Amen. It's especially important to see that people don't get addicted in a vacuum. The are reasons people prefer games or drugs over life - it may be something temporary, like a depression, or it might go deeper.
There's a theory of a thing called "self-handicapping". People would sometimes rather fail with something to blame, than take the risk of failing without something to blame. Unlike "rock bottom", this is possible to define and test: If you give someone an impossible task, they're more likely to accept a drink halfway through than people who get an easier one.
I think this explains a lot of drug abuse and other addictions. If you smoke pot and party like crazy in college, you have an excuse for poor grades - maybe it won't work as an excuse for a potential employer, but it'll work for yourself, and that's what matters. If you're afraid of becoming a complete loser, it may be appealing to do something that will MAKE you a complete loser - because then you'd have something to point to.
Meh, I'll just have to waste the mod points I've used in this discussion, to clear up this misunderstanding.
Addiction and withdrawal symptoms are quite independent.
Even for drugs, s.c. physical addiction isn't very serious in itself. People get physically addicted to morphine in hospitals all the time, but they will accept the withdrawal pains, and will be no more likely to become morphine addicts than other people (there are studies on this, which is why morphine-based painkillers are still used.)
Some of the nastiest street drugs have very little actual physical addictiveness.
It's psychological addiction that matters, for drugs as for anything else. Addicted people like doing what they do. And it's not based on a single chemical in the brain, as some people assume, because although both WoW and doing drugs may increase your dopamine levels, you can't just easily switch from one addiction to another.
This is incorrect. Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk and so on are mainly protected by trademarks, precisely because while a particular expression of the rules may be copyrighted, the rules themselves need to be patented in order to have protection.
They don't usually bother with patents, because 1. maybe 1/100 of games will succeed enough to warrant it, and you never know which beforehand, and 2. for those 1/100, half will stay popular more than the 20 years of patent protection (Scrabble was patented, it expired)
You can make a game substantially identical to Risk, call it "Global Struggle" or something, and publish it. This will fail miserably, because your customers won't know it's Risk, and you won't be allowed to tell them - in a nutshell why board game companies rely on trademarks more than copyright.
"While we're at it, why are we still teaching kids that there are only three states of matter?"
Well, we don't, but those three are the ones they're most likely to encounter, unless they play around with microwave ovens. As for supercritical and triple-point, give me a break.
If you look to the past, you have DR Armenia, DR Georgia, DR Azerbaijan, and DR Taiwan, all of which were apparently reasonably democratic, and destroyed by Russia (first three) and Japan respectively.
I wish it was true that it was really just some big evil corporations that were behind this. But I've read enough in trade journals etc. to know that there is broad support for "as much as we can get away with" in copyright issues - not just length of terms, but spyware, DRM, anything.
Some people have unbelievable ideas about what they're entitled to. When I find an artist who actually believes he's deserves to be paid until death + 70 years, then I get that same feeling, like nothing worthwhile ever came out of that artist. At least nothing without a rancid aftertaste.
Nethack has had "achievements" for a long time. Atheist conduct (never pray), Illiterate conduct (never read scrolls or write on the ground), weaponless conduct (never hit with a wielded weapon), pacifist conduct (complete the game without killing a single enemy personally!)
I remember an old arcade game by Taito, don't remember it's name, it was a spaceship-style shooter where you would pick up stars to buy powerups. Just for fun, I once tried to see how far I could get without firing a shot. To my surprise, when I finally lost a life, I was sent a long, long way ahead in the game. One of the few "secrets" I've found all by myself.
So voluntary challenges aren't new, even if tracking them between sessions is.
"You believe your opinion of what the product is worth is more important than what THEY think it is worth."
That's how capitalism works, Toonol. What you think your product is worth doesn't matter, only what people will be willing to pay for it. It can come out in your favour (like that IPhone app that did nothing), or to your loss (the vast majority of would-be artists).
When I had 1-hour bus ride to and from work, I found that I could work on my laptop just fine on the way to work, with a clear head - but homewards, I would just get nausea.
Do you include in your calculations is the resale value of your car, or what remains of it after you're done with it? New cars drop in resale value dramatically quickly.
No, they're orbs of fire. If you haven't had the pleasure of being blasted to cinders and mutated to a quivering mess by these guardians of the Orb of Zot, you haven't played the coolest game enough!
It's been even longer since the devteam seemed to have any coherent vision about which direction nethack should take and why.
Many NH players, including me, have jumped ship to Crawl Stone Soup. It doesn't have all of Nethack's amusing silliness, but it's careful attention to gameplay design goals (don't make grinding attractive, don't make spoilers necessary, make different strategies feasible, make interface smoother, etc.) makes it a far better game in the long run.
That Diablo was Roguelike-inspired (perhaps even specifically Angband-inspired: Town, randarts, etc.) is clear enough. But how did that inspire Warcraft? Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans is older than Diablo anyway...
Well, to defend our glorious military (which I opted out of the non-easy way, by becoming a CO), there probably isn't much blood involved in conscripted Norwegian military service. No conscript is shipped abroad, even on the most sleepy peacekeeping mission, without applying for it himself.
This was basically what they did at my college, too, for important projects. You handed in stuff, and a couple of weeks later you were called in to answer some basic questions about what you'd written. No grades on the second test, it was purely to catch mindless plagiarism.
The dark side of the Norwegian system (which you describe correctly) is that teachers get a lot of power of subjective evaluation. This is creeping up even into higher education. In my opinion it is inferior to standardized tests, not necessarily because teachers play favourites, but because their relationship with their students become tainted.
A teacher should be like a defence attorney: one you can trust to be 100% there to help you pass, with as good grades as possible. When they get broad powers to pass subjective judgement on their student's performance, they become part defence attorneys, part judges.
In the long term, I think this erodes respect for teachers, and devalues academic performance (because it inevitably carries with it whispers of boot-licking). Standardized tests have their problems, too, but they're better on the whole, IMO.
Oh, it's like that here as well. Exam guards are also usually retired teachers, with an attitude like airport security guards: "We'll go through the motions slavisly with no intelligence applied whatsoever". In addition, they are completely illiterate about technology, so their ability to catch actual cheating is probably close to zero.
I suppose... but we don't call Polio "shit sickness" or HIV "ape sex virus". I guess swine is sort of like a swear word in many places. How about suinine flu? It rings better with avian flu, and might be sufficiently euphemistic for muslim/jewish sensibilities.
I think this is a consequence of self-selection for the translation job. The ones who are really fluent in English may feel less of a need for a Spanish translation.
For what it's worth, the Norwegian Facebook translation has become quite good with time.
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Amen. It's especially important to see that people don't get addicted in a vacuum. The are reasons people prefer games or drugs over life - it may be something temporary, like a depression, or it might go deeper.
There's a theory of a thing called "self-handicapping". People would sometimes rather fail with something to blame, than take the risk of failing without something to blame. Unlike "rock bottom", this is possible to define and test: If you give someone an impossible task, they're more likely to accept a drink halfway through than people who get an easier one.
I think this explains a lot of drug abuse and other addictions. If you smoke pot and party like crazy in college, you have an excuse for poor grades - maybe it won't work as an excuse for a potential employer, but it'll work for yourself, and that's what matters. If you're afraid of becoming a complete loser, it may be appealing to do something that will MAKE you a complete loser - because then you'd have something to point to.
Meh, I'll just have to waste the mod points I've used in this discussion, to clear up this misunderstanding.
Addiction and withdrawal symptoms are quite independent.
Even for drugs, s.c. physical addiction isn't very serious in itself. People get physically addicted to morphine in hospitals all the time, but they will accept the withdrawal pains, and will be no more likely to become morphine addicts than other people (there are studies on this, which is why morphine-based painkillers are still used.)
Some of the nastiest street drugs have very little actual physical addictiveness.
It's psychological addiction that matters, for drugs as for anything else. Addicted people like doing what they do. And it's not based on a single chemical in the brain, as some people assume, because although both WoW and doing drugs may increase your dopamine levels, you can't just easily switch from one addiction to another.
This is incorrect. Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk and so on are mainly protected by trademarks, precisely because while a particular expression of the rules may be copyrighted, the rules themselves need to be patented in order to have protection.
They don't usually bother with patents, because
1. maybe 1/100 of games will succeed enough to warrant it, and you never know which beforehand, and
2. for those 1/100, half will stay popular more than the 20 years of patent protection (Scrabble was patented, it expired)
You can make a game substantially identical to Risk, call it "Global Struggle" or something, and publish it. This will fail miserably, because your customers won't know it's Risk, and you won't be allowed to tell them - in a nutshell why board game companies rely on trademarks more than copyright.
"While we're at it, why are we still teaching kids that there are only three states of matter?"
Well, we don't, but those three are the ones they're most likely to encounter, unless they play around with microwave ovens. As for supercritical and triple-point, give me a break.
Sao Tomé and Principe, is that a tyranny? How about East Timor? Ethiopia is hardly a beacon of freedom and democracy, but they at least have multi-party elections.
If you look to the past, you have DR Armenia, DR Georgia, DR Azerbaijan, and DR Taiwan, all of which were apparently reasonably democratic, and destroyed by Russia (first three) and Japan respectively.
I wish it was true that it was really just some big evil corporations that were behind this. But I've read enough in trade journals etc. to know that there is broad support for "as much as we can get away with" in copyright issues - not just length of terms, but spyware, DRM, anything.
"culturally irrelevant" as opposed to you and your basement/myspace project, I suppose?
Artists are replaceable, just like the rest of us.
I know how he feels about entitlements, really.
Some people have unbelievable ideas about what they're entitled to. When I find an artist who actually believes he's deserves to be paid until death + 70 years, then I get that same feeling, like nothing worthwhile ever came out of that artist. At least nothing without a rancid aftertaste.
I found out the game's name, by the way. It was called "Slap fight", which sounded pretty cool to a kid not yet knowing a word of English.
Nethack has had "achievements" for a long time. Atheist conduct (never pray), Illiterate conduct (never read scrolls or write on the ground), weaponless conduct (never hit with a wielded weapon), pacifist conduct (complete the game without killing a single enemy personally!)
I remember an old arcade game by Taito, don't remember it's name, it was a spaceship-style shooter where you would pick up stars to buy powerups. Just for fun, I once tried to see how far I could get without firing a shot. To my surprise, when I finally lost a life, I was sent a long, long way ahead in the game. One of the few "secrets" I've found all by myself.
So voluntary challenges aren't new, even if tracking them between sessions is.
"French corporations and government are entangled in ways that Americans might find unfamiliar."
It's not so unheard of outside of France either, believe it or not.
"You believe your opinion of what the product is worth is more important than what THEY think it is worth."
That's how capitalism works, Toonol. What you think your product is worth doesn't matter, only what people will be willing to pay for it. It can come out in your favour (like that IPhone app that did nothing), or to your loss (the vast majority of would-be artists).
I buy a monthly pass for approx. 100$, giving free use of bus, light rail/underground, trains and trams inside the city centre.
Does your car really cost you less than 100$ per month, including depreciation, fuel, insurance, parking and taxes?
When I had 1-hour bus ride to and from work, I found that I could work on my laptop just fine on the way to work, with a clear head - but homewards, I would just get nausea.
Do you include in your calculations is the resale value of your car, or what remains of it after you're done with it? New cars drop in resale value dramatically quickly.
No, they're orbs of fire. If you haven't had the pleasure of being blasted to cinders and mutated to a quivering mess by these guardians of the Orb of Zot, you haven't played the coolest game enough!
It's been even longer since the devteam seemed to have any coherent vision about which direction nethack should take and why.
Many NH players, including me, have jumped ship to Crawl Stone Soup. It doesn't have all of Nethack's amusing silliness, but it's careful attention to gameplay design goals (don't make grinding attractive, don't make spoilers necessary, make different strategies feasible, make interface smoother, etc.) makes it a far better game in the long run.
That Diablo was Roguelike-inspired (perhaps even specifically Angband-inspired: Town, randarts, etc.) is clear enough. But how did that inspire Warcraft? Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans is older than Diablo anyway...
Well, to defend our glorious military (which I opted out of the non-easy way, by becoming a CO), there probably isn't much blood involved in conscripted Norwegian military service. No conscript is shipped abroad, even on the most sleepy peacekeeping mission, without applying for it himself.
Support for conscription would plummet if it did.
"A fair number of schools use MACs. Those are mainly used in schools with emphasis on creative arts."
Blech! Been there, done that, it's even worse. You haven't seen an ugly user interface until you have seen early Finale on an old PowerPC mac.
This was basically what they did at my college, too, for important projects. You handed in stuff, and a couple of weeks later you were called in to answer some basic questions about what you'd written. No grades on the second test, it was purely to catch mindless plagiarism.
The dark side of the Norwegian system (which you describe correctly) is that teachers get a lot of power of subjective evaluation. This is creeping up even into higher education. In my opinion it is inferior to standardized tests, not necessarily because teachers play favourites, but because their relationship with their students become tainted.
A teacher should be like a defence attorney: one you can trust to be 100% there to help you pass, with as good grades as possible. When they get broad powers to pass subjective judgement on their student's performance, they become part defence attorneys, part judges.
In the long term, I think this erodes respect for teachers, and devalues academic performance (because it inevitably carries with it whispers of boot-licking). Standardized tests have their problems, too, but they're better on the whole, IMO.
Oh, it's like that here as well. Exam guards are also usually retired teachers, with an attitude like airport security guards: "We'll go through the motions slavisly with no intelligence applied whatsoever". In addition, they are completely illiterate about technology, so their ability to catch actual cheating is probably close to zero.
I suppose... but we don't call Polio "shit sickness" or HIV "ape sex virus". I guess swine is sort of like a swear word in many places.
How about suinine flu? It rings better with avian flu, and might be sufficiently euphemistic for muslim/jewish sensibilities.
I think this is a consequence of self-selection for the translation job. The ones who are really fluent in English may feel less of a need for a Spanish translation.
For what it's worth, the Norwegian Facebook translation has become quite good with time.