September 2009
96 posts
“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest...”
– Phil Angell, Director of Corporate Communication, Monsanto (via NYT)
August 2009
100 posts
'Reading Rainbow' Reaches Its Final Chapter : NPR →
Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.
Grant says that PBS,...
Treasured Moon Rock Is Petrified Wood →
BBC reports that a treasured piece at the Dutch national museum — a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969 — has been revealed as nothing more than petrified wood, curators say. A jagged fist-size stone with reddish tints, it was mounted and...
“If graphics card development in the last 10 years is anything to go by,...”
– Ant P. (974313) (via Slashdot)
In linguistics, we discussed how the older generations always think the young people are ruining the language. How language is always in a state of devolution from when the one pondering it remembers their youth. So, ever since the first speakers, language has devolved.
That’s great, as long as morons don’t take that to mean “… and therefore your horrible grammar and...
WatchSurreal
Museum of Animal Perspectives
FTC drops the banhammer on prerecorded "robocalls" →
The Federal Trade Commission next week will make automated robocalls illegal for most telemarketers. Still, the list of exceptions mean that the calls will continue as charities, politicians, banks, and telcos can continue their prerecorded pitches.
Finally.
The Future is Procedural →
The hook with FUEL is that the gameworld is procedurally generated. I’ve done some procedural design myself (example) and I’m really excited to see procedural techniques making their way into mainstream games. Up until recently, only indies and experimental projects like .kkrieger used procedural content. Spore is the other major title to give procedural content a go, but a lot of...
Evolution of Photoshop: 1988 – 2009 →
Adobe Photoshop has always been one of the greatest (if not the best) software when it comes to manipulating and editing image. It all started off in 1987 with a Mac application call Display, created by Thomas Knoll. With almost two decades worth of changes and improvements, you almost can’t imagine how the first version of Photoshop would look like by looking at the Photoshop you have on your...
Epic Fails in Star Wars Design →
Death Star An unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor? Really? And when you rebuild it, your solution to this problem is four paths into the central core so large that you can literally fly a spaceship through them? Brilliant. Note to the Emperor: Someone on your Death Star design staff is in the pay of Rebel forces. Oh, right, you can’t get the memo because someone...
AI Follies: Pathing →
1) Geometry analysis. The program has to analyze the geometry in the room, deciding what areas are passable and what the sensible routes are. This can get to be really complicated. Remember that AI doesn’t understand “furniture” vs. “hallways”. It’s all just “shapes” to the AI. It sees the shortest-distance path across the room requires it to go up a step, then down a step. Except, that “step” is...
Notify: Gmail notifier for Mac OS X →
I love the option to turn off all colors in the menubar icon. Now my Gmail notifier matches everything else. And the interface is slick to boot.
Notify (via TUAW)
Bespin cloud editor gains collaborative editing... →
The Bespin project was first launched in February with the goal of producing a next-generation software development tool in the cloud. It has a highly extensible command system and a heavily keyboard-oriented user interface that is richly powerful and still relatively easy to use. The project has attracted a lot of interest from third-party developers and has become a nexus for innovation.
AI Follies: Targeting →
It was difficult to choose what to quote. The article is high-quality overall. If you like AI and/or FPSs, that is.
This is one that games have yet to tackle (among games I’ve played, anyway) but it’s a major annoyance of mine. A bad guy pins you down behind some cover and then just plinks away at your hiding spot. Endlessly. Even if you hold your position for five minutes, the AI will just drill...
A modest proposal for improving football: the... →
Surprisingly, this was an engaging read.
So in the spirit of our ever-evolving game of football, I have a rule proposal of my own: the time-in.
If you’ve ever noticed that football games slow to a predictable crawl at the end of each half, the time-in is the rule for you. The idea is simple: When the clock is stopped, for whatever reason, a coach could call a “time-in,” and force the clock to...
Arrow of time no longer double-ended →
How does this resolve the arrow of time problem? Well, put simply, running time in one direction allows records to be kept and events to be observed. In the other direction, observation becomes impossible. Therefore, although time could be running in either direction (or, who knows, both directions simultaneously), it is only possible for any observer (not necessarily a human one) to experience...
The Unexpected Hanging →
This is another excerpt inside a bigger story that I will post on.
This recursive series of “ifs” leads down a trail of thinking so complicated that it has a name in philosophy: the Unexpected Hanging paradox. Imagine a prisoner is told that sometime during the next week he will be hanged, and it will be a complete surprise. The prisoner, being part of a philosophical problem, is not scared...
“The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we...”
– David Duchovny (via affremblequotes)
Circle the cat →
I played a similar game on the iPhone so the strategy came pretty quickly.
IBitOBear (410965): Eventually someone is going to revolt against someone somewhere.
amicusNYCL (1538833): Thanks, Nostradamus.
(via /.)
Stanford University's $5 Challenge →
How much money could you earn if you were given $5 and two hours? That was the challenge put forth to Tina Seelig’s students at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She divided her students into 14 teams, gave each team an envelope with $5 in “seed funding,” and told them to come up with a plan. During the weekend, they had two hours to put their plan into action.
Read on to...
“The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the...”
– “Rocket to the Renaissance” by Arthur C. Clarke (via affremblequotes)
