ZJVavrek - Slashdot User

Why Don't MMOs Allow Easier Transportation? 337

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday June 28, 2009 @06:38AM from the i'm-looking-at-you-eve dept.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an opinion piece which asks why the majority of MMOs force users to spend a fair portion of their time traveling around a virtual world. At what point does moving from one location to another become a chore? From the article: "I love big, explorable worlds. They're by far one of my most favourite things about games. Running off in a direction without any idea what I might encounter is a rare pleasure, and one far more likely to result in an exciting discovery in a game's world than the real one. ... Not knowing what's coming up is huge and exciting, and I'd not want to take it away from gaming, not ever. But you know what? Once I've been there, that moment's gone. I've discovered it already. I did the exploring. I don't need to spend half an hour of my time that I've allocated for playing games trudging at whatever stupidly slow speed a game's decided to impose upon me. There is no good reason, whatsoever, to not just let me be there."

Comment Re:Didn't the movie do bad enough? (Score 1) 73

by ZJVavrek on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @06:28AM (#27309575) Attached to: <em>Max Payne 3</em> Announced For Next Winter

How so? Tell me, did you return home from the theater only to find that your copies of Max Payne and Max Payne 2 had been stolen from your collection? Did you, upon mourning their loss, realize that you could only think of Nicole Horne as some vaguely cheerful woman to the side and that you had no idea where the name Vlad kept entering your head from?

The series still exists and will exist for a very long time. Your memories still exist, but I can't speak to how long they will last. The movie version can never actually ruin the book, or the game, or the events of real life upon which it is based.

I don't expect Max Payne 3 to be good, or bad, because I have no prior experience with this studio of Rockstar's. They made Bully, according to what I've read. Was that any good? (The concept seemed fun.)

*Still waiting for A.Wake...*

New Law Will Require Camera Phones To "Click" 1235

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 26, 2009 @04:08PM from the pointless-wastes-of-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new bill is being introduced called the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, which would require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the phone's camera. It would also prohibit such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone."

Comment Re:Jesus. (Score 1) 550

by ZJVavrek on Wednesday December 03, 2008 @12:25PM (#25976231) Attached to: Visual Hallucinations Are a Normal Grief Reaction

I shouldn't post 6 hours after I should go to sleep. "the thing" refers to the Bible, not The Authoritarians, which is a wonderful book that I finished recently.

Comment Re:Jesus. (Score 1) 550

by ZJVavrek on Wednesday December 03, 2008 @12:22PM (#25976199) Attached to: Visual Hallucinations Are a Normal Grief Reaction

I've never gotten around to reading the thing, but in The Authoritarians, in an evaluation of reconciling incompatible beliefs, it's pointed out that there are several accounts of the resurrection. Each one has its own details which differ slightly from the others. Who was there, what was said, etc. I don't remember if the tangibility of Jesus was one of those.

It certainly helps the premise that a handful of the apostles, in mourning over someone important to them, all happened to dream similar dreams.

Interest Growing For Pre-Paid Game Cards 70

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday October 26, 2008 @01:10AM from the myriad-ways-to-pay dept.

Worlds in Motion is running an interview with GMG Entertainment, a company finding success marketing pre-paid "digital currency cards" used online for games and other entertainment services. Customers and retailers alike are enjoying the simplicity and utility of the cards, and GMG suggests that this segment of the industry will only continue to grow: "I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names. We tend to estimate the size of the total pre-paid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010. We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years."

Orbiter Reveals Rock Fracture Plumbing On Mars 61

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @01:57AM from the more-evidence-for-hydrogen-hydroxide dept.

Riding with Robots writes "Mars researchers report that a robotic spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that once directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone. 'This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet,' said one of the mission scientists for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been regularly returning terabytes of high-resolution images and other kinds of data from Mars."

Wall-E Lookalike Wins British War Robot Showdown 155

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 21, 2008 @02:58AM from the let-the-robot-wars-begin dept.

longacre writes "Following in the footsteps of DARPA's Urban Challenge, in which robotic vehicles had to navigate a complex obstacle course without human intervention, the UK upped the ante with its own Ministry of Defence Grand Challenge: within a mock enemy village, robots were instructed to find potential targets and make distinctions between armed troops, roadside bombs and snipers. The winning entry, Team Stellar's SATURN system, actually consists of three vehicles: a low level drone and a tracked ground vehicle transmit reconnaissance data to a high-altitude robotic relay aircraft, which proceeds to phone that data home to a central processing center. Upon announcing the winner yesterday, MoD said they are 'carefully considering if technologies demonstrated in the final can be incorporated into future frontline kit for the Armed Forces. It is possible that the winning team will have invented a product that can be developed rapidly for the front line.'"

Yahtzee Deconstructs the E3 Trailer Park 46

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Thursday July 31, 2008 @12:55PM from the tell-it-like-it-is dept.

With all the E3 wrap-up and deconstruction flying around Yahtzee has once again done a stellar job of summarizing and unmasking the standard bullshit in his own Zero Punctuation-style review of the E3 "trailer park". Labeling this year as "sequel boulevard" and questioning the lack of any meaningful amount of gameplay footage, this year was almost a universal disappointment. There are rumblings of some improvements next year, perhaps returning things to some small measure of their previous glory, but only time will tell.

Johnson & Johnson Loses Major Trademark Lawsuit 176

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 25, 2008 @02:59AM from the pass-the-tylenol dept.

Dekortage writes "As previously discussed here, the health-products giant Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over use of the ubiquitous 'red cross' logo. J&J has now lost. The presiding judge said Johnson & Johnson's claim against the organization was doubtful because the manufacturer entered into a brand-sharing promotional agreement with the American Red Cross in 1986 — not to mention that the two organizations agreed to share the logo way back in 1895. Sounds like J&J may need to crack open some Tylenol and Band-Aids."

JFK, LAX To Test Millimeter-Wave Scanners 235

Posted by timothy on Monday April 21, 2008 @05:39AM from the actually-frauelein-we-no-longer-ask-for-papers dept.

Narrative Fallacy writes "The Transportation Security Administration has announced that it's beginning pilot tests of millimeter wave scanning technology at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) that allow TSA personnel to see concealed weapons and other items that may be hidden beneath clothes. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley says that that the potentially revealing body scans (YouTube) would not be stored and that 90% of passengers subject to secondary screening opt for a millimeter wave scan over a pat-down. The agency added that security officers viewing the scans would do so remotely, where they will not be able to recognize passengers but will be able to trigger an alarm if needed. The agency also said that a blurring algorithm is applied to passengers' faces in scanned images as an additional privacy protection."

Carbon Nanotubes Can Exist Safely Inside the Body, Help Treat Cancer 86

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 01, 2008 @01:22AM from the series-of-tubes dept.

iandoh writes "A team of scientists at Stanford University has tracked the movement of carbon nanotubes through the digestive systems of mice. They've determined that the nanotubes do not exhibit any toxicity in the mice, and are safely expelled after delivering their payload. As a result, the study paves the way toward future applications of nanotubes in the treatment of illnesses. Previous research by the same team demonstrated that nanotubes can be used to fight cancer. The nanotubes do this in two ways. One method involves shining laser light on the nanotubes, which generates heat to destroy cancer cells. Another method involves attaching medicine to the nanotubes, which are able to accurately 'find' cancerous cells without impacting healthy cells."

World's Smallest Projector 246

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:04AM from the there-are-no-small-roles dept.

SkinnyGuy writes "Mixed into all of PCMag's CES preview coverage is an interesting story about a projector that's no bigger than an iPod. An early version showed up at last year's CES, but some of the guts weren't inside the small body. Now they are. It uses lasers to project the image. Really fascinating, futuristic stuff."

What's Wrong With the TV News 536

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @10:13PM from the not-enough-capes-spaceships-and-pie dept.

MBCook writes "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."

Jack Thompson Claiming Games Industry in Collusion with DoD 289

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 29, 2007 @11:19AM from the no-word-on-dick-cheneys-duck-hunt-sequel dept.

mytrip brings us a Wired blog about Jack Thompson's recent press release, which claims an "unholy alliance" exists between the gaming industry and the U.S. Department of Defense. Game Politics also has a discussion of Thompson's main points. From Wired: "Jim Blank, the head of the modeling and simulation division of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, says that commercial games don't meet the demand of the military, adding, 'first-person shooter games really don't apply in this environment.' Blank's point is that game-like simulations are a valuable tool for training soldiers in situations that would be too expensive to simulate in reality."

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