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Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Gamers perform better on surgical skill test

Blindside writes: Are surgeons who are also gamers at an advantage in the operating room? A new study showed that gamers had a distinct advantage in a surgical skills test. 'Neither years of training nor number of surgeries performed would predict performance on the laparoscopy skills test. Past gaming and current skills, in contrast, would. Those who had never gamed took significantly longer to complete the skills test, and had an error rate of roughly 1.5 times that of regular gamers. Similar correlations also held when gaming skills were tested: those scoring in the top third made nearly 50 percent fewer errors, and and performed the drill nearly 40 percent faster. For those keeping score at home, Super Monkey Ball 2 had the best correlation with surgical skills, Star Wars Racer Revenge the worst.'
Encryption

Submission + - HD DVD on-the-fly copy tool announced

tronicum writes: Heise reports that Antigua based SlySoft announced a tool called "AnyDVD HD" which ripps AACS on-the-fly from HD DVD discs. It also allows to watch movies on a computer without HDCP equipment and comes with built-in UDF 2.5 for Windows XP. It ships for 79 US$.
The Courts

Sweden to Make Denial of Service Attacks Illegal 108

paulraps writes "Sweden is to pass legislation making Denial of Service attacks illegal. The offense will carry a maximum jail term of two years, and is thought to be a direct response to the attack which crashed the Swedish police's web site last summer. Nobody was charged for that, but the fact that it came shortly after a raid on the Pirate Bay's servers was thought by many to be not entirely coincidental. Sweden's move follows the UK, which is even tougher on web attackers — there the sentence can be over five years in prison."
Announcements

Submission + - Wanna be great surgeon? Start playing video games

Anonymous Coward writes: "Surgeons with video game skill appear to perform better than non-gamers, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Training curricula that include video games may help thin the technical interface between surgeons and screen-mediated applications, such as laparoscopic surgery," the authors conclude. "Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons.""
Windows

Consumer Vista Upgrades Moving at Snail's Pace 269

Chester Freeze writes "During the holiday season, many shoppers bought PCs with the promise of quick, free Vista upgrades. The reality has been something else entirely: many Dell and HP customers are being told that they won't receive their copies of Vista before April. 'One source at a major OEM who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the real issue is that OEMs are still not sure which PCs are really ready to support Vista, and which PCs aren't... Customers who qualify for an Express Upgrade also qualify for OEM support for Windows Vista, even if their machines came with Windows XP. The last thing a Dell, Gateway, or HP wants to do is start sending out upgrades to customers who might have video cards that do not have particularly stable drivers yet (or sound cards, or RAID controllers, etc.). This could be a support disaster.'"
Google

Submission + - New search Feature in Google

Voelspriet writes: "Its not perfect, but hey, its new. Google accepts all kind of new search words. Type employees and a name of a company in Google. Now you know: Yahoo has more employees then Google. Says who? Wikipedia. Google recognizes the keywords from the info box on many pages. But thats not all. What was a label of popgroup Queen? Googles answers Queen — Label: Parlophone and links to Amazon in the UK (but it doesnt say sponsored link). Ever wonder what genre Slayer is?

If you want to know what is the religion of India, Google suggests you to visit .. Yahoo for the answer. Ever wondered what my time zone is? The language in Canada? Now you know. The internet TLD of Tokelau? Yup, still .tk. But who says so? Google quotes Arthistoryclub.com, but this site based its information on the CIA World Factbook of 2004.

Sometimes the information is from 2003 or older, sometimes it isnt complete: IBM is there, Indian Railways not. So how does Google decide which source to use? I counted over 100 different sources. It appears Google is simply parsing the "Infobox_Company" from the Wikipedia and other similar templates from other online sources, thanks Frank for pointing this out to me."

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