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Space

TheSpaceGame — Design Your Route To Jupiter 76

Posted by Soulskill from the try-the-clarke-kubrick-corridor dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency is celebrating World Space Week (4-10 October 2010) with the release of 'The Space Game,' an online game for interplanetary trajectory design. The Space Game is an online crowdsourcing experiment where you are given the role of a mission designer to seek the best path to travel through space. The interactive game, coded in HTML5, challenges the players to devise fuel-efficient trajectories to various bodies of the Solar System via a user-friendly interface. The aim of the experiment is get people from all ages and backgrounds to come up with better strategies that can help improve the effectiveness of the current computer algorithms. As part of the events organized worldwide for Space Week, the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant. The best scores by 10 October will be displayed on the Advanced Concepts Team website and the three best designs will also receive some ESA prizes."

Comment The US don't actually have credit card security (Score 1) 511

by carbon116 (#31871542) Attached to: What Can Be Done About Security of Debit Cards?

I've been in the US for 10 days or so (longer now thanks to the Iceland volcano) and not once have I had my PIN or signature checked while purchasing goods. I get handed the goods and card before I finish my signature.

In the UK I have to enter my PIN for each purchase, and get occasional signature spot-checks.

So I suppose you guys have to start actually checking credit card security first before complaining.

Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game 196

Posted by Soulskill from the pick-up-and-play dept.
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."
Games

Review Scores the "Least Important Factor" When Buying Games 169

Posted by Soulskill from the arbitrary-numbers-are-arbitrary dept.
A recent report from a games industry analyst suggests that among a number of factors leading to the purchase of a video game — such as price, graphics and word of mouth — the game's aggregated review score is the least important measure. Analyst Doug Creutz said, "We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game. We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by 'grade-grubbing' after the fact."

Comment Re:What about emissions ? (Score 1) 942

by carbon116 (#29869745) Attached to: Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog

I first read this article in New Scientist.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427311.600-how-green-is-your-pet.html

When they talk about the eco footprint of something, they include *everything* relating to that item. So with these cars, it includes the original manufacture, use of fuel during the car lifetime and subsequent emissions.

For SUVs, they are talking about 4.6l Toyota Land cruisers.

I do agree that environmentalists seem to be nit picking, but I think the general idea is that the Human species in general is using using far too many resources in every part of our lives for us to be around much longer!

Comment Re:bright enough to see in daylight? (Score 1) 243

by carbon116 (#27128449) Attached to: ISS To Become Second Brightest-Object In the Sky
If it's in the opposite side of the sky to the Sun, then it's definately not Venus. Venus is inside Earth's orbit, and as such will always appear fairly close to the Sun from our viewpoint. That's why it used to be called "the Evening Star" or "The Morning Star" as it's never far behind or in front of the Sun in our sky.

Comment Re:Mercury = moon? (Score 2, Informative) 137

by carbon116 (#22124456) Attached to: Messenger Probe Sends Back Mercury Photos
I don' think those dots are stars. They probably wouldn't show up on a photos like this, especially seeing as Mercury is probably *very* bright because it's so much closer to the sun than us. I suspect there is actually a bit of processing going on the dim the photos to make sure they're not washed out.

I think it's either just noise from the camera, or possibly the effect of cosmic rays hitting the camera CCD. This is something that effects anything leaving Earth's protective atmosphere, and causes astronauts (especially Apollo astronauts) to see random flashes in their eyes as the cosmic rays hit the receptors at the back of the eyeball.

A bit of explanation here:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mir_lights_030416.html

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