It’s a jewel one should have in its tool-shop.

 Let me relate a few war stories...

 Once I had a very very complex problem to solve.

 I had not the foggiest notion in which order to compute what.

 So I took the cowards way and hooked in the Observer all over the place
 so I didn't have to think in what order to do it.

 It was very slow and buggy and I was no closer to understanding in the
 problem than before. It did work occasionally though.

 I put in enough logging to see what order it did things in (when it
 worked). After glaring at that for an hour I saw the pattern, recoded
 it as a couple of tight while loops.

 Result...

 Very fast, very understandable, easily maintained, no bugs and no observers.

 Story two...

 Once I took over the maintenance of some code that had several
 observer pattern instances scattered around it.

 It was fragile, buggy, and erratic.

 After much loss of hair and many hours of poring over log traces I
 figured it out.

 There were complex loop paths through several observers. No mere
 mortal could really understand what would happen if object X updated,
 since the possible impacts and possible variants of paths were almost
 limitless and depended crucially on the order of registration of
 observers.

 After a brief killing spree amongst the instances of the observer
 pattern the code was still buggy, but at least no longer fragile and
 erratic...

groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/msg/fae4a931c64f5311

Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship.

ABSTRACT

Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.

I describe other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. I also explain a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.

Scientific development has always learnt a lot from SF. Maybe boody-sleeving will be next.

Let’s admit it, Lisp coders are on average very smart, but so are the early ruby adapters .. and they get only on average $60k. Sniff ..

Short update, before the conference on Nov 4 and 5.

• We are still evaluating whether we should get a bigger room. Sofar we have about 30 people that confirmed that they will show up. We have space for 50 people and might simple close the conference registration once we are fully booked and overbooked by 5% like these airline companies.
• O’Reilly might give a free book to every speaker. Please add to the wiki what book you want. I will send off our wish list o O’Reilly around Oct 5.
• Please put titles of your talks in the wiki, so that some structure will emerge. In the worst case we do a "planing-game" at the start of the conference and quickly produce the program as we did last year.
• Get-Togethers will be announced in the wiki till Friday this week.

Looking forward to see you all again this year!

> Hi all,

 > When you are programming, what kind of music or which song you love to
 > hear? Is it classic music, piano, or pop music? Is it by male singer or
 > by female singer?

 I don't listen to music as such; I listen to an 8-second mp3-loop of my
 manager screeching, puce-faced, at the top voice, "WTF is taking you so
 long?!?! RELEASE THE CODE!!!! RELEASE THE CODE!!!! WTF AM I PAYING YOUR
 SALARY FOR?!?! RELEASE THE F%#KING CODE, YOUR WORTHLESS, DISGUSTING,
 INTOLERABLE PIECE OF S@&T!!!"

 > I think sometime hearing music would be helpful in
 > our productivity, right?

 I find that this mp3-loop truly helps <TWITCH> my productivity. I love
 <TWITCH> my manager, and dream of him <TWITCH><TWITCH><releases safety>
 often ...

 > Regards,
 > Sam Huang
 .ed

A great short film about William Blake’s poem "The Tyger".

www.guilherme.tv/tyger

wiki

 Euruko06, the European Ruby Conference,
 will be in Munich, November 4 and 5, 2006.

 ******************************************
 * Conference wiki: http://www.euruko.com *
 ******************************************

 This year, we'll meet in a hotel in Munich,
 locations are being searched for. If you know
 of a good place, let us know, too.

 The conference will begin at 10 AM on Saturday and
 end sometime on Sunday.

 ******************************************
 * matz has offered to give us a          *
 * Skype video message.                   *
 ******************************************

 Audience:      Everybody interested in Ruby is most welcome!
 Fee:           minimal fee of 20 EUR, T-Shirts will be extra
                (cash in small unmarked bills)
 Registration:  wiki at http://www.euruko.com, follow the link
                to the Visitors' Page.

 Talks:         If you want to give a talk, please put down
                topic (an short description) on the wiki, too.

 ******************************************
 * Design the conference T-Shirt          *
 * or I'll do it again ...                *
 ******************************************

 If you have questions drop us a note at
 euruk...@euruko.com

 See you in Munich,

We have been using R and ruby since 1998.

Please send requests to armin (at) approximity.com.