This came up today in a discussion about why profanity filters in online games aren't perfect. Bear with me for just a minute, I'm going somewhere important.

It turns out computers just aren't very good at interpreting context sensitive languages. A context sensitive language is one where context, the big picture, matters. For instance, the phrase "this stinks" means different things depending on whether you were just talking about cabbage fermenting in your refrigerator or about asteroids set on a collision course for Earth. What computers are great at are (alleged) context free languages. I say alleged because what they really mean by 'context free' is 'context fixed.' One plus one is always two...as long as the participants agree to discuss boring, mortal, Earthling math.

As a side note, the phrase "time flies" is purported to have at least seven possible interpretations. I've long thought that your ability to have a normal conversation is directly proportional to the number of interpretations you can identify. (Please don't take offense, 'normal' isn't all it's cracked up to be.)

Note, I didn't say it was impossible for a computer to interpret context-sensitive language, just that they are bad at it. Bad meaning slow. It fries their baloney. See, that sentence barely even makes sense to you and me, but you get the idea. A computer would, well, fry its baloney trying to figure out what we were saying.

Now back to the important stuff.

So, first, if you think you can write a good, efficient, effective context-sensitive language interpreter for something like, oh I don't know, a profanity filter for an MMO, you should do two things (1) write it and make history, (2) prepare to spend a large number of your remaining days in a government think tank.

Second, humor, you may have noticed, depends almost entirely (I say "almost" because I haven't really thought about this much and I need to cover my butt (look, there's another case of context-importance...in a very real sense my butt is very well-covered already thank you)) on an audience who can interpret context-sensitive material. This simple fact, I think, will be a huge advantage for our side in the impending robot wars. We won't really have a chance against them with normal encryption methods, but if we couch all our mission critical data in clever waggery, I think they will be tremendously put out. It follows that our chief information officers for the resistance should come from the ranks of popular comedians: David Letterman, Sinbad, circus clowns.

Who knew the jesters would inherit the Earth?

The people who didn't disappear on Monday disappeared Thursday and Friday. There may have been some whackos still around those days, but I wouldn't know cause I disappeared too.

Some went for weekend trips, Ryan Miller was in Seattle at a conference signing his book. I spent time with family and drank cointreau. Wow, that's good stuff.

What's cointreau? I didn't know either. I was researching mind control for a short story when I found an article about a doctor who'd died under questionable circumstances. He plummeted to his death from a hotel balcony after his glass of cointreau was allegedly laced with LSD by the CIA for whom he was working. Always willing to go the extra mile, I bought a bottle to...get in the spirit. It's orangy, it's French, it's all the rage in Europe right now, it's 80 proof, and it's yummy. It's also not cheap.

Anyway, Monday is back-on-track day. Finally, in regard to Uru Live, the future is now.

Aye carumba. Blue's News posted a link to Gigagiggles.

Er, so, welcome all Blue's Newsers. If you'll kindly direct your attention to my Amazon referrer's link down and right...Go ahead and follow the link and purchase Uru to deposit a shiny new nickel in my free books fund. I'm sure we're all going to get along quite nicely.

We just got word that the single-player offline version of Uru is officially gold master. As always, there are caveats, contingencies and qualifications in the fine print, but for all intents and purposes: Woot!

Coincidentally, today is my 4 year anniversary at Cyan. That makes Uru Gold Master kind of like a shiny, round diploma. If I had a tassle, I'd flip it.

What happens now? Well, we have about 29 days before someone buys Uru and clicks on the option that tries to connect to an Uru Live server. We should figure out what happens then...

In the game industry, Gold Master is the CD you send to the publisher that will be used to print all the other CD's. We sent the offline, single-player Uru gold master disc to Ubisoft today. Now we wait to hear if it's approved. It's been a crazy month or more of very long days and very long weeks. Bug fixes, last minute features, final arguments, etc. Those late-night checkin emails can be loads of fun...So, without further adieu, I bring you:

Musings Overheard on the Way to Gold Master

"Made the human brain rewind the idle behavior when it resumes."

"The proper fix would require creating a black hole inside the bucket which would turn Teledahn inside-out and stretch the avatar until he was the width of a human hair."

"Defensive scripting was a bit too defensive."

"Another critical fix to [stuff] that is completely going away tomorrow."

"If the other linking books were working they might crash as well."

I'm getting a laptop tomorrow. It's very exciting.

When I looked into laptops, I found there are two kinds: the kind that weigh 80 pounds and do tricks and the kind that weigh 3 pounds and you can skip very far if the lake surface is calm. I opted for the 80 pound version. Someone recommended I don't actually use this particular laptop on my lap per se. Apparently the 80 pound laptops get very hot and humans, you know, are flammable.

The specs say the battery, when fully charged, will supply 96 Watt-Hours of operation. By my calculations I should be able to run it for about 90 seconds without an external power source. I figure they underestimate so you'll buy an extra battery. That's how they get ya. Instead, I'm designing a harness so I can wear a generator on my back. With a little practice and some gas freshener I think I'll be able to yank the start cord over my shoulder and get it going with one hand. vroooom digga digga digga

Generator technology has come a loooong way in the past few years. The Beechcraft Mentor I flew in the Navy couldn't fly upside down for more than 15 minutes or all the engine oil would drain out of the casing, it'd seize up and down you'd go. So, I figured handstands with the generator strapped to my back were right out...until I found the Honda EU1000i Inverter Generator. Check this out:

"To prevent any possible damage to the unit, the Oil Alert will shut the unit off when the oil drops below a safe operating level."

And this!

"The Honda Inverter Technology makes this generator ideally suited for use with sensitive electronics (e.g., computer, printer, and other sensitive electronic equipment) because the generator produces a clean sine wave of energy that prevents surging."

And this!!

"...up to 8.3 hours on a single tank of gas when used with the Eco-Throttle feature."

A couple of scuba tanks to carry gas in and I'm set.