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Games

New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances 342

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."
Bug

Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards 230

Posted by Soulskill from the more-or-less-finished dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."
Image

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Microsoft

Microsoft Game Software Preps Soldiers For Battle 44

Posted by Soulskill from the blue-screen-of-real-death dept.
coondoggie writes "Soldiers may go into battle better prepared to handle equipment and with a greater knowledge of their surroundings after an intellectual property licensing deal Monday between Microsoft and Lockheed Martin that will deepen the defense giant's access to visual simulation technology. The intellectual property agreement between the two focuses on Microsoft ESP, a games-based visual simulation software platform for the PC."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.
Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
Censorship

Modern Warfare 2 Not Recalled In Russia After All 94

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-the-thought-that-counts dept.
thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia." Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.

Comment better application for this (Score 1) 150

by artecco (#29614763) Attached to: Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles Become Reality
Still waiting for the "omg. think of the children dept" and "omg terrorists are everywhere dept." to start wiring presumed dangerous people.

Just think of the benefits, if anything bad happens the department can just push the big red button and every dangerous man in the country automatically stops whatever they are doing and walks to the detention camp/holding cell until the the dept. in charge have figured out who had done it.

Brilliant! I can't wait for this system to get applied in a wider area than bugs.
Education

US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490

Posted by CmdrTaco from the talking-to-you-cliff dept.
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

Comment Re:It really is the same as all other marriages. (Score 1) 1146

by artecco (#28955101) Attached to: Navigating a Geek Marriage?

There is, as you alluded to, a big difference between doing this for an hour or so each day, and spending eight hours straight playing WoW instead of talking to your wife.

And the even more important difference is the reason for doing the activity. If it is done because it is what you enjoy, then fine, BUT if it is done to make yourself unavailable or to avoid the issues you should be handling (as I did) you are on your way to a place i recommend you keep clear of (trust me that place sucks)

Comment It really is the same as all other marriages. (Score 2, Insightful) 1146

by artecco (#28953905) Attached to: Navigating a Geek Marriage?
Don't be a fool like I was

Don't go into a coma and hope that problems will fix themselves (they don't).

Tell her that she is special (she is).

Get your ass off the computer chair do stuff with her (she wants you to take part in her activities)

Get out of bed when the alarm goes off, shave and make her breakfast, buy her flowers ones in a while.

If you think that marrying a geek is extremely different than a non geek you are dead wrong. I married a geek girl, and I nearly lost her because I thought she was 90% logic and 10% emotions. I was wrong and now 10 years after our marriage I have just gone through the worst summer ever, and have finally realized that she deserves much more than I have been offering her.

I fell into a vegetable state where I was waiting for things (we were fighting a lot) to get better. Some guys watch sports, other play computer games and some do other shit. No matter what one chooses, all these activities boils down to a low activity veggie state where one resigns and hopes things, in some magical way will get better.

After some serious TLR (Total Life re-engineering) I'm back on track and we are rebuilding our relationship now. All it took was for me to realize that my special little geek girl are as all other girls, they need more than pure logic and reasoning, they need complements and they need to feel that they are special in the way only you can make her feel. A male geek and a female geek has as much in common as a male and a female, while a female geek and a "ordinary" female has almost everything in common.
Role Playing (Games)

Sims 3 Expansion Announced 84

Posted by Soulskill from the hundreds-of-new-ways-to-torture-your-sim dept.
EA has announced that The Sims 3 will be getting its first expansion pack on November 16th, titled World Adventures. It will be available at first for the PC and Mac clients, and later for mobile platforms. "Players can take their Sims on new journeys to famous real-world inspired destinations around the globe for the first time ever and seek out new adventures. ... From mastering martial arts in Shang Simla, China, discovering rich culture and famous landmarks on a romantic getaway to Champs Les Sims, France or exploring the depths of ancient tombs in Al Simhara, Egypt, players can take their Sims on a journey that will change their Sims' lives." EA's Lyndsay Pearson spoke further about the expansion in an interview with IGN.
Graphics

Submission + - Five Nvidia CUDA-Enabled Apps Tested (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by
crazipper
crazipper writes: "Much fuss has been made about Nvidia's CUDA technology and its general-purpose computing potential. Now, in 2009, a steady stream of launches from third-party software developers sees CUDA gaining traction at the mainstream.

Tom's Hardware takes five of the most interesting desktop apps with CUDA support and compares the speed-up yielded by a pair of mainstream GPUs versus a CPU-only. Not surprisingly, depending on the workload you throw at your GPU, you'll see results ranging from average to downright impressive."

Comment Re:Love! (Score 1) 528

by artecco (#20936973) Attached to: The Evolution of Language
Dictionary wtf, nobody use them anymore, google it m8 "girl love" gives A LOT of hits, I know this for sure as its one of my favourite queries...... But I agree searching for "Date" doesn't make any sense at all

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