cyan - Slashdot User

What To Do With 78 USB Drives Next Christmas? 381

Posted by timothy on Saturday May 30, 2009 @08:20PM from the channel-the-mind-of-a-giftee dept.

ArfBrookwood writes "Every year, I write a Christmas Letter and send it to about 50 people, and every year, it's different. One year it was just the word blah blah blah over and over with keywords, one year I made papercraft wallets with full color cards and money in them, another year I created a Christmas Letter writing contest that instructed the recipients to create our Christmas Letter for us and we awarded prizes to winners, last year, I took a fake retro photo of my family, Inkscaped/GIMPed in a chemistry set and some wall art, printed it onto CD covers, and burned retro Christmas songs onto digital vinyl and sent everyone in the family what looked like a miniature Christmas album. Last week, I came into the possession of 78 2GB USB drives. I have already taken the time to wipe them clean and reflash the memory so they are blank slates." Now, Arf's looking for suggestions for how to best use all these drives; read on for more.

Journal Journal: Ecce Gratum

Journal by cyan on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:28AM

~
Ecce gratum et optatum
ver reducit gaudia:
purpuratum floret pratum,
sol serenat omnia.
iam iam cedant tristia!
estas redit nunc recedit,
hiemis sevitia.

lam liquescit et descrescit
grando, nix et cetera;
bruma fugit, et iam sugit
veris tellus ubera.
illi mens est misera,
qui nec vivit nec lascivit
sub estatis dextera!

Journal Journal: Everything is Under Control

Journal by cyan on Sunday March 01, 2009 @02:22AM

So I had the pleasure of attending an Edmonton Symphony Orchestra concert last night. It was titled "A Night in Vienna", which I found to be slightly amusing, having actually been to Vienna in person. To anyone thinking of going to Paris, *forget all that* and go to Vienna instead. It's a really classy city without so much of the tacky tourism.

Journal Journal: 25 Things About Me

Journal by cyan on Saturday February 07, 2009 @11:06AM

Well, I've been tagged in this Internet meme that *everyone* seems to be posting in. I'm not going to post the preamble. Here's the list:

Journal Journal: Perspective

Journal by cyan on Thursday January 08, 2009 @03:52PM

So, FireMyst is complaining about his lack of "notoriety" in the gaming community. I guess he finally figured out that, you know, just because you run a website based around RPG reviews, that doesn't make you hot shit.

His solution to the problem? To "de-dragonify". No, I'm not kidding:

Journal Journal: Valkyria, Valkyria. May the bloodline live forever.

Journal by cyan on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @10:53AM

So you may have heard something about Valkyria Chronicles lately, and I just finished it over the weekend. This game is nothing short of awesome. I've always been a fan of very bright, colorful graphics (ANSI, 16-bit RPG's, and old DOS games in particular), and Valkyria Chronicles does this very well. It's *so nice* that the gaming world seems to have realized that 3D polygons isn't the be-all and end-all of gaming. Thank *god* that era seems to be over.

Submission + - Canadian coins not bugged after all

Submitted by Foobar_ on Sunday January 14, 2007 @06:23PM

Foobar_ writes: The Defense Security Service (an agency of the Department of Defense) has retracted its claims that it found tiny transmitters hidden inside Canadian coins, as previously reported on Slashdot and just about everywhere else. From the release: "This statement was based on a report provided to DSS. The allegations, however, were found later to be unsubstantiated following an investigation into the matter. According to DSS officials, the 2006 annual report should not have contained this information." Canada.com reports further.

Wikipedia Used for Artificial Intelligence 177

Posted by Zonk on Sunday January 07, 2007 @02:25PM from the great-it-has-finally-become-self-aware dept.

eldavojohn writes "It may be no surprise but Wikipedia is now being used in the field of artificial intelligence. The applications for this may be endless. For instance, the front of spam fighting is a tough one and it looks as though researchers are now turning towards an ontology or taxonomy based solution to fight spammers. The concept is also on the forefront of artificial intelligence and progress towards an application passing the Turing Test and creating semantically aware applications. The article comments on uses of Wikipedia in this manner: '"... spam filters block all messages containing the word 'vitamin,' but fail to block messages containing the word B12. If the program never saw B12 before, it's just a word without any meaning. But you would know it's a vitamin," Markovitch said. "With our methodology, however, the computer will use its Wikipedia-based knowledge base to infer that 'B12' is strongly associated with the concept of vitamins, and will correctly identify the message as spam," he added.'"

Submission + - mIRC commanding troops in afghanistan

Submitted by

Maarten van Assen

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @08:01AM

Maarten van Assen writes: "On his blog, Joep Gommers writes to share some insight into the communication systems used in the war in Afghanistan. It turns out mIRC is used within a system called CENTRIXS as a chat program to facilitate Command and Control over US troops. With all the talk about cybercrime and cyberwarfare, seems me might still win the war with scriptkiddies :) http://joep.gommers.googlepages.com/"

Father of Instant Ramen Passes Away 195

Posted by Zonk on Sunday January 07, 2007 @05:21AM from the a-sad-day-for-noodles dept.

Chained Fei writes "Ando Momofuku, Father of the Instant Ramen, passed away on January 5th at the age of 96. He concocted the idea for Instant Ramen after WWII, hoping to reduce the amount of poor nourishment for soldiers in the field. If not for this great man, many a poor college student and programmer would have starved over the years. From the article: 'In 1971, Nissin introduced the Cup Noodle featuring instant ramen in a waterproof plastic foam container. Dubbed the "Ramen King," Ando is credited with expanding Nissin into the No. 1 company in the industry and was well-known for his dedication to his work ... In 1999, Ando opened the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, after installing his second son, Koki, as president of the company.'"

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