....why? Do you prefer rectangles to circles? They're the same damn game.
Different implementations of the same idea, yes. Of course, it's quite possible for one implementation to be better than another. I think Rock Band is better, that's all.:)
Guitar Hero is a portal to get more kids interested in music, and not just listening to it in their iWhatever. Imagine if even 1% of those kids were shown this instrument. Regardless, I'd take a music game over many other popular genres of mehware.
Hold on, there... I think he was saying that playing with this particular controller setup looked dumb - not that music games in general were dumb.
(Forget Guitar Hero... Rock Band is better.)
Re:Activision - Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero
on
Theremin Guitar Hero
·
· Score: 1
So, I guess you've proven my point, and destroyed yours, i.e., you are NOT "stuck" with iOS if you purchase an iPhone. You just admitted that your initial statement was a LIE.
Are you even sure theolein is the AC from four posts pack? Or did you forget to see who was posting what? Or are you pretending to have misidentified the posters in order to troll?
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
Actually, being able to not speak and speak the Queen's (or King's) English at the same time shows innovation.
True. It's like having tea time, and having no tea, while at the same time having tea.
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
Irony? I don't know. What better way to flaunt our old victory over the English than to continue our long practice of systemic abuse and degradation of the English language?
Something developed in China is being bastardized by a foreign country who basically copied it and is changing it at its will?
Well, that has been going on with the Chinese character set in various other countries for some time - but this is not an example of that. This isn't about them changing the characters in use, they're just changing their officially recognized selection of what characters are part of the "standard" set which (according to the government) all Japanese should know. People can still use characters outside of that set.
Characters do not necessarily map one-to-one to phonemes. For instance there are 12 vowels in English, but these are represented with only 5 characters.
You forgot "Y". Well, I assume you forgot "Y" 'cause it's hard to imagine you forgot one of "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U"...
and perhaps also pointing out that people that use "However, IANAL" had to also start out at the same point before constantly confusing and forcing people to look it up.
i'll further waste people's time in defense of not wasting their time.
I expect they instead started by saying "I am not a lawyer" and then abbreviating it once the phrase was common enough to be recognizable...
You've now converted percentages to the number of gallons it would represent in savings;
This is what was presented in the article. If you're criticizing the article and talking about percentages, you're addressing the wrong point.
still quite meaningless when making a purchasing decision based on the range of the vehicle. Here:
500 gallons at 2MPG, 200 gallons at 5MPG.
Gee I saved 300 gallons! (Even though I only get 3 more miles per gallon, it must be the best option! I'm saving the most!)
Well, the idea is that if you have a vehicle that gets 5MPG or whatever, probably a more efficient vehicle that does the same job (i.e. SUV or minivan) probably isn't going to get more than 10-20MPG.
But then, in that case, I don't know why it would matter. Either you're replacing an SUV with another SUV or you're replacing a small car with another small car - and it doesn't matter which of the two options saves more fuel, because which one you replace depends on which one you have...
The only scenario I can think of where the article's complaint maybe makes sense is if a family had an inefficient SUV and a relatively inefficient small car, and could only replace one for financial reasons, and had to pick which one. Then which of the two options would save the most fuel? That seems to me the only case where inverting the ratio is really helpful. You can say, OK, using 100 gallons per 1000 miles now on the SUV, could switch to 50 gallons per 1000 miles for a new SUV, or replace my 30 gallons per 1000 miles compact with a 20 gallons per 1000 miles compact... That makes the difference clear. Even though replacing the compact gives you a greater difference in MPG (17 vs. 10), replacing the SUV would result in greater overall fuel savings. Of course, a better comparison would also include how much you drive one vehicle vs. how much you drive the other...
So what are you suggesting? That we (should?) have a king?
With the right king, perhaps. But that's the trick. How can you find someone to take on huge power and huge responsibility, grant them authority irrevocable except by force of revolution, and trust that they'll do what's best?
I'm not proposing any kind of perfect solution - I'm just saying that doing what people want isn't always best. The USA isn't a pure democracy, it's a representative democracy - which provides some measure of insulation between the momentary whims of the populace and the current course of action. If a representative uses the "will of the people" as a guide, they should still consider who they're listening to, why they want that change, and try to determine, to the best of their ability, whether that course really is sensible.
Specifically I was saying I disagree with darkness404's suggestion that if drivers want to drive faster, the speed limit should be higher. There are other factors that must be considered apart from such short-sighted whims.
The article's math is silly. You don't look at the percentage of increase for the best gain. You look at the total gain.
They're not talking about percentages, they're talking about comparing how much fuel you'd use for a given journey at each fuel economy level, and seeing which change (10-to-20 or 33-to-50) saves you more fuel (and, thus, more money.)
For instance, if traveling 1000 miles - you need 100 gallons at 10MPG, 50 gallons at 20MPG, about 30 gallons at 33MPG, and 20 gallons at 50MPG.
So going from 10-to-20 saves you 50 gallons, going from 33-to-50 saves you 10 gallons.
I think that kind of comparison makes a certain amount of sense (I'm more often interested in how much gas a certain trip will take, rather than how far I can get for a certain amount of gas), but I'm not convinced that we need to invert the ratios to make that kind of calculation easier... And overall savings over a longer period of time is still pretty easy to work out. Operating a 10MPG vehicle takes twice as much fuel as 20MPG, etc.
The dude in that video sounded like he was constantly on the verge of breaking down in tears. I think this really hurt his presentation - the audience didn't laugh at his "MPH" joke at all!
Personally, I'm used to thinking in metric for small measurements (it's a lot nicer to deal with mm rather than fractions of an inch, IMO), but I rely on imperial for anything large. I've been running my GPS on metric to get used to metric speed and distance for car travel (pretty easy - instead of a mile per minute being highway speed, it's about 100km per hour) but the whole effort is kind of frustrating. If the country is going to continue to resist this change, aren't I just making things harder for myself?
More seriously - it would be costly to switch. I think when the US finally does switch to metric, it will be for economic reasons - if we hit a major slump and our people needed to start going to other countries for good jobs, then suddenly there would be a big drive to switch to metric... Short of that, I don't know what could possibly get us to switch.
Well, by most accounts we are in the worst economy since The Great Depression. Now seems like a good time to make that change to help the economy, wouldn't ya think?
Perhaps, but a lot of other countries were affected as well. I don't know if a switch to metric would have any benefit in the near future, and the situation isn't bad enough that we'd want to. The scenario I'm describing is not just a weak economy, but more like a fall from our current state as a world power... In such a case we'd need to learn metric (and, possibly, a foreign language or two) in order to compete economically.
a word of sense for americans. but it seems that they like to be reminded about their previous colony status by using the imperial units, so liters and kilometers might be as bad as "COMMUNISM !";)
Well, these days the US feels pretty secure in its relationship to England because of World War II. We tend to believe that we single-handedly showed up and sorted out Europe.:)
The Metric system is French in origin, though - perhaps we don't love the old ways of the British so much as we hate the French?:) I don't know where this hatred of France comes from... World War II again? Or just a general feeling that the French don't like us, either?
More seriously - it would be costly to switch. I think when the US finally does switch to metric, it will be for economic reasons - if we hit a major slump and our people needed to start going to other countries for good jobs, then suddenly there would be a big drive to switch to metric... Short of that, I don't know what could possibly get us to switch.
Well, no. The law should promote the overall well-being of the people. There is a difference.
It is also an impossibility, because people disagree on what the overall well-being is. The best you can do is go with what people want.
You're saying that my suggested approach cannot work because it cannot be made perfect? Nothing can be made perfect, but with whatever system is chosen, one simply does one's best to make it work well. Why is "what people want" the best choice, then? Why do you suppose that it is not possible to come up with something better?
"what people want" is subject to many factors - and it's fickle. Would the whole middle class of the USA have cared about financial reform five years ago? How many do you suppose would have been content with "let the free market sort itself"? Would the situation not be better if financial reform had come prior to a major economic disaster? "what people want" is very sensitive to what has captured people's attention. Governing by "what people want" is a good way to appease people in the short term, but it's not necessarily the best direction in general.
People also have conflicting goals. They want to drive fast but they don't want other people to drive fast near their homes. They want low taxes, but they want a good public school system. They want a general atmosphere of financial prosperity but they don't want to pay duties on imported goods (to balance a trade deficit), don't want a war to be fought to protect national economic interests, etc. "people" often don't consider the bigger picture, and want simply whatever's best for them - even if it's self-defeating in the long term.
And what about issues like minority rights? Not everyone agrees about what they want with regard to an issue like that of course, but going with a simple majority rules decision scheme would mean the minorities in question would effectively have no say in anything.
How do you mandate that? (I do love Top Gear here in the US, and the US version of The Office... so I give them that.)
More serious response: it seems you missed the content.
The BBC is under a mandate to produce quality programming. The BBC isn't an ordinary corporation, it operates under a royal charter, funded by the television license fees, and their charter comes under review periodically - so of course not complying with a mandate like "produce quality programming" could jeopardize their comfortable niche.
Other broadcasters wouldn't be subject to that mandate, of course - but ultrasound's point is that the mandate still affects them, since they need to compete with the BBC in order to survive.
You don't see murderers and rapists complaining about CCTVs in other people's buildings.
Actually, if they or their attorney had a good legal argument for why that CCTV was illegal, or its footage inadmissible, I believe murderers and rapists would be happy to take advantage of this and prevent the footage from being used as evidence against them.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget Guitar Hero... Rock Band is better.
....why? Do you prefer rectangles to circles? They're the same damn game.
Different implementations of the same idea, yes. Of course, it's quite possible for one implementation to be better than another. I think Rock Band is better, that's all. :)
What Guitar Hero has the Zelda theme in it????
Frets on Fire, I'm guessing?
I never really played the free implementations of the guitar games, so I can't say for sure...
Well, you don't count then :P
Guitar Hero is a portal to get more kids interested in music, and not just listening to it in their iWhatever. Imagine if even 1% of those kids were shown this instrument. Regardless, I'd take a music game over many other popular genres of mehware.
Hold on, there... I think he was saying that playing with this particular controller setup looked dumb - not that music games in general were dumb.
(Forget Guitar Hero... Rock Band is better.)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/activision-reports-sluggish-sales-for-sousaphone-h,2246/
You know, back when Guitar Hero was made by Harmonix, Harmonix joked about the possibility of "Accordion Hero"...
I guess what I'm saying is, I love The Onion, but it's a very old joke. :)
I am disappointed in you all. Does no one get the Hitchhiker's Guide reference?
Anonymous Coward said...
if you want an iPhone you're stuck with iPhone OS
theolein said...
Pssst, Android has been ported to the iPhone.
So, I guess you've proven my point, and destroyed yours, i.e., you are NOT "stuck" with iOS if you purchase an iPhone. You just admitted that your initial statement was a LIE.
Are you even sure theolein is the AC from four posts pack? Or did you forget to see who was posting what? Or are you pretending to have misidentified the posters in order to troll?
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
Actually, being able to not speak and speak the Queen's (or King's) English at the same time shows innovation.
True. It's like having tea time, and having no tea, while at the same time having tea.
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
Irony? I don't know. What better way to flaunt our old victory over the English than to continue our long practice of systemic abuse and degradation of the English language?
Something developed in China is being bastardized by a foreign country who basically copied it and is changing it at its will?
Well, that has been going on with the Chinese character set in various other countries for some time - but this is not an example of that. This isn't about them changing the characters in use, they're just changing their officially recognized selection of what characters are part of the "standard" set which (according to the government) all Japanese should know. People can still use characters outside of that set.
I don't see whats Ironic about it. Whats your definition of irony?
You know, it's like rain, on your wedding day. Things like that.
Characters do not necessarily map one-to-one to phonemes. For instance there are 12 vowels in English, but these are represented with only 5 characters.
You forgot "Y". Well, I assume you forgot "Y" 'cause it's hard to imagine you forgot one of "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U"...
and perhaps also pointing out that people that use "However, IANAL" had to also start out at the same point before constantly confusing and forcing people to look it up.
i'll further waste people's time in defense of not wasting their time.
I expect they instead started by saying "I am not a lawyer" and then abbreviating it once the phrase was common enough to be recognizable...
That is to say, it's the closest thing that they have to the English language. /drumroll
I think the drum-related word you were looking for was "rimshot".
No, it's still dumb.
You've now converted percentages to the number of gallons it would represent in savings;
This is what was presented in the article. If you're criticizing the article and talking about percentages, you're addressing the wrong point.
still quite meaningless when making a purchasing decision based on the range of the vehicle. Here:
500 gallons at 2MPG, 200 gallons at 5MPG.
Gee I saved 300 gallons! (Even though I only get 3 more miles per gallon, it must be the best option! I'm saving the most!)
Well, the idea is that if you have a vehicle that gets 5MPG or whatever, probably a more efficient vehicle that does the same job (i.e. SUV or minivan) probably isn't going to get more than 10-20MPG.
But then, in that case, I don't know why it would matter. Either you're replacing an SUV with another SUV or you're replacing a small car with another small car - and it doesn't matter which of the two options saves more fuel, because which one you replace depends on which one you have...
The only scenario I can think of where the article's complaint maybe makes sense is if a family had an inefficient SUV and a relatively inefficient small car, and could only replace one for financial reasons, and had to pick which one. Then which of the two options would save the most fuel? That seems to me the only case where inverting the ratio is really helpful. You can say, OK, using 100 gallons per 1000 miles now on the SUV, could switch to 50 gallons per 1000 miles for a new SUV, or replace my 30 gallons per 1000 miles compact with a 20 gallons per 1000 miles compact... That makes the difference clear. Even though replacing the compact gives you a greater difference in MPG (17 vs. 10), replacing the SUV would result in greater overall fuel savings. Of course, a better comparison would also include how much you drive one vehicle vs. how much you drive the other...
So what are you suggesting? That we (should?) have a king?
With the right king, perhaps. But that's the trick. How can you find someone to take on huge power and huge responsibility, grant them authority irrevocable except by force of revolution, and trust that they'll do what's best?
I'm not proposing any kind of perfect solution - I'm just saying that doing what people want isn't always best. The USA isn't a pure democracy, it's a representative democracy - which provides some measure of insulation between the momentary whims of the populace and the current course of action. If a representative uses the "will of the people" as a guide, they should still consider who they're listening to, why they want that change, and try to determine, to the best of their ability, whether that course really is sensible.
Specifically I was saying I disagree with darkness404's suggestion that if drivers want to drive faster, the speed limit should be higher. There are other factors that must be considered apart from such short-sighted whims.
The article's math is silly. You don't look at the percentage of increase for the best gain. You look at the total gain.
They're not talking about percentages, they're talking about comparing how much fuel you'd use for a given journey at each fuel economy level, and seeing which change (10-to-20 or 33-to-50) saves you more fuel (and, thus, more money.)
For instance, if traveling 1000 miles - you need 100 gallons at 10MPG, 50 gallons at 20MPG, about 30 gallons at 33MPG, and 20 gallons at 50MPG.
So going from 10-to-20 saves you 50 gallons, going from 33-to-50 saves you 10 gallons.
I think that kind of comparison makes a certain amount of sense (I'm more often interested in how much gas a certain trip will take, rather than how far I can get for a certain amount of gas), but I'm not convinced that we need to invert the ratios to make that kind of calculation easier... And overall savings over a longer period of time is still pretty easy to work out. Operating a 10MPG vehicle takes twice as much fuel as 20MPG, etc.
My car gets 13500 cubits per sester of phlogiston-infused fuel!
Oh, you're just whinging without actually paying attention to any of the benefits that metrication would bring. Please watch Metrication Matters and read this site to find out more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgtsSM7vN0M
http://www.metricationmatters.com/
The dude in that video sounded like he was constantly on the verge of breaking down in tears. I think this really hurt his presentation - the audience didn't laugh at his "MPH" joke at all!
As for the website... Comic sans? Really?
> and had no need to remember the conversion when they learned it in science class.
That's because they teach a crappy remembrance system...
Compare and contrast to the SIMPLE way that you can do in your head:
miles -> km: x*2*2*2*2/10
i.e. 60 miles = 60*2*2*2*2/10 = 120*2*2*2/10 = 240*2*2/10 = 480*2/10 = 960/10 = 96 km
km -> miles: x/50 + x/10
i.e. 100 km = 100/2 + 100/10 = 50+10 = 60 miles
x/50 is not the same as x/2! :)
Being really able to work in metric isn't a matter of doing conversions, it's a matter of not needing to do conversions.
Relevant XKCD...
Personally, I'm used to thinking in metric for small measurements (it's a lot nicer to deal with mm rather than fractions of an inch, IMO), but I rely on imperial for anything large. I've been running my GPS on metric to get used to metric speed and distance for car travel (pretty easy - instead of a mile per minute being highway speed, it's about 100km per hour) but the whole effort is kind of frustrating. If the country is going to continue to resist this change, aren't I just making things harder for myself?
More seriously - it would be costly to switch. I think when the US finally does switch to metric, it will be for economic reasons - if we hit a major slump and our people needed to start going to other countries for good jobs, then suddenly there would be a big drive to switch to metric... Short of that, I don't know what could possibly get us to switch.
Well, by most accounts we are in the worst economy since The Great Depression. Now seems like a good time to make that change to help the economy, wouldn't ya think?
Perhaps, but a lot of other countries were affected as well. I don't know if a switch to metric would have any benefit in the near future, and the situation isn't bad enough that we'd want to. The scenario I'm describing is not just a weak economy, but more like a fall from our current state as a world power... In such a case we'd need to learn metric (and, possibly, a foreign language or two) in order to compete economically.
a word of sense for americans. but it seems that they like to be reminded about their previous colony status by using the imperial units, so liters and kilometers might be as bad as "COMMUNISM !" ;)
Well, these days the US feels pretty secure in its relationship to England because of World War II. We tend to believe that we single-handedly showed up and sorted out Europe. :)
The Metric system is French in origin, though - perhaps we don't love the old ways of the British so much as we hate the French? :) I don't know where this hatred of France comes from... World War II again? Or just a general feeling that the French don't like us, either?
More seriously - it would be costly to switch. I think when the US finally does switch to metric, it will be for economic reasons - if we hit a major slump and our people needed to start going to other countries for good jobs, then suddenly there would be a big drive to switch to metric... Short of that, I don't know what could possibly get us to switch.
Well, no. The law should promote the overall well-being of the people. There is a difference.
It is also an impossibility, because people disagree on what the overall well-being is. The best you can do is go with what people want.
You're saying that my suggested approach cannot work because it cannot be made perfect? Nothing can be made perfect, but with whatever system is chosen, one simply does one's best to make it work well. Why is "what people want" the best choice, then? Why do you suppose that it is not possible to come up with something better?
"what people want" is subject to many factors - and it's fickle. Would the whole middle class of the USA have cared about financial reform five years ago? How many do you suppose would have been content with "let the free market sort itself"? Would the situation not be better if financial reform had come prior to a major economic disaster? "what people want" is very sensitive to what has captured people's attention. Governing by "what people want" is a good way to appease people in the short term, but it's not necessarily the best direction in general.
People also have conflicting goals. They want to drive fast but they don't want other people to drive fast near their homes. They want low taxes, but they want a good public school system. They want a general atmosphere of financial prosperity but they don't want to pay duties on imported goods (to balance a trade deficit), don't want a war to be fought to protect national economic interests, etc. "people" often don't consider the bigger picture, and want simply whatever's best for them - even if it's self-defeating in the long term.
And what about issues like minority rights? Not everyone agrees about what they want with regard to an issue like that of course, but going with a simple majority rules decision scheme would mean the minorities in question would effectively have no say in anything.
mandate to produce quality programming
"You there! Entertain me! I demand it!"
How do you mandate that? (I do love Top Gear here in the US, and the US version of The Office... so I give them that.)
More serious response: it seems you missed the content.
The BBC is under a mandate to produce quality programming. The BBC isn't an ordinary corporation, it operates under a royal charter, funded by the television license fees, and their charter comes under review periodically - so of course not complying with a mandate like "produce quality programming" could jeopardize their comfortable niche.
Other broadcasters wouldn't be subject to that mandate, of course - but ultrasound's point is that the mandate still affects them, since they need to compete with the BBC in order to survive.
mandate to produce quality programming
"You there! Entertain me! I demand it!"
You're absolutely right. Suddenly I feel stupid. And contagious.
You don't see murderers and rapists complaining about CCTVs in other people's buildings.
Actually, if they or their attorney had a good legal argument for why that CCTV was illegal, or its footage inadmissible, I believe murderers and rapists would be happy to take advantage of this and prevent the footage from being used as evidence against them.