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Comment Re:FPS TOO LOW!! (Score 1) 111

by JohnnyBigodes (#45600817) Attached to: Retail Radeon R9 290X Graphics Cards Slower Than AMD's Press Samples
I get your point, but nobody's interested in playing Quake 1 any more :). Generally speaking, with the recent/upcoming graphics-intensive games, when you're set to a reasonably high resolution and the pretties up, you'll have a hard time maintaining a steady 50+ FPS in the middle of an intense firefight. Which is exactly the moment when you need it the most, even if anywhere else you get 100 FPS. The lows are what you want to avoid.

Besides, the whole point of burning $550 on a top-of-the-line graphics card is the expectation of a performance level of X, and, well, you're going to feel ripped off when you find out that your store-bought $550 card, unlike the review sample, performs just slightly above the $400-ish one.
Games

Submission + - Frame capture tools produce new insight on game benchmarking (techreport.com)

Submitted by
crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: "A revolution is unfolding in the world of game benchmarking. Instead of using FPS averages that obscure brief but perceptible moments of stuttering, reviewers are increasingly moving to more representative metrics based on frame times. Their efforts are being bolstered by Nvidia, which has developed a suite of tools that allows for a deep analysis of the contents of the individual frames sent to the display. These "FCAT" tools will be freely distributable and modifiable, and some portions will be open-source. Examining the data they generate has produced new insight into how modern graphics cards really perform in games. The display output analysis made possible by the FCAT tools exposes "runt frames" that can make up only tiny slivers of the screen, rendering FPS averages especially meaningless. It also suggests that disruptions in smoothness can be measured both early in the pipeline, using Fraps, and later on, where FCAT takes into account frame metering technologies that can massage the flow of frames to the display."
Cloud

Submission + - One in six Amazon S3 storage buckets are ripe for data-plundering (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "Using a combination of relatively low-tech techniques and tools, security researchers have discovered that they can access the contents of one in six Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets whose owners had them set to Public instead of Private. All told, researchers discovered and explored nearly 2,000 public buckets, according to Rapid 7 Senior Security Consultant Will Vandevanter, from which they gathered a list of more than 126 billion files, many of which contained sensitive information such as source code and personal employee information. Researchers noted that S3 URLs are all predictable and public facing, which make it that much easier to find the buckets in the first place with a scripting tool."

Submission + - Library journal board resigns on "conscience crisis" after death of Aaron Swartz (chronicle.com)

Submitted by c0lo
c0lo writes: The editor-in-chief and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration announced their resignation last week, citing "a crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access" in the days after the death of Aaron Swartz.

The board had worked with publisher Taylor & Francis on an open-access compromise in the months since, which would allow the journal to release articles without paywall, but Taylor & Francis' final terms asked contributors to pay $2,995 for each open-access article. As more and more contributors began to object, the board ultimately found the terms unworkable

The ultimate future of the journal is still undetermined, but the next issue appears to be dead in the water. In a statement to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the journal's editor-in-chief said:

And I advise everyone to take a closer look at the text when I said: “The sad truth is that we’ll never see this particular issue of the Journal of Library Administration.” I never said the content was dead, I simply stated that it would never be in JLA.
Programming

Submission + - Adobe Hedges its Bets on Flash (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Adobe seems to have finally wised up to the fact that Flash on mobile is dead in the water, and is offering developer tools for other kinds of mobile development. Blogger Matthew Mombrea is singing the praises of one 'invaluable' free tool that lets you remotely control a mobile device and manipulate the web browser and DOM as you would on a desktop, making diagnosing a style or layout issue on a particular device oh so much easier."

Submission + - Creationist Bets $10k Against Challengers To Literal Interpretation of Genesis (yahoo.com)

Submitted by HungWeiLo
HungWeiLo writes: A California man who believes the literal interpretation of the Bible is real is offering $10,000 to anyone who can successfully debunk claims made in the book of Genesis in front of a judge.

Joseph Mastropaolo, the man behind this challenge, is to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account. His debate opponent would be asked to do the same. They would then jointly agree on a judge based on a list of possible candidates. Mastropaolo said that any evidence presented in the trial must be “scientific, objective, valid, reliable and calibrated."

For his part, Mastropaolo has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and writes for the Creation Hall of Fame website, which is helping to organize the minitrial. It’s also not the first such trial he’s tried to arrange. A previous effort, known as the “Life Science Prize,” proposed a similar scenario. Mastropaolo includes a list of possible circuit court judges to oversee the trial and a list of those he challenged to take part on the evolutionary side of the debate.

Anyone up for winning $20,000?
Science

Submission + - Microbes May Slim Us Down After Gastric Bypass (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Gastric bypass surgery is supposed to work by shrinking the size of the stomach, leading to rapid weight loss. But a new study reveals that the procedure changes the population of microbes in our guts, and that these microbes themselves may be helping us lose weight. When researchers transfered microbes from mice that had undergone gastric bypass to mice that hadn't, the recipeint mice loss 5% of their body weight in two weeks. No surgery required.
AMD

Submission + - Improving the PC as a gaming platform: the hardware (techreport.com)

Submitted by
JohnnyBigodes
JohnnyBigodes writes: "PC gaming still has a few warts, and lack the ease-of-use of consoles, first and foremost when it comes to buying the hardware. And as they say, recognizing and admitting a problem is the first step in solving it. So here are some ideas for improving the platform, ranging from having revival of the 90s-era MPC specification, to better model numbering on behalf of manufacturers.
What does the Slashdot crowd think?"
Intel

Submission + - Ivy Bridge running hotter than Intel's last-gen CPU (techreport.com) 1

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: The launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs made headlines earlier this week, but the next-gen processor's story is still being told. When overclocked, Ivy Bridge runs as much as 20C hotter than its Sandy Bridge predecessor at the same speed, despite the fact that the two chips have comparable power consumption. There are several reasons for these toasty tendencies. The new 22-nm process used to fabricate the CPU produces a smaller die with less surface area to dissipate heat. Intel has changed the thermal interface material between the CPU die and its heat spreader. Ivy also requires a much bigger step up in voltage to hit the same speeds as Sandy Bridge. Looks like serious overclockers are better off sticking with Intel's last-generation chips.
The Internet

Submission + - Has the infamous Goatse guy been found? (gawker.com) 1

Submitted by
DesScorp
DesScorp writes: "If you were on Slashdot in the late 90's and early 2K's, then you've probably been "Goatse'd". Someone posts a link about a supposedly innocuous subject, you click, and suddenly you're looking at something you didn't think was humanly possible. Goatse'ing was a form of RickRolling, only with a "What has been seen cannot be unseen" aspect. For years, people have speculated: "Who IS that guy?". Was he some otherwise normal guy... a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, that just had some very kinky personal tastes? It was noted that in his pic, he wore a wedding band. Was this the guy sitting next to you in church?

Adrian Chen at Gawker claims to have found the man responsible, and describes the process of how the Internet's first truly infamous meme began, and how it spread."

Submission + - DARPA Robotics Challenge: Here Are the Official Details (ieee.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The DARPA Robotics Challenge is offering tens of million of dollars in funding to teams from anywhere in the world to build robots capable of performing complex mobility and manipulation tasks such as walking over rubble and operating power tools. It all will culminate with an audacious competition with robots driving trucks, breaking through walls, and attempting to perform repairs in a simulated industrial-disaster setting. The winner takes all: a $2 million cash prize.
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft is ending support for Windows Vista today, still a couple more years f (pureinfotech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today, Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 is the day that Microsoft is ending the mainstream support for Windows Vista after five years of its release, and for Microsoft Office 2007. However, because Windows XP still a big players in the operating system world, all support is set to be terminated in about two years, together with Microsoft Office 2003.
Earth

Submission + - 800-year-old Farmers Could Teach us How to Protect the Amazon (scienceworldreport.com)

Submitted by
fishmike
fishmike writes: "In the face of mass deforestation of the Amazon, recent findings indicate that we could learn from its earliest inhabitants who managed their farmland sustainably. An international team of archaeologists and paleoecologists, including Dr. Mitchell Power, curator of the Garrett Herbarium at the Natural History Museum of Utah and assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Utah, report for the first time that indigenous people, living in the savannas around the Amazonian forest, farmed without using fire. These findings are published today, April 9, 2012, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

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