Slashdot Mirror

Ant writes "Yahoo! News reports that British soldiers will be getting germ-fighting underwear. The antimicrobial underpants have been introduced by the Ministry of Defense as part of a new desert uniform for soldiers. They are the first undergarments issued to British troops, who traditionally have had to supply their own. Military officials said Thursday the unisex trunks were made from artificial fibers for comfort, with silver particles woven into the material to prevent sweating. "It is coated to prevent bacterial infection, and we have tried to arrange the seams so that they don't chafe," Col. Silas Suchanek, who led the team that procured the new equipment, said Thursday."

Reader Ant wrote to mention the article entitled Is Cheap Broadband UnAmerican? The author argues that media companies are systematically ruining the MuniWiFi efforts across the country, likening the community initiatives to a form of communism. From the article: "Telecommunications giants have mobilized a well-funded army of coin-operated think tanks, pliant legislators and lazy journalists to protect their Internet fiefdoms from these municipal internet initiatives, painting them as an affront to American innovation and free enterprise"

Ant writes "ABC News reports that scientists are bringing the past to life by hatching eggs once thought to be dead and producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago. They are calling it 'resurrection ecology,' and it's a whole new field that quite literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred, using animals that were quite different than their kinfolk today."

Ant writes "Shacknews reports that ECTS has undergone a decline and was even considered surpassed by a new event last year, the European Games Network. Earlier last week, ECTS finally bit the dust, along with the European Game Developers Conference, as media firm CMP revealed they were leaving the market. Days before this news, the show Game Zone Live was announced as canceled, due to a lack of support from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo."

Ant writes "ZDNet UK reports that Russians who once hacked for fun are now teaming up to get rich through cybercrime, according to police. The Russian cybercrime division, known as Department K, has warned that Russian hackers are the best in the world. From the article: 'Everyone knows that Russians are good at math...Our software writers are the best in the world, that's why our hackers are the best in the world.'"

Ant writes "BetaNews reports that Google quietly updated its maps service late Monday to include satellite imagery, a first in the industry... Much of Google Maps remains the same - just with detailed pictures from high-tech satellites instead of standard map graphics. Maps can be dragged to view adjacent areas, which means users do not have click and wait for graphics to reload. Zooming is also instantaneous with the help of a slider placed atop the map." The resolution doesn't seem very high, but the integration is very seamless.

Ant writes "The Battlefield: Pirates v0.31 modification for Battlefield 1942 is now available for download. You can be either be a pirate or a zombie pirate (skeleton), and this neat mod allows you to use various boats (e.g., galleons), various guns, cannons, balloons, kegs, grenades, stone throwing axes, muskets, cutlasses, etc - there are screenshots of the Beta on the official site." What other Battlefield 1942 mods are worth checking out?

Ant writes "This web page has a list of 120 years of electronic music from 1870 to 1990."

Ant writes "I just noticed Doomsday HQ, source of some of the best enhancements of original DOOM, Heretic, and Hexen game engines since the code was open-sourced, has released v1.8.0 of both the Linux and Windows ports. SkyJake, the author, also mentions on the news page that a Mac OS X version might be ported in the future." As the official beginner's guide notes, you'll need "a copy of the original shareware/registered [game .WAD]" to play.

Ant writes "According to the story on Blue's News and Slitherine Software's related official statement, the gold master for Gates of Troy, their upcoming stand-alone PC strategy title, has been purloined, via a physical robbery of a UK Post Office carrier, rather than a computer break-in." It may well have just been "a piece of extreme bad luck", but kudos to Slitherine for trying to make the most of this incident, as they slather: "This attack comes hot on the heels of the theft of the Half Life 2 source code and shows how vulnerable games companies can be", and also fret: "It has been a wake up call to us and Slitherine will be reviewing its procedures in future to ensure the same type of thing cannot happen again." - perhaps a heavily armed guard is needed?

Ant writes " According to linuxreviews article's on 6/11/2004, there is a nasty bug that lets a simple C program crash the kernel (2.4.18-2.6.x reported so far), effectively locking the whole system. Affects both 2.4.2x and 2.6.x kernels on the x86 architecture. This exploit can be compiled and run without a root access and with a shell access. There are detailed information and source code mentioned. " You need to have shell access to run this program; it's also worth noting that not *all* flavors are vulnerable. Please read article for the full details.

Ant writes "GameSpot and other sources report arrests were made: Developer of the much-anticipated and delayed shooter sequel reveals an international wave of arrests has been made. The Half-Life 2 code theft saga entered a new chapter today when Valve Software announced a series of arrests had been made in the case. According to Valve, suspects in several countries had been taken into custody in relation to charges stemming from the theft of the Half-Life 2 code, distribution of the code, and breaking into Valve's network..."

Ant writes "Here is a link where this guy always wanted Edmund Scientific's Giant Fresnel Lens. 'Melts asphalt in seconds!' the ad said. When he went to graduate school he met several other people with the same enthusiasm for aimless destruction through bizarre means, and just enough combined cash to make it happen. Thus the reign of terror began."

Ant writes "Science Daily has an article about scientists having found that the way spiders stick to ceilings could be the key to making Post-it notes that don't fall off even when they are wet. A team from Germany and Switzerland have made the first detailed examinations of a jumping spider's 'foot' and have discovered that a molecular force sticks the spider to almost anything. The force is so strong that these spiders could carry over 170 times their own body weight while standing on the ceiling. The research is published today (Monday 19 April 2004) in the Institute of Physics journal Smart Materials and Structures." Other researchers are actually exploring ways to make a sort of non-glue adhesive tape.

Ant writes "Computerworld has an editorial article about slowing down, not speeding up, patch releases."

Ant writes "GameSpy has an article discussing their favorite ideas for licenses that should be made into games, but haven't made the transition yet." The piece, thankfully, notes that we "often get slammed with hideously inappropriate or just badly implemented and misbegotten licensed creations", but also argues: "For every Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, or Superman for the N64, we'll occasionally get a Tron 2.0, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic", before picking The Road Warrior, Lone Wolf and Cub, and Ender's Game, among others, as licenses they'd like to see made into games. Which licenses do you think could survive the transition to games intact?

Ant writes "Apple just posted the Spider-Man 2 trailer after the trailer was shown on The Apprentice for west coast."

Ant writes "According to 'Nvidia Macrovision DVD-TV rules forced on consumers', Nvidia drivers 41.09 and onwards include 'stringent checks' to comply with Macrovision requirements. That could mean if you have a TV encoder that does not support Macrovision, you may well get an error message depending on what DVD software player you are using, the company has said."

Ant writes "This article talks about transforming today's dumb electricity grid into a smart, responsive and self-healing digital network--in short, an 'energy internet'."

Ant writes "CNN has a story about scientists having learned the composition of the mysterious sphere-shaped objects scattered across the crater floor at Meridiani Planum, the landing site of the Opportunity Mars rover."

Ant writes "A story over at Blue's News reveals that the June 2004 print issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Computer Gaming World (on newsstands in late April) will confirm a sequel to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and that the game is, as previously rumored, in development at Obsidian Entertainment, the developer formed by ex-Black Isle boss Fergus Urquhart."

Ant writes "Wired News has an article on a campaign for the presidency of Alphaville, the biggest city in The Sims Online. Two challengers will square off in a final primary for the opportunity to unseat Alphaville's incumbent president, the appropriately named Mr-President, in next month's general election."

Ant writes "Demor is a location-based 3D audio shooter - according to the official site: 'This highly innovative game was developed by a multi-disciplinary team of seven EMMA-students for the Bartimeus Institute for the Blind. Demor does not only focus on the entertainment aspect of computer gaming, but also attempts to contribute to the emancipation of the blind and visually impaired people in order to enhance their integration with the 'sighted' world. It is a proof of concept developed on the basis of theoretical and practical research' - there's a preview of the game over at AudioGames.net, who also cover Drive, a demo of an audio racing game created for the same institute."

Ant writes "According to this interview with the Xbox developers Vicarious Visions over at GamePro, only the Xbox port of id's Doom 3 will have co-operative play, and the PC version will not have co-op, unlike the original Doom games. There are also two recent interviews with id themselves on the GamePro site." Co-op was one of the parts of Doom (and Quake) that really got me into the genre, but after I got good enough fighting alongside my friends, I found it was more fun to fight against them, since they were more challenging than anything the computer could come up with then.

Ant writes "According to Wired News: 'It was bound to happen. First there was SimCity. Then there was The Sims. And then came a series of highly successful expansion packs like Hot Date, Livin' Large, House Party and others. Now comes a fan-made plug-in that allows Sims characters to effectively play SimCity inside The Sims. The Sims franchise has gone meta.'"

Ant writes "One line synopsis -- Winner of over 23 awards, 'Robot Stories' is science fiction from the heart, four stories in which utterly human characters struggle to connect in a world of robot babies, robot toys, android office workers, and digital immortality." There are a few reviews available.

Ant writes "This is where you can find photos of those unusual items which somehow missed our keen attention in the 70s and 80s. Be it a specialty product, electronic novelty or an utter boondoggle from a major electronics outfit of the day, we'll dig 'em up and talk about 'em."

Ant writes "Over at the 1UpArcade site they've been making a rotating game controller, including a normal arcade stick, as well as '...a 3" trackball, a Discs Of Tron-style up/down spinner, and two 8-way trigger joysticks.. [and] a genuine Star Wars yoke', all in the same arcade cabinet." Other interesting projects on the page include replacement joystick handles for 'Tron' and hacking a Crayola Kidsball into a MAME cabinet as a trackball.

Ant writes "Growing net, computer and phone use is driving a huge rise in the amount of information people generate and use. US researchers estimate that every year 800MB of information is produced for every person on the planet. Their study found that information stored on paper, film, magnetic and optical disks has doubled since 1999. Paper is still proving popular though. The amount of information stored in books, journals and other documents has grown 43% in three years."

Ant writes "According to Blue's News, there's a playable demo for S2Games' FPS/RTS hybrid, Savage: The Battle for Newerth now available, providing the chance to sample multiplayer under either Windows (143 MB) or Linux (155 MB)." There are also BitTorrents of the Windows demo and the Linux demo, courtesy GameTab, for this welcome Linux-friendly title, recently cause for controversy when GameSpot pulled a review of it after "...allegations by the game's developers that the reviewer of the product did not play it for a sufficient length of time."

Ant sends this link about a home-made mortar. Now all he needs is explosive shells and a good tripod...

Ant writes "Futurama's last new episode airs tonight at 7:00 PM on Fox." If you're missing your fix, there's a Futurama website with entirely too much Futurama info.

Ant writes "According to an article at Blue's News: 'Though id Software basically invented the idea of using "when it's done" as a release date, and thus did not specify a release date when DOOM 3 was announced, many have been assuming that the game would be available for this year's holiday season. Now a report on HomeLAN Fed cites Activision's 2003 release calendar and quarterly financial conference call... [saying that] Activision admits that this matter is entirely in id's hands, but that they are not expecting the game this year, and have it "penciled" on their calendars for fiscal Q4 (Jan-March) 2004.' Additionally, Quake IV is now due in Fiscal 2005 (which begins April 2004)."

Ant writes "After two years of work, OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11) is golden master and ready for immediate download by all Mac OS X users. This release marks a major milestone. It uses the Unix standard X Window and takes advantage of the immense wealth of open source material. To name but one feature, fonts are anti-aliased, making documents look smooth and clean and wholly professional. If you use Mac OS X there is no reason to wait. This will address your needs. And, as with all in the OpenOffice.org 1.0 family, this free release reads and writes Microsoft Office documents and works freely in heterogeneous environments where one might find Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X machines working side by side. The next step is to finish the Aqua version."

Ant points to Steve Ferris' site demonstrating what Ferris has done "using Wideview software, Multi Monitors and Fs2002 Panel Interior view Bitmaps. 9 PC's & 13 monitors. Server PC is a 2.0ghz AMD and has 1 Asus 4800se G4 AGP and when Motor flying 4 PCI graphic cards for the instrument panels.. All 8 Clients have AGP cards and are AMD 800 to 1.5ghz... My Ask21 Glider with 3 Asus 4800se G4 cards on the front 6 monitors, giving great downward landing view. When you sit in front, all screens line up reasonably well ... Windows XP on the 3 front PC's and 98se on the rest."

Ant writes "KnoppixMAME is a bootable arcade machine emulator with hardware detection and autoconfiguration. It works automatically on all modern and not-so-modern hardware, including gameports and joysticks. It is powered by Knoppix Debian GNU/Linux, X-MAME, and gxmame." Update: 06/19 23:18 GMT by S : Although there are earlier versions in the release directory, looks like V1.0 hasn't made it onto the FTP just yet. Meanwhile, Jim points out the AdvanceCD image, which is "..also a bootable ISO image of a minimal Linux distribution containing MAME, but weighing in at 16 MB rather than 200 MB so there is more room for ROMs."

Ant writes "Synopsis: Opera, Mozilla & Netscape with javascript enabled are vulnerable to remote command execution. This has been tested on Microsoft, and many many Unices. Macintosh may also be vuln. Ironically enough, IE is unaffected." Update: 06/08 23:56 GMT by H : The problem seems to be one in the Java security model itself; but the evidence seems to be that if you turn off JavaScript, you turn off the vulnerability. Update: 06/09 00:56 GMT by T : According to this followup message from Mozilla security group member Daniel Veditz, the problem is actually one that's already been fixed in Mozilla 1.3, and not a remote command execution vulnerability at all. (Thanks to reader Jared Klett and others.)

Ant writes "'Many young people around the world use the internet every day, and yet they have no memory of the history that led to the creation of the global network. Many have no understanding of how or why the internet has developed. As part of out continuing efforts to combat ignorance around the world, The Lemon is proud to present this timeline...'"

Ant writes "Saturday morning no longer means kids in front of TV sets across the country, glued to the latest in hip cartoons. Why? Gerard Raiti investigates the death of an era." As a former Saturday morning TV addict, this doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.

Ant writes "Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Test is released for Linux and Windows! It doesn't require the original game." See the news blurb and player guide.

Ant writes "This is a radio series perhaps unlike anything you have listened to before! Recorded over a year, the series charts the fascinating and bizarre lives of two colonies of wood ants; one in a pine forest and the other in a deciduous woodland in Northumberland (UK). Using specially designed microphones, we eavesdrop on the private and noisy activities of the ants; we join the soldiers, workers, nurses and guards within nests, following them as they march through the forest on a highway of ant trails, and we are with them when the nest is attacked by badgers, damaged by mountain bikes, and threatened by tree harvesters, dogs, ferocious storms and predatory birds. The series has computer voice effects like you hear in Star Trek (i.e., "Enemy ants defeated.", "Harvester approaching.")"

Wow, there is absolutely nothing good to post in the bin today, so you get to enjoy this little gem: Here are some simple instructions for making an Enterpris from a 3.5" floppy disk. Remember those? Before CDRWs cost next to nothing? Thanks to Ant for digging this one up. Update Removed the link when the original content was removed.

Ant writes "A video clip (Windows Media Player required) the construction, operation, and demolition. It is a real-life remote control car with Knight Rider references!" The video works fine for me in xine (though sound dropped out for a bit). This car is not yet ready for the Las Vegas run, but if they hook up with some AI reseachers ...

Ant writes "Minotaur is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Phoenix rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."

Ant sent us a fun link to an article running over at GameSpy discussing the Top 10 Dying Game Genres. Although I don't think Puzzle games have died - I think they've transformed: Pikmin is just a fancy puzzle game, after all ;) But I still want Dr Mario for my GBA.

Ant writes "The Fowler students picked an experiment with ants, rather than plants, because they wanted to see some activity in space. They have been following the ants' progress on the web. The students and their teachers also have learned that sometimes the best thought-out hypothesis does not pan out in reality. 'We predicted that the ants would tunnel a lot slower in microgravity, but we're finding out they're moving a lot faster,' said Golash. The students have a control group of ants at their school, living in a similar environment except with gravity. After the shuttle returns from its scheduled 16-day flight in early February, the young scientists will have 30 days to put together a preliminary report. Their "Ants in Space" experiment was sponsored by SPACEHAB, an aerospace company that has worked with NASA for many years to design and build hardware for space experiments."

Ant writes "Six lead schools are participating in the STARS Program, actually designing, developing, and flying experiments in space. STARS students get an unforgettable opportunity to work with space scientists, engineers, and astronauts to design and develop their experiments. As lead schools, they are conducting experiments that will be viewed by thousands of people around the world. The experiments will be housed within BioServe's ICM (Isothermal Containment Module). The ICM is a small temperature-controlled facility and will provide the necessary experiment support such as physical containment, lighting, video imaging, and more. Obviously, my favorite one is the U.S.A.'s harvester ants tunneling in algar-based gel experiment for 16 days. I have a discussion on my message board watching this experiment. Now, where's Homer Simpson? ;)"

Ant writes "Not necessarily the worst, but the most wrong -- here are 10 of the most seriously flawed titles of all time according to GameSpy."

Ant sent in a bit about new Water proof books. From the article "The new dunkable books are made not from trees, but from plastic resins and inorganic fibers. Melcher Media, a New York-based publisher, is promoting books that are manufactured using a technology it calls "Durabooks." The books' pages don't absorb water, and they stretch instead of tearing. Other companies make waterproof books with standard wood-based paper that is heavily laminated in the printing process."

Ant writes "From Page 6 of FiringSquad's QuakeCon 2002 Postmortem article: John Carmack said something at the end of the Q&A about how the multiplayer will be only four players? Tim: After 2 hours of talking up at the podium, sometimes you leave a few details out. Doom 3 multiplayer will be fully scalable. It will be a peer to peer system. We haven't started working on it yet. Tell everyone not to panic - it will be fine. John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players. It's hard to give a hard number because we haven't started working on it yet. Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."