Computer bests checkers players every time
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Blog: A group of computer scientists say they've managed to crack the "code" of the checkers board game so that a computer program can win or draw against any opponent.
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What high-powered, high-design, graphics-oriented, Unix-based computers are beloved by their fanatical users? Clue: It's not what you think. By Jason Walsh.
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China, computers and algorithms combine in a perfect storm.
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Mahjong Puntenteller is a small and easy but very usefull program which calculates the scores of the old and famous game Mahjong. All you have to do is enter the points and who won the game, and it will automaticle calculate your scores.   Beta II is just finished but has already known bugs. Also there is no English language support yet, so for everyone not from Holland you have to wait a few weeks more or grab a dictionarie
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?
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Anyone desperate for a break from crunching numbers, minding the kids or studying for exams knows how easy it can be to find distraction in the simple brain teasing of computer games like Sudoku, solitaire or mahjong.
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For weeks now, bits and pieces of Valve Software&#39;s &quot;Half-Life 2,&quot; one of the year&#39;s most hotly anticipated computer games, have been trickling onto nearly 2 million computers around the world.
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If you think you spend too much time  stuck in front of a computer screen, spare a thought for bleary  eyed gamer Eric Furrer.
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A computer program is created that can win or draw any game of draughts, scientists say.
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Tens of millions of people play videogames online; the tricky part is finding your friends--and favorite foes--among them. Michael Cassidy can help. His company, Xfire, runs a Web site that is the TV Guide, ma&icirc;tre d' and instant messenger of the gaming world. Cassidy's service can point you to a buddy who is ready to play the game you want at any moment of the day or night. He already has a lot of friends to prove it. In eight months a million people in 100 countries have downloaded Xfire's software.
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Alan Meckler is one of the pioneers of the Net. And he hasn't lost his uncanny sense of timing.
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Nick Halstead is conducting a poll of his own to try to figure out who the online community thinks are the "Top 10 Programmers of All Time".   My original list was based upon my programming background and was purely my own opinion and I did not expect everyone to agree with it. What I thought I would do this time round was to give everyone a chance to voice their opinion. [...] have pre-filled 18 programmers from my original list plus those that were suggested in the comments.   You can vote on a wide range of developers, including several PHP-associated once like Rasmus Lerdorf, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski.
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KPlayer is a KDE media player based on MPlayer. With KPlayer you can easily play a wide variety of video and audio files and streams using a rich and friendly interface that follows KDE standards. The new 0.5.2 version features a brand new user manual, whats-this hints throughout the user interface including configuration dialog and file properties, improved mouse wheel support, several other improvements and bug fixes, and new Hungarian and Polish translations.   KPlayer is licensed under GPL.  KPlayer 0.5.2 is available for download at http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/#downloads  Source tarball http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kplayer/kplayer-0.5.2.tar.bz2  Debian package http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kplayer/kplayer_0.5.2-1_i386.deb  Read me http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/kplayer/kplayer/README?rev=HEAD  Installation http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/kplayer/kplayer/INSTALL?rev=HEAD  Micro-HOWTOs http://sourceforge.net/docman/?group_id=71710  Enjoy!  -- kiriuja
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Computers can beat some of the world's  top chess players, but the most powerful machines have failed  at the popular Asian board game "Go" in which human intuition  has so far proven key.
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Group Test The desktop PC is a truly versatile animal, capable of running both our business and personal lives as well as entertaining us like nothing else since the television entered our world. Whether you want an all-encompassing budget marvel or a high-end gaming beast, there's a system out there to suit you. It's just a question of finding it...â¦
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Gametap puts hundreds of titles at your fingertips and connects you to gamers worldwide. By Chris Kohler from Wired magazine.
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The cat-and-mouse game continues between Microsoft and a group of hackers intent on breaking the copy protection technology on its Windows Media files. This time, an individual has cracked the latest DRM scheme employed by Microsoft.