On a boat: Ars reviews the return of Hydro Thunder
You can pick up some good deals when a developer or publisher goes under, and Microsoft was smart to grab the rights to the Hydro Thunder brand when Midway sank. It may not be the most prestigious title, but the original still has a number of hardcore fans itching for an update—the perfect recipe for an Xbox Live update. How does the simplistic arcade gameplay hold up against modern games? Let's just say that you're in for a treat.
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No early StarCraft 2 reviews; we'll be playing with you
Are you scouring the Internet for StarCraft 2 reviews? Don't bother. Blizzard has confirmed to Ars Technica that no outlets have been given early access to the game for final reviews; we'll be playing alongside the public when the game's servers go live and the game is released on retail shelves tomorrow.
No, reviewers. Not yours.
As a gamer and a reviewer I'd rather be playing now, but Blizzard's strategy is right for this particular game. This is a deep game; we'll try to get some solid coverage up after launch but don't expect anything in-depth for a few days. Some games may not suffer from being guzzled like a Bud Light, but Starcraft 2 is the gaming equivalent of good bourbon (think Noah's Mill), one we want to pour into our glass and savor for a bit before we give our verdict.
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WikiLeaks drops 90,000 war docs; fingers Pakistan as insurgent ally
Turns out “Collateral Murder” was just a warmup. WikiLeaks just published a trove of over 90,000 mostly-classified US military documents that details a strengthening Afghan insurgency with deep ties to Pakistani intelligence.WikiLeaks’ release of a 2007 Apache gunship video sparked worldwide outrage, but little change in US policy. This massive storehouse taken, it would appear, from U.S. Central Command’s CIDNE data warehouse—has the potential to be strategically significant, raising questions about how and why America and her allies are conducting the war.
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Scientists informally intervene in cases of sloppy research
Most people involved in scientific research are well aware of the big three ethical lapses: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. These acts are considered to have such a large potential for distorting the scientific record that governments, research institutions, and funding bodies generally have formal procedures to investigate incidents, and formal sanctions for those found to have infringed. But the big three are hardly a complete list of all the problems that can produce misleading results; anything from poor record-keeping to sloppy techniques can cause errors to creep into the scientific literature, and there are rarely formal procedures to deal with them. That doesn't mean they're not dealt with, however. A survey published by Nature has found that researchers regularly engage in informal interventions with colleagues if they suspect that there's any form of misconduct going on—even if they think the problems are inadvertent.
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Sony's trojan horse for 3D and Move: games you already own
Sony has money and effort sunk into two technologies: the PlayStation Move and 3D televisions and movies. The company would love nothing more than to have you waving your glowing, ball-tipped controller while wearing glasses in front of your brand new 3D Sony television. While both technologies will require an investment above and beyond the system you already own, the software side of the effort is doing exactly what it needs to do to get you ready to buy: making sure that you already own games that support each option before you buy either one.Read the comments on this post
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The (court) case against San Francisco's cell phone radiation law
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is putting a brave face on the news that big wireless is suing the city over its new cell phone radiation labeling ordinance."I am disappointed that the association representing the wireless communication industry has decided to challenge our landmark consumer information law in court," Newsom declared on Friday, calling it "a modest, common sense measure which merely takes information already made available by these companies and makes it more accessible and easier to find by the point-of-sale consumer."
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Street Fighter, Tekken characters mix in two upcoming games
The fighting mechanics of Street Fighter and Tekken couldn't be more different, but both Capcom and Namco know that fans have been asking "what if" for years. At Comic Con, game studios delivered: two games are currently in production mixing characters from both franchises. Namco is helming development of Tekken X Street Fighter, and Capcom is hard at work creating Street Fighter X Tekken. The first teaser trailer shows some hints of what we can expect.Both games will offer something different: one with both characters fighting in the style of Street Fighter, and the other is expected to feature both sets of characters fighting in the style of Tekken. The release date was listed as "Not for a while" at Comic Con, but without a long gap between releases the fighting genre could be saturated. How many gamers out there in the target audience for this will be willing to buy both releases?
Still, this is huge news for both companies, and the end of that teaser trailer is pure brilliance. We can't wait to get more details.
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Weird Science thinks that computer memory could grow on trees
Tree + memory = circuitry: The race for ever shrinking circuitry has apparently headed for the trees. Researchers have found that a protein isolated from poplar trees can host silicon nanoparticles as small as 5nm across. The protein is stable and acts as an insulator, isolating each nanoparticle and allowing them to be addressed individually by an atomic force microscope tip. The authors demonstrate they can use this combination as a Set-Reset machine, a very simple logic circuit with memory. The technology has already been patented and licensed out, so maybe some day we'll be seeing a switch from sycamore to oak processes driving the next leap in computing power. It's OK to be incompetent, as long as everyone's polite about it: Anybody who deals directly with customers has probably had some basic advice drilled into their heads: be nice to the customer, or they won't buy stuff. One thing that might not be as heavily emphasized is being nice to your fellow employees. A recent study found that customers who witness employees being uncivil to each other, "make negative generalizations about (a) others who work for the firm, (b) the firm as a whole, and (c) future encounters with the firm." The surprising thing is that customers developed these negative feelings even if the incivility was the result of someone scolding an employee for providing said customer with poor service.
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