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Science

Dogs As Intelligent As Average Two-Year-Old Children 472

Posted by timothy from the buddy-the-dog-is-hiding-his-smarts dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Telegraph reports that researchers using tests originally designed to demonstrate the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in human children have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations putting them on par with the average two-year-old child. While most dogs understand simple commands such as sit, fetch and stay, a border collie tested by Professor Coren showed a knowledge of 200 spoken words. 'Obviously we are not going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with a dog, but like a two-year-old, they show that they can understand words and gestures,' says Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Dogs can tell that one plus one should equal two and not one or three,' says Coren, adding that dogs 'can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.' Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. 'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'"
Software

Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers 173

Posted by timothy from the html's-great-blessing-is-heterogeneity dept.
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."

Comment superbounce (Score 2, Interesting) 346

by Panzor (#28994235) Attached to: Finding New and Unintended Ways of Playing Games

man, I must have spent a whole summer in halo 2 superbouncing and rocketlauncher-sword zooming (I forget what we called that) to see where I could get on maps. I hated it when people did that in ranked matches though.

I think we do these things because it's a new way to play a familiar game. Games get old and new games can be fun - especially when all your friends are already playing them - and you're tired of the "real" game.

Take a game like halo: standard shoot-em-up. Now you're practically free-running with superhero-like glitches flying you around the map juuuuust short of that one ledge. *runs around and tries it again*

It's just a matter of time before someone mentions machinima. Machinima is awesome. Most noteable is Red vs. Blue (another halo ref, I'm sorry) - a fan machinima that's been going for YEARS and even got it's most recent full-length film put into CANON. I couldn't believe that when I heard it. You know what, I just tried to get a citation and couldn't (going off of what my friend said). Who can confirm/deny that claim? I'd appreciate it.

Tricks and machinima. I think game developers (at least at Bethesda(spelling) and Rockstar games) are quickly realizing that sandboxy games are an easy way to let the gamers' imaginations add 100s of playing hours.
GUI

Preview the Office 2007 Ribbon-Like UI Floated For OpenOffice.Org 617

Posted by timothy from the trial-balloon-target-practice dept.
recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."

Comment Re:Peace (Score 1) 492

by Panzor (#28881815) Attached to: CentOS Project Administrator Goes AWOL

The bottom line is that it's unprofessional to hold up others at work when you want to take a vacation. Either he's hoping to get a promotion, momentary lapse of reason, or the company-who-must-not-be-named has kidnapped him.

I wonder who gets all three of those refs...
Security

ImageShack Hacked, Security Groups Threatened 288

Posted by Soulskill from the a-picture's-worth-a-couple-hundred-words-or-so dept.
revjtanton writes "Last night a group calling themselves 'Anti-Sec' hacked ImageShack, one of the largest image hosting sites on the web, and replaced many of the site's hosted pictures with one of their own, which detailed their manifesto. The group's grievance is against full-disclosure of exploits, an issue that was debated recently after a presentation on an ATM exploit was canceled. Anti-Sec simply wants the practice within security circles to end, and they've promised to cause 'mayhem and destruction' if it doesn't. These people are taking direct aim against a sector of the IT industry that is already armed to fight the ... but they also already know that. It should be interesting to see how this plays out."

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