Story 2014-04-09

Recreating the THX Deep Note

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in movies on (#3HQ)
story imageSo you've just settled into your seat at the movie theater, and as the film starts to roll it begins with an advertisement for the THX Sound System, accompanied by a sound that's recognizable in a heartbeat, but a bit hard to describe in words [mp3]. That sound is called Deep Note. It was created in 1982 by Dr. James A. Moorer, who used the Audio Signal Processor (ASP), also known as SoundDroid to create it.

The ASP was a complex machine to program and included about 20,000 lines of C code to program. Only one ASP was ever produced, and LucasFilms LTD owns it. So what do you do if you're an enterprising hacker interested in blowing the covers off your speakers at home by replicating that sound? You build your own .

Read more at Hackday.com .

Link between video games and violence might be user frustration

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in games on (#3HP)
story imageA recent study out of the University of Rochester investigating the link between violence and video games suggests that it's gamer frustration and not game content that may lead to feelings of aggression. The study found that games with poorly-designed controls or excessive difficulty led to player frustration which, in turn, led to feelings of aggression, and this was independent of whether the game's content was violent or not. This study is an interesting and potentially important addition to the long-running debate on the possible connection between video games and aggressive behavior. A further analysis is available here .

[Ed. note: so, if your word processor frustrates you , does that lead to violence too? Because it seems like it might .]