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Games

Why Are There No Popular Ultima Online-Like MMOs? 480

Posted by Soulskill from the risk-is-not-our-business dept.
eldavojohn writes "I have a slightly older friend who played through the glory days of Ultima Online. Yes, their servers are still up and running, but he often waxes nostalgic about certain gameplay functions of UO that he misses. I must say that these aspects make me smile and wonder what it would be like to play in such a world — things like housing, thieving and looting that you don't see in the most popular massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. So, I've followed him through a few games, including Darkfall and now Mortal Online. And these (seemingly European developed) games are constantly fading into obscurity and never catching hold. We constantly move from one to the next. Does anyone know of a popular three-dimensional game that has UO-like rules and gameplay? Perhaps one that UO players gravitated to after leaving UO? If you think that the very things that have been removed (housing and thieving would be two good topics) caused WoW to become the most popular MMO, why is that? Do UO rules not translate well to a true 3D environment? Are people incapable of planning for corpse looting? Are players really that inept that developers don't want to leave us in control of risk analysis? I'm familiar with the Bartle Test but if anyone could point me to more resources as to why Killer-oriented games have faded out of popularity, I'd be interested."
Encryption

How To Replace FileVault With EncFS 65

Posted by timothy from the for-secretive-tweakers dept.
agoston.horvath writes "I've written a HOWTO on replacing Mac OS X's built-in encryption (FileVault) with the well-known FUSE-based EncFS. It worked well for me, and most importantly: it is a lot handier than what Apple has put together. This is especially useful if you are using a backup solution like Time Machine. Includes Whys, Why Nots, and step-by-step instructions."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Code Review of Doom For the iPhone 161

Posted by Soulskill from the old-dogs-new-tricks dept.
Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform. "Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."
Games

Game Difficulty As a Virtue 204

Posted by Soulskill from the all-hail-battletoads dept.
The Wii and various mobile gaming platforms have done wonders for the trend toward casual or "easy" games. But the success of a few recent titles, despite their difficulty, has caused some to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far; whether a little frustration can be seen as a good thing. Quoting: "The evidence is subtle but compelling. For one example, look to major consumer website GameSpot's Game of the Year for 2009: Atlus' PS3 RPG Demon's Souls, which received widespread critical acclaim – none of which failed to include a mention of the game's steep challenge. GameSpot called it 'ruthlessly, unforgivingly difficult.' Demon's Souls was a sleeper hit, an anomaly in the era of accessibility. One would think the deck was stacked against a game that demanded such vicious persistence, such precise attention – and yet a surge of praise from critics and developers alike praised the game for reintroducing the experience of meaningful challenge, of a game that demanded something from its players rather than looked for ways to hand them things. It wasn't just Demon's Souls that recently flipped the proverbial bird to the 'gaming for everyone' trend. In many ways, the independent development scene can be viewed on the macro level as a harbinger of trends to come, and over the past year and into 2010, many indies have decided to be brutal to their players."
PlayStation (Games)

PS3 Hacked? 296

Posted by Soulskill from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."

Comment US patent office workers should be ashamed... (Score 3, Interesting) 191

by BuddaLicious (#30823462) Attached to: USPTO Grants Google a Patent On MapReduce

how do you get a patent awarded on something that has already been released as "open source" (Hadoop)

This does not add up, either Hadoop is not really open source, or US patent office are as FCKING stupid as EVERYONE seems to think they are.

Come on people, don't you get tired of the shame of working for such an organization....don't you want to see freedom and democracy restored to the world..?>?>
Software

Drupal's Dries Buytaert On Drupal 7 55

Posted by Soulskill from the on-the-horizon dept.
itwbennett writes "The Drupal community has been working on Drupal 7 for two years, and there are 'hundreds of changes' to show for it, says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in an interview with ITworld's Esther Schindler on the occasion of Drupal 7 going into Alpha test this week. Most notable for end users are 'some massive usability improvements,' says Buytaert, while site builders will see the greatest changes in the Drupal Content Construction Kit (CCK), which has been moved into the Drupal core. But one thing that hasn't changed is the not-so-easy upgrade path. 'The upgrade path for a Drupal site has never been really easy, to be honest,' Buytaert says. 'We do break backwards compatibility. It's a little bit painful because it requires all of the contributed modules — and there's 4,000-5,000 of them — to make changes.' But Buytaert doesn't think that's all bad. 'Innovation is key. Backwards compatibility limits innovation,' Buytaert contends. 'The rule we have is: We'll break the API if it makes a better API, and if it allows good innovation and progress to be made. Also: The second rule is that we'll never break people's data. We'll always provide an upgrade path for the data.'"
Image

Tower Switch-Off Embarrasses Electrosensitives 292

Posted by samzenpus from the radiation-placebo dept.
Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."
Mars

Mars Images Reveal Evidence of Ancient Lakes 128

Posted by timothy from the older-I-get-the-wetter-mars-was dept.
Matt_dk writes "Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology. Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods."
Science

Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110

Posted by timothy from the ice-tractor-cometh dept.
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Earth

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy from the even-superer dept.
drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."

Comment Re:why don't these go away? (Score 1) 186

by BuddaLicious (#30389472) Attached to: SQL Injection Attack Claims 132,000+

They = ICANN, the body legally responsible for yanking the license of a domain name registrar if they don't react quickly to this kind of BS.
SOMEONE has to first complain and ask the DomainName Registrar to revoke the domain name, if they don't comply then SOMEONE has to complain to ICANN.
So first SOMEONE has to change to real living person willing to register the complaint (should fall to the first person who finds themselves infected).

ICANN can be slow, but it has revoke Domain Name Registrar licenses and can do so pretty much at will.
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Re:MP3s, perceptual coding and a little test (Score 1) 849

by BuddaLicious (#30139910) Attached to: Can We Really Tell Lossless From MP3?

I digitized my CD collection to 320kbps.
I ran similar tests audio tests using quality component stereo set-up (speakers/amp), and just playing on the PC ($80 audigy zx card)over a $80 5.1 surround Logitech speakers. I also used good pair of over-ear (muffs)headphones.
I used a variety of different music to test with (metal, jazz, rap, classical, pop, etc) the majority were off the shelf music CDs, one was a DDD (all digital) Gold disc of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. I used mostly songs we would have heard in different situations and were familiar with/ It had 5 test subjects including myself for the fuller tests, and ran a few follow up tests with about a dozen people.

The results:
192kbps was good enough for the majority on most songs. Going back and forth you could tell a difference on some songs, and on the component stereo system, no one could really tell the difference @ 192.
The good pair of headphones was better at revealing the differences - 192 more consistently given a worse rating than a straight play back from the original CD.
Everyone agreed that on pretty much any equipment 128kbps sounded noticeably worse (though they would still enjoy the music).

The magic line was 256kbps.

At this rate no one was able to discern any difference between the original or the ripd mp3.
Everyone agreed they both sounded like it should, no real distortion, or "sound" to the music, just the music itself.
I got similar results for 320kbps. No one could tell the difference. (I would say there was even a preference for the 320 over the original format, but it could have been test bias)

A very large CD collection will fit in 100GB at 320kbps, and sounds great!
I would recommend backing up your collection at at least 256, or better 320 (not much more space)

Best of all, the files will play on pretty much any computer or audio player as is.
If I want a CD for non-mp3 (real CD player), I can spit one out, that no-one could tell the difference from the original on.

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