Clipmarks | Computer games Clips

Computer Virus Infects Space Station

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:58:17 GMT

clipped by: Andy Greenberg
clipper's remarks: This piece of malware sounds mostly harmless, designed to steal video game passwords. But I'm imagining a hacker causing a satellite to plummet from space onto a US city. It's possible I've been reading too much science fiction.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Computer viruses make it to orbit

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

Once it has scooped up passwords and login names the Gammima.AG worm virus tries to send them back to a central server. It targets a total of 10 games most of which are popular in the Far East such as Maple Story, HuangYi Online and Talesweaver.

Tags: space station, virus, worm, hacker, cybersecurity

Computer viruses make it to orbit

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:59:24 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: What better place than in the games, smuggled on laptops for those sleepless nights, for a virus to lurk.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

Orbital outbreak

Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS.

Nasa told SpaceRef that no command or control systems of the ISS were at risk from the malicious program.

The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth.

The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection.

Computer viruses make it to orbit

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:12:57 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: I wish my laptop can bring me to space too.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

The ISS has no direct net connection and all data traffic travelling from the ground to the spacecraft is scanned before being transmitted.

It is thought that the virus might have travelled via a flash or USB drive owned by an astronaut and taken into space.

The space agency also plans to put in place security systems to stop such incidents happening in the future.

Nasa told Wired News that viruses had infected laptops taken to the ISS on several occasions but the outbreaks always only been a "nuisance".

Tags: science, technology, space, virus, computer, news, laptops, gammima.ag, travel

Lifelike Animation Breakthrough

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:02:28 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: AMD last week released a new chip with a billion transistors that will be able to show off creations such as Emily by allowing a much greater number of computations per second. "If you're trying to process the graphics in a photo-realistic animation, in real-time, there's a lot of computation involved," said Mr Koduri.

He said that AMD's new chip - the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - was able to process 2.4 teraflops of information per second, meaning it had a capability similar to a computer that - only 12 years ago - would have filled a room. AMD's chip fits inside a standard PC.

But he said that the line between what was real and what was rendered would not be blurred completely until 2020.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.

Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

"Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said.

"The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face.

they are what makes people look real."

Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films

Tags: animation, computer graphics, virtual characters, gaming

Hacker blows Chinese coverup of gymnist's age

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:29 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

A determined U.S. computer expert has delved into cached pages on the Internet to unearth Chinese official documents showing a gymnast who took gold in the uneven bars competition, edging the U.S.'s Nastia Liukin, may indeed be underage.

First he simply tried Google, only to find that an official listing by the Chinese sports administration that had given her age could no longer be accessed. Then he tried the Google cache, only to find that He’s name had been removed.

Finally, he tried the cache of Chinese search engine Baidu. There, he found that Baidu lists two spreadsheets in He's name, both giving her date of birth as January 1, 1994 — making her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete at the Beijing games.

The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China.

Tags: china, olympics, gymnastics, cheating

COMPUTER ADDICTION-hmm...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:17:17 GMT

clipped by: fewstingscorpio
clipper's remarks: what and where are you now? Ah-just messing with you. Read the full article;
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/computer-addiction.htm

Clip Source: computer.howstuffworks.com

How Computer Addiction Works

Inside this Article

Obsessively checking e-mail. Playing online games for 12 hours or more at a time. Placing more value on chat-room friends than real friends. Neglecting family, work and even personal health and hygiene. These are all symptoms of a new form of addiction that has surfaced only in recent years: computer addiction. In this article, we'll learn about computer addiction, why it's a problem -- and why some doctors disagree about whether it exists at all.

Creating a single definition for computer addiction is difficult because the term actually covers a wide spectrum of addictions. Few people are literally addicted to a computer as a physical object. They become addicted to activities performed on a computer

Tags: addiction, computers, psychology, sociology

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:39:26 GMT

clipped by: pperazzo

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

'Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films, says her creator, Image Metrics

Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.

Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a 'control system'.

LivePlace IS the Second Life Killer

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:45:50 GMT

clipped by: bferman
clipper's remarks: All I can say is... simply amazing!

Clip Source: www.techcrunch.com

LivePlace.com has posted a video displaying a very impressive render of a 3D virtual world called City Space

The other nugget of information found in the video is that the game is running on OTOY, the 3D engine that renders graphics in the cloud. The technology allows relatively weak computers (or even mobile phones) to display incredibly detailed graphics comparable to those seen in Hollywood movies.

[Video]

While there are a number of online games that offer impressive graphics (though none of this caliber), the real potential behind LivePlace and the OTOY engine is the cloud-based rendering engine, which allows games on almost any computer to play without needing a powerful graphics card. OTOY has been developed to work in any browser without a plugin, which makes the barrier for entry into this virtual world much lower than Second Life

The 14 mins of real time rendering in this material is streaming live to a Treo 700 at 240 kpbs

Tags: liveplace.com, second life, 3d, rendering, game

Want to play better? Think harder.

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:17:13 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Would love to try this...

Clip Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com

Brain-powered games

A Drexel University researcher today presented a game that lets players control the action on the screen merely by concentrating. The game, called Lazybrains, uses a technology that measures oxygen levels in the frontal cortex of the player to determine neural activity.

The technology, called functional near-infrared imaging, measures oxygen levels in various portions of the brain by projecting infrared lighting into the brain via a headband.

The device was initially developed at Drexel's School of Biomedical Engineering in Philadelphia as a way to detect when patients under anesthesia were conscious but unable to move.

The game is not commercially available

In games, several companies have also explored this concept, including ...

... Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, which introduced its EPOC headset

OCZ Technology

, which makes memory and computer peripherals

A lot of what we’re doing is investigating how to break down the barriers between the game and users."

Tags: brain, games

Suspense builds for Wii 2

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:33:45 GMT

clipped by: coonhnd
clipper's remarks: Can't wait to see what they come up with

Clip Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

Evolution or revolution? Suspense builds for Wii 2

Nintendo fans rejoice: there may well be a new arrival in the group's family of consoles sooner than you think. Satoru Iwata, president of the Japanese computer games group that has been lauded for its ability to attract new waves of gamers, has admitted that the company is hard at work on a follow-up to the motion-sensing Wii.

Mr Iwata said this week: “The hardware team started work on the next thing as soon as they were done with their previous project, but what they think up doesn't necessarily become a product.”

There is even talk of a mind-controlled console that could take the form of a claw-like unit strapped to the head, which would translate brain activity into movement.

And amid the adulation, some gamers, too, are wondering whether the Wii has reached its limits. Its graphics are perfectly good, but the machine's lack of computing horse-power is evident when its games are compared with those on the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360.

Tags: gaming, wii, technology, tech, wii2, gadgets

One more game has been won

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:50:02 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Go, played by placing stones on a uniform 19x19 grid, does not allow for that kind of shortcut. The strategy that's proved most effective for computer Go is the Monte Carlo method, in which possible moves are assembled in a tree structure, and given statistical weight based on how likely they are to lead to a win."

Clip Source: www.popsci.com

Rise of the Game-Playing Machines

We humans are no longer undefeated in the classic game of Go. Next year: the first computer poet laureate

The game of Go has long been a bastion of human brilliance. While computers have gotten steadily better at playing chess and poker, they've had a harder time wrapping their silicon minds around the elegant Japanese strategy game. That's why it's a big deal that a computer Go player known as MoGo beat a top-ranked human, Myungwan Kim, yesterday.

While the complexity of chess is quite high -- there are an estimated 10¹²³ possible ways a chess game can play out -- the systematic nature of that game is susceptible to the sorts of strategies computers are good at, with libraries of endgames and simple heuristics for eliminating possible but nonsensical plays.

For yesterday's game, the MoGo software ran on a supercomputer with 800 parallel processors

It's starting to seem as though it won't be long before computers can reliably beat human

Tags: computer, games, ai

The Infinite Ocean and more...

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:35:56 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: What is life? What is thought? Is there hope? Is there meaning?
How will it all end?
Free downloads from source

Clip Source: www.jonas-kyratzes.net

I believe that computer games are a form of art; these games represent my attempts to use this unique interactive medium to tell the stories I couldn’t tell otherwise. Which means that my games can seem heavy, experimental, strange, disturbing or “intellectual” (this terminology seems pretty useless, actually) - but hopefully not less fun. If art isn’t interesting or exciting, it’s worthless. Go ahead - just keep an open mind.

The Museum of Broken Memories

The Great Machine - A Vision

The Infinite Ocean

Last Rose in a Desert Garden

Clip Source: www.download.com

Publisher's description of The Infinite Ocean

view larger

From Jonas Kyratzes: The Infinite Ocean is a free adventure game by Jonas Kyratzes. It deals with some profound philosophical ideas and questions; the story is something you must discover for yourself. TIO is a complex game that requires much thought, but it is also very rewarding to play - and quite scary.

See more CNET content tagged:: adventure game

Tags: games, sci-fi, jonas kyratzes

Computer visuses hit one million

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:31:33 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They say it is due to an increasingly professional digital criminal underground. Doesn't that just mean they're making increasing amounts of money? Looks like Vista is as infectious as Windows has ever been. I suppose it pays to become more well versed on the capability, and mechanisms of computer viruses, and watch out for them in addition to relying on antivirus programs.
If my programs have found a virus trojan etc, I can't delete it until I've found out what I can about it. I don't remember having any real trouble since I started using firefox, but I'd be surprised if any could compete with some of the operator errors I've had to fix. It can be hard to fix something when the answer can be found on line, and the computer won't boot.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one million mark.

The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.

The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve months, said Symantec.

Cyber criminals pump out malware to fool anti-virus programs which look for characteristics they have already seen.

Throughout 2007 Symantec detected more than 711,912 novel threats which brings the total number of malicious programs that the security firm's anti-virus programs detect to 1,122,311.

The vast majority of these viruses are aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows

Popular malicious installations include key loggers that spring to life if particular websites are visited or programs, such as online games, are started up.

The report also put the growth in malicious code down to the increasingly professional digital criminal underground.

7 ways to exercise your brain

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:40:34 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: intelligenttravel.typepad.com

Clip Source: detnews.com

Many of us exercise our bodies on a regular basis.

But what about our minds? Exercising our brains can be just as important as exercising our muscles. Here are seven ways to keep your brain in tip-top shape.

1. Exercise your memory.

2. Play games

3. Take up mentally challenging hobbies.

4. Find computer or Internet programs that promise to build brain function.

5. Eat healthy. A balanced diet will help maintain brain health. Some foods linked to mental agility are blueberries, apples, spinach, onions, broccoli, beets, grapes, cherries, tea, eggplant and chocolate

6. Relieve stress. Our brains are also affected by our emotions. Meditation can help relieve stress and can also have a positive effect on the brain.

7. Get physical exercise. New research shows adults who are more physically fit have less brain shrinkage as they age. And listening to music while exercising boosts brain power even more.

Wii Downloads

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:50:22 GMT

clipped by: keepingscore
clipper's remarks: <a href="http://www.downloads-for-wii.com/"> Wii Downloads, Secure Wii downloads</a>

Clip Source: www.downloads-for-wii.com

Wii Downloads Sites Reviews

If you are looking for Wii Downloads you've come to the right place. Usually it's really expensive when you want to buy or download all possible media for your Wii console like music, Games, TV-shows, Movies and so on. Of course you have the ability to get all your Wii downloads from unsecured and illegal P2P networks for free, but many times it ends up in a mess in your computer.

Free Wii downloads is of course what everybody wants, but are you willing to take the risk filling up your computer with adware, spyware and viruses when downloading? If you are, then I suggest you quit reading right here because here we're going to show you how to get secure and high quality Wii Downloads from paid membership sites.

Tags: wii downloads