Monohielo - Slashdot User

Mathematicians Deconstruct US News College Rankings 161

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @05:00PM from the deep-springs-college dept.

An anonymous reader writes "US News makes a mint off its college rankings every year, but do they really give meaningful information? A pair of mathematicians argues that the data the magazine uses is all likely to be at least somewhat relevant, but that the way the magazine weights the different statistics is pretty arbitrary. After all, different people may have different priorities. So they developed a method to compute the rankings based on any possible set of priorities. To do it, they had to reverse-engineer some of US News's data. What they found was that some colleges come out on top pretty much regardless of the prioritization, but others move around quite a lot. And the top-ranked university can vary tremendously. Penn State, which is #48 using US News's methodology, could be the best university in the country, by other standards."

40M Vista Licenses in 100 Days 579

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @11:18AM from the allright-who-did-it dept.

Gary writes "In the first 100 days since its launch in Jan 30 Windows Vista has sold an astounding 40 million licenses. Bill Gates gives the credit to accelerating consumer shift to digital lifestyles which has made it the fastest selling operating system in history. Surprisingly the more expensive premium editions accounted for 78 percent of Vista sales. With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users."

The Making of Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64 89

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 11, 2007 @12:46PM from the how-to-run-a-business-empire-on-ectoplasm dept.

Next Generation recently began running content from the respected British gaming magazine Edge, and today they're sharing The Making of Ghostbusters. The article is a look back to a barely-remembered but (for the time) forward thinking movie tie-in for the Commodore 64. Instead of a lame 'action' title following the movie's plot line, the game was set in the world of the Ghostbusters, and allowed players to build a financial empire through ghostbusting. "Crucially, for a game with so many parts - driving, simple resource management, shooting and trapping ghosts - the pieces snapped together well, and the money-making, business-upgrading elements gave the game a lasting replayability. Activision's Ghostbusters is polished, intelligently-paced, and suggests a measured and meticulous development approach: something which wasn't the case at all. 'A typical C64 game took nine months from start to finish,' laughs David Crane, the game's designer. 'Ghostbusters took six weeks!' Crane is one of the most prolific developers of the early videogame era. Creating titles such as Little Computer People and Pitfall made him Activision's star programmer."

Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better? 923

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 11, 2007 @12:43PM from the makes-for-lots-of-swimming-opportunities dept.

mikee805 writes "A lengthy article in Spiegel explores the possibility that global warming might make life on Earth better, not just for humans, but all species. The article argues that 'worst-case scenarios' are often the result of inaccurate simulations made in the 1980s. While climate change is a reality, as far as the article is concerned, some planning and forethought may mean that more benefits than drawbacks will result from higher temperatures. From the article:'The medical benefits of higher average temperatures have also been ignored. According to Richard Tol, an environmental economist, "warming temperatures will mean that in 2050 there will be about 40,000 fewer deaths in Germany attributable to cold-related illnesses like the flu." Another widespread fear about global warming -- that it will cause super-storms that could devastate towns and villages with unprecedented fury -- also appears to be unfounded. Current long-term simulations, at any rate, do not suggest that such a trend will in fact materialize.'"

Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text 404

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 11, 2007 @10:43AM from the i'd-prefer-to-reformat-my-brain dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at a small startup called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly to read block text. They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw. Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading, but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below. This causes your brain to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and ignore the noise. The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension. The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend."

No Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth 328

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 11, 2007 @09:25AM from the make-sure-to-sip dept.

yuna49 writes "News from last week, but still worth noting: Mark Shuttleworth told eWeek in a May 3rd interview that Dell will not include open-source software such as Wine with the PCs it plans to bundle with Ubuntu Linux. Says Shuttleworth: 'I do not want to position Ubuntu and Linux as a cheap alternative to Windows ... While Linux is an alternative to Windows, it is not cheap Windows. Linux has its own strengths, and users should want it because of those strengths and not because it's a cheap copy of Windows ... Often we see proprietary software companies just completely fail to understand not only the motivations of the Linux community, but also the processes. It's very practical, there's a way to get things done, and it's different. The VMware guys have really engaged with us completely and worked to the agenda set by the Linux community, which is not an ideological agenda but a practical one.' Does that mean Wine won't even be listed in the package manager?"

Thousands of ICQ Numbers Deleted 264

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday May 11, 2007 @02:26AM from the subtle-hints dept.

BondGamer writes "Many ICQ users woke up and found their ICQ numbers were no longer working. There is a topic on the ICQ support with more than 1,500 replies. There are pages upon pages of other topics asking what happened. As of yet, there has been no official response from AOL about what has happened."

iPods and Pacemakers Don't Mix 152

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday May 10, 2007 @09:35PM from the listen-to-your-heart dept.

fermion writes "The Register reports a study that indicates that iPods and pacemakers do not get along. While there do not appear to be any long term effects, iPods disrupt the operation of the pacemaker. It is noted that such effects have not previously been observed as iPods do seem to be popular with the pacemaker-wearing population."

Remains of James Doohan Lost in New Mexico 220

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday May 10, 2007 @07:52PM from the red-shirts-all-around dept.

caffiend666 writes "According to a Space.com news article the cremated remains of 200 people were lost in the mountains after their trip to space. 'The search for the UP Aerospace payload of experiments and the cremated remains of some 200 people — including "Scotty" of Star Trek fame, as well as pioneeering NASA Mercury astronaut, Gordon Cooper — continues within rugged New Mexico mountain landscape.' Is it just me, or does it seem appropriate that they lost the landing party? Here's to a safe recovery!"

Spore Delayed Until Q2 2008 107

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:47AM from the no-terraforming-until-next-year-go-home dept.

georgewilliamherbert writes "CNet has the news that EA is reporting a slight loss for the quarter. It expects profits for the year to fall short about ten cents, hitting a high of $1.20 as opposed to the expected $1.31. The company's share price was down 3% in extended trading yesterday. The reason for these adjustments? EA reluctantly announced that Spore has been delayed until Q2 2008. ' Redwood City, Calif.-based Electronic Arts said it taken out Spore, a game where players build organisms from scratch, from its financial projections for the fiscal year ending in March 2008, adding that the game could be delayed until fiscal 2009. In the fourth quarter ended March 31, the company said its net loss widened to $25 million, or 8 cents per share, from $16 million, or 5 cents, in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, the company earned 6 cents per share versus 14 cents in the year-earlier period.'" From a technology perspective, this thing seems at least as complicated as some Massive games; makes perfect sense it would take about as long to build this title as a game in that genre.

How Pro Gaming Will Change World of Warcraft 146

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @01:37PM from the for-the-honor-of-mountain-dew dept.

1up has a piece looking at the impact that commercial support of WoW Arena teams might have on the game. There are already two teams backed with corporate money, both pulled from prominent PvP guilds in the Bloodlust battlegroup. "It's a challenge to pick teams to sponsor in WoW's PvP: 'The same team that may be ranked #2 or #3 in one Battlegroup may be ranked #1 in another," said Stephen Schoder of Check Six. "this makes the proposition of scouting out the right team more difficult than most other competitive eSports. The arena system in World of Warcraft is much more complicated than the simplistic FPS and RTS games in terms of being able to immediately pick up on what is going on.'"

An Inconvenient Truth 1033

Posted by jamie on Tuesday November 21, 2006 @11:22AM from the conveniently-packaged dept.

There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.

Comment Re:The most difficult part of reviews (Score 2, Insightful) 98

by Monohielo on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:20PM (#10976305) Attached to: Is There Something Wrong with Video Game Reviews?

For me, the most informative reviews are not ones that take a generic approach to a review and compare it against other games in the genre but those in which the reviewer personally states his likes and dislikes often and mentions the particulars that made the game special (or not so special) to them.

I'd say that's one of the biggest reasons that Tycho and Gabe are so respected. I know that Tycho likes computer games of the strategy variety and Gabe prefers action packed consoles, and so when I read their opinion of a game, I take into account the reviewer and compare their personal likes to mine. Generally, I like games that Tycho recommends, and know that if Gabe really enjoys a game, it's probably not going to be my cup of tea.

The best thing that a review site can do is provide an easily accessible background on each of the reviewers, containing the genres they like and mention specific games which they have liked and disliked. Also, provide and easy way of identifying particular reviewers, such as the picture icons PA uses. Eventually, people will figure out what reviewers they agree with and trust.

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