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PC Games (Games)

King's Quest Fan Project The Silver Lining Is Back 61

Posted by Soulskill from the every-cloud-has-something-something dept.
LoTonah writes "After eight years of development and a Cease & Desist from Vivendi, King's Quest fan project The Silver Lining is back in action. From the website: 'We are extremely happy to announce that our project, The Silver Lining, will definitely see the light of day! In a wonderful turn of events, Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining. After negotiations, the C&D has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining! Our team is ecstatic about this, and as hard as we've worked for eight years, it's the tireless belief and support of you, our fans, that has made this possible.' The first episode of the project is due to be released on July 10."

Comment Re:works in Boston (Score 2, Insightful) 385

by stuffman64 (#31724782) Attached to: Chicago Debates Merits of ShotSpotter Technology

The triangulation is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what exactly is a gunshot and what is firecrackers, backfires, kids popping plastic bags, etc. Being able to accurately determine this is not trivial, and thus is costly.

Of course, as something sold to the government, there's always going to be excessive markup, because they know they can get away with it.

Comment It's Cool. (Score 2, Interesting) 72

by stuffman64 (#31505484) Attached to: The State of Robotic Surgery

I for one welcome our robotic overlords... I mean, helpers!

Last month I got to play with one of the Da Vinci units at a car show (why it was there is anyone's guess). I am amazed at how intuitive it was to use- even though I was just putting tiny rubber bands on small rubbery cone-thingies, the 3D display and 1:1 motion mapping really made it feel like an extension of my body. Even though the unit doesn't use force feedback, it almost seemed like it did (just my brain, I guess). The most amazing part? My 7-year-old niece had absolutely no problem using it, and now she wants to become a doctor.

Cool stuff.
Image

Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262

Posted by samzenpus from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-a-big-star dept.
davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Games

Review Scores the "Least Important Factor" When Buying Games 169

Posted by Soulskill from the arbitrary-numbers-are-arbitrary dept.
A recent report from a games industry analyst suggests that among a number of factors leading to the purchase of a video game — such as price, graphics and word of mouth — the game's aggregated review score is the least important measure. Analyst Doug Creutz said, "We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game. We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by 'grade-grubbing' after the fact."

Comment Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score 4, Interesting) 215

by stuffman64 (#26792003) Attached to: AMD Launches New Processor Socket Despite Poor Economy

Core i7 940 -> $564.99 + about $250 for mobo = $800+
Phenom II 940 -> $224 + about $150 for mobo = about $375

Core i7 needs DDR3, Phenom II 940 runs DD2 (note that the 940 is an AM2+ part, not AM3 so it doesn't support DDR3). DDR3 is somewhere around 50% more expensive than DDR2 (though falling).

For me, the fact that the i7 is only about 10-20% faster than the Phenom for more than twice the cost, it's simply not worth considering for me. Then again, I do most of my gaming on consoles.

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