Comment Re:Voodoo (Score 1) 300
Somwhat adapted xkcd since its mandatory http://www.economics.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/windowslivewritereconomicscartoon-da04economicscientist-thumb2.jpg
Comment Re:Voodoo (Score 1) 300
Econometrics is not statistics... Oh wait, that might be ok since statistics is awsoume...
Comment Re:Why there is so much emphasis on design (Score 1) 85
The obvious and mandatory http://xkcd.com/323/
SGI's Open Source Performance Co-Pilot 24
codesmythe writes "The Fates, through SGI nee Rackable, have granted a new beginning to Silicon Valley's once darling Silicon Graphics. Despite old mistakes and economic misfortunes, Silicon Graphics' engineering contributions are legendary: their systems (oh, the systems!), and software such as the well known OpenGL and the little known Performance Co-Pilot. PCP is an enterprise-class open source system monitoring, measurement, and visualization infrastructure — overlooked in last fall's monitoring tool discussion. Since its proprietary beginning in 1993, PCP has been re-released as open source and ported to all major operating systems. Readers of Slashdot's recent Beginning Python Visualization book review will be pleased to hear there are Python interfaces to PCP data sources. Here is an example of using Python and Blender to visualize PCP data (registration may be required). The PCP dev community is well and active, and includes several of the original team members."
Understanding Addiction-Based Game Design 308
spidweb writes "The common theory is that games like World of Warcraft are addictive. But what are the exact qualities that make it so? Are there specific elements of the design that can be pulled out, distilled, and used at will to give a game drug-like properties? Is it wrong to do so? A new article at IGN RPG Vault attempts to isolates the exact qualities that go into making an addiction-based design. From the article: 'If a game uses rewards of any sort to entice you to experience highly repetitive content, you should see what it's trying to do and which of your buttons it's trying to press. If you don't mind, that's cool, but you should understand it.'"
Comment Actually OpenStreetMap sometimes has better maps (Score 1) 52
A lot of the time OpenStreetMaps will have more details in their maps, especially in developing countries.
Compare google maps over Almaty Kazakhstan
And OpenStreetMaps over Almaty Kazakhstan
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=43.167025&mlon=77.096700&zoom=10
EU Sues Sweden, Demands ISP Data Retention 315
Death Metal writes "The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears."
Epic's Sweeney On the PC Shareware Revolution 111
simoniker writes "Over at Gamasutra, there's a massive new interview with Epic (Mega)Games founder Tim Sweeney, the guy who's still a key technical figure at the Unreal Engine/Gears Of War developer. He discusses his early programming days, the story behind classic shareware game/tool ZZT, the origins of Epic, the '90s shareware business, and even a bit about the future as well. Particularly neat is his revelation that you can still order ZZT via mail, with orders fulfilled by his dad: 'My father still lives at the address where Potomac Computer Systems started up, so he still gets an order every few weeks... he's retired now, so he doesn't have much to do. Every week, he'll just take a stack of a few orders, put disks in them, and mail them out.'"
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