guardian.co.uk TechnologyArticles published by guardian.co.uk TechnologyNo Headline - page id: 3492558 article id: 15090717- August 13, 2008 Rappin' bout da physics, dawgsEver wonder what it would sound like if Stephen Hawking dropped some nasty rhymes about particle physics Check it.bit.lyyouc22 ...8805; Send links to techguardian.co.ukRelated StoriesFlighting against the hackers and spammers who pollute our blogsLinkedIn warns social networkers about dangers of 'frolleagues'Social networking: Twitter drops text message support in UKLogica remains upbeat on IT outlookClick to download: American anti-smoking campaign remixeshttp://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b6/story01.htm Victor Keegan: BBC iPlayer success points to the future- August 13, 2008 If your web connection slows down dramatically it could be because too many people are using the BBC's iPlayer. It has been a huge success and could soon account for 10% of UK traffic. That is the problem: it devours bandwidth, and internet service providers (ISPs) are up in arms. They argue that because of the success of a tax-funded service they are being forced to boost capacity while getting nothing in return beyond their monthly subscriptions. They want the BBC to pay for extra...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b5/story01.htm Elon Musk's company SpaceX hopes to take over from Nasa- August 13, 2008 Earlier this month, space failed to be the final frontier for James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty the engineer in Star Trek. The rocket due to carry his cremated remains and those of 207 other posthumous space explorers failed to make it into orbit, failing two minutes into the flight at an altitude of 135 miles.The company behind the rocket is SpaceX, whose founder is 37-year-old Elon Musk, a technology entrepreneur better known for being a co-founder of PayPal, the online payments...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b3/story01.htm Michael Cross: Public bodies will have to watch their IT spending- August 13, 2008 We all know the feeling. We shop around for the best deals, marvel at the extra features we're getting for our buck, but every time we upgrade we end up spending slightly more. The government has the same problem, only its numbers are bigger: last year, it spent £13.2bn on IT, 6.6% up on 2005-06. For some that will be evidence enough of a government chucking money at favoured suppliers. But the total, and the underlying figures, deserve more attention than that. In the great scheme of...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b2/story01.htm Keith Stuart, Gamesblog: Electronic Arts are making games fun again- August 13, 2008 Electronic Arts used to be the publisher that every gamer hated. Predictable, aggressive and mind-numbingly successful, the corporation was an affront to the grassroots ethic. But since John Riccitiello took over as chief executive last year, there have been radical changes. Immediately, he attacked the way the company's bought small and interesting developers, then assimilated them. EA now sees its studios as autonomous city-states, allowing them to retain creative freedom and even take the...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813ba/story01.htm Game review: Pool Party- August 13, 2008 We're well into the summer software slump now, which explains why Pool Party even gets a look-in. Sadly, it's hardly worth the effort. Visually it's not too bad, with crisp-looking 3D tables and convincing physics governing cue and ball movement. The problems start with using the Wiimote as a cue, with a clumsy prodding motion that feels nothing like the real thing. Flashy motion-blur effects and 31 annoying songs hardly compensate for ponderous AI and players you can't customise. It's a pity,..http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813ad/story01.htm Ask Jack- August 13, 2008 CNN AlertsHow do I stop themJohn Kirkham JS: You can't, but they should be sorted into your spam folder. If not, create a rule to do this. These emails are not really from CNN, though they are a good imitation. Click a link in the latest version, My Custom Alert, and it takes you to a Russian website, where you are asked to download a malware version of Adobe's Flash player (adobe_flash.exe). This installs a Trojan downloader which runs a service called CbEvtSvc and connects to a remote host....http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b4/story01.htm Game review: Soulcalibur IV- August 13, 2008 In these days of epic multiplayer worlds and hi-def first person shooters with accurately modelled weapon ballistics, the beat-'em-up genre can feel a little anachronistic. Sure, Street Fighter and the like were amusing enough on the SNES in 1992, but can the genre still be relevant in 2008 Soulcalibur IV would suggest so. This is a stylish and enjoyable fighting game that successfully allows both button-bashing novices and dexterous devotees to indulge in some swashbuckling combat. Star Wars...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813ae/story01.htm Flighting against the hackers and spammers who pollute our blogs- August 13, 2008 Barry Welford considers himself lucky. The weekend he decided one of his blogs, Staygolinks.com, needed a cleanup was the same time a hacker chose to splatter the site with a host of unwanted pages."I was doing something I don't normally do: changing the theme of the blog. But it turned out that it was just after the hacker had got in," says Welford.As he went through the software that drives his Wordpress-based blog, he found a block of code he didn't recognise. Its job was to subvert the...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813bb/story01.htm First open source Welsh language translator hopes to free public data- August 13, 2008 Flummoxed by a document in Welsh Now you can get a free translation at cymraeg.org.uk. The Apertium-cy software, described as the first free automatic translator from Welsh to English, is the fruit of a multilingual effort involving developers in Spain, Wales and Ireland pushing forward the possibilities of open-source software and, they hope, free public-sector data. Apertium-cy is the first non-Romance language to be available on Apertium, a machine-translation platform developed by the...http://www.guardianfeeds.co.uk/c/288/f/7511/s/1a813b9/story01.htm |