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Medicine

Psychopaths have brain structure abnormality-> 4

Submitted by mmmscience
mmmscience writes "http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m8d4-Psychopaths-have-brain-structure-abnormality A group of scientists have identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared to controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdale (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could presumably be presented as evidence in a trial."
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Education

Teen dies in chinese gaming rehab camp

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes ""A teen, who was sent to a rehabilitation camp in China to cure his internet addiction was beaten to death by his trainers. While this is considered a cure for Internet addiction, it was not what the parents of Deng Senshan, 16, had in mind when they sent him to the camp. The three supervisors who allegedly beat him to death have been arrested." Seen on: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14916/1/"
Classic Games (Games)

A History of Robotron->

Submitted by
blacklily8
blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has published our History of Robotron: 2084, Eugene Jarvis' ultimate twitch-game of 1982. Robotron's frantic gameplay, intense difficulty, and elegant control scheme made it a hit in the arcade and a favorite of countless retrogamers. The illustrated article compares the game with Jarvis' earlier hit Defender, describes its gameplay in detail, and traces its roots and impact on later games such as Smash T.V. and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Robotron's gameplay may be intimidating, but never too complex to grasp--with both hands!"
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Programming

Mario AI Competition->

Submitted by
togelius
togelius writes "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about each time step deciding what to do — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario.

This is hard. So hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, and we welcome commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins (maybe you?) this will be really interesting.

The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."
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Comment: Re:Oh come on. (Score 1) 794

by vaz01 (#28302811) Attached to: Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?

C++: An octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

You definitely earned funny points for that one. I got a good laugh.

Me too, I'm not sure who gets credit for the quote though.

Operator overloading?

Not sure if that makes C++ harder. But I've seen people disagree.

I like the idea of operator overloading a lot. In Ruby it's great. I find it a bit cumbersome in C++ though, things like dealing with friend/global functions, e.g. for appending to a stream with <<.

To the credit of operator overloading and templates, they make the standard library interfaces mostly nice.

Destructors?

finalize

Unfortunately finalize is incredibly quirky as you have absolutely no say or guarantee about when your object will be gc'd. I've tried a few times to find the "right" way to use finalize and it seems to be almost always discouraged.

For me: What makes C++ difficult is ++. :)

Comment: Re:Oh come on. (Score 1) 794

by vaz01 (#28297839) Attached to: Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?

Getting rid of memory management and multiple inheritance from C++ doesn't begin to give you Java.

Operator overloading? virtual, pure virtual functions? namespaces (not quite like packages)? Templates? (Even Java generics are less convoluted.) Destructors? Global variables? Const correctness?

I'm not much of a fan of Java (the language), but C++ is just awful. I waste more time when I write C++ than I gain (compared to writing object-oriented C).

C++: An octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

Comment: Re:Sounds a bit useless (Score 1) 167

by vaz01 (#26843071) Attached to: Euro Parliament Wants "Red Button" For Shutting Down Games

As for why it's useless, if your child is not ready to see "stuff", and they see "stuff", and then you press the panic button, they won't _unsee_ stuff. In fact, they would probably remember it for a very long time.

Yes. Panic button == my parents are panicking. What could possibly be more compelling (and guilt-forming) to a kid than something that makes their parents leap out of their chair pounding a big red panic button?

Fun thing to try with your kids: next time they break some stupid little thing, yell "oh my god", act flustered, hide the remains quickly and insist that they never speak of it again. Let sit for 8-10 years or until emotional problems are fully developed.

Yes you may think brainwashing is wrong. But ...

Brainwashing:
1) reduce target to the mentality of a child
2) imprint them with the values you want them to have.

There is no difference, kids just come pre-washed.

Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.