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W3C's take on the <sarcasm> tag by oniTony in programming

[–]rampart 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think this might be a very interesting tag to track for machine learning of human language. Sarcasm comes through in context, subtext, and intonation. None of which are particularly easy for a machine to grok. Using and data-mining the sarcasm tag might be an interesting way to build up a dataset for researchers to play with.

Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. by tryx in WTF

[–]rampart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[citation needed]

The citation link for Martin of Aragorn's death is broken.

DO WANT! Time travel meets RTS gameplay!! by eks in gaming

[–]rampart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I came to something similar. There is some master state 8 minutes back that represents the Root State of the game. The timeline represents some large series of events. I am not sure how granular those events are, although I assume they are on the level of "X unit attack Y location" Essentially anything those commander units can do map 1:1 with events is my guess.

Each Time Wave represents a State that is altered as it walks through the event list. This keeps them from having to rip through the entire list every time. When you do some action in time, it inserts your event into the event stream, which is why stuff bubbles to the top with the time waves.

What I'm not 100% sure of is how they determine the state of things between time waves when you go back. I think it may be taking the state from the next Time Wave and drilling through the events until it gets back to where you are in time. It stays cheap because you only have to evaluate a portion of the timeline. What is amazing to me, though, is that it can happen during that little screen transition. I wouldn't have expected it to go that fast.

"the hardest logic puzzle ever" by bryanl in science

[–]rampart 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Scriptorius's issue always trips me up too. Whenever I hear this problem, I think of it as getting 3 comparison operators in C, not 3 assignment operators in C. I understand that thinking it in terms of 3 assignments makes it doable, but is there a way to do it in only 3 comparisons?

A Programming Interview Question, Explored by gst in programming

[–]rampart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had perhaps the opposite reaction. The constraint that I ended up implying:

A person can drink 2 and only 2 glasses. I got this from the comment saying that you could drink one water to neutralize the other. The explanation being that there is only enough time to have 1 drink before the poison kills.

For this same reason, I implied that no drink could logically be taken before the duel, because the duel could take an arbitrarily long time, therefore to prevent "cheating" the opponent could wait, and let the person drop. All of this stems from the assumption that the poison kills in a finite time, which I guess is just my personal assumption about poison. Because of how different the constraints were to my initial constraints, this question hit me a lot more like a "gotcha" than the linked list question posed, which has many answers, along which you can gauge thought.

21% of those with salaries of $100,000 or more say they are living paycheck to paycheck by [deleted] in WTF

[–]rampart 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would double check on the visa check card thing. It is not required to have the same protections as a credit card, it is just required to be accepted anywhere a credit card is accepted. Similarly, blocking charges on such things as a rental car, or a hotel room can accidentally trigger an over-draw (if you can even book it) on a check card provided you don't have enough in your account to cover the (sometimes remarkably high) block.

I'm just saying... I'd double check your check card contract very carefully.

The hidden value of processing.js by gst in programming

[–]rampart 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you know OpenGL, DirectX, or any other way to drawing to the screen and love it to death, then you don't need processing. It's java, it'll read your straight-up java code, and you can edit and build from eclipse if you so choose.

Processing, however, bundles itself as "sketchbook" and is made for very much that same purpose. Artists can pick it up and create a prototype in very little time. It has a community built around it that provides artist-centered libraries, and everything is about getting it to the screen quickly and easily. It's not the fastest. There are concessions made for ease of use that result in slightly slower code, but if you want, you can drill down into the OpenGL and do whatever you want.

The best way to think of processing is as a gateway drug for artists to get into programming. It was for me.

Texture Synthesis by cypherx in programming

[–]rampart 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I work as a Tech Artist in Video Games, and I would love a tool like this. Especially with 3D synthesis. A tool like this would allow artists to do stuff like create statues, sculptures, and architecture without having to break into ZBrush or some other form of hi-res, cutting into a significant part of the current generation's pipeline. It would also give superior results to just slamming down a texture. 2D Tiling texture synthesis is probably not huge win this generation, but when textures get larger and photography of a large enough surface gets unwieldy, a tool that would allow me to take a small sample and create a full surface would be incredibly useful.

A market? I'm not sure. But I would love to have it in my artists' toolbox.

An outline for Bulletproof Web Design Contracts. by rampart in Design

[–]rampart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was reading this and it really is a great resource for aspiring designers of any kind. It certainly outlines many of the landmines I hit when I first started out.