just about all of these games posts are subpage-specific
I don't have any problem with the filtering-level
of other topics, so I don't want to un-collapse
allthe sections. And I don't want to
filter all games posts or all Simoniker posts--
I just want a reasonable level of filtering that
leaves out two-star reviews and handjob
interviews, etc. Is there some preference setting
that will accomplish this, or is it all or nothing?
Okay, let's analyse how interested the Slashdot community is in Simoniker's links. If you click on
older stuff from a games.slashdot.org page, you get a summary of how many followups there were to each of his postings over the last five days:
I think this is a very interesting news
article, as it illustrates the divide between
how a 3rd party is handling the running of a
game differently than the original company.
The point of Slashdot is to FILTER the
most interesting news stories. If the filter
is set to include everything this specialised,
then you get so many items that they belong in
a separate weblog for game-obsessives.
The real giveaway is that Simoniker always
attributes the stories to the websites rather
than any Slashdot reader-- he's spending all day
reading game-news sites, so even if he only
posts one-tenth of what he reads, it's still
vastly more than any normal human could care
about.
Two-star game reviews? Handjob interviews
without screenshots or gameplay details?
The Slashdot crew needs to draw a stricter line...
imho.
I'm quite interested in game news, but Simoniker
has been posting about six trillion 'news' items
a day lately, and I don't think more than a
fraction of them are of general interest.
Can someone convince him to keep most of them
off the front page?
People need to wake up to a simple fact--
XML is for databases, not for documents. (I
first pointed this out in 1998.)
The gigantic propaganda campaign about the
"wonderful new things" that semantic markup
would make possible was always just a
masturbatory fantasy by people who'd never
implemented anything, encouraged by SGML
contractors who saw an opportunity to broaden
their target market.
At the root of this delusion is what I call
"Goldfarb's conjecture"-- the claim that
document styles are superficial representations
of underlying semantics. If Goldfarb were
right, then tagging document semantics would be
no harder than tagging styles, so this
sort-of-works for titles and highlighting.
But hardly any other semantics have associated
styles, so tagging them becomes sheer drudgework
for almost no payoff. It's absurd to have to
tag every name as a name, every place as a place,
etc. This metadata belongs in headers, not as
embedded tags.
So the real outcome of the XML-scam is that the
effort to add metadata to webpages has been set
back at least five years. What should have been
emphasized was META headers for: Yahoo
topic-category, DMoz topic-category, list of
persons, list of places, list of companies,
list of things, dates discussed, document type
(eg timeline, image gallery, biography, etc).
Apology-- because of connection problems, the
online version of my timeline doesn't include the new entries yet. Also, my host may be Slashdotted pretty quickly so here's the Google cache
it doesnt have anything to do with the above comment or the story
That's the anal-retentive theory of topicality--
the alternate (correct) theory is that you're
on topic if you address a topic likely to be
of interest to those reading the original
article.
Bill Budge planned to follow it up with a
"Construction Set Construction Set" which
was an idea way too far ahead of its time. He
also started a series of articles on 6502 programming for
the major Apple gaming magazine (Soft-something?)
which was the most profound vision of the art
of programming I've ever seen, but the magazine
imploded.
...arguing against diarism seems a bit revisionist
In the early days I didn't mind, but people
seem to have forgotten the original meaning
and substituted the derogatory 'diary'
connotation, so I decided I better start
laying down the law.
Weblogs are annotated logs of web-reading,
and are therefore outward-directed, with lots
of links. Web journals are just self-directed
diaries that happen to be posted on the Web.
The explicit original purpose of weblogs was
to make the process of finding good reading
on the Web more efficient. Unintentionally,
the main current purpose is probably spreading
news items that the mass media self-censor.
Wallowing in narcissism has nothing to do with weblogs, although the mass media have been
propagating that slur since the earliest days.
Shuffling in cardgames is just creating random content-- what's critical to a cardgame's success is that it be designed so that a randomly shuffled deck produces interesting variations in gameplay.
Applying this to Propp's story-elements, randomisation won't help unless the story elements are really orthogonal, which Propp's weren't. I proposed a much more orthogonal breakdown in my Anti-Math notation system, but it's not rich enough for gaming yet.
"The functions you use the most should be the easiest to reach."
I'm not sure I've ever seen it emphasized by the comp.human-factors crew, though.
It applies to every sort of design including webpages, so you'd expect the design process
to start with the task of listing the main
functions in order of expected frequency...
All the followups protesting that science isn't
a religion can be simply answered by distinguishing
'scientism' from science. I call scientism
what RAW calls fundmentalist materialism--
elevating the materialist hypothesis to a
proven truth, and dismissing challenges
without a fair hearing.
The Slashdot blurb does this, the article may
not. (Reuters.com screws up my browser.)
Keeping an open mind is hard, and people who
calls themselves skeptics aren't any better at it,
as a group, than people who call themselves new agers.
I cringe when I see people pretending it's somehow
scientific to call an unproved hypothesis an
'explanation' just because it fits the current
materialist paradigms, and to dismiss wholesale
the whole realm of new age thinking, lots of
which has been experimentally validated
(obviously positive thinking strengthens the
immune system, obviously lots of natural remedies
have a biochemical basis).
This sort of closed-mindedness led to 'experts'
being sure it was safe to turn cows into cannibals
by mixing dead cow-parts into their feed,
because 'obviously' no disease could possibly
spread via proteins (ha!). If those experts had
respected the fuzzy-headed tree-huggers who
protested that cannibalism was unnatural, how
many lives would have been saved?
The same cynical BS is responsible for hundreds
of thousands of birth defects as depleted uranium
and other poisons are poured into the environment--
let the cynics devote their lives to
caring for crippled children.
Robert Anton Wilson calls it 'fundamentalist materialism' (in his book "The New Inquisition": Amazon)
because its advocates make exactly the same
logical errors they claim to attack. [more ranting]
Obviously they know how many recruits they get
each month-- is this classified or something,
that they can't show a graph of the changes
since the game was introduced? The only
reason I can imagine them withholding that
graph is that the increases are so small they
fail to justify the expense...
another correction
on
Google Turns 5
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any problem with the filtering-level of other topics, so I don't want to un-collapse allthe sections. And I don't want to filter all games posts or all Simoniker posts-- I just want a reasonable level of filtering that leaves out two-star reviews and handjob interviews, etc. Is there some preference setting that will accomplish this, or is it all or nothing?
Okay, let's analyse how interested the Slashdot community is in Simoniker's links. If you click on older stuff from a games.slashdot.org page, you get a summary of how many followups there were to each of his postings over the last five days:
September 23rd (2 so far): 9, 19
Sept22 (7): 19, 172, 133, 27, 27, 77, 43
Sept21 (5): 360, 111, 14, 26, 67
Sept20 (5): 17, 32, 20, 23, 29
Sept19 (6): 12, 37, 125, 44, 40, 9
Sept18 (5): 11, 23, 36, 237, 256
So out of 30 stories, HALF got under 30 comments.
Learn to read, bozo. I said "I'm quite interested in game news..." but Simoniker is not filtering for a general audience.
I just go straight to games.slashdot.org anyway
So obviously your interests are specialised. This is fine, but it's not what Slashdot has always been for.
The point of Slashdot is to FILTER the most interesting news stories. If the filter is set to include everything this specialised, then you get so many items that they belong in a separate weblog for game-obsessives.
The real giveaway is that Simoniker always attributes the stories to the websites rather than any Slashdot reader-- he's spending all day reading game-news sites, so even if he only posts one-tenth of what he reads, it's still vastly more than any normal human could care about.
Two-star game reviews? Handjob interviews without screenshots or gameplay details? The Slashdot crew needs to draw a stricter line... imho.
Can someone convince him to keep most of them off the front page?
The gigantic propaganda campaign about the "wonderful new things" that semantic markup would make possible was always just a masturbatory fantasy by people who'd never implemented anything, encouraged by SGML contractors who saw an opportunity to broaden their target market.
At the root of this delusion is what I call "Goldfarb's conjecture"-- the claim that document styles are superficial representations of underlying semantics. If Goldfarb were right, then tagging document semantics would be no harder than tagging styles, so this sort-of-works for titles and highlighting.
But hardly any other semantics have associated styles, so tagging them becomes sheer drudgework for almost no payoff. It's absurd to have to tag every name as a name, every place as a place, etc. This metadata belongs in headers, not as embedded tags.
So the real outcome of the XML-scam is that the effort to add metadata to webpages has been set back at least five years. What should have been emphasized was META headers for: Yahoo topic-category, DMoz topic-category, list of persons, list of places, list of companies, list of things, dates discussed, document type (eg timeline, image gallery, biography, etc).
Finally got thru and fixed it.
Apology-- because of connection problems, the online version of my timeline doesn't include the new entries yet. Also, my host may be Slashdotted pretty quickly so here's the Google cache
Whereas the Minter interview was utterly worthless, this one was full of details and theories and screenshots.
Is there some way we can vote the editor responsible out of his job?
That's the anal-retentive theory of topicality-- the alternate (correct) theory is that you're on topic if you address a topic likely to be of interest to those reading the original article.
Disney Corp alienates the progressives.
I'd love to see a 'classic games' CD that universities could use for classes in game design (with everything tweaked to run on modern OSes).
Bill Budge planned to follow it up with a "Construction Set Construction Set" which was an idea way too far ahead of its time. He also started a series of articles on 6502 programming for the major Apple gaming magazine (Soft-something?) which was the most profound vision of the art of programming I've ever seen, but the magazine imploded.
In the early days I didn't mind, but people seem to have forgotten the original meaning and substituted the derogatory 'diary' connotation, so I decided I better start laying down the law.
Simply because I coined the term.
(Heh.)
Weblogs are annotated logs of web-reading, and are therefore outward-directed, with lots of links. Web journals are just self-directed diaries that happen to be posted on the Web.
The explicit original purpose of weblogs was to make the process of finding good reading on the Web more efficient. Unintentionally, the main current purpose is probably spreading news items that the mass media self-censor.
Wallowing in narcissism has nothing to do with weblogs, although the mass media have been propagating that slur since the earliest days.
Applying this to Propp's story-elements, randomisation won't help unless the story elements are really orthogonal, which Propp's weren't. I proposed a much more orthogonal breakdown in my Anti-Math notation system, but it's not rich enough for gaming yet.
Propp's 1927 scheme is one of many I tried to track in my timeline of knowledge representation.
Incidentally, the Atari 800 had an 8-bit hardware random-number generator that probably worked on thermal noise, unless I'm confusing it with the C64.
I'm not sure I've ever seen it emphasized by the comp.human-factors crew, though.
It applies to every sort of design including webpages, so you'd expect the design process to start with the task of listing the main functions in order of expected frequency...
I hope to add direct links from my Linux timeline sometime soon.
The Slashdot blurb does this, the article may not. (Reuters.com screws up my browser.)
Keeping an open mind is hard, and people who calls themselves skeptics aren't any better at it, as a group, than people who call themselves new agers.
This sort of closed-mindedness led to 'experts' being sure it was safe to turn cows into cannibals by mixing dead cow-parts into their feed, because 'obviously' no disease could possibly spread via proteins (ha!). If those experts had respected the fuzzy-headed tree-huggers who protested that cannibalism was unnatural, how many lives would have been saved?
The same cynical BS is responsible for hundreds of thousands of birth defects as depleted uranium and other poisons are poured into the environment-- let the cynics devote their lives to caring for crippled children.
Robert Anton Wilson calls it 'fundamentalist materialism' (in his book "The New Inquisition": Amazon) because its advocates make exactly the same logical errors they claim to attack. [more ranting]
Obviously they know how many recruits they get each month-- is this classified or something, that they can't show a graph of the changes since the game was introduced? The only reason I can imagine them withholding that graph is that the increases are so small they fail to justify the expense...
The 'prenatal' Google was already being discussed on netnews in March 1998. [more history]
I criticise this thread on rec.arts.books