Is it more rude than profs whose lectures are so utterly useless that the only way they can get people to attend class is to count attendance or have random quizzes?
I'm a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and class lectures are largely not worth the time. The profs either parrot what we've already read in the text, or they spend their time answering inane questions from students of dubious intelligence. (Whoever said that there's no such thing as a stupid quesiton obviously never attended a tech school. When a 4th year IT major asks (no joke) what a subnet mask is, there is something wrong!)
I've almost never attended lectures in my major, yet I manage a high GPA and IBM is all over hiring me when I graduate. I read the text:: I know the answers. Unless the professor has something insightful to tell me, I have better things to be doing.
They have the biggest, best, and most interesting roller-coasters in the world. Not to mention a rich history (The resort has been around since the late 1800s).
Everything we know about nutrition and health assumes that you lead a MODERATELY ACTIVE LIFESTYLE! If your life is entirely sedentary, your body will react accordingly: lower metabolism, over-worked pancreas, etc...
Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to lunch instead of driving. Do something OTHER than watching TV after work: take up running/swimming/biking/kendo/fencing/gardening. If you don't feel comfortable exercising at work, do it at home. If you say you don't have the time, make a list of what you do every night. I'll bet a lot of it involves sitting and/or a cathode ray tube of some kind.
Eating properly is important, but if you don't move your ass, it will grow to fill its container.
I consider myself to be a geek. I'm also quite sociable and very "extroverted." Most of my friends are the same way. We go to parties, we hang out, we like to be around people.
I've met a few introverted geeks, but I've met just as many introverted non-geeks. As for depression, I see sad geeks and non-geeks alike.
I've seen no real correlation between geekiness and introversion and/or depression. You say "geeks are not extroverted, for the most part they are extremely introverted", but I see no evidence of this. Geeks seem to be of all types, just like other people. To say that geeks are introverted is akin to saying "Jocks are dumb." It's just silly and unsubstantiated.
And whoever modded the parent down is an asshat. Off-topic my foot.
If I'm reading between the lines, you're really playing a NES emulator (i.e. NEStor) with, more than likely, illegal roms.
We've got two NESs, an SNES, an Atari 7800, an N64, a Sega Genesis, an Intellivision II, a Japanese PS1, several PSXs, two PS2s, four Game Cubes, and countless GBAs between us. Not to mention a pile of games for all of them. We don't even need ROMs.
I don't think this is the majority attitude. Could be wrong though.
I sure hope it isn't. But with the economy being the way it is, I'm sure people are re-evaluating where they spend their "entertainment dollar."
This is no different than it's ever been. While I do call bullshit on your 20 to 1 ratio. Secondly, stop being a mooch.
I didn't say it was different, and the 20-1 is just my group;^) We're all pretty cheap, so overall we save a lot of money as a group. We all mooch.
Also, I attend RIT, a college full of gamers and geeks. Games are lent and traded (and pirated, but that's another argument altogether) freely. Why buy a game when you can borrow it for free a week after it comes out. Odds are you know -someone- who bought it.
I just mooch more (leach, if you prefer) because I care somewhat less about the games than everyone else. That, and I'm finding myself much more financially stable by not wasting my money on games.;^) Always look out for #1.
This is the same point as 2. If this is truely you attitude, you'd never buy any of these games to begin with.
No, I probably wouldn't. It's the same with mp3s. I have no desire to spend money on music or games, but I'll take them for free if I can. If they're no longer free, I find another hobby.
Your points have been the same since I was playing the Atari 2600. They have no bearing on why current game sales have slipped.
Consider this. Despite all the new games we have, and all the new consoles we have, we (my friends and I) play the old NES more than anything else. There was something about those old games that made them fun and worth playing over and over again. When I left for college (and left my SNES with my brother), I went right about re-buying all my favorite games. Didn't give it a second thought (didn't know about emulation back then). Those games were worth the money, even a second time.
To me, most new games just aren't. As for other people, if they are repeatedly burned by less-than-fun games, they become less likely to buy more games in the future.
The last PC game I purchased was Tribes 2. I only bought it because all of us bought it in order to play together.
The last console game I bought was Final Fantasy VI (III in the US) for the Super Nintendo.
Now, allow me to make three points:
1. Most "new" games just don't interest me. Sure, they look entertaining, but they're just not worth the money. I'd like to play them, but I have better things on which to spend my money. $40 buys a lot of pizza.
2. I'm in college. If any one of my friends buys a new game or system, I can play it for free pretty-much whenever I want. Between all of my friends, I've got access to everything but X-Box games. One purchase satisfies 20 people, so only one purchase is made, instead of 20.
3. Most newer games, while they may be entertaining, are usually only thus so the first time through. There's no replay-value. Ergo, when we all leave college and lose access to all those games, we have no desire to acquire them on our own.
Also, having lost access to free games, people tend to either give up on gaming altogether (just not worth the money) or stay a step behind the curve, picking them up at steep discounts in the bargain bin.
Zelda 2 was worth the $50 I paid for it back in the day, considering that I -still- play (and greatly enjoy) it from time to time.
I first heard w00t playing MegaTF (an old CTF mod for Quake 1: has a small but hardcore fanbase to this day) back in the day. We're talking 1997ish. No one there knew where it came from.
"pwned" was another one. I saw it a lot not only in MegaTF, but more recently in Weapons Factory and CounterStrike. This one, however, I know the origins of...
In MegaTF, there were a handful of players who were so good it was sickening. "Owned!" was a common taunt when someone capped the flag or spectacularly fragged someone. One of those really good players made a typo one day in a pretty big clan match: "pwned" instead of "owned."
It spread faster than that GODS-BE-DAMNED All Your Base thing. It's getting "cool" again, though, probably due to its "old-school" nature
"Of course this *could* be great for college paper researchers, looking for a quote or two to stick in a research paper. Depends on how much meat you can really get at."
College is great in this respect. No matter how crazy, ill-conceived, or outlandish your premise is, there are a thousand nut-jobs out there with nice quotations to support it. This would make it even easier to back that dribble up. Especially late the night before it's due, when you need to support that last flimsy claim in order for your paper to make sense.
I can get an awesome cell phone for free. Anyone can. It won't play decent games or browse the web in full-colour, but it... MAKES PHONE CALLS. Well, mind you.
Just about every cell company offers a free or nearly so phone when you sign up with them. Now, why would I spend $200 or so on a "better" cell phone to play a handful of games, when I can take the free phone and play games on my GBA?
The only people who will buy these things are upper-class twits with money to burn. As such, the games designed for them will cater to this demographic, and no good games will be produced.
Now, what someone should do is design a cart that makes the GBA act like a cell phone.
"when you first start a char in ANY mmorpg what do you do - mind numbing macroing until you uber out your character - that's to be expected"
I'd say that means your expectations are -way- too low.
"anyone who plays an MMORPG knows that the first 6 months usually sucks..."
If I know full well that a game is going to suck for the first six months I play it, I'm not going to waste that half of a year. I'll either write a macro to level my character for me so I can get to the "good" part, or I'll buy a leveled character on E-bay so I can get to the "good" part. Or, I'll just pass on yet another sub-standard Everquest clone of an MMORPG.
" the rewards years down the line usually pay off with veteran rewards etc etc"
Years. You're saying that I should invest -years- playing what is essentially a beta-test (and paying for the privilage, mind you) because it will get better? I'll be rewarded somehow?
A game should be fun and rewarding to play in its own right. If it isn't, why are you playing?
Re:The explanation is in the culture
on
Help My Game - RISK
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"The fun for my friends and I as far as board games go also comes mostly from the social interaction, and almost not at all from the game."
Then why even play the game? Why not just hang out and socially interact? You don't need an excuse to get together with your friends.
American board games are generally garbage. I was always amazed my how my friends could enjoy a game like LIFE, where the outcome is 100% random, or Trouble, where the outcome is also 100% random (yea, you can make decisions, but there is always an obvious "best" decision, so unless you're a complete moron the game is random). Why even play the games, when you could just flip a coin and declare a winner?
Axis and Allies was a decent game, except that it's unbalanced. All players being of equal competance, the Allies WILL win. Period. If they don't, then the Axis made a fatal and/or stupid decision early on. It's not a game of strategy or skill, it's just a game of avoiding obvious errors until America lands in Normandy.
Puerto Rico, El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Entdecker, Tikal, Mexica, Java, Carcassone... Those are real games. Tactics and strategy, deterministic outcomes, and real competition. You're comparing brain power instead of comparing dice rolls.
We can't just "overhaul" the system: it's too deeply entrenched. Couple that with the fact that the majority of Americans can live without a lot of this tech, and that's the end of that...
Why bother with the expense and hardship of upgrading a system that, for the majority of people, is just fine?
Actually, I'm seriously considering getting into writing part-time, and I've got a crazy scheme with a few IT friends to open a nightclub on the Jersey shore.
Take risks and life is in the very least more interesting.
Code is a product. If a team is given precise requirements, and those requirements are met, then that's that. The idea may be created locally by the expert, but the code is just code: it doesn't matter who writes it.
You hire people locally to hash out your specific requirements, and you send those requirements to the coder farm in $country. Saves the company money as long as their requirements are in order.
The software doesn't make business go, it makes business go cheaper. You can bet your arse that if company X dicsovered that ledgers and calculators were cheaper than computers for task Y, they would ditch the technology in an instant.
My point is just that software is a commodity: nothing more. Software is the same as office supplies, Xerox machines, and TPS reports. Cheaper software "may" be less-than-perfect, but if it gets the job done, the company wins.
(I may not -want- it to be that way, but that's another story altogether)
I got into IT instead of coding partly for this reason. You can ship coding jobs overseas, but you still need someone in the server room to re-seat the RAM and flash the switch's microcode. As long as I'm not tech support, they need me physically present. It will take longer for them to bring people here to replace me than it would to simply send my job over there.
Now I can watch that rave/orgy in all its home-theatre glory. With slow-motion and freeze-frames, I'll bet I can get a good estimate of the true volume of saliva shown on screen.
Even better, I can loop it and leave it on 24/7. I'm sure everyone in the apartment will love it!
In the true penny-arcade style, I propose the following:
We gather a large group in a major urban center. Taking our cars, we drive en masse along a pre-planned route that, to the pattern-matching machine, will appear as a giant wang on the map.
This wang will be awe-inspiring, perhaps enough-so to cause the AI in the machine to become envious, thereby destroying it.
President: What's that on the map? Some sort of terrorist cell!?
CIA guy: Ummm....
President: I want answers!
CIA guy: Well... It appears... to be a... wang, sir.
President: Wang, eh? That some sort of dirty bomb?...
Macros make MMORPGs fun. Without them, you'd actually have to waste your time clicking on the tree ten-thousand times. With a macro, you can let the computer do the repetitive, boring, tedious tasks while you're at work, and then have fun playing the game when you get home.
If a task in a game can be reliably done with a non-intelligent macro, that task is only worthy of a non-intelligent being.
Imagine (HYPOTHETICALLY!) if the the US Government actually -had- orchestrated 9/11 (or knew about it and allowed it to happen) as part of a larger scheme.
Now imagine if the public at large found out. If there were undeniable proof.
What would happen? How would middle-class America react? That would be the ultimate test of the unity of the American people. Would they actually -do- something about it? Or would the spin-doctors win?
If only there were a World-Sim(tm) I could use to watch something like that unfold.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it more rude than profs whose lectures are so utterly useless that the only way they can get people to attend class is to count attendance or have random quizzes?
:: I know the answers. Unless the professor has something insightful to tell me, I have better things to be doing.
I'm a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and class lectures are largely not worth the time. The profs either parrot what we've already read in the text, or they spend their time answering inane questions from students of dubious intelligence. (Whoever said that there's no such thing as a stupid quesiton obviously never attended a tech school. When a 4th year IT major asks (no joke) what a subnet mask is, there is something wrong!)
I've almost never attended lectures in my major, yet I manage a high GPA and IBM is all over hiring me when I graduate. I read the text
Cedar Point is my happy place.
They have the biggest, best, and most interesting roller-coasters in the world. Not to mention a rich history (The resort has been around since the late 1800s).
Everything we know about nutrition and health assumes that you lead a MODERATELY ACTIVE LIFESTYLE! If your life is entirely sedentary, your body will react accordingly: lower metabolism, over-worked pancreas, etc...
Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to lunch instead of driving. Do something OTHER than watching TV after work: take up running/swimming/biking/kendo/fencing/gardening. If you don't feel comfortable exercising at work, do it at home. If you say you don't have the time, make a list of what you do every night. I'll bet a lot of it involves sitting and/or a cathode ray tube of some kind.
Eating properly is important, but if you don't move your ass, it will grow to fill its container.
I consider myself to be a geek. I'm also quite sociable and very "extroverted." Most of my friends are the same way. We go to parties, we hang out, we like to be around people.
I've met a few introverted geeks, but I've met just as many introverted non-geeks. As for depression, I see sad geeks and non-geeks alike.
I've seen no real correlation between geekiness and introversion and/or depression. You say "geeks are not extroverted, for the most part they are extremely introverted", but I see no evidence of this. Geeks seem to be of all types, just like other people. To say that geeks are introverted is akin to saying "Jocks are dumb." It's just silly and unsubstantiated.
And whoever modded the parent down is an asshat. Off-topic my foot.
If I'm reading between the lines, you're really playing a NES emulator (i.e. NEStor) with, more than likely, illegal roms.
We've got two NESs, an SNES, an Atari 7800, an N64, a Sega Genesis, an Intellivision II, a Japanese PS1, several PSXs, two PS2s, four Game Cubes, and countless GBAs between us. Not to mention a pile of games for all of them. We don't even need ROMs.
I don't think this is the majority attitude. Could be wrong though.
;^) We're all pretty cheap, so overall we save a lot of money as a group. We all mooch.
;^) Always look out for #1.
I sure hope it isn't. But with the economy being the way it is, I'm sure people are re-evaluating where they spend their "entertainment dollar."
This is no different than it's ever been. While I do call bullshit on your 20 to 1 ratio. Secondly, stop being a mooch.
I didn't say it was different, and the 20-1 is just my group
Also, I attend RIT, a college full of gamers and geeks. Games are lent and traded (and pirated, but that's another argument altogether) freely. Why buy a game when you can borrow it for free a week after it comes out. Odds are you know -someone- who bought it.
I just mooch more (leach, if you prefer) because I care somewhat less about the games than everyone else. That, and I'm finding myself much more financially stable by not wasting my money on games.
This is the same point as 2. If this is truely you attitude, you'd never buy any of these games to begin with.
No, I probably wouldn't. It's the same with mp3s. I have no desire to spend money on music or games, but I'll take them for free if I can. If they're no longer free, I find another hobby.
Your points have been the same since I was playing the Atari 2600. They have no bearing on why current game sales have slipped.
Consider this. Despite all the new games we have, and all the new consoles we have, we (my friends and I) play the old NES more than anything else. There was something about those old games that made them fun and worth playing over and over again. When I left for college (and left my SNES with my brother), I went right about re-buying all my favorite games. Didn't give it a second thought (didn't know about emulation back then). Those games were worth the money, even a second time.
To me, most new games just aren't. As for other people, if they are repeatedly burned by less-than-fun games, they become less likely to buy more games in the future.
We play DDR at the local arcade at least three times a week. I was even bored enough to make my own metal dance pad.
I love that game ^_^
The last PC game I purchased was Tribes 2. I only bought it because all of us bought it in order to play together.
The last console game I bought was Final Fantasy VI (III in the US) for the Super Nintendo.
Now, allow me to make three points:
1. Most "new" games just don't interest me. Sure, they look entertaining, but they're just not worth the money. I'd like to play them, but I have better things on which to spend my money. $40 buys a lot of pizza.
2. I'm in college. If any one of my friends buys a new game or system, I can play it for free pretty-much whenever I want. Between all of my friends, I've got access to everything but X-Box games. One purchase satisfies 20 people, so only one purchase is made, instead of 20.
3. Most newer games, while they may be entertaining, are usually only thus so the first time through. There's no replay-value. Ergo, when we all leave college and lose access to all those games, we have no desire to acquire them on our own.
Also, having lost access to free games, people tend to either give up on gaming altogether (just not worth the money) or stay a step behind the curve, picking them up at steep discounts in the bargain bin.
Zelda 2 was worth the $50 I paid for it back in the day, considering that I -still- play (and greatly enjoy) it from time to time.
[end_rant]
I first heard w00t playing MegaTF (an old CTF mod for Quake 1: has a small but hardcore fanbase to this day) back in the day. We're talking 1997ish. No one there knew where it came from.
"pwned" was another one. I saw it a lot not only in MegaTF, but more recently in Weapons Factory and CounterStrike. This one, however, I know the origins of...
In MegaTF, there were a handful of players who were so good it was sickening. "Owned!" was a common taunt when someone capped the flag or spectacularly fragged someone. One of those really good players made a typo one day in a pretty big clan match: "pwned" instead of "owned."
It spread faster than that GODS-BE-DAMNED All Your Base thing. It's getting "cool" again, though, probably due to its "old-school" nature
"Of course this *could* be great for college paper researchers, looking for a quote or two to stick in a research paper. Depends on how much meat you can really get at."
College is great in this respect. No matter how crazy, ill-conceived, or outlandish your premise is, there are a thousand nut-jobs out there with nice quotations to support it. This would make it even easier to back that dribble up. Especially late the night before it's due, when you need to support that last flimsy claim in order for your paper to make sense.
This EXACT conversation happened the last time Nintendo was in a thread.
Goddamn geeks!
(Not that I didn't make the SELECT == Friends arguement in that last article...)
Heh heh... GBA games are $15.00. Wait a month and buy them used. They're certainly 3.759x better than those cheesy cellphone games.
I've never paid full price for a GBA game.
I can get an awesome cell phone for free. Anyone can. It won't play decent games or browse the web in full-colour, but it... MAKES PHONE CALLS. Well, mind you.
Just about every cell company offers a free or nearly so phone when you sign up with them. Now, why would I spend $200 or so on a "better" cell phone to play a handful of games, when I can take the free phone and play games on my GBA?
The only people who will buy these things are upper-class twits with money to burn. As such, the games designed for them will cater to this demographic, and no good games will be produced.
Now, what someone should do is design a cart that makes the GBA act like a cell phone.
"when you first start a char in ANY mmorpg what do you do - mind numbing macroing until you uber out your character - that's to be expected"
I'd say that means your expectations are -way- too low.
"anyone who plays an MMORPG knows that the first 6 months usually sucks..."
If I know full well that a game is going to suck for the first six months I play it, I'm not going to waste that half of a year. I'll either write a macro to level my character for me so I can get to the "good" part, or I'll buy a leveled character on E-bay so I can get to the "good" part. Or, I'll just pass on yet another sub-standard Everquest clone of an MMORPG.
" the rewards years down the line usually pay off with veteran rewards etc etc"
Years. You're saying that I should invest -years- playing what is essentially a beta-test (and paying for the privilage, mind you) because it will get better? I'll be rewarded somehow?
A game should be fun and rewarding to play in its own right. If it isn't, why are you playing?
"The fun for my friends and I as far as board games go also comes mostly from the social interaction, and almost not at all from the game."
Then why even play the game? Why not just hang out and socially interact? You don't need an excuse to get together with your friends.
American board games are generally garbage. I was always amazed my how my friends could enjoy a game like LIFE, where the outcome is 100% random, or Trouble, where the outcome is also 100% random (yea, you can make decisions, but there is always an obvious "best" decision, so unless you're a complete moron the game is random). Why even play the games, when you could just flip a coin and declare a winner?
Axis and Allies was a decent game, except that it's unbalanced. All players being of equal competance, the Allies WILL win. Period. If they don't, then the Axis made a fatal and/or stupid decision early on. It's not a game of strategy or skill, it's just a game of avoiding obvious errors until America lands in Normandy.
Puerto Rico, El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Entdecker, Tikal, Mexica, Java, Carcassone... Those are real games. Tactics and strategy, deterministic outcomes, and real competition. You're comparing brain power instead of comparing dice rolls.
The main obstacle to having cool things like this in the US is twofold:
1. Large landmass consisting of major population centers separated by great distances.
2. Massive existing (and functional) infrastructure.
We can't just "overhaul" the system: it's too deeply entrenched. Couple that with the fact that the majority of Americans can live without a lot of this tech, and that's the end of that...
Why bother with the expense and hardship of upgrading a system that, for the majority of people, is just fine?
Heh heh..
Actually, I'm seriously considering getting into writing part-time, and I've got a crazy scheme with a few IT friends to open a nightclub on the Jersey shore.
Take risks and life is in the very least more interesting.
Code is a product. If a team is given precise requirements, and those requirements are met, then that's that. The idea may be created locally by the expert, but the code is just code: it doesn't matter who writes it.
You hire people locally to hash out your specific requirements, and you send those requirements to the coder farm in $country. Saves the company money as long as their requirements are in order.
The software doesn't make business go, it makes business go cheaper. You can bet your arse that if company X dicsovered that ledgers and calculators were cheaper than computers for task Y, they would ditch the technology in an instant.
My point is just that software is a commodity: nothing more. Software is the same as office supplies, Xerox machines, and TPS reports. Cheaper software "may" be less-than-perfect, but if it gets the job done, the company wins.
(I may not -want- it to be that way, but that's another story altogether)
Oh, they will. But that will take time. Time enough for me to find a real career.
I got into IT instead of coding partly for this reason. You can ship coding jobs overseas, but you still need someone in the server room to re-seat the RAM and flash the switch's microcode. As long as I'm not tech support, they need me physically present. It will take longer for them to bring people here to replace me than it would to simply send my job over there.
Yea, I'm a selfish bastard ^_^
Now I can watch that rave/orgy in all its home-theatre glory. With slow-motion and freeze-frames, I'll bet I can get a good estimate of the true volume of saliva shown on screen.
Even better, I can loop it and leave it on 24/7. I'm sure everyone in the apartment will love it!
In the true penny-arcade style, I propose the following:
We gather a large group in a major urban center. Taking our cars, we drive en masse along a pre-planned route that, to the pattern-matching machine, will appear as a giant wang on the map.
This wang will be awe-inspiring, perhaps enough-so to cause the AI in the machine to become envious, thereby destroying it.
President: What's that on the map? Some sort of terrorist cell!?
CIA guy: Ummm....
President: I want answers!
CIA guy: Well... It appears... to be a... wang, sir.
President: Wang, eh? That some sort of dirty bomb?...
Here's what killed UO for me.
Macroing.
Macros make MMORPGs fun. Without them, you'd actually have to waste your time clicking on the tree ten-thousand times. With a macro, you can let the computer do the repetitive, boring, tedious tasks while you're at work, and then have fun playing the game when you get home.
If a task in a game can be reliably done with a non-intelligent macro, that task is only worthy of a non-intelligent being.
You made me think...
Imagine (HYPOTHETICALLY!) if the the US Government actually -had- orchestrated 9/11 (or knew about it and allowed it to happen) as part of a larger scheme.
Now imagine if the public at large found out. If there were undeniable proof.
What would happen? How would middle-class America react? That would be the ultimate test of the unity of the American people. Would they actually -do- something about it? Or would the spin-doctors win?
If only there were a World-Sim(tm) I could use to watch something like that unfold.