Link Dumpage for 2011-03-22
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"In thirty-eight years, The Price is Right never had a contestant guess the exact value of prizes in the Showcase showdown. Until Terry Kniess outsmarted everyone — and changed everything … He looked into the audience for a moment, leaned into his microphone, and said his bid as though he were reading it from a slip of paper: $23,743. … "Wow," Drew Carey said. "That's a very exact bid. We'll be right back, folks," Carey said. "Don't go away." And then the show just stopped."
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"The goal for marketing types in the Internet age is a "viral" ad campaign. You pull off some publicity stunt, there's tons of coverage on the internet, you wind up with millions of eyeballs for virtually no cost. But viral campaigns are all about pushing the envelope. You have to shock people to get their attention, and this is where the potential for disaster lies. Awful, hilarious disaster."
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"I periodically post about “games and names,” or etymologies and explanations of names and words that appear in video games. Over time, I’ve come across various bits of information that I didn’t feel deserved their own post but that might be interesting to readers. I began collecting these bits in what was at one point a short list of odds and ends but which now exists as a bigger-than-planned list of name etymologies, translation oddities, and my own geek theories — with footnotes, no less." Includes the Legend of Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Wario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter and other Capcon titles, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Castlevania, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Mega Man, and more.
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The Venus Kallipygos, also known as the Callipygean Venus, all literally meaning "Venus (or Aphrodite) of the beautiful buttocks",[1] is an Ancient Roman marble statue, thought to be a copy of an older Greek original. In an example of anasyrma, it depicts a partially draped woman, raising her light peplos to uncover her hips and buttocks, and looking back and down over her shoulder, perhaps to evaluate them."
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"Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize AI opponents. We think the computer is going through a thought process just like a human would do in a similar situation. When we see the ball end up in an advantageous position, we think the computer must have intended that to happen. The effect is magnified here by the computer's ability to pot a ball from any position, so for the computer, all positions are equally advantageous. Hence, it can pot ball after ball, without having to worry about positional play. Because sinking a ball on every single shot would be impossible for a human, the player assumes that the computer is using positional play."
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"Mindfuckers aren’t just Dadaism by another name—there has to be some rationale for the mayhem, even if it’s far-fetched (orbiting hallucination-inducing lasers!) or lame (it was all a dream!). And they are not those movies where the audience (and the characters) think they know what’s happening, only to discover in the final moments some key twist that turns everything on its head. (Bruce Willis was balding the whole time?!) ... In Mindfuck Movies you know that Something Is Going On. It’s just not clear what." Covers Spellbound, Rashômon, La Jetée, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solyaris, Videodrome, The Quiet Earth, Jacob’s Ladder, The Game, Abre los ojos, Cube, Dark City, Memento, Mulholland Dr., Donnie Darko, and Primer.
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"Some of the characters we know and love were recycled from other TV shows and commercials Jim Henson worked on, while others were invented by using whatever materials were around." Covers Cookie Monster, Elmo, Telly Monster, Count von Count, Kermit, Swedish Chef, Missy Piggy, Rowlf the Dog, Oscar the Grouch, Gonzo, Statler and Waldorf, Beaker, Fozzier Bear, Bert and Ernie, Grover, Sweetums, Rizzo the Rat, Pepe the King Prawn, and Herry Monster.
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"Confidence tricks and scams are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the “con artist” or simply “artist”, and the intended victim is the “mark”."
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"In this article, I will be taking a closer look at the various types of adventure game puzzles, how they relate to the gameplay, and even how some of these basic forms relate to other game genres." Creates a classification of self-contained puzzles (interaction, mini-game, and riddle puzzles) and key puzzles (inventory, pattern, and implicit information puzzles).
