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Super Mario Bros. 3 Level Design Lessons 95

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 02, 2011 @07:36AM from the double-whistle-to-victory dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Significant Bits about how the early level design in Super Mario Bros. 3 gradually introduced players to the game without needing something as blatant and obtrusive as a tutorial: "Super Mario Bros. 3 contains many obvious design lessons that are also present in other games, e.g., the gradual layering of complexity that allows players to master a specific mechanic. What surprised me during my playthrough, though, was how some of these lessons were completely optional. The game doesn't have any forced hand-holding, and it isn't afraid of the player simply exploring it at his own pace (even if it means circumventing chunks of the experience)."

Alzheimer's Disease Possibly Linked To Sleep Deprivation 164

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 25, 2009 @04:17PM from the justification-for-more-sleep dept.

sonnejw0 writes "NewScientist is reporting a link between sleep deprivation and Alzheimer's Disease via an increased amyloid-beta plaque load thought responsible for a large part of the symptoms of the disease, in mice. Medication to abrogate insomnia reduced the plaque load. Also discussed is a recently discovered sleep cycle of amyloid-beta deposition in the brain, in which levels decrease while asleep. 'Holtzman also tried sending the mice to sleep with a drug that is being trialled for insomnia, called Almorexant. This reduced the amount of plaque-forming protein. He suggests that sleeping for longer could limit the formation of plaques, and perhaps block it altogether.'"

The Duct Tape Programmer 551

Posted by kdawson on Friday September 25, 2009 @10:40AM from the coders-at-work dept.

theodp writes "Joel Spolsky sings the praises of The Duct Tape Programmer, who delivers programming teams from the evil of 'architecture astronauts' who might otherwise derail a project with their faddish programming craziness. The say-no-to-over-engineering attitude of the Duct Tape Programmer stems not from orneriness, but from the realization that even a 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it's in your lab where you're endlessly polishing the damn thing. Like Steve Jobs, Duct Tape Programmers firmly believe that Real Artists Ship."

Journal Journal: Eclipse IDE - do people actually use it for c/c++ coding???? 6

Journal by tomhudson on Thursday March 15, 2007 @10:15PM

I decided to give Eclipse another try today. Downloaded the latest version (3.2.2 after all the updates) and the packages necessary for c/c++ coding.

I cannot believe how painfully s - l - l - o - o - o - w - w - w - w - w it is, for what little additional functionality it appears to bring to the party if you're doing c ...

Feed Downloading Is a Packrat's Dream (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @07:12AM

In the good old days, clutter kings smothered under mountains of their own trash. Like everything else, compulsive hoarding has gone digital. By Jeff Koyen.

Feed Microsoft Attacks Google on Copyright (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @02:12AM

The Microsoft Corporation has prepared a blistering attack on rival Google, arguing that the Web search leader takes a cavalier approach to copyright protection.

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