Say hello to a scientific analysis of how mathematically hard some classic games are.

Location traversal and single-use paths, ala Pac-Man, is NP-hard. Pressure plates, ala Prince of Persia or Portal, is PSPACE-hard if there are two pressure plates, and NP-hard if only one is required to open a door. In the case of switches, one switch is P-hard, two is NP-hard, and three or more is PSPACE-hard.

Viglietta then uses these characteristics to classify each of the 13 games. Boulder Dash, which involves traversing a map strewn with boulders, is NP-hard. Prince of Persia, thanks to its pressure plates, is PSPACE-complete. Doom, with its multiple switches, is PSPACE-hard (and Viglietta claims that most other FPSes and adventure games are the same).

Regrettably, they don't have categories for games like Ninja Gaiden 3 or the original Castlevania, which qualify simply as "throw your controller at the wall repeatedly in frustration, Nintendo Hard."

SOPA/PIPA are dead, but could be revived.
A SOPA-alike is being considered by Canada.
ACTA is continually being pushed in Europe, despite the resignation of the EU's ACTA chief in disgust over attempts to push it through without required public comment and consideration of the EU governing bodies.

Contact your representatives. WHEREVER you are.

The SOPA bill, sometimes called the "internet blacklist", has been shut down in the US House of Representatives. Its Senate counterpart, called "PIPA", is still alive.

PIPA is less well known than SOPA, but the provisions are basicly the same. It still includes the same DNS blocking and censoring system that the original SOPA did, just without the SOPA name. There are around 40 co-sponsors of the bill in the Senate so far, with no word on how many senators support the bill in addition to that. There will most likely need to be 60 votes in the Senate in order to invoke cloture and end an almost guaranteed filibuster.

Focus your attention on your Senators for now, but keep your eyes peeled in case SOPA tries to make a stealth return.

We all know: Google is king in the search engine business. But Microsoft's "Bing" search just went past Yahoo.

Yahoo queries came in with 14.5% share, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.0% in December 2010. Microsoft’s Bing’s share of searches in December was 15.1%, compared with 15% in November 2011 and 12.0% in December 2010. Since Bing powers Yahoo search, combined the two search engine’s share of searches was 29.6%, compared with 30.1% in November 2011. AOL queries declined 8% in December with 1.6% share.

Yahoo's brand loyalty is fading fast.

As the new year picks up steam... anyone for some halo?

This stuff just kinda writes itself.

There's really not much more to say; it's just no help to anyone. Especially when it gets bad enough that someone tries to impersonate other people.

I think Gabe says it best: this guy is just a bully.

This is too weird but true: the BBC is actually going to recover some lost Doctor Who episodes thanks to an anomaly in space bouncing TV signals back to earth on a 47-year time delay.

They even have a screenshot from a Doctor Who episode recovered from the signals.

Amazing!

... is Pure Win.

This is great. I'd advise snagging it with a downloader, just in case some wag from Paramount gets it taken down.

Just in time for your christmas shopping needs, Humble Indie Bundle 4 has gone live.

Super Meat Boy's in this one, and if you beat the normal asking price, they'll throw in Cave Story+ and Gratuitous Space Battles as well.

And remember, part of the proceeds go to Child's Play - a true worthy cause.

Two more classic Doctor Who episodes, thought destroyed, have been found in the hands of a private collector:

Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure "Galaxy 4" and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton's "The Underwater Menace" were purchased by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 80s. He had been unaware that the canisters contained material missing from the BBC.
...
Over 100 episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s still remain missing. The tapes were routinely wiped once the rights to repeat them had expired. It seems unfathomable to us today, but before the advent of DVDs and iPlayer, grainy black and white material was thought to no longer be of interest to the television audience. However, many film prints sold overseas have since been returned. These latest discoveries are the first complete episodes to have been located since 2004.

Leaves hope that maybe a few more preserved episodes are still out there?