Actually it looks like the result of a pretty standard multiple linear regression (link). Somebody sat down and gave each game a 1-10 rating for "Fun", "Engagement", and similar nonsense and then fed the resulting "data" through a linear regression algorithm.
Algorithms always give an answer. That doesn't mean the answer makes any sense.
I'm 39 and still play games whenever I have time - which is a lot less frequently now with parenting, work, and all. I don't anticipate ever stopping completely, simply because they're fun. Why should I stop just because I've hit a particular year?
I do notice that my reactions aren't quite as good as many clearly younger players - I'm pretty consistently in the middle of the pack in an Unreal Tournament game, for instance. There seems to be a level about which I'm unlikely to move now. On the other hand that means I'm consistenly whipping the ass of at least half the people younger than me as well:)
One type of game I've dropped entirely is long RPG-type games. I just plain don't have the time for them, and the work/reward ratio of spending five hours hack&slashing just to get my little blob of pixels to go up a level does not seem worth it to me. I'd rather play with my kids.
Couldn't agree more - I avoided using OO 1.0 because it simply didn't work as well as MSO. With 1.1 that's all changed. I regularly use OO now and find it just as comfortable as MSO for most ordinary activities. The draw program is acceptable, the word processing works and imports every MSO document I've thrown at it. Charting in the spreadsheet still isn't the best, but will do in a pinch.
I just finished off a 40-page report to the government on our research project, complete with charts and graphs all done in OO. It felt genuinely good to not use MSO for it.
I'd call the animation...unique. It wasn't the star, it just supported a strong story with likeable characters.
Shrek was fun - not a great technical movie.
it limits its conclusions to the data and the results obtained. If you want to criticise it then criticise the science.
This would be a good idea if there were any science in the paper to criticize. Check the threads above for the title "All Microsoft Excel's Fault". The original authors of "MBH98" have clearly pointed out that this peculiar little work grossly misrepresents the work they did, analyzes an imcomplete and biased sample of the data, and uses inappropriate analyses.
Movies too - when was the last time you watched a movie on network TV? Is there any decent reason to subject yourself to the tiny bits of censored entertainment stuck in between barrages of commercials? Utterly worthless.
Because the compassion Jesus preached for dealing with everyone around us, regardless of race, age, political- and sexual orientation simply doesn't apply to acts of war on the international level.
I've never bought this line of argument. I can't call myself a Christian, but OTOH I can't see Jesus bellowing "Drop JDAMs on the F***ers! God loves it when you kill children in his name!" and so on.
Your line of arguemnt strikes me as playing lawyer with the Bible - "Now come on Lord, you did not say 'Thou shalt not kill EVER', now did you? You only said 'Thou shalt not kill'. What did you REALLY mean by that?"
I would have thought "Thou shalt not kill." would be self-explanatory. Thou art killing whether it is by stabbing your neighbour for letting his dog poop on your lawn, or by flicking a switch at 50000 feet.
Not so sure about that any more. I recall an awful lot of tales of buy ratings based upon nothing at all during the big bubble; of analysts recommending known dogs just to pump them up and so on. I've never been able to trust the "experts" since then...
Oh man I miss ours - about five years ago our house got burglarized and they took the computer. That was a good job for the most part and I got a nice new computer as a result. On the other hand they took my Omnikey keyboard - I've missed that that ever since. Really have to go have a look on Ebay...
I see it as being about options - if you're tired of it all and just want to decay away into nothingness, good on you. Have a good time. I may do the same next century, or I may not. Right now nobody has a choice - if you're lucky you get 70 or so good years of life followed by inevitable decay.
I'd just like to be the one in charge of that issue (to the exent that random accidents allow, anyway).
Interesting study, but they gave short shrift to the work that's been done over the past couple of years that points (pretty solidly) to Sir2 (in yeast) and Sir2 homologs (in animals) being the sole mediator of the "calorie restriction" effect. I hate to belabor a point that's been made in other/. stories, but there's decent evidence now (being actively pursued by some folks at Harvard Medical School and a biotech startup as well) that Sir2-linked pathways can be activated by particular polyphenols, resulting in a lifespan-extension effect in the absence of any calorie restriction (somebody tell Roy Walford it's okay to go have a pizza now).
The effect described for fruit flies is just about what I'd expect for the kind of mechanism proposed: genome "stabilization" (specifically lack of rDNA minicircle production in yeast, but it remains to be seen what the effect is in animals). Go on calorie restriction -> Sir2 activation -> life "extension" effect. Go off calorie restriction -> Sir2 deactivation -> loss of effect.
The exciting bit is maybe being able to gain the calorie restriction effect without going on that nasty-ass diet.
But who's the replacement? Will he (or possibly she), be much better. Will they be WORSE?
Gephardt or Dean worse than Bush and the Cabal of Evil (R) - this is astoundingly unlikely. There's a WORLD of difference between a somewhat incestuous old-boys network and the all-out symphony of stupidity, evil, and greed we've all been witnessing since 2000.
Really. This is important. If you're under the impression that the Democrats the and the Republicans are the same then I humbly suggest without flaming that you haven't been paying attention for the past couple of years. Something dark and terrible is starting up in the USA.
Well, yeah, to an extent. I'll probably order up the Pinot Noir with a bit more abandon now...
I'm sure your comment wasn't really serious, but I think it raises an interesting point all the same - we don't see hordes of 120-year-old frenchmen all over the place (everybody who is about to make a French joke please don't) despite their drop in cardiovascular disease. Clearly too much alchohol is poisonous, and maybe this accounts for the lack of a greatly increased lifespan, or possibly they simply aren't getting enough of the right polyphenols. Once thing that's clear from the Howitz et al. Nature paper is that too much resveratrol may be almost as bad as not enough, so clearly just pumping up the dosage isn't the answer either. There's a whole raft of questions remaining to be answered here...
Do a google news search for "resveratrol". This is some potentially huge news that got only a few writeups here and there a couple of weeks ago. They even posted a "Science" section story on Slashdot about it, but most people there seem to have largely missed what a big story it may actually be.
Executive summary: Not only have some people at Harvard Medical School worked out how the caloric restriction effect works, they have demonstrated that in yeast, flies, and likely in mice a particular class of polyphenols (resveratrol being the most effective thus far) can be used to stimulate the same system in eukaryotes and extend lifespan some 30%.
It works by engaging a stress response mechanism which appears to stabilize cells against aging damage in times of environmental stress - ie, you get more time to reproduce once the (mild!) famine is over and you haven't wasted your reproductive years just scrounging for food.
Of course nobody has yet demonstrated that it will work in humans, but at this point there is no clear reason why it wouldn't work...
You're not the only one. I still remember my old IBM Selectric fondly. They were pretty much the peak of Typewriter Tech - fancy schmancy addons like digital displays and whatnot were all very nice, but nothing ever came close to the satisfyingly chunky feel of typing on a Selectric, and the near perfection of the "Erase/Backspace" key.
I saw someone reference these numbers in a seminar once, but I can't for the life of me recall where they came from. Apparently they were estimated from life insurance actuarial tables after removing all age-linked causes of death (heart disease, cancer etc).
One way or another I firmly expect they'll announce a cure for death about five minutes after they tie the tag on my toe.
Don't forget about the Boeing plant! That's one worthwhile tour, watching them put together advanced passenger planes inside one of the biggest buildings in the world. Highly recommended, and it has to be high on the list of any geek touring guide.
It's already been proven that there is NO global warming,
In what universe? Seriously, you may have issues with the political implications of global warming, you may have issues with the implementation of damage-control policies before a true consensus of the scientific community has been reached, but that statement is just plain wrong.
I don't have any doubt that it is repeated ad nauseum in hysterical screeds by the likes of Rush et al, but you would do yourself some good by attempting to understand the opinions of people who actually know what they are talking about.
I could go on but I won't. There's still lots of debate, and this is as it should be, but global warming has not been "disproved" except in the minds of politically motivated ideologues.
Seems like a lot of people are still confused about whether the movie is supposed to be a "dream" or not, but the quick shot of the Martian Reactor pretty much settles it. Furthermore, the psychiatrist who shows up at Brubaker's hotel room seals the deal and announces the real theme of the movie - which is somewhat self-referentially about mass entertainment - you'll the hero, the spy, a friend of the governer, but in reality you're just sitting in your chair, lobotomized.
The psychiatrist states that if Brubaker shoots him then "the walls of reality will come crashing down". After Brubaker does in fact shoot him, there is a constant, recurring motif of walls falling down throughout the rest of the movie. I've never thought of it as a great film, but it does have some interesting subtext, probably worthy of a Dick novel.
And of course youngsters who are startled by the presence of anyone older than their own circle of friends. And much more besides. I'm note even sure what constitutes a proper nerd anymore.
I'm reasonably sure that it was done decades before that, even. Burnham's Celestial Handbook mentions some figures for the oblateness of Altair, and the handbook was last updated in, IIRC, the late 1970s.
That being said, I'm sure the latest work is much more advanced.
My favourite shortwave phenomenon was always the numbers stations. Where else can you listen to real-life spy messages, even if there's not a hope in hell you'll ever be able to decode them?
As I recall there was always a ton of mysterious signals on shortwave - wierd humming stations, modem-ish tone stations (in the 70's)and all sorts of strange, intelligent-sounding clicks and pops. Shortwave is a peculiar little world.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it looks like the result of a pretty standard multiple linear regression (link). Somebody sat down and gave each game a 1-10 rating for "Fun", "Engagement", and similar nonsense and then fed the resulting "data" through a linear regression algorithm.
Algorithms always give an answer. That doesn't mean the answer makes any sense.
I'm 39 and still play games whenever I have time - which is a lot less frequently now with parenting, work, and all. I don't anticipate ever stopping completely, simply because they're fun. Why should I stop just because I've hit a particular year?
I do notice that my reactions aren't quite as good as many clearly younger players - I'm pretty consistently in the middle of the pack in an Unreal Tournament game, for instance. There seems to be a level about which I'm unlikely to move now. On the other hand that means I'm consistenly whipping the ass of at least half the people younger than me as well :)
One type of game I've dropped entirely is long RPG-type games. I just plain don't have the time for them, and the work/reward ratio of spending five hours hack&slashing just to get my little blob of pixels to go up a level does not seem worth it to me. I'd rather play with my kids.
Couldn't agree more - I avoided using OO 1.0 because it simply didn't work as well as MSO. With 1.1 that's all changed. I regularly use OO now and find it just as comfortable as MSO for most ordinary activities. The draw program is acceptable, the word processing works and imports every MSO document I've thrown at it. Charting in the spreadsheet still isn't the best, but will do in a pinch.
I just finished off a 40-page report to the government on our research project, complete with charts and graphs all done in OO. It felt genuinely good to not use MSO for it.
I'd call the animation...unique. It wasn't the star, it just supported a strong story with likeable characters. Shrek was fun - not a great technical movie.
Rating: 1 [**********] 10
I'm quite certain the book would have something to say about such an egregious waste of space to communicate the number "10".
This would be a good idea if there were any science in the paper to criticize. Check the threads above for the title "All Microsoft Excel's Fault". The original authors of "MBH98" have clearly pointed out that this peculiar little work grossly misrepresents the work they did, analyzes an imcomplete and biased sample of the data, and uses inappropriate analyses.
Yup.
Movies too - when was the last time you watched a movie on network TV? Is there any decent reason to subject yourself to the tiny bits of censored entertainment stuck in between barrages of commercials? Utterly worthless.
Very cool. I just tried it, and it works. I had no idea.
Because the compassion Jesus preached for dealing with everyone around us, regardless of race, age, political- and sexual orientation simply doesn't apply to acts of war on the international level.
I've never bought this line of argument. I can't call myself a Christian, but OTOH I can't see Jesus bellowing "Drop JDAMs on the F***ers! God loves it when you kill children in his name!" and so on.
Your line of arguemnt strikes me as playing lawyer with the Bible - "Now come on Lord, you did not say 'Thou shalt not kill EVER', now did you? You only said 'Thou shalt not kill'. What did you REALLY mean by that?"
I would have thought "Thou shalt not kill." would be self-explanatory. Thou art killing whether it is by stabbing your neighbour for letting his dog poop on your lawn, or by flicking a switch at 50000 feet.
Agreed. I'm just replying in hopes that the mods will notice this thread and mod it up.
a great deal of research goes into a "buy" rating
Not so sure about that any more. I recall an awful lot of tales of buy ratings based upon nothing at all during the big bubble; of analysts recommending known dogs just to pump them up and so on. I've never been able to trust the "experts" since then...
Oh man I miss ours - about five years ago our house got burglarized and they took the computer. That was a good job for the most part and I got a nice new computer as a result. On the other hand they took my Omnikey keyboard - I've missed that that ever since. Really have to go have a look on Ebay...
I see it as being about options - if you're tired of it all and just want to decay away into nothingness, good on you. Have a good time. I may do the same next century, or I may not. Right now nobody has a choice - if you're lucky you get 70 or so good years of life followed by inevitable decay.
I'd just like to be the one in charge of that issue (to the exent that random accidents allow, anyway).
Interesting study, but they gave short shrift to the work that's been done over the past couple of years that points (pretty solidly) to Sir2 (in yeast) and Sir2 homologs (in animals) being the sole mediator of the "calorie restriction" effect. I hate to belabor a point that's been made in other /. stories, but there's decent evidence now (being actively pursued by some folks at Harvard Medical School and a biotech startup as well) that Sir2-linked pathways can be activated by particular polyphenols, resulting in a lifespan-extension effect in the absence of any calorie restriction (somebody tell Roy Walford it's okay to go have a pizza now).
The effect described for fruit flies is just about what I'd expect for the kind of mechanism proposed: genome "stabilization" (specifically lack of rDNA minicircle production in yeast, but it remains to be seen what the effect is in animals). Go on calorie restriction -> Sir2 activation -> life "extension" effect. Go off calorie restriction -> Sir2 deactivation -> loss of effect.
The exciting bit is maybe being able to gain the calorie restriction effect without going on that nasty-ass diet.
But who's the replacement? Will he (or possibly she), be much better. Will they be WORSE?
Gephardt or Dean worse than Bush and the Cabal of Evil (R) - this is astoundingly unlikely. There's a WORLD of difference between a somewhat incestuous old-boys network and the all-out symphony of stupidity, evil, and greed we've all been witnessing since 2000.
Really. This is important. If you're under the impression that the Democrats the and the Republicans are the same then I humbly suggest without flaming that you haven't been paying attention for the past couple of years. Something dark and terrible is starting up in the USA.
Well, yeah, to an extent. I'll probably order up the Pinot Noir with a bit more abandon now...
I'm sure your comment wasn't really serious, but I think it raises an interesting point all the same - we don't see hordes of 120-year-old frenchmen all over the place (everybody who is about to make a French joke please don't) despite their drop in cardiovascular disease. Clearly too much alchohol is poisonous, and maybe this accounts for the lack of a greatly increased lifespan, or possibly they simply aren't getting enough of the right polyphenols. Once thing that's clear from the Howitz et al. Nature paper is that too much resveratrol may be almost as bad as not enough, so clearly just pumping up the dosage isn't the answer either. There's a whole raft of questions remaining to be answered here...
Do a google news search for "resveratrol". This is some potentially huge news that got only a few writeups here and there a couple of weeks ago. They even posted a "Science" section story on Slashdot about it, but most people there seem to have largely missed what a big story it may actually be.
Executive summary: Not only have some people at Harvard Medical School worked out how the caloric restriction effect works, they have demonstrated that in yeast, flies, and likely in mice a particular class of polyphenols (resveratrol being the most effective thus far) can be used to stimulate the same system in eukaryotes and extend lifespan some 30%.
It works by engaging a stress response mechanism which appears to stabilize cells against aging damage in times of environmental stress - ie, you get more time to reproduce once the (mild!) famine is over and you haven't wasted your reproductive years just scrounging for food.
Of course nobody has yet demonstrated that it will work in humans, but at this point there is no clear reason why it wouldn't work...
You're not the only one. I still remember my old IBM Selectric fondly. They were pretty much the peak of Typewriter Tech - fancy schmancy addons like digital displays and whatnot were all very nice, but nothing ever came close to the satisfyingly chunky feel of typing on a Selectric, and the near perfection of the "Erase/Backspace" key.
I saw someone reference these numbers in a seminar once, but I can't for the life of me recall where they came from. Apparently they were estimated from life insurance actuarial tables after removing all age-linked causes of death (heart disease, cancer etc).
One way or another I firmly expect they'll announce a cure for death about five minutes after they tie the tag on my toe.
Don't forget about the Boeing plant! That's one worthwhile tour, watching them put together advanced passenger planes inside one of the biggest buildings in the world. Highly recommended, and it has to be high on the list of any geek touring guide.
It's already been proven that there is NO global warming,
In what universe? Seriously, you may have issues with the political implications of global warming, you may have issues with the implementation of damage-control policies before a true consensus of the scientific community has been reached, but that statement is just plain wrong.
I don't have any doubt that it is repeated ad nauseum in hysterical screeds by the likes of Rush et al, but you would do yourself some good by attempting to understand the opinions of people who actually know what they are talking about.
Here are some starters:
The US Global Change Research Information Office
The American Geophysical Union
The Union of Concerned Scientsts
The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research
UCS Debunking of the 'Skeptical Environmentalist'
globalwarming.org's constantly updated list of scientific references
I could go on but I won't. There's still lots of debate, and this is as it should be, but global warming has not been "disproved" except in the minds of politically motivated ideologues.
Seems like a lot of people are still confused about whether the movie is supposed to be a "dream" or not, but the quick shot of the Martian Reactor pretty much settles it. Furthermore, the psychiatrist who shows up at Brubaker's hotel room seals the deal and announces the real theme of the movie - which is somewhat self-referentially about mass entertainment - you'll the hero, the spy, a friend of the governer, but in reality you're just sitting in your chair, lobotomized.
The psychiatrist states that if Brubaker shoots him then "the walls of reality will come crashing down". After Brubaker does in fact shoot him, there is a constant, recurring motif of walls falling down throughout the rest of the movie. I've never thought of it as a great film, but it does have some interesting subtext, probably worthy of a Dick novel.
Slashdot regularly makes me reappraise what it means to be a nerd. We see:
- Republicans/Democracts/Libertarians/Communists/Nut balls/more
- hard-core games/ derisive non-gamers
- people who love LoTR/hate LoTR
- love anime/hate anime
- scientists/artists/programmers/blue-collar types/much more
- thoughtful intelligent posters/foul-mouthed cretins
And of course youngsters who are startled by the presence of anyone older than their own circle of friends. And much more besides. I'm note even sure what constitutes a proper nerd anymore.
I'm reasonably sure that it was done decades before that, even. Burnham's Celestial Handbook mentions some figures for the oblateness of Altair, and the handbook was last updated in, IIRC, the late 1970s.
That being said, I'm sure the latest work is much more advanced.
My favourite shortwave phenomenon was always the numbers stations. Where else can you listen to real-life spy messages, even if there's not a hope in hell you'll ever be able to decode them?
As I recall there was always a ton of mysterious signals on shortwave - wierd humming stations, modem-ish tone stations (in the 70's)and all sorts of strange, intelligent-sounding clicks and pops. Shortwave is a peculiar little world.