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First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Duke Nukem Developer Shuts Down (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by
PLSQL Guy
PLSQL Guy writes: "Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms is shutting down, according to Shacknews, who cites 'a reliable source close to the company' who said the developer, along with the recently resurrected Apogee name, is finished and employees from both have already been let go. It looks like all of the Duke Nukem Forever jokes are turning into reality- it looks like DNF might turn out to be the ultimate vaporware after all."

Comment Hidden Content (Score 2, Interesting) 188

by KingEomer (#21455599) Attached to: MPAA College Toolkit Raises Privacy, Security Concerns
http://universitytoolkit.com/ (mentioned in the pdf) seems to have some hidden content. The page displays a link to: http://universitytoolkit.com/MPAA_University_Toolkit_Admin_Guide.pdf. If you look at the source, you can notice a link at the bottom which isn't displayed: MPAA_University_Toolkit_Administrators_Guide.pdf (it's a relative link in the source).

This version is slightly longer, with what looks like a section detailing development goals. Can anyone see anything incriminating there?
Communications

Submission + - Richard Stallman talks on Copyright V. The People 5

Submitted by
holden
holden writes: "Richard M. Stallman recently gave a talk entitled Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club. The talk looks at the origin of copyright, and how it has evolved overtime from something that originally served the benefit of the people to a tool used against them. In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the talk and qa are available in ogg theora only."
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Checkers solved, unbeatable database created (nature.com)

Submitted by
tgeller
tgeller writes: "My story in Nature announced that a team of computer scientists at the University of Alberta has solved checkers. From the game's 500 billion billion positions (5 * 10^20), "Chinook" has determined which 100,000 billion (10^14) are needed for their proof, and run through all relevant decision trees. They've set up a site where you can see the proof, traverse the logic, and play their unbeatable automaton. Congratulations to Dr. Schaeffer and his crew!"
Security

Submission + - FBI used CIPAV for secret online search (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by
juct
juct writes: "The FBI has used PC spyware for the first time to reveal the identity of an offender who sent bomb threats to a high school in Washington state. According to heise Security a declaration from the FBI official who applied for the search warrant describes the mode of operation of the spyware which the FBI is using under the abbreviation CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier)."
Biotech

Submission + - All Humans Evolved from a Single Origin in Africa (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
Invisible Pink Unicorn
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Researchers at the University of Cambridge have combined studies of global human genetic variations with skull measurements worldwide to conclusively show the validity of the single origin hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis contended that different populations independently evolved from Homo erectus to Home sapiens in different areas. The lead researcher explains, 'The origin of anatomically modern humans has been the focus of much heated debate. Our genetic research shows the further modern humans have migrated from Africa, the more genetic diversity has been lost within a population. However, some have used skull data to argue that modern humans originated in multiple spots around the world. We have combined our genetic data with new measurements of a large sample of skulls to show definitively that modern humans originated from a single area in Sub-saharan Africa.' The article abstract is available from Nature."
Graphics

Submission + - Instrumented GIMP to Identify Usability Flaws

Submitted by Mike
Mike writes: New users of the GIMP often become frustrated at the application's unwieldy user interface. For this reason Prof. Michael Terry and a group of researchers at the University of Waterloo have created ingimp, an modified version of the GIMP that collects real-time usability data. Terry recently gave a lecture about ingimp and the data it collects. During each session, ingimp records events such as document creation, window manipulation, and tool use. A log of these events is sent to the ingimp server for analysis. The project hopes to answer questions such as "What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?" and "Is GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?" Answers to these questions will help the GIMP developers find and fix GIMP's usability problems. For more information about ingimp, visit the project's web site.
Math

Text Compressor 1% Away From AI Threshold 442

Posted by kdawson from the second-hutter-prize dept.
Baldrson writes "Alexander Ratushnyak compressed the first 100,000,000 bytes of Wikipedia to a record-small 16,481,655 bytes (including decompression program), thereby not only winning the second payout of The Hutter Prize for Compression of Human Knowledge, but also bringing text compression within 1% of the threshold for artificial intelligence. Achieving 1.319 bits per character, this makes the next winner of the Hutter Prize likely to reach the threshold of human performance (between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character) estimated by the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon and confirmed by Cover and King in 1978 using text prediction gambling. When the Hutter Prize started, less than a year ago, the best performance was 1.466 bits per character. Alexander Ratushnyak's open-sourced GPL program is called paq8hp12 [rar file]."
Television

Submission + - Uri Geller Accused of Bending Copyright Law (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
JagsLive
JagsLive writes: "FoxNews reports, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288665,00.html " Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube , landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online. "All it takes is a single e-mail to completely censor someone on the Internet," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer for the online civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing Geller over an unflattering clip posted on YouTube for which he claimed a copyright ownership. ""
Biotech

Submission + - Potential cure for antibiotic resistant infections (newsobserver.com)

Submitted by kpw10
kpw10 writes: "Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that two drugs used to treat bone loss in old folks can both kill and short-circuit the 'sex life' of antibiotic-resistant bacteria blamed for nearly 100,000 hospital deaths across the country each year."
AMD

Submission + - AMD reports $611 million loss

Submitted by mpfife
mpfife writes: Toms hardware reports that "Declining microprocessor sales as well as dropping average selling prices for its microprocessors have pushed AMD deeper into the red. The company reported a net loss of $611 million on revenues of $1.233 billion, which is more than 20% below the guidance the company expected at the end of Q4 2006. The loss includes charges related to the ATI acquisition in the amount of $113 million, but is mainly a result of the increasing competition with Intel in the microprocessor market."
Privacy

Audit Finds FBI Abused Patriot Act 341

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the watching-the-watchers dept.
happyslayer writes to mention that according to Yahoo! News a recent audit shows that the FBI has improperly and in some cases illegally utilized the Patriot Act to obtain information. "The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. Still, 'we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,' the audit concludes."

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