Word: coding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with the universe, serenely attuned to the ebb and flow of natural forces. The culture of the U.S. Marine Corps is quite the opposite--gung-ho machismo in full cry. Yet in World War II, the latter had a desperate need for the former, specifically for an unbreakable code, based on the Navajo language, which could be openly spoken on the radio in combat. Windtalkers is a (heavily) fictionalized account of this coupling...
John Woo's film concentrates on a non-com, Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage), a Marine ordered to guard one of the code talkers, Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach). Joe is to protect the Navajo if possible, to kill him if it looks as if Ben will be captured by the Japanese. Joe, however, is a bit shell-shocked, or as we now say, suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome. He has followed orders before, and, as a result, is the sole, death-haunted survivor of a unit he led into an ambush. He resolves not to become too close...
This does not render Windtalkers worthless, though it does pretty much ignore code talking--how it was invented and how it worked. It exists as a largely unexamined premise, while the picture pursues the more routinely uplifting theme of male bonding across fairly standard barriers of ignorance and prejudice...
Software engineers will tell you that the longer they labor to solve complex problems by manually writing code, the more they respect the reasoning powers of the human brain. For years, artificial-intelligence researchers have gained some of their most useful insights from experts in brain function. And today the biological sciences are making similar contributions to all sorts of technologies useful to business, from software that "grows," "heals" and "reproduces" to tiny carbon tubes that will allow computer transistors to shrink to atomic dimensions even as they grow more powerful...
...predicts that United Airlines, the second largest U.S. carrier, could still go the way of U.S. Airways, which announced last month that it plans to seek government loan guarantees. Just two weeks ago, Bethune announced that to boost revenues, Continental and U.S. Airways are discussing a code-sharing alliance that would allow passengers to book flights on one airline but travel on the other for part of the route. "Fact is, we're all losing money. At Continental, we're just losing less than everybody else," he says. "If we don't survive, no one is going to survive...