Scientists developing "Stupid Filter"

lol stup1d f1lt3r

But in all seriousness from the article:

http://www.tfot.info/news/1065/stupidfilter-time-to-fight-back-the-imbeciles.html

"A team of American scientists are developing the “StupidFilter” – an open-source filter software that will be able to detect “rampant stupidity” of web-content in written English. Similarly to the way spam recognizing software detects suspicious e-mails, the “StupidFilter” will look for pre-fed words or sign combinations that characterize stupidity, assigning particular tokens with different weights based on how often they occur in hand-picked examples of idiotic comments. The developers are using weighted Bayesian analysis along with some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines, in order to efficiently distinguish unacceptable messages among the submitted texts."

This could be an interesting solution to filtering out spam and just plain dumb comments that seem every so prevalent in many sites today (I'm looking at you youtube) If a post is deeped, well stupid by the stupid filter the user will recieve a message telling them they must rephrase thei post before they can post it. If done right this could be a good solution but there are many things that could go wrong with it (False-Positives and detecting things that are perfectly intelligent) but the team is working to differentiate between things like intentional spelling mistakes for emphasis and just plan spam posts.

lawl.

Sebastian Bach - Angel Down

I picked up Angel Down from Sebastian Bach (Former Lead Singer of Skid Row) after hearing a lot of good things about it. This is a great all around album with some diverse songs, from kickass thrashers to Ballads. This album is sort of like a fusion of Skid Row's Slave To The Grind and Subhuman Race, Slave to the grind had some incredibly catchy hard rockers and Subhuman,an Race had an edgier Heavy Metal Feel.

The first song on the album Angel Down has an ominous intro and then burst into a heavy thrash metal song with Bach screeching the vocals, his voice is definitely as great as it was in skid row and he remains one of the best Heavy Metal Singers of all time.

This album also has some surprises, contributing vocals to the three songs in the album is Axl Rose, making his first performance in ages, which has built up alot of hype for the album. He first appears in Back in the Saddle which is an awesome cover of the Aerosmith song, Rose and Bachs vocals go perfectly together and this metal cover of back in the saddle kicks ass. (Love is) a bitchslap also features Rose on the vocals, and the songs blunt name is reminiscent of the old G N' R days, it's a hard rocker with Axl and Bach wailing over heavy guitar. Some other notable songs are You don't Understand which has a retro seventies feel and American Metalhead is just an all out metal thrash. Overall I think this is one of the greatest modern Rock/Metal albums I have heard in a long time, the songs are varied and very well done.

MPAA hit with copyright takedown notice? Oh the irony

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently released a software toolkit made to help universities detect potential illegal file-sharing on school networks. The toolkit is based on the increasingly popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and includes custom traffic monitoring software created by the MPAA. The toolkit was available from a website put up by the MPAA, the software was removed last night after they received a request from the Ubuntu Technical Board to take it down due to GPL violations.
To make clear what the GPL license is it's official definition states "The GPL is an open-source software license that broadly permits modification and redistribution of software but requires distributors to make the source code available to third parties and publish their changes. Licenses like the GPL, which require distributors to make source code available, are referred to as copyleft licenses."
The MPAA consistently tries to get harder penalties for copyright infringement passed through congress, and it seems like they themselves fail to respect copyright laws.
























Picture: http://www.steveball.com/words/archive/2002/2002-09-01.htm

Windows Vista "Kill Switch" Removed

With the release of the new Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft has even further tightened it's Anti Piracy measures, to what in my opinion is getting completely ridiculous. This "Kill Switch" will activate when windows detects a pirated copy of windows, basically what happens is you're screen goes black and a small window comes up informing you that you are running a pirated copy of windows, whether you actually are or not. This is the problem, Windows Anti-Piracy measure (Windows Genuine Advantage, sounds nice doesn't it?) has been reported many times to deactivate perfectly legal copies of windows. This is a huge problem when users who have bought the operating system are being treated as pirates.I think this is a good step in the right direction because I think legal users don't deserve to be treated as criminals. Microsoft describes this change as a "Change of Tactics". The change will take effect with the release of Vista Service Pack 1.
Vista being deactivated

















Users Being Pissed
















http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7126902.stm
BBC aticle on the matter

Images:
www.pcdoctor-guide.com/
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://lh3.google.com/_3kdhAIJFUQA/RapoP445qGI/AAAAAAAAANk/YgTlkopSJJI/s800/DSC02009.JPG&imgrefurl=http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/aR-a_5T1Fy41Su76N8DgyA&h=600&w=800&sz=87&hl=en&start=8&sig2=cjhzCTwWud22vq5bjdwJlA&um=1&tbnid=NMHmvoi1wOmbMM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&eid=WplVR8ruGJeCeLnwuboO&prev=

Call of Duty 4: A great game, or the greatest game?

Call of Duty finally moves away from the old overdone WWII setting and moves into Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 4 does this with flying colors. This is definately one of the best games I have played in a long time.

The single player campaign is just great, the action is very intense and the variety of levels is amazing, each and every level is large and very well designed. They range from levels expansive desert maps to insane firefights inside a boat. The story is told from two perspectives, an S.A.S. officer and an American Marine and their stories eventually come together, the story is very well done and draws you in. You basically have to save the world from impending Nuclear doom; I know, Fun right? There story in COD4 just has many, many completely jaw-dropping moments that really draw you in and it has an incredibly realistic cinematic feel to it. The story was so well done, but one major caveat is it is ridiculously short compared to most games of the type and leaves you wanting more, and experienced gamer should cruise through single player in no time, but this game definitely has lasting power with it's multiplayer.

The multiplayer in COD4 is just friggin' awesome, intense action and a variety of game modes. There is just so much to like about it. The ranking system in multiplayer is great, after a couple ranks which you should rise through very quickly you gain the ability to make you own class instead of just using the predisigned classes and weapon kits, this is a great ad on to the multiplayer, you can customize what weapons you use and make it fit your needs, you can also customize the scope and color of your guns. You also get three "perks" these are special abilities that allow you to run faster, have more grenades and other special abilities. You unlock more weapons and abilities as you go up the ranks. The variery of game modes online is also great, you get good old school TDM, to Search and Destroy which is reminiscent of counterstrike (Plant bomb, no respawns) to Domination, my personal favorite where you have to capture and hold flags. Some other cool things are the rewards you can get for killsteaks in game, after three kills you can call a radar scan exposing enemy positions and after more you can also call in choppers and air strikes. The Multiplayer on this gives the game real value and longevity.

Visuals/Performance
The computer I run this on is dated but runs the game without any problems never a single hitch or slowdown, this game is designed very well unlike well... cough fear cough.

Specs:
AMD X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz
4 GB DDR800 RAM
aTi x1950PRO 512 MB

Settings are on max with 4x aa, this game looks really good and performs great even on the minumum required hardware. The game is very realistic the character movement, fluid animations and realistic camerashake area all really well done, in intense firefights you can see and hear the bullets ripping around you, and explosions rock the camera. Overall this is a great game with an intense but short single player and great lasting multiplayer.
















New Screenshots
Pictures Copyright: Me