Slashdot Mirror
Domain: gmail.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gmail.com.
Stories · 2,907
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Beatbox Studio Announced for PSP/PS2
Drakken writes "GamesAreFun.com is reporting on a new PSP and PS2 game being developed by Coong Entertainment called Beatbox Studio. Apparently, players will have to beatbox (make drumming sounds using their voice) to the rhythm of songs. The game will utilize the PS2 mic and upcoming PSP mic accessories. It looks like it will be similar to Dance Dance Revolution and other bemani titles, except for the fact that none of those titles involve beatboxing. I don't think there have been any beatboxing games in the past; it's a truly interesting and unique idea." -
How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree?
syynnapse asks: "I've been interested in computer science since my mother taught me how to program in QBASIC when I was eleven, and I've wanted to be a developer ever since I learned C++ in AP Computer Science while in high-school. Now I'm in my sophomore year of college studying CS at a state university that isn't particularly known for its CS program, but I'm quite happy and personally think I'm learning plenty. My father thinks otherwise, and the deadline for transferring successfully is approaching quickly. What chance do I have in the real world with a not-so-prestigious degree? Am I likely to be learning what's important? Am I looking at a series of awful jobs if I don't transfer?" -
Half-Life 2 Deathmatch Confirmed
Satertek writes "Following up a previous post, a teaser was posted on the Steam website with the image HL2DM.jpg entitled 'Soon', confirming rumors of a Half-Life 2 Multiplayer Deathmatch game. It was also brought up on the forums by Valve. It will be released alongside the SDK sometime this week." Update: 12/01 13:49 GMT by T : Since this was written, "this week" has turned into "now"; the update was released last night. -
Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes
Amadaeus writes "According to the latest study by USA Today and Avantgarde, it takes less than 4 minutes for an unpatched Windows XP SP1 system to become part of a botnet. Avantgarde has the statistics in their abstract. Stats of note: Although Macs and PC's got hit with equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks." See also our story on the survival time for unpatched systems. -
SCO Sells First Linux Licenses in UK
Christopher writes "SCO has actually sold its first Linux licenses in the UK. These licenses permit the use of SCO's intellectual property that is apparently present in Linux distributions, and in binary form only. To my understanding SCO hasn't won yet and these licenses don't grant you any freedoms you didn't already have, but SCO's vice president Chris Sontag says that 20 to 30 organisations worldwide have purchased these licenses." -
Microsoft Offers Beta of Visual Studio 2005
nanodude writes "According to DimensionXC, Microsoft is offering a free beta version of Visual C++ Express 2005 among other programs in the Visual Studio 2005 Express Suite. Seems like a good deal to me!" -
Tankjumping in Halo 2
The original Warthog Jump video from Halo is a hilarious and informative way to learn about game physics. An Anonymous reader wrote in to mention a Spare Time production in which they try to recreate the essence of the experiment. "A tank on top of a shield in Halo2 proves to be quite an experience! We got it on tape. Enjoy!" -
Creating Hydrogen With (Very) Hot Water
carbonman writes "NYTimes is reporting that a public-private research team will announce on Monday that they have discovered a new technique to produce pure hydrogen that is far more efficient than conventional methods. The advance could be a significant development in attempts to realize the dream of the hydrogen economy in taking gasoline-powered vehicles off the road, and without releasing carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change. It does, however, require the use of advanced high-temperature nuclear reactors, none of which have been built on a production scale before." swiftstream adds a link to the same story at the no-reg Indianapolis Star, and summarizes the method as "electrolysis of very, very hot water." -
Steve Ballmer's $100 PC, Sans Windows
Martin_Flory writes "SolarPC has announced the $100 personal computer. Steve Ballmer's idea for reducing piracy was great after all, since this computer runs on Linux (DSL Distro). 'The design and construction of the SolarLite is consistent with the goal of an environmentally friendly computer. It uses a lightweight, recyclable, aluminum case that has a 20-year warranty. Its VIA chipset based "long-life" motherboard is a "green" lead free product. Like all SolarPC computers, the SolarLite operates on 12 volt DC power and can be run from a solar panel, car battery, or human powered (with a bicycle-based generator). The cool and quiet SolarLite uses approximately 10 watts of energy, just a fraction of what a standard PC consumes.' Sounds amazing right? This could change education all around the globe... a new Information Era is coming, and everyone is invited." The site claims they'll be available next month (minimum order 100,000 units), and promises a demo at SCALE 2005. -
Source SDK Released Soon, HL2 High in Gamerankings
Biomemetic writes "Valve announced yesterday that they'll be releasing the Source SDK next week, along with a "surprise for the community". Incidentally, the sound stuttering bug (actually three bugs, to do with texture loading problems), has been solved and an update released through Steam." Relatedly, Highpriest writes "According to gamerankings.com, Half Life 2's average review is higher than Halo 2's. Half Life 2 has recieved a 96.6% overall rating wheras Halo 2 came in with a 95.1%." -
Wireless Mouse with no Batteries
GI Joe writes "Hardcoreware.net have posted a review of a mouse with no batteries; it receives its charge through induction from the USB powered mousepad. Of course this means you must use the mouse on this mousepad, taking away some of the big advantages of a wireless mouse. However, they said that the mouse is otherwise very accurate, and has no lag at all since it uses RFID." -
WebDAV with a Quota?
gik asks: "I'm in the need for a quota-managing, multi-account capable, class-1 WebDAV server (for remote file storage for clients). I've been researching WebDAV for a long long time now, and have only found one all-in-one implementation: Xythos webfile server, which is a very costly (but a very good) solution. I know that some online storage companies use a hacked Apache, but as anyone who's worked with WebDAV knows, doing this with Apache can be hard. So I'm asking: Does anyone out there know of a good WebDAV server with (hopefully) quota management that is as reliable and free as Apache? Oracle's IFS, Novell Netware, and the like are acceptable as possible candidates." -
World Largest LAN Party Opens
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World of Warcraft Reaching Record MMOG Sales
Drac8 writes "Blizzard Entertainment has announced that World of Warcraft has reached record sales in the first day, selling over 250,000 copies, and 200,000 accounts have been created. As of 5:00PM PST tuesday the game had over 100,000 people playing." -
Payrolling Services for Shareware?
ajius asks: "Over the last 3 months, I have developed a solution for a client that, in order to minimize costs, decided to allow me to retain copyright. So that I could resell it. Now I see tons of services offering payroll services for contractors (in fact I use one of them), but I can't find a service that will act as the corporate wrapper for someone selling a product. So is there a service that takes care of the bookkeeping, benefits, and tax payments for those of us selling software/components/games/training videos/books/etc." -
Intentional SpyWare Infection?
zagman asks: "I am doing some research on SpyWare / AdWare, and how to prevent/contain the problem, and am looking for some of those 'Bad Sites' - you know, the ones which take advantage of any of the known exploits and installs a whole bunch of software without your knowledge (or sometime with it). I am testing this on IE6 on an XP-SP1 box (no further patches) and also IE6.02 on a XP-SP2 box. Can anyone out there recommend some 'good' bad-sites for me to go? Benjamin Edelman did some similar work, and posted his results, but I also want to compare Mozilla and FireFox's response as well. Thanks out there!" Update: 11/24 4:05pm EDT by C : In case it hasn't been mentioned already, a considerable amount of infection can be obtained from a single website. Any other infectious goodies out there? -
Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Bill
Finalnight writes "The Senate has voted to outlaw several favorite techniques of people who illegally copy and distribute movies, but has dropped other measures that could have led to jail time for Internet song-swappers..." -
Failing Grades For Most Anti-Spyware Tools
serbach writes "Steve Gibson posted this link to a superb test of about two dozen top Anti-Spyware programs: Eric L. Howes conducted the test over a two-week period in October. The results surprised me: only 3 ASW programs had a 'batting average' of better than .500 when it came to eradicating the broad range of spyware in the test. Freeware star Spybot Search & Destroy came in a distant 7th with an average of only .376. The top three? Giant Anti-Spyware, Spy Sweeper, and Ad-Aware. These test results are well worth your time." -
Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf
gollum123 copies and pastes: "AP has a story on how as Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search engine is muscling into the software giant's turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop." -
Half Life 2 Stuttering Bug Official
sinner0423 writes "Due to recent complaints on several forums, Steampowered announced they are working on a fix to this stuttering problem in Half Life 2. Usually, a game bug isn't news-worthy, but the sporadic nature of this bug makes me wonder - who else has problems with HL2 pausing/skipping? This site outlines the problem certain users are having in a very clear & concise manner, and also includes some stopgap solutions from Erik Johnson & other Valve employees." -
Berkeley Researchers Analyze Florida Voting Patterns
empraptor writes "Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida. They have held a conference and posted their findings online. You can find articles on their research from CNet, Wired News, and many other sources. While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?" -
Playstation Holiday Demo May Erase Memory Cards
Audigy writes "The 2004 Playstation Underground demo disc (that includes a playable demo of Viewtiful Joe 2) apparently may contain a fatal bug that destroys all data on the memory card inserted into the system when the first save point is passed." -
Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports Taipei city planners are building what they say will be the world's biggest Wi-Fi network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital. The project will build on the network available in Hsinyi, an up-and-coming shopping and financial district that is home to the world's tallest building, the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101, and the city government headquarters. The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million. Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. The network will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005." -
Valve Takes the Offensive on Warez Users?
Drull writes "It's claimed by a poster on filefront.com that Valve might have released a "Warez" version of Half-Life 2 to monitor and ban those who attempt to use it. This is the news from some guy with a filefront account, so take it with a grain of salt. -
China to Have Over 100 Eyes in the Sky
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports China plans to launch more than 100 satellites before 2020 to watch every corner of the country, state-run China Central Television quoted a government official as saying Tuesday. A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating. "The aim is that, at any time and any place, we can obtain necessary data on any event through watching the Earth from space," said Shao Liqin, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology." -
Microsoft and SBC Team Up on IPTV
rdurell writes "Microsoft is once again trying to get into the television market. This time they are teaming up with SBC Communications in a $400M deal to deliver television via IPTV through SBC's network. According to the article, Microsoft has spent $20B in its attempts to break into the market." -
Steam Registration Servers Overloaded
duckle writes "The Inquirer reports that "The World has come crashing down around Half-Life 2 players today, as Steam's authentication servers in Europe have died.", and deemzzzz_k writes "It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity. HL2 requires registration to unlock the game and although the Valve/Steam homepage claims that it fixed registration issues the servers are still overloaded. Registration is "delayed" and temporarily unlocking the game takes 20-30 minutes over a 1.5MB DSL line." This seems to primarily be an issue for folks who bought the game from a store; I purchased the game via Steam and was playing at 12:15 am PST on launch day. -
Killer Ozone?
Tufriast writes "This will make you think twice about an H2... The BBC News has reported that the death toll in U.S. cities might have a correlation to the ozone levels in them. The article mentions several major U.S. cities, and notices the upward trend in premature deaths as pollution levels rise. The results can also be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association." -
Disney to Make Toy Story 3 Without Pixar
rdurell writes "CNN is reporting that Disney has begun the process of setting up a new CGI studio with the goal of making Toy Story 3. Pixar has balked at the idea of another sequel thus far though Disney does own the rights to the franchise. Does this truly spell the end of the Disney-Pixar relationship? Can both Disney and Pixar live without the other?" We covered the Disney/Pixar breakup in January. -
Firefox News Roundup
Spaceman40 sent in this ZDNet story. PeterPumpkin collects way too many links to Firefox stories: "According to SpreadFirefox.com , there were almost 3 million downloads of Firefox 1.0 in the 5 days since launch, which comes to over 500,000 downloads per day. There are news bites coming out about Firefox everywhere you could possibly imagine. According to a report on MozillaZine, Denmark's largest television channel, TV2, reported on the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. PC-WELT, the German equivalent of PC-World, is distributing their own customised version of Firefox to customers." Thomas Hawk writes "Rather than go outside for the past 48 hours, Scott Granneman prefers to burrow in his den and come up with one of the first definitive lists of Firefox links. Good geeking Scott. And way to overcompensate." -
Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computing?
krozinov writes "Instinct tells us that computer security and computer usability are inversely proportional to each other. In other words, the tougher and stricter the security is, the less usability there is, and vice versa. However, there have been plenty of cases where both computer security and computer usability went hand in hand with each other and actually improved together. In the last few years security has been the biggest buzzword in computer systems and as such has become part of our computer systems. Before that, computer systems were all about getting it done faster and easier, but now they must also do it securely. Can the two continue growing together? This paper argues that it can, as evident by the most recent Indian Assembly Election." -
Can Reverse Engineering Help In Stopping Worms?
krozinov writes "The goal of this paper is to try to answer the following three questions: How do you reverse engineer a virus? Can reverse engineering a virus lead to better ways of detecting, preventing, and recovering from a virus and its future variants? Can reverse engineering be done more efficiently? The paper is organized into five sections and two appendixes. Section 1 is the introduction. Section 2 reviews basic x86 concepts, including registers, assembly, runtime data structures, and the stack. Section 3 gives a brief introduction to viruses, their history, and their types. Section 4 delves into the Beagle virus disassembly, including describing the techniques and resources used in this process as well as presenting a high level functional flow of the virus. Section 5 presents the conclusions of this research. Appendix A provides a detailed disassembly of the Beagle worm, while Appendix B presents the derived source code of the Beagle virus, as a result of this research." -
Atlantis Found. Again.
Tufriast writes "Paul McCartney and Mythic eat your heart out! BBC News has an interesting revelation regarding the lost city of Atlantis: "American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus."" Hey, here's an idea: The idea of an almost mythical lost civilization is common thread throughout all old human societies - much like, say, really big Floods. Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion. -
Building/Testing of a High Traffic Infrastructure?
New Breeze asks: "I'm currently working on my first web 'application', and have discovered that I know less than nothing about setting up the infrastructure to manage a high traffic system. Where does one go to learn about setting up the infrastructure required to host something like Slashdot? Or do you just say, 'Not my area!' and help them find a consultant?" "My experience is pretty much limited to:1. Install the web server on one box, the database on the same box if it's a small installation or a separate box if performance seems like it will need it. Add more memory and processors based on SWAG criteria. (Scientific Wild Ass Guess)
I had a potential customer ask what I would recommend if they wanted to self host, they have around 300 remote locations and would have multiple users from each location hitting the application at the same time, so saying a couple of beefy servers probably isn't the right answer.
2. Contract with a hosting company.
I haven't a clue. The last place I worked with on something like this hired a high dollar consultant who spend a huge pile of their money setting up a load balanced, oracle parallel server redundant everything system.
How do you test it? I've worked where they actually had a room with hundreds of systems on racks that they would configured to run test transactions against different servers and software builds for stress testing, but that's not in my budget..." -
Metal Gear Solid 4 Confirmed
t3rror writes "It seems as though Metal Gear Solid 4 has been confirmed even before its predecessor is released. According to an article at CVG, Hideo Kojima's acclaimed series will not end with the soon to be released MGS3: Snake Eater." -
Ham and Software - Communities of Creativity?
lgreco asks: "I've been thinking about the similarities between the community of early ham radio operators and software developers. Both communities produced a lot of useful technologies that found applications beyond the scope of a 'just a hobby'. Ham radio operators built their own equipment and experimented with modulation and propagation techniques. The results of their efforts today are used in a variety of radio communication applications, from cell phones to marine radios. Similarly, hackers developed concepts of computing that are now universally accepted tools of productivity. Both communities share an enthusiasm for technical creativity and up until recently there was even some overlap between the two groups. Are there any interesting stories about the creativity of either groups (that relate to the other group perhaps) that should be recorded and documented?" -
Are Game Stats Important to You?
Nehle asks: "In almost every new multi-player game there is a way of keeping statistics about the games that are being played. Whether it's fan-based services or a service created by the game creator. Unreal Tournament 2004 can write nice HTML files for you, Bungie keep an insane amount of stats about games played over X-Box Live. For my favorite shooter - Enemy Territory, there is an application called Enemy Territory Teamstats and I wrote this little script to keep track of my games. Are stats any important to the average /. reader? Is it interesting how many times you shot 1337h4x0rg4m3r in the head, or is winning all that counts? Do you even want people to know if you lost 14 games in a row?" -
Half-Life 2 Street Date
JFlex writes "According to Valve's website, Half-Life 2 will hit the streets on November 16th! From the press release: "The Company confirmed that Half-Life 2, developed by Valve Software, has gone gold with a planned retail street date of November 16, 2004." Gonna have to rush home and beat Halo 2 as fast as possible to free up some time for HL2!!" -
Video Games Changing the Workplace
kwolf22 writes "Last night, Marketplace aired the story: The New Video Frontier (audio available). From the show description : 'Host David Brown talks to author Mitchell Wade (Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever) about the video game industry and how first person shooter games will change workplace dynamics for the next generation of employees.' Mr. Wade brings up some interesting points about how persistance in gaming translates to persistance on the job." -
CA Executive Outlines Open Source Plans For Ingres
Rob Westervelt writes "In this Q&A, a top CA executive outlines CA's plans to take on Oracle, MySQL and others with the newly open sourced Ingres database. The status of CA's Million Dollar Challenge to open source developers is also explained." -
FTC Email Authentication Summit
gal1264 writes "The FTC is hosting an email authentication summit today and tomorrow in Washington, DC conveniently happening at the same time as the IETF meeting in the same town. Today mainily was comprised of an overview of the various outstanding proposals. It was interesting to see the whole crowd cheer as the Yahoo representative reiterated that their proposal was full open, much unlike the recent Sender-ID proposal which caused great furor in the IETF MARID working group as well as the open source community. It does seem however, that all of the participants were excited to be testing various techniques (personally I found the Bounce Address Tag Validation very compelling) and were communally comitted to converging on the most effective solutions without anything other than defensive patent structure." -
Court Urged to Hear File-Sharing Case
gollum123 writes "AP reports that: A disparate group made up of dozens of state attorneys general, labor unions, retailers, professional sports leagues and others urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to hear a claim brought by the recording and film industries against two Internet file-sharing firms. In legal briefs filed with the court, the petitioners stressed the justices should take the entertainment companies' case and finally resolve conflicting lower court rulings on file-sharing, said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America." -
2004 IOCCC Winners Source Code Released
Langly writes "The IOCCC have finally released their source code for 2004. My thoughts goes out to the poor guys that actually wrote this code. Reader discretion is advised." Every time I see an obfuscated code contest, I wonder if 'Winner' is the right word to describe the victor ;) -
Best Buy: 20% Of Customers Are Wrong
Mr Show writes "Ars Technica has an article up discussing Best Buy's strategies to drive off the deal hunters. It's a good follow up to the Slashdot story from back in July, and offers some details on what they're actually trying to do." -
Competition Fosters Next Generation Of Linux Talent
gollum123 writes "Yahoo reports that about 3,000 students from 75 countries registered for the 2004 IBM Linux Scholar Challenge before registration closed Oct. 31, the largest turnout in the competition's history. This year's winners will be revealed in January at LinuxWorld in Boston. Each entry consists of a 1,200-word essay that can describe the solution to one of 29 Linux-related challenges IBM poses as part of the competition. Entrants, who must be enrolled full time at an accredited university, aren't limited to these challenges and can suggest and solve their own problems. The IBM-provided challenges include asking entrants to identify deficiencies in Linux and propose solutions, describe how to build a high-availability application that would provide failover capability across multiple IBM servers, and improve boot time on a Linux-based IBM ThinkPad." -
The Scoop on Bloggercon III
Trizor writes "Bloggercon III commenced today with the opening session ending in a singalong of 'This land is your land'. The sessions ranged from introductions on blogging to a comparison of bloggers and journalists. The developers at O'Reilly have provided notes, coverage, and commentary on the event." -
FreeBSD 5.3 Released
cpugeniusmv writes "FreeBSD 5.3 has been released! This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes and errata list. Bittorrent Download." -
Source Engine SDK Released
wolrahnaes writes "It's finally available to the public. According to a post on The Valve ERC Collective, the tools needed to create maps and mods for Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and other Source engine based titles are now available on Steam. Some documentation is available here." -
Nokia Announces 7710 PDA/GPS/Internet Phone
Tufriast writes "The Register has an interesting article on Nokia's internet ready/GPS/PDA ultra phone. It boasts music playing capabilities and features the Series 90 Software. Its attractiveness, and 'No side-talking' (NGage) capacity alone makes it a handy utensil." -
Halo 2 Retail Date Broken in Midwest
Thanks to c0nrad, who alerted us to a Gamespot article stating that Halo 2's launch date has been broken by a Midwestern store. From the article: "Several reports on the Gaming Age forums--which included photos of the limited edition of the game--said that several individual Meijer stores, a self-described grocery and general merchandise retailer that operates in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, were selling the game early. However, calls made by GameSpot to several Meijer outlets made it sound like the franchise was sticking to the deadline." The reader continues: "Despite that, Ebay auctions have already gone up, with one having already reached $265!"
