nielsen - Slashdot User

20 Years of Commander Keen 152

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @04:51AM from the aliens-ate-my-babysitter dept.

angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."

Should the Gov't Pay For Injured Man's Wii? 222

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 03, 2010 @06:38AM from the if-the-wii-fits dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Politicians in the Australian state of Victoria are currently locked in a debate about whether an injured man should be able to claim the cost of a Nintendo Wii for rehabilitation purposes under worker's compensation. The man's doctor apparently recommended he use the Wii Fit exercise device, but both insurance companies and the government itself have blocked the payment and have now ridiculed the idea as paying for video games. But with the Wii Fit increasingly being used for rehabilitation purposes internationally, does the man have a fair case?"

An Early Look At Next-Gen Shooter Bodycount 238

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 20, 2010 @03:59AM from the piece-by-piece dept.

If you ask fans of first-person shooters what feature they'd like to see in a new game, their answers — now and for the past 15 years — probably involve destructible environments. Game developers have tried to satisfy this demand with scripted events, breakable objects, and more crates than you can shake a rocket launcher at. However, Bodycount, an upcoming game from Codemasters Guildford, is aiming to deliver what gamers have wanted for so long: the ability to blast apart whatever you please. Quoting the Guardian's games blog from their hands-on with the game: "... it's not just about effect, it's about access. In Bodycount, you can blow chunks out of thinner interior walls, allowing you to burst through and catch enemies by surprise. You can also brilliantly modify cover objects – if you're hiding behind a crate and want to take out enemies without popping up from behind it, shoot a hole in it. Bingo, you've got a comparatively safe firing vantage. The difference between this and say, Red Faction or Bad Company, is that the destruction isn't limited to pre-set building sections. It's everywhere. This should, of course, grind the processor to a halt, but the team has come up with a simple compromise to facilitate its vision. 'The trick is that we're not running full physics on everything,' explains lead coder, Jon Creighton. ... This is tied in with one of the best cover systems I've ever seen. While in a crouching position (gained by holding the left trigger down), you can use the left analogue stick to subtly look and aim around your cover object, ducking and peeking to gain that perfect view of the war zone. It's natural, it's comfortable and it's adaptive, and it will surely consign the whole 'locking on' mechanic to the graveyard of cover system history."

US District Court Says Calculating a Hash Value = Search 623

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @11:02AM from the fair-enough dept.

bfwebster writes "Orin Kerr over at The Volokh Conspiracy (a great legal blog, BTW) reports on a US District Court ruling issued just last week which finds that doing hash calculations on a hard drive is a form of search and thus subject to 4th Amendment limitations. In this particular case, the US District Court suppressed evidence of child pornography on a hard drive because proper warrants were not obtained before imaging the hard drive and calculating MD5 hash values for the individual files on the drive, some of which ended up matching known MD5 hash values for known child pornography image and video files. More details at Kerr's posting." Update: 10/28 16:23 GMT by T : Headline updated to reflect that this is a Federal District Court located in Pennsylvania, rather than a court of the Commonwealth itself.

Comment Re:is daveo a "troll" (Score 1) 476

by nielsen on Sunday September 05, 1999 @08:38AM (#1703013) Attached to: On the Subject of Trolls

Well, I don't find him annoying at all.
And I don't see why he is brandmarked as Troll.
I mean, honestly, the way he talks is really individual,
so everytime he posted something you really notice, that
*he* posted something. I can't remember a posting
of him that made me think "bastard" or so... Why bother
with his individuality? What's next, demanding Alan should
cut off his beard? ;-) Well, ok, on the other hand I can
understand that some people might get pissed off by his
style. *hmm* Perhaps I should have thought a little
mor before starting to write. Hmm. Ok, but it's really
too hard if he is one of the two out of 80000 marked as
a troll. Really.
(Actually, I only wanted to see *my* score now. I am
one of the really anonymous cowards, have been reading
slashdot for a long time, but never written a bit. So
it's my fi.. *censored* :-)

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