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So there is a massive earthquake in Japan, with who knows what consequences, and the great and glorious SIGGRAPH papers community has taken action.
Why yes they have, they have given the folks in Japan 48 hours.
Dear authors,
Due to the severe earthquake in Japan, papers with Japan-based authors may have an additional 48 hours to submit their rebuttals (beyond the regular deadline which is today, March 11, 22:00 GMT). These late rebuttals can be sent by email to papersadmin2011@siggraph.org.
SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers Chair
How about a week guys, or has the program committee already booked their tickets?
March 11th, 2011
Twice this Olympics Scott Hamilton has been snarky.
First it was the Brian Boucher comment: Finally Brian gets his gold medal. Like really dude, we know you beat him. We know it. And yes we’re bitter as Canadians that Brian came in second twice.
Then it was the comment on Ice-Dancing: I’ve been around the sport of ice-dancing my whole career, but I’ve never understood it.
well at least that one I can get behind.
February 27th, 2010
One thing that every geek can do is quote their favorite geek-culture media, whether it’s movies, books, television, theater or music. The GeekDads have tried to compile a list of such quotes for your enjoyment. This list is certainly not definitive. Indeed, it’s only the beginning! Feel free to add your own (clean) ones in the comments below.
- “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” — Dennis the Peasant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- “Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for the mortal men doomed to die, one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne, in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring the bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.” -LOTR
- “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” – HAL, 2001: A Space Odyssey
- “Spock. This child is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do….spank it?” — Dr. McCoy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- “With great power there must also come — great responsibility.” – Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962)
- “If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid.” — Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation “Q Who?”
- “Five card stud, nothing wild. And the sky’s the limit” — Captain Jean Luc Picard, uttering the last line of the series, Star Trek: The Next Generation “All Good Things…”
- “If you think that by threatening me you can get me to do what you want… Well, that’s where you’re right. But – and I am only saying that because I care – there’s a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.” – Chris Knight, Real Genius
- “We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi. We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog.” – John Winger, Stripes
- “If I’m not back in five minutes, just wait longer.” – Ace Ventura, Ace ventura, Pet Detective
- “I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.” – Ty Webb, Caddyshack
- WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE – God (Douglas Adams), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
- “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” – Adam West, Batman & Robin
- “Bill, strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” – Ted, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- “Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.” – Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
- “Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There’s some spooky shit goin’ on there. And it’s green too.” – Slater, Dazed and Confused
- “Alright, alright alright.” – Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
- “Heya, Tom’, it’s Bob from the office down the hall. Good to see you, buddy; how’ve you been? Things have been alright for me except that I’m a zombie now. I really wish you’d let us in.” Jonothan Coulton, Re: Your Brains
- “Never argue with the data.” – Sheen, Jimmy Neutron
- “Oooh right, it’s actually quite a funny story once you get past all the tragic elements and the over-riding sense of doom.” – Duckman (Jason Alexander)
- “Fantastic!” – The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Doctor Who
- “I must not fear. / Fear is the mind-killer. / Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. / I will face my fear. / I will permit it to pass over me and through me. / And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. / Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. / Only I will remain.” – Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune
- “This is the way society functions. Aren’t you a part of society?” – Kramer, Seinfeld
- “Okay. You people sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we’re not back by dawn… call the president.” – Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China
- “No matter where you go, there you are. ” – Buckaroo Banzai, Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
- “Do you know of the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space.” -Khan, ST:TWOK
- “Ray, if someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!” – Winston, Ghostbusters
- “Greetings, programs!” -Flynn, TRON
- “I guess you picked the wrong god-damned rec room to break into, didn’t you?!” -Burt, Tremors
- “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” -Darth Vader, Star Wars
- “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side, kid.” -Han Solo, Star Wars
- “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back
- “It’s a moral imperative.” – Chris Knight, Real Genuis
- “Talk with your mouth full / bite the hand that feeds you / bite off more than you can chew / dare to be stupid” – Weird AL “dare to be stupid.”
- “Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning’s reading, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.” – Egon, Ghostbusters
- “This episode was BADLY written!” -Gwen, Galaxy Quest
- “Worst. Episode. Ever.” – Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons
- “Goonies never say die.” -Mike, The Goonies
- “Nothing shocks me–I’m a scientist.” – Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- “Bright light! Bright light!” – Gremlins
- “The Road goes ever on and on/Down from the door where it began/Now far ahead the Road has gone/And I must follow, if I can/Pursuing it with eager feet/Until it joins some larger way/Where many paths and errands meet/And whither then? I cannot say.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
- “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” – Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters
- “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” – Albert Einstein
- “Wait a minute, Doc. Ah… Are you telling me you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?” – Marty McFly, Back to the Future
- “Don’t call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight blob of grease!” – C3PO, Star Wars
- “I’d just as soon kiss a wookiee!” – Princess Leia, The Empire Strikes Back
- “But one thing’s sure: Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.” – Detective, Plan 9 from Outer Space
- “I know kung fu.” – Neo, The Matrix
- “This is your receipt for your husband… and this is my receipt for your receipt.” – Officer, Brazil
- “Your soul-suckin’ days are over, amigo!” – Elvis, Bubba Ho-Tep
- “I don’t believe there’s a power in the ‘verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct-tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” – Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly (episode: “Serenity” (pilot))
- “Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – El Guapo, ¡Three Amigos!
- “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!” Vizzini, The Princess Bride
- “There is no Earthly way of knowing… which direction we are going. There is no knowing where we’re rowing, or which way the river’s flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a’blowing? Not a speck of light is showing so the danger much be growing. Are the fires of hell a’glowing? Is the grisley reaper mowing? YES! The danger must be growing for the rowers keep on rowing AND THEY’RE CERTAINLY NOT SHOWING ANY SIGNS THAT THEY ARE SLOWING!!” – Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
- “Time…to die.” – Roy Batty, Blade Runner
- “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Check, please.” – Lone Starr & Barf, Spaceballs
- “So say we all.” – Battlestar Galactica
- “After very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.” – General Beringer, WarGames.
- “I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar.” – Wash, Serenity
- “No matter what you hear in there, no matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door or you will undo everything I have worked for.” – Young Frankenstein
- “Ahh, a bear in his natural habitat: a Studebaker.” Fozzie, The Muppet Movie
- “He’s dead, Jim.” McCoy, ST:TOS
- “Who’s gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It’s chocolate, it’s peppermint – it’s delicious!” – Kramer, Seinfeld
- “Bring out your dead.” Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” -Inigo, The Princess Bride
- “Why a duck? Why-a no chicken?” – Chico Marx, Cocoanuts
- “Redrum.” Danny, The Shining
- “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.” – announcer, The Shadow radio drama
- “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” – Chief Brody, Jaws
- “Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.” – Ian Malcolm, The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.” Criswell, Plan 9 from Outer Space
- “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” – President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove
- “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” – Obi-Wan, Star Wars
- “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” – Taylor, Planet of the Apes
- “You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh, damn you! Damn you all to hell!” – Taylor, Planet of the Apes
- “Klaatu barada nikto.” The Day the Earth Stood Still
- “Monsters from the Id.” – Doc Ostrow, Forbidden Planet
- “ET phone home.” – ET
- “What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” – Bridgekeeper, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- “We thought you was a toad!” – Delmar, O Brother Where Art Thou?
- “Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot!”–Mary Jane, Spider-Man.
- “You don’t have to be a gun.”-Hogarth, The Iron Giant.
- “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!” – Robbie the Robot, Lost in Space
- “Yeah, well. The Dude abides.” – The Dude, The Big Lebowski
- “All things serve the beam.” various instances, The Dark Tower series
- “You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Clause!” – Chico Marx, A Night at the Opera
- “Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Harry Lime, The Third Man
- “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…” – Milton Waddams, Office Space
- “Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.” – Peter Gibbons, Office Space
- “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.” – John McClane (in writing), Die Hard
- “Gimme some sugar, baby.” – Ash, Army of Darkness
- “Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I’ve got news for you pal, you ain’t leadin’ but two things, right now: Jack and sh*t… and Jack left town.” – Ash, Army of Darkness
- “Kneel before Zod.” – Zod, Superman II
- “Shall we play a game?” – Joshua, WarGames
- “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” – Samantha, Night of the Comet
- “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.” “Hit it!” – Elwood, The Blues Brothers
- “Make it so” / “Engage” – Captain Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
- “Ya Ta!” – Hiro Nakamura, Heroes
- “End Of Line” – The MCP, TRON
January 9th, 2010
This is a fascinating read:
http://dashes.com/anil/2007/12/google-and-theory-of-mind.html
Especially the section on the transformational power of the PageRank/AdSense mechanism on the link mechanism of the web.
2. Connecting PageRank to economic systems such as AdWords and AdSense corrupted the meaning and value of links by turning them into an economic exchange. Through the turn of the millennium, hyperlinking on the web was a social, aesthetic, and expressive editorial action. When Google introduced its advertising systems at the same time as it began to dominate the economy around search on the web, it transformed a basic form of online communication, without the permission of the web’s users, and without explaining that choice or offering an option to those users.
Worse, the transformation was retroactive and the eventual mechanisms for opting out were incomplete in that the economic value could not be decoupled from the informational value. Inevitably, spammers arose to take advantage of the ability to create high-economic-value links at very low cost, causing vast damage to the ability to use links as a purely informational exchange. In addition, this forced Google to become more and more opaque about the refinements and adjustments it makes to its indexing algorithms, making a key part of their business less and less transparent over time. The eventual result has been the virtual decimation of communications systems like TrackBack, and absurdities like blogs linking to their own tag search results for key words in lieu of useful links, in an attempt to appease a search algorithm that they will never be allowed to fully understand.
An awareness of how a transformation in the fundamental value of links from informational to economic could have led Google to develop a system that separated editorial and aesthetic choices from economic ones, preventing the eventual link-spam arms race.
What the author observes is that linking which was a globally distributed process of creating an outline of the world’s information has been distorted by the economies generated by Google. In effect, the global outline was perverted to be almost useless.
July 12th, 2009
In this article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/4-reasons-why-the-iphone-app-store-is-bad-news-for-google-2009-6
Time spent in apps is competing with (and replacing) time spent on the mobile Web.
There are some Google display ads in iPhone apps, but no direct line to
Google Search or search ads, where Google stands to make the most
money. (The good news is that Google doesn’t make much money yet from
the mobile Web, so this isn’t immediately disruptive.)
Time spent in apps is competing with (and replacing) time spent on the REAL Web.
This is probably the scariest scenario for Google. If I am sitting on
my couch playing iPhone games or reading an article in Instapaper Pro
– instead of goofing around on the Web on my laptop — that is
potentially real lost revenue for Google. (Similarly, even if I’m using
my iPhone’s Web browser, using the mobile Web and Google search, Google
is probably not monetizing those searches nearly as well as they do on
the computer.)
Users are learning to go to an app to find the information they need as opposed to going to Google or the Web.
For example, if I want a restaurant review, I don’t go to Google to
type in the name of the restaurant. I go to the Yelp app. Or
Urbanspoon. Or whatever. Either way, no Google there.
The App Store search engine built into every iPhone is becoming a very important search engine.
One billion apps downloaded means hundreds of millions (or billions) of
searches conducted. Google doesn’t power it or sell ads there.
Think client applications are back, baby.
June 11th, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reported on the following very creepy business practice …
Suppose you have a bunch of executives who are owed deferred compensation like a pension.
Rather than keep money and have it count against your bottom line, use the money to buy out life insurance for your employees.
The life insurance premiums count as an investment so don’t hurt the bottom line.
The payouts, when your employees die allow you to pay out your executives.
Wolfram and Hart, the evil law firm from Angel, bragged that you had to sign a contract for all time, who knew that this wasn’t fiction.
So employers not only made money from you in life, but also made money off of your death.
And yes, your relatives got none of this money.
And yes, even if you quit the company or got laid off, the firm still made money off the premiums.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
May 20th, 2009
Very rarely does a film and a director re-invent a genre, creating a new story that is so utterly consistent with the original story to leave you breathless with the audacity and the vision.
And I will contend, I have never seen a story teller re-invent the story in a way that is utterly and completely totally consistent with the original story.
JJ Abrams may, over time, deliver a crappy series, and the rest of his Star Trek movies may suck, but this movie will remain a magical moment in the history of story telling.
May 15th, 2009
Finally learned some python and set up my own sourceforge repository.
I have a tool, I am calling twitterblog, which will take a set of tweets, format them into an html table and post them to a blog.
You can check out the tool at twitterblog.sourceforge.net
I am still in very early stages of the tool. Some short term goals are to create a windows installer.
February 13th, 2009
So i am watching the episode last week and this old woman makes her dramatic return and I can not remember who or what she was. It was it turns out an old character. Eloise Hawking.
January 28th, 2009
The Eidos Rescue Plan: Naked Lara Croft?
No more? Over on tombraiderforums.com
, a poster believed to be (but not confirmed as) "Tomb Raider: Underworld" creative director Eric Lindstrom says future Lara Croft games may go for a "Mature" rating.
The Teen rating meant we couldn’t do things we wanted to or were done in the past, but it was a publisher mandate at the tmie [sic]. It won’t always necessarily be so, though, the future can always be different.
Shares in Eidos rose 8% in morning trading.
Sex sells, and finally Lara Croft will be sexy. Well okay, she’s always been sexy.
January 12th, 2009
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