Maybe it has something to do with the way these collisions happen? I mean, I'm sure being drunk increases the likelihood of all sorts of wrecks, but maybe a drunk person is far more likely to be the one hitting (with the front of their car) than the one being hit (possibly from the side).
Maybe it has more to do with that, and less to do with the whole "the liquor loosens you up" factor.
No idea whether that's got any merit--just speculating.
Why does the speed limit not vary dependent on conditions? 20mph outside a school is sensible when kids are around but annoying during school holidays.
I've always thought school zones are kind of weird. The ones I've seen usually have had times and/or days listed, but they always say they apply on school days during school hours; I'd think it'd be much more likely for a kid to be wandering around in the streets when school is not in session, really. When it's in session, they're in the school! Or at least on a damn near escape-proof (these days) playground.
Of course there is. Sure, we drill in to them that there's not, but that doesn't make it true. Same with the whole "a Marine's not a soldier" business; there's possibly a useful distinction that gives the sentiment some merit, but in a generic sense, of course they're soldiers, and of course there's such a thing as an "ex-Marine", at least in the sense that most people would use the term (i.e. someone who was once but no longer is an active member of the Marine Corps).
In fact, failing to prepend the "ex-" causes any sentence referring to such people to lose some possibly-significant meaning, or forces them to be wordier to retain it.
I second the recommendation of Asimov. I've got most of his essay collections (from his Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction column), his guides to the Bible and Shakespeare, and recently I picked up the original version of his guide to science (that one's mostly good for the humor value; it's worth it for the chapter on the potential of atomic energy/weapons alone)
He's an amazing non-fic writer. I don't even like his fiction--the ideas are often interesting, but the execution is usually on par with what a moderately talented high school freshman might produce--but I can't get enough of his non-fiction.
I'd love to find a collection of his non-fic online (I really, really want to have a searchable version) but I've not found much. Bittorrent has failed me, certainly, though I haven't tried resorting to (*shudder*) IRC yet. Looks like anyone who's interested will have to shell out for the real thing, but luckily most it isn't in very high demand so it's very cheap used.
Desktops may be on the road toward obsolescence, but I strongly believe there's a growing place for a PC in your TV stand.
The thing is, 50% of the benefit of an under-the-TV PC comes from illegal shiat like console/arcade emulation (unless you actually buy all the games) and movie/TV piracy.
Almost all of the other 50% is better with a traditional DVR + one or more gaming consoles (Netflix, gaming).
About the only thing the PC has going for it that isn't illegal is Hulu, and eventually the TV execs will get their heads out of their asses and that (or something like it) will be available on consoles, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm saving up to put a system under my TV, but honestly it's mostly to emulate consoles and play pirated TV shows. Hulu will be a nice bonus, I guess.
I think that's why it's hard for media PCs to take off--companies can't market them the way they have to be marketed for them to look significantly better than the alternatives.
Even if they did re-create the study, and a bunch of schools started doing this, I can assure you that most of them would decide that "less math" was just as good as "no math" and far less scary, and that "6th-7th grade" could be cut back to "2nd grade" without affecting the results of the program.
From what I've seen, school administrators (principals up to and including district supers) are very good at latching on to (possibly useful) fads in pedagogy, but very bad at actually implementing entire programs; they'll go on about how important this is, and how the teachers must follow its principles, then direct them to do things contrary to it either because they don't actually understand it or because those parts are too scary. A couple years later they'll pick some other program to get excited about and it'll start all over.
Most of them also have a damn poor understanding of the scientific process, which might explain some of the above nonsense.
Wikipedia's entire mathematics section is pretty much useless for learning new concepts--its only value is as a reference for specifics about things one already understands well. Hell, even when I look up stuff I already know their explanations of it often make no sense to me.
God, those games were complicated. I remember doing the same thing with Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries--I could play it on my own, but it was complex enough to keep two people entertained controlling one mech.
I only discovered X-Wing: Alliance about a year ago, having somehow missed its release (I stopped paying much attention after X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter). I have no idea how I ever played those games. Certainly not up to the task now; I ran in to a mission pretty early on that had me completely stuck, not even getting close to completing it. You've got to be able to hit, without looking, about 30-40 commands to have a prayer of doing well enough to beat those games. Clearly, younger-me was much better at this than I am now:(
There was a game with (IIRC) Harrier in the title that gave you control over the invasion of a small island nation. I can't recall whether you actually got to dispatch the ground forces or whether they arrived on a time table, but you definitely did have control of a few Harrier aircraft, which you could launch from your carrier with an autopilot or fly on your own. You planned out your (or the AI pilot's) objectives before hand, setting waypoints and targets.
It's pretty obscure, and a bit hard to find as there are several more-well-known games with Harrier in the title. I'm pretty sure it's this one:
I like that it doesn't hold your hand the whole way. It's even possible to get the "bad" ending and have no idea that there are others, if you haven't read about it--especially since, given the bleak nature of the game, it doesn't seem implausible that they'd pick something that dark as the sole ending.
It's got more scares than most of the "scary" FPS games of the last decade (Doom 3 and Bioshock, I'm looking at you!), RPG elements that aren't heavy-handed or forced, spectacular atmosphere, a damn solid story, intense combat, a fun arsenal, and missions that invite comparison to Deus Ex and the Delta Force series in the freedom they allow. It's best exemplar of the features for which I play FPS games, and a reminder of how great they can be when they're not compromised to make them friendly.
It's the game that convinced me a first-person Fallout could actually work--which was unfortunate, since it raised my hopes for Fallout 3, which was a much worse game than either STALKER or the other games in the Fallout franchise.
The sequel was a really shitty cross between Starcraft and Alpha Centauri, but the first was a sort of ultra-bleak, punishingly difficult version of Sim City.
It's like Sim City for fans of games where you always or almost always lose, like Dwarf Fortress or Nethack.
Hell, it's possible (likely, even) to insta-lose the game by picking the wrong star system at the beginning. You'll go through all your planning for your colony ship, launch, and arrive at your new home star system only to discover that there are no terrestrial planets. Finding one that's merely as inhospitable as Mars is practically a miracle; more often you're stuck with some barren-ass frozen wasteland or a planet only slightly better than Mercury.
I'd love to see either of the SS games spruced up in a modern engine, but of the two I think I'd rather see the first one given the treatment, as it's one of the only games (hell, I can't even think of any others) where the graphics were so damn ugly that they caused eyestrain. I couldn't even play past the first couple of minutes, between that and the horrid controls.
This from someone who could tolerate Blake Stone, Wolfenstein 3D, Dark Forces, Doom, etc.
Darklands. Freakin' great game. RPG, set in a medieval Germany where everything people at the time believed to exist does, in fact, exist. Very free form, but with two or three "main" quests you can go on (or not)--I won't say what they are, since discovering them is part of the fun. Pain-in-the-ass manual-based copy protection, so be sure to grab a PDF of the manual if you download it from an abandonware site or something.
The Commander Keen series (especially 4-6), Duke Nukem (especially 2--I'm not talking about the 3-D Dukes here) and Hunter Hunted all need more love than they get. They're not better than the best console platform games, but they're at least in the same league.
Tachyon: The Fringe was one of the last good space fighter "sim" games. Doesn't come up nearly as often as X-Wing, Tie Fighter, etc.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is the only really good FPS game I've played in quite a damn while that wasn't developed by Valve, but either no one else who played it thought so or not nearly enough people played it.
This here's America, partner, where being able to do one and only one thing or else be completely fucked equals more freedom than being able to do a whole bunch of things but pay slightly higher taxes, and where freedom to choose which insurance company will assrape you is more dear to us than the freedom to change where we live or pursue any sort of employment aside from a salaried corporate or government job.
Most bikes in the U.S. are cheap, shitty "mountain bikes" (used to ride on sidewalks, roads, driveways, and other paved places, almost exclusively) with shifters that didn't work when they were new, with pedals that occasionally just break off, and with all sorts of other problems.
In cities it's a bit different, but even there you see plenty of adults riding the damn things. No wonder they get tossed out so often.
Is Europe as full of these pieces of crap as the U.S. is? All the good bikes here go for a premium, because they're so much less common than crappy Wal-Mart bikes that would cost more to bring up to working order than just buying a new bike would.
It's better than anything else I've seen. You still need a lot of grammar and listening/speaking study outside of it, but it's good for vocabulary building and basic sentence structure.
It's an ideal platform for language-learning software in general. The portability, quick suspend mode, touch screen, speakers, and microphone make it perfectly suited to the task.
Unfortunately, the only software of the sort that I've seen is the (if I recall the title correctly) "My [language name here] Tutor" line, which is limited to (AFAIK) four languages and--at least for French--sucks. They're not nearly as good as Rosetta Stone (not even in the same ballpark), they (again, extrapolating from the French one) contain significant errors at very low levels which make them poor tools for beginners, and they don't cover material that's difficult or complete enough for advanced learners.
I'd pay good money for Rosetta Stone Portable (or whatever) on the device, but I don't think anything like that exists.
Has it ever been demonstrated that social scientists have a worse understanding of statistics than physical scientists?
You raise a good point. The problem is that the people performing such a study would be social scientists, and we can't trust their results since they're so bad at statistics.
All of us who pre-ordered L4D thought they were going to do the same thing with it (in no small part because Valve said they would). We got burned.
Excellent job with TF2, which no-one expected them to support so well or so long. Awful job with L4D, which they said they'd support very well but didn't.
Their prices for movies are obscene. No way I'd "buy" one, but I was excited when I saw that rental was an option--until I saw the price. I expected maybe $2, $3 tops. Nope. $6. These dumbasses don't seem to realize that they're competing with Redbox and its $1/day rentals. In many cases, that's enough to buy a DVD of the movie (used, at least).
I'm willing to pay a bit more for the convenience of not having to go out to get the disc and to return it, but not that much. $2 is really what I expected to see; 200% of their best competitor, but still low enough to be an impulse rental. FFS, I can have Netflix for the cost of 1.5 PSN rentals a month.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy shit... you're right. I can't believe I never made that connection.
Maybe it has something to do with the way these collisions happen? I mean, I'm sure being drunk increases the likelihood of all sorts of wrecks, but maybe a drunk person is far more likely to be the one hitting (with the front of their car) than the one being hit (possibly from the side).
Maybe it has more to do with that, and less to do with the whole "the liquor loosens you up" factor.
No idea whether that's got any merit--just speculating.
I've always thought school zones are kind of weird. The ones I've seen usually have had times and/or days listed, but they always say they apply on school days during school hours; I'd think it'd be much more likely for a kid to be wandering around in the streets when school is not in session, really. When it's in session, they're in the school! Or at least on a damn near escape-proof (these days) playground.
Of course there is. Sure, we drill in to them that there's not, but that doesn't make it true. Same with the whole "a Marine's not a soldier" business; there's possibly a useful distinction that gives the sentiment some merit, but in a generic sense, of course they're soldiers, and of course there's such a thing as an "ex-Marine", at least in the sense that most people would use the term (i.e. someone who was once but no longer is an active member of the Marine Corps).
In fact, failing to prepend the "ex-" causes any sentence referring to such people to lose some possibly-significant meaning, or forces them to be wordier to retain it.
I second the recommendation of Asimov. I've got most of his essay collections (from his Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction column), his guides to the Bible and Shakespeare, and recently I picked up the original version of his guide to science (that one's mostly good for the humor value; it's worth it for the chapter on the potential of atomic energy/weapons alone)
He's an amazing non-fic writer. I don't even like his fiction--the ideas are often interesting, but the execution is usually on par with what a moderately talented high school freshman might produce--but I can't get enough of his non-fiction.
I'd love to find a collection of his non-fic online (I really, really want to have a searchable version) but I've not found much. Bittorrent has failed me, certainly, though I haven't tried resorting to (*shudder*) IRC yet. Looks like anyone who's interested will have to shell out for the real thing, but luckily most it isn't in very high demand so it's very cheap used.
The thing is, 50% of the benefit of an under-the-TV PC comes from illegal shiat like console/arcade emulation (unless you actually buy all the games) and movie/TV piracy.
Almost all of the other 50% is better with a traditional DVR + one or more gaming consoles (Netflix, gaming).
About the only thing the PC has going for it that isn't illegal is Hulu, and eventually the TV execs will get their heads out of their asses and that (or something like it) will be available on consoles, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm saving up to put a system under my TV, but honestly it's mostly to emulate consoles and play pirated TV shows. Hulu will be a nice bonus, I guess.
I think that's why it's hard for media PCs to take off--companies can't market them the way they have to be marketed for them to look significantly better than the alternatives.
Even if they did re-create the study, and a bunch of schools started doing this, I can assure you that most of them would decide that "less math" was just as good as "no math" and far less scary, and that "6th-7th grade" could be cut back to "2nd grade" without affecting the results of the program.
From what I've seen, school administrators (principals up to and including district supers) are very good at latching on to (possibly useful) fads in pedagogy, but very bad at actually implementing entire programs; they'll go on about how important this is, and how the teachers must follow its principles, then direct them to do things contrary to it either because they don't actually understand it or because those parts are too scary. A couple years later they'll pick some other program to get excited about and it'll start all over.
Most of them also have a damn poor understanding of the scientific process, which might explain some of the above nonsense.
Wikipedia's entire mathematics section is pretty much useless for learning new concepts--its only value is as a reference for specifics about things one already understands well. Hell, even when I look up stuff I already know their explanations of it often make no sense to me.
MIT OpenCourseWare, maybe?
There's a commercial re-make that's full 3D. I hated the original, but love the remake.
God, those games were complicated. I remember doing the same thing with Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries--I could play it on my own, but it was complex enough to keep two people entertained controlling one mech.
I only discovered X-Wing: Alliance about a year ago, having somehow missed its release (I stopped paying much attention after X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter). I have no idea how I ever played those games. Certainly not up to the task now; I ran in to a mission pretty early on that had me completely stuck, not even getting close to completing it. You've got to be able to hit, without looking, about 30-40 commands to have a prayer of doing well enough to beat those games. Clearly, younger-me was much better at this than I am now :(
There was a game with (IIRC) Harrier in the title that gave you control over the invasion of a small island nation. I can't recall whether you actually got to dispatch the ground forces or whether they arrived on a time table, but you definitely did have control of a few Harrier aircraft, which you could launch from your carrier with an autopilot or fly on your own. You planned out your (or the AI pilot's) objectives before hand, setting waypoints and targets.
It's pretty obscure, and a bit hard to find as there are several more-well-known games with Harrier in the title. I'm pretty sure it's this one:
AV8B Harrier Assault
Sounds a bit like EF2000, so assuming you can get it to run and can tolerate the old graphics, you might enjoy it.
That should read "It's the best recent exemplar of the features for which I play FPS games", rather.
I like that it doesn't hold your hand the whole way. It's even possible to get the "bad" ending and have no idea that there are others, if you haven't read about it--especially since, given the bleak nature of the game, it doesn't seem implausible that they'd pick something that dark as the sole ending.
It's got more scares than most of the "scary" FPS games of the last decade (Doom 3 and Bioshock, I'm looking at you!), RPG elements that aren't heavy-handed or forced, spectacular atmosphere, a damn solid story, intense combat, a fun arsenal, and missions that invite comparison to Deus Ex and the Delta Force series in the freedom they allow. It's best exemplar of the features for which I play FPS games, and a reminder of how great they can be when they're not compromised to make them friendly.
It's the game that convinced me a first-person Fallout could actually work--which was unfortunate, since it raised my hopes for Fallout 3, which was a much worse game than either STALKER or the other games in the Fallout franchise.
Outpost
The sequel was a really shitty cross between Starcraft and Alpha Centauri, but the first was a sort of ultra-bleak, punishingly difficult version of Sim City.
It's like Sim City for fans of games where you always or almost always lose, like Dwarf Fortress or Nethack.
Hell, it's possible (likely, even) to insta-lose the game by picking the wrong star system at the beginning. You'll go through all your planning for your colony ship, launch, and arrive at your new home star system only to discover that there are no terrestrial planets. Finding one that's merely as inhospitable as Mars is practically a miracle; more often you're stuck with some barren-ass frozen wasteland or a planet only slightly better than Mercury.
I'd love to see either of the SS games spruced up in a modern engine, but of the two I think I'd rather see the first one given the treatment, as it's one of the only games (hell, I can't even think of any others) where the graphics were so damn ugly that they caused eyestrain. I couldn't even play past the first couple of minutes, between that and the horrid controls.
This from someone who could tolerate Blake Stone, Wolfenstein 3D, Dark Forces, Doom, etc.
Darklands. Freakin' great game. RPG, set in a medieval Germany where everything people at the time believed to exist does, in fact, exist. Very free form, but with two or three "main" quests you can go on (or not)--I won't say what they are, since discovering them is part of the fun. Pain-in-the-ass manual-based copy protection, so be sure to grab a PDF of the manual if you download it from an abandonware site or something.
The Commander Keen series (especially 4-6), Duke Nukem (especially 2--I'm not talking about the 3-D Dukes here) and Hunter Hunted all need more love than they get. They're not better than the best console platform games, but they're at least in the same league.
Tachyon: The Fringe was one of the last good space fighter "sim" games. Doesn't come up nearly as often as X-Wing, Tie Fighter, etc.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is the only really good FPS game I've played in quite a damn while that wasn't developed by Valve, but either no one else who played it thought so or not nearly enough people played it.
This here's America, partner, where being able to do one and only one thing or else be completely fucked equals more freedom than being able to do a whole bunch of things but pay slightly higher taxes, and where freedom to choose which insurance company will assrape you is more dear to us than the freedom to change where we live or pursue any sort of employment aside from a salaried corporate or government job.
Most bikes in the U.S. are cheap, shitty "mountain bikes" (used to ride on sidewalks, roads, driveways, and other paved places, almost exclusively) with shifters that didn't work when they were new, with pedals that occasionally just break off, and with all sorts of other problems.
In cities it's a bit different, but even there you see plenty of adults riding the damn things. No wonder they get tossed out so often.
Is Europe as full of these pieces of crap as the U.S. is? All the good bikes here go for a premium, because they're so much less common than crappy Wal-Mart bikes that would cost more to bring up to working order than just buying a new bike would.
It's better than anything else I've seen. You still need a lot of grammar and listening/speaking study outside of it, but it's good for vocabulary building and basic sentence structure.
It's an ideal platform for language-learning software in general. The portability, quick suspend mode, touch screen, speakers, and microphone make it perfectly suited to the task.
Unfortunately, the only software of the sort that I've seen is the (if I recall the title correctly) "My [language name here] Tutor" line, which is limited to (AFAIK) four languages and--at least for French--sucks. They're not nearly as good as Rosetta Stone (not even in the same ballpark), they (again, extrapolating from the French one) contain significant errors at very low levels which make them poor tools for beginners, and they don't cover material that's difficult or complete enough for advanced learners.
I'd pay good money for Rosetta Stone Portable (or whatever) on the device, but I don't think anything like that exists.
You raise a good point. The problem is that the people performing such a study would be social scientists, and we can't trust their results since they're so bad at statistics.
All of us who pre-ordered L4D thought they were going to do the same thing with it (in no small part because Valve said they would). We got burned.
Excellent job with TF2, which no-one expected them to support so well or so long. Awful job with L4D, which they said they'd support very well but didn't.
It's more obvious in the similar-but-better Links browser.
What about ethical systems? They generally have a large logical component, arriving at many conclusions from a much smaller number of premises.
Their prices for movies are obscene. No way I'd "buy" one, but I was excited when I saw that rental was an option--until I saw the price. I expected maybe $2, $3 tops. Nope. $6. These dumbasses don't seem to realize that they're competing with Redbox and its $1/day rentals. In many cases, that's enough to buy a DVD of the movie (used, at least).
I'm willing to pay a bit more for the convenience of not having to go out to get the disc and to return it, but not that much. $2 is really what I expected to see; 200% of their best competitor, but still low enough to be an impulse rental. FFS, I can have Netflix for the cost of 1.5 PSN rentals a month.