Slashback: Games, Goats, Galileo

Slashback tonight brings you word on a games contest, an update to the famous spider-goat hybrid which grossed you out months ago, bad news for Galileo's last days, passable news for anyone following the David McOwen story and more. Read on for the updates :)

Make sure you slip this into the fine print of your consulting contracts. Adn writes "Newsbytes is reporting in a story that David McOwen, who was facing some pretty serious charges will be let go with a fine as against a much harsher fate. If utilizing so called "unused cycles" for the greater good is a crime (I know he was not charged for that per se... but bear with me here) then makes you consider uninstalling all those SETI@Home Screensavers doesnt it? Also a larger question...If the law (in these kinds of cases) operates on the 'intent' of the accused, what is the justification for even considering it a crime?"

Playing games builds your mind and your hand-eye coordination. Bill Kendrick writes: "The results are in for the SDL Game Contest held by No Starch Press, Linux Journal and Loki Games.

First place was awarded to LBreakout by Michael Speck. Second place went to Tower Toppler by Andreas Roever. My own game, Vectoroids just barely made third place over another asteroids-style game, Rock Dodgers by Paul Holt.

Congratulations! The full list of games is listed on No Starch's results page."

Guaranteed not to be your average Slashdot book review! Alex Chiu writes "Hello. This is alex chiu. I have written an online book at http://superiching.com Teaching people how to communicate with God using I-Ching. This online book is free for everyone to read. It's at least 5 times bigger than alexchiu.com. If interested, please release this news."

You may remember Alex from the interview we did with him a little while ago -- truly a unique individual.

Flying blind and a long way from home. Vertigo01 writes: "According to this article on CNN.com, galileo has encountered some technical problems on its flyby of Io and "for unknown reasons, went into safe mode" ... (sounds like my last Win98 install) ... flight engineers hope to restore normal operation for the duration of Galileo's life, but it looks like we won't get any more pictures of Io out of her."

Victoria's Secret probably won't put this on the box. FortKnox writes "Spider Silk is long known to be one of the strongest biological structure made (5 times stronger than steel by weight). Biologists have already genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk in their milk. Now, they have successfully extracted the protein and "spun" the silk. The next, and final step, is to mass produce the silk to be available commercially. Move over kevlar, here comes something better! I want to have the first biologically built house! I wonder how insulated spider silk is...."

Comments

On the first one there

[TheQuantumShift]

Why should this guy's community service be "not related to computers"? If thats what he's best at, then shouldn't he be allowed to use his talents to benefit the community? What, is he going to hack the pentagon while streamlining the city hall databases? Or would this all make way too much sense to be in an american court?

Inviting trouble

[Nathdot]

I don't care if the latest breaking news is "Scientist clone new super species of hybrid shark/goat" or "Apple releases latest PC: the iGoat", know this, and know it well:

An article on slashdot with "GOAT" in the headline is inviting trouble

:)

McOwen still got too much

[Dr. Awktagon]

McOwen used resources without permission. Ideally that gets you a talking-to from a supervisor, at worst it gets you fired.

Taking legal action against an employee for it is way overboard, and even 80 hour community service and $2100 is too much, considering he was fired from a subsequent job, and probably has had his life turned upside down for a few months (I believe he and his wife had a newborn at the time). The reason we should have a fair legal system is so you don't have to go through this kind of thing. What on earth was the attorney general thinking? Where they trying to meet some quota or something? Testing out a new law?

Anyway, glad to see things turned out all right, and he didn't have to go to court, where he probably wouldn't have had enough money to win the case.

Re:Strong, but Bulky!

[cicadia]

Of course, the question then, is how long does it last, and how gracefully does it degrade?

A great thing about using steel as a construction material is that not much eats it. You can leave steel on it's own for a while, and count on it to stay pretty much in the same condition you left it. On the other hand, I'm sure there's been a nice little biological niche carved out by insects/bacteria/whatever that eat old abandoned cobwebs. I'd hate to see what would happen when they discover your bridge :)