I have a Wii, and I love it to bits. I've been playing it a fair amount. I also have a PS3. I haven't gotten a game for it yet, because none of them look interesting.
I have more than one 60+ character on World of Warcraft. I own a Sega Genesis+Sega CD, SNES, 3DO, Saturn, PS1, PS2, and N64. I have something in excess of 200 various games for PC and Mac. I have written my own video games for my own amusement, I have done major revision work on one of the roguelike variants, I've contributed code to Angband (which was even in the official distribution for a whole sub-release before the entire spell system got converted to lua!), and I probably spend in excess of twenty hours a week playing video games. I have published papers (admittedly, not peer-reviewed) on game design and usability.
And yet, I think the Wii is clearly well-suited to people like me.
So, is the problem that, having an advanced understanding of video games, I am not a person with only a basic understanding, who would naturally prefer the PS3?
Seems to me that the Wii is a much better machine for [b]playing games[/b] than either of the competitors. Yes, they have very impressive graphics. The Wii has a controller which is flat out better for playing games. Since I'm interested in playing games, not watching photorealistic cut scenes, playing movies, or otherwise doing things which are not "playing games", the Wii is by far the best of the current options.
Step back from your assumptions. If you don't already believe that she's not a paid shill... How is this guy's testimony that she exists a counterargument? It's evidence that there is an actual person by that name. It doesn't necessarily prove that she's not shilling for IBM; indeed, this journalist doesn't even have a discernable way to know whether or not she's shilling!
What I'm trying to point out is, we're all coming to this starting from the assumption that, since it's totally ludicrous to accuse her of being a shill, obviously she's not, and when we see an "argument" in favor of a conclusion we already accept, we tend to accept that argument, since we know it can't be very bad since the conclusion's right.
However, it's not actually a very good argument. The focus of SCO's paranoid delusion is the belief that this is being intentionally orchestrated against them. Evidence that there's an actual person, and not a team of legal aides, running the site, doesn't really address that. For that matter, unless you already know this guy, his claim might not be seen as compelling evidence at all. He's not under oath or anything; people post nonsense on the internet all the time.
What I'm trying to explain here is that this is not likely to persuade anyone. The people who were seriously considering the notion that PJ was a front of some sort are not suddenly going to change their minds over this; it's not compelling within their belief system. The people who will take this as confirmation already thought PJ was a real person.
This isn't exactly convincing evidence that she exists, let alone that she's not a paid shill.
Now, does either of the complaints seem plausible? No. But this isn't proof against them; it's just some guy claiming she exists, and not at all really giving us a basis for rejecting the theory that she's a paid shill.
On the other hand, since there was never any reason to believe she was a paid shill, that hardly matters... But I don't see any reason for SCO to change their stance based on this.
Seriously, it's a total non-issue to me, and I think that's why they're succeeding. What sold WoW three accounts in my household was that their client was playable on an old G4 iBook.
He said the Cell was harder to develop for than the Xenon (the 360 CPU). It is, obviously. They accused him of being old, set in his ways, and not ready to deal with modern multi-core architectures.
Yes, it's that stupid. I about bust a gut laughing at them.
Try visiting a PS fan site. I hang out on one some (because I've been doing work on the PS3), and it's astounding. They dismiss Gabe Newell and John Carmack as idiots who don't understand programming. They mostly think the Wii is just "for kids" and all the games are "kiddy games".
Violence is very significant in perceptions of hardcoreness, though, which is why the PS3 and 360 people are so quick to dismiss the Wii as "kiddy games" and the like. Gears is marketed at people who want to prove they're into stuff that little kids couldn't handle.
What makes you say you're "not supposed to do that"? Those of us in single-party consent states can tap our own phones any time we want. My phones are recorded 100% of the time by me.
FWIW, though, I will say I have talked to Americans with atrocious language skills, so it does happen.
I keep seeing people vaguely claim this, but what little I've read of the PEAR research does not appear to be saying what the detractors say it is saying.
In short, this is exactly the kind of handwaving I was complaining about. You didn't actually identify anything concrete; you just asserted that there's a problem somewhere, but you can't be bothered to explain it. You are, in fact, making exactly the bogus argument under discussion: "The results are wrong, therefore there must be a flaw, even though I can't name any flaw other than that the results are wrong."
The way it works in real science is that you look at the analysis to determine what it does or doesn't prove. What you're doing is deciding what is or isn't proven, and then reasoning from it that the analysis must be wrong because it doesn't support your conclusion.
Er, alternative conclusion: If their claims were true, they would not qualify for the challenge, which requires a much narrower sense of "repeatability" than most people think.
People keep saying there are methodological flaws, but none of them get down to brass tacks and point out a specific coherent flaw. In fact, if anything, it seems to come down to "since these results are obviously wrong, the methodology must be flawed".
The problem is that, while it's true that overreaction is likely to be the difference between your child living and your child dying... Overreaction is likely to cause his death.
In short, the policy you are pursuing is not merely unnecessary for your goals, it stands in direct opposition to them. You would have to actually stab him yourself for the contradiction between your goals and your methods to be any greater. Overreactions like this lead to lack of resources to do things competently and lack of consideration given to real threats.
I had the same problem in Bureaucracy, where the paranoid's questions (all of which can be answered only by reading the glossy insert) stumped me for some time.
Aiming the bow (or boomeraing, or whatever else) is much, much, better with a pointer than with an analog stick.
People who have never actually tried the system, and are just talking out their ass, tend to assume the Wii has nothing but motion sensing, but it's not so.
Part of what makes the Wii awesome (and it's what I liked about the DS, too) is that it encourages people to develop games that cannot be simply written off as an example of some particular genre.
If it's not the default control, it won't be statistically significant. Non-default controllers don't sell enough to really allow games to be developed for them, with RARE exceptions. (Guitar Hero, DDR... Maybe Duck Hunt.)
Every soundbite explanation I've seen of what "net neutrality" should do has been a disasterously bad idea. Most of them would prohibit me from tar-pitting spammers or just plain dropping their traffic, because I'm not allowed to drop their traffic in preference to someone else's, because that's not "neutral".
In a world of oversold bandwidth, reliability costs extra. Just deal with it already. We have been doing just fine without this legislation for twenty years; we don't need it now.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a question for you.
I have a Wii, and I love it to bits. I've been playing it a fair amount. I also have a PS3. I haven't gotten a game for it yet, because none of them look interesting.
I have more than one 60+ character on World of Warcraft. I own a Sega Genesis+Sega CD, SNES, 3DO, Saturn, PS1, PS2, and N64. I have something in excess of 200 various games for PC and Mac. I have written my own video games for my own amusement, I have done major revision work on one of the roguelike variants, I've contributed code to Angband (which was even in the official distribution for a whole sub-release before the entire spell system got converted to lua!), and I probably spend in excess of twenty hours a week playing video games. I have published papers (admittedly, not peer-reviewed) on game design and usability.
And yet, I think the Wii is clearly well-suited to people like me.
So, is the problem that, having an advanced understanding of video games, I am not a person with only a basic understanding, who would naturally prefer the PS3?
Seems to me that the Wii is a much better machine for [b]playing games[/b] than either of the competitors. Yes, they have very impressive graphics. The Wii has a controller which is flat out better for playing games. Since I'm interested in playing games, not watching photorealistic cut scenes, playing movies, or otherwise doing things which are not "playing games", the Wii is by far the best of the current options.
Okay, nevermind that I've never heard of the guy.
Step back from your assumptions. If you don't already believe that she's not a paid shill... How is this guy's testimony that she exists a counterargument? It's evidence that there is an actual person by that name. It doesn't necessarily prove that she's not shilling for IBM; indeed, this journalist doesn't even have a discernable way to know whether or not she's shilling!
What I'm trying to point out is, we're all coming to this starting from the assumption that, since it's totally ludicrous to accuse her of being a shill, obviously she's not, and when we see an "argument" in favor of a conclusion we already accept, we tend to accept that argument, since we know it can't be very bad since the conclusion's right.
However, it's not actually a very good argument. The focus of SCO's paranoid delusion is the belief that this is being intentionally orchestrated against them. Evidence that there's an actual person, and not a team of legal aides, running the site, doesn't really address that. For that matter, unless you already know this guy, his claim might not be seen as compelling evidence at all. He's not under oath or anything; people post nonsense on the internet all the time.
What I'm trying to explain here is that this is not likely to persuade anyone. The people who were seriously considering the notion that PJ was a front of some sort are not suddenly going to change their minds over this; it's not compelling within their belief system. The people who will take this as confirmation already thought PJ was a real person.
This isn't exactly convincing evidence that she exists, let alone that she's not a paid shill.
Now, does either of the complaints seem plausible? No. But this isn't proof against them; it's just some guy claiming she exists, and not at all really giving us a basis for rejecting the theory that she's a paid shill.
On the other hand, since there was never any reason to believe she was a paid shill, that hardly matters... But I don't see any reason for SCO to change their stance based on this.
Boy, so much for my game, "Combanitorics!"
Who cares?
Seriously, it's a total non-issue to me, and I think that's why they're succeeding. What sold WoW three accounts in my household was that their client was playable on an old G4 iBook.
Fallout 2's explanation of how the holocaust happened blamed American politics. :)
I am all for having some story to games. It's generally a plus.
He said the Cell was harder to develop for than the Xenon (the 360 CPU). It is, obviously. They accused him of being old, set in his ways, and not ready to deal with modern multi-core architectures.
Yes, it's that stupid. I about bust a gut laughing at them.
Try visiting a PS fan site. I hang out on one some (because I've been doing work on the PS3), and it's astounding. They dismiss Gabe Newell and John Carmack as idiots who don't understand programming. They mostly think the Wii is just "for kids" and all the games are "kiddy games".
Violence is very significant in perceptions of hardcoreness, though, which is why the PS3 and 360 people are so quick to dismiss the Wii as "kiddy games" and the like. Gears is marketed at people who want to prove they're into stuff that little kids couldn't handle.
I was totally expecting to find out that Michael Crichton had asserted that gene patents have tiny penises and rape children.
I've gotten repeated false positives from Avast! on the 1.0.74 updater for Arcanum. I've reported it, but I don't think it's fixed.
This is one of the reasons I'm dropping Windows as a host platform for gaming.
I have very little face-to-face empathy, so I don't really care whether people are near or far; it makes little difference to me.
So for me, socials online are about as interesting (or uninteresting, sometimes) as socials offline.
What makes you say you're "not supposed to do that"? Those of us in single-party consent states can tap our own phones any time we want. My phones are recorded 100% of the time by me.
FWIW, though, I will say I have talked to Americans with atrocious language skills, so it does happen.
I keep seeing people vaguely claim this, but what little I've read of the PEAR research does not appear to be saying what the detractors say it is saying.
In short, this is exactly the kind of handwaving I was complaining about. You didn't actually identify anything concrete; you just asserted that there's a problem somewhere, but you can't be bothered to explain it. You are, in fact, making exactly the bogus argument under discussion: "The results are wrong, therefore there must be a flaw, even though I can't name any flaw other than that the results are wrong."
The way it works in real science is that you look at the analysis to determine what it does or doesn't prove. What you're doing is deciding what is or isn't proven, and then reasoning from it that the analysis must be wrong because it doesn't support your conclusion.
Er, alternative conclusion: If their claims were true, they would not qualify for the challenge, which requires a much narrower sense of "repeatability" than most people think.
People keep saying there are methodological flaws, but none of them get down to brass tacks and point out a specific coherent flaw. In fact, if anything, it seems to come down to "since these results are obviously wrong, the methodology must be flawed".
The problem is that, while it's true that overreaction is likely to be the difference between your child living and your child dying... Overreaction is likely to cause his death.
In short, the policy you are pursuing is not merely unnecessary for your goals, it stands in direct opposition to them. You would have to actually stab him yourself for the contradiction between your goals and your methods to be any greater. Overreactions like this lead to lack of resources to do things competently and lack of consideration given to real threats.
I had the same problem in Bureaucracy, where the paranoid's questions (all of which can be answered only by reading the glossy insert) stumped me for some time.
Aiming the bow (or boomeraing, or whatever else) is much, much, better with a pointer than with an analog stick.
People who have never actually tried the system, and are just talking out their ass, tend to assume the Wii has nothing but motion sensing, but it's not so.
Except that it's not "for the sake of having a special feature". It's not a gimmick, any more than the Wiimote or the DS's touch screen is a gimmick.
Dismissing Okami as a "gimmick" suggests that you have no clue what the word normally refers to.
Part of what makes the Wii awesome (and it's what I liked about the DS, too) is that it encourages people to develop games that cannot be simply written off as an example of some particular genre.
Yeah, and Hollywood's gotta stop placing the same damn actors in all their movies. We've all gotten pretty much sick of them.
If it's not the default control, it won't be statistically significant. Non-default controllers don't sell enough to really allow games to be developed for them, with RARE exceptions. (Guitar Hero, DDR... Maybe Duck Hunt.)
Every time this comes up, it comes down to this:
Every soundbite explanation I've seen of what "net neutrality" should do has been a disasterously bad idea. Most of them would prohibit me from tar-pitting spammers or just plain dropping their traffic, because I'm not allowed to drop their traffic in preference to someone else's, because that's not "neutral".
In a world of oversold bandwidth, reliability costs extra. Just deal with it already. We have been doing just fine without this legislation for twenty years; we don't need it now.