In covering Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time (requires registration), a New York Times story on serious games, the folks at seriousgamessource.com used a screenshot from Food Force to illustrate the story.
From Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor in The New York Times:
Mr. Nagle, a former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., was paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he had not been involved in starting the brawl and did not even know what had sparked it. The man who stabbed him is now serving 10 years in prison, he said.
Implants like the one he received had previously worked in monkeys. There have also been some tests of a simpler sensor implant in people, as well as systems using electrodes outside the scalp. And Mr. Nagle has talked before about his experience.
But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an experiment in people with a more sophisticated implant, able to monitor many more brain neurons than earlier devices. The paper helps “shift the notion of such ‘implantable neuromotor prosthetics’ from science fiction towards reality,” Stephen H. Scott, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen’s University in Ontario, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
The sensor measures 4 millimeters by 4 millimeters — less than a fifth of an inch long and wide — and contains 100 tiny electrodes. The device was implanted in the area of Mr. Nagle’s motor cortex responsible for arm movement and was connected to a pedestal that protruded from the top of his skull.
When the device was to be used, technicians plugged a cable connected to a computer into the pedestal. So Mr. Nagle was directly wired to a computer, somewhat like a character in the “Matrix” movies.
A motorino is far and away the best method of getting around town in Rome. Now Piaggio, the company that built the first scooter back in 1946, has introduced an innovative new mdoel: the MP3 with twin front wheels. The main advantage seems to be that it brakes better than regular 2-wheelers.
pMachine, the company that produces the ExpressionEngine web publishing system, has posted an interview about Deepend’s building of the Boeing Italia website.
AppleInsider reports on an analysis concludes that “the average difference in price for comparable components on a desktop is only 13 percent lower for a Windows PC, while for notebooks the price difference is a mere 10 percent.”
In The Web 2.0 Big Font Controversy, big-fonter (and ExpressionEngine user) Max Kiesler notes that “the current most popular resolution is 1024×768 with 57.38% of users”, so that “if the most popular font size was 12 point in 2000, then the current best size would be at least 14 point if not 1 em or 16 point.”
From Frank Lloyd Wright to Steve Jobs, LukeW has compiled choice design quotes. Here’s one by the latter: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
It’s almost a decade old, but Tom Peters’ essay on The Brand Called You applies more than ever. ” Anyone can have a Web site. And today, because anyone can … anyone does! So how do you know which sites are worth visiting, which sites to bookmark, which sites are worth going to more than once? The answer: branding.”
Anyone NOT convinced that gaming is a seious business, read on…
Gamers can use the card at cash machines around the world to convert virtual dollars into real currency. The card is offered by the developers of Project Entropia, an online role-playing game that has a real world cash economy. Last year, a virtual space resort being built in the game was snapped up by a gamer for $100,000 (£56,200).
Time to give up the day job?
