you just earned more than 100k word of mouth sales at ${full_price}.
Maybe, but that's offset by 100k apps worth of support paid for by $0 in income. From TFA, in their case, 300 emails/day, and no subsequent increase in sales.
The problem with passwords is that if they are too complex..
Partly. There are also too damned many of them. Every pissant site seems to require a login/passwd, it's best to keep them all distinct, and the difficulty of remembering all these passwords is in a continuum with their complexity.
Ok, maybe too harsh, that might be fine for HS. But most university CS curricula start by teaching you a programming language---how to do structured program, incrementally adding features and complexity. I don't see why HS should be so different, it's not like it's difficult if you're remotely suited to the topic. Why not give your siblings a leg up on the competition, check out major university CS programs and start from there---from experience, even grade early HS students can master these concepts in small enough doses.
I've experienced FF using over 2G of memory after some use. Who should I blame? I spent several hours to narrow it down to greasemonkey, though I'm still not sure which script.
Complaints about memory leaks will persist, even if caused by the plug-ins and extensions. Rather than dismiss and ignore the complaints it would help the overall user experience to if it were easy to identify the cause---a "standard memory profiler" may catch leaks in a (dev?) firefox build, but there's no convenient way to figure out which plug-in is causing an actual user problem, let alone where the leak comes from within a plug-in. Asking users to perform a binary search disabling plug-ins is ridiculous---an option that showed how much memory each plug-in is using would at least easily allow blame to be allocated appropriately.
That said, rereading the end of your post, I'm kind of implementing my unit tests as if they were interface level tests. Testing String.replace() doesn't make sense to me.
TDD has some of the same weaknesses as commenting. Adding comments like "// begin for loop" and "// end for loop" make some people feel like they're commenting their code, without actually doing so to any useful effect. Developing trivial tests which verify nothing useful is an easy way to let you pretend you're doing TDD without actually spending enough effort to be effective.
I don't mind the take and or not stance, it's the "don't you dare say anything bad about it" stance that bugs me. Surely they're secure enough to take a little criticism, no? I thought the idea that being surrounded by "yes-men" was some sort of apogee of social(/corporate) status was well-ridiculed at this point---you need some criticism, or you eventually just end up stagnant, staring with glee at your own navel as the world changes around you...
That's a false analogy. Things like the student center, gym, etc would not exist at all without widely distributing the cost load, and while not everyone uses them in practice nearly everyone agrees they are useful and that campus life would be overall worse for everyone if those facilities did not exist. Students also see most of these as quid pro quo---if you fund my gym, I'll fund your science lab, even though the groups using those are probably fairly distinct.
An iPad is a commercial product everyone can buy individually; mass enforcement of a purchase does not suddenly make the infeasible feasible---those who can afford the tuition/service-fee increase could afford the iPad on their own anyway, and don't need it mandated. It only hides the cost in other areas, and may or may not make it slightly cheaper (there's overhead in these things you know---no point forcing the students to have them if the faculty and administrative staff don't, and they don't pay tuition...), at a cost of tying the entire university infrastructure to a single vendor.
Expanding the use of social networking is an interesting development in universities, but this feels more like the microsoft buy-ins they all got sucked into, except this time it's even more of a walled garden, and is also being directly forced onto the students...
It's not unlike the monthly license paid by commercial entities to Muzak
Yes, and it represents a similar level of quality. Really, you think a sanctioned 33% tax (and absolutely certain to grow!) on your internet access is worth supporting and even further entrenching all that auto-tune crap coming from the major labels and clear-channel radio stations?
Why would someone be an idiot if they could not afford to go? I'd assume the order of operations is "submit paper -> apply for funding -> talk at conference". Conference hosts should be used to poor college students being unable to present from time to time due to lack of funds.
No, the order is: ensure that one way or another you can attend if you are accepted -> submit paper -> present paper.
A good conference will not be able to accept as many papers as they'd like---the threshold is not a super-clear line, and some papers will end up rejected at least partly because there isn't time to have that many presentations. If you have no intention of going then you are wasting reviewer time and effort (these people are volunteers, spending a lot of effort to help the conference, they are not your personal coaches), and if you withdraw a paper after acceptance then you may be taking away a space from someone else who would have been accepted in your stead. People will remember you if you do this, and will refuse to accept your paper submissions in the future. Of course stuff happens, you may get hit by a bus just before the conference etc.; even in such extreme situations you are expected to make alternative arrangements as best you can though (find some colleague who is going and get them to present your work). Anything less is dickish behaviour that will give you a corresponding reputation.
Conferences often do help poor college students, but unsurprisingly there is almost never enough funding to go around, so don't count on it. If you can't afford to go, find another conference you can afford to attend, or send your work to a journal instead.
ICSE is a very different conference from CCSC; I'm kind of shocked that someone who was able to get a paper into ICSE doesn't know this. ICSE is a top-tier, 'A'-level conference. CCSE is somewhere in the C's. Few people outside of the US midwest have heard of it, it has a very high acceptance ratio, and lacks any specific research focus.
All that negative stuff said, you need to start somewhere, and always have to work with the resources and opportunities actually available to you. The conference experience itself can still be useful---as many here have posted the main point is to meet other researchers and gain experience in writing and presenting a paper. If you want a future career in academia, (almost) any publication is better than no publication.
I don't know what common practice is in your university; places where research is actually done have funding to pay expenses for students attending conferences. Given the audience for CCSC that's probably not true there, so then yes, it's on your own nickel. nb: Don't get your hopes up too much; I seriously doubt google would be actively recruiting at CCSE.
At the very, very most submit your paper. You can still decide not to go...
Do not do that. That's how you gain a reputation as an idiot. If you submit a paper you should absolutely be committed to going.
However, Revenue, I assumed would be the amount of cash I receive after the store commission has been taken.
I sell something for $100
Microsoft store takes $30 leaving me with a revenue of $70
Microsoft then take a further 30% of this, $21, because I work for them... Leaving me with just $49
No, they take both take 30% off sales. So from your $100 app you realize just $40 in gross revenue.
Unlike actors, musicians, and other artists, they're not going to fall for that 'net revenue' thing.
They work when civilization collapses and they're found centuries later in a cave
Absolutely. As well as lending out, one of the primary functions of libraries used to be as an archive. Many/most libraries quickly jumped on the e-* bandwagon, ignoring that fundamental property in favour of cheaper acquisitions. Now they're reaping the benefits. I'm glad they're fighting back, or at least complaining. Unfortunately the argument still centers mostly based on arguments over cost rather than realizing what is being lost..
Your post is chock-full of exaggerations and false information. You seem to be looking for things to complain about Steam rather than actually looking at what it offers.....I buy a game on Steam, it downloads and I play it. It downloaded, installed and patched Left 4 Dead 2 in about 15 minutes which is faster than I could install it from a DVD.
"Bombardment with ads!" - Go into the settins and set your favorite window to "Library". You will never see another ad.
Why would I want that? That is not value-add, and the fact that I can fix it doesn't mean that they're selling something I want. I don't want to opt-out. I want you to opt-in to ads.
"Some games require steam" - Because they use it as a multiplayer lobby
And I can't tell the difference easily ahead of time. This makes the whole thing suspicious, and more effort. Tales of bizarre and intrusive 'anti-cheat' programs do not help this; I call that spyware---perhaps mainly benign, at this point anyway, but I do not trust that to remain that way, and I do not want to give up control of my machine to steam.
I did not buy the Fallout-3 expansion. I wanted to. But I don't want a steam account. I don't want to have to turn off half-a-dozen spam/ad/spyware "features" and I don't want to have to ask steam nicely when I want to play it, whether or not I've connected to steam recently. For pure multiplayer games I can see the need for an online presence---the problem is that the same techniques seem to be applied to single player games.
"Always running" - File > Settings > Interface > Run Steam when my computer starts. Uncheck it if it bothers you that much. Lots of programs do the same thing.
Yes, and I avoid those too. The nicer ones at least ask first. For the kinds of games I prefer (single-player, no online connections) I don't see what sort of value that provides to me---it is a major negative, only providing bloat and unknown monitoring/uploading facilities.
"Centrally owned" - If you refuse to use any software that's owned by a private organization, you're gonna have some trouble playing games.
Centrally owned and centrally managed. I can live with a single activation to protect their precioussss IP, but after that I want it to be my game to play when I want, without having to beg for permission from some remote entity. The need to repeatedly connect and re-validate, the need to use special offline modes, the fundamental dependency on them is the problem. They can make it as "easy" as they want, but remains unappealing---it's a gateway to privacy violation (used as such now or not), it's a further gateway to ads/spam/virus-injection (used as such now or not), and as many others have pointed out it's a remote dependency that renders the game useless once steam goes out of business. What benefit is that to me? "Leasing" the software to me and periodically coming around to inspect it to make sure I'm not using it "incorrectly" is not a business model I find appealing as a consumer.
"Why not just use the internet?" - Because, as I mentioned above, Steam supplies multiplayer functions and copy protection.
Neither of which interests me. Copy-protection provides no value-added to me as a consumer, and I prefer to play single-player games. For some reason these are all tossed into the same bucket and get the same treatment.
Steam also syncs saved games and settings across platforms, provides in game text & voice chat, a very helpful friends list through which you can jump directly into a friends server, and tons of other nice features.
None of which interest me. I'd prefer to keep my settings on the one machine I use, I see no reason for steam to own them, I don't want to chat with 14-year olds around the world, I don't want integration with IM or other online services. I just want the game.
I was content buying many games for the PC, spending quite a bit of money over the years. I now find it very difficult to even find new PC games---the local stores have all switched to only selling console versions, and the online downloads either come with mysterious activation and monitoring systems, or are mixed in with the same to the
Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time---how many simultaneous targets can it destroy? What if they launched a series of missiles from beyond the horizon, how long can you keep using your laser? What if they launched torpedos instead, or at the same time, does your laser also work underwater? What if they launched highly reflective chaff with their missiles, would your laser be able to find the target and would it have full energy? What if they launched a whole lot of small missiles rather than one big one? What if their missiles incorporated radar invisibility, so you don't see it with the auto-aiming mechanism? What if they just launched chunks of metal that didn't care if they had a pin-sized hole in them? What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?
In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent
Impressive: at +18% per year; in just 10 more years they'll have 241% of the market!
They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010.
That does look good. Let's see: "2010 revenues at Apple Inc. totaled $65.2B" (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.asp?ticker=AAPL:US). So 10 years from now they should have $20.8 trillion/year in revenue!
disclaimer: past performance does not guarantee future results
It could only be large scale is in overall size, not routing capacity.
First: you don't use routing tables. You flood.
Second: I didn't think this is about supporting google, replicating the internet content, or doing other super bandwidth-heavy things. It's about building basic infrastructure for people to communicate.
I am sure Maytag are unhappy when a report shows their dishwashers are not as good as Kitchen Aide....However this simply provides them with the necessary information and the motivation to improve their products.
Except people aren't dishwashers and measuring good teaching is not as straightforward as measuring appliance sales.
Let's suppose such scoring becomes standard. Those uninterested in maximizing it, or who view the effort more than the benefit will be driven out, so you're left with only those who spend sufficient energy maximizing their scores. Is that good? Scores will go up for sure, but would that be because of increased learning? Evaluation is apparently based on student improvement, but there are a lot of ways to make that measure go up. Harder testing at the beginning and easier at the end accomplishes that, and is real easy to scale. So does pruning-out and avoiding the slower students, since they drag down the numbers. Different courses will obviously offer different scales and kinds of student improvement, so teaching choices might be important.
The problem with optimizing for arbitrary metrics is that it always leads you to a point where you are optimal for an arbitrary metric. An objective, stable, and accurate measure of teacher quality would be very cool, but anything less will just end up pushing things toward whatever weird bias it embodies, including all the interesting ways the measure may be misled, interpreted, or gamed.
First, he doesn't address the question of the effect of monetization on player base.
This is so important. I've played several F2P games. I have donated plenty too, but never to the ones where the main goal is obviously to keep chipping away at my bank account.
A free game relies on the relationship between the players and the producers. If I'm just a commodity to the game then I treat the game the same---tell me what I have to pay up-front and I'll decide if it's worth it. A labor of love, a game where the developers care that the players are enjoying the game irrespective of payment, induces symmetric feelings. That's your loyal, paying base.
It is certainly possible to have a successful F2P game that does not over-monetize and doesn't constitute a charity. Kingdom of Loathing comes to mind: completely free (donation-only and it's not essential), but supports 4-6 full time staff and has been going for 5 years.
Slashdot Mirror
you just earned more than 100k word of mouth sales at ${full_price}.
Maybe, but that's offset by 100k apps worth of support paid for by $0 in income. From TFA, in their case, 300 emails/day, and no subsequent increase in sales.
I'm more inclined to think that these people are exceedingly satisfied with their phones
They can't be that satisfied if they want a new one.
The problem with passwords is that if they are too complex..
Partly. There are also too damned many of them. Every pissant site seems to require a login/passwd, it's best to keep them all distinct, and the difficulty of remembering all these passwords is in a continuum with their complexity.
I'm pretty surprised that it exists in nature since it seems that it wouldn't serve any useful purpose.
Well, ensuring everyone is doing the same thing has direct benefits for locusts.
Are you sure your mom is qualified to teach CS?
Ok, maybe too harsh, that might be fine for HS. But most university CS curricula start by teaching you a programming language---how to do structured program, incrementally adding features and complexity. I don't see why HS should be so different, it's not like it's difficult if you're remotely suited to the topic. Why not give your siblings a leg up on the competition, check out major university CS programs and start from there---from experience, even grade early HS students can master these concepts in small enough doses.
I've experienced FF using over 2G of memory after some use. Who should I blame? I spent several hours to narrow it down to greasemonkey, though I'm still not sure which script.
Complaints about memory leaks will persist, even if caused by the plug-ins and extensions. Rather than dismiss and ignore the complaints it would help the overall user experience to if it were easy to identify the cause---a "standard memory profiler" may catch leaks in a (dev?) firefox build, but there's no convenient way to figure out which plug-in is causing an actual user problem, let alone where the leak comes from within a plug-in. Asking users to perform a binary search disabling plug-ins is ridiculous---an option that showed how much memory each plug-in is using would at least easily allow blame to be allocated appropriately.
Now, after Mr. Hotz's computer hard drives, and a graphing calculator have been impounded
Surely that was inadequate---what if he counted on his fingers?
That said, rereading the end of your post, I'm kind of implementing my unit tests as if they were interface level tests. Testing String.replace() doesn't make sense to me.
TDD has some of the same weaknesses as commenting. Adding comments like "// begin for loop" and "// end for loop" make some people feel like they're commenting their code, without actually doing so to any useful effect. Developing trivial tests which verify nothing useful is an easy way to let you pretend you're doing TDD without actually spending enough effort to be effective.
I don't mind the take and or not stance, it's the "don't you dare say anything bad about it" stance that bugs me. Surely they're secure enough to take a little criticism, no? I thought the idea that being surrounded by "yes-men" was some sort of apogee of social(/corporate) status was well-ridiculed at this point---you need some criticism, or you eventually just end up stagnant, staring with glee at your own navel as the world changes around you...
That's a false analogy. Things like the student center, gym, etc would not exist at all without widely distributing the cost load, and while not everyone uses them in practice nearly everyone agrees they are useful and that campus life would be overall worse for everyone if those facilities did not exist. Students also see most of these as quid pro quo---if you fund my gym, I'll fund your science lab, even though the groups using those are probably fairly distinct.
An iPad is a commercial product everyone can buy individually; mass enforcement of a purchase does not suddenly make the infeasible feasible---those who can afford the tuition/service-fee increase could afford the iPad on their own anyway, and don't need it mandated. It only hides the cost in other areas, and may or may not make it slightly cheaper (there's overhead in these things you know---no point forcing the students to have them if the faculty and administrative staff don't, and they don't pay tuition...), at a cost of tying the entire university infrastructure to a single vendor.
Expanding the use of social networking is an interesting development in universities, but this feels more like the microsoft buy-ins they all got sucked into, except this time it's even more of a walled garden, and is also being directly forced onto the students...
It's not unlike the monthly license paid by commercial entities to Muzak
Yes, and it represents a similar level of quality. Really, you think a sanctioned 33% tax (and absolutely certain to grow!) on your internet access is worth supporting and even further entrenching all that auto-tune crap coming from the major labels and clear-channel radio stations?
No, the one you're looking for is "A fool and his money are soon parted."
Why would someone be an idiot if they could not afford to go? I'd assume the order of operations is "submit paper -> apply for funding -> talk at conference". Conference hosts should be used to poor college students being unable to present from time to time due to lack of funds.
No, the order is: ensure that one way or another you can attend if you are accepted -> submit paper -> present paper.
A good conference will not be able to accept as many papers as they'd like---the threshold is not a super-clear line, and some papers will end up rejected at least partly because there isn't time to have that many presentations. If you have no intention of going then you are wasting reviewer time and effort (these people are volunteers, spending a lot of effort to help the conference, they are not your personal coaches), and if you withdraw a paper after acceptance then you may be taking away a space from someone else who would have been accepted in your stead. People will remember you if you do this, and will refuse to accept your paper submissions in the future. Of course stuff happens, you may get hit by a bus just before the conference etc.; even in such extreme situations you are expected to make alternative arrangements as best you can though (find some colleague who is going and get them to present your work). Anything less is dickish behaviour that will give you a corresponding reputation.
Conferences often do help poor college students, but unsurprisingly there is almost never enough funding to go around, so don't count on it. If you can't afford to go, find another conference you can afford to attend, or send your work to a journal instead.
All that negative stuff said, you need to start somewhere, and always have to work with the resources and opportunities actually available to you. The conference experience itself can still be useful---as many here have posted the main point is to meet other researchers and gain experience in writing and presenting a paper. If you want a future career in academia, (almost) any publication is better than no publication.
I don't know what common practice is in your university; places where research is actually done have funding to pay expenses for students attending conferences. Given the audience for CCSC that's probably not true there, so then yes, it's on your own nickel. nb: Don't get your hopes up too much; I seriously doubt google would be actively recruiting at CCSE.
At the very, very most submit your paper. You can still decide not to go...
Do not do that. That's how you gain a reputation as an idiot. If you submit a paper you should absolutely be committed to going.
However, Revenue, I assumed would be the amount of cash I receive after the store commission has been taken.
I sell something for $100 Microsoft store takes $30 leaving me with a revenue of $70
Microsoft then take a further 30% of this, $21, because I work for them... Leaving me with just $49
No, they take both take 30% off sales. So from your $100 app you realize just $40 in gross revenue. Unlike actors, musicians, and other artists, they're not going to fall for that 'net revenue' thing.
They work when civilization collapses and they're found centuries later in a cave
Absolutely. As well as lending out, one of the primary functions of libraries used to be as an archive. Many/most libraries quickly jumped on the e-* bandwagon, ignoring that fundamental property in favour of cheaper acquisitions. Now they're reaping the benefits. I'm glad they're fighting back, or at least complaining. Unfortunately the argument still centers mostly based on arguments over cost rather than realizing what is being lost..
Your post is chock-full of exaggerations and false information. You seem to be looking for things to complain about Steam rather than actually looking at what it offers.....I buy a game on Steam, it downloads and I play it. It downloaded, installed and patched Left 4 Dead 2 in about 15 minutes which is faster than I could install it from a DVD.
Whoosh. But ok, enjoy the kool-aid.
"Bombardment with ads!" - Go into the settins and set your favorite window to "Library". You will never see another ad.
Why would I want that? That is not value-add, and the fact that I can fix it doesn't mean that they're selling something I want. I don't want to opt-out. I want you to opt-in to ads.
"Some games require steam" - Because they use it as a multiplayer lobby
And I can't tell the difference easily ahead of time. This makes the whole thing suspicious, and more effort. Tales of bizarre and intrusive 'anti-cheat' programs do not help this; I call that spyware---perhaps mainly benign, at this point anyway, but I do not trust that to remain that way, and I do not want to give up control of my machine to steam. I did not buy the Fallout-3 expansion. I wanted to. But I don't want a steam account. I don't want to have to turn off half-a-dozen spam/ad/spyware "features" and I don't want to have to ask steam nicely when I want to play it, whether or not I've connected to steam recently. For pure multiplayer games I can see the need for an online presence---the problem is that the same techniques seem to be applied to single player games.
"Always running" - File > Settings > Interface > Run Steam when my computer starts. Uncheck it if it bothers you that much. Lots of programs do the same thing.
Yes, and I avoid those too. The nicer ones at least ask first. For the kinds of games I prefer (single-player, no online connections) I don't see what sort of value that provides to me---it is a major negative, only providing bloat and unknown monitoring/uploading facilities.
"Centrally owned" - If you refuse to use any software that's owned by a private organization, you're gonna have some trouble playing games.
Centrally owned and centrally managed. I can live with a single activation to protect their precioussss IP, but after that I want it to be my game to play when I want, without having to beg for permission from some remote entity. The need to repeatedly connect and re-validate, the need to use special offline modes, the fundamental dependency on them is the problem. They can make it as "easy" as they want, but remains unappealing---it's a gateway to privacy violation (used as such now or not), it's a further gateway to ads/spam/virus-injection (used as such now or not), and as many others have pointed out it's a remote dependency that renders the game useless once steam goes out of business. What benefit is that to me? "Leasing" the software to me and periodically coming around to inspect it to make sure I'm not using it "incorrectly" is not a business model I find appealing as a consumer.
"Why not just use the internet?" - Because, as I mentioned above, Steam supplies multiplayer functions and copy protection.
Neither of which interests me. Copy-protection provides no value-added to me as a consumer, and I prefer to play single-player games. For some reason these are all tossed into the same bucket and get the same treatment.
Steam also syncs saved games and settings across platforms, provides in game text & voice chat, a very helpful friends list through which you can jump directly into a friends server, and tons of other nice features.
None of which interest me. I'd prefer to keep my settings on the one machine I use, I see no reason for steam to own them, I don't want to chat with 14-year olds around the world, I don't want integration with IM or other online services. I just want the game.
I was content buying many games for the PC, spending quite a bit of money over the years. I now find it very difficult to even find new PC games---the local stores have all switched to only selling console versions, and the online downloads either come with mysterious activation and monitoring systems, or are mixed in with the same to the
...impossible to counter?
Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time---how many simultaneous targets can it destroy? What if they launched a series of missiles from beyond the horizon, how long can you keep using your laser? What if they launched torpedos instead, or at the same time, does your laser also work underwater? What if they launched highly reflective chaff with their missiles, would your laser be able to find the target and would it have full energy? What if they launched a whole lot of small missiles rather than one big one? What if their missiles incorporated radar invisibility, so you don't see it with the auto-aiming mechanism? What if they just launched chunks of metal that didn't care if they had a pin-sized hole in them? What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?
The map, costing about $200 million
Really? I'd of done it for a paltry $150 million.
In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent
Impressive: at +18% per year; in just 10 more years they'll have 241% of the market!
They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010.
That does look good. Let's see: "2010 revenues at Apple Inc. totaled $65.2B" (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.asp?ticker=AAPL:US). So 10 years from now they should have $20.8 trillion/year in revenue!
disclaimer: past performance does not guarantee future results
It could only be large scale is in overall size, not routing capacity.
First: you don't use routing tables. You flood.
Second: I didn't think this is about supporting google, replicating the internet content, or doing other super bandwidth-heavy things. It's about building basic infrastructure for people to communicate.
I thought they were just patent trolls.
I am sure Maytag are unhappy when a report shows their dishwashers are not as good as Kitchen Aide....However this simply provides them with the necessary information and the motivation to improve their products.
Except people aren't dishwashers and measuring good teaching is not as straightforward as measuring appliance sales.
Let's suppose such scoring becomes standard. Those uninterested in maximizing it, or who view the effort more than the benefit will be driven out, so you're left with only those who spend sufficient energy maximizing their scores. Is that good? Scores will go up for sure, but would that be because of increased learning? Evaluation is apparently based on student improvement, but there are a lot of ways to make that measure go up. Harder testing at the beginning and easier at the end accomplishes that, and is real easy to scale. So does pruning-out and avoiding the slower students, since they drag down the numbers. Different courses will obviously offer different scales and kinds of student improvement, so teaching choices might be important.
The problem with optimizing for arbitrary metrics is that it always leads you to a point where you are optimal for an arbitrary metric. An objective, stable, and accurate measure of teacher quality would be very cool, but anything less will just end up pushing things toward whatever weird bias it embodies, including all the interesting ways the measure may be misled, interpreted, or gamed.
First, he doesn't address the question of the effect of monetization on player base.
This is so important. I've played several F2P games. I have donated plenty too, but never to the ones where the main goal is obviously to keep chipping away at my bank account.
A free game relies on the relationship between the players and the producers. If I'm just a commodity to the game then I treat the game the same---tell me what I have to pay up-front and I'll decide if it's worth it. A labor of love, a game where the developers care that the players are enjoying the game irrespective of payment, induces symmetric feelings. That's your loyal, paying base.
It is certainly possible to have a successful F2P game that does not over-monetize and doesn't constitute a charity. Kingdom of Loathing comes to mind: completely free (donation-only and it's not essential), but supports 4-6 full time staff and has been going for 5 years.