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+ - Asheron's Call to end active development, Turbine to release server software->

Submitted by _KiTA_
_KiTA_ writes "Asheron's Call, one of the longest running modern era MMOs at 15 years, will have one final monthly update on March 4th, whereupon the game (alongside Asheron's Call 2) will be placed in Mothball — going free to play for existing accounts, with only bugfix and balance updates to be expected.

However, at the same time, Turbine's going out with a bang — adding a Disgaea-like character reincarnation system, LOTRO style evolving weapons, and a fanservice-filled bonus dungeon for the remaining (and returning) faithful players.

Oh, and they're planning on releasing the game's servers, client, utilities, and art assets for free. Similar to how Ultima Online spawned a host of unofficial and technically illegal 3rd party servers, Turbine is going to officially allow 3rd party servers now that the game is being retired. There are also increasing rumors that Turbine might be working on an Asheron's Call 3 or AC Reboot, as well."

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+ - Group Thinks Anonymity Should Be Baked Into the Internet Itself Using Tor

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "David Talbot writes at MIT Technology review that engineers on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an informal organization of engineers that changes Internet code and operates by rough consensus, have asked the architects of Tor to consider turning the technology into an Internet standard. If widely adopted, such a standard would make it easy to include the technology in consumer and business products ranging from routers to apps and would allow far more people to browse the Web without being identified by anyone who might be spying on Internet traffic. The IETF is already working to make encryption standard in all web traffic. Stephen Farrell believes that forging Tor into a standard that interoperates with other parts of the Internet could be better than leaving Tor as a separate tool that requires people to take special action to implement. “I think there are benefits that might flow in both directions,” says Farrell. “I think other IETF participants could learn useful things about protocol design from the Tor people, who’ve faced interesting challenges that aren’t often seen in practice. And the Tor people might well get interest and involvement from IETF folks who’ve got a lot of experience with large-scale systems.” Andrew Lewman, executive director of Tor, says the group is considering it. “We’re basically at the stage of ‘Do we even want to go on a date together?’ It’s not clear we are going to do it, but it’s worth exploring to see what is involved. It adds legitimacy, it adds validation of all the research we’ve done.”"

+ - No, the Tesla Model S Doesn't Pollute More Than A SUV-> 1

Submitted by thecarchik

This is absolutely false.

Virtually all electric car advocate agree that when toting up the environmental pros and cons of electric cars, it's only fair to include powerplant emissions. When this has been done previously, the numbers have still favored electric cars. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, concluded in a 2012 report, "Electric vehicles charged on the power grid have lower global warming emissions than the average gasoline-based vehicle sold today.

Working through everyone of Weiss' conclusions may show a higher emissions rate than Tesla's published numbers but in no way does a Model S pollute the amounts even close to an SUV."

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+ - Kenneth Appel Remembered For Four Color Theorem->

Submitted by mikejuk

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Comment: Re:Duh, it's evidence (Score 3, Insightful) 218

I echo somebody else's comment above that comparing this to a school board is disingenuous. A court order is far different than a school board going fishing.

For this case, a court order for information from a person's web account should have a way to subpoena the information necessary without requiring disclosure of passwords. That's reasonable, just like how with a court order a suspect must provide the keys and/or open up a safe on their property if such is specified in a search warrant. It's similar. The problem comes that with some models of computer security, that information is not available without a privacy violation (giving up a password). It's quite a conundrum.

That being said, in this case (and many others) I'm shocked that Facebook (& friends) don't have some type of "legal request mechanism" that would work as a "backdoor" for this type of thing. They can reset passwords and such, so it's hard to believe they don't have a mechanism to handle requests from legal systems for a history of posts, images, etc. The law should always require a warrant to access it if it's not publicly posted, but other than that, I'm surprised it isn't already there.

Comment: Re:Simple (Score 4, Interesting) 515

by Erioll (#41442005) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?

Not the same thing IMO. A great amount of malware requires that the user does something. So "download our .exe and ignore the security prompts!" is still a very large section of things, and has nothing to do with a secure OS or not. Programs running as a user has as many rights as a user themselves. That's what most virus software is for: detecting that you're trying to run something that's "bad" but it's not exploiting security holes to do so. It's just running with "full trust" just like any other program on your machine, and behaving badly.

Comment: Re:Awesome. (Score 2) 168

by Erioll (#37220386) Attached to: PS3 <em>Counter-Strike</em> To Support Keyboard and Mouse

I have not bought ANY fps games on consoles because of this issue (closest is metroid, and that at least had lock-on, and such, and so was OK). And there ARE exclusives, so no, I can't necessarily play some games, so the company is losing money because of this.

If you want to put out separate matches for each type, then fine, have you able to set up matches with controller-only, K+M only, or mixed. But don't just cut it out entirely. They ARE losing sales from this policy.

Comment: Re:Awesome. (Score 4, Informative) 168

by Erioll (#37220164) Attached to: PS3 <em>Counter-Strike</em> To Support Keyboard and Mouse



Comment: Re:Hmmm (Score 1) 937

by Erioll (#37072394) Attached to: 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars

This is the thing: why isn't he making this directly into a small generator system before making it portable? Scale it up to the point that the turbine problem is a non-issue, and sell THAT. That would prove that the energy source itself is viable (economically too) and not a pipe dream.

Basically, that he hasn't already done so makes me skeptical that there isn't "something else" wrong here. Doesn't pass the smell test IMO.

Now having said that, I hope I'm wrong. I love this idea. But still, I'd like to know why this part hasn't been done already. This smells like trying to get investor dollars on something that MIGHT work instead of selling something that DOES work.
