icsEater - Slashdot User

Team Fortress 2 Stats Confirm Every Suspicion 110

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @05:02PM from the bloody-snipers dept.

Valve has released another round of stats, this one concerning all that Team Fortress 2 playing we've been doing. They have things broken out along a couple of different metrics, including lifespan, kills, assists, captures, and even just damage dealt. As Rock, Paper, Shotgun's commentary notes, the stats confirm every suspicion you've had about your fellow players. "Yes, there are more rushy-bastard Scouts than any other class. Yes, campy-bastard Snipers earn the most points. Yes, hitpointy-bastard Heavies get the most kills. Yes, hidey-bastard Engineers live longest. And so on. What's slightly odder is the breakdown of which side wins most frequently on each map. BLU has the edge in every killing field except Dustbowl and Gravelpit. Why? How? I thought we were all the same! Damn you for not being neater, demographics." We previously discussed Valve's stats release on Half-Life 2: Episode 2 .

Submission + - FTC: payment processor schemes took millions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @04:48PM

coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission and seven states have charged a payment processor with violating federal and state laws by debiting, or attempting to debit from consumers' bank accounts on behalf of numerous fraudulent telemarketers and Internet-based merchants.Between June 23, 2004 and March 31, 2006, the payment processing company, Your Money Access, processed more than $200 million in debits and attempted debits to consumers' bank accounts and more than $69 million of the attempted debits were returned or rejected by consumers or their banks for various reasons, indicating the lack of consumer authorization, the FTC complaint alleges. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22935"

Submission + - Free Yale College Courses Debut Online (yale.edu)

Submitted by

gyokuro

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @04:17PM

gyokuro writes: "Today, Yale University is making some of its most popular undergraduate courses freely available to anyone in the world with access to the Internet. The project, called 'Open Yale Courses,' presents unique access to the full content of a selection of courses and makes them available in various formats, including video."

Submission + - Ulteo brings OpenOffice.org to the web browser! (ulteo.com)

Submitted by

joestar

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @04:08PM

joestar writes: "Just announced on their website and now on some news sites: OpenOffice.org 2.3 can now be used online within the web browser (at least Firefox and IE), without prior download nor install. I've just tried it and they have implemented an interesting way to print documents, as a PDF download. It seems that the Ulteo plateform also offers some realtime desktop sharing capabilities, for training and workgroup. I would love to access all my apps online the same way!"

Submission + - Ohio caves to encryption after massive data breach (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @03:56PM

Lucas123 writes: "After a backup tape containing 106,821 pieces of sensitive information on Ohio residents and businesses was stolen from the car of a government intern in June, the state government just announced it has purchased 60,000 licenses of encryption software for state offices to use to protect data. Ohio's missing backup tape featured the names and Social Security numbers of 47,245 individuals; the names and Social Security numbers of 19,388 former state employees; and banking information on less than 100 businesses. It's estimate that the data loss will cost the state $3 million. In September, the state docked a state government official about a week of future vacation time for not ensuring that the data would be protected."

Submission + - SpaceX Provides Major Progress Update

Submitted by iamlucky13 on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @03:34PM

iamlucky13 writes: In an online posting Monday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave a detailed update on the status of their ongoing projects. The many details covered include extensive testing of the new, higher-performance Merlin 1C engine, test firing of a Falcon 9 first stage, groundbreaking on a new launch facility at Cape Canaveral, results from the NASA COTS critical design review, updates on the Dragon capsule including splash-down testing and work on the heat shield, a new hypergolic OMS engine called "Draco," and plans to launch the third Falcon 1 in spring of 2008. Whew! Also included are some great pictures and videos of the Falcon 9 test firing, its 17 foot diameter payload fairing, Dragon test articles, the new manufacturing facility, and plenty of other fascinating evidence of the work going on at SpaceX.

Submission + - SPAM: Microbes churn out hydrogen at record rate 1

Submitted by

FiReaNGeL

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @02:51PM

FiReaNGeL writes: "By adding a few modifications to their successful wastewater fuel cell, researchers have coaxed common bacteria to produce hydrogen in a new, efficient way. Using starter material that could theoretically be sourced from a salad bar, the researchers have coaxed microbes to generate hydrogen. "We achieved the highest hydrogen yields ever obtained with this approach from different sources of organic matter, such as yields of 91 percent using vinegar (acetic acid) and 68 percent using cellulose"."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Enigma machine still up for grabs (rhul.ac.uk) 1

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @02:20PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Ever wanted to own your own piece of crypto history?

A genuine WWII Enigma machine, potentially worth thousands of US dollars, is up for grabs in a code-breaking competition associated with the book "Can you crack the Enigma code?" by author Richard Belfield (ISBN-10: 0752875264, ISBN-13: 9780752875262).

As part of the book, Richard worked with a team of experts from the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London to create a challenging collection of puzzles. These "Enigma puzzles" are designed to test even the most experienced puzzle addicts. The puzzles have been designed in such a way that ingenuity and lateral thinking will be as important as having access to a computer in solving them. The prize: a genuine Enigma machine, potentially worth thousands of pounds.

The competition has been running for over a year, and so far, it seems that the puzzles have defied even the most determined attempts to break them. There's been plenty of discussion on the on-line forum at http://enigma.isg.rhul.ac.uk/ but so far it seems that only the first three of the six puzzles have been cracked.

Time to sharpen your pencils and get to work..."

Submission + - Crazed Monkeys on rampage in Indian capital (propheticnews.net)

Submitted by

christ_the_conqueror

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @01:27PM

christ_the_conqueror writes: "Just weeks after the Indian capital's deputy mayor toppled to his death fending off a pack of monkeys, the animals have gone back on the attack, sparking fresh concerns about the simian menace."

Submission + - Microbial Hydrogen Fuel Cells at Record Efficiency (nsf.gov)

Submitted by

Invisible Pink Unicorn

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @12:24PM

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Researchers at Penn State University have built upon past attempts to generate electricity from microbes, reaching efficiencies of up to 91%. According the lead researcher, 'this process produces 288% more energy in hydrogen than the electrical energy that is added to the process.' In certain configurations, nearly all of the hydrogen contained in the molecules of source material converted to useable hydrogen gas, an efficiency that could eventually open the door to bacterial hydrogen production on a larger scale."

Submission + - Firefox Memory Hogging Is Due to Fragmentation (pavlov.net)

Submitted by A beautiful mind on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @10:19AM

A beautiful mind writes: It has been long claimed by users that Firefox leaks memory, and on the other hand the developers claimed the number of leaks are minimal. It turns out both groups were right. Stuart Parmenter, one of the authors of the RAMBack extension started investigating and found out that the issue is memory fragmentation. He discovered that while loading about:blank uses 12,589,696 bytes of memory in the test he performed (image), after exercising Firefox with different websites and then clearing the caches with the help of the RAMBack extension the picture is wholly different: "Our heap is now 29,999,872 bytes! 16,118,072 of that is used (up 4,634,208 bytes from before... which caches am I forgetting to clear?). The rest, a whopping 13,881,800 bytes, is in free blocks!"

Submission + - Leaked MS doc lists next gen Windows features (pollsb.com)

Submitted by

Daniel Hunter

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @09:44AM

Daniel Hunter writes: "Someone uploaded a leaked Microsoft document to pollsb.com. It appears to be an extremely long feature list the Microsoft people are preparing for their next OS released. Feature included: xbox 360 backups on PC, live TV feed recording using media center, and... Pinball."

Submission + - Mozilla: Firefox 3 Tops Safari, IE7 in Memory Test

Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @08:06AM

Anonymous writes: Mozilla is working to calm fears that Firefox is a memory hog: They say the Firefox 3 Beta beat Safari and IE7 in a memory usage test. But they also admit the tests were very, let's say, controlled and they might need to do some more "real world" testing.

Submission + - eBay finally launches auctions in real time (ebay.com)

Submitted by

Hosting Talk

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @07:21AM

Hosting Talk writes: "eBay Countdown is a brand new way to track and win items on eBay. Countdown provides buyers with a competitive edge with instant item updates for current bid and time remaining, easy interface to monitor items in My eBay buying and a fast and easy bidding interface. Countdown also provides a way to search for last minute deals. Best of all, no download is required to use eBay Countdown. Countdown is a completely optional tool and users can always access their items via the eBay web site as well."

Submission + - Facial recognition vending machine debut in Japan (japanesecustomer.com)

Submitted by

Peter Hanami

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @06:47AM

Peter Hanami writes: "Yesterday in Japan, a facial recognition vending machine went on sale that can tell the age of the buyer based on a range of features including number of wrinkles, bone structure and how the skin sits on the face. Developed as a way to stop minors from buying cigarettes from vending machines.In Japan, cigarette vending machines are a common feature on the street and presently few safeguards exist to stop younger users from purchasing. This new machine is seen as a positive step to reduce under age smoking. If the machine doesnt deem the buyer to be of suitable age, 20 years old in Japan. The buyer must provide further identification such as a drivers licence."

Slashdot Top Deals