Challenge accepted Dwarf Fortress pros show Ars up with insane 10-hour forts  Ars Technica
I know we have some Dwarf Fortress people here.

Possible security disasters loom with rollout of new top-level domains  Ars Technica

DC Member and prodigious coder Skwire has released a new tool:

Title	sStockQuote
Description	A simple stock quote application with CSV export.
Supported OS	Windows XP or later
Website:	http://skwire.dcmembers.com/fp/?page=sstockquote
History	Changelog
Download	sStockQuote.zip
PAD file	pad.xml

I understand how terribly hard it is to track down and deter/punish the individuals that post spam comments to forums and send spam emails.

That seems like an impossible task.

But what continues to bewilder me is why there don't seem to be any mechanisms for shaming/punishing/reporting/deterring the COMPANIES that spammers promote?

We get dozens of spam posts and profiles changes every day that are deleted from the DonationCoder.com forum before anyone seems them.  All of these spam posts are promoting a given store or product.. Why on earth is there not someplace for forum/blog admins to report these companies that could impose some penalty that would stop them from hiring or incentivizing these spammers.

The commercial spam ecosystem is very clear -- the companies are paying the spammers to do this stuff -- or paying middle men that they know hire spammers.  We can't stop the individual spammers but de-incentivizing the companies seems trivial -- google could put them out of business in 10 seconds if they wanted to..

Every time i see some story about some stupid new google pr stunt i wonder.. hey wouldn't it be cool if every once in a while they devoted some energy to shoveling off a layer or two of the advertising spam that the internet is drowning in?

DC member IainB writes:

Wow.
For a while now I have been playing with Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope, but I had not realised that it might lead to this "GeoFlow" exercise.
You can follow this up on the Excel blog, and you can get a download of the app via that route also.

Here's the post on the Excel blog which gives the background to the preview of this development. This looks like a bit of a statistician's "dream modelling tool" for presentation of data.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Public preview of project codename “GeoFlow” for Excel delivers 3D data visualization and storytelling
by Ari Schorr
on April 11

Today we are announcing the availability of the project codename "GeoFlow" Preview for Excel 2013, a result of collaborations between several teams within Microsoft. GeoFlow lets you plot geographic and temporal data visually, analyze that data in 3D, and create interactive "tours" to share with others.

GeoFlow originated in Microsoft Research, evolving out of the successful WorldWide Telescope project for scientific and academic communities to explore large volumes of astronomical and geological data. Researchers collaborated closely with the Office product team to usher GeoFlow from its research lab inception to this public preview availability in Excel. GeoFlow adds to the existing self-service Business Intelligence capabilities in Excel 2013, such as Microsoft Data Explorer Preview and Power View, to help discover and visualize large amounts of data, from Twitter traffic to sales performance to population data in cities around the world.

With GeoFlow, you can:

• Map Data: Plot more than one million rows of data from an Excel workbook, including the Excel Data Model or PowerPivot, in 3D on Bing maps. Choose from columns, heat maps, and bubble visualizations.
• Discover Insights: Discover new insights by seeing your data in geographic space and seeing time-stamped data change over time. Annotate or compare data in a few clicks.
• Share Stories: Capture "scenes" and build cinematic, guided "tours" that can be shared broadly, engaging audiences like never before.

Unlocking insights within geospatial data like ticket sales is now possible with GeoFlow.

To learn more about how people are already using GeoFlow to gain and share insights in conjunction with existing self-service business intelligence tools in Excel, go the Excel blog.

Download the Add-in for Excel 2013 with Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus 2013.

Find out more about Microsoft BI.

DC member CZB posted today about a new open source music-instruction game he just released, Musicope:

---

Intro:

I have put together a small online open-source piano game. You connect an electric piano to your computer, install Jazz plugin to make Google Chrome communicate with the piano and then you start playing. I use it almost on every-day basis and I must say that I am very happy about it. It really helps me to play songs that I like in an easy manner!

I have prepared three small videos about the game. The first video shows the game in action. The second video gives a brief overview of the game. The third video shows how to change default parameters of the game.


Preview:



Introduction:



How to change game parameters.

Here is a sample link which loads songs from my dropbox public folder.
http://piano.musicop...e-songs%2Fsongs.json




Who is this app designed for:

Musicope is for anybody who would like to play a piano in an easy manner.


The Good


Musicope helps in playing a piano quickly and without the need to learn notes. It is an online game and it is open source! This means that you can very easily integrate it into your blog or modify it to your needs.


The needs improvement section


The game is in its alpha phase. I have used it only together with my piano Yamaha PSR423. The game surely has many bugs and lacks plenty of features . As for now, I am the only developer. More developers and testers are welcome to make the game better!


Why I think you should use this product


This game helps you to play the piano in a very easy manner. No need to learn notes. The game is free and open-source!


How does it compare to similar apps

There is Synthesia which is an offline paid alternative. There is also PianoCrumbs which is online and very limited with a lot of adds. This game is open source and free. It lack features that Synthesia has, but since it is open source, nothing restricts you to implement the features that you like!


Conclusions

I hope you like the game . If you have any comments, if you find any bugs (and there are many), or if you would like to contribute in any way, do not hesitate to contact me.

This is a fun read that I think many will enjoy, that will shed some light on why so many hated this classic game, and how it was a game that was actually ahead of its time.

And if you follow along with your hex editor and E.T. rom, you'll find out just how to fix it, to make it more fun.

If you're reading this page, chances are that you're already well aware that E.T. for the Atari 2600 is one of the most reviled games ever made. I never understood why. As a child, it was one of my favorite games. I still think it's a good game. Apparently, I'm not alone.

On this page I'm going to briefly explore why people hate E.T., and how the game can be fixed.

http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/