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Have a look at the picture here and judge for yourself ...

Or you could read the arstechnica article from October when this news first appeared on Slashdot

BAN on in-game Gay Guilds http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/ban_on_gayfri endly_g.html http://www.joystiq.com/2006/01/31/blizzard-vs-gaym ers-are-other-minorities-next/ http://news.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029682,492491 57,00.htm http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6129 .html In case you are still reading impaired, notice the word 'BAN' in all those article titles? Notice the threat of being banned by WOW? They threatened to ban people for talking about being gay. Whether anyone was banned or not is irrelevant because the threatened to ban people for talking about being gay. And that was their policy until the community backlash caused them to change their mind. So what part of Blizzard threatening to ban gay players are you confused about? Just for the record, this took all of two seconds to find in Google. So now not only are you wrong but you are also apparently incompetent at researching your own info. Sucks to be you.

Maybe I am clueless, but that seems a little high... Even if the claimed 500k registered L2Extreme users downloaded the client each 1 time, that would mean it costs them close to $2 to upload the file each time.

As described by Ars Technica, the new NVIDIA G80 generation of GPUs are actually collections of general stream processors, a type of FPU. The GPU functionality is then programmed in software. The article from Ars Technica points out that "These threads could do anything from graphics and physics calculations to medical imaging or data visualization.". I assume the ATI GPU is moving in the same direction.

So what AMD is adding to x86-64 is probably not just a GPU, but a new powerful general purpose massively parallel FPU.

Your numbers are incorrect. (Probably just out of date.)

The PS3 shipped 80,000 units in Japan, and another 200,000 to 400,000 to the U.S. (No one is entirely sure of the exact number.) The Wii shipped over a million units to the U.S. with some reports saying it was as high as 1.2 million.

According to Sony, the PS3 is expected to ship about 2 million units worldwide by the end of the year. They admit that their figures are "more of a target" though. According to Nintendo, they are committed to bringing at least 4 million units worldwide by the end of the year.

Linden labs have released Images of the suspected mastermind. If sighted, do not approach the suspect, and inform police!

Wow, I would have never thought that the Boy Scouts of America were becoming that evil. I guess the BSA is going to have to add merit badges for incompetent management, outsourcing, and hostile business takeovers in addition to their recently announced copyright merit badge.

Oh, you mean the Business Software Alliance? I suppose they could have their own merit badges if they wanted.

You can't trust amazon.com reviews.

However, Ars Technica (an Apple-friendly, but fair site, IMO) gave a pretty positive review for the Zune (7 out of 10), even though they pointed out the early flaws of this product. If you're not familiar with Ars Technica reviews, they are the ones that published some rather infamous iPod reviews where they tested durability by putting an iPod in a washing machine, running it over with a car, and dropping it from a third-story balcony onto concrete (covered on Slashdot). BTW, they gave the newest iPod Shuffle 7/10 and the 2nd generation Nano got 8/10.

You can't trust amazon.com reviews.

However, Ars Technica (an Apple-friendly, but fair site, IMO) gave a pretty positive review for the Zune (7 out of 10), even though they pointed out the early flaws of this product. If you're not familiar with Ars Technica reviews, they are the ones that published some rather infamous iPod reviews where they tested durability by putting an iPod in a washing machine, running it over with a car, and dropping it from a third-story balcony onto concrete (covered on Slashdot). BTW, they gave the newest iPod Shuffle 7/10 and the 2nd generation Nano got 8/10.

You can't trust amazon.com reviews.

However, Ars Technica (an Apple-friendly, but fair site, IMO) gave a pretty positive review for the Zune (7 out of 10), even though they pointed out the early flaws of this product. If you're not familiar with Ars Technica reviews, they are the ones that published some rather infamous iPod reviews where they tested durability by putting an iPod in a washing machine, running it over with a car, and dropping it from a third-story balcony onto concrete (covered on Slashdot). BTW, they gave the newest iPod Shuffle 7/10 and the 2nd generation Nano got 8/10.

There is analysis supporting that MS is now making a profit on each XBox 360 sold. It certainly would make sense given how quickly component prices fall.

No defendant has won a contested case either.

AllOfMP3 has been censored at the DNS level by the Danish ISP, Tele2/Get2net, following a court ruling. They've appealed the ruling and expect the censorship to be canceled, but who knows...
See more at Google News.
Direct links to first few hits: 1, 2, 3.

Coincidentally, one of my colleagues worked for the Danish police making the pedo-filter working out which IP addresses to block, delivering those to all danish ISPs who have to block these by law. I asked her about pirates, and her comment was "why should the police care?".

The following Ars Technica story give more detail http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061116-8239 .html however it still is what is called "rubbery figures" in that it is a so called "technical estimate" which is based on something but that something is not defined, however they do have a nice shiny chart to the tune of Sony loosing $240 (about $60 difference). The best way of determining truth here is get a cost breakdown from Sony and they aren't talking not that I blame them. Personally I do think they are taking a hit per machine but in dollar terms I don't know.

When I see the following quote ""It's common for video-game console makers to lose money on hardware, and make up for the loss via video game-title sales". The article always looses credibility since it really was Microsoft who actually did this not Sony (they did make a small initial loss on the PS2 though) or Nintendo. A typical urban legend quote that seems to be dragged up a lot especially by blogger's and games writers to lend credence to their stories.

Still if you believe the article and really hate Sony and would like to make them loose money then you best get out there and purchase a PS3 after-all this is what happened to the Xbox to the tune of over $4 Billion. On a more serious note if you are going to buy a new console then which one are you going to buy since all the vendors want your money and patronage and to be brutally honest don't give a damn about you.

My recommendation to anyone is to buy the console that you can afford which has the games you like and can also afford.

> Do these comapnies not have a management hierarchy? They dont have weekly meetings with other departments?

Yes, they have one, which is why they will (gasp!) support Vista when the OS is generally available to consumers (who are Zune's market, not the corporate-edition users). God forbid teams focus on things like getting products out of the door, instead of fulfilling /.-ers' "M$ is teh B0rg" everything-must-proceed-in-lockstep fantasies.

Also, you do realize that for Microsoft, under the terms of the antitrust settlement, "doing department meetings" with other application teams (and Zune's software is an application) is illegal? That there's supposed to be a "Chinese Wall" between MS OS and MS Apps? For MS OS teams, Zune is an app. So's Realplayer, so's iTunes. All of them get exactly the same level of access.

If Zune needs Windows source access to do their work, competitors get source access too (provided they ask) -- except that the myth of Microsoft Apps teams 'looking at Windows source' has been a myth -- the OS teams hate anyone (inside MS or out) who 'work around' the API because it means they have get to support those work arounds forever in the name of back compat. Unlike Linux, the Windows API is supposed to be sufficient for anyone to create a good Windows app -- and Microsoft is happy to train developers -- including Firefox developers -- on how to use the Windows API to create better apps.

Anyway, the point is-- it's often easier to wait until a beta OS is in RC1 (API freeze) before starting to target it -- especially when your own product is a v1.0.

But of course, explaining engineering trade-offs to the know-all script kiddies on /. is like casting perls before swine.

Sorry guys, but you need to pick a better alternative. You don't want to dual-boot Windows fine, but you might want to consider the cons of using a system with such low developer support. You may not like Apple for some reason or the other but Blizzard does developed its game for Mac OS X. I would rather wait for Linux to be ported to Apple intel-based computers than for game developers to see value in porting games to Linux.

The reason is of course, that most games are barely optimised for dual cores, let alone four cores. It is not simple either as balancing several cores to get the most out of them requires a redesign of the game engine.

Or having a multi-threaded OpenGL implementation in your operating system.

I can totally see Apple hyping this when 10.5 ships. "They'll give you 4 cores, but we'll give you 4 cores that *get* *used*. Look, fast pretty pictures."

How fast do you think gamers and game companies will flock to Mac OS X when Apple starts demoing the same game running on Windows and Mac OS X on the same hardware and running 2-4x faster on the Mac?

The original post is an Apple troll.

...and the parent post is a Tandy troll(!). The standard microcomputer for business at that time was the Commodore PET. Hah, take that Tandy! :-)

Cheers,
Ian

Some utilities, such as Beagle or F-Spot are written in C# and depend on the Mono runtime, but the core desktop is Mono-free.

Wrong. Tomboy is part of the core GNOME 2.16 desktop as described by the GNOME project, and Tomboy requires Mono.

As Ars Technica put it,

"After much discussion, the GNOME developers decided to add the GTK C# sharp bindings and Mono as official GNOME dependencies."

And here's the official announcement from the mailing list stating that Mono is part of GNOME 2.16.

>> ... why not let me use my own sound clips?
>> Why am I stuck with the musty-sounding Vista start-up sound clip that Microsoft thinks I will like?

> That's been a function since at least Win95, maybe before.

They removed it in Vista. The new "sounds" dialog looks a bit wierd.

The reason is "branding".

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060924-7815 .html and others.

Looks like the PS3 is going to be a hackers dream. The trickle of info available so far indicated that it will be trivial to install Linux. Apparently YellowDog have built a PS3-specific distribution that will be installable with only a few clicks. And now it also appears that it wont have to be hacked to use homebrew firmware either...

Argh! ars technica linked to it http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/4/ 24/3724 .. no wonder the high rank look for the "always look better " link in the last paragraph

Mute is the only option, not Change.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060924-7815 .html

imho Eno/Win95 > Fripp/Vista

I know of nothing that I would consider an advantage in language design to Java over C#, and many advantages to C#.

Two things I can think of offhand that Java has an upper hand with are more powerful enums (here's an example) and a much stronger Collections library (C# is notably lacking a Set collection).

However, as of late I certainly agree with you. I keep seeing "new" features in Java that it lacked until C# (especially 2.0) came out (though it's still missing some nice things like partial classes, passing-by-reference, and variable-length argument lists). Another example of why it's good to have options/competition. Personally, I find C# much more intuitive and easy to develop with than Java.

It's obvious why you would want this sort of interaction between machines, but take a broader look. For example if the Nintendo Wii runs its non-game software on a linux core and MS opens up to Linux, does that mean that now the homes the Wii permeate will also be able to (hypothetically) interact with Micosoft "channels?" What implications could this have on the industry outside of PCs?

Ok, so captchas and other email obfuscation mechanisms are used a lot. Fine, a web designer can choose to do this.

Now, lets enter US law: American with Disabilities Act. Target is currently being sued for NOT complying with this federal law. I can understand why businesses would be required for this, but where will the net-boundaries stop?

For example, I have a US corp. I hire an offshore datacenter to handle web processing. Is my website have the compulsory ADA lawss upon it, or do they not apply due to international boundaries? Yipe.

Buddi (http://buddi.sourceforge.net/) is another free GPL budgeting program which I made to help budgeting. It is very simple and does not include a bunch of unused features; however, what it does it does well. It is written in Java 1.5. As of this past week, it is expandable via a plugin architecture, and there are a number of people currently working on plugins for it. If you want a simple budgeting program which does not require an accounting degree to use, this is for you.

There was recently a review of it at Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/11 /5/5866).

Cheers
--Wyatt

Jon Stokes covered this on Ars[1].

To prove how much easier it is to commit wholesale fraud when we having electronic voting machines, consider the following. I want Mickey Mouse to win every seat in the Senate. Is this feasible with a paper ballot? How about evoting technology?

Sure, we'd have small-scale stuff, but we always have small-scale stuff and the poll workers are accustomed to handling it. This new stuff confuses them, and makes it much easier to be malevolent.

[1] How to Steal an Election

Ars Technica detailed a plausible transmission path for a viral hack on a single machine to spread to the precinct, county, or even state level.

but if someone's pirated the app they generally won't be ringing up for support.

Those are the only two cases I found quickly, but I'm sure there are others.

No kidding.

According to Dr. Crutzen, a Nobel laureate, we can counter the warming by creating a global haze by ejecting thousands and thousands of tons of SO2 into the stratosphere to produce a shaded earth that would counter the effects of global warming. Note the word - stratosphere, which is a bit higher up than where we are pumping SO2 currently :).

I got this from: http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/1 0/23/5718

As alternatives consider this:
* Drop a few nu-cu-lar bombs on rogue nations... so we get nucular winter
* tickle mt. st. Helens, Krakatoa, Tambora - ps: Tambora erupted 1815 and it is estimated it spewed out 150x more ash than miss Helen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora

You mean the Thermal Paste issue that is actually non-existant? Is that the issue you're talking about?

Strange bedfellows: Microsoft, Novell ink pact

You obviously miaaed the slashdot article last week, here is a direct link to TFA:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s

Perhaps these will be of interest http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ and a write up. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s

This article on electronic voting suggests that the whole election will be a total debacle anyway. It makes horrifying reading. For example, voters discovered that anyone using a Sequoia voting machine (apparently the third largest supplier in the country) can vote multiple times. No hacking required - just hold down the button on the back of the box. WTF???

Why hasn't there been more coverage of this? Why does no-one care?

I'd say mudslinging is the least of your worries....

Boy, how innovative! Too bad that "new" Windows DWM sounds suspiciously like the Quartz compositing engine that's been in OS X for over four years now (see "Jaguar" release date)...

It could backfire. Chinese don't like being told off. I think they are actually trying to get rid of Microsoft as much as they can.

With the WGA (Windows genuine advantage) ramping up, we are getting to a situation in which the administrator of WGA in the USA can, with the flip of a switch, stop the economy of any country that relies too much in Windows. I think that is the reason China is pushing Linux so much. Windows is a liability to their national security.

If you think this is exaggerated, just think about the ridiculous reactions on Lenovo laptops being used by the US State Department. If the Chinese government where to react in the same line as the USA government, they would ban outright all Microsoft products.

"and the same ppl are claiming that global warming is a myth."

OT, but... Actually, global warming could be a myth, and I'm not one to believe in ID or any of that silly superstitious crap. The reason it may be a myth is simple: volcanoes. Each one puts out more pollution in a day than we can possibly put out in our lifetimes, IIRC, and when the major content of that pollution is sulfur dioxide, it changes to sulfuric acid when it hits moisture, which creates a COOLING effect because H2SO4 acts as a mirror.

From http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/1 0/23/5718 :
Nature lent credence to this radical idea through two events, the 1982 eruption of the volcano El Chichón and the more recent eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The eruption of Pinatubo left large quantities of water droplets containing sulfuric acid, each of which reflected some of the sun's energy away from the earth--enough in fact to cool the earth at a rate of about 0.5 oC/yr for almost two years after the eruption.

While this article wasn't saying that we were facing global cooling(they wanted to use the idea to fight global warming), any increase in volcanic activity would create that exact effect. So at the moment, the warming aspect isn't quite so set in stone as we would like to think.

The website that this information comes from was featured on Ars the other day. As many people pointed out in that discussion. The person making this claim, Alex Jones, also claims 9/11 was a conspiracy and a missile hit the pentagon. Is this really a credible source? sounds about as valid as a random AC troll on slashdot.

There is ample evidence of a) the ease in which Diebold voting machines can be patched and b) votes being switched to Republican candidates. Diebolds CEO vowed to deliver the 2004 presidential election to Mr. Bush.

Concerns are already mounting in Texas and Arkansas that votes are being flipped in early 2006 voting.

It's not a conspiracy when so many municipalities conclude that Diebold machines are not fit for elections.

Well according to this study:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061004-7908 .html

The daily show is just as good a source of news as some major networks.

Sad? Maybe, but it makes ya think (about your comparison).

APIs did often change in early releases of OS X. 10.0 and 10.1 were basically the foundations future releases built upon. It took Apple some time to get things stabilized. It wasn't until 10.4 that Apple promised "no API disruption for the foreseeable future." OS 9 to OS X was a huge change, it's really not surprising it took Apple a few releases to nail down API stability.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but why would anyone pay the asking price of just under a hundred quid for a minor revision?

There were some major major differences between XP and 2000, and I can understand Microsoft paying for these.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but why would anyone pay the asking price of just under a hundred quid for a minor revision?

There were some major major differences between XP and 2000, and I can understand Microsoft paying for these.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but why would anyone pay the asking price of just under a hundred quid for a minor revision?

There were some major major differences between XP and 2000, and I can understand Microsoft paying for these.

I don't know if this is related to the news that their patent has fallen through for the user interface based on the clickwheel but if I may speculate, it may have some influence on their decision.

So you might wonder who cares if you can patent an interface or not? If it works, who cares? Well, I would like to point out that if they can't successfully patent the clickwheel & interface, this leads the way for many many knock offs that could potentially function identical to an iPod. If someone can offer an iPod for a fraction of the price, they could potentially steal a part of the market share.

So it might seem that a part of their strategy is to introduce an equally intuitive interface with the user (that they can patent) so as to maintain their unique offering to the consumer. Maybe they don't think their name brand reorganization & iTMS compatibility is sufficient to keep a hold on the market. But it's not certain the market will love the new interface as much as the old ... so it is definitely a risky move either way. Perhaps they could market both flavors of iPod interface?

The simplest explanation is that they're just testing the waters for interfaces that they can patent.

I'm impressed you can hear the difference; although it seems Fraunhofer (was) better than LAME at the time of the following test (admittedly a few years ago): http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/mp3/mp3-1.h tml.

In any case LAME is Free, and thereby far better suited to the politically minded nerdcore audience of today.

Wait a second. You're saying that a browser released in 1999 requires fewer resources than one released in 2006? Whoa, dude, you've blown my mind. You are a promising researcher indeed.

By the way, Firefox 2.0 doesn't use an SQL database to store bookmarks and history. That feature got cut.

Go troll somewhere else, please.