Gaming May Not Release Violent Emotions

An interesting study published in the journal Emotion goes against most research dealing with gaming.  According to this paper, if you kill your opponents in a game, you are likely to feel badly — not exultant.  If you are killed yourself, you are likely to feel a sense of pleasure.

The scientist has a couple of possible explanations.  If you kill someone, even within a game, your sense of morality may kick in, leading you to believe that it was wrong and you may feel distressed.  By being killed yourself, you remove yourself from the very intense game for a few seconds, allowing your system to relax.

There were only 36 gamers in the study.  Although the results are provocative, further study will be needed to verify these results.

[from Wired]

Acid3 Test

Update 4/13/08:

Apparently, there is more to the Acid3 Test than just displaying the graphic below correctly.  There are actually three parts to this test.  Both WebKit and Opera have passed two of the three tests at this point.  Thanks for the clarification, Lars!

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The Web Standards Project is always trying to focus those developing and manufacturing for the web to be aware and to implement web standards. The Acid2 Test was for browsers. If your browser could display the smiley face correctly, then you had implemented those standards correctly.

In March, they released the Acid3 Test, which of course, raises the bar even further. Acid3 includes 100 tests that include primarily testing the DOM, ECMAScript, and CSS properties and selectors.

Here is what the result of the test should look like:

Here is what Firefox 2.0.0.13 did to it:

Here is what Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11 did to it:

As you can see, these two major browsers have a ways to go. So far, two browsers have passed the test — WebKit , an open source web browser, and Opera.

[from Slashdot]

Help with Newly Found Documents on Kennedy Assassination

The Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watson found some previously unknown documents related to the Kennedy assassination in his office.  They were originally compiled by Henry Wade, the district attorney at the time of the assassination, but were not made public.

Watson has scanned these documents and the Dallas Morning News has made them public.  In addition, he’s asking for help in going through them.  Feel free to read them and, if you find something that might be historically valuable, there is a forum for discussion.

Here’s your chance to be among the first to look through these documents.  See if there is anything important.

[from ResearchBuzz]

TV on Your Computer

It’s coming! In other countries, television programs and videos are already streamed to cell phones. However, here in the United States, it’s a little different.

NBC Universal and News Corp. have banded together to provide Hulu, a free Internet service which provides television shows and movies over the web. Some of their partners include Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, MGM, the NBA, Lionsgate, FX, E! Entertainment, Bravo, National Geographic, and USA Networks. Be aware that the service is free, but it is ad-supported. So, expect commercials!

The interface is very nice! Go to the home page and choose something . . . anything! I chose Ice Age. Here are your basic options:

• Embed - provides you with the HTML to embed this video into your website or blog (although I couldn’t get it to work with WordPress)
• Email — provides you with a URL that goes directly to your video that you can send via email
• Share — options to post this video to one of your social networking profiles
• Details — basic information about the video
• Full Screen — <esc> takes you back to the original mode
• Pop Out — loads video into a new window
• Lower Lights — the screen is divided horizontally into three rows with the video in the middle; this option will dim the top and bottom rows. My favorite option!
• Hi-Res — loads the high resolution video

Enjoy!

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

Microsoft is allowing developers to download the first beta of Internet Explorer version 8. They are asking the rest of us to wait until at least the second beta. However, some of the changes they’ve made should be helpful:

• URLs in the Address Bar will now have the owning domain name highlighted. For example, you might see:
  http://www.amigos.org/?q=conferences/spr08
  The bolding of the owning domain name should allow you to more readily see which server you are dealing with — especially when it comes to phishing scams.
• It will delete extra carriage returns and spaces in URLs. For example, when you receive email messages, sometimes the URLs are wrapped. When you copy the URL into the Address Bar, you usually don’t get the whole thing — you should with IE 8.
• “Emulate as IE7″ button will allow you to see a website as IE7 would have. As IE8 should be much more standards compliant by default, this may help in looking at websites that were written to Microsoft’s standards instead of the web’s standards.
• The default rendering will be standards-compliant; in order to see a page as IE7 does, you can add a meta element to those web pages.

[from IE Blog]
[from IE Blog]
[from IE Blog]

Music from Windows 98 and XP

I’m always surprised at the creativity of others.  In this case, someone took the sounds from the Windows 98 and XP operating systems and made music!  Don’t believe me?  Try it!

[from CNET News.com]

“In Plain English” Videos

If you’ve seen one of the “In Plain English” videos created by Common Craft, you’ll remember it. Using basic tools like paper, scissors, drawings and a creative mind, they create videos that explain complex ideas.

If you’re wondering what these topics are and have a few minutes to spare, you will be rewarded:

• Twitter
• Online Photo Sharing
• Blogs
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Networking
• Wikis
• RSS

They’ve also got videos on the new CFL light bulbs and how to recognize a zombie!

Can I End These Processes?

If you’ve ever used the Ctrl-Alt-Del command, you’ve probably seen the Windows Task Manager and most likely the tab for open applications.  If you click on the second tab, Processes, you’ll see a number of programs that are currently available and may be working.  Ever wonder what these were and if you should/could end some of them?

ProcessLibrary.com gives you just this type of information.  For example, I’ve always wondered what csrss.exe was.  Using this service, I found that it is a main executable for the Windows Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem.  It’s important for stability and security of the program — definitely do not want to end this process!

I know there are other programs that do this, but this is the first I’ve used.  If you know of others, I’d be interested!

reCAPTCHAs

I heard a very interesting podcast interviewing Luis von Ahn, one of the inventors of the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). These are the images of distorted letters you have to type. They let the service know that you are a real person and not a program.

von Ahn has now created the reCAPTCHA. Instead of using random letters, he is using parts of scanned materials that need to be digitized. Ultimately, solving a CAPTCHA also helps digitize a book!

So, how do you know you typed the correct letters if the system hasn’t already decoded it? You are given two words to decode — one is new and one has been decoded by several other people. If you decode the second one correctly (as the others before you did), then there is higher confidence that you decoded the first one right. The new word is sent to multiple people; when there is agreement, then it is assumed the word has been correctly decoded.

So, remember — if you’re frustrated with those CAPTCHAs — you may be performing a public service by digitizing part of a book!

Implementing Google’s Books Into Catalog

Google has introduced a set of protocols, Google Book Search API, that allow libraries’ automation systems to include Google’s scanned books into patron searches. Basically, if a library owns a title, they can provide a link to the full-text or to the preview, depending on its copyright restrictions. The University of Texas at Austin has implemented it; you can see an example below — see the “Google Book Search” icon.

[from The Chronicle of Higher Education]