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Submission + - Using AI to identify opportunities for innuendo (computerworld.com.au)

angry tapir writes: ""Well that was hard!" "That's what she said" Turning seemingly normal comments into sexual innuendo by adding the words "That's what she said" is a cultural phenomenon. This has led some to wonder whether it is possible to determine when it is appropriate to add those magic four words to a sentence. As it turns out, identifying humour through software is hard. Two researchers at the University of Washington, however, were willing to give it their best shot. In a recently released paper entitled "That's What She Said: Double Entendre Identification", the researchers describe what they've found and introduce their new approach to the problem: "Double Entendre via Noun Transfer" or DEviaNT for short."

Comment Re:Game over Michael (Score 1) 104

Conroy is a senator. His electorate is the whole of Victoria.

Since almost everyone votes for the party (above the line) there are two possibilities that will result in him loosing his seat: a) he's moved from his current top position in the labor list to #3 or #4. It's still possible for him to get elected again if he's at #3 but unlikely. He's currently one of the leaders of the Labor Right faction in the Labor party, so even going from #1 to #2 position is unlikely.

b) is for Labor to get less than 1/6 of the vote in Victoria and then still not get anywhere with preferences which is quite unlikely.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Slashdot Comments 2

This is going to be a short entry (even though that's probably bad form for my first). A friend of mine and I were talking about Slashdot and the number of comments. We've noticed that lately there seems to be more comments than there have been in a while, and those comments seem to come a lot more quickly than they have in the past. We could be wrong about it, but that's certainly the way both of us perceive it. So here's the hypothesis: The unemployment rate is up, which gives nerds time
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - America's Army 3 developer team canned

incognito84 writes: "The development team responsible for the developing of the freeware game, "America's Army 3" has been canned, days after the launch of the highly flawed game which was distributed mostly via Steam.

The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources."

The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which are inhibiting most players from playing it two days after the game's official launch."
Space

Submission + - Aussie scientists build a cluster to map the sky

Tri writes: "Scientists at the Siding Spring Observatory have built a new system that maps and records over 1 billion objects in the southern hemisphere sky. They collect 700 GB of data every night which they then crunch down using some perl scripts and make available to other scientists through a web interface backed on Postgresql. They've also got a system with over 12,000 cores which they use to process the data."
The Media

Copyright Decision In Australia Vindicates 3d-Party EPG Provider 66

angry tapir writes "In a landmark decision, the High Court of Australia has ruled that Electronic Program Guide (EPG) vendor IceTV has not violated the copyright of Channel 9 by reproducing programming information in its third-party EPG. This case has been running since May 2006, when the Nine Network alleged that IceTV's electronic program guide infringed the copyright of Channel 9's television schedule."
IBM

Submission + - IBM grants universal and perpetual access to IP

StonyandCher writes: IBM is making it easier to utilize its patented intellectual property to implement nearly 200 standards in SOA, Web services, security and other spaces.

Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind.

Among the technologies included on IBM's list, are various standards pertaining to SOAP, SAML, XML Schema, and Service Component Architecture.

"These are what I could call the core infrastructure standards that people now use around such things as SOA," said Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. Web 2.0 applications also could be developed, for example. The company seeks to spur development of software that leverages these standards.
Security

IT Departments Fear Growing Expertise of Users 499

flatfilsoc recommends a long article in CIO magazine on users who know too much and the IT leaders who fear them. Dubbing the universe of consumer technology the "shadow IT department," the article highlights the extent to which the boundary between users' workplace and home have broken down. It notes the increasing clash — familiar to anyone who works in a company with an IT department — between users' home-grown productivity boosters and IT's mandate to protect corporate data. The inherent tendency of the IT department to want to crack down and control technology that it doesn't supply should be resisted at all costs, according to CIO. The article outlines strategies for co-existence. It just might persuade some desperate CIO somewhere not to embark on a career-limiting path of decreeing against gmail and IM.
Republicans

Submission + - Illinois Bill to Ban Social Networking Sites

AlexDV writes: "Library blogger Michael Stephens is reporting that Illinois Senator Matt Murphy (R-27, Palatine) has filed a senate bill which "Creates the Social Networking Web site Prohibition Act. Provides that each public library must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to the public in the library. Provides that each public school must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to students in the school." The bill's full text can be found here.

What is it with politicians introducing crazy Internet-related legislation lately? Could this bill have something to do with the fact that prominent Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edward are using social networks as a core component of their campaigns? Hmm..."

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The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. -- Edsger Dijkstra

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