Slashdot Mirror

Daetrin writes "The Magic Box is reporting that Square Enix will be releasing both Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Final Fantasy X-2 in America on the same day. Perhaps they figure any Americans who can afford both a PS2 and a GameCube should also be able to afford putting down the cash for both games at the same time? Usually competing against yourself isn't the best business plan." Square Insider also confirms this. I'm a huge Final Fantasy nut, and I have both a GameCube and a PS2, but I'm sure I don't have the time to play both games simultaneously, and I bet there's a lot of people who fall into this same category.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamesindustry.biz article analyzing the best-selling UK videogames of 2003 so far. This intriguing analysis also includes sales figures, often difficult to come by in US charts, and notes the biggest selling all-formats title was The Sims, with "..total sales to date across the three console formats.. [of] a whisker short of 300,000, with the PS2 sales of the game accounting for over 90 per cent of that figure." Close behind it was soccer sim Championship Manager 4, which "tempted over a quarter of a million PC owners to part with their cash." Overall, they gave 'top marks', amongst others, to "Ubi Soft for bothering to port Splinter Cell properly", and 'must try harder' to "Sony for ignoring [marketing efforts for] any first party titles not developed in the UK."

Thanks to Blue's News for pointing to a New York Times article entitled 'On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and Confused' (registration required). It talks about the mixed messages being given to parents about video gaming, especially with regard to violent content, and its effect on their children: "In the face of contradictory, inconclusive or just plain confusing evidence, some parents... agonize over what limits to set." One concerned mother even has to keep her spouse in check as well: "My husband is a little hard to control. Sometimes he lets them rent games with little figures on top of buildings trying to shoot each other off." What limits do you or your relatives put on their children's gaming, and why?

Thanks to Gamepro for posting an in-depth interview with the man behind the Game Boy Advance SP, Kenichi Sugino. Interestingly, he mentions that seeing the Afterburner third-party backlight for the GBA "..reminded us of exactly how many users really wanted to see some kind of light in their Game Boy Advances. It was an impetus for us to devote the time to figuring out how to finally just do it." Also, asked about Sony's new PSP handheld, he offers: "As I mentioned before, a portable system isn't about features as much as it is about balance - the balance between capability and price."

We don't usually post announcements of this sort, but with MacHack just weeks away, and me speaking at it again this year, I figured I'd remind readers of Slashdot's Apple section about it. It's in Dearborn, MI near Detroit, and I gotta say that I've gone to many tech shows, but this is a good show. For those of you who saw my Keynote last year, my talk this year promises to be at least as incoherent, except that THIS year I might actually talk about the Mac! Other speakers are far more qualified. ;)

Thanks to the Gaming-Age messageboard conglomerate for pointing out a new investor relations press conference (Japanese text only) held today in Japan by SquareEnix. They announced that Final Fantasy XII is intended to ship within the fiscal year in Japan - still no screenshots or details, though. Kingdom Hearts 2 is still having its license negotiated, so won't be out soon. But 9 titles should ship in the US from SquareEnix this fiscal year, including Final Fantasy X-2, which has already sold almost 2 million copies in Japan, and a mystery, solitary Playstation 1 title (another Final Fantasy remake?) The company also gave sales figures for their online title, Final Fantasy XI, which has sold 340,000 copies, and currently has 250,000 subscribers, even ahead of its Western release.

linuxwrangler writes "According to articles at PC World, c|net, Internet Week and elsewhere, Phoenix Technology is introducing a new BIOS-based anti-theft system. Every time a TheftGuard equipped machine connects to the internet it pings a server at Phoenix which can instruct the machine to wipe its hard drive, report its location or disable itself. Given that most people don't want to have their every movement tracked and don't want someone else to have the power to wipe their drives, Phoenix figures that corporate clients are the prime customer. I just wonder who is liable when a company sells a surplus laptop on eBay but gets their inventory control screwed up and reports it as stolen..."

Mattcelt asks: "While we're all discussing the eventual demise of the RIAA and the triumph of the MP3, what should a small independent music publishing company do to sell a new artist to the public? My publishing company recently ran a $4,000 advertising campaign on a local radio station (107.9 the Link in Charlotte, NC). Despite reaching an average audience of more than 10,000 during peak times, we netted *0* sales. That's right, absolutely nothing. I've made the entire album available in MP3 format on the Ephelian Records website to facilitate adoption, and I know some people have downloaded the songs, but I can't figure out why no one has pre-ordered the CD. How does an indie artist make a living when gig prices for unknown artists will barely cover the gas money and CDs won't sell? Are we really wrong about the availability of MP3s affecting music sales?"

Borgoth asks: "At my company we just broke 10 million pageviews per day. We use 5 2-processor 1U off-the-shelf Intel boxes running Apache, Linux, mod_perl, and MySQL. This averages out to about 2 million pageviews per day per server (about 20 million hits/server, including images). Most of our pages have some dynamism using mod_include SSIs, and maybe one pageview in five directly results in a db query. We think we should be pretty happy that we're doing so much with so little, but we don't really have any idea how much horsepower other sites are using in their server farms. So, what sort of webfarms do Slashdot readers maintain, and how does their performance compare?"

arhines asks: "I'm working on a little research project to figure out what the environmental cost of heavy technological reliance is, and want any suggestions Slashdot has for factors to consider. My school has started requiring students to own and use laptops in all of their classes, under the pretext of saving paper. Having read about the problems with computer recycling on Slashdot, I've become suspicious of the true effect of having several hundred computers thrown out each year. What statistics should I focus on, and are there any definitive studies on the topic you could point me to?"

The Other White Meat asks: "I want to put a computer in my kitchen. For space reasons, I want to make it an LCD; a 15" screen would be perfect. This monitor is going to be exposed to harsh conditions (flying food, jumping cats, general mishandling). I don't want to spend so much money on it that if I came home and found it broken that I would be upset by it. I figured there must be plenty of places that will sell LCDs with dead pixels or columns, where I might be able to pick one up in the $50-100 range, but so far I have found nothing. Surely there must be a market for 'Grade B' LCD monitors, for precisely this sort of low life expectancy sort of usage? So fellow readers, can you succeed where Google® has failed, and lead me to the cheapo LCDs?"

Thanks to EvilAvatar for pointing out this article about the rise in popularity of games over at Creative Planet's Videography site. Amidst interesting figures about the ascent of games compared to movies, the author points out that, in 2001, the IDSA was expecting almost 17 billion dollars in videogame sales for 2003, when the total is unlikely to be anywhere near that. Is the games industry over-reaching, or are heady movie-surpassing revenue goals in sight?

Ric writes "From the article lead paragraph: 'If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that's just the beginning - Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'"

krahd asks: "We, at the CS department of our University, in Uruguay, are evaluating different ways of securing the access to our floor. Until now we have used just a traditional door lock, but its's time to delpoy a new, more geeky solution. So, after reading this Ask Slashdot, I figured I'd pose this question as a follow-up. What would be the best way to do it? We've already evaluated biometric technologies like iris-scanning and fingerprint-scanning, and more traditional ways like intelligent cards but, what others possibilities exist, and which would you choose? Yes, price does matter."

T_moz writes "According to this article AOL has blocked over two billion (2000000000) SPAM emails in one day!" This figure is 70-80% of all mail incoming to AOL users. Utterly insane. Unfortunately, all this blocking means spammers will just send more mail to make up for it until a real solution is found.

PolyDwarf writes "I'm in the process of figuring out how I'm going to build a homegrown TiVo machine (i.e. a computer sitting next to or in my home electronics stack). My question for is "What's worked best for you?" Most solutions I've researched are great if you have regular cable. However, satellite systems and digital cable boxes seem to present a special challenge, in that the software on the PC needs to know about an IR connector that is then hooked up to the front of the digital cable/satellite box. Who has done a solution like what I'm researching? What cases/processors/memory/TV Card/IR transceiver/OS/software/etc worked out for you? Did the end result justify the pain and hassle?"

Ummagumma asks: "My computers have recently been relegated to the basement by decree of the fiancee. Problem is, the basement is carpeted (with a really old carpet), and I have two cats, which generate alot of 'fuzz'. I have had to disassemble my PC to clean the fans and heatsinks out several times now. I am looking for a case that has a built in filter of some kind, even a simple one, that wont blow the bank balance. I have found the Antec SLK3700AMB, but cannot verify that is has a filter, though I have been told it may have. I figure at least a few of you are in a similar situation, so what are you using to prevent dust and fuzz from getting into your cases? My only requirements are: At least mid-sized (full size atx board), room for 4 5.25" drives, minimum 300W powersupply, a front and rear 120mm case fan (or mountings), with a filter at least on the intake." Some of the aluminum cases from Lian Li (and I can't remember the exact model numbers) have simple filter in their front mounted fans. What other case manufacturers have such features?

dW writes "The Australian hacker has been working on pushing Samba beyond the POSIX world and figuring out what work needs to be done to get Samba to support new filesystems such as XFS, ext3, and Storage Tank. The answer is nothing less than a complete rewrite of Samba's smbd code, which has become his latest pet project. Here's an interview with Andrew Tridgell on his latest Samba rewrite."

sugapablo writes "AOL has filed lawsuits against five spamming companies, seeking damages in the millions for unwanted email. As the AP reports, AOL hasn't actually figured out who all the defendants are though, filing the lawuits against some "John Does" and attempting to "subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers"."

ChesireKat asks: "I'm interested in knowing where people go for their Linux help/questions/needs. It seems that most IRC users will laugh at you, kick you, or just make you feel stupid because you're not quite as smart as they are (irc.nullnet.net is pretty good, they are usually willing to help). Forums are nicer about it, but most of the time, no one quite knows. Man pages always work, but it so time consuming, and sometimes after hours of searching, your still just as clueless as when you started. I'm interesting in knowing where other people find answers to the questions you just can't seem to figure out."