|
|
Noticias -
Noticias
|
|
Sábado, 16 Julho 2011 01:44 |
|
Makoss writes "Normal cryptographic hash functions turn any input text or data into a compact set of bits; useful for computers, not useful for humans. Visual hash functions turn data into graphical representations which are more easily recognizable and memorable to humans. You've seen Identicons and other simple geometric image generators already, but Vash takes the technique beyond basic geometry and produces some really striking images." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 ler mais: |
|
Noticias -
Noticias
|
|
Sábado, 16 Julho 2011 01:00 |
|
guusbosman writes "Yesterday a district court in Washington, D.C. issued its ruling in a case that boiled down to the definition of 'strictly random.' In the 2011 drawing of the U.S. 'Green Card Lottery,' a computer programming error was made and two weeks after the official drawing of the lottery the Department of State closed the website and voided the results. A lawsuit sought an injunction claiming that, while the process was not mathematically random, it was random in the dictionary definition of 'without definite aim, direction, rule or method.' The court, analyzing language from the State Department's regulations, and examples from laws on casinos and the like, rejected that and came out in favor of a mathematical definition of randomness. The lottery is voided and the results of the new drawing came out today at noon EST."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 ler mais: |
|
Noticias -
Noticias
|
|
Sábado, 16 Julho 2011 00:39 |
|
Data mining and customer tracking are familiar concepts from online advertising, but an article at the Guardian examines how metrics and analytics are becoming a big part of the social games people play as well. This merging of games and advertising sounds just as distasteful as you might expect:
"Whereas traditional games are about creating big macro-environments for player exploration, freemium is about micro-managing every step the player takes toward actually buying something. 'A developer can build 'funnels' that depict the player actions leading to a financial conversion like purchasing extra content or virtual merchandize,' says Justin Johnson, CTO of Playmetrix, another British company specialising in game analytics. 'It's then down to the developer to use this analysis to improve conversion by removing obstructions and bottlenecks that may be inherent in the design.' ... It's a strange business. In the free-to-play universe, every player action is a potential metric in a revenue model. In-game behaviour is an algorithm that needs to be unraveled and de-coded. Developers have to operate like a sort of secret police agency, effectively bugging players – the Playmetrix software allows them to embed 'call backs' into their game code that trigger when players do something of interest. This is all visualised via graphics and charts so activities become infographics.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 ler mais: |
|
|
Noticias -
Noticias
|
|
Sábado, 16 Julho 2011 00:18 |
|
jfruhlinger writes "Xbox on Windows 8? A shared PC-tablet OS? Hints have been coming fast and furious from Microsoft about what their next-generation OS strategy will look like. It may be that at its heart, Microsoft is doing what it should have been doing for the last 5 years: building a set of modular OS components for different platforms that work together when need be, rather than a group of competing and incompatible OSes with superficially similar branding. In other words, the company may be getting out of its own way, at last."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 ler mais: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
JPAGE_CURRENT_OF_TOTAL |
