamma rays seem to coming from black holes. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model and found that intense gravity near the event horizon caused protons to fling outward at near light speeds where some would randomly make it beyond 10 light years of the black hole after thousands of years. Once they are sufficiently far away, these super high-energy protons would collide with low-energy protons to form pions which decay into gamma radiation emanating in all directions from the collision. If their simulation holds to be accurate and survives the skepticism of the community, the source of some gamma rays that were believed to all be remnants of the big bang could instead be signals from just outside black holes. Not only does a rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet star collapsing into a black hole cause narrow streams of gamma radiation but apparently they continue to emit them long after their formation."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

Submitted by dispatch
dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...
The Internet

Canadian ISPs Send Thousands of Copyright Notices 184

Posted by Zonk from the you-there-off-the-internets dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The CBC reports that Canadian Internet service providers are passing along thousands of copyright infringement notifications to their customers. These notices are coming, not from Canada, but from US copyright lobby groups such as the Business Software Alliance under a system called notice and notice. Michael Geist comments that unlike the U.S. takedown approach, the Canadian system is proving effective while protecting privacy and free speech. Downloaders take the hint, and alter their behavior before they receive a more serious letter in the mail."
Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Mods we need to see 2

Journal by FuzzyDaddy

So, I've just been giving mod points, and there are some new categories I'd like to propose:

-1, bad analogy
-1, overly cynical
-1, you think you're funny, but you're not
-1, unnecessarily mean

+1, nuanced
+1, attempting to see things from another person's point of view
+1, acknowledging your own mistake

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