arcticstoat - Slashdot User

Submission + - All the cyan and magenta! The horror of CGA graphics and how it worked (custompc.com)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Monday April 17, 2023 @11:38AM

arcticstoat writes: Old enough to remember when PC games could only display four colors as standard? Here's an in-depth look at the PC's first color graphics adaptor (CGA) in the 1980s, including how it worked and the different palettes available, complete with screenshots from games of the time.

Submission + - Train phone thief caught on camera - help us catch him (standupmaths.com)

Submitted by

arcticstoat

on Thursday February 09, 2012 @11:24AM

arcticstoat writes: "Stand up comedian and mathematician Matt Parker filmed this brazen phone thief on the train in the UK Last night. He stole a phone from a bag that a woman had accidentally left on the train, and even held it up to pose with it, despite being shouted at by Parker. We're trying to identify the guy so that British Transport Police can act accordingly, so please help to spread this around if you can. If Matt's blog is down, you can see a picture of the thief here and a full video of the incident here."

Submission + - How 9/11 Affected Games (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by

arcticstoat

on Monday September 12, 2011 @09:16AM

arcticstoat writes: "The events of 9/11 have had a curious effect on the gaming industry. From having to redraw the box art for Red Alert 2 (which not only the twin towers, but also an aeroplane) to a terrorist character being deleted from Grand Theft Auto III, 9/11 has had a direct effect on specific games, but it's also had a more general effect on the industry. Many first person shooters are now set on battlefields in the Middle East, for example, and even a decade later people questioned Crytek's decision to set Crysis 2 in New York. Part of the problem lies in the semantics of the word 'game'. It implies an experience which is there primarily to entertain; a series of rules and mechanics designed for the purposes of having fun. Hence the idea of 'making a game about 9/11' immediately suggests a product that intends to make 9/11 enjoyable, while films and novels are recognised as being able to aim for other emotions. This isn't because the games industry is incapable of making an intelligent and thought-provoking game based around 9/11, it's just that doing so would require a significant departure from a lot of mainstream gaming conventions."

Comment LulzSec says this isn't true (Score 1) 1

by arcticstoat on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @09:48AM (#36511926) Attached to: LulzSec claims theft of UK Census records

Curiously, Lulzsec is denying its involvement in this - http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/statuses/83167715799470080 and http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/statuses/83168314527981568

Submission + - LulzSec suspected arrested by UK police (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @07:46AM

An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Police Computer e-Crime Unit (PCeU) has arrested a 19-year-old man in Wickford, Essex, in connection with the series of LulzSec attacks against organizations including the CIA, PBS and Sony.

The man, who has been arrested under the Computer Misuse and Fraud Act, has had his house searched and a significant amount of material taken away by police for forensic examination.

The PCeU worked with local Essex police and the FBI on the investigation.

Submission + - LulzSec 'Mastermind' Arrested In Essex UK (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @07:45AM

Stoobalou writes: A 19-year-old man has been arrested in Essex, UK suspected of being the 'mastermind' behind mischievous hacking japesters Lulz Security, otherwise known as LulzSec.

Submission + - Intel unveils 50-core maths co-processor card (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @06:40AM

arcticstoat writes: Intel has officially taken the wraps off its next generation ‘Knights Corner’ processor; a dedicated 50-core maths co-processor chip based on the technology from Intel’s abandoned Larrabee graphics project.

Intel confirmed that the 50 x86 cores used in Knights Corner will be fabricated using the same 22nm Tri-Gate process as next year’s Ivy Bridge processors, meaning the processors will use the very latest transistor technology. The processors will also be packaged on a traditional 16x PCI-E card, so they'll potentially provide an easy upgrade for any workstation that requires a little extra processing grunt.

Submission + - Exploring the Abuse Tolerated by Female Gamers (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @05:49AM

arcticstoat writes: If you want any more proof that feminism still has a long way to go, you only need to look at the illiterate misogyny that's inherent in online gaming trash talk. This exploration of the issue reveals the abuse that online female gamers have to tolerate, resulting in many pretending to be male while they're gaming, while others never return to online gaming, which has the knock-on effect of reinforcing the stereotype that women just don't like games. Example comments include ‘suck a big fat cock slut’, ‘you fat f**king tomboy go kill yourself’ and ‘u no ur an ugly girl wen u play xbox’.

Submission + - OnLive to launch in UK this Autumn (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Thursday June 02, 2011 @07:06PM

arcticstoat writes: Cloud-based gaming platform OnLive has announced plans to launch in the UK this Autumn, with Onlive.co.uk opening for OnLive player tag registration on 7 June.

OnLive runs games on remote servers and streams them back to subscribers, but until now it's only been available in some areas of the US.

Submission + - AMD: We're Betting Everything on OpenCL (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @01:14PM

arcticstoat writes: Fusion is either going to carry AMD through to the victory parade, or drag it through the streets for a pelting in the village stocks. In fact, the whole future of AMD's CPU division rests on GPGPU computing being catapulted into the mainstream. In an interview, AMD's manager of Fusion software marketing Terry Makedon revealed that 'AMD as a company made a very, very big bet when it purchased ATI: that things like OpenCL will succeed. I mean, we're betting everything on it.' He also added: 'I'll give you the fact that we don't have any major applications at this point that are going to revolutionise the industry and make people think 'oh, I must have this,' granted, but we're working very hard on it. Like I said, it's a big bet for us, and it's a bet that we're certain about.'

Submission + - Windows 1.0: The power of DOS, plus tiled windows (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

jbrodkin

on Thursday May 26, 2011 @11:16AM

jbrodkin writes: "I'd always wanted my own working copy of the elusive Windows 1.0, and after a few failed attempts I got one working in a virtual machine (I had to downgrade from the latest version of Windows Virtual PC to an earlier version to get it started, but that's another story). With 416K free memory, we were able to cruise through Reversi, take a look at the first version of Notepad, as well as the now-defunct Microsoft Write, and create a "masterpiece" in Microsoft Paint. Eventually, applications started crashing, but a simple reboot got it working again. All in all, a nice tour through computing history. Anyone have a copy of the first Macintosh OS they want to send me?"

Submission + - Why Some People Can't See Stereoscopic 3D (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by

arcticstoat

on Thursday May 26, 2011 @09:47AM

arcticstoat writes: "While punters are queuing up to see Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides in 3D, the film's main star, Johnny Depp, will never be able to see the film's 3D effects. Like millions of other people, Depp has a lazy eye, meaning that he can't combine the image from both eyes to create a stereoscopic 3D effect. In addition to this, some people with a strabismus (squint) can also struggle to see 3D, while millions of others report problems with nausea, headaches and dizziness as a result of viewing 3D. This feature discusses the various issues surrounding stereoscopic 3D with optometrists, and also reveals how 3D could even be used as a lazy eye correction tool in the future."

Submission + - Researchers Grow a Brain in a Dish

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Thursday May 26, 2011 @08:06AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Dr. Jeffrey H. Toney writes that a team of biomedical engineers at the University of Pittsburgh led by Henry Zeringue have managed to grow an active brain in a dish, complete with memories by culturing brain cells capable of forming networks, complete with biological signals. To produce the models, the Pitt team stamped adhesive proteins onto silicon discs. Once the proteins were cultured and dried, cultured hippocampus cells from embryonic rats were fused to the proteins and then given time to grow and connect to form a natural network. The researchers disabled the cells' inhibitory response and excited the neurons with an electrical pulse which were then able to sustain the resulting burst of network activity for up to what in neuronal time is 12 long seconds compared to the natural duration of .25 seconds. The ability of the brain to hold information ‘online' long after an initiating stimulus is a hallmark of brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex. The team will next work to understand the underlying factors that govern network communication and stimulation, such as the various electrical pathways between cells and the genetic makeup of individual cells. "This is amazing," writes Toney. "I wonder what the "memory" could be — could be a good subject for a science fiction story.""

Submission + - IDC: ARM will take 13% of PC CPU market by 2015 (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Monday May 09, 2011 @09:18AM

arcticstoat writes: The x86-stronghold on the PC microprocessor market could start to breakdown over the next couple of years, according to market research company IDC. The firm recently predicted that ARM will control 13% of the PC microprocessor market by 2015. According to IDC's research director of computing semiconductors, Shane Rau, this prediction is also based on a traditional definition of a PC processor, which doesn't include smartphones and tablets.

"Going forward," explains Rau, "Microsoft will support Windows on ARM and companies like Nvidia will develop ARM-based processors specifically for PCs. Assuming there are strong investments from ARM and many more companies in the software, hardware, and design ecosystem, we believe that ARM will get some traction, starting with its customers' PC processor products in netbooks and then scaling upwards into traditional mobile PCs, then desktop PCs, then PC servers."

Submission + - Computing rarities of the 1990s (technologizer.com)

Submitted by

harrymcc

on Monday April 18, 2011 @02:30AM

harrymcc writes: "The historic computers of the 1970s and 1980s are rightly celebrated, but we tend to forget that some fascinating machines came out in the 1990s. Technologizer's Benj Edwards has rounded up some of them, including Sega's PC, Apple's Unix server, IBM's Unix ThinkPad, an Atari laptop, the NeXT-based workstation from Canon, and more."

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