Jackyshadow - Slashdot User

Comment In China... (Score 1) 218

by Jackyshadow on Wednesday January 09, 2013 @08:19PM (#42540355) Attached to: Microsoft Axing Messenger On March 15th

Windows Live Messenger (although most Chinese only refer it as MSN) is one of the two major IM services in China (the other one being Tencent QQ). It is so dominant in the market that MS is planning to keep it alive there.

In fact, it might be the only commercially successful consumer product MS has in China (Pirated Windows and Office are so rampant that nobody pay for them. XBOX game consoles are also not officially available in China).

Comment Skyrim is infinitely better with mods (Score 1) 249

by Jackyshadow on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @06:10PM (#41087447) Attached to: The Rebirth of PC Gaming? Bring On the Modders!

I bought Skyrim over Steam summer sale so I am a bit late to the game. The benefit of being late is that there are lots of completed, polished mods out there.

The mod community just blew my mind, offered things that are far beyond my expectation. It sometimes feels surreal that there are highly skilled people out there spending huge amount of time and effort to produce these insanely quality mods, for free.

Skyrim PC on itself is pretty good. But it has some stupid flaws (e.g. console centric UI). The smartest thing Bethesda ever did is to make it mod-able, let the community finish the things that developers are not willing to invest money/time on. With couple of mods plug in, this game becomes perfection.

EA and Bioware should learn a lesson here. I can only hope Dragon Age 3 would be similarly mod-friendly (given EA's track record, I am not holding my breathe).

Comment Re:[Stupid] move (Score 1) 400

by Jackyshadow on Tuesday June 19, 2012 @08:44PM (#40379199) Attached to: Assange Requests Asylum In Ecuador

No he did NOT flee the country. He asked permission to leave the country, and that permission was granted by the Swedish authority. Thus he left Sweden legally.

Mercury Turns Out To Be a Weird Little World 90

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 29, 2011 @04:52PM from the it's-certainly-mercurial dept.

sighted writes "The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER, now orbiting the first planet, has found new findings odd features on its surface, including unexplained, blueish 'hollows' that may be actively forming today. The findings will be published this week in Science. One scientist said, 'The conventional wisdom was that Mercury is just like the Moon. But from its vantage point in orbit, MESSENGER is showing us that Mercury is radically different from the Moon in just about every way we can measure.'" As you might expect, National Geographic has beautiful imagery to go along with the story.

The Rise of Robotic Labor 308

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @04:49PM from the robot-fry-cooks dept.

kkleiner wrote in with a link to a singularityhub story about the increase of automated manufacturing world-wide. The article reads: "The accelerating rise in robot labor of the past decade, and its expansion into all areas of production, have led many to worry about the future of human workers. Yet how extensive is the robotic take over of labor? Our friends at Mezzmer Eyeglasses did some impressive research and created an even more impressive infographic explaining the present and future of robots in the workplace."

Science and the Shortcomings of Statistics 429

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @10:30PM from the 14%-of-people-know-that-statistics-can-prove-anything dept.

Kilrah_il writes "The linked article provides a short summary of the problems scientists have with statistics. As an intern, I see it many times: Doctors do lots of research but don't have a clue when it comes to statistics — and in the social science area, it's even worse. From the article: 'Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.'"

Comment Making games for Wii is too risky (Score 1) 582

by Jackyshadow on Thursday June 11, 2009 @07:31PM (#28302245) Attached to: Does the Wii Provide A "Watered-Down" Game Experience?

For the game developers and publishers, the issue with Wii is that its audience (light gamers) are largely unpredictable. Publishers dont know what kind of Wii games would definitely make money. The hardcore gamers (x360, PS3 owners) are a lot more predictable and easier to make money off.

Earth-Like Planets In Our Neighborhood 171

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @03:11AM from the known-space dept.

goran72 sends in a story out of the Chicago AAAS meeting contending that Earth-like planets with life-sustaining conditions may be spinning around stars in our galactic neighborhood — we just haven't found them yet. "'So I think there is a very good chance that we will find some Earth-like planets within 10, 20 or 30 light years of the Sun,' astrophysicist [Alan Boss]... told his AAAS colleagues meeting here since Thursday. ... The images from those new planets, he added, should identify 'light from their atmosphere and tell us if they have perhaps methane and oxygen. That will be pretty strong proof they are not only habitable but actually are inhabited. I am not talking about a planet with intelligence on it. I simply say if you have a habitable world. ... Sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss."

Comment No, Google will never launch its own Navy (Score 1) 259

by Jackyshadow on Saturday September 06, 2008 @07:39PM (#24905767) Attached to: The Google Navy

Instead, Google will provide target search service for the Navy. Of course, the Navy men could also use the classic tools from Google such as "I am feeling lucky" and "sponsored links". The latter one is full of targets nominated by whoever pays the most for the particular keyword.

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