Slashdot Mirror

rtnair writes "Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday."

Armour Hotdog writes "Level3 and Cogent have announced an agreement on a modified peering contract that provides for settlement-free peering subject to certain unspecified conditions. This is a welcome announcement considering the disruption caused earlier when Level3 depeered Cogent. After that earlier dispute, Level3 temporarily restored peering, but announced that they would once again depeer Cogent on November 9th, unless the parties could come to an agreement."

brass1 writes Ma Bell is back. It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing its name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete. Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been asked to build a massive storage solution to scale from an initial threshold of 25TB to 1PB, primarily on commodity hardware and software. Based on my past experience and research, the commercial offerings for such a solution becomes cost prohibitive, and the budget for the solution is fairly small. Some the technologies that I've been scoping out are iSCSI, AoE and plain clustered/grid computers with JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Personally I'm more inclined on a grid cluster with 1GB interface where each node will have about 1-2TB of disk space and each node is based on a 'low' power consumption architecture. Next issue to tackle is finding a file system that could span across all the nodes and yet appear as a single volume to the application servers. At this point data redundancy is not a priority, however it will have to be addressed. My research has not yielded any viable open source alternative (unless Google releases GoogleFS) and I've researched into Lustre, xFS and PVFS. There some interesting commercial products such as the File Director from NeoPath Networks and a few others; however the cost is astronomical. I would like to know if any Slashdot readers have any experience in build out such a solution? Any help/idea(s) would be greatly appreciated!"

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been asked to build a massive storage solution to scale from an initial threshold of 25TB to 1PB, primarily on commodity hardware and software. Based on my past experience and research, the commercial offerings for such a solution becomes cost prohibitive, and the budget for the solution is fairly small. Some the technologies that I've been scoping out are iSCSI, AoE and plain clustered/grid computers with JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Personally I'm more inclined on a grid cluster with 1GB interface where each node will have about 1-2TB of disk space and each node is based on a 'low' power consumption architecture. Next issue to tackle is finding a file system that could span across all the nodes and yet appear as a single volume to the application servers. At this point data redundancy is not a priority, however it will have to be addressed. My research has not yielded any viable open source alternative (unless Google releases GoogleFS) and I've researched into Lustre, xFS and PVFS. There some interesting commercial products such as the File Director from NeoPath Networks and a few others; however the cost is astronomical. I would like to know if any Slashdot readers have any experience in build out such a solution? Any help/idea(s) would be greatly appreciated!"

user9918277462 writes "The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation has announced a new partnership with the Answers Corporation, which provides the content for Google Definitions links. There is also a lengthy discussion, wiki-style for those who wish to participate." Update 10/25 18:42 by SM: An announcement has been posted on Wikipedia to help clarify the original submission (which thankfully was patently false and has since been cleaned up a bit, our apologies to Wikimedia). Answers.com will be creating their own co-branded version which will show ads and no ads will be shown on wikipedia.

user9918277462 writes "The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation has announced a new partnership with the Answers Corporation, which provides the content for Google Definitions links. There is also a lengthy discussion, wiki-style for those who wish to participate." Update 10/25 18:42 by SM: An announcement has been posted on Wikipedia to help clarify the original submission (which thankfully was patently false and has since been cleaned up a bit, our apologies to Wikimedia). Answers.com will be creating their own co-branded version which will show ads and no ads will be shown on wikipedia.

user9918277462 writes "The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation has announced a new partnership with the Answers Corporation, which provides the content for Google Definitions links. There is also a lengthy discussion, wiki-style for those who wish to participate." Update 10/25 18:42 by SM: An announcement has been posted on Wikipedia to help clarify the original submission (which thankfully was patently false and has since been cleaned up a bit, our apologies to Wikimedia). Answers.com will be creating their own co-branded version which will show ads and no ads will be shown on wikipedia.

meehawl writes "A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it swings within 17 light hours of the black hole (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size constraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter."

meehawl writes "A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it swings within 17 light hours of the black hole (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size constraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter."

no reason to be here writes "An article at CNN.com is reporting on the FDA granting approval to the first ever transplant of fetal stem cells into human brains. The stem cells will be transplanted into six children suffering from Batten disease, a rare, always fatal, genetic neurological illness, which renders its victims blind and speechless before finally paralyzing them and killing them." From the article: "The stem cells to be transplanted in the brain aren't human embryonic stem cells, which are derived from days-old embryos. Instead, the cells are immature neural cells that are destined to turn into the mature cells that makeup a fully formed brain. Parkinson's disease patients and stroke victims have received transplants of fully formed brain cells before, but the malleable brain cells involved here have never before been implanted."

afaik_ianal writes "A working reconstruction of an ancient Greek computer, the Antikythera mechanism, which was found at the bottom of the ocean in 1900 has been unveiled and is on display at the Technopolis museum, in Athens. The device is believed to have been used to calculate the positions of various celestial bodies including the sun and the moon on any given date. While some guesswork was required in the reconstruction, the bulk of the design is based on updated X-ray photographs of the device."

Evil Grinn writes "As reported on Yahoo and elsewhere the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has given a deadline of end-of-year 2006 for U.S. banks to implement two factor authentication."

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"

IconBasedIdea writes "Dallas Mavericks owner and opinionated media entrepreneur Mark Cuban blogs about Walt Disney cheese Robert Iger, and his recent deal with iTunes to allow TV episodes to become available for purchase and download. Granted, it was only a matter of time, but someone had to go first, and it is apparently ABC. Could this help niche shows stay alive longer? Will it kill traditional TV ads, long on the downswing of effectiveness? Will we end up eventually paying (or stealing) all of our future programming?"

IconBasedIdea writes "Dallas Mavericks owner and opinionated media entrepreneur Mark Cuban blogs about Walt Disney cheese Robert Iger, and his recent deal with iTunes to allow TV episodes to become available for purchase and download. Granted, it was only a matter of time, but someone had to go first, and it is apparently ABC. Could this help niche shows stay alive longer? Will it kill traditional TV ads, long on the downswing of effectiveness? Will we end up eventually paying (or stealing) all of our future programming?"

i_c_andrade asks: "Apple and other tech companies were in the past called to task for the lack of Hispanics and African-American's on their Board of Directors, so after doing some research I came to the conclusion that I just did not know a lot of named IT/OSS/Web/CS innovators/developers that were not white (or American) specifically Hispanic or African-American. The first (and only) name that I could think of was Miguel de Icaza, and well I can only blame my own ignorance for not knowing any more, or are there? I know there is a big BSD movement in Brazil (they created the The FreeBSD LiveCD Project; but where else are there developers 'of color' and what are they working on?"

bluebanzai writes "When hordes of people bought up the Motorola V710 upon its release a year ago, Slashdot readers may remember many impressive features including the cutting edge Bluetooth features (picture/mp3 transfer, wireless syncing) as described on Motorola's website. However, when used with the popular Verizon Wireless cell phone service provider, many Bluetooth features were sadly crippled (apart from a wireless headset) because OBEX features had been purposely disabled by Verizon. Hundreds of people donated to a hacker rewards program to unlock the full features of the phone to the tune of $3000, but was never fully successful. Well, one year later, the Los Angeles Superior Court (PDF Warning) and Verizon have announced the initial steps of a Class Action Lawsuit that appears to be influenced by the user community allowing everyone who bought it before the start of 2005 a few options for compensation--including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack."

dr. loser writes "The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"

dr. loser writes "The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"

dr. loser writes "The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"

porp writes "On Tuesday, October 11th at 8PM EDT, PBS will feature a docudrama about Einstein's discovery of his famous E=mc^2 equation. The program will include details explaining those who came before him and the development of his miracle year. The pinnacle of which according to the program was his discovery that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Yahoo summarizes the program details in length." From the article: "Based on David Bodanis' best-seller 'E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation,' the program explores the lives of the men and women who helped develop concepts behind each term: E for energy; m for mass; c for the speed of light; and 2 for 'squared,' the multiplication of one number by itself."

porp writes "On Tuesday, October 11th at 8PM EDT, PBS will feature a docudrama about Einstein's discovery of his famous E=mc^2 equation. The program will include details explaining those who came before him and the development of his miracle year. The pinnacle of which according to the program was his discovery that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Yahoo summarizes the program details in length." From the article: "Based on David Bodanis' best-seller 'E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation,' the program explores the lives of the men and women who helped develop concepts behind each term: E for energy; m for mass; c for the speed of light; and 2 for 'squared,' the multiplication of one number by itself."

tiltowait writes "A lot of Wikipedia critics point to hypothetical situations when giving reasons for not valuing the site. Wikipedia even has a 'Replies to common objections' article set up to field these. I'd rather look at some real examples of applying the same level of scrutiny to materials often held up as the Platonic ideal of 'scholarship,' such as peer-reviewed journals, conference papers, established journalism sources, monographs, and print encyclopedias. Even these have disclaimers because they can be can be vandalized or have their reliability and accuracy questioned. As dangerous as it is to trust unverified information, it can be just as bad to make prior judgments discounting information because the source happens to be anonymous. The above examples illustrate that all materials existing along a continuum of valuable information formats. Wikipedia articles can be useful for quickly obtaining factual overviews or as a starting point to further research. But that's just one librarian's opinion. How do tech-savvy people view Wikipedia?"

tiltowait writes "A lot of Wikipedia critics point to hypothetical situations when giving reasons for not valuing the site. Wikipedia even has a 'Replies to common objections' article set up to field these. I'd rather look at some real examples of applying the same level of scrutiny to materials often held up as the Platonic ideal of 'scholarship,' such as peer-reviewed journals, conference papers, established journalism sources, monographs, and print encyclopedias. Even these have disclaimers because they can be can be vandalized or have their reliability and accuracy questioned. As dangerous as it is to trust unverified information, it can be just as bad to make prior judgments discounting information because the source happens to be anonymous. The above examples illustrate that all materials existing along a continuum of valuable information formats. Wikipedia articles can be useful for quickly obtaining factual overviews or as a starting point to further research. But that's just one librarian's opinion. How do tech-savvy people view Wikipedia?"

tiltowait writes "A lot of Wikipedia critics point to hypothetical situations when giving reasons for not valuing the site. Wikipedia even has a 'Replies to common objections' article set up to field these. I'd rather look at some real examples of applying the same level of scrutiny to materials often held up as the Platonic ideal of 'scholarship,' such as peer-reviewed journals, conference papers, established journalism sources, monographs, and print encyclopedias. Even these have disclaimers because they can be can be vandalized or have their reliability and accuracy questioned. As dangerous as it is to trust unverified information, it can be just as bad to make prior judgments discounting information because the source happens to be anonymous. The above examples illustrate that all materials existing along a continuum of valuable information formats. Wikipedia articles can be useful for quickly obtaining factual overviews or as a starting point to further research. But that's just one librarian's opinion. How do tech-savvy people view Wikipedia?"

lwb writes "For those of you interested in interesting hard-core C programming tricks: Adam Dunkels' protothreads library implements an unusually lightweight type of threads. Protothreads are not real threads, but rather something in between an event-driven state machine and regular threads. But they are implemented in 100% portable ANSI C and with an interesting but quite unintuitive use of the switch/case construct. The same trick has previously been used by Simon Tatham to implement coroutines in C. The trick was originally invented by Tom Duff and dubbed Duff's device. You either love it or you hate it!"

008 asks: "My work requires me to travel to some harsh climes with my laptop and other equipment, and the data I collect there is potentially very sensitive. Currently I use the PGP family to secure my drives, but my paranoia always demands more. IBM's biometric-ready Thinkpad really piques my interest, but getting one isn't feasible for me because it's too wimpy for the physical stress I'd inflict on it. I'd much prefer a way to biometrically lock a computer I already have. What options are out there?"

slashmicah asks: "Internet partitioning and Tier 1 ISPs are something most people don't know much about (myself included). Today, however, some Slashdot readers might have run into some issues involving these two topics. Cogent Communications and Level 3, both Tier 1 ISPs, are apparently having some 'undisclosed' disagreements, causing an Internet partition by turning-off or deactivating their peering point. Cogent Co. has released a statement explaining their side of the problem, however they have no mention of when the problem will be fixed, or when they will sort it out. This partitioning is a problem because any [single-homed] computers that are connected through Cogent Co, can not connect to [single-homed] computers connected through Level 3. Having spent all day sorting out this problem, I ask Slashdot: Isn't there a better way that the issue of peering can be handled/regulated? If not, does the future hold a scenario in which the Internet is split into several separate networks, only to be connected at the whims of large corporations?"

slashmicah asks: "Internet partitioning and Tier 1 ISPs are something most people don't know much about (myself included). Today, however, some Slashdot readers might have run into some issues involving these two topics. Cogent Communications and Level 3, both Tier 1 ISPs, are apparently having some 'undisclosed' disagreements, causing an Internet partition by turning-off or deactivating their peering point. Cogent Co. has released a statement explaining their side of the problem, however they have no mention of when the problem will be fixed, or when they will sort it out. This partitioning is a problem because any [single-homed] computers that are connected through Cogent Co, can not connect to [single-homed] computers connected through Level 3. Having spent all day sorting out this problem, I ask Slashdot: Isn't there a better way that the issue of peering can be handled/regulated? If not, does the future hold a scenario in which the Internet is split into several separate networks, only to be connected at the whims of large corporations?"

The Dungeons and Dragons license has graced some truly fine videogames. Planescape: Torment and the Baldur's Gate sagas are some of the finest gaming experiences RPG fans can cite. Dragonshard is the first melding of Dungeons and Dragons with the Real-Time Strategy genre, combining traditional RTS action with RPG elements to create a unique whole. While the game doesn't redefine my understanding of the RTS genere, it's very different from your normal title and is well worth checking out. Read on for my impressions of Liquid Entertainment's Dragonshard.

• Title: Dragonshard
• Developer: Liquid Entertainment
• Publisher: Atari
• System: PC
• Reviewer: Zonk
• Score: 8/10

Wizards of the Coast's newest campaign setting, Eberron, is the backdrop to Dragonshard. Though this is the first Eberron videogame, the pulp fantasy environment is set to play home to several types of games for a good reason. High adventure and intrigue are core concepts of the setting, and techno-magical items allow for a vaguely more modern feel while maintaining the fantasy overtones. The elements that distinguish Eberron from your standard D&D setting are woven deep into the game's structure. The construct warriors known as the Warforged, magical crystals called dragonshards, and craft-mages known as Artificers all have gameplay repercussions. Despite this, the flavour of the Eberron setting isn't captured as well as one would hope. The game is set on the jungle continent of Xen'drik, and as a result some of the most interesting Eberron-specific elements are far to the north on another continent. The wilderness-based dungeoncrawling paints the world with a generic fantasy brush that detracts from the source material substantially. While the gameworld is obviously Eberron, I would have enjoyed the inclusion of some of the most interesting setting elements (such as the Dragonmarked houses or the intricate political situation in the wake of the Last War) into the game. My nitpicking aside, it's definitely D&D. Riffling through the Monster Manual at random will give you a good look at the critters you'll face. All the favorites are there, from Beholders to Ilithids, and they look great.

In addition to the setting, Liquid also broke new ground with gameplay elements. While most RTS titles pit you against other factions in titanic battles, Dragonshard offers more than one way to play the game. On the surface of Xen'drik you build a fortress settlement and train up characters referred to as captains. These captains fill different character templates from the Eberron setting (artificers, rogues, ranged warriors, warforged soldiers, etc). Powerful captains attract soldiers which bolster your numbers while campaigning aboveground. There are several unique hero characters you can choose from as well, and these lead your captains in battle against opposing forces. The problem is that the only resource you can gather aboveground are the semi-ubiquitous dragonshards. Like every good adventuring party, you need gold to fund your conquests. In the grand tradition of D&D there is just as much gameplay to be had belowground as above. In the dungeon realm of Khyber, which runs beneath every level's map, monstrous creatures with hordes of loot await your blade's ministrations. By taking your captains belowground you leave the common soldiery behind, reducing the game to a much more traditional dungeoncrawling experience. Defeating these creatures nets you experience, which you can apply to captain types in order to level them up. In a nice circular fashion, leveled captains gain more followers. These soldiers don't count against the maximum number of followers you can control, and above ground your captains lead huge armies against your opponents. As you conquer more of the map above, you'll find new entrances to the Underdark and new opportunities for loot.

The result is a fun combination of traditional Warcraft-like combat and something more akin to Neverwinter Nights. The focus of game's storyline is very RPG, as well. A group of good-aligned warriors united in their worship of the Holy Flame seek three mystic seals which will allow them access to a giant hunk of Dragonshard. The powerful relic has affected the local lizardfolk population, changing them in substantial ways and providing the primary adversary for the Holy Flame's army. Aside from the goals you'll attempt to fulfill in acquiring the seals, quests you receive from characters scattered throughout the map give you opportunities to gain additional power and treasure. Items can affect your Hero's stats, and some quests can even open up new captain types in your base. The experience taken as a whole is very different than your standard cookie-cutter RTS, and the variety of gameplay ensures that if you get bored with one aspect of the game you can indulge in another activity to switch things up.

Base building in Dragonshard is fairly unique as well. Bases are laid out into blocks of four squares, with a central citadel and a stout wall surrounding the buildings. Unit-building structures are built on each square. Once their training facility is constructed, captains can be trained and (if you have enough experience) upgraded to level 2. By building another of the same structure type adjacent to the original, you can train units more quickly and upgrade the captain type further. Beyond simply upgrading the captains, there are structures you can build in the square arrangement that will improve the statistics of adjacent unit structures. Placing a mana increase obelisk in an arrangement with priest and sorcerer producing buildings will allow your spellcasters to be more effective in combat. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of putting together a base it's easy to throw one together fairly quickly. After you've ventured into the Underdark enough times to gain some sizeable wealth you'll have a base that resembles a small city, with monuments and buildings nicely blending together.

The visual look of the game is distinct, and quite attractive. Units are highly detailed, with lots of nice touches given to the captains and heroes you'll be leading. One hero has a cross hanging from their armor that swings as she runs, while the angelic Archons wield inner-lit lightning bolts. The lizardfolk are especially intricately designed, with spines and scale flaps all over the place. The world is equally beautifully rendered, with environmental effects aplenty and a deformable terrain adding to the experience of combat in a substantial way. The most dramatic way to see the terrain deformation is the infrequent impacts of dragonshards from above. The first time it happens, it's quite startling to see. The explosions of crystalline shards are heavy enough to knock your troops off of their feet if they hit nearby, and leave collectible shards nestled in impact craters in their wake. The downside to all this pretty is a drag on your rig. While I don't have a cutting edge setup, I can play Half-Life 2 with most of the shinies turned up. Just the same, a screen full of warring armies caused me slowdowns on a couple of occasions. Despite the slowdowns, Dragonshard is a dramatic game. The auditory environment is dramatic as well, with angry cries and clashing blades adding emphasis to the visual devastation. Heroes and captains have unique vocalizations and catch phrases. As with every RTS they get old after the hundredth time you've heard them, but until you get fed up and turn them off you'll enjoy their gusto. There are precious few cinematics in the game, with most plot elements being explored via cutscenes acted out within the engine. While this is a good way to show off the game's graphical power, it can make for some odd moments. Up-close, the running animations of the heroes looks decidedly awkward. Additionally, there are no animations for characters to turn in place. When a hero turns to address one of his fellows, he rotates in place like a cardboard cutout. It's distracting, but the cut-scenes move the plot forward effectively. While some of them skirt the line of hokey gaming patter, for the most part they do a good job of keeping you informed about your goals in the single-player campaign.

The single-player mission is enjoyable, but re-playability is fairly low due to brevity. Multiplayer is where the game gets an extended life. Whatever reservations I have about the single-player are easily ignored when it comes to online play. The aboveground/Underdark gameplay makes for an even more interesting experience when other adventuring parties are thrown into the mix. In addition to probing the dungeons for treasure and experience, you have to fend off the opposing forces as well. This can be a tricky prospect if you've just put your party through a difficult boss battle. Beyond the basic gameplay, there are additional objectives that you can attempt to gain dominance. A capture-the-flag-like mode has you collecting artifacts before your opponent does, while another gametype requires you to take and hold places of power for a given span of time. Good gameplay is nothing without opponents, and I was very happy to have little problem finding folks to play against via the browser. The only catch is that you have to download a patch straight off in order to get online. A small price to play for the most entertaining way to play the game.

I didn't like this game at first. My knee-jerk reaction to this version of Eberron set me back, and the gameplay didn't jump out at me the way many other games have in the past. It's been a slow year for Real-Time Strategy, but after some time working with Dragonshard it began to grow on me. The base-building has a very different feel to it than your standard model, and the Underdark dungeoncrawling component is the perfect contrast to combat between massive armies. There are still elements that weaken the end result. The single-player game is very short, and confusingly while there are three races in the game there are only two campaigns. The game has occasional slowdowns, and the random Underdark spawn tables can make for overly interesting forays in the Multiplayer game. Overall, though, Dragonshard is well worth taking in if you're a fan of strategy games or the Dungeons and Dragons brand. Eberron is a fascinating setting, and I'm looking forward to seeing it realized more fully in future titles.

Sanity writes "According to a Macworld story, Intel is standing up for the interests of consumers in the war between Blue-ray and HD-DVD, by making its support for either format contingent on support for 'mandatory managed copy', the ability to copy content to 'home servers' so that it can be accessed from around the home. While it is refreshing to see someone consider the (often ignored) interest of consumers in the world of DRM, it appears that 'mandatory managed copy' will still allow content producers to limit what consumers can do with the content and equipment they own well beyond the limitations imposed by copyright law. Thus the question over DRM remains: should we be policed by our own property?"

H_Fisher writes "Orson Scott Card, author of sci-fi classic Ender's Game and many other novels and stories, has posted his review of the much-discussed Joss Whedon film Serenity (which opened at #2 in the US box office this past weekend). Among other things, Card has this to say about Serenity: 'Those of you who know my work at all know about Ender's Game. I jealously protected the movie rights to Ender's Game so that it would not be filmed until it could be done right ... I'll tell you this right now: If Ender's Game can't be this kind of movie, and this good a movie, then I want it never to be made.'" With praise for Full House, Friends, Being John Malkovich, and Lost to boot.

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

ikewillis writes "The new beta version of news.com now features an integrated ontology viewer developed in collaboration with LivePlasma who appears to have built a large ontology for music and movies. While they don't appear to provide direct access to the ontological data using semantic web formats like OWL and RDF, it's the first time I've ever seen web ontologies used on such a high profile site. How long until we can expect web ontology viewers (and semantic web integration) for sites like Wikipedia?"

obli writes "In Google's official blog, Dr. Brian L. Fisher (an entomology researcher) writes about a newly discovered species of ant that he has named after Google (Proceratium google). The reason for this name is a tribute to the usefulness of Google Earth in his research. This is not the only species with a company name, there is also the GoldenPalace.com Monkey (Callicebus aureipalatii)." The California Academy of Sciences also has a short piece on the discovery along with a brief background of Dr. Fisher.

jesup writes "The FCC ruled yesterday that the CALEA applies both to broadband suppliers and to all calls made via VoIP providers. If they have any connection to the PSTN, it applies whether the call in question is IP-to-IP or not. Separately, all broadband suppliers will have to implement CALEA, which means providing access to law enforcement for trap-and-trace on all traffic on broadband connections. In related news, the FCC has also released a policy document that states that 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.' In theory, under this they could require wiretaps on in-game chat, or key-logging in file encryption programs."

jesup writes "The FCC ruled yesterday that the CALEA applies both to broadband suppliers and to all calls made via VoIP providers. If they have any connection to the PSTN, it applies whether the call in question is IP-to-IP or not. Separately, all broadband suppliers will have to implement CALEA, which means providing access to law enforcement for trap-and-trace on all traffic on broadband connections. In related news, the FCC has also released a policy document that states that 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.' In theory, under this they could require wiretaps on in-game chat, or key-logging in file encryption programs."

commonchaos writes "Recently a company named Zimbra has come out of nowhere and released an open source Exchange replacement. The exciting part is a front end that uses AJAX. There is an impressive flash demo, you can download the source or try out a "live" version of the code yourself." Interestingly, this open source system seems to be very similar to the recent Yahoo announcement covered on Slashdot.

TrentL writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (aka Jimbo) was recently interviewed on C-SPAN's primetime program Q&A. Topics included the origins of Wikipedia, governing philosophy, and criticisms from members of the print encyclopedia community." From the article: "I had the idea basically from watching the growth of the free software movement. So all of the software that really runs the Internet, Linux, Apache, the Web serving software, it's all written by volunteers collaboratively working together using free licenses. And it's really good quality stuff."

danimo writes "In response to his letter to the Massachusetts administration, the KOffice team has written an open letter to Microsoft manager Alan Yates. It clarifies some false claims that Yates made, such as KOffice, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being one codebase and that OpenDocument was thus never a real standard. Massachusetts has meanwhile adopted OpenDocument."

arc.light writes "According to a report at Space.com, the US Senate voted to allow NASA to buy Russian Soyuz vehicles for the purpose of servicing the International Space Station. Because Russia continues to assist Iran with its nuclear energy and ballistic missile programs, NASA would otherwise not be allowed to buy Russian hardware by the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000. The US House of Representatives still needs to give its approval before NASA can make such a purchase."