Michael’s here at MIT and just gave a great talk. While he was preparing for it, apropos of conversations I’ve had recently with him and Beth Cardier, I wrote something that I think is a story generator, and which is a self-contained 1K python program. Here it is: story.py

Let me know if you think it’s a story generator, and, whether or not you think it is, if you think of anything interesting about stories and computation as a result of looking at the program and running it.

Rockstar Games have released the first details of the upcoming download material for Grand Theft Auto IV. Time to join a biker gang and take on Liberty City from...

You probably recall that two days ago, when the new Xbox Experience launched, sadly, about 300 Sony Pictures films were unavailable for Netflix Watch Instantly on NXE, thus quashing your hopes of streaming The Karate Kid series. At the time, it seemed possible that missing titles were due to the fact that Xbox 360 manufacturer Microsoft and Sony are direct competitors. Well, according to a Sony spokesperson, the problem isn't specific to the Xbox, nor is their beef competition-related in any way. Sony also says it is in talks with the several "relevant parties" to work out these vague licensing issues, though there was no word on when the issue would be resolved. We really do hope it's soon because we're dying to see how everything turns out with the Cobra Kai.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Xbox 360's lack of Sony Pictures films streaming on Netflix "unrelated" to competition originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Only a few days ago it was announced that SHq and noth1ng are leaving aAa to join up with former emuLate player mSx, leaving aAa shocked with a three man lineup. Now they decided to remove the three remaining players Geno, MarM and TDSI in order to pick up eSport-eu which qualified for this years World Cyber Games.

In a continuing series of articles highlighting that GNU/Linux is a viable replacement operating system, I want to spend a bit of time talking about data encryption, focussing on how...

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/84645?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Brutal+share+sell-off+in+US+as+oil+falls+below+%2450+for+first+time+in+3%26frac12%3B+yearsch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=US+economy+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CMarket+turmoil%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CSharesc5=Investments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=James+Doran%2CLarry+Elliottc7=2008_11_21c8=1121682c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=US+economyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FUS+economy" width="1" height="1" //divpWall Street suffered its biggest battering in more than 10 years last night, while fears of a long and painful economic slump continued to stalk the markets./ppBoth stockmarket indices in the US - the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Standard Poor's 500 index - closed the day at levels not seen since before the burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000. And the price of oil dropped below $50 a barrel for the first time in 3frac12; years./ppYesterday afternoon, what little confidence remained in the market was sapped by a record rise in US unemployment, and Washington's refusal to offer a financial bail-out to the country's so-called Big Three carmakers./ppIn the final two hours of trading, the sell-off was brutal: the Dow plunged 444.99 points - or 5.6%- to 7552.29. The SP 500 slid 6.7% to 752.44, its lowest close since 1997. Banking shares were perhaps the hardest hit, with Citigroup closing the day down 26%. This latest share collapse left Citigroup - once the biggest bank in the world - with a market value of $25bn. Less than two years ago, the group was worth more than $250bn./ppGM And Ford both closed up but lost massive gains made earlier in the day when the prospect of a bail-out was still on the cards. Their share prices plunged as Paulson revealed his distaste for government intervention in the car market ./pp"No one thinks a failure of any company in [the auto] industry would be a good thing. It's something to be avoided," Paulson said. But: "It doesn't make any sense to put any money in, if there isn't a clear path to viability."/ppThe slumping markets were further buffeted by the worst unemployment data in the US for 16 years. /ppInitial claims for state unemployment benefits were a seasonally adjusted 542,000 in the week to November 15, compared with 515,000 a week before, the biggest weekly increase since 1992. /ppCalifornia had the worst increase, with 15,000 more out of work over the week. New York also posted record gains, with 3,700 newly unemployed people as a large number of layoffs from Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup begin./pp"These numbers are rotten," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard Poor's in New York. He said California's losses were so high because many businesses had been affected by the recent wildfires. America's national unemployment rate is running at 6.5%, while total claims lasting more than one week broke through the 4m mark, to hit a 25-year high./ppTo compound it all, the dollar weakened further still against major currencies. A euro cost $1.2534, up from $1.2526 on Wednesday. /ppIn the oil market, the cost of a barrel of benchmark Brent crude fell by almost $3 to $49.83 on commodity markets. US light crude, which tends to be slightly dearer than Brent, briefly dipped below the $50 level in New York trading./ppThe slump means British motorists are likely to see petrol prices come down by a further 7p a litre before Christmas./ppThe Opec oil cartel is contemplating supply curbs when it meets in Cairo next week, but oil analysts said the prospect of tumbling demand for oil outweighed any possible cut in production. /ppThe RAC said the tumbling cost of crude - dropping almost $100 a barrel since its July peak of more than $147 - would mean that it would be pound;17 cheaper to fill up the average car. But AA spokesman Luke Bodset warned that, while wholesale prices were being pushed down, "they are not necessarily being passed on to the consumer, because the pound has lost a quarter of its value over the last year"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketturmoil"Market turmoil/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/shares"Shares/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227235575618112102461559266"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227235575618112102461559266" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

Incroyable, mais vrai : c’est hier que fut annoncé qu’un radar de la NASA avait détecté un glacier caché sous de la roche sur Mars. Ca me rappelle une autre découverte sur cette planète, récente… Pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas l’histoire, c’est ici.

Rekrut.ru will host an international tournament as an opener of their site on December 14th 2008 inviting 8 top teams as well as 8 local teams can qualify on December 13th. So far mTw, Alternate, HAHA and k23 have been invited to the $24,000 tournament.

Paul Walsh / Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Recount, Day 2: Coleman, Franken trade gains, losses  —  Today is Day 2 in the Minnesota recount of ballots in the overtime election struggle between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic rival Al Franken.  The candidates traded modest gains and losses throughout the day.

Well having just read a pretty technical article regarding Nehalem (Core i7) CPU's on Anandtech, I came across an interesting tidbit of information. It looks like we are not going to see Nehalem chips in mainstream notebooks until 2010.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3461&p=3

Quote: Without mainstream mobile Nehalem until Q1 2010, next year will be a very long wait for a serious mobile upgrade. But if you can wait it out, or buy something cheaper today, the time to upgrade will be in Q1 2010. I’m going to go ahead and revise my Apple notebook recommendation given that we probably won’t see a Nehalem based MacBook until 2010. Buy the cheapest MacBook you can today and make it last, upgrade again in 2010. Ooh, that rhymes. It looks like I will be picking up my Alu Macbook on Black Friday.

The families of US victims of the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing say they have received full compensation from Libya.

The families of US victims of the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing say they have received full compensation from Libya.

...with the scenes of some destroyed couch sitting on an off-level porch with cans and bottles scattered around and a nearby pile of refuse rotting into the dust. Then, walking through a slummy part of town, what do I see but this couch with torn up upholstery and padding sitting there on this deck that isn't even close to level any more with scattered beer cans stuck underneath it, and in the corner back of the yard there was this pile of junk with pipes, an old bike or two and a few rotting mattresses trying to become one with the earth again. No nuclear apocalypse needed...

Sadly, no camera with me as I was just coming back from the hospital.

Kozar_The_Malignant writes Scientific American is reporting that data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris. Data from the surface-penetrating radar on MRO revealed that two well-known mid-latitude features are composed of solid water ice. One is about three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. This certainly makes the idea of establishing a station on Mars far more plausible.pa href=http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/21/0021229amp;from=rssimg src=http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/11/21/0021229 //a/ppa href=http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/21/0021229amp;from=rssRead more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/e0pYUj64fUHeiF3yO7ARUcxjKZw/aimg src=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/e0pYUj64fUHeiF3yO7ARUcxjKZw/i border=0 ismap=true //a/pimg src=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/h3dOWVRHEsc height=1 width=1 /

So I have recently come across several of my grandfather's old letters, most of which are in French or Yiddish. There is one postcard, however, that I can't translate or even determine the language it is written in. The handwriting is unusual which doesn't help. Any ideas?

I'd be happy to share some of the others if anyone is interested in this sort of thing.

Thanks,
Daniel
Attached Thumbnails  

Age: 36
Hometown: Szczecin
Where do you now live?: Strasbourg
Where would you most like to live?: close to the sea, on a shore
Who was your first "hero" in life?: Melvin Van Peebles
What is your favorite thing to do on your day off from work?: listen music
What is your favorite color?: the whole rainbow
Who (or what) do you love?: the nature

Wooster: Who and/or what are some of your influences?

Mankind, anyone being able to do the worst and the best at the same time. A few passionated ones, being better, provode me insipration to paint and become someone good as well.

Wooster: What other artists do you most admire?

I could quote hundred, but I have Andy Goldsworthy in mind for his poetry, Moretti for his amazing drawings. C215 for doing so generous art, and for sure my idol James Brown.

Wooster: How would you describe your art to someone who could not see it?

I am mainly painting portraits of people who inspire me through their exemplar lives and actions I try to catch their humanity and energy. I show my works through different ways (gallery, streets, press) and I also use different techniques. I recently launched a blog www.cheval23.net so that i can present who is hidden behind the portraits I paint

Wooster: What other talent would most like to have?

Without any doubt to play music. Music is the ultimate art, that does not need any translation

Wooster: What do you fear the most?

That I could not hear anymore, this could deprive me of listening music

Wooster: What is your greatest ambition?

To believe in human beings

Argentina's Senate approves a bill to nationalise private pension schemes, a measure that has provoked controversy.