An anonymous reader writes “In one year today exactly, Microsoft will shut down support for Windows XP. The deadline will prove a challenge for many of Australia’s largest users of IT, all struggling to migrate to new Microsoft environments.” Net Applications’ chart of current OS market share figured shows XP only slightly behind Windows 7, even now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP
An anonymous reader sends news that Disney is closing LucasArts. The game studio has been around since 1982, and brought us classics such as Labyrinth, The Secret of Monkey Island, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Star Wars: Battlefront. They also published Star Wars: Galaxies, Knights of the Old Republic, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The company held a meeting today informing employees of the layoffs. “In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company’s core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. … LucasArt’s other big franchise, Indiana Jones, has failed to make much of a dent in games in recent years, with the exception of Traveller’s Tales LEGO Indiana Jones series that, once again, was not developed by LucasArts. Meanwhile, series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which are both heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones films, have thrived.” If only they hadn’t abandoned the X-Wing series of games. I would have bought a new one of those in a heartbeat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Disney Closes LucasArts
An anonymous reader writes “Years of desire by AMD Linux users to have open source video playback support by their graphics driver is now over. AMD has released open-source UVD support for their Linux driver so users can have hardware-accelerated video playback of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG video formats. UVD support on years old graphics cards was delayed because AMD feared open-source support could kill their Digital Rights Management abilities for other platforms.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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AMD Releases UVD Engine Source Code
While The Pirate Pay is certainly notorious, it’s always oddly lingered in the mid-table when it comes to real-world file sharing. No longer, though: according to fresh analysis by Torrent Freak , the site has now sailed into the top spot as the world’s most-used file sharing site. More »
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The Pirate Bay Is Now the World’s Largest File-Sharing Site
Twitter is lighting up with a backlash against the choice from prominent Christians. [Read more]
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Google Cesar Chavez doodle on Easter ignites furor
theodp writes “In a move that would do Bill Lumbergh (YouTube homage) proud, Microsoft has been pulling in about $25 million a year through its unusual practice of charging its vendors for occupying office space on its campus while working on Microsoft projects, according to the real estate firm that manages the program. And that’s before a planned July 1st rate increase that Microsoft informed vendors of earlier this week, which will boost the ‘chargeback’ rate for its ‘shadow workforce’ from $450 per month ($5,400 per year) for every workstation to $510 per month (or $6,120 per year). So, is there a discount if you’re moved downstairs into Storage B?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Makes Millions Renting Campus Space to Vendors
iOS ( Jailbroken ): If you want to enable the passcode on your iPhone you usually need to jump into the settings, hit the toggle, and enter your passcode. It’s a bit tedious, but if you want to speed up the process TapTapPass makes it possible to enable your passcode from pretty much anywhere. More »
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TapTapPass Quickly Enables Your iPhone’s Passcode from Anywhere
Egypt’s Naval forces claim they have captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement that the divers were caught while “cutting the undersea cable” of Telecom Egypt. Internet services have been disrupted since March 22 in Egypt. From the article: “The statement was accompanied by a photo showing three young men, apparently Egyptian, staring up at the camera in what looks like an inflatable launch. It did not have further details on who they were or why they would have wanted to cut a cable.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Egyptian Forces Capture 3 Divers Trying To Cut Undersea Internet Cable
The new E6 Series Super Komachi has a sleek design and a top speed of nearly 200 mph. Operators hope it will help the quake-ravaged north. [Read more]
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200-mph red bullet trains thrill rail-mad Japan
Lucas123 writes “It may be a movie about a stone age family, but DreamWorks said its latest 3D animated movie The Croods took more compute cycles to create than any other movie they’ve made. The movie required a whopping 80 million compute hours to render, 15 million more hours than DreamWorks’ last record holder, The Rise of the Guardians. The production studio said between 300 and 400 animators worked on The Croods over the past three years. The images they created, from raw sketches to stereoscopic high-definition shots, required about 250TB of data storage capacity. When the movie industry moved from producing 2D to 3D high-definition movies over the past decade, the data required to produce the films increased tremendously. For DreamWorks, the amount of data needed to create a stereoscopic film leaped by 30%.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Animation Sophistication: The Croods Required 80 Million Compute Hours