Corporate gaming promotes productivity

As a gamer, I think this is great news. Far too often playing computer games is given a bad reputation. It’s a great stress reliever, sharpens your mental abilities, and most of all it’s just plain fun. It’s not just a time waster or slacking off, it will provide returns in the long run. Trust me, you’d rather an employee go postal playing Halo than in RL. (see original post below)

“David Edery and Ethan Mollick argue that many skills and lessons from the gaming world are applicable in the business world. The smartest firms, the authors argue, will not only allow game-playing in the workplace, but will actively encourage it.

To CEOs who throw a tantrum every time they catch someone playing solitaire on an office PC, or who consider video games to be the exclusive preserve of pasty-faced teens, that may sound like daft advice.” (link)

Quebec getting sued for loving Microsoft too much

I think this is pretty funny. Would you rather the Quebec government shut you down right from the start? or pretend to be give you a chance and let you make a futile attempt to make a competitive bid only to be passed over for Microsoft? It’s their choice. Just because you offer a cheaper open source solution, doesn’t mean that it may be a better fit for their systems.

If Facil wanted to make a name for itself, they definitely did, but not in a good way. (see original post below)

“Quebec’s open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company’s products rather than using free alternatives.

The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.”(link)

British hacker to face the music in the U.S.

You wanted to see if you could do it and then you did. Congrats! One thing. You got caught. Don’t expect the British government to bail you out. The British want to keep the U.S. relations all chummy, you see. I bet this will wipe that snide smile off your face. Have fun getting your butt waxed in prison.

“Gary McKinnon has lost his legal challenge against extradition to the United States to face charges of hacking into NASA and military systems.
…
Two weeks ago, McKinnon’s legal team submitted his application to the ECHR. Under the terms of the application, the U.K. government could not extradite McKinnon. This legal block has now been lifted.” (link)

Virus … in space!

I’m surprised the space station held out this long. I mean with new viruses being created every day it was bound to happen. Despite the strict controls on what goes into space how did the astronaut manage to sneak a USB device with him on to the shuttle, and for God’s sake why did he plug it in?

Haven’t they heard of this “anti-virus” software over at NASA. For a bunch of rocket scientists this does not make them out to be the smartest people on the planet (even though they probably are).

“Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.”(link)

SanDisk Extreme getting 50% faster

SanDisk Corporation today set a new speed record of 30 megabytes per second1 for SD™ flash memory cards with the introduction of the SanDisk Extreme® III 30MB/s Edition line of SDHC™ Cards. The new cards, expected to be available worldwide in September in 4-gigabyte (GB)2, 8GB and 16GB capacities, are designed to deliver peak performance when used with the new digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera, Nikon D90.(link)