Falstaft - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Fast walk? (not run?) (Score 4, Funny) 216

by Falstaft on Saturday August 01, 2009 @05:55PM (#28912099) Attached to: Toyota Reveals A Humanoid Robot That Can Run

It looks to me like their is something below the foot that makes contact before the white part of the foot makes contact. From the high speed camera, it looks like this make contact on the front foot before the back foot leaves the ground. I thought to be running, both feet need to be in the air at once. Otherwise you were walking. Maybe I am just seeing the video wrong? Regardless, it looks very impressive.

If you watch closely around :53 you can see that both feet are not touching the ground. But really, when you're being pursued by a hyper-ambulatory Asimo, my mind's on survival, not robo-locomotive kinematics!

Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed 268

Posted by timothy on Monday July 06, 2009 @07:14PM from the oh-there's-a-scheme-all-right dept.

BotScout writes "The nation's Social Security numbering scheme has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual's date and location of birth. The researchers used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person's Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a social security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists 'there is no fool-proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number.'" Update: 07/07 00:01 GMT by T : Reader angrytuna links to Wired's coverage of the SSN deduction system, and links to the researchers' FAQ at Carnegie Mellon, which says that the research paper will be presented at BlackHat Las Vegas later this month.

Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him 895

Posted by Soulskill on Monday July 06, 2009 @06:06PM from the match-made-in-heaven dept.

D1gital_Prob3 writes with this excerpt from a story about David Myers, a Loyola professor who spent some time studying superhero MMO City of Heroes/Villains: "... he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain 'Syphris.' Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player. Syphris fired an instant message at Myers moments later. 'If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.' ... As part of his experiment, Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules — disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular. At first, players tried to beat him in the game to make him quit. Myers was too skilled to be run off, however. They then made him an outcast, a World Wide Web pariah that the creator of Syphris — along with hundreds of other faceless gamers — detested."

Time-Tested Gaming 123

Posted by Zonk on Sunday June 04, 2006 @06:31PM from the hand-worn-favorites dept.

1up has an interesting piece looking at games that have withstood the test of time, aging gracefully where others have not. Titles discussed include the Korean powerhouse Starcraft, Nethack, and the Sim series. From the article: "It's hard to label which games are suitable for repeated lovin' and which are forgettable. One gamer's Halo is another gamer's Superman 64. But when it comes to firing up a favorite, some adventures hold the same appeal they did when they were released years ago -- and jumping in for the fortieth round is every bit as pleasurable as the first time."

Nethack 20 Years Old Today 47

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 17, 2004 @01:26PM from the part-10-still-missing dept.

An Anonymous Reader wrote in to mention that, according to an informational page about the venerable game Hack, today is Hack's 20th birthday. From the page: "In December 1984 I distributed Hack 1.0 in the newsgroup net.sources.... [T]here were 15 pieces, all sent out on 17-Dec-84." From the reader: "This was the first widespread distribution of the game, which was created by Jay Fenlason a couple of years previously. Nethack's history continues here. You can download this descendant of Rogue from its home page, or connect to a nethack server. Many nethack veterans try their hand at Slash'EM, a.k.a., "nethack on amphetamines". Here's to another 20 years of training your dog to rip off shopkeepers."

Quake For The iPaq 148

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 21, 2001 @09:29PM from the start-shaking dept.

hooded1 writes: "Although once considered a utopian ideal, it has now become a reality. Last night on January 20th Dan East released the alpha version of PocketQuake, the first successful port of Quake to any pda. ... Currently PocketQuake only runs on the iPaq." And Jacek Fedorynski points to this screenshot as well. Note that this only works for iPaqs running WinCE, not Linux.

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