Miyamoto's games are always a lot of fun. Who needs "maturity", whatever that means? As long as he keeps making games that are fun, I will keep buying them.
We all hope so, but it's not necessarily going to be released even in the next year or two. In the meantime, Perl 5 is more widely used than ever. And even after Perl 6 does come out, it will take a long time for people to switch over, assuming they do decide to switch. Heck, there's still a lot of Perl 4 code out there even though Perl 5 has been out for... like 8 years?
Just about every country I've been in (European and Asian) has different colors and sizes for currency denominations. And coins, too! It makes it much easier to count money.
I'm from the U.S., but if I hadn't grown up with our coin system, I would not find it at all intuitive.... United States coins come in denominations of 25, 10, 5, 1 cents... 25 being the largest coin, followed by 5, 1, then 10. If that's not confusing enough, if you want to know how much a coin is worth by reading the words on it, you'll find that the 25-cent coin (quarter) is a "Quarter Dollar", the 1-cent coin (penny) is "One Cent", the 5-cent coin (nickel) is "Five Cents", and the 10-cent coin (dime) is "One Dime". What the heck is a dime?:-)
Of course, the Earth's terminator and the shadow of a stationary object on Earth's surface move in opposite directions. The terminator moves from east to west, while the shadow of any given object on the surface moves from west to east. I haven't seen the movie, but I don't think it would make sense for the hero to be running away from the sun in order to stay in the shadow of an object. Instead, he would want to run toward the sun (and toward the object) in order to get closer to the object and stay in its shadow.
There was a bank in Holland, MI that had a sign offering "Totally Free Checking" (in big letters) when I was in college a few years back. I knew a guy who did something similar to the guy in this article: he created false letters to match the ones on the sign exactly. He altered the sign so that it read "Totally Free Chicken". He walked into the bank a little while later, and told them with a completely straight face that he was there to get the Totally Free Chicken they were offering. The bank took down the sign, but I don't think he was ever caught.
People have to take some sort of responsibility for their own actions. If this guy had problems to the extent that he was willing to take his own life, I don't think a video game maker can be held responsible for that. Why is everything always someone else's fault?
Oh, it's just another case of reality imitating art. The asteroid probably saw "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon" a few too many times and got wacky ideas in its head about smashing into Earth.
Lots of free sites that used to be fun are now making themselves "useful" by charging for subscriptions.:-)
Nat. Language Understanding != Speech Recognition
on
Mining Unstructured Data
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· Score: 3, Informative
A minor nitpick with the article... when the term "natural language understanding" is used, it seems to be mostly synonymous with "speech recognition". Actually, speech recognition is a subset of natural language understanding. NLU (or NLP, natural language processing) deals with all aspects of understanding human languages. In fact, most NLP is done with text, not speech.
I think upper management (and the general public) think that a computer is some sort of magic box. "The data is right there! Why can't you just take it from the Word document and put it in the database? I can understand it, so why can't the computer?" But people have been working on automatic language understanding for over 50 years and haven't even come close to solving the problem. I work in natural language processing, and I can attest, it's tough.
An interesting book I just finished reading was The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent. It goes all the way back... actually beginning with the precursors to pinball in the 19th century, and telling the story of video games and similar amusements as a narrative up to the year 2001. I thought it was well-written, and contains tons of quotes from firsthand sources.
Pump up your laptop battery and get tackled because the passengers or flight attendants think you're trying to light your shoes on fire, Boy Scout style.
There's also a recently-published book on the history of video games called the Ultimate History of Video Games. I picked it up not too long ago, and from what I've read so far, it's got a lot of anecdotes and some interesting information.
But comparing man-hours wasted playing Solitaire to the man-hours required to complete large construction projects is not really a valid comparison. In the realm of software engineering, anyway, Brooks tells us in The Mythical Man-Month that men and months (or men and hours) are not interchangeable. So although it's easy for 23.1 million people to waste their time independently, in parallel, it would require tremendous overhead to get them to work together on anything constructive. Of course you can't build an Empire State Building in 9 days if you just get 23.1 million people to work on it.
Boy, I was getting tired of all those pesky security holes in IE. I'm glad Microsoft went and fixed them all up. Wait a minute... the uber-patch only runs under Linux?
Slashdot Mirror
Miyamoto's games are always a lot of fun. Who needs "maturity", whatever that means? As long as he keeps making games that are fun, I will keep buying them.
Isn't Perl 6 coming out soon?
We all hope so, but it's not necessarily going to be released even in the next year or two. In the meantime, Perl 5 is more widely used than ever. And even after Perl 6 does come out, it will take a long time for people to switch over, assuming they do decide to switch. Heck, there's still a lot of Perl 4 code out there even though Perl 5 has been out for... like 8 years?
SuSE has always been pretty sleeky, but I can't wait to see the increased sleekiness!
Unlike ILovYou-type viri,
A bit off-topic, I know, but here's an interesting link about the word "viri", the alleged plural of "virus": What 's the Plural of 'Virus'?
Put your hands up and step away from the mouse... slowly...
Meanwhile, outside the building...
Officer: "I think we can handle one little web site. I sent two units. They're bringing it down now."
Smith: "No, lieutenant. Your men are already dead."
From the story: The hoods are duct-taped shut, since metal tearing off at terminal velocity could endanger the "drivers."
Boy, I wish I had a nickel for every time duct tape prevented someone's violent death at terminal velocity.
Mozilla is a trademark infringement on Godzilla just as Godzilla is a trademark infringement on God. Now there's a three-way fight I'd like to see. :-)
Just about every country I've been in (European and Asian) has different colors and sizes for currency denominations. And coins, too! It makes it much easier to count money.
:-)
I'm from the U.S., but if I hadn't grown up with our coin system, I would not find it at all intuitive.... United States coins come in denominations of 25, 10, 5, 1 cents... 25 being the largest coin, followed by 5, 1, then 10. If that's not confusing enough, if you want to know how much a coin is worth by reading the words on it, you'll find that the 25-cent coin (quarter) is a "Quarter Dollar", the 1-cent coin (penny) is "One Cent", the 5-cent coin (nickel) is "Five Cents", and the 10-cent coin (dime) is "One Dime". What the heck is a dime?
Of course, the Earth's terminator and the shadow of a stationary object on Earth's surface move in opposite directions. The terminator moves from east to west, while the shadow of any given object on the surface moves from west to east. I haven't seen the movie, but I don't think it would make sense for the hero to be running away from the sun in order to stay in the shadow of an object. Instead, he would want to run toward the sun (and toward the object) in order to get closer to the object and stay in its shadow.
There was a bank in Holland, MI that had a sign offering "Totally Free Checking" (in big letters) when I was in college a few years back. I knew a guy who did something similar to the guy in this article: he created false letters to match the ones on the sign exactly. He altered the sign so that it read "Totally Free Chicken". He walked into the bank a little while later, and told them with a completely straight face that he was there to get the Totally Free Chicken they were offering. The bank took down the sign, but I don't think he was ever caught.
People have to take some sort of responsibility for their own actions. If this guy had problems to the extent that he was willing to take his own life, I don't think a video game maker can be held responsible for that. Why is everything always someone else's fault?
Oh, it's just another case of reality imitating art. The asteroid probably saw "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon" a few too many times and got wacky ideas in its head about smashing into Earth.
Lots of free sites that used to be fun are now making themselves "useful" by charging for subscriptions. :-)
A minor nitpick with the article... when the term "natural language understanding" is used, it seems to be mostly synonymous with "speech recognition". Actually, speech recognition is a subset of natural language understanding. NLU (or NLP, natural language processing) deals with all aspects of understanding human languages. In fact, most NLP is done with text, not speech.
I think upper management (and the general public) think that a computer is some sort of magic box. "The data is right there! Why can't you just take it from the Word document and put it in the database? I can understand it, so why can't the computer?" But people have been working on automatic language understanding for over 50 years and haven't even come close to solving the problem. I work in natural language processing, and I can attest, it's tough.
Inspired by your comment, I went back and looked up :)
CmdrTaco's old homepage. What a kick in the pants!
Probably the reason it was ignored was because the exact same question was asked (by the exact same person) and answered earlier in the discussion.
An interesting book I just finished reading was The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent. It goes all the way back... actually beginning with the precursors to pinball in the 19th century, and telling the story of video games and similar amusements as a narrative up to the year 2001. I thought it was well-written, and contains tons of quotes from firsthand sources.
I'm selling my car so I can buy a Segway! After all, I won't need the car anymore, right? Well, maybe I'll have to sell my house too.
Pump up your laptop battery and get tackled because the passengers or flight attendants think you're trying to light your shoes on fire, Boy Scout style.
Coleco stands for Connecticut Leather Company, not Colorado. I'm reading the same book :-)
There's also a recently-published book on the history of video games called the Ultimate History of Video Games. I picked it up not too long ago, and from what I've read so far, it's got a lot of anecdotes and some interesting information.
First off, those stats are pretty amazing.
But comparing man-hours wasted playing Solitaire to the man-hours required to complete large construction projects is not really a valid comparison. In the realm of software engineering, anyway, Brooks tells us in The Mythical Man-Month that men and months (or men and hours) are not interchangeable. So although it's easy for 23.1 million people to waste their time independently, in parallel, it would require tremendous overhead to get them to work together on anything constructive. Of course you can't build an Empire State Building in 9 days if you just get 23.1 million people to work on it.
Boy, I was getting tired of all those pesky security holes in IE. I'm glad Microsoft went and fixed them all up. Wait a minute... the uber-patch only runs under Linux?
"It's really destroyed a lot of marriages," said Tony, whose wife had an affair with her make-believe husband.
Man, this is a sentence I wouldn't expect to see anywhere but The Onion.