Science & Tech
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When there’s a new discovery or invention, it goes here.
Albright:
But climate change is okay when we do it this way!
What a load of crap! First off, you would need to establish that there is any such problem. Secondly, you would need to determine that this very expensive project would have any effect. In theory, this sounds like it could work, but I seriously doubt that we would be able to do enough of it to have any real effect. The world is big. Really, really big. Most of the planet is unpopulated. If the entire population of the world were to abandon all human endeavors and devote all our efforts to this project, I doubt that, even then, we would be able to cover any significant portion of the atmosphere with this stuff. I wish that liberals would learn the difference between the physical sciences and political science.
I thought that maybe AB would find this interesting: A Programmer’s Analysis of the CRU Data.
Also, following the links through the above, you can become a flawless programmer with Bad Code Offsets.
Ah, yes. Read through that and the follow-up… Oh, the joys of working with someone else’s crap code. (At least with your own crap code, you can usually remember or deduce why you did something crappily like that.)
A major problem when programming, and something which I’m betting came into play here, is that of not totally understanding what the input is going to look like before you start writing something to process it and create output - or, in a broader sense, of not understanding the whole of the problem before writing the code to solve it. For example, let’s say you write a program that takes two integers (whole numbers) as input, adds them, then prints out the result. Easy. But then someone comes along and wants the program to accept floating point (fractional) numbers as well. Okay, so you patch up the program to accept floats. Then someone else comes along and complains that the program crashes when you enter commas as thousands separators in the numbers (like 12,345 instead of just 12345). You didn’t anticipate someone doing that, but you patch the program to accept commas. But then someone from a foreign office complains because in their language, it’s common to use periods as the thousands separator and commas as the decimal separator (like 12.345,67), and the program can’t deal with that. Patching. Then the program has to be able to add three numbers. Or multiply instead of add. Or multiply and add. Or translate it to Korean and Hindi. And all these changes need to be in place by tomorrow. In the end, you’ve written a multi-lingual, general-purpose calculator which is a piece of shit because it’s all just quick hacks and patches upon a program which adds two integers together, whereas if you had been told from the beginning to write a multi-lingual, general-purpose calculator, you could have written a pretty good one in half the time. So in a sense, I’ve found that being a good programmer is not only about being able to write good code, but to be sure you have a firm grasp on the exact depth of the problem before you even fire up your code editor. For me, that means anticipating the features the client may want on the site before they’ve even thought of them, and to remind them that they need to tell me about any changes early in a project and discourage them from trying to change scope or add features late into one.
I’ve forgotten what exactly that previous wall of text paragraph had to do with the CRU code, so I’ll just say that clearly it was not written by competent programmers, and the quality is such that the output simply could not have been trusted. Of course, that assumes that the input was any good to begin with - garbage in, garbage out.
I’m suspicious. “Select the color of your opponent’s shirt” - so if he’s wearing a red shirt, would I be able to just point the gun at a red car or something like that and pull the trigger and rack up points? I suppose it might be using the compass and GPS to know if I’m aiming in the general direction of the other guy, but still… unless there’s some other sort of “hit detection” going on, it looks easily gamed.
Also, AT&T.
Dennō Coil Gets Japan’s 1st Augmented Reality Campaign
In the real world, the Den-noh Coil promotional campaign runs on pin@clip, a new Apple iPhone/ipod Touch application that uses the phone’s camera, GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation system, motion sensors, and compass. As the user walks around and pans the phone’s camera across the surroundings, the application detects any places of interest within the line of sight. The application then displays the live camera video feed and superimposes informational tags about those places in comic-style balloons. The Parco Part 1 department store in Tokyo’s bustling shopping district of Shibuya is offering 15 different t-shirts with Den-noh Coil art, and the pin@clip application will display tags in Shibuya that are tied to the anime and the t-shirts.
Actually, Dennou Coil is the way I’d spell it and the way the subs did too. I thought that you did see it, especially after all the raving I did about it*. It’s one I think would appeal to you in particular, AB.
- Quoth I:
Imagine that you have a pair of glasses that are actually a computer. You make a certain gesture while wearing them and a keyboard appears floating in the air in front of you. Take the glasses off and it disappears because it isn’t really there, it’s in the glasses. You can type on this keyboard and open windows which also appear floating in front of you. Your hand is used just like your mouse; moving the windows, resizing them, placing the cursor so you can type in them, etcetra. Since these glasses automatically connect to the local wireless network, you can browse the internet. You can even show your work to other people who have these glasses.
Sounds cool, huh? But wait! There’s more! The whole town has an identical virtual town overlaid on it. What is this building I am looking at? Who lives there? What business is this? What’s it’s address? Phone number? Call them up. I want to talk to them. All this information and more is available to you with just a gesture if you’re wearing your glasses. You can even have virtual pets that act just like real ones except that they never stink up your house, destroy your furniture, grow old, get sick, need to be fed nor cleaned up after.
This is the world that these children live in. They have their own detective agency that looks for virtual pets because lately some glitch is causing many of them to get lost. It seems that there are also flaws in the virtual town that cause pixelated sections and dark holes to appear. Strange things are rumored to happen in these distorted spaces. Pets and even people are supposed to disappear in them.
So there’s Satchi. Satchi is the visual representative of the system’s protection program. Satchi wanders around searching for distorted space which it repairs, viruses and other malware which it destroys and hackers which it bans. Satchi is your friend.
…unless you’re a kid playing Pet Detective. Unfortunately, many of the utilities and tools that the children use are viewed by Satchi as malware making the kids hackers. So they have to avoid or flee Satchi who will fry their very expensive glasses if he catches them. Then they learn that there are dark secrets hidden in the distorted spaces…
GrinfilledCelt:
So what is the slimy thing doing?
Cool! If that works out, it’ll be bigger than the polio vaccine. I realize that they haven’t worked out all the details and that nothing may come of it, but the “ethical” questions at the end of the article are BS. The only question needed to fulfill any ethical requirement is, “Will it do more good than harm?”
I told you what would happen if you gave the Democrats control. But did you listen? Nooooo!
The coolest weapon ever: Cupcake Cannon
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