Delicious LiveJournal Links for 3-9-2009

[andrewducker]

• Harvard Scientists' Discovery Opens Door to Synthetic Life
  The technology can be used to program cells to make virtually any protein, even some that donâ™t exist in nature, the scientists said. That may allow production of helpful new drugs, chemicals and organisms, including living bacteria. It also opens the door to ethical concerns about creation of processes that may be uncontrollable by lifeâ™s natural defenses.
  (tags: science life)
• The Sheer Size of IPV6
  Some nice visualisations
  (tags: internet graphics)
• How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People)
  Donâ't make it a whacking huge deal if you say something racist, or something others perceive as racist.
  (tags: culture advice racism race privilege)
• Ancient brain circuits light up so we can judge people on first impressions
  The scans showed that two brain regions were involved in opinion-forming, the almond-shaped amygdala, which is linked to regulating emotions, and the posterior cingulate cortex, which is active in making financial decisions and putting values on the outcomes of situations.
  (tags: psychology neuroscience brain emotions decisions)
• The good news is reality exists. The bad is it's even stranger than people thought
  Yet more proof that the stuff down at a quantum level makes no sense when thought about using metaphors derived at a human level.
  (tags: philosophy physics reality quantum)
• The International Jurassic Park Erotic Fan-Fiction Writer's Association
  Go on. You know you want to.
  (tags: fanfic JurassicPark)
• When soft-core games turn hard-core
  Fascinating piece on why PopCap managed to launch a hard-core game without realising it.
  (tags: games physics)
• Parents need guidance too
  I reall,y really hope I never turn into this person.
  (tags: people stupidity age Comment)
• Why we've reached the end of the camera megapixel race
  With some comments on why jamming in more pixels can make your cameras _worse_.
  (tags: technology photography sensors camera)
• Edsger Dijkstra - The parable of the toilets
  Programmers, as a rule, are delighted by it, and managers, invariably, get more and more annoyed as the story progresses; true mathematicians, however, fail to see the point.
  (tags: funny programming toilets)
• How to stop the drug wars
  The Economist makes sense
  (tags: law drugs government prohibition)
• Hanzi Smatter
  Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture.
  (tags: funny language tattoo chinese)

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I beta-test for Popcap (I'm one of the 'army of moms' they talk about in interviews) and one of the most interesting things about the process is that it turns out that 'casual gamers' are no more casual about their gaming than 'hardcore gamers'. The 'simplicity' of casual games is about the ease of getting into the game; it's not at all about the depth of strategy that can be deployed. Popcap do understand this and their games are better than most of the opposition because of a pretty complex risk/reward balancing system.

Peggle (which I don't much like, to be honest), is a special case; it is both more and less skillful than it initially appears. More skillful because you can do huge amounts to control where the ball goes; far more than you think you can. Less skillful because the programming's dead clever; the game adjusts your shots imperceptibly to make them better than they are. So you are more likely to make a 'lucky' shot than if it were pure ball physics. Popcap games are full of these sorts of things; for example, in Bookworm Adventures the letters that fall down often 'just happen' to spell words that are relevant to the scene you're in.

I've been meaning, for ages, to write about all this for Plokta.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Thanks as always for the links!

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

*snorfl* BEST fan-fiction site ever! *lol*

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

From How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism:

3) Don’t make it about you. Usually the thing to do is apologize for what you said and move on. Especially if you’re in a meeting or something, resist your desire to turn the meeting into a seminar on How Against Racism You Are. The subject of the conversation is probably not “your many close Black friends, and your sincere longstanding and deep abhorrence of racism.”

I think it's a great site, and some great points there, but having read some of what's been bandied about the interweb in recent weeks, I think that this bit is slightly unfair. There are plenty of cases (and not just in regards to racism) where someone says something, means it in a particular way (which is utterly innocent), and then is pulled up for being racist/sexist/etc by someone who is making a mountain out of a molehill/is overly sensitive. It goes both ways, and I don't think that it's always the case that someone should apologise for what they've said if it has been utterly misinterpreted. And that applies to both sides of the giant debate that's ongoing.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

Megapixel article is spot-on. I find that anything higher than 3, for me, usually just means more computer resources required to manipulate the images later.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I already have Bejeweled and Chuzzle. Reading that article about casual vs hardcore gamers resulted in me downloading the demo for Peggle. Then buying it. £2.55. Can't argue with that.