MAC SOFTWARE
Posted by on under firefox extension, versis, document viewer, ug, open source, linux, microsoft | 
Windows/Linux (Firefox): Microsoft, through its open-source hosting site (yes, that really exists), has released a plug-in and extension set for Windows and Linux versions of Firefox that can open...Posted by on under game states, solutis, actis, brute force, hurdles, avenues, chess, spectrum, video games, memory |
IEEE Spectrum is running a feature about the progress of game AI, and how it's helping to drive AI development in general. They explore several of the current avenues of research and look at potential solutions to some of the common problems. "The trade-off between blind searching and employing specialized knowledge is a central topic in AI research. In video games, searching can be problematic because there are often vast sets of possible game states to consider and not much time and memory available to make the required calculations. One way to get around these hurdles is to work not on the actual game at hand but on a much-simplified version. Abstractions of this kind often make it practical to search far ahead through the many possible game states while assessing each of them according to some straightforward formula. If that can be done, a computer-operated character will appear as intelligent as a chess-playing program--although the bot's seemingly deft actions will, in fact, be guided by simple brute-force calculations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Posted by on under samuel morse, iry, best thing since sliced bread, panics, phe, hysteria, thoreau, typewriters, backlash, aces, pencil, brains, critique, telegraph, waves, peoe, attitude, memory |
Salon has a refreshing take on the effect of the net on wider culture, courtesy of Dennis Baron, author of the new book A Better Pencil. Baron places hysteria about the net's supposed dumbing-down in context with other panics of years gone by. Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they're interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn't, they don't buy into it. I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony. We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything." Is the Internet melting our brains?...Posted by on under modder, usb drive, lore, hard drives, hard drive, nintendo, memory |
Like I've said here before, when a modder takes a perfectly perfect piece of Nintendo lore and makes a hard drive out of it, or turns a classic item from gaming history and begets a USB drive, I...Posted by on under promes, nasal spray, cram, late night, scientists, sleep, memory |
Good news for procrastinating students: A nasal spray developed by a team of German scientists promises to give late-night cram sessions a major boost, if a good night's sleep follows.
