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First Person Shooters (Games)

Valve Engineers Weed Out 'Lying' TF2 Game Servers 97

Posted by Soulskill from the truth-in-fragging dept.
billlava writes "Tired of Team Fortress 2 servers that lie in order to attract players, engineers at Valve (creators of the Half Life franchise) have come up with a way to weed out servers that give false information about the number of players online, or custom server options. 'After kicking around some proposals, we came up with a simple system built around the theory that player time on a server is a useful metric for how happy the player is with that server. It's game rules agnostic, and we can measure it on our steam backend entirely from steam client data, so servers can't interfere with it. We already had this data for all the TF2 servers in the world, allowing us to try several different scoring formulas out before settling on this simple one that successfully identified good & bad servers.' Of course, this only works with their games running on Steam."
Earth

Drilling Hits an Active Magma Chamber In Hawaii 251

Posted by timothy from the time-for-a-lava-luau dept.
Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber. Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study. Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. 'This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat,' the Johns Hopkins University professor told BBC News. 'Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's life. They're lying there on the surface, they've de-gassed. It's not the natural habitat.' It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature."

Comment Re:Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly (Score 2, Interesting) 279

by John Carmack (#23266718) Attached to: The Science of Iron Man
Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack
Networking

Cisco To Develop Third-Party APIs For IOS 129

Posted by kdawson from the letting-a-little-light-in-on-the-crown-jewels dept.
MT628496 tips a Computerworld article on Cisco's announcement that it plans to build IOS on a UNIX kernel, in modules, and allow third-party developers to access certain parts of it. IOS has traditionally been a closely guarded piece of software without any way for anyone to add functionality. No timetable was given for when APIs will be available. A Forrester analyst said, "...the network is one of the least programmable pieces of the infrastructure. The automation and orchestration market is far more oriented towards servers, storage and desktop environments. The ability to dynamically change the network is a missing component." The article mentions that Juniper Networks had announced on Monday its own developer platform for Juniper routers, and it's available now.
Sci-Fi

New Laws of Robotics Proposed for US Kill-Bots 373

Posted by Zonk from the maybe-calling-them-kill-bots-is-a-bad-first-step dept.
jakosc writes "The Register has a short commentary about a proposed new set of laws of robotics for war robots by John S Canning of the Naval Surface Warfare Centre. Unlike Asimov's three laws of robotics Canning proposes (pdf) that we should 'Let machines target other machines and let men target men.' Although this sounds OK in principle, 'a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.'"
NASA

NASA Slashing Observations of Earth 358

Posted by kdawson from the blue-marble dept.
mattnyc99 points us to a new report by the National Research Council warning that, by 2010, the number of NASA's Earth-observing missions will drop dramatically, and the number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft will decrease by 40 percent. The report says, "The United States' extraordinary foundation of global observations is at great risk." Popular Mechanics asks an MIT professor what it all means. From these accounts it is clear that the Bush administration's priorities on a Mars mission and a moon base are partly to blame for the de-emphasizing of earth science. Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming.
Science

Global Warming Exposes New Islands in the Arctic 645

Posted by Zonk from the go-north-young-man dept.
circletimessquare writes "The New York Times has a sobering article about the rapidly accelerating pace of glacial melting across the arctic, focusing on the discovery of new islands and the fact that this is occurring far faster than climate scientist's models predict. What were called Nunataks or 'lonely mountains' in Inuit, trapped in the ice, only a few years ago, are now in the open ocean by kilometers. Off of Greenland, what was known previously as peninsulas have been revealed to be islands as the ice retreats. Dennis Schmitt, a modern day explorer and discoverer of one of these new islands and fluent in Inuit, has named it Uunartoq Qeqertoq: the warming island."
The Courts

Fighting Porn Vs. Ruining Innocent Lives 815

Posted by kdawson from the overzealous-is-an-understatement dept.
After news of the conviction of a substitute teacher for endangering minors — because porn popups, possibly initiated by adware, had appeared on her computer during class — comes the even sadder story of 16-year-old Matt Bandy. His family's life was turned upside-down when he was charged in Arizona with possession of child pornography, even though the family computer was riddled with spyware and Trojans. After the intervention of ABC's 20/20, Matt finally was allowed to plead to a lesser charge (namely, sharing a Playboy magazine with friends) and just barely escaped being labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Linux Business

Alan Cox Files Patent For DRM 281

Posted by kdawson from the counter-troll dept.
booooh writes "Alan Cox has filed a patent for DRM (Digital Rights Management). From the filing: 'A rights management system monitors and controls use of a computer program to prevent use that is not in compliance with acceptable terms.' According to the patent pledge of Cox's employer Red Hat, they will not license this technology if the patent is granted. And it can probably be applied to the DRM that is in Vista. This forum has a few more details.
NASA

NASA Will Go Metric On the Moon 695

Posted by kdawson from the late-conversion dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA has decided to use the metric system for its new lunar missions. NASA hopes that metrication will allow easier international participation and safer missions. The loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter was blamed on an error converting between English units and metric units. 'When we made the announcement at the meeting, the reps for the other space agencies all gave a little cheer,' said a NASA official."
Windows

Some 'Next-Gen' DVDs May Not Work With Vista 293

Posted by Zonk from the that-seems-like-an-oversight dept.
schnikies79 wrote to mention an article on the Times Online site, where they report that a 'substantial number' of Vista PCs will be unable to play HD-DVDs or Blu-ray discs, as a result of DRM requirements made by the operating system. From the article: "Dave Marsh, the lead program manager for video at Microsoft, said that if the PC used a digital connection to link with the monitor or television, then it would require the highest level of content protection, known as HDCP, to play the discs. If it did not have such protection, Vista would shut down the signal, he said."
Google

Google Tops 100 Best Places To Work 317

Posted by kdawson from the perks-galore dept.
inetsee writes "Fortune Magazine's annual '100 Best Companies to Work For' list is out, and Google topped the list in their debut appearance. Some highlights of the benefits of working for Google that caught my eye were the free gourmet meals and the massages. The chance to spend 20% of your time working on your own personal projects also sounds very appealing. Of course, with resumes rolling in at the rate of thousands a day, the competition is fierce."
Programming

Father of Instant Ramen Passes Away 195

Posted by Zonk from the a-sad-day-for-noodles dept.
Chained Fei writes "Ando Momofuku, Father of the Instant Ramen, passed away on January 5th at the age of 96. He concocted the idea for Instant Ramen after WWII, hoping to reduce the amount of poor nourishment for soldiers in the field. If not for this great man, many a poor college student and programmer would have starved over the years. From the article: 'In 1971, Nissin introduced the Cup Noodle featuring instant ramen in a waterproof plastic foam container. Dubbed the "Ramen King," Ando is credited with expanding Nissin into the No. 1 company in the industry and was well-known for his dedication to his work ... In 1999, Ando opened the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, after installing his second son, Koki, as president of the company.'"
The Internet

UK Teachers Say Censor The Internet 463

Posted by samzenpus from the how-can-you-have-any-pudding-if-you-smash-my-window dept.
Marlow the Irelander writes "The BBC is reporting that in response to a YouTube video of a schoolboy breaking his teacher's window (yes, this is a video), NASUWT, one of the teaching unions in the UK, is calling for legislation to control the internet. Could Britain, rather than the US, be the main front of the battle against censorship in 2007?" From the article: "Unfortunately, any yob or vandal can now have their 15 minutes of fame, aided and abetted by readily accessible technology and irresponsible internet sites which enable such behaviour to be glorified. [The general secretary of the union] said the union supported a zero tolerance approach in schools to pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers, and called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites which gave them license."
The Almighty Buck

Hans Reiser to Sell Company 583

Posted by CowboyNeal from the will-order-bits-for-cash dept.
DVega writes "Due to increasing legal costs, murder suspect Hans Reiser is seeking to sell his company. His lawyer William DuBois said he is running out of money to pay for his defense. DuBois added, 'This is a unique opportunity for someone to buy the company for pennies on the dollar. We welcome all vultures.' This is a good opportunity to own a filesystem and rename it after your own."

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