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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Earlier this week, we noted that the major parties in the European Parliament had all agreed on a resolution trashing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the secret process that has been hashing it out. That resolution has passed Parliament by a huge margin—633 yes votes, 13 no votes, and 16 abstentions.
The Greens/EFA coalition praised the vote. Greens MEP Carl Schlyter of Sweden said that "ACTA risks becoming known as the Absence of Commission Transparency Agreement... The EU cannot continue to negotiate on ACTA if the people are not allowed to take part in the process. It is also a totally absurd and unacceptable situation if MEPs, behind closed doors, have to ask the Commission about the content of the agreements we are supposed to vote on."
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Let's get one thing out of the way first: True Crime looks good. The game was demoed for me in a private suite, played live, and talked up by the developer. Mixing the best parts of Stranglehold and Grand Theft Auto IV, it was a game where we walked in with low expectations and walked out very excited about the story of an undercover cop in the wilds of Hong Kong.
Now, let's talk about the way games are marketed at events like GDC. Activision paid for an area in the W Hotel to look like a shady club from the game and decked it out with seedy characters. Two stripper poles were set up in the room, and beautiful women used them to demonstrate how long they could hold their own body weight upside down. Camera phones were out, free drinks were enjoyed by all, and camera crews worked the room fervently. This is video games.
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When you have Mark Shuttleworth as your backer, as commercial Linux distributor Canonical does, it is a bit like having money in the bank when the bank also believes fervently in your cause. It is a rare combination, and one that has allowed the Ubuntu project to reach out from its Linux desktop beginnings into commercial servers - and with the latest releases, cloudy infrastructure - without having the profit pressure that most startups have to deal with as they try to grow.?
Google is now "99.9 per cent" certain it will shut down its Chinese search engine, according to a report citing "a person familiar with the company's thinking."?
Comment Since STEC revealed that EMC had over-ordered back in November last year, the company has been waiting for EMC orders to get back on track. Will they??
Florida State University, like most state schools in the US with a storied (American) football program, also has a respectable comp sci department that is not afraid to spend a little cash on a new technology when it comes along. And that's how the Seminoles have ended up being one of the first customers of upstart server maker 3Leaf Systems.?
Review Toshiba is late to the Blu-ray party, having waited a decent interval after the death of HD-DVD. The BDX2000 - oh, how futuristic products used to seem, just by adding the millennium to their name - is its first offering. It?s a sleek unit, with a pull-down front panel that hides the disk tray, display, controls and an SD card slot.?
Somebody called Steve Barnes has written a piece for Times Union about an American politician trying to introduce a bill to completely ban all salt in restaurant cooking.
Right from the first couple of paragraphs, you're left in no doubt that this bill is disliked by Mr Barnes:
A new bill in the state Assembly would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them.
In a deeply misguided gesture that is also an abuse of the legislative process, a New York City Assemblyman is pushing a nanny-state bill
Don't hold back there, Steve, tell us what you REALLY think! :o) (There's also a picture of a dunce cap in the main body of the text)
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with him: the bill is insane and the dangers of salt - an absolutely vital substance we can't live without - are hugely overstated, mainly by the writers of faddy diet books.
But in a world that usually insists on at least some pretence of balanced, unbiased journalism, I found this to be a very unusual piece: Well-researched and completely biased. Those two don't often go together.
I'm impressed :o)
As the Android kernel code is now gone from the Linux kernel, as of the 2.6.33 kernel release, I'm starting to get a lot of questions about what happened, and what to do next with regards to Android. So here's my opinion on the whole matter...