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Comment Top 10 of the top 20 console games... (Score 3, Informative) 496

...are recent games! Mario Kart for Wii and New Super Mario for DS has sold very well.
Top 20 console games of all time
1. Wii Play (Wii – 24.43 million)[68]
2. Wii Fit (Wii – 22.5 million)[68]
3. Nintendogs (DS – 22.27 million, all five versions combined)[69]
4. Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green (Game Boy – 20.08 million approximately: 10.23 million in Japan,[45] 9.85 million in US)[19]
5. New Super Mario Bros. (DS – 19.94 million)[68]
6. Mario Kart Wii (Wii – 18.36 million)[68]
7. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES – 18 million)[108]
8. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS – 17.41 million)[69]
9. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2 - 17.33 million)[114]
10. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (DS – 16.81 million)[70]

Except for the single PS2 game and Super Mario Brothers 3, DS and Wii games seem to be selling very well. It will be very interesting to see how well New Super Mario Wii sells. It has been out for three weeks and is currently clocking in near 2 million units.

Comment Re:Ooh, that reminds me... (Score 1) 560

Hmm, why didn't I assume I'd have to defend myself from Mr/Ms Literal... Let me explain: They are forcing me to not watch it earlier, by disallowing UK access to the videos on Comedy Central's site. So I have to watch it according to their schedules if I want to watch it at all. It also means UK viewers don't have access to the archive that goes back 10 years, or any of the extended interviews. Clear enough?

Comment Re:Teach them something useful (Score 2, Insightful) 256

I strongly disagree. I think too many people are put off electronics by the utilitarianism, maths and feeling like they need to know something before they start. I would suggest circuit-bending, the skills can be picked up along the way and there isn't really knowledge threshold for starting. I think it's far better to teach people the principles of reverse engineering and give them an idea that they can just do things. Take away the scariness of opening the lids on stuff and it could lead to all sorts of creativity, ingenuity and so on - broader skills than repairing toasters.

Comment Re:bad idea... (Score 2, Insightful) 504

That study compared the result of watching a rom-com with watching a David Lynch movie and their conclusion was that the rom-coms fucked you up more than David Lynch? I totally call Bullshit! on that.

Why? Lynch's films often leave a lot open to the viewer to conclude, allowing people to think for themselves and make their own judgements. Your typical rom-com practically forces an emotional response out of the viewer - usually based on a (noxious?) set of ideals that are hard to live up to. Eraserhead may be scary, but not as much as the idea that your real life isn't as good as the ones in heightened emotional world that is a hollywood rom-com.

Comment Procedural Sound (Score 1) 104

No evidence of any sound yet, I really hope he uses similar principles for generating audio as the game seems to for other content. I'm really looking forward to games taking up a more dynamic approach to audio, synthesis could be so much more fluid and immersive than samples. And this looks like the perfect opportunity for showing people it could work especially as visually its quite stylised, so people might not expect such a 'realistic' sound world.
Books

Submission + - Open Source Computer Literacy Textbook?

dcollins writes: "The college where I work has decided to forego ordering a textbook for the computer class that I teach this fall. Does anyone know of a free, open-source textbook for basic computer literacy concepts (overview of hardware, software, operating systems, and file systems)?"
Software

Submission + - Tested: Five Web browsers you've never heard of 1

An anonymous reader writes: Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against "underdog Web browsers" Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests.
Security

Submission + - Should we fight back against phishers?

An anonymous reader writes: While looking through Garry's Blog this afternoon, I noticed an interesting post about Steam Phishing Sites being a significant problem on his forum recently. His post seemed to suggest that a good way to stop these sites is for each forum member to register a single set of false credentials in an indirect attempt to overload the phisherman's database with fake and useless steam credentials. This got me thinking, what are the legal implications of launching such an attack against phishing sites? In the United Kingdom, DDOS attacks of any sort have been outlawed since 2006 with a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. However, if each member of a large forum (such as Facepunch Studios) independently registers a false single username/password combination in an attempt to crash the database, are they perpetrating a DDOS attack? By the same token, could a person whose website has been Slashdotted successfully sue Slashdot for causing a DDOS situation?
Earth

Submission + - GM gets to dump its polluted sites 1

ParticleGirl writes: "GM emerged from bankruptcy and "was freed of obligations for polluted properties at discarded plant sites that will require millions of dollars to clean up." Industrial waste is no joke-- there are implications for the health of the local economy, individuals, communities and environment. Industry should be responsible for cleaning up their own messes, right? But it's such a double bind-- businesses don't always recognize the implications of their own policies, and they often would rather not find out. How do we make this happen? What ARE there exceptions-- like bankruptcy-- and can there be a backup plan in these cases?"
Censorship

Iran Getting Better At Filtering Web Traffic 68

Al writes "Rob Lemos reports that Iran's national ISPs seem to have recently gained the ability to filter large quantities of web traffic more effectively. Arbor Networks used data gathered from distributed network sensors to monitor the data going to Iran from the global internet. The firm found that all of the country's providers showed an enormous drop in traffic following the contested June 12 election, then nearly normal traffic patterns until June 26. After that, five of six national ISPs showed an 80 percent drop in traffic for approximately three weeks. The one internal ISP that continues to see significant traffic during those three weeks counts many government ministries among its clientèle. The picture painted by the data is of an ISP that is becoming increasingly skilled in filtering, says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks."

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