Vertex Under the Gun
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Vertex announces development plans for its lead drug.
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Tycho:  I uploaded the comic early, as many of you noticed.  I entered the wrong number in the update field.  You may also have noticed that the spelling in these posts has really gone to hell.  So, that's numbers and letters.  I hope to one day discover a set of pictograms with which I can manage some baseline fucking proficiency.
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Tycho:  Our newest comic is available here, regarding the blogger that Nintendo fired recently.  As usual, Gabriel and I disagree absolutely on virtually every point of this discussion, my own perspective favoring greater liberty while he presents a naked defense of fascism.  The two universal axioms we were both able to agree upon were that:
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MySpace, AGs in deal over sex-offender data &gt;&gt; Advertisement &lt;&lt;  ALERT: "How A Hacker Launches A Blind SQL Injection Attack Step-by-Step"!" - White Paper  Blind SQL Injection can deliver total control of your server to a hacker giving them the ability to read, write and manipulate all data stored in your backend systems! Download this *FREE* white paper from SPI Dynamics for a complete guide to protection! https://download.spidynamics.com/1/ad/bsq.asp?Campaign_ID=701600000004c29
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An attack utilizing a vulnerability in an ActiveX control for the popular RealPlayer media program may be spending in a more more dangerous fashion than anyone realized. Exploit code for the vuln has been found embedded in ads served up from a popular advertising site.
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50 Cent is at it again. Preparing to drop his second album, the rap superstar is on the cover of the upcoming XXL magazine with a rifle-like crossbow, taking aim at a range of rap rivals in print and with one of his most incendiary songs yet.
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A video game purports to probe the minds of the Columbine killers. What enlightenment can a shooter game provide? Commentary by Tony Long.
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Submachine gun, check. Semiautomatic pistol, check. Personal digital assistant, check.
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Phisher 'Vladuz' dodges eBay's defenses &gt;&gt; Advertisement &lt;&lt;  ALERT: "How A Hacker Launches A Blind SQL Injection Attack Step-by-Step"!" - White Paper  Blind SQL Injection can deliver total control of your server to a hacker giving them the ability to read, write and manipulate all data stored in your backend systems! Download this *FREE* white paper from SPI Dynamics for a complete guide to protection! https://download.spidynamics.com/1/ad/bsq.asp?Campaign_ID=701600000004c29
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Gabe:  We had our annual Enforcer wrap party on Monday night over at Gameworks. It's a chance for all the Enforcers to get together and relax after the show. It's also a chance for Tycho and I to thank them for all their help. We played a lot of games and heard a ton of great stories. There's so much of the show that Tycho and I miss but the Enforcers see it all and this year they saw some crazy shit.   For example I had no idea that e for all had hired guerrilla marketers to wander the streets in front of PAX with T.V's in their shirts. They were passing out glow sticks and postcards with the e for all logo on them. PAX Enforcers and attendees started a game that involved masking tape and replacing the "for all" with other things the e might stand for.   That's certainly funny but it's not the best story about other exhibitions invading PAX. At one point during the evening a table full of Enforcers told me a tale that was so awesome I just had to pass it along.Late Friday night Amber was called down to the lobby of the convention center to deal with a drunk and belligerent member of the media who was apparently yelling at a couple of our Enforcers. Amber arrived to find the man obviously hammered and harassing our security. She approached him and explained that the show was over (which it wasn't) and that he should just go home and sleep. Upon seeing Amber his behavior changed quite drastically. He stopped arguing with the Enforcers and instead stared hitting on her. He bragged that he'd been out all night drinking with Incubus. Then he suggested the two of them go see a movie, get some drinks and "see where it goes." I think we all know where it goes. Sloppy drunks twice her age really aren't Amber's type so she politely declined the offer while still trying to move him towards the door. He leaned in at this point and said "this Penny Arcade shit is weak!" and then asked her if she wanted to know a secret. He said it would "impress her" and with that he produced his business card.  He pointed at it and slurred "this is where it's at baby."Now we'd seen this guy all weekend taking photos of our game rooms and exhibition hall. Since he was pretending to be media he also interviewed all our Enforcers about how the show was organized and managed. A few of our Exhibitors even complained that he was in the exhibition hall trying to sell them on his convention. Amber took the card and asked him to find her the next day after he had sobered up. She had every right to pull his badge right then but was a little worried about how he might react. The next morning she happened to meet up with him on the escalators in the main hall. "Hey I remember you" he said, "but I don't remember your name." "I'm Amber the event coordinator for PAX and I need you to give me your badge." she replied.He looked around at the group of colleagues around him and laughed. I guess he thought she was joking. Security arrived and she pressed him again for his badge. He tried to apologize for hitting on her but she informed him that while that was certainly inappropriate it was the drunken tirade that we didn't appreciate at PAX. He reluctantly handed over his badge and was escorted out by a group of Enforcers. I was told this story by a dozen or so other Enforcers who witnessed or took part in the event. When they gave me Ed's business card as physical proof of their encounter I couldn't believe it. I was already laughing when I turned the card over and noticed the back.   -Gabe out
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DAYTON  --  Researchers at the University of Dayton are taking aim with a triple-barreled gun, one they're calling the fastest light-gas gun in the world, hoping their target practice can help ensure better safety for space shuttle missions.
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Tycho:  Having played collectible card games since the original printing of Magic - taking my dishwasher's tips across the street to Dragon Tails to secure boosters for the coveted Arabian Nights - seeing Gabriel take up the pastime has warmed (but not thawed) my black heart.  It's always a portion of myself I've bridled in his presence, kept hidden, suppressed may be the word.  To have him take it up so freely makes me wonder which perversion of mine he'll take up next.    When he started talking about his "Firestarter" deck, whose dancing fires were stoked by a mysterious device known as "The Holon Engine," I began to worry.  The dangers of Netdecking are fairly substantial when it comes to friendly play, a corrosive force that turns friendly pick-up games into ostentatious displays of wealth on par with rap videos.  If you're playing in a competitive venue, building on prior art and making loads of precision purchases is probably your only recourse.  But if you're just playing at lunch, let me be clear:  you are consorting with devils.    I took time over the weekend to hit the level cap in Call of Duty 4, and then just to be sure that I understood what was going on I played for several more hours.  I'm not the most skilled player you will encounter, with a roughly equal number of kills and deaths, but I prefer to think of my work in an assassinative context - the removal of key players at key moments.  Please let me have this.  In the absence of the game's deeply integrated progression scheme, Infinity Ward would merely have created one of the best shooters available today.  It would have staunch proponents, and they would be right to praise it.  Is there a substance within cream that can rise to the top of itself?  This substance has been discovered.  As a distillation of the Infantry FPS, this is right down to it.  This is brutal, unrepentant, bathtub fucking hooch.  It is tight and smooth, it is lethal.  Unrelenting in its intensity, your first rounds - indeed, your first few levels - will be spent without the succor of CoD4's rich rewards for continued play.  But you'll see them on the killcam, every time you go down:  this one has increased health, of course that would help.  This one does more damage.  This one, after he's killed, pulls his sidearm and takes a few final shots.  This one's shots retain more of their damage after they pass through a wall.        You earn these for leveling up, with the experience you gain for every kill, for every round.  You also earn experience for Challenges, which are (collectively) "awesome things that you did."  I completed X-Ray challenges last night for killing people behind walls, which dished up bonus XP - this is displayed with exultant audio and video cues at the very moment of success.  Killing while crouched, killing while prone, taking down an enemy helicopter, this is all gravy.  There are challenges specific to your weapon, as well:  for kills and headshots with that firearm, you travel down an upgrade path unique to that weapon that reveals sights, camouflage patterns, and other tools to customize your equipment.    Watching videos of multiplayer play online, you'll get the impression that it looks better than it does.  It looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not completely photorealistic.  What it does have is an extremely reliable framerate and excellent level design, so that during the experience of play these fantastic visuals are transmuted into something sublime.  Here's what I mean:  if a friend is over, and they are watching you play, they'll be able to detect flaws here and there.  Level geometry isn't especially fanciful, and blown paper or leaves look a little strange.  But for the player, movement is just right, player models are just right, and the environments are right so that moment to moment everything gels.      As I said on Friday, to bring this thing into the house of Halo is pretty ballsy - but it'll carve out its proper due.  On the Playstation 3, what force could stand against it?  I have a high opinion of Haze, but I've never played it - that's based mostly on my gut.  Call of Duty 4 will fall hard on that system, like shrieking artillery.
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Logitech International unveils the world's first computer mouse to use a sensor based on a laser. Also: Nintendo slashes some prices & hellip;. Sales of Boston Scientific's new heart stent dip & hellip;. and more.
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Tycho:  It's floating around now, out there on the Wub, and it calls to you.  Or maybe it does, I don't actually know.  In any case, it can be got from 3D Downloads, the Fileplanets, GamersHell, or WorthDownloading.  Download it from mulltiple sites simultaneously for a naughty thrill.  God only knows how this would run on my Vista rig at home, but it's a Vista rig, so you can probably guess.  (CW)TB
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Game animator I-Wei Huang is getting rave reviews for his steam-powered robots. How does he hack RC kits with steam engines? And will he ever make a rideable robot? By Griffin Wright.
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Tycho:  In case you are wondering, cats apparently need regular maintenance, like cars.  And, like an oil change, this juicing process can be done (I'm told) at home, preferably with the curtains drawn and a couple inches of sawdust laid down.  That's right: you can wring out your own cat's asshole.  This is the kind of helpful information you can expect when you visit Penny Arcade.  Don't everybody run home at once.    I've been playing a lot of Prism on the DS, even though the Zelda cartridge seems to squeal as I remove it.  I understand there's some kind of Ghost Ship?  I forget all of my cares, and also the cares of Princess Zelda, once those beams begin to refract.    They've ginned up some ridonculous crap about light eating space monsters to support their gameplay, which is very solid, and requires no extraterrestrial photophiles.  It's a puzzle game.  When I put pieces of a puzzle together, I never think about how alone each piece must feel, longing only to congregate with similarly knobbed partial images.  So, discard that.  Discard also the truly nasty presentation, no doubt a result of hard time done in already the Mobile and PC Casual markets.  Part these imperfections like tall savannah grass, and gaze into the game's rich core:  the creation of sometimes very complex circuits.     Inside each puzzle grid, the player is given some combination of Light Emitting Entities, Reflective Mirrors, Splitters, or Prisms.  You must jigger the aforementioned until light of the correct colors is distributed to targets around the edge of the field.  That's it, and the fun comes from how complicated this process can become.  There are quite a few cooperative puzzles as well - where each player has access to half the grid, and they must work together to route everything.  If you try this mode - and I request that you do so, as you only need one (1) cartridge and a willing accomplice - I recommend that you each turn your DS sideways, so that the UI is along the bottom.  That will make it so that "left" and "right" and "up" and "down" all mean the same thing to each of you.  Trust me, you want this.  The game is hard enough without the horror of fully relative terms.    Prism actually taught me something fairly significant about why I play games, and I think it's because the gameplay is so clean and the presentation so spartan that I could pick up on it.  I like games that generate communication.  This is why team-based shooters, roleplaying games, and tactical games are my delight - every one of these entails a suite of custom language to describe it, they require constant dialogue, and, most importantly, all other things being equal these games can be won by the efficient use of language.  Working out puzzles together in Prism has a strong logic component, but in large part the challenge was communicating ethereal notions succinctly.    I suppose this is also why I torment you here, thrice weekly: even when playing a game by myself, I am harvesting the experience so that it may be reconstituted here.  So, thank you for reading.  You dignify my leisure hours.          The Playstation 3 in the office has been more than acceptable for playing the sometimes short, often bad games that have arrived on it - but this holiday, with the titles to prove out the claim, I had to "get mine" in the bawdy parlance of the young.  What tipped my hand wasn't the four hundred dollar system on offer, rather, it was the three hundred and seventy nine dollar model.  These are probably mostly a mail order proposition, but any of those rare twenty gig models the platform launched with got bumped down by the new price.  It's inexpensive by PS3 standards, but it's positively cheap for a Blu-Ray device.  Now fully franchised, flexing all the rich benefits of Sony citizenship, you may expect me to be even more brutal in my critique.
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The Simple Object-Oriented Game Library is basically a simplification of SDL with some nifty features. SOOGL is used in a C++ course at MÃÂ¤lardalen University (http://www.mdh.se) and is mainly intended for beginners.   SOOGL is a small, simple and yet powerful C++ game library intended for beginners.     This is the fourth release by the SOOGL team.  Major changes since last version is that we have disabled debug of C-Runtime, since newbies seldom does this anyway. Some other minor bug-fixes have also been included.   Currently vista and visual studio9 is primary target. But we are currently testing XP and VS8. Linux support is yet to come, but if you have some experience, you can build the library from the source code.   Have fun and play around with the improved and more stable version of this funny library.  Just go on and download the library: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=165806