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Role Playing (Games)

A Look At the Growth of MMOs In 2008 122

Posted by Soulskill from the world-of-evertabconanhammer-online dept.
Zonk writes with news of a collaboration between Massively and GamerDNA to analyze the state of MMO player bases for 2008. Sifting through the data brought out several interesting trends. For example, Age of Conan took a substantial hit when Warhammer arrived on the scene, but none of the other major MMOs were significantly affected. Also, it seems Lord of the Rings: Online got a big shot in the arm from its Mines of Moria expansion — even moreso than World of Warcraft from Wrath of the Lich King, relatively speaking. The article also asserts the following about the recently-canceled Tabula Rasa: "... until the cancellation announcement in November, numbers were trending in the right direction, however slightly. Players were growing more interested in the sci fi MMO shooter, and logins were on the rise. If its development had not been so long, so expensive, and so vastly overhyped and mismarketed, this title could have been left alone to find its legs and found some small measure of success in a long tail environment akin to the Sony Station Pass."

Comment Re:Looks like anchor drag to me. (Score 1) 329

by Durindana (#26186185) Attached to: Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again

Cables going to very close shore landing points between similar destinations tend to be pretty close together, saves significantly on the survey costs.

The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.

Chalk up another victory for geographically dispersed redundancy.{/quote>

Are you trying to say David Hasselhoff was involved?!?

Comment Re:Herbal medicine has limited value (Score 1) 713

by Durindana (#26185919) Attached to: Trick or Treatment

As someone who suffers from a related problem called Avoidant Personality Disorder, I can tell you that self medicating with drugs and alcohol doesn't solve the problem at all. Oh, sure, you might become a little more sociable, for a while. Eventually, you get to the point where you need the alcohol to function at all, even in non-social situations. Pretty soon, you find yourself stuck in a cycle at the bottom of a bottle and the drugs and alcohol take control, making it even harder to meet other people because by that point, most people actually won't want to be around you and that reinforces the initial problem. I have a lot of family members who buried their problems with drugs and alcohol and they went from being functional addicts to not caring about themselves or pretty much anyone else anymore - all they want is to stay drunk and high. Anything which threatens that state can force them to become aggressive and violent in ways they never were before. Growing up around that, I avoid alcohol and drugs completely.

I don't mean to belittle what I have no reason to believe is not a real disorder - but I'd like to point out that the result of social drinking you apparently assume is inevitable (substance abuse) certainly isn't. Many people do feel more sociable after a drink or two, yet do not move from there to raging alcoholism or drug addiction. Not everyone shy in public has the same disorder you suffer from, so dismissal of the most common (and most commonly effective, I'd guess) solution is irresponsible
Sci-Fi

The Real Monsters Behind Godzilla 243

Posted by kdawson from the radioactively-enhanced-cash-cow dept.
eldavojohn writes "A Wired blog looks at the real monsters behind Godzilla: his lawyers. Do you think Godzilla is basically a glorified T. Rex? Guess again, as his lawyers have tirelessly argued: 'He's erect-standing. He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow, he's got an anthropomorphic torso. The T. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle.' Read on to find out why they targeted the site davezilla.com but not mozilla.org. Another abuse of the American trademark & copyright system? You decide — just don't make a float of him or you'll find yourself paying an undisclosed sum to Toho Co. Ltd."
Transportation

Plane Simple Truth 460

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
brothke writes "In the TV show House, M.D., a premise that protagonist Dr. Greg House holds dear is that people are liars and stupid. Real life is often not far from House's observation. At the general public level, people are often misled by their lack of common sense, their deficiency in understanding statistics and basic science, and therefore fall victim to the lies of the myriad charlatans that claim to have something that fixes everything. A piece I wrote on that issue, New York News Radio — The voice of bad science, details that. While it is too broad to call the authors of Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft: An overview of historical and future trends liars; their mediocre research created the scenario that far too many took their research as reality. Known as the Peeters report, after lead author P.M. Peeters, the authors of Plane Simple Truth refute the wide-spread belief that the fuel efficiency gains in the commercial aviation sector are erroneous, which is the principle theme of the Peeters report." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
Role Playing (Games)

Age of Conan's "Kinda" Launch and Massive Pre-Orders 582

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the david-and-goliath dept.
While some are already enjoying the joys of Age of Conan via the early launch, many more will soon be enjoying the fruits of Funcom's labor. An amazing 700,000 copies of the game are being shipped to retailers for day one sales and in some locations pre-orders will not be filled due to server limitations. Between this and the new Warhammer game on the way, should Blizzard be worried, or will Wrath of the Lich King continue to hold their competitive edge?
Music

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison 314

Posted by Zonk from the now-that-is-an-oldie dept.
Tree131 writes "The New York Times is reporting that sound recordings pre-dating Edison's made by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer, were discovered by American audio historians at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. The archives are on paper and were meant for recording but not playback. Researchers used a high quality scan of the recording and an electronic needle to play back the sounds recorded 150 years ago. 'For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words "Mary had a little lamb" on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison's invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.'"
Security

Apple Fixes 'Misleading' Leopard Firewall Settings 264

Posted by Zonk from the walls-need-to-be-just-a-teensy-bit-thicker dept.
4 for 52 writes "ZDNet is reporting that Apple has fessed up to at least three serious design weaknesses in the new application-based firewall that ships with Mac OS X Leopard. The acknowledgment comes less than a month after independent researchers threw cold water on Apple's claim that Leopard's firewall can block all incoming connections. The firewall patches come 24 hours after a Mac OS X update that provided cover for at least 41 security vulnerabilities."
Security

Meshnet Digital Armor To Protect Tanks 164

Posted by Zonk from the web-facing-armor-plating dept.
An anonymous reader writes "General Dynamics Canada and Secure Computing have partnered to develop Meshnet, a hardware/software firewall designed to protect networks and digital devices inside tanks and other military vehicles from hostile computer and virus attacks. Without adequate protection a tech savvy enemy can infiltrate networks, manipulate information, and deny crews the data they need to participate in modern warfare. Exactly such an event happened last year to an Israeli crew, when hackers from Hezbollah eavesdropped on their communications. 'The system uses Secure Computing's off-the-shelf Sidewinder Security Appliance ... Sidewinder consolidates all major Internet security functions into a single system, providing "best-of-breed" antivirus and spyware network protection "against all types of threats, both known and unknown," according to Secure Computing.'"

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