While Minecraft is both good and successful, I haven't yet seen how it has made any significant contributions to gaming as a whole. It may be that your point is that a single developer can make a great product, which is true. However, that has been shown before, and Minecraft's gameplay hasn't made much impact on the market at large, as far as I can tell. Examples of it would be interesting and appreciated, though.
This is a man who probably more responsible for the modern video game industry than any other. While it's not likely he'll re-revolutionize games, seeing his new work could be both interesting and enjoyable.
What I'm personally more interested in is the direction that Nintendo will take in his absence. His franchises are the core of their offerings on every platform for the past 25 years or so. Will those franchises continue to balloon beyond the bounds of reason? Mario and Link will likely sell more games and merchandise than anything they could possibly replace them with. I would love to see Nintendo take a new direction with their franchises and perhaps even introduce a single deep or interesting character (which as far as I know they have never done). I wouldn't bet on it though. That's certainly not to say that Nintendo isn't a great company with great products. They are. I just wonder if they can do more.
I subvocalize exactly like you do. However, I think the distinction made by the article may be less than what you're asserting. Even though I hear words in my head, I *don't* process letters or syllables within a given word. I read an entire word at a time, recognize that word, and then hear it. The individual letters and syllables never play a role unless the word isn't familiar. I still recognize words based on shape; I just do so one word at a time and with an internal vocalization.
I'm an auditory person. I mentally "hear" every word as if someone is speaking. It happens more quickly than people are generally capable of speaking, but I still run the mental auditory pathway for every word. It's simply how I'm accustomed to processing written text, and how I remember that text most easily. Coincidentally, it also means that I often can't remember if read a piece of information or heard it in an audio file or video.
Most fonts are about the same shape, except for fonts which mimic cursive (at least in English). The style and feel are different, but the shapes stay largely unchanged.
For me, it explains why it takes me longer to read actual text in fixed width fonts, and why I often forget that variable names in my programs also happen to be English words.
And it's not reading ability, it's reading speed, which I'd be hesitant to trust self-assessment on with metrics.
Watch the fucking video. This isn't spanking. This is abuse. I was spanked as a child. It made me a better child. What never happened, though, was repeated whipping over my entire body after I was screaming in submission. He beats her. She screams and cries. Then he beats her more. Then he yells at her, cursing. Then he beats her more. She screams. He beats her more. If you think the fathers behavior is ok in this video, then you are lower than scum.
Before you go all chicken little on nuclear power, find out how much 137CS "a large fraction" actually is. In my location in North America, the local nuclear experts saw a spike in Cesium equivalent to approximately one half of one banana.
Stallman wants exactly one thing: visbility for FOSS. He doesn't care about anything else. So if he has to make some pseudo-controversial statement about a generally well-liked public figure in order to get some air time, he will. Personally, I elect to pay him little attention.
How many "poor people" have to die before we react, in your humble opinion?
More than the collateral damage you cause.
You talk like you're in the service, and I respect that and you for it. However, it doesn't mean that the greater good is served by wars that kill as many or more people than the situation that caused them.
A guy who walked on the moon thinks manned space flight is a good idea. Full story at 11.
In all honesty, manned space flight makes no sense right now, as it's not something that can be done half-assed. With the current state of American finances (and the petty squabbling surrounding it) , NASA will never get the investment they need to put a human anywhere that matters. Robotic and satellite exploration, however, is not out of reach at all. We need to do more of, and we need to invest more in it if we (the US) are ever going to maintain some innovative power going forward. Space exploration is the right thing to do, but we don't yet have the knowledge or technology to make meaningful manned missions.
But that's exactly what they are accused of. The bickering is over Google ranking its subsidiaries higher than competing services, essentially using their market position as a search engine to gain an edge in other markets.
Think MS and IE. Do you think anyone would use that stinker if it wasn't bundled with the most used OS on the planet?
The difference that when IE is bundled with the operating system and you don't like it, it's difficult, time consuming, and possibly expensive to choose a new operating system. Alternatives in the general desktop market to Windows are either expensive (Apple) or difficult (*nix) for average users (especially before more friendly distros like Ubuntu).
Alternatives to Google's products are plentiful, easy to find, and largely free. Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc. All you have to do is redirect your browser. You can even use Google to find them. There is a certain amount of lock-in to an operating system. There is almost none to a website.
Caring is a product of risk. Risk is, by definition, a probability and a cost. In the case of open vs. closed software on my phone, the cost of the worst problems associated open software are approximately equal (open source malware on Android can steal my information just as easily as Google can). The probability that I'll experience any problem at all is HUGELY greater on open software (incompatibilities, slowdowns, and most commonly unintuitive, obtuse configuration).
Overall, it means that the risk of closed source software is the same or less than open alternatives. You can be condescending all you want, but "Most People" figured this out while enjoying their lives watching sports and sitcoms, while you've spent hours of effort researching and defending an ideological stance that has no evidence of significant impact in the world where actual people live. Eventually you'll find that "most people" are actually a lot more intelligent than you think they are, and they're laughing behind your back while you go on caring about inane shit that doesn't matter.
--Disclosure-- I own an Android phone because I like the features and price.
Choice and corresponding competition drive innovation, which creates better products for users. The current browser market is a great example of this, where Chrome/Firefox/IE (and Opera and Safari to some extent) compete fiercely for market share and are thus required to make compelling improvements for users.
Having a multitude of choices does have real downsides, though. When you have these choices, you're never really sure you made the right one. KDE/Gnome etc. have this problem, where users switch back and forth because of various updates/changes/features that they do or don't like at any given time. Because they flip, they aren't confident that they are getting the best experience, which degrades the entire experience of using the OS.
While the parent already commented on this, I'll say this just for information sake. People in South Carolina call USC "Carolina", and people in North Carolina call UNC "Carolina". So when someone talks about "the Carolina game" it really matters what state they're from to know what they're talking about.
It's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to "prove" anything that isn't pure mathematics. You can estimate probabilities to within statistically significant bounds (it's 99.999% possible that you are the father of that child, etc.) Proof, as an abstraction, is much more difficult. To prove that DNA is unique, you would need to sequence every human who ever lived, is currently living, or will ever live. Disproof, by contrast, is much easier. You could disprove that DNA is unique with only 2 people (though it's very unlikely).
Real names make it easy to find people you know on a social network, and to remember the identities of people you connect with on them. Social networks are most valuable for "loose connections" like friends from grade school or non-immediate relatives. You might be interested in their lives, but can't commit the energy or mental capacity to identifying them in the first place or remembering the association function between their pseudonym and their identity.
You or others like you might not care about weak social ties, but (evidently) a vast majority of computer users do.
This is demonstrably false. You can say that pseudonymity has great value. You can say that to you, it has vastly more value than "real names". However, to say that real names offer to value to users, whose goal is to connect primarily with people they know in real life, is either ignorant or defiantly stupid.
It sounds like, to me, you're saying that "The Road Less Traveled" is actually Robert Frost pre-mocking hipsters in 1920. I actually quite like this interpretation.
That's exactly the point, though. They aren't trying to kill item or gold farming. They want to make it (relatively) safe for their players, who will buy items anyway. I would much rather players be able to pay through a Blizzard service than giving their credit card information to some level 1 Witch Doctor name itemsforgoldcom
While Minecraft is both good and successful, I haven't yet seen how it has made any significant contributions to gaming as a whole. It may be that your point is that a single developer can make a great product, which is true. However, that has been shown before, and Minecraft's gameplay hasn't made much impact on the market at large, as far as I can tell. Examples of it would be interesting and appreciated, though.
I hate you, internet, for making me feel silly.
This is a man who probably more responsible for the modern video game industry than any other. While it's not likely he'll re-revolutionize games, seeing his new work could be both interesting and enjoyable.
What I'm personally more interested in is the direction that Nintendo will take in his absence. His franchises are the core of their offerings on every platform for the past 25 years or so. Will those franchises continue to balloon beyond the bounds of reason? Mario and Link will likely sell more games and merchandise than anything they could possibly replace them with. I would love to see Nintendo take a new direction with their franchises and perhaps even introduce a single deep or interesting character (which as far as I know they have never done). I wouldn't bet on it though. That's certainly not to say that Nintendo isn't a great company with great products. They are. I just wonder if they can do more.
The one where online privacy and intellectual property rights are the most important issues.
I subvocalize exactly like you do. However, I think the distinction made by the article may be less than what you're asserting. Even though I hear words in my head, I *don't* process letters or syllables within a given word. I read an entire word at a time, recognize that word, and then hear it. The individual letters and syllables never play a role unless the word isn't familiar. I still recognize words based on shape; I just do so one word at a time and with an internal vocalization.
I'm an auditory person. I mentally "hear" every word as if someone is speaking. It happens more quickly than people are generally capable of speaking, but I still run the mental auditory pathway for every word. It's simply how I'm accustomed to processing written text, and how I remember that text most easily. Coincidentally, it also means that I often can't remember if read a piece of information or heard it in an audio file or video.
While not politically correct, I find this to be an absolutely true phenomenon.
Most fonts are about the same shape, except for fonts which mimic cursive (at least in English). The style and feel are different, but the shapes stay largely unchanged.
For me, it explains why it takes me longer to read actual text in fixed width fonts, and why I often forget that variable names in my programs also happen to be English words.
And it's not reading ability, it's reading speed, which I'd be hesitant to trust self-assessment on with metrics.
Watch the fucking video. This isn't spanking. This is abuse. I was spanked as a child. It made me a better child. What never happened, though, was repeated whipping over my entire body after I was screaming in submission. He beats her. She screams and cries. Then he beats her more. Then he yells at her, cursing. Then he beats her more. She screams. He beats her more. If you think the fathers behavior is ok in this video, then you are lower than scum.
Before you go all chicken little on nuclear power, find out how much 137CS "a large fraction" actually is. In my location in North America, the local nuclear experts saw a spike in Cesium equivalent to approximately one half of one banana.
Out of curiosity: are you advocating fleeing the country as a means of theft, or are you simply saying that that is what some people do?
Stallman wants exactly one thing: visbility for FOSS. He doesn't care about anything else. So if he has to make some pseudo-controversial statement about a generally well-liked public figure in order to get some air time, he will. Personally, I elect to pay him little attention.
How many "poor people" have to die before we react, in your humble opinion?
More than the collateral damage you cause.
You talk like you're in the service, and I respect that and you for it. However, it doesn't mean that the greater good is served by wars that kill as many or more people than the situation that caused them.
A guy who walked on the moon thinks manned space flight is a good idea. Full story at 11.
In all honesty, manned space flight makes no sense right now, as it's not something that can be done half-assed. With the current state of American finances (and the petty squabbling surrounding it) , NASA will never get the investment they need to put a human anywhere that matters. Robotic and satellite exploration, however, is not out of reach at all. We need to do more of, and we need to invest more in it if we (the US) are ever going to maintain some innovative power going forward. Space exploration is the right thing to do, but we don't yet have the knowledge or technology to make meaningful manned missions.
But that's exactly what they are accused of. The bickering is over Google ranking its subsidiaries higher than competing services, essentially using their market position as a search engine to gain an edge in other markets.
Think MS and IE. Do you think anyone would use that stinker if it wasn't bundled with the most used OS on the planet?
The difference that when IE is bundled with the operating system and you don't like it, it's difficult, time consuming, and possibly expensive to choose a new operating system. Alternatives in the general desktop market to Windows are either expensive (Apple) or difficult (*nix) for average users (especially before more friendly distros like Ubuntu).
Alternatives to Google's products are plentiful, easy to find, and largely free. Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc. All you have to do is redirect your browser. You can even use Google to find them. There is a certain amount of lock-in to an operating system. There is almost none to a website.
Caring is a product of risk. Risk is, by definition, a probability and a cost. In the case of open vs. closed software on my phone, the cost of the worst problems associated open software are approximately equal (open source malware on Android can steal my information just as easily as Google can). The probability that I'll experience any problem at all is HUGELY greater on open software (incompatibilities, slowdowns, and most commonly unintuitive, obtuse configuration).
Overall, it means that the risk of closed source software is the same or less than open alternatives. You can be condescending all you want, but "Most People" figured this out while enjoying their lives watching sports and sitcoms, while you've spent hours of effort researching and defending an ideological stance that has no evidence of significant impact in the world where actual people live. Eventually you'll find that "most people" are actually a lot more intelligent than you think they are, and they're laughing behind your back while you go on caring about inane shit that doesn't matter.
--Disclosure--
I own an Android phone because I like the features and price.
Watch this video
Choice and corresponding competition drive innovation, which creates better products for users. The current browser market is a great example of this, where Chrome/Firefox/IE (and Opera and Safari to some extent) compete fiercely for market share and are thus required to make compelling improvements for users.
Having a multitude of choices does have real downsides, though. When you have these choices, you're never really sure you made the right one. KDE/Gnome etc. have this problem, where users switch back and forth because of various updates/changes/features that they do or don't like at any given time. Because they flip, they aren't confident that they are getting the best experience, which degrades the entire experience of using the OS.
Keep watching the rest of that video. It's quite awesome to hear Jobs talk about how awesome this brand new "Universal serial bus" development is.
While the parent already commented on this, I'll say this just for information sake. People in South Carolina call USC "Carolina", and people in North Carolina call UNC "Carolina". So when someone talks about "the Carolina game" it really matters what state they're from to know what they're talking about.
It's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to "prove" anything that isn't pure mathematics. You can estimate probabilities to within statistically significant bounds (it's 99.999% possible that you are the father of that child, etc.) Proof, as an abstraction, is much more difficult. To prove that DNA is unique, you would need to sequence every human who ever lived, is currently living, or will ever live. Disproof, by contrast, is much easier. You could disprove that DNA is unique with only 2 people (though it's very unlikely).
Real names make it easy to find people you know on a social network, and to remember the identities of people you connect with on them. Social networks are most valuable for "loose connections" like friends from grade school or non-immediate relatives. You might be interested in their lives, but can't commit the energy or mental capacity to identifying them in the first place or remembering the association function between their pseudonym and their identity.
You or others like you might not care about weak social ties, but (evidently) a vast majority of computer users do.
It offers no value to users.
This is demonstrably false. You can say that pseudonymity has great value. You can say that to you, it has vastly more value than "real names". However, to say that real names offer to value to users, whose goal is to connect primarily with people they know in real life, is either ignorant or defiantly stupid.
It sounds like, to me, you're saying that "The Road Less Traveled" is actually Robert Frost pre-mocking hipsters in 1920. I actually quite like this interpretation.
That's exactly the point, though. They aren't trying to kill item or gold farming. They want to make it (relatively) safe for their players, who will buy items anyway. I would much rather players be able to pay through a Blizzard service than giving their credit card information to some level 1 Witch Doctor name itemsforgoldcom
Intelligent? Perhaps.
Willing to learn new things? Almost certainly.
Interesting to talk to? You've got to be kidding me.