Costly Errors Search Results

How To: Make Torus Knots from Soft Metals

Torus knots are beautiful knots formed by wrapping a line around a torus and tying the ends together to form a loop. The resulting knot has a star-like appearance when viewed from above. The 36 examples with the least number of crossings can be seen at the Knot Atlas's page on torus knots.

News: 10 Peculiar Game Rules for Competitive Scrabble Tournaments

The 2011 Toronto International Scrabble Open (TOSI) took place last weekend, with former World Champion Adam Logan beating out all of the human competition for the $3,000 grand prize. But when it came time to take on the Quackle program in the Human vs. Computer Showdown, he lost his first two games and won the last two, ultimately losing with a measly 28-point differential of the combined total scores. But he still came out three grand happier.

News: Is the Metascore Algorithm for Rating Video Games B.S.?

Guiding internet users to useful content is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. This process is called aggregation. Google and other search engines form the top of the food chain, aggregating all of the content on the web in response to queries. There are all sorts of other important aggregators though, and you probably use at least one every day: Fark and Reddit for web content, Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews, and Metacritic for a variety of media, but most importantly, vid...

News: Millenium Challenge

In 2000, the U.S. Joint Command Forces, a sort of think tank within the military, began planning a war game named Millennium Challenge. The scenario of the game was as follows: a rogue military commander had broken away from his government somewhere in the Persian Gulf and was threatening to engulf the entire region in war. He had a considerable power base from strong religious and ethnic loyalties, and he was harboring and sponsoring four different terrorist organizations. He was virulently ...

How To: Get Rid of Even the Most Extreme Malware and Spyware on Your Grandma's PC

You're sitting in front of your grandmother's Windows XP machine that has the worst infection you've ever seen. Safe mode? No dice. Restore points? They're compromised. Even worse, all of the files are hidden and none of the executables will run! This leaves her computer in a bricked state. Without some serious CPR, it will be lost to you. Sure, you could just reinstall the system, but then you might lose all of that valuable data.

Hacker Fundamentals: A Gentle Introduction to How IP Addresses Work

Imagine you're in Paris and you need to get to Versailles. Looking around for directions, you come to a cold realization—you do not speak a lick of French! How are you going to get to Versailles and what happens if there is a detour? It will be a difficult struggle, and you'd probably get lost and eventually fail. This is why it's important to know some of the country's language before taking that trip in the first place.

How To: Detect Facebook Spam

Spam is everywhere and Facebook is no exception. In fact, spammers are constantly stepping up their game by tricking unsuspecting Facebook users to participate in quizzes, games, apps, or "new features" that are actually dangerous computer viruses, spyware, or other trojan horses in disguise. Their attempts even trick people into unknowingly becoming spammers themselves.

News: Final Fantasy 14 Final Thoughts

Spending five days with the game is enough to know it's not to my liking. Is it a horrible MMO? Yes, yes it is. There are better Free to Play MMOs launched years ago that are better than this. As a fan of the Final Fantasy series (I am currently playing and liking Final Fantasy 13), this MMO is so bad that at some point I couldn't justify the awful environment, game play, and interface.

News: Do the Do!

We are embarking upon a new year. As usual, some of us will make "resolutions." There isn't anything wrong with setting goals for the year. It's actually a good idea. It may help focus the energy we bring to life.

How To: Carve Fractals and Stars on Pumpkins

Fractals and stars are two of the most beautiful and complicated-looking classes of geometric objects out there. We're going to explore these objects and how to carve them on a pumpkin. Unlike the last one on carving polyhedral pumpkins, where we used the entire pumpkin to carve a 3 dimensional shape, the pumkin carving in this post will involve two-dimensional images on a small part of the pumpkin's surface.

News: SCRABBLE Is Everywhere... Movies, Books & Other Media

In our media-enriched world, past and present, SCRABBLE has made a name for itself, whether deliberately, subconsciously, or influentially. You may have a read a book that had the popular word game within a chapter, watched a movie that showed your favorite characters bringing out the SCRABBLE board, or even listened to a rap about this word or that word. SCRABBLE is everywhere, even if you don't realize it.

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