grangerg - Slashdot User

Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies 397

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @02:22PM from the cause-or-symptom dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"

Comment Like texting? (Score 1) 422

by grangerg on Thursday July 09, 2009 @10:36AM (#28636477) Attached to: Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo

The first thing I think of when someone uses their phone for directions is them squinting at the screen while holding it in their hand; that's been my experience watching others (iPhone & G1). It feels like it's right between taking a phone call w/o a hands-free set and texting (but closer to texting since it diverts your eyes).

There's only so much that "voice guidance" can do, and it never seems to be enough to remove the need to see, or mess with, the map.

Comment Re:Remind me again... (Score 1) 140

by grangerg on Thursday January 22, 2009 @06:13PM (#26566699) Attached to: Ink Breakthrough Heralds Bendy PC Screens

Because wrap-around screens would be really cool for games, if nothing else. I would like to see a "dry" version of what the ProtoType This guys did in their virtual sea adventure episode. A hemispherical screen (minus the projector of course) would be awesome.

Stretching Before Exercising Weakens Muscles 339

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 07, 2008 @10:40AM from the everything-you-know-is-wrong dept.

Khemisty writes "Back in grade school you were probably taught the importance of warm-up exercises, and it's likely you've continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes' warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but are actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg's muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements."

The Real Story On WPA's Flaw 67

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 07, 2008 @09:14AM from the calm-down dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes "The reports earlier today on WPA's TKIP key type being cracked were incorrect. I spoke at length with Erik Tews, the joint author of the paper that discloses a checksum weakness in TKIP that allows individual short packets to be decrypted without revealing the TKIP key. I wrote this up for Ars Technica with quite a bit of background on WEP and WPA. Tews's paper, co-written with Martin Beck, whom he credits as discovering and implementing a working crack (in aircrack-ng as a module), describes a way to use a backwards-compatible part of TKIP to exploit a weakness that remains from WEP. ARP packets and similarly short packets can be decoded. Longer packets are likely still safe, and TKIP hasn't been cracked. Don't believe the hype, but the exploit is still notable."

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