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Comments:71 | Votes:4087

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Yesterday's News
Recent reviews from Slashdot readers:

Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 20051129 by hemos

Games: Duke Nukem Forever Reviewed

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday April 01, @12:23PM
from the future-of-gaming dept.
First Person Shooters (Games)
Aranth writes "The staff at Ars Technica has gotten its hands on a demo of Duke Nukem Forever, and has written up a review. It seems the game is near ready for release! As the article explains, the reason it has taken so long to develop is because this is the first real Web 3.0 application- it has 'been rewritten as an Ajax application written using the Ruby on Rails framework' and runs in any web browser, although some seem to have difficulties." Sadly, the game looks to be deficient in the area of ponies. :(((( But, it's playable from my hiptop!! :))))

Microsoft Buys OpenOffice.org

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday April 01, @11:51AM
from the right-price dept.
Microsoft
Micahel West writes "As reported on OpenOffice.org: 'For an undisclosed sum but reputed to be in the billions, Microsoft's Bill Gates has personally bought the leading open-source desktop project. Saying he "was sick and tired of open-source eating away at his profits," the world's richest man decided to put an end to the nuisance and simply buy OpenOffice.org. It will form part of a growing list of Microsoft acquisitions including several erstwhile competitors, a considerable number of prominent politicians, and a few small governments.'"

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MONKEYS USE ROBOTS TO FLING POO!!! GROSS!!! :) :)

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, @11:17AM
from the technology-continues-to-impress dept.
Robotics
Bananatree3 writes "A monkey has learned to control a remote arm to fling its own poo at researchers. From the article: " Researchers at Duke University have taught a lab monkey to control the movement of a robotic arm, using only signals from its brain. The monkey's immediate utilization of this new skill was to shower a group of neurobiologists with feces, according to the report by lead researcher Miguel Nicolelis.""

IT: OpenSSH Vulnerability Discovered

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, @10:38AM
from the well-thats-not-good dept.
Software
farker haiku writes "Those of you who haven't heard of the metasploit project, it's an open source product for performing security audits. This time they've managed to find a remote buffer overflow in OpenSSH. Ya'll might want to read the link and then do whatever updating is necessary." It's unfortunate that something like this gets released today since nobody will bother to patch.

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Linux: OMG!!! OMG OMG!!! LINUS LIKES PINKDOT!!! LOL!!!

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, @10:15AM
from the because-we're-the-cutest dept.
Slashdot.org
fimion writes "Linus Torvalds seems to be pleased by the new slashdot look. Slashdot has appeased the linux gods! Let us all rejoice on this happy day!" He is totally invited to my next sleepover/pajama party. We're watching The O.C. OMG Marissa tried DRUGS!!!

UNICORN T-SHIRTS!!! LOL!!!

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, @09:43AM
from the omg-unicorns-are-the-coolest dept.
News
realgirl58 writes " i found the best UNICORN T-SHIRTS!!! on this website today!!! LOL!!! they have some with pictures of rainbows with some of hte unicorns!!! Watch out tho because the musics on that page is stupid!! KELLY CLARKSON IS MY AMERICAN IDOL!!! LOL LOL!! But ace is realy cute hee hee... if you read this text me ace LOLLOL JK HEHEHEHEHE ok i hafta logoff BYE!!!"

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OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE <3 <3 <3!!!

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, @09:15AM
from the can-we-get-chicks dept.
Google
Chapium writes "Google Romance (Beta) is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search(TM), get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for. With this addtion has Google gone too far with its data collection?"

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Games: New Alliance Race/ 1.11 Notes

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 01, @08:46AM
from the get-your-ethereal-action-on dept.
Role Playing (Games)
The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion has a number of mysteries associated with it, and one of the most often discussed is 'what will the new Alliance race be'? Blizzard has finally unveiled their plans: The new race is the ethereal wisp. Additionally, community mod Caydiem is back on the official forums and has official details on the upcoming 1.11 patch. From those notes: "- Each player will only be allowed to pick up one flag per game in Warsong Gulch. While this decision is slightly restrictive, we do feel the value of teamwork it will teach by allowing each player more opportunity to shine outweighs any negative side-effect. - New Level 1 only Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin bracket available! - If a match-up begins and drops everyone due to lack a lack of players, Horde automatically wins."

Politics: UK Government to Shut Down GSM Networks

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 01, @06:50AM
from the worrisome-most-worrisome dept.
Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile Gazette is reporting that the British government wants to shut down the UK's GSM networks next year and re-use the frequencies for gambling terminals and a new citizen surveillance program extending the use of the new compulsory ID cards. Although we should perhaps welcome the move away from old-style 2G mobile phone networks, there are perhaps a few worrying things about the new "Big Brother" citizen monitoring that the government is proposing to put in."

New Plans From Lucasfilm

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 01, @04:34AM
from the galaxy-not-too-far-away dept.
Star Wars Prequels
Lawrence Person writes "Locus Online has the announcement from Lucasfilms stating that they have authorized an 'adult' line of Star Wars novels. From the article: 'While the movies were still an ongoing project, it was important to portray all aspects of the Star Wars universe as wholesome family entertainment. However, now that the cycle of films is done, we can finally broaden the Star Wars franchise into marketing niches we'd heretofore avoided, and adult entertainment is at the top of our list.'" Relatedly, H_Fisher writes "In a first-of-its-kind move, George Lucas has announced that Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox will offer free 'replacement DVDs' to anyone who mails in pre-Special Edition VHS and Laserdisc copies of Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI by April 30th. From the press release: 'This unique opportunity will help fans experience the complete and correct vision of my epic story.'"

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Science: Here There Be Dragons

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 01, @02:47AM
from the omg-unicorns dept.
Biotech
ThisNukes4u writes "The Economist reports that scientists in California are coming closer to creating real-life mythical animals. Basically, they re-create the natural selection process through a computer simulation and then clone the resulting set of DNA in a donor animal." From the article: "Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn, gryphon, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn and, most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle for the gryphon). The virtual genomes of these real animals are then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled."

Ask Slashdot: How Hot Would a Light Saber Really Be?

Posted by Cliff on Saturday April 01, @12:45AM
from the whizzz-vroom dept.
Technology
Datagod asks: "Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air? How hot would a light saber really need to be? Also, I am assuming that at least some of the metal would be vaporized and the expanding gas would fling bits of molten metal at the saber wielder. Wouldn't your average Jedi be horribly scarred from all this."

CUTEST WEB SITE EVER DISCOVERED!!!

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 31, @10:37PM
from the danger-cute-alert-omg-lol dept.
News
ToeSocks06 writes "The cutest site i've ever or youve ever seen is this one CLICK IT NOW LOL!!! because they have the cutest pictures you will ever see :) :) :) Like hamsters wearing SO CUTE hats and so many kittens zomg i love kitties especially that brown one i hope they show him with hats to LOLOLOLOLOL!!! Ok I gottta go now bye!!!"

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OMG WIRELESS EXTENSION CORDS!!! LOL!!!

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 31, @09:19PM
from the now-thats-what-i'm-talking-about dept.
Toys
True ChAoS writes "Using the latest in microwave energy transmission technology, the Wireless Extension Cords (WECs) 'beam' power right where you need it. Broadcasting in the 7.2GHz range, the WECs will not interfere with wireless networks, phones, or Bluetooth components. Be sure to heed all the warnings in the instruction manual; the microwaves used are relatively safe, but you don't want to cook your computer (or coworkers) by mistake." ThinkGeek is also owned by OSTG.

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SPECIAL BIRTHDAY REPORT!!! HEMOS IS 30 :) :) :)

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 31, @08:22PM
from the older-than-you've-ever-been-and-now-you're-even-older dept.
Slashdot.org
Jeff "Hemos" Bates, who you all know and love here on Slashdot, celebrated his 30th Birthday last Monday. The only way to properly celebrate would be to send him belated e-congratulations to hemos at slashdot.org. Show the love. He'd do it for you. No I'm not kidding.

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Slashdot Design Changes for Wider Appeal

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 31, @07:24PM
from the omg-i-heart-ponies-lol dept.
Slashdot.org
Our marketing department has done extensive research over the last 3 quarters and discovered that our audience is strangely disproportionately skewed towards males. Like, 98.3% males to be precise. To correct this oversight, we have decided to subtly tweak Slashdot's design and content to widen our appeal to these less active demographics. Don't worry! We'll still continue to serve our core audience, but we hope you'll work with us as we try to find a balance that will work for all.

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Ask Slashdot: GMail for Domains vs. MS Live Office? 29 of 40 comments

Developers: Interview With the Father of Java

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 31, @06:41PM
from the hot-brewed-programming-language dept.
Java
Eh-Wire writes "The Globe & Mail interviews James Gosling after a keynote talk to Sun developers in his home town of Calgary. His thoughts and comments regarding the 'dead end' oil industry, disconnected Telco strategist, and unleashing 'creative weirdoes' makes for an interesting read." From the article: "Java is evolving. It's sort of embedded in the social experiment that is the Internet. There's been tremendous adoption of Java for building large-scale enterprise apps. It's worked tremendously well there. There's been all kinds of growth lately in cellphones and more and more embedded systems. It's all about making the environment around us more intelligent."

Games: The State of Cheating in Online Games 30 of 36 comments

IT: IBM Challenges Microsoft With an Ad Campaign

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 31, @06:04PM
from the draw-sabers-and-duel dept.
Microsoft
Rytis writes "IBM is about to spend $300 Million dollars on a campaign to win customers and to convert them from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino under Linux. IBM is also said to offer resellers a bounty of $20,000 for switching customers to its Linux-based e-mail programs from Microsoft server software. It seems that the concurrence Microsoft Corp. is facing is getting tighter and tighter. The Penguin gets more and more support from the two biggest rivals that Microsoft have ever had."

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