That sounds great to me. I had Out of this World and Prince of Persia back in the day. Loved them both. I really enjoyed Sands of Time. I think PoP:SoT is a great example of a franchise reboot done right.
Just hang the pre-assembled windmill upside down, run electricity backwards through the generator, and voila! - You've got a nice powerful propeller to drive it.
Taking the developmental psych research instead of the dictionary, a game is "play with rules". Obviously the simulator has rules which are imposed by the software. A good simulator has rules that closely approximate the real world. So I think santax's argument is that the simulator isn't "play". Something I would debate strongly.
The only way that a flight simulator isn't a game or play is if one were a professional pilot or trainee and were doing it as part of your job duties.
Especially for flight sims... thinking back to X-Wing and TIE Fighter, I don't think I could have survived all those dogfights with either a keyboard/mouse or a console controller...
I'm with you. I wish there would be support for something like the Wii nunchuck to replace WASD. Analog sticks for aiming are highly suboptimal compared to a direct pointing device like a mouse (or Wiimote IR pointer), but analog sticks are great for movement.
I'm sure a lot more people die in the US country from insurance rejecting their claim than from the hospital not having enough blood.
My sister-in-law works in blood donations at the Red Cross. Typically, they keep a 10-day supply in the Northeast (meaning the inventory would be depleted in 10 days if donations stopped altogether). Right now, they have a 20-day inventory because money is tight with the recession and blood is expensive so the bean-counters at the hospitals and insurance have been encouraging the providers to cut back on the number of transfusions.
But it sure would suck to have government bureaucrats making healthcare decisions.
Sorry Games Industry, but I'm all set right now. I've got a list of games I'm waiting on, but the only thing released recently that I want is Ghostbusters (and it's not a "must-have on launch day" purchase).
* Ghostbusters (Not worth the full price to me right now) * TIger Woods 10 for Wii (weather is nice, I'm playing real golf, thanks)
...and I'm waiting on * Rock Band Beatles * Metroid Prime Trilogy special edition (Yes, I'll gladly rebuy games I already own with the Wii controls) * Scribblenauts DS (This, I'll buy on launch day!)
My laundry list for games to buy is long, but I'm waiting until I finish these! I want to play TRINE, I want to buy and re-play all those LUCASARTS games that just came out again on Steam, I want to start another MMO like the new Star Trek Online or Knight of the Old Republic MMO.
This is actually a great time for games, for me personally.
I've been on a Virtual Console buying spree, in fact. I'd never played Majora's Mask before so I grabbed that. I'm completely stumped by the Bit.Trip series (so simple and yet so HARD). And I love that Monkey Island and other Lucasarts games are back. New games on a disk in shrinkwrap... not so much lately.
I fought this at my school. I fought it all the way to the level of School Board and I won. A whole lot of "college-track" entered into shop classes after I did, too. Turns out I wasn't the only one who wanted to; I was just the only one willing to argue about it (and whose parents weren't afraid to step on toes, I didn't learn about my father's angry rant at the principal's office until I was well into college).
Pinker is too damn good. It's particularly frustrating for those of us who think that Chonsky's Universal Grammar is a load of crap because Pinker is a better writer and speaker than anyone we've got on our side (although we've got high hopes for Michael Tomasello).
Ah, the American Protestant/Puritan practical virtue ethic!
"Famous" isn't the same as "celebrity". People can be famous for good reasons, not just frivolous ones.
And I agree that any individual scientist who does good work is worth looking up to, but if we never hear about them, how do we do that?
You know what kids do hear about? Athletes. And Paris Hilton. If we don't exalt scientists as being valued, those values don't get transmitted to the next generation. We were in the process of reimporting that value from India before the flow of visas dried up after 9-11.
Most "meteorologists" are local hacks working for TV stations who have passed 2-week-long weather reporting school and get all their data from NOAA anyway. They do not have careers in science at all. On the contrary, their ambition is to become TV anchorman.
I would hardly call your typical local TV "meteorologist" a good example of a science teacher.
They usually show some text on the screen when the person doing the weather is an actual meteorologist. If it doesn't say, you can assume it's nothing but an on-air "talent" who can read the powerpoint without tripping over his or her tongue.
Where I grew up (Maine) there are a lot of people who work outdoors and they take weather very seriously, so the TV weather was always done by an actual scientist. (Also, it's a little trickier forecasting in Maine than in places where you can just look one state to the west and say "We'll get that tomorrow.")
A lot of times, a TV meteorologist does presentations at schools with the specific goal of sparking interest in science.
I dislike that Neil deGrasse guy, he was quite the smirking "I'm smart and you're not" during that whole Pluto isn't a planet anymore crap. I'm with Michio Kaku as my favorite science enthusiast and speaker. He's smart, he's enthused and he didn't go around on the Tonight Show smirking about how Pluto isn't a planet. I'm also looking to punch whoever it was that decided Brontosaurus wasn't a proper name for the Brontosaurus too. (shakes fist in fury)
You're a little late on that one. The peer-reviewed paper that showed that the "brontosaurus" was really an apatosaur was published in 1903.
I'm a Michio Kaku fan, too and have been since I read his book Hyperspace 15 years ago.
Paint the windmills to look like giant supermodels!
Please don't encourage this line of thinking. Wind turbines are as aesthetically beautiful as any man-made industrial thing I've ever seen, but as soon as they become a canvas for outdoor advertising, they will be hideous.
Do you really want an advertising agency to have complete access to your OS? Microsoft would be better, IMHO.
OTOH, google is up front about their use of your personal data. They use it anyway they like for any purpose. good to know.
That's a legit argument for being wary about Chrome on my primary computer, but don't think people use their netbooks the way they use a full laptop or a desktop.
http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html Sirlin's essay is correct insofar as it goes, but it ignores 75% of the categories of play. Scrubs are only scrubs if they are applying their socially constructed rules in the Fiero space. Socially constructed rules are normal and expected in the other three play types.
Gah, I lost my mod points two minutes before reading your post. Yes! A game where "fouls" are committed intentionally, regularly, and repeatedly is seriously broken. I understand that it's commonly accepted and expected now, but anyone who steps away from that game for a year and comes back should say: "You know, that's really dumb."
This is the exact reason that I dislike basketball. (Well, and the fact that lazy pro players look like they are exerting themselves less than the kids outside playing HORSE in the driveway). The benefits for fouling are too high and the penalties too small. Fouls are basically time-outs where you trade a small number of points for possession.
Sirlin is talking specifically about the Goal-Oriented/Abstract-Game type of fun (Fiero). He ignores the other three quadrants of play, which are very real and every bit as legit as his competitive gaming.
Every game has a socially constructed agreement about what the game is that they are playing. The developers have very little input into what that agreement ends up being once the game is put into motion (much to the chagrin of many game developers). Regardless of "the rules" as they are written, if you bring your A-game to a casual play session, YOU are the asshole; and calling everyone else "scrub" only makes you more so. Just like casual players whining at a high-level tournament about "dishonorable" play is being the asshole because they are not honoring the social agreement about what game they are playing.
The State ID number is a random series of letters and numbers and it is harder to guess
In New Hampshire, if you know somebody's name, DOB and a couple of other things you can extrapolate someone's driver's license number. (I can't remember what else was in there and they confiscated it when I got my PA one. Eye color, maybe.)
Mania can be just as dangerous as depression, especially since depression doesn't always lead to suicidal thoughts. I used to work at a rehab for people with traumatic brain injuries and behavior impairments and we had a lot of people who got their brain injury because they were in a manic phase and did something really crazy and got hurt. Bipolar disorder can be tough with an intact frontal lobe. With a damaged frontal lobe, you're not going to be "harnessing" anything.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds great to me.
I had Out of this World and Prince of Persia back in the day. Loved them both. I really enjoyed Sands of Time. I think PoP:SoT is a great example of a franchise reboot done right.
Samus Aran keeps losing all her gear whenever she lands on a planet, too.
Until something is shelved wrong. Or stolen.
Just hang the pre-assembled windmill upside down, run electricity backwards through the generator, and voila! - You've got a nice powerful propeller to drive it.
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Taking the developmental psych research instead of the dictionary, a game is "play with rules".
Obviously the simulator has rules which are imposed by the software. A good simulator has rules that closely approximate the real world. So I think santax's argument is that the simulator isn't "play". Something I would debate strongly.
The only way that a flight simulator isn't a game or play is if one were a professional pilot or trainee and were doing it as part of your job duties.
Especially for flight sims... thinking back to X-Wing and TIE Fighter, I don't think I could have survived all those dogfights with either a keyboard/mouse or a console controller...
I'm with you. I wish there would be support for something like the Wii nunchuck to replace WASD. Analog sticks for aiming are highly suboptimal compared to a direct pointing device like a mouse (or Wiimote IR pointer), but analog sticks are great for movement.
The Bruce Willis Rocket Design Company, eh?
Eject the Warp Core. When it explodes, that will propel us forward!
I'm sure a lot more people die in the US country from insurance rejecting their claim than from the hospital not having enough blood.
My sister-in-law works in blood donations at the Red Cross. Typically, they keep a 10-day supply in the Northeast (meaning the inventory would be depleted in 10 days if donations stopped altogether). Right now, they have a 20-day inventory because money is tight with the recession and blood is expensive so the bean-counters at the hospitals and insurance have been encouraging the providers to cut back on the number of transfusions.
But it sure would suck to have government bureaucrats making healthcare decisions.
A logged in account and everything. I'll be sure to enemy it in case it comes up again while I have mod points.
Sorry Games Industry, but I'm all set right now. I've got a list of games I'm waiting on, but the only thing released recently that I want is Ghostbusters (and it's not a "must-have on launch day" purchase).
* Ghostbusters (Not worth the full price to me right now)
* TIger Woods 10 for Wii (weather is nice, I'm playing real golf, thanks)
...and I'm waiting on
* Rock Band Beatles
* Metroid Prime Trilogy special edition (Yes, I'll gladly rebuy games I already own with the Wii controls)
* Scribblenauts DS (This, I'll buy on launch day!)
My laundry list for games to buy is long, but I'm waiting until I finish these! I want to play TRINE, I want to buy and re-play all those LUCASARTS games that just came out again on Steam, I want to start another MMO like the new Star Trek Online or Knight of the Old Republic MMO.
This is actually a great time for games, for me personally.
I've been on a Virtual Console buying spree, in fact. I'd never played Majora's Mask before so I grabbed that. I'm completely stumped by the Bit.Trip series (so simple and yet so HARD). And I love that Monkey Island and other Lucasarts games are back.
New games on a disk in shrinkwrap... not so much lately.
I fought this at my school. I fought it all the way to the level of School Board and I won.
A whole lot of "college-track" entered into shop classes after I did, too. Turns out I wasn't the only one who wanted to; I was just the only one willing to argue about it (and whose parents weren't afraid to step on toes, I didn't learn about my father's angry rant at the principal's office until I was well into college).
Pinker is too damn good. It's particularly frustrating for those of us who think that Chonsky's Universal Grammar is a load of crap because Pinker is a better writer and speaker than anyone we've got on our side (although we've got high hopes for Michael Tomasello).
Ah, the American Protestant/Puritan practical virtue ethic!
"Famous" isn't the same as "celebrity". People can be famous for good reasons, not just frivolous ones.
And I agree that any individual scientist who does good work is worth looking up to, but if we never hear about them, how do we do that?
You know what kids do hear about? Athletes. And Paris Hilton. If we don't exalt scientists as being valued, those values don't get transmitted to the next generation. We were in the process of reimporting that value from India before the flow of visas dried up after 9-11.
Good choice. One of my personal heroes. He's a great role model of the "brilliant inventor."
Most "meteorologists" are local hacks working for TV stations who have passed 2-week-long weather reporting school and get all their data from NOAA anyway. They do not have careers in science at all. On the contrary, their ambition is to become TV anchorman.
I would hardly call your typical local TV "meteorologist" a good example of a science teacher.
They usually show some text on the screen when the person doing the weather is an actual meteorologist. If it doesn't say, you can assume it's nothing but an on-air "talent" who can read the powerpoint without tripping over his or her tongue.
Where I grew up (Maine) there are a lot of people who work outdoors and they take weather very seriously, so the TV weather was always done by an actual scientist. (Also, it's a little trickier forecasting in Maine than in places where you can just look one state to the west and say "We'll get that tomorrow.")
A lot of times, a TV meteorologist does presentations at schools with the specific goal of sparking interest in science.
Also, Michio Kaku was in the Army. Just missed going to 'Nam.
I dislike that Neil deGrasse guy, he was quite the smirking "I'm smart and you're not" during that whole Pluto isn't a planet anymore crap. I'm with Michio Kaku as my favorite science enthusiast and speaker. He's smart, he's enthused and he didn't go around on the Tonight Show smirking about how Pluto isn't a planet. I'm also looking to punch whoever it was that decided Brontosaurus wasn't a proper name for the Brontosaurus too. (shakes fist in fury)
You're a little late on that one. The peer-reviewed paper that showed that the "brontosaurus" was really an apatosaur was published in 1903.
I'm a Michio Kaku fan, too and have been since I read his book Hyperspace 15 years ago.
Paint the windmills to look like giant supermodels!
Please don't encourage this line of thinking. Wind turbines are as aesthetically beautiful as any man-made industrial thing I've ever seen, but as soon as they become a canvas for outdoor advertising, they will be hideous.
Do you really want an advertising agency to have complete access to your OS?
Microsoft would be better, IMHO.
OTOH, google is up front about their use of your personal data. They use it anyway they like for any purpose. good to know.
That's a legit argument for being wary about Chrome on my primary computer, but don't think people use their netbooks the way they use a full laptop or a desktop.
http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html
Sirlin's essay is correct insofar as it goes, but it ignores 75% of the categories of play. Scrubs are only scrubs if they are applying their socially constructed rules in the Fiero space. Socially constructed rules are normal and expected in the other three play types.
Gah, I lost my mod points two minutes before reading your post. Yes! A game where "fouls" are committed intentionally, regularly, and repeatedly is seriously broken. I understand that it's commonly accepted and expected now, but anyone who steps away from that game for a year and comes back should say: "You know, that's really dumb."
This is the exact reason that I dislike basketball. (Well, and the fact that lazy pro players look like they are exerting themselves less than the kids outside playing HORSE in the driveway). The benefits for fouling are too high and the penalties too small. Fouls are basically time-outs where you trade a small number of points for possession.
I've been wanting to write a rebuttal to Sirlin for a long time using Nicole Lazzaro's Four Types of Fun model: http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html
Sirlin is talking specifically about the Goal-Oriented/Abstract-Game type of fun (Fiero). He ignores the other three quadrants of play, which are very real and every bit as legit as his competitive gaming.
Every game has a socially constructed agreement about what the game is that they are playing. The developers have very little input into what that agreement ends up being once the game is put into motion (much to the chagrin of many game developers). Regardless of "the rules" as they are written, if you bring your A-game to a casual play session, YOU are the asshole; and calling everyone else "scrub" only makes you more so. Just like casual players whining at a high-level tournament about "dishonorable" play is being the asshole because they are not honoring the social agreement about what game they are playing.
The State ID number is a random series of letters and numbers and it is harder to guess
In New Hampshire, if you know somebody's name, DOB and a couple of other things you can extrapolate someone's driver's license number. (I can't remember what else was in there and they confiscated it when I got my PA one. Eye color, maybe.)
Mania can be just as dangerous as depression, especially since depression doesn't always lead to suicidal thoughts. I used to work at a rehab for people with traumatic brain injuries and behavior impairments and we had a lot of people who got their brain injury because they were in a manic phase and did something really crazy and got hurt.
Bipolar disorder can be tough with an intact frontal lobe. With a damaged frontal lobe, you're not going to be "harnessing" anything.