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Input Devices

Avoiding Wasted Time With Prince of Persia 507

Posted by Soulskill from the getting-to-the-good-stuff dept.
Zonk pointed out an interesting video presentation by Shamus Young on the importance of the new Prince of Persia, calling it the most innovative game of 2008. Young brings up the fact that many of today's games punish failure by wasting the player's time; being sent back to a check point, the beginning of a level, or sometimes even further. This cuts into the amount of time players have to enjoy the meat of the game — the current challenge they have to overcome. Unfortunately, as Young notes, modern controllers are designed for players who have been gaming since they were kids, and have evolved to be more complicated to operate than an automobile. The combination of these factors therefore limits or prevents the interest of new players; a problem Prince of Persia has addressed well through intuitive controls and the lack of punitive time sinks.

Comment Re:The most likely reason (Score 5, Informative) 936

by livewire98801 (#24168155) Attached to: Why Do We Have To Restart Routers?

I'm a network admin for an ISP, and we've been recommending UPSs for the frequent-reboot routers that our customers have. We've found that routers (especially Linksys) have a real problem with power fluctuations that most other systems and devices don't notice. A decent line-conditioning UPS might solve your problems, but a cheap one will suffice.

Also, could be the device is running out of memory, if your ISP is changing the properties of your connection a lot, or you might have a duplex issue causing a lot of retransmissions. . .

Just a couple of thoughts :)
The Courts

Submission + - Judge bars RIAA prez from testifying in P2P case (arstechnica.com) 3

Submitted by Eskimo Joe
Eskimo Joe writes: A federal judge surprised observers in the Captiol v Thomas file-sharing trial today by barring RIAA president Cary Sherman from testifying. 'After a brief recess this afternoon, plaintiffs' counsel Richard Gabriel and defendant's counsel David Toder made their cases before the judge as to the relevance of Sherman's testimony. Toder argued that Sherman's testimony was not relevant to the question at hand, the fact of whether Thomas was liable for copyright infringement. Gabriel said that Sherman would be able to tell the jury why this case was significant, and more importantly, describe the harm the RIAA believes piracy has caused to the music industry. "I don't want to turn this case into a soap box for the recording industry," Toder argued in response.' Testimony wrapped up today with closing arguments expected Thursday morning.
Censorship

Submission + - Burma Shuts Down Internet 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "MIT Technology Review reports that in the aftermath of pro-democracy protests, Burma's military rulers have physically disconnected their country from the internet:

Last week — after images of the beatings of Buddhist monks and the killing of a Japanese photographer leaked out via the Internet — Burma's military rulers took the ultimate step, apparently physically disconnecting primary telecommunications cables in two major cities, in a drastic effort to stop the flow of information from Burma to the rest of the world. It didn't completely work: some bloggers apparently used satellite links or cellular phone services to get information outside the country.
One Burmese blogger reported last week that "Myanmar main ISP has been shut down by so-called "maintenance reasons" and most of the telecommunication services have been cut off or tapped. ""
Power

Submission + - New Form of Matter Melds Lasers, Superconductors

Submitted by
sterlingda
sterlingda writes: ""Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers with those of the world's best electrical conductors — superconductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser. The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed." The work is published in the May 18 issue of Science."
The Internet

Submission + - Novablade.com stolen, sold to highest bidder

Submitted by hidingintheclosetwithaplatypus
hidingintheclosetwithaplatypus writes: Damien & Trisha Buchwald (previously) from Novablade.com have loosed the dogs of war after their registrar, Network Solutions, refused to allow them to renew or transfer their domain name and who have now sold it to another company to be auctioned off. Apparently the name's worth around US$16,000, and the Buchwalds are looking for help from anywhere they can get it.

We are infuriated, upset, and feel like we have had our very souls stolen from us and sold. This is a very disgusting, underhanded act that deserves justification.
Space

Submission + - Hawking Enjoys Zero-G Ride

Submitted by
user24
user24 writes: "TimesOnline reports: "For more than 40 years, Stephen Hawking has studied the mysteries of the universe from his wheelchair. Last night, he broke free of his disability and indulged his passion for gravitational phenomena in a finely stage-managed operation 32,000 feet above the Atlantic.

"It was amazing," he said after he returned from his experience of weightlessness. "The zero-g bit was wonderful . . . I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come."""
Graphics

Submission + - DoHDR Photos signal the end of traditional images?

Submitted by
okinawa_hdr
okinawa_hdr writes: "With the emergence of High Dynamic Range Photography and the wondrous images it can produce, what does the future hold for the future of digital imaging? Since HDR Photography can capture any amount of dynamic range, does this form of photography finally put the stake in the heart of film versus digital debate?"
Robotics

Submission + - New Prosthetic Arm Developed By DARPA Team

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "An international team lead by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory & funded by DARPA has delivered their first prototype arm that is "the first fully integrated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally and provide sensory feedback, and allows for eight degrees of freedom." The big breakthrough here is that the team used residual nerves & Injectable MyoElectric Sensor (IMES) devices which measure muscle activity at the source verses surface electrodes on the skin. So the good news is that whether you lose your arm in a lightsaber duel or from pushing people around at the Mos Eisley Cantina, modern medicine can give you a hand ... er, arm."
Programming

Submission + - Open Source alternative to Java/Flash/Silverlight

Submitted by dgym
dgym writes: Having applications that can be deployed on the net and run either in a browser or from a standalone player is an old idea, but still not one that has been done really well.
Java is one solution, but for various reasons hasn't attained ubiquity. Now that it is being open sourced it might find itself on more platforms, but it still may be too big for some devices, and too slow to start up to not be annoying.
Flash is geared towards video and animation, but can also lend itself to RIAs and it is certainly a very popular plugin. However, like any closed standard, it is only available on the platforms Adobe decide to support.
Silverlight might be a better platform for RIAs from a technical perspective, but is otherwise in the same position as Flash (only with even fewer platforms).

So why are there so many poor choices for such a simple problem? After all the requirements for developing applications are rather low:
  • A sand boxed virtual machine for running client side code.
  • A means to display information, i.e. graphics drawing primitives.
  • Event handling for user input.
  • Networking back to the originating server.
Can we not have an open standard for these, and open source plugins implementing it? The "virtual machine" could either be defined in terms of a language (e.g. ECMAScript), or be a true byte code engine such as Parrot or Mono. The graphics are straight forward, and using a cross platform library such as Cairo would help make these plugins extremely portable. Networking is almost trivial, although being able to make HTTP requests using the browser's proxy settings would be an important consideration.

The need is there, where is the open standard?
Power

Submission + - "Women's town" to put men in their place

Submitted by espamo
espamo writes: Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction — the world's first "women's town," where men get punished for disobedience, an official said Thursday.
The motto of the new town would be "women never make mistakes, and men can never refuse women's requests," Chinese media have reported....
link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070426/od_nm/china_wo mentown_odd_dc

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