The idea of Nintendo creating a compilation of Mario games to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. is exciting. Surely the company has vaults filled with memorabilia, fascinating documents and stories, and thoughts from the creators of the game. If Nintendo had the urge to create a true testament to how popular and enduring the Mario character has become, it would be an impressive thing.Sadly, the company took the lazy way out with the Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary package for the Wii. The content included is limited and obvious, but to everyone's credit the price is low. Still, when you're trying to honor your most popular creation, thrift shouldn't be your biggest accomplishment.
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Quantum cryptography is secure... except when it's not
Not so long ago, we reported on a paper that purported to blow a hole in quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. Now, researchers at Toshiba have struck back with findings that show that the attack doesn't really work. To which the original authors have replied, "Well, it depends." Read the comments on this post
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Gaming has nothing to fear from the Spike TV Video Game Awards
Spike TV aired its so-and-so annual Video Game Awards this weekend; the show was hosted by the always-classy Neil Patrick Harris, who sometimes seemed pained by the show that was going on around him. There were lame jokes, there was the brief possibility of a bared vagina, and anyone who takes gaming seriously at all winced more than once.Gaming writers, pundits, and various hangers-on took to Twitter to complain about how bad the show was and how terrible it made our hobby look. There were editorials written and opinions defended, and there was this odd consensus that we should be threatened by the smoke and mirrors of Spike's yearly orgy of promotion. The truth? Gaming is fine, and it's going to take more than Spike TV to hurt it.
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Mass Effect 3 coming for 360, PS3, PC in "Holiday 2011"
We're as excited as anyone about the idea of Mass Effect 3, but the series was always planned to be a trilogy, and the second game has been out for a good amount of time. Is anyone really surprised by the game's official reveal? Well, we now know that the game that we all knew was coming is in fact coming, with a release date of "Holiday 2011."
Like most of the games revealed at the 2010 Video Game Awards, there was a short teaser with no game play, but some interesting details on the game's story. Looks like we're going to be fighting on Earth this time. Take a look at the teaser and start speculating!
Before the awards show, EA briefly listed the game on its official site with the following details on the story:
Earth is burning. Striking from beyond known space, a race of terrifying machines have begun their destruction of the human race. As Commander Shepard, an Alliance Marine, your only hope for saving mankind is to rally the civilizations of the galaxy and launch one final mission to take back the Earth.While I enjoy distant planets much more than returning to Earth, our planet will likely be one setting among many. With such drastic changes taking place in the game play between the first and second Mass Effect titles, the new game is bound to offer many surprises in terms of mechanics and tone. Also, the game has been confirmed for the Xbox 360, PC, and... drum roll please... the PlayStation 3! That's great news for Sony fans who are just now getting a taste of Mass Effect 2.
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FCC Commissioner: net neutrality rules should cover wireless
We're about ten days and counting from the Federal Communications Commission issuing an Order with net neutrality rules, but one of three Democrats on the FCC who supports the idea now says that the draft on the table might not go far enough. That would be Mignon Clyburn, who told the Practicing Law Institute's annual telecommunications summit that she "still has many questions" about the proposal, particularly whether it adequately covers wireless broadband. "Do we have a consensus item in front of us?" Clyburn asked out loud on Thursday. "I think we are pretty close. But my focus over the coming days will be to ensure that we are thinking through the implications of the wireless piece of the item. While I recognize that there are distinctions between wired and wireless networks, I think it is essential that our wireless networks—those of the present and future—grow in an open way just as our wired ones have."
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Jailbreak "detection" API now gone from iOS 4.2
Apple has apparently dropped access to a jailbreak detection API first added to iOS 4.0 this past summer. Third-party developers of mobile device management software told Network World that the API no longer works in iOS 4.2.1, though Apple never warned that it was being deprecated.Word of a jailbreak detection API appearing in iOS 4.0, combined with the publication of a patent application for disabling an iPhone when an "unauthorized user" is detected, originally stirred fears that Apple might be looking to automatically disable iPhones that were jailbroken. However, such a move would run counter to a Copyright Office ruling that jailbraking was essentially a legal activity.
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Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim coming next November, first trailer released
The 2010 Video Game Awards on Spike TV was filled with awkward celebrity guests, game reveals that were light on actual game play, and few surprises before the show. One game announcement caught everyone flatfooted, however, and that was the reveal of a new Elder Scrolls game.
Called Skyrim, the game was announced by Bethesda Softworks Executive Producer Todd Howard and teased with a short trailer that explained some of the game's story but showed none of the in-game graphics. A tweet from Bethesda's Nick Breckon dispelled the rumor that the game will run on the recently-acquired id Software's technology. "We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new," he wrote. "And it looks fantastic."
It won't be long until we get more details, but that's all there is to go on for now. The game's release date? November 11, 2011. That's right, 11-11-11. How many more ones can there be? None. None more ones.
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Demand growing for open access science texts and tools
About a year and a half ago, we reported on a Nature venture that was a bit far afield from its general focus on scientific publishing. Scitable aims to provide online, open access educational materials in the sciences. Anyone can browse the content or follow predefined courses, currently limited to the life sciences. But one thing that you won't generally spot is ads. Can a resource like this stay free indefinitely? It seems like a lot of scientific publishers are betting that it can, since a number of other free services have launched in the intervening time. According to Scitable's Vikram Savkar, the answer is yes, although it's not there yet. Within the past year, the company has gotten some sponsors on board. Some of these are biotech and pharmaceutical companies, which are very focused on the current bioscience material (New England Biolabs, for example, has sponsored a series on the restriction enzymes they sell). Presumably, this roster will expand as Scitable grows into more subject areas. But a couple of existing sponsors—Intel and Tata Consultancy—are involved simply because they apparently think they're promoting a valuable resource.
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Weird Science sings the praises of sex among the neurotics
Neurotic? We prescribe sex: The problem's very simple, as stated in the first sentence of this article: "A robust literature indicates that neuroticism has numerous negative implications for romantic relationships." So, what's a neurotic to do? Apparently, roll in the hay. "A lagged multilevel analysis revealed that although neuroticism was negatively associated with marital satisfaction on average," the authors continue, "it was unrelated to marital satisfaction when couples had engaged in relatively frequent sex over the past 6 months." Given the propensity of people to lie about how often they're having sex, the authors were careful to ask both halves of the couple what their sexual frequency was. No word on whether sex helps the antisocial, but marriage apparently does: Men who are married are very unlikely to be formally diagnosed as antisocial, but is that a cause or effect? In other words, are antisocial males less likely to get married, or does marriage reduce antisocial behavior? A bit of both, it seems. Antisocial men are less likely to get married, but it seems that, if they do manage to tie the knot, their partners help mellow their discomfort with others. The study took a bit of an unusual approach, in that it estimated how antisocial someone would be if they weren't married by testing for these tendencies in a monozygotic twin. Identical twins show lots of characteristics in common, but this seems to be a fairly large logical leap.
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