SurfaceScapes 2.0 demo

I remember many long nights (and some long weekends!) spent playing D&D. I have a long history with the game, all the way back to I think 1977 (yes, I am that old!).

I remember our game evolving to include miniatures, but that's as far as it ever went. With the advent of computer fantasy games, most of the fun went out of D&D, but the games were mostly stale, canned experiences without the spontaneity of playing with a group of six real live (arguably) people around a table, each one making his or her plans for what they wanted to do, and each completely foiled by the DM.

Well, this may just be the thing that brings the computer gamer and the D&D player together, just like the chocolate and peanut butter of a Reese's Cup. I'll be honest with you here, I only watched the video, but that made me so excited that I wanted to share it with all of you. I understand it's still a demo, but still, it just looks too cool! Watch the video, and read the review from Wolfgang Baur.

SurfaceScapes 2.0 demo: "

Wolfgang Baur, former editor of the immortal D&D magazine DRAGON and current publisher of a new, independent D&D magazine Kobold Quarterly had a chance to play around with the second edition of MS Surface-based SurfaceScapes D&D game. There are a lot of cool developments, like being able to load your character sheet onto a smartphone and have it continually updated as you take wounds. Here are Wolfgang's impressions:

1. Movement and line of sight work great. In fact, a clever DM can distract the players, then move an orc from one patch of cover to another, where he again becomes invisible -- right until the moment a PC gets line of sight on it.
   
2. It's still a demo. They've got a TON of work to do to integrate more powers, but the newest build for PAX East covers up to 5th level PCs, plus area attacks. Lots of basics still aren't implemented, like say a charge or anything outside the 1st PHB half-Heroic tier.
   
3. The sound effects. Subtle, but powerful. Each attack comes with a sound. Dropping a dragon figure on the surface generates a roar and cloud of smoke. I could get used to this. What does a beholder sound like, I wonder?
   
4. The Infinite Map. Being able to scroll the map under the figures is nice; it makes the table infinitely large. Not news for Fantasy Grounds players, but obviously useful. When the map scrolls, colored lines connect your figures to their new positions to make them easy to shift.
   
5. Figures and Screens Together. The combination of real and virtual PCs and NPCs worked much better than I expected. There's been some hard work done on the interface design which takes me to .....
   
6. At Your Fingertips. Overall, the interface is intuitive and easy to learn. You can pull up your PC's powers on the table. Frankly there's no reason this couldn't be integrated with the DDI if that's the direction the team wanted to go.
   
7. 4E-Only. I asked about Pathfinder or generic game support. It ain't happening; this is specifically meant to handle 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. A generic system would probably be less valuable to gamers than one that handles specific rules.

See Wolfgang's post for a lot more details of his experience.

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PLUG hearing aid concept

I really don't know what to think about this one. It's a hearing aid that fits into a gauged ear. And it looks like it's about 1" from the picture!

I take this as proof that my mother was right about listening to my music way too loud on my headphones and in the car! Looks like the gen-Xers are starting to experience the same issues!

PLUG hearing aid concept: "

Body modification has its fair share of fans and detractors, and if you fall under the former category, then you might want to check out the PLUG hearing aid concept. Why do we say so? After all, the stereotype hardcore body modification aficionado will most probably indulge in a whole lot of rock music during his/her youth at some really insane volume levels, which is why a hearing aid would come in handy in their later years, sagging body parts, fading tattoos and all. Just see where the PLUG hearing aid concept fits in the ear and you'll get what we mean.

Permalink: PLUG hearing aid concept from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

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Subversive Groups Must Now Register In South Carolina

OK, this just looks like the stupidest law by far. Unless I'm reading this wrong, any organization in South Carolina that wants to overthrow the federal government has to tell the secretary of state of South Carolina or face a fine. Um, if they don't tell, how is anyone going to know? Or am I missing something here?

Subversive Groups Must Now Register In South Carolina: "Hugh Pickens writes "The Raw Story reports that terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The 'Subversive Activities Registration Act' passed last year in South Carolina and now officially on the books states that 'every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

Robotic Audi TTS To Speed On Its Own Without A Driver

Here's some more on that robotic car that will do the Pikes Peak drive. This looks like a real promising test. Differential GPS and all the other gadgets are the keys to success here, I think. Too bad we need to wait until September for the test. I'll be waiting for the results! I'm excited. I want to get into my car and say "Take me to work" and kick back and relax! That would make this stupid commute a lot easier!

Robotic Audi TTS To Speed On Its Own Without A Driver: "

Humanoid robots are definitely cool, but what about cars that drive themselves? The team at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) is looking to send a robotic Audi TTS racing off at high speed up the tight bends that lead to Pikes Peak without a driver. The car, nicknamed Shelley, will be attempting a timed race in September. Other autonomous cars have reached the summit before, but only at speeds of around 25mph, the team is looking to do it much faster, and when you take into account Shelley has hit speeds of 130mph without a driver on testing grounds, it’ll certainly be an interesting challenge. The car will stay on track thanks to its use of a differential GPS, which is much more accurate than a standard GPS, allowing you to pinpoint the car’s position to within an inch. Aside from the GPS unit, Shelley can measure her speed and acceleration thanks to the wheel-speed sensors and accelerometer, and getting her bearings from gyroscopes. This will all be controlled by the bunch of electronics and gadgets that are crammed into the vehicle’s trunk. Will we all have self-driving cars to chauffer us around town in the future? It certainly seems like an appealing idea.

Permalink: Robotic Audi TTS To Speed On Its Own Without A Driver from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

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Microsoft Finally To Patch 17-Year-Old Bug

Well, I guess this would fall into the category of "better late than never". Actually, no one even noticed this "back door" into DOS. Yes, they finally patched a bug in DOS! Let's see, 17 years ago would have been 1993, which would have been NT 3.1 and DOS 4.1. Ancient history? Yes, but believe it or not, it's still included in the 32-bit access capabilities in all the current Microsoft OSs. Ouch!

Microsoft Finally To Patch 17-Year-Old Bug: "eldavojohn writes 'Microsoft is due for a very large patch this month, in which five critical holes (that render Windows hijackable by an intruder) are due to be fixed, in addition to twenty other problems. The biggest change addresses a 17-year-old bug dating back to the days of DOS, discovered in January by their BFF Google. The patch should roll out February 9th.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

Robotic Audi To Brave Pikes Peak Without a Driver

This is very interesting! The key part of this whole thing is "at race speeds". I know that the annual Pikes Peak race goes pretty fast up that mountain. But without a driver? Autonomous? Um, I hope it will be the only car on the mountain! If Audi is successful with this, it could have big impacts in traffic jam reduction by automating some of the actions of people who commute long distances. Someone like me.

Robotic Audi To Brave Pikes Peak Without a Driver: "Scifi83 writes 'A team of researchers at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) has filled the trunk of an Audi TTS with computers and GPS receivers, transforming it into a vehicle that drives itself. The car will attempt Pikes Peak without a driver at race speeds, something that's never been done.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

Can You Trust Chinese Computer Equipment?

Here's a question that's been bothering me for quite some time! How do we know that the people who build our computer hardware or firmware aren't putting something into them to eavesdrop, track, or steal information? Is it just paranoia? Is it justified, because of the recent Google attacks?

I've heard stories of people getting free thumb drives from trade shows, basically "vendor trash", but they would have key loggers or viriuses on them. Users without thinking will just jam them into a USB port "because it's free storage" and they're infected, or being "watched".

Be careful out there.

Can You Trust Chinese Computer Equipment?: "Ian Lamont writes 'Suspicions about China slipping eavesdropping technology into computer exports have been around for years. But the recent spying attacks, attributed to China, on Google and other Internet companies have revived the hardware spying concerns. An IT World blogger suggests the gear can't be trusted, noting that it wouldn't be hard to add security holes to the firmware of Chinese-made USB memory sticks, computers, hard drives, and cameras. He also implies that running automatic checks for data of interest in the compromised gear would not be difficult.' The blog post mentions Ken Thompson's admission in 1983 that he had put a backdoor into the Unix C compiler; he laid out the details in the 1983 Turing Award lecture, Reflections On Trusting Trust: 'The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

Obama

This is a very interesting analysis of Obama's State of the Union address last night. It's very reminiscent of some of the analysis we did to Bush's address in 2002, but for obvious different reasons that I can't really get into here.

If you like analytical reviews and comparative analysis, take a look at this article at FiveThirtyEight. Geekdom at it's highest point, I think.

Analysis of Obama's State of the Union Address

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs

Ok, any of you tech-heads out there. Here's a new MoBo that looks like it could be awesome. It's still a prototype board, and it has some issues (like you can't use Core i7 chips in SMP mode on it, you need to use Xeon W5000 series chips which are more expensive, server-type CPUs), but just the thought of having 2 quad core hyper-threaded CPUs on one MoBo (16 processor equivalents!) think of the vitalization you could do on this baby!

Oh, and in case you didn't notice in the picture, there are 7, count them, 7 PCIe slots on this baby, which theoretically you could put 7 SLI or CrossFireX video cards into, to have 7 GPUs cranking out the video for your screen (do you REALLY need that much power? Um, yeah!)!

I haven't seen anything on pricing yet, but it looks AWESOME!

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs: "

Think CrossFireX is nifty? We're betting you're a big fan of SLI, huh? For those who grew up bragging about their 'dual Voodoo' setup, there's nothing in the world that can stop you from lusting over this bad boy. Quietly introduced at CES, the EVGA W555 is just now being shown to the world in proper (prototype) form, and aside from being crafted to hold two overclocked processors and a dozen DDR3 DIMM slots, there's also space for seven PCI expansion slots. In other words, you could theoretically run seven GPUs in this thing. Of course, you'd need some serious software hacking skills to drive all that horsepower into a single display, but we get the feeling you like challenges, anyway. Hit the source link for more of the madness, but don't expect any units to hit retail until later in the year.

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink bit-tech Email this Comments"

Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy

Had to comment about this, but I only have one word:

SQUIRREL!

Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy: "

Twitter is certainly a popular service, and deservedly so, but sometimes people take things to extremes. Would you want your dog to be tweeting as well? It seems that there are folks out there who would certainly want such an arrangement. Mattel has come up with a device dubbed ‘Puppy Tweets’, which you can attach you the puppy’s collar, allowing it to tweet for your dog. You’ll still need to help your dog create a Twitter account, and after everything has been set up, if your dog is barking non-stop at something, it’ll tweet stuff like “YAHOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on." If your dog just ran around in circles for a long time, it might tweet something along the lines of "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!" Apparently this product wants to capitalize on peoples’ love for their dogs, as well as the trend for social media and real-time communication. It might seem rather pointless to you, but it’ll be debuting at next month’s Toy Fair in New York, so if you want to check it out, that’s where you can probably catch a glimpse of it.

Permalink: Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

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Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

OK, this is just another case of people blaming D&D for stupid things or accusing something inanimate of being evil.

My experience with D&D is that
1. It increases the ability to use the imagination
2. It improves teamwork
3. It can teach tactical thinking
4. It is a GREAT release of stress or boredom (one would think people in prison would need that)

People, please stop blaming things for your perceived problems and start blaming people.


Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure: "Trepidity writes "In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

UN Glacier Melt Report was Speculative Nonsense

One of the first things I was told when I started working on my masters degree was "Always check your sources!". Well, I guess you need to check your sources sources, and your sources sources sources, too!

Well, how about this: It it doesn't seem to make sense, check it out for yourself!

UN Glacier Melt Report was Speculative Nonsense: "

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

This sort of stuff really pisses me off. Taking advantage of a frightened public like this is just plain wrong. The original article here and New Scientist angle here.

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Left-wing Activist: Haiti Quake Caused By Global Warming

Um, OK, WHAT? An earthquake was caused by global warming? I couldn't believe the title on this one, but I watched the video and from 2:00 to the end of the clip, the gentleman from Seattle is actually saying that this sort of thing (earthquakes) could happen to any of the Caribbean nations because of global warming and the fact that we didn't do enough at the Copenhagen summit.

I'm sorry, but there's no way I can believe that an earthquake is caused by politics. However, I did notice we had a severe cold snap here in DC right after Congress went on recess. I attribute that to a lack of hot air.

Left-wing Activist: Haiti Quake Caused By Global Warming: "

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1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing

This is interesting. I remember the first CD player I saw, back in 1984. I was a "On-Air Personality", i.e. DJ, and assistant station engineer, at a small, community broadcasting station in Machias, Maine. I was in Ellsworth Maine with the station's engineer Craig Zurhorst, (my friend who got me the job) and we went into Radio Shack for some supplies. There it was; a shiny, black, device with VU meters on the right side and a sliding drawer on the left. We played with it for a while, and tried to figure out how we would que up a song on this, since we used 2 analog turntables at the time.

How times have changed. I'm guessing (because I haven't been in a radio station since 1985) that most stations are now using MP3 files, driven off a computer generated random list of songs from the library. Cool info, none the less.

1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing: "Here's a little bit of color for you. The gang at Retro Thing have brought our attention to a republished 1983 Stereophile review of the Sony CDP-101, the first-ever CD player. The results were that the audio quality was promising but not stellar, and the $1,000 (!) cost of entry for the device made it even less alluring. Knowing how history unfolded, we can't help but chuckle a bit at the worry that CDs would in the near-term become obsolete by another physical disc medium, but hey, we can't blame them for not being psychic. Just think, one day our own reviews will be discovered for the future to laugh about -- paying over $500 for a device that doesn't do multitouch on its native apps? What's up with that? Find yourself 15 to 30 minutes of quiet time and hit up the source link for a blast from the past.

1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Retro Thing Stereophile Email this Comments"

It Will Haunt Your Dreams Forever – The Horror of the Human-Faced Goat!

OK, this is just so odd that I have to post it. Seems that a goat in Turkey had a kid with a human-looking face. The pictures are quite gruesome, but it doesn't really look re-touched (although, I didn't actually analyze the data in the image itself).

Mutations happen; most are caused by what we've done to the world around us: chemicals, radiation, etc. (my opinion).

Follow the links if you dare.

It Will Haunt Your Dreams Forever – The Horror of the Human-Faced Goat!: "

You WISH the human-faced goat looked this cute!

To protect our dear readers with more gentle constitutions, you must click here to enter our freak show tent to view the beast. If you DARE!!!

(Note: DU relinquishes all responsibility for any physical ailment or insanity that may result from clicking the link above to view the unholy abomination. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!)

A sheep in Turkey has reportedly given birth to a lamb with a human-like face.

Vet Erhan Elibol performed a caesarean section to deliver the calf near the city of Izmir and was horrified to find it looked like a human, Russian and Turkish news sites said.

[...]

Photos purportedly of the lamb, which was stillborn, show human-like eyes, nose and mouth.

Vets said the calf’s mutation was most likely the result of an excess of vitamin A in the mother’s fodder.

Pravda reported that a goat in Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar human-like calf last September. But villagers killed it, believing it was the result of intercourse between the mother goat and a man.

If you could stomach that, perhaps you are now ready for THIS!!!

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Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger

This looks FANTASTIC! Harvesting power from the WiFi signals around you. Who knew you could generate power from a sniffer?!

So, when do the replacement batteries come out?

Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger: "
[

CES 2010] Wireless charging seems like a dream to move gadget-users out there, after all, who’d want to plug a device into a charger, if you could charge it wirelessly, right? The Airnergy Charger certainly looks promising, and might actually fulfill your wireless charging fantasies. This device is able to harvest the electricity from Wi-Fi networks, and convert it into electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practical. When demoed at CES, it was able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% charge to full in about 90 minutes, using ambient Wi-Fi as a power source. So as long as you have a Wi-Fi network around you, you just have to carry it around, and it’ll charge itself. Of course, the proximity of the Wi-Fi source, and number of Wi-Fi sources will also be a factor. The best part is the company, RCA, says that the USB charger will be available this summer for just $40, and if they stick to that price point when it’s released, it’s going to be one interesting device.

Permalink: Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger from Ubergizmo Hot: Blackberry Bold 9700 Review

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Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive

This borders on the crazy side. These guys actually hit a 256GB SSD drive with a baseball bat; and not just a little tap, either; I think this would at least have been a base hit.

Crazy stuff, but watch the video to see what happens at the end!

Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive: "

We put one of Kingston's SSDNow V Series drives through its paces last month, but we can't say we went quite as far as Kingston itself has gone in its latest demo video, which takes stress-testing to an all-American extreme. You can probably guess what happens next considering that Kingston is out boasting about the video, but, hey, it's not everyday that you get to see 256GB fly off the end of a bat.



[Thanks, Shane]

Continue reading Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive

Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Beijing has coldest year since 1970

Yet another effect of "Global Warming"!

Beijing has coldest year since 1970: "

From the Australian ‘The Age’:

A FREEZING cold front swept over much of northern China on Sunday with snowstorms snarling traffic and air travel, while some of the coldest temperatures in decades were forecast for coming days.

Gale-force winds sweeping down from Siberia could result in temperatures as low as minus 16 degrees in the capital today, the Beijing meteorological station said.

Such temperatures are believed to be the coldest in the capital in 40 years.

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Rapture is set for May 21, 2011, are you ready?

Wow. This is a real bummer. I guess I should cancel our 28th anniversary plans for that day?

I would like to add something else, for those of you reading this that are believers (and one of the commenters talks about this, too):

Matthew 24:30-44 (NIV)

"At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the
nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the
clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels
with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds,
from one end of the heavens to the other.

"Now learn this lesson from
the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know
that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that
it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will
certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

The Day and
Hour Unknown
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the
flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to
the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen
until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the
coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken
and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will
be taken and the other left.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know
on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the
house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept
watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be
ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

So, reading this, I guess I don't need to cancel our plans, since the world won't really end on that day, because no one knows when it will be, so it won't happen on that day. Wait; did that make sense?

Rapture is set for May 21, 2011, are you ready?: "

sfgate.com – Friday, January 1, 2010:

Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he’d found: The world will end May 21, 2011.

This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day.

On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping’s believers gathered inside Alameda’s Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. Followers dressed children in their Sunday best and held Bibles open-faced toward heaven.

But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. He spent the next decade running new calculations, as well as overseeing a media company that has grown significantly in size and reach.

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