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The Real 'Stuff White People Like' 286

Here's an interesting and funny look at 526,000 OkCupid users, divided into groups by race and gender and all the the things each groups says it likes or is interested in. While it is far from being definitive, the groupings give a glimpse of what makes each culture unique. According to the results, white men like nothing better than Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing.
Crime

Mom Arrested After Son Makes Dry Ice "Bombs" 571

formfeed writes "Police were called to a house in Omaha where a 14-year-old made some 'dry ice bombs' (dry ice in soda bottles). Since his mom knew about it, she is now facing felony charges for child endangment and possession of a destructive device. From the article: 'Assistant Douglas County Attorney Eric Wells said the boy admitted to making the bomb and that his mother knew he was doing so. The boy was set to appear Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court, accused of possessing a destructive device.'" She's lucky they didn't find the baking soda volcano in the basement.
Games

Portal, Bioshock Lead Game Developer's Choice Nominations 71

Gamasutra is reporting that the annual Game Developer's Choice Award nominations are now available for your reading pleasure. Portal, BioShock, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 4 are all looking pretty good, with Portal in particular sitting pretty in five separate categories. Here are a few of the nomination lists: "Best Game Design - BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Portal, Super Mario Galaxy. Best Visual Art - Assassin's Creed, Team Fortress 2, Crysis, BioShock, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Best Writing - Portal, God of War II, Mass Effect, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, BioShock. Innovation - Rock Band, Portal, flOw, Peggle, Mass Effect." Five bucks says Portal sweeps the awards.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Why do games still have levels? (blogspot.com) 1

a.d.venturer writes: Elite, the Metroid series, Dungeon Siege, God of War I and II, Half-Life (but not Half-Life 2), Shadow of the Colossus, the Grand Theft Auto series; some of the best games ever (and Dungeon Siege) have done away with the level mechanic and created uninterrupted game spaces devoid of loading screens and artificial breaks between periods of play. Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play, and a throwback to the era of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 when games were stored on cassette tapes, and memory was measured in kilobytes. So in this era of multi-megabyte and gigabyte memory and fast access storage devices why do we continue to have games that are dominated by the level structure, be they commercial (Portal, Team Fortress 2), independent (Darwinia) and amateur (Nethack, Angband)? Why do games still have levels?
Censorship

Submission + - Student arrested for writing essay

mcgrew writes: "The Chicago Tribune reports that an eighteen year old straight A Cary-Grove High School student was arrested for writing a "disturbing" essay. From the Trib:

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
So much for freedom of speech in the US."
Biotech

Submission + - Chinese develop remote controlled pigeons

KDan writes: As seen on CNN and other places, "Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains". Whilst everyone focuses on the weird and fun aspects of remote-controlled pigeons and points out that "The report did not specify what practical uses the scientists saw for the remote-controlled pigeons", a number of obvious uses jump out to me. Flocks of remote controlled pigeons could be used in warfare as very effective weapons delivery systems. They can take out low-flying planes and helicopters by being flown into their way. In fact they can probably be used to take out any target. Electronically controlled pigeons could lead to a new expansion of the concept of self-healing minefields... How about a patrolling flock of payloaded pigeons that target anyone identified as an "enemy"? The important factor is that whereas building a mechanical equivalent of a pigeon would be expensive, growing a pigeon and implanting some electrodes is comparatively cheap so that large numbers of RC pigeons could be "manufactured" and used for any purpose imaginable. A missile costs tens of thousands of dollars — why bother when you can raise a flock of pigeons and "upgrade" them for a fraction of that price, and proceed to send them to the target?

Perhaps most importantly, however, the remote-controlled pigeons will finally allow us to create an efficient implementation of RFC 1149 and RFC 2549.
Security

Reverse Hacker Awarded $4.3 Million 171

jcatcw writes "Shawn Carpenter was awarded a $4.3 million award — more than twice the amount he sought and money he thinks he'll never see. Carpenter worked for Sandia National Labs as an intrusion detection analyst. He anayzed. He detected. He reported. He was fired — in Janurary 2005 after sharing his results with the FBI and the U.S. Army. Computerworld asked him what he hoped to achieve in that investigation. Answer: 'In late May of 2004, one of my investigations turned up a large cache of stolen sensitive documents hidden on a server in South Korea. In addition to U.S. military information, there were hundreds of pages of detailed schematics and project information marked 'Lockheed Martin Proprietary Information — Export Controlled' that were associated with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. ... It was a case of putting the interests of the corporation over those of the country.' Ira Winkler, author of Spies Among Us , said the verdict was 'incredibly justified. Frankly, I think people [at Sandia] should go to jail' for ignoring some of the security issues that Carpenter was trying to highlight with his investigation."
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista worse for user efficiency than XP

erikvlie writes: "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse in those areas than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarised the most important findings."
Bug

Submission + - Vanishing Honeybees will affect future crops

daninbusiness writes: "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as 14 billion dollars' worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination. Reasons for this problem, dubbed "colony collapse disorder" are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides. TFA is in the New York Times (login may be required)."

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