The CSS and HTML stuff are on there. as well as Solaris and Unix (in the skills section, though to mention it in the other section might not be a bad idea either). And there is a resume in word format on the reward page at the bottom (I actually save in HTML so I don't have 2 seperate versions of my resume floating around, which can be a pain, only equaled by the fact that Word can't produce W3C compliant HTML). I thought I had the support thing moved to the bottom already, I guess not.
Most people believe that they're above average drivers, their kids are above average in school, their sports team is the best, ditto for their resume. This obviously, cannot be true. I therefore view every recommendation with a good grain of salt, since I do realize they're just trying to help.
For example, the AC pointed out that: "Installed and have experience in troubleshooting software in MS Windows 95-XP Installed and have experience in troubleshooting hardware in MS Windows 95-XP"
was "filler". The TSC provided a free (to them, we got paid by the University) service to students , faculty, and staff in computer maintenance. Simply put, unlike say the CIA or something, there was no such thing as a "standard" platform with no "standard" programs. If a high level official came in and said his computer wouldn't boot, we'd fix it. He'd get the same level of service as a freshman undergrad if she asked to have MS Office installed for her. Most of the support was "bring your box to us" but we'd do stuff over the phone occasionally if it was a quick fix. If there's a shorter more clear way to explain that than above, I wish someone would suggest it.
Lastly, I think I fixed the mailto link and also tried to take some of your suggestions with my resume. Thanks.
I always find it strange looking at monster or dice because they always are looking for people with lots of experience, and while I have a degree, I don't have a lot of work experience yet. I also find it funny how people expect to find things like a C# programmer with 5 years of experience when the language is really quite young.
Unless they count programming out of boredom, in which case I have 15 years experience (though before the internet, I mostly did basic, since I could teach myself and I had no resources otherwise).
I use register.com. Yes, it's more expensive ($40/year for domain + email, use promo code "domaindeal"), but really I know I'm paying for convenience. $40 is about what I'd spend on a typical night out on the town or about 2 DVDs or 1 day of minimum wage work (in the US). Rather than getting a cheap service, I get a reliable service that has free 24/7 phone support.
If you were a spammer or something, scalability to large ammounts of e-mail addresses and cheapness in bulk would be important (godaddy is great for this). But really, what % of your operating expenses is $40?
Right now Lucasarts is making near $0 on the Sam and Max license. They could get a non-zero ammount for it, but instead they choose to keep it. Why? Well obviously it's worth more than is being offered to them, which must mean they're planning on doing something with it (as opposed to sitting on it and making nearly $0).
It's honestly amazing. I'm serious. Can anyone remember Windows 3.11? That's what was state of the art when this came out.
Over 10 years later, tasks like e-mailing, starting a program, and even browsing a network look very similar to what he's demoing, and I'm talking about MS Windows (PC) use. I'd still like an easy-to-use inter-application dictionary. I'm sure the editors of slashdot could use one too.
The FFVI commercial for example, is for the PSX rerelease of FFVI, not the original. Note the high quality FMV and the word "playstation" at the end. Hardly "old school".
My suggestion would be Java, simply because the graphics libraries are pretty decent and it's not hard to write a decent GUI. Additionally, it's cross-platform and would probably help you in the real world later.
But the real question is, how much experience do you have currently? I started programming in HS by doing games on those little calculators (TI-81 to 85 completely self-taught) and enjoyed the experience so much I decided to do CS in college (graduated last year). If I were in your shoes, you may want to think small. Many of the early video games were text-based, many made by one person. Nowadays due to complication, you need teams. So it may not be a bad idea to write something simple and textbased in whatever language. Text-based doesn't need to mean uncomplicated or compromised gameplay; chess, othello, hearts, and dungeon-crawlers were all very popular and I still know people who prefer these over newer games.
Yeah, I did notice that. However, not taking into account the basic and huge fundamental imbalances in technology would be equally of a problem wrt realism. There's no reason why having uneven teams wouldn't work as a fun, realistic, and playable solution. It would also fundamentally change strategies for each teams in a brand new way.
WWII was anything but balanced in real life, so I'm curious how the balance works in the game (since they supposedly focus on realism).
All told, Russia had 20 million casualties total (one front, only fighting the Germany for the most part) while Germany had "only" 4.5 million casualties (fighting both Russia and US/Britain/Canada) (source).
This is at least partially due to the better quality of German equipment. Do they have teams of 20 Russians playing against teams of 4 people to compensate for this?
There seems to be at least 4 distinct independent rating "ladders" if you will.
First, there's sex. Now some parents feel differently about this than others, but I don't think there's a 14 year old out there who didn't at least try and look at pr0n. Males are biologically interested in sex about this age or younger. American society's take on this is that if we pretend it doesn't exist and don't talk about it, it'll be all better.
Second, there's language. Society defines what profanity is. Different languages have different profanities. By censoring words and saying they're bad, we're only adding to their mythos.
Third, drugs and I'll throw violence in here too. Why? Because what matters from a psychological point of view is not that the player can do them, but what in game rewards/punishments such a system allows. Violence may be bad, but suppose I were to make a game where a player plays the role of a narcotics cop. This game would have both drugs and violence. But is it really bad? What rating does it deserve? Suppose you had the option of getting high before going to work which would cause you to get fired and lose the game. How about being able to run over civilians and also losing the game?
Games are really just sandboxes. Being an ostrich and pretending many facets of life simply don't exist seems to earn a good rating, when really good interaction can aid children.
I'm certainly not in favor of GTA being banned or whatnot, but its treatment of drugs and violence probably isn't good to show younger children (killing cops and doing drugs to make money). UT2K4 may be violent, but take out the blood and it's a glorified paintball game (no one actually dies, even when their bodies are in a million pieces, they'll just respawn. Additionally, you can even take out the blood and exploding bodies out of the game. Why don't they rate the game at the lowest violence settings since it doesn't effect the gameplay?)
Nintendo has made some really great games, the only thing lacking in their console as far as I'm concerned is internet multiplayer, but that's why I have my PC anyway.
Abroad, I think people are much more concerned with a good core single plater experience or in-the-same-room multiplayer. With titles like Mario Party, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and Metroid Prime 2, I still can't think of a console I'd rather use to play against 3 of my friends.
My now ex-girlfriend's Dad used to work for IBM and got carpal tunnel.
He got out of the tech industry completely, bought property and became a landlord. Last I heard, he does renovations and fixes stuff and has plenty of time for other things. While this doesn't sound like the right path for you, I wanted to offer proof of the possibility of a career change for some of your aforementioned reasons.
Along with the other story today, found here does this signal a major shift in Sony's actual strategy with respect to formats or is this merely for PR benefit and marketing? Thoughts?
I never stated that clarinet lessons weren't useful, yet you state that many guitar masters were/are self-taught without bothering to explain a contradiction to your argument.
The two styles of play are simply different. On one hand, you have a part of a larger whole (violin/clarinet) and on the other a solo or 2-4 person ensemble instrument. What are you goals? Do you want to be a professional guitarist? Or are you looking for a creative outlet?
In a more socialized environment, it's good to have a teacher to tell you about "right" and "wrong" rythyms and techniques. Large ensembles need to flow like and work a single entity. In a more expressionistic environment, "right" and "wrong" become barriers to creativity.
It has less to do with the instrument than the social setting. Most modern guitarists share a common lineage with the jazz movement and common inspiration and technique (emphasis on improvisation, expression over technical merit, etc). Dizzy Gallespie had some quite eccentric techniques, notably his puffy cheeks, he'd never make it in a modern orchestra, yet most still consider him a genius. Jimmi Hendrix learned to play guitar incorrectly by most people's standards. Kurt Kobain, also self-taught, was a poor technical guitarist and yet Nirvana is still considered a very important and influential band.
As far as computers, I do have a CS degree. However, to illustrate, one CS professor recently asked freshman CS students "How many of you took HTML classes?" Anyone who answered yes was told they should consider changing majors. Anyone who learned it on there own was told they were in the right place.
I happen to think I'm not that great, but hey, I never played guitar to be good. I learned to play becuase I wanted to be able to play certain songs.
This site has some stuff I found really good including mp3s to play along with to get trickier rythyms or strumming techniques.
If you want to play in a band type setting, I suggest you find like-minded people with similar skills or lack thereof.
Needing a professional tutor or some crap seems a popular thing in this thread, which I don't quite understand. I played clarinet for 10 years (including 4 in university ensembles) before I started guitar and I don't understand what the point of lessons is. What I learned from both instruments is that practice is the most important. Not legnth, but frequency. I think I've progressed more on my second instrument faster because I'd just pick it up and do a few chord shapes for a few seconds.
Professional teachers are only a recent phenomenon and I don't see why they're being embraced with such enthusiasm by practioners of an instrument that has has become a popular symbol of rebellion and freedom.
How many of you people would argue that you need professional classes to use a computer? How many of you are mostly self-taught?
That's all it really boils down to. Both MS and FOSS are trying to do this and really, in the best case, this is what a user, whether it be a corperation or Joe Sixpack wants. Linus talks about not competing with MS and just wanting to create great software. That's what software engineering is all about.
By porting FOSS apps to windows, it provides free publicity to FOSS. Someone who already uses/likes gaim/firefox/openoffice is more likely to trust further FOSS and possibly replace their OS.
I would also say interoperability is a major difference between FOSS and MS. Linux can mount FAT32 but Windows can't mount Ext2. Truly open software isn't just about open source, it's also about open standards such that it facilitates interoperability.
In regions of many countries (China and North Korea for example) it's not unusual to find children working jobs to support their families.
I went to public schools (in the US) and got a 750.
I actually mistyped. I also got a 750.
My mother is an immigrant. But unlike the picture of immigrants you have in your head, she has a graduate degree in the "hard sciences."
That's the danger of generalities. There are many people who immigrate to the US who are educated and have degrees. However, the majority (I'd guestimate 85% as I was unsuccesful when I googled for statistics) do not. Any internet sample on this basis is going to be biased, since there is larger proportion of well-educated people have computers.
One problem is how we count money. $1 in the US is not $1 in the Czech republic. You can get a very nice meal at a restaurant in the Czech republic for under $5 (US) (groceries/rent/etc are much cheaper as well). Trickle this down, and the Czech republic can afford to pay their teachers much less while maintaining a better standard of living than US teachers.
Another issue: it's mandatory for everyone in the US to go to school. Everyone. In other countries, it's voluntary or not strictly enforced. Because it's mandatory, not all parents really care about their kids performance. My mom read to me since I was born, and I learned math skills at home before I ever went to school. I don't think it's purely coincidental I managed a 650 in math on the SATs while going to public schools my entire life.
I like the use of empirical methodology to measure these things, but we have to study the data a bit more thoroughly before making conclusions (even radical things like spending more money on foreign aid to the world's poorest countries instead of more nuclear subs we're never going to use).
They have it takes to learn simple fixes is minute compared to how long it takes. People are dumb because they'd rather watch a survivor re-run than make their unusable $1000 machine worth $1000 again. I used to feel bad computer places charged so much, but with the ignorance of users and their unwillingness to learn, combined with internet charlatans who play on their fears (recent case of a company adverising anti-spyware software when in fact it installs it). The net is lawless, and just as you don't give a stranger keys to your car because he wants to inspect your hubcaps, there's certain things you shouldn't believe about computers. At least the majority of users are finally spam-savvy.
Simplistic but fun games dominated the 80's and early 90's. In pong, people were fascinated by two paddles moving and a ball and would pay over $1000 for a system that only did that. Super Mario Bros was a watershed game that introduced a new level of complexity into gaming. Suddenly, there were secret warps, character power-ups, tight controls, and great graphics (for the time). Mario and then Zelda became a symbol of this innovation. As the video game generation aged, we became savvier and realized that the designers, not "mario" was responsible for innovative game design. Nowadays, Mario has transformed into a symbol of a child-safe game and lost some of his glorious former mystique.
The new mascots are all trying to be neo-mario instead of original mario. That is, capitalize on marketing potential quickly after the first hit is realized (by making bad movies or sequels). Square even finally sold out by releasing a true sequel (and a game where a certain N*Sync singer voices voices a particularly memorable villain from a previous game.)
We now tend to trust studios rather than properties to be good (e.g. Blizzard or Sid Meier or Hideo Kojima or Maxis etc).
Hundreds of people die every year waiting for a heart transplant. So in effect, giving the sheep a human heart killed a human. Animal research is one thing, but I was unaware we'd started killing humans to do research.
Slashdot Mirror
The CSS and HTML stuff are on there. as well as Solaris and Unix (in the skills section, though to mention it in the other section might not be a bad idea either). And there is a resume in word format on the reward page at the bottom (I actually save in HTML so I don't have 2 seperate versions of my resume floating around, which can be a pain, only equaled by the fact that Word can't produce W3C compliant HTML). I thought I had the support thing moved to the bottom already, I guess not.
Most people believe that they're above average drivers, their kids are above average in school, their sports team is the best, ditto for their resume. This obviously, cannot be true. I therefore view every recommendation with a good grain of salt, since I do realize they're just trying to help.
For example, the AC pointed out that:
"Installed and have experience in troubleshooting software in MS Windows 95-XP
Installed and have experience in troubleshooting hardware in MS Windows 95-XP"
was "filler". The TSC provided a free (to them, we got paid by the University) service to students , faculty, and staff in computer maintenance. Simply put, unlike say the CIA or something, there was no such thing as a "standard" platform with no "standard" programs. If a high level official came in and said his computer wouldn't boot, we'd fix it. He'd get the same level of service as a freshman undergrad if she asked to have MS Office installed for her. Most of the support was "bring your box to us" but we'd do stuff over the phone occasionally if it was a quick fix. If there's a shorter more clear way to explain that than above, I wish someone would suggest it.
Lastly, I think I fixed the mailto link and also tried to take some of your suggestions with my resume. Thanks.
As someone else once said, if calling it a review is a stretch, what is calling FreeSBIE a Linux Live CD?
OSS OS Live CDs? Though OS SOS CDs may be appropriate as well, especially since Knoppix seems to work well for that purpose.
So I take it you've been to Seaford...I'm sorry.
I always find it strange looking at monster or dice because they always are looking for people with lots of experience, and while I have a degree, I don't have a lot of work experience yet. I also find it funny how people expect to find things like a C# programmer with 5 years of experience when the language is really quite young.
Unless they count programming out of boredom, in which case I have 15 years experience (though before the internet, I mostly did basic, since I could teach myself and I had no resources otherwise).
I use register.com. Yes, it's more expensive ($40/year for domain + email, use promo code "domaindeal"), but really I know I'm paying for convenience. $40 is about what I'd spend on a typical night out on the town or about 2 DVDs or 1 day of minimum wage work (in the US). Rather than getting a cheap service, I get a reliable service that has free 24/7 phone support.
If you were a spammer or something, scalability to large ammounts of e-mail addresses and cheapness in bulk would be important (godaddy is great for this). But really, what % of your operating expenses is $40?
Right now Lucasarts is making near $0 on the Sam and Max license. They could get a non-zero ammount for it, but instead they choose to keep it. Why? Well obviously it's worth more than is being offered to them, which must mean they're planning on doing something with it (as opposed to sitting on it and making nearly $0).
It's honestly amazing. I'm serious. Can anyone remember Windows 3.11? That's what was state of the art when this came out.
Over 10 years later, tasks like e-mailing, starting a program, and even browsing a network look very similar to what he's demoing, and I'm talking about MS Windows (PC) use. I'd still like an easy-to-use inter-application dictionary. I'm sure the editors of slashdot could use one too.
The FFVI commercial for example, is for the PSX rerelease of FFVI, not the original. Note the high quality FMV and the word "playstation" at the end. Hardly "old school".
My suggestion would be Java, simply because the graphics libraries are pretty decent and it's not hard to write a decent GUI. Additionally, it's cross-platform and would probably help you in the real world later.
But the real question is, how much experience do you have currently? I started programming in HS by doing games on those little calculators (TI-81 to 85 completely self-taught) and enjoyed the experience so much I decided to do CS in college (graduated last year). If I were in your shoes, you may want to think small. Many of the early video games were text-based, many made by one person. Nowadays due to complication, you need teams. So it may not be a bad idea to write something simple and textbased in whatever language. Text-based doesn't need to mean uncomplicated or compromised gameplay; chess, othello, hearts, and dungeon-crawlers were all very popular and I still know people who prefer these over newer games.
Yeah, I did notice that. However, not taking into account the basic and huge fundamental imbalances in technology would be equally of a problem wrt realism. There's no reason why having uneven teams wouldn't work as a fun, realistic, and playable solution. It would also fundamentally change strategies for each teams in a brand new way.
WWII was anything but balanced in real life, so I'm curious how the balance works in the game (since they supposedly focus on realism).
All told, Russia had 20 million casualties total (one front, only fighting the Germany for the most part) while Germany had "only" 4.5 million casualties (fighting both Russia and US/Britain/Canada) (source).
This is at least partially due to the better quality of German equipment. Do they have teams of 20 Russians playing against teams of 4 people to compensate for this?
There seems to be at least 4 distinct independent rating "ladders" if you will.
First, there's sex. Now some parents feel differently about this than others, but I don't think there's a 14 year old out there who didn't at least try and look at pr0n. Males are biologically interested in sex about this age or younger. American society's take on this is that if we pretend it doesn't exist and don't talk about it, it'll be all better.
Second, there's language. Society defines what profanity is. Different languages have different profanities. By censoring words and saying they're bad, we're only adding to their mythos.
Third, drugs and I'll throw violence in here too. Why? Because what matters from a psychological point of view is not that the player can do them, but what in game rewards/punishments such a system allows. Violence may be bad, but suppose I were to make a game where a player plays the role of a narcotics cop. This game would have both drugs and violence. But is it really bad? What rating does it deserve? Suppose you had the option of getting high before going to work which would cause you to get fired and lose the game. How about being able to run over civilians and also losing the game?
Games are really just sandboxes. Being an ostrich and pretending many facets of life simply don't exist seems to earn a good rating, when really good interaction can aid children.
I'm certainly not in favor of GTA being banned or whatnot, but its treatment of drugs and violence probably isn't good to show younger children (killing cops and doing drugs to make money). UT2K4 may be violent, but take out the blood and it's a glorified paintball game (no one actually dies, even when their bodies are in a million pieces, they'll just respawn. Additionally, you can even take out the blood and exploding bodies out of the game. Why don't they rate the game at the lowest violence settings since it doesn't effect the gameplay?)
Nintendo has made some really great games, the only thing lacking in their console as far as I'm concerned is internet multiplayer, but that's why I have my PC anyway.
Abroad, I think people are much more concerned with a good core single plater experience or in-the-same-room multiplayer. With titles like Mario Party, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and Metroid Prime 2, I still can't think of a console I'd rather use to play against 3 of my friends.
My now ex-girlfriend's Dad used to work for IBM and got carpal tunnel.
He got out of the tech industry completely, bought property and became a landlord. Last I heard, he does renovations and fixes stuff and has plenty of time for other things. While this doesn't sound like the right path for you, I wanted to offer proof of the possibility of a career change for some of your aforementioned reasons.
Along with the other story today, found here does this signal a major shift in Sony's actual strategy with respect to formats or is this merely for PR benefit and marketing? Thoughts?
Legacy graduates are destroying the integrity of the academic program and make a feudalism out of a supposed meritocracy.
Say what you will about GW Bush; the man is not an intellectual, but is an ivy league grad.
You're right, there is a clear difference.
When CBS accidently issues an erroneous report, people get fired and they apologize.
I'm still waiting for the WMD apology (or for a massive US intel shake-up).
I'm still waiting for someone in management to get fired over Abu Ghraib.
At least no one died as a result of CBS's blunders.
You seem to be quite ambivilant.
I never stated that clarinet lessons weren't useful, yet you state that many guitar masters were/are self-taught without bothering to explain a contradiction to your argument.
The two styles of play are simply different. On one hand, you have a part of a larger whole (violin/clarinet) and on the other a solo or 2-4 person ensemble instrument. What are you goals? Do you want to be a professional guitarist? Or are you looking for a creative outlet?
In a more socialized environment, it's good to have a teacher to tell you about "right" and "wrong" rythyms and techniques. Large ensembles need to flow like and work a single entity. In a more expressionistic environment, "right" and "wrong" become barriers to creativity.
It has less to do with the instrument than the social setting. Most modern guitarists share a common lineage with the jazz movement and common inspiration and technique (emphasis on improvisation, expression over technical merit, etc). Dizzy Gallespie had some quite eccentric techniques, notably his puffy cheeks, he'd never make it in a modern orchestra, yet most still consider him a genius. Jimmi Hendrix learned to play guitar incorrectly by most people's standards. Kurt Kobain, also self-taught, was a poor technical guitarist and yet Nirvana is still considered a very important and influential band.
As far as computers, I do have a CS degree. However, to illustrate, one CS professor recently asked freshman CS students "How many of you took HTML classes?" Anyone who answered yes was told they should consider changing majors. Anyone who learned it on there own was told they were in the right place.
I happen to think I'm not that great, but hey, I never played guitar to be good. I learned to play becuase I wanted to be able to play certain songs.
This site has some stuff I found really good including mp3s to play along with to get trickier rythyms or strumming techniques.
If you want to play in a band type setting, I suggest you find like-minded people with similar skills or lack thereof.
Needing a professional tutor or some crap seems a popular thing in this thread, which I don't quite understand. I played clarinet for 10 years (including 4 in university ensembles) before I started guitar and I don't understand what the point of lessons is. What I learned from both instruments is that practice is the most important. Not legnth, but frequency. I think I've progressed more on my second instrument faster because I'd just pick it up and do a few chord shapes for a few seconds.
Professional teachers are only a recent phenomenon and I don't see why they're being embraced with such enthusiasm by practioners of an instrument that has has become a popular symbol of rebellion and freedom.
How many of you people would argue that you need professional classes to use a computer? How many of you are mostly self-taught?
That's all it really boils down to. Both MS and FOSS are trying to do this and really, in the best case, this is what a user, whether it be a corperation or Joe Sixpack wants. Linus talks about not competing with MS and just wanting to create great software. That's what software engineering is all about.
By porting FOSS apps to windows, it provides free publicity to FOSS. Someone who already uses/likes gaim/firefox/openoffice is more likely to trust further FOSS and possibly replace their OS.
I would also say interoperability is a major difference between FOSS and MS. Linux can mount FAT32 but Windows can't mount Ext2. Truly open software isn't just about open source, it's also about open standards such that it facilitates interoperability.
And what countries are these?
In regions of many countries (China and North Korea for example) it's not unusual to find children working jobs to support their families.
I went to public schools (in the US) and got a 750.
I actually mistyped. I also got a 750.
My mother is an immigrant. But unlike the picture of immigrants you have in your head, she has a graduate degree in the "hard sciences."
That's the danger of generalities. There are many people who immigrate to the US who are educated and have degrees. However, the majority (I'd guestimate 85% as I was unsuccesful when I googled for statistics) do not. Any internet sample on this basis is going to be biased, since there is larger proportion of well-educated people have computers.
There's a problem with test methodology here.
One problem is how we count money. $1 in the US is not $1 in the Czech republic. You can get a very nice meal at a restaurant in the Czech republic for under $5 (US) (groceries/rent/etc are much cheaper as well). Trickle this down, and the Czech republic can afford to pay their teachers much less while maintaining a better standard of living than US teachers.
Another issue: it's mandatory for everyone in the US to go to school. Everyone. In other countries, it's voluntary or not strictly enforced. Because it's mandatory, not all parents really care about their kids performance. My mom read to me since I was born, and I learned math skills at home before I ever went to school. I don't think it's purely coincidental I managed a 650 in math on the SATs while going to public schools my entire life.
Lastly, immigrants. The majority come from poorer countries. The proble is that kids who never went to school in Haiti, come over to the US and take this test, aren't going to do so hot. In addition to not having an education, malnourishment is a problem in many poorer counties. Early malnourishment has been scientifically shown to have a stifling and sometimes permanent effect on intellectual capacity.
I like the use of empirical methodology to measure these things, but we have to study the data a bit more thoroughly before making conclusions (even radical things like spending more money on foreign aid to the world's poorest countries instead of more nuclear subs we're never going to use).
They have it takes to learn simple fixes is minute compared to how long it takes. People are dumb because they'd rather watch a survivor re-run than make their unusable $1000 machine worth $1000 again. I used to feel bad computer places charged so much, but with the ignorance of users and their unwillingness to learn, combined with internet charlatans who play on their fears (recent case of a company adverising anti-spyware software when in fact it installs it). The net is lawless, and just as you don't give a stranger keys to your car because he wants to inspect your hubcaps, there's certain things you shouldn't believe about computers. At least the majority of users are finally spam-savvy.
Is it just me or does this guy remind me of a cross between Rasputin and RMS?
Take a look for yourself!
Simplistic but fun games dominated the 80's and early 90's. In pong, people were fascinated by two paddles moving and a ball and would pay over $1000 for a system that only did that. Super Mario Bros was a watershed game that introduced a new level of complexity into gaming. Suddenly, there were secret warps, character power-ups, tight controls, and great graphics (for the time). Mario and then Zelda became a symbol of this innovation. As the video game generation aged, we became savvier and realized that the designers, not "mario" was responsible for innovative game design. Nowadays, Mario has transformed into a symbol of a child-safe game and lost some of his glorious former mystique.
The new mascots are all trying to be neo-mario instead of original mario. That is, capitalize on marketing potential quickly after the first hit is realized (by making bad movies or sequels). Square even finally sold out by releasing a true sequel (and a game where a certain N*Sync singer voices voices a particularly memorable villain from a previous game.)
We now tend to trust studios rather than properties to be good (e.g. Blizzard or Sid Meier or Hideo Kojima or Maxis etc).
Hundreds of people die every year waiting for a heart transplant. So in effect, giving the sheep a human heart killed a human. Animal research is one thing, but I was unaware we'd started killing humans to do research.