If some foreigner came to your town and said "Hey, shove this metal in with your food and you'll magically stop getting sick!" you'd be skeptical at first too.
The nerd in me is positively delighted at the idea of getting a discount in exchange for memorizing a passage of text.
The atheist in me is upset he had to pick John 3:16. If he picked, say, Luke 6:31 ("And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise), I would have no problem with this at all. If the verse was Ezekiel 23:20 ("There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses") it would have completely made my day.
Perhaps a bit off-topic, but I'm reminded of Blue Man Group. I remember hearing that there are more than three "Blue Men" at any given time, that rotate performances, or perform in different areas. Which makes sense, given the anonymity of the role.
If we're going to be simplifying and revolutionizing things, how about we leave the humble mouse to do its job and start making a device that would strip all those wanton apostrophes from this video? "1960s" and "PCs", like all plurals, do not warrant apostrophes.
If you're going to be vain enough to call your product the "EvoMouse", you should probably have better grammar in your own fart-sniffing demo reel.
I'm probably being unfair, though - I wouldn't want this anyway. I'd rather have a tactile experience, and I'm sure that buying a physical mouse or keyboard will continue to be far cheaper.
A lot of modern classical music has basically turned into a fart-smelling contest. Composers plop down any old notes on a page and call it "challenging" and "cerebral" and "daring". These are embarrassingly courteous euphemisms for "crappy music". Modern classical music (Is there a better term for that? Neoclassical?) lost relevance to pop culture long ago - this should not be taken as a compliment, since in its glory days classical music WAS pop culture - and if people keep writing seas of incoherent notes and claiming that it is classical music, then it will lose relevance even to itself.
Most of your designs have been far too whimsical to ever be practical - which is, of course, the charm! - but I think you could be on to something big with the half-a-heart. There'd be scant room for the feet and folding it might be a challenge, but it seems a very lovely idea!
I'm still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I fed it several posts of mine that were stylistically similar, and I kept getting Stephen King. That's not to say I necessarily agree with the analyses it's giving - just that it seems to have some logic and consistency to how it works.
I think the problem is that it's designed to look for what IS there than what ISN'T. It probably factors in things like the lengths of sentences and paragraphs, word repetition, capitalization or punctuation, maybe looking for a few key words (like vulgarities, perhaps?). It gets "fooled" by garbage, because it doesn't check for garbage, and it doesn't make sense for it to do so - internet posts are filled with slang and misspellings, and a "snobbier" algorithm that chides you for writing nonsense might return some false positives, which would only end in tears.
I don't think it's random, at the very least - the same piece of text will keep giving you the same author.
My lengthier journal posts have pretty reliably been coming up as Stephen King, which is pretty neat, except for one that came up as Dan Brown, which made me make a face.
Obviously the only real use for this would be for parents who want to stop their Meddlesome Kids from using Bad Words On That Internet, since I can't imagine anybody wanting to use this to self-monitor their curse output.
And, well, it's very obviously a waste of time - Why can't we just have a program that monitors keystrokes and, upon detecting a dirty word, play a short buzzer - or better yet, enter enough backspace keystrokes for you to remove the offending term?
It would be far cheaper - the coding would be almost identical but there would be no hardware - and if you bury it with administrative privileges, it'll be far less tempting to disable it then it will be to unplug the danged stinkdongle from your computer and eliminate those smells. As an added bonus, it doesn't make the room completely unusable by everybody else, and it can never need refill cartridges!
Personally, I'd label this one far less "neat" than "stupid".
The atheist in me is upset he had to pick John 3:16. If he picked, say, Luke 6:31 ("And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise), I would have no problem with this at all. If the verse was Ezekiel 23:20 ("There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses") it would have completely made my day.
If you're going to be vain enough to call your product the "EvoMouse", you should probably have better grammar in your own fart-sniffing demo reel.
I'm probably being unfair, though - I wouldn't want this anyway. I'd rather have a tactile experience, and I'm sure that buying a physical mouse or keyboard will continue to be far cheaper.
At the very least, Batman makes for a far more compelling story than Superman - or Mary-Sueperman, as he ought to be called.
In the Mandelbulb paragraph, there's a "#D" where I think you meant "3D", but that's a minor quibble. Great article!
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I think the problem is that it's designed to look for what IS there than what ISN'T. It probably factors in things like the lengths of sentences and paragraphs, word repetition, capitalization or punctuation, maybe looking for a few key words (like vulgarities, perhaps?). It gets "fooled" by garbage, because it doesn't check for garbage, and it doesn't make sense for it to do so - internet posts are filled with slang and misspellings, and a "snobbier" algorithm that chides you for writing nonsense might return some false positives, which would only end in tears.
My lengthier journal posts have pretty reliably been coming up as Stephen King, which is pretty neat, except for one that came up as Dan Brown, which made me make a face.
That said, this is a VERY neat idea!
And, well, it's very obviously a waste of time - Why can't we just have a program that monitors keystrokes and, upon detecting a dirty word, play a short buzzer - or better yet, enter enough backspace keystrokes for you to remove the offending term?
It would be far cheaper - the coding would be almost identical but there would be no hardware - and if you bury it with administrative privileges, it'll be far less tempting to disable it then it will be to unplug the danged stinkdongle from your computer and eliminate those smells. As an added bonus, it doesn't make the room completely unusable by everybody else, and it can never need refill cartridges!
Personally, I'd label this one far less "neat" than "stupid".