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Blood Pact: WoL, 'locks, and damage done
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wants to coin WoL'lock, but isn't sure if she should. Last week, I started off with some basics of World of Logs (WoL) regarding warlocks. I started to write a column to go spec by spec, but later I realized that might become a game of find and replace with the different buffs or DoTs important to each spec. So instead, this week is another general World of Logs lesson with a little more specific caster DPS focus with warlock flavor. We'll just build up to the nitty gritty spells next week.
EVE Online gives a report card to Retribution ships
"The introduction of new ships always sparks considerable initial interest and Retribution was no exception in that regard," CCP Recurve wrote in a new EVE Online dev post today. "Hundreds of billions were spent on blueprints and manufactured ships." The article analyzes the popularity between the five new ships (one mining frigate and four destroyers), noting that the Algos and Corax have proven to be more desirable in PvP. The Venture both sold more blueprints and was destroyed more than the others since the expansion launched, although the mining frigate did account for a sharp uptick in harvested gas overall. If breaking down stats and crunching all sorts of interstellar numbers are your thing, then check out the post for the nitty-gritty details on these ships' performances.
How accurate are your favorite video game analysts?
Man, being a video game analyst must be a sweet job. You can put out all sorts of crazy predictions and no one will ever call you on it if you end up being wrong, right? Well, yes, right, until today, because today Kotaku has completed a massive project to rank the truthiness of predictions from some of the most prominent video game industry analysts out there.The results show that even the best prognosticators out there aren't all that infallible -- Michael Pachter, Jeetil Patel and Mitshuhiro Osawa all top out the scale at 60% correct. That might not sound so good, but it looks absolutely glowing when compared to Billy Pidgeon's dismal 10% truthfulness rating (with 20% still to be determined). Want to avoid his ignominious fate? Just be like Piers Harding-Rolls and predict stuff so far into the future no one can tell how accurate your calls are until you've moved on to used car sales or something.The full piece takes an interesting look behind the scenes in analyst-land and provides some good reasons to be cautious of all those stories with headlines that start with "Analyst predicts ..." Do yourself a favor, take a few minutes and give it a read.
Honeywell seeks to use brainwaves to more quickly analyze intelligence data
In a scenario that could have been ripped straight from the pages of Chuck, Honeywell is apparently hoping to monitor analysts' brains in order to more hastily break down intelligence data. The project, which is being supported by DARPA, seeks to key in on electrical activity in the brain in order to flag images as potentially interesting / useful before the human can actually determine what's what. Head mounted sensors would be used to "detect brain signals associated with the recognition of targets analysts are looking for," and the goal would be to increase productivity and help military / intelligence agencies analyze imagery more effectively. Of course, we've no idea how the system will differentiate between a legitimate signal and one triggered by the rumbling of one's belly, but we're sure Honeywell is all over it. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
WVU's Punchstat system intelligently halts boxing matches
The state of West Virginia seems to be on the "get fit" warpath, as not only did the public school system decide to expand and renew the Dance Dance Revolution program to get youngsters a-movin', but now WVU has developed a system that allows boxers to give it a go without, um, perishing. The Punchstat analysis system is a ringside computerized tool that is being honed to provide a realistic and objective method of determining when a boxing match should be halted. Researchers in Morgantown have performed a "computer-assisted video analysis" to compare a trio of professional matches where one of them led to a fighter's death; these results were further compared with over 4,000 other bouts previously scored with Punchstat, and it was stated that a "significant differences" were seen in fights that led to death. Most notably, fighters that died due to boxing faced around 23 punches per round (compared to the average of 9.4), and more "power punches" were withstood as well. But before scientists can accurately implement a "danger meter" of sorts into pay-per-view matchups, some critics insinuate that factors such as "fighter strength and the effects of the punches that connect" need to be considered before it can be entirely reliable, and it's even suggested that a tried and true accelerometer be installed on a fighter to calculate the force of a blow. Still, we're down with beating someone to a pulp for sport if everyone leaves without a life-threatening injury, but we'll probably take the pansy's way out and stick with Wii Boxing to carve our calories.[Via Physorg]
Windows Vista SuperFetch / ReadyBoost analyzed
While we're certain that you out there eager to get Vista up and running effectively on your new (or old) PC have already perused our Upgrade Guides with care, but if you're still curious about this newfangled caching approach used in SuperFetch / ReadyBoost, Tom's Hardware has you covered. Doing a bit of analysis on Vista's ability to use excess memory (and USB 2.0 flash drives in particular) to speed up the launching of your favorite applications, the gurus at Tom's found more useful than gimmicky. They noticed that SuperFetch indeed took care of buffering applications proactively, and although it kept nearly all of the system RAM occupied at all times, their favorite applications did indeed launch faster after a short "learning period." Furthermore, the crew found ReadyBoost equally impressive and infinitely useful, and while using both features in conjunction, opening applications such as OpenOffice and Outlook 2007 took around half the time as it would normally when using 512MB of memory, and while systems packing 2GB of RAM or more didn't notice nearly the same speed increases as those attempting to get along with half a gigabyte, they still felt it worthwhile to shove your spare flash drive into your PC when not using it for other tasks. Overall, it seems that benefits will (unsurprisingly) vary by system, but if you're interested in just how many nanoseconds these two features could save you, be sure to hit the read link for all the geeked-out bar charts that only the hardcore could love.[Via Engadget Chinese]
