That's an interesting definition of the word "waste" - choosing no effect over a small effect.
Maybe you're suggesting that *everyone* do that? In that case, the effect of your vote is dwarfed by the massive effort you'll need to invest to get *everyone* to vote third-party.
What I'm saying is: be realistic; it's not so simple. Simply voting third-party is a waste, by any practical definition of the word. The effect is more negligible by an order of magnitude than an R/D vote. If you want to make a change, come up with a better idea and push that. Your position basically amounts to taking your ball and going home, while ignoring the millions of other people still playing.
Want to make a real difference? Primaries. A ton of people are going to vote R/D, and you have almost no power to change that. But you can change what R and D stand for. The differences between primary candidates can be immense - far more than the difference between "Generic R" and "Generic D".
Actually, as far as I can tell, the only problem is securing the endpoint, and that's a simple fix. Rather than opening the floodgates and letting *all* devices access online voting portals, we could set aside public spaces on election day for online voting. Private booths could be provided to avoid prying eyes.
If I need to know about executeFoo() in SomeLibrary, I can:
Google "SomeLibrary executeFoo"
Go to SomeLibrary.com, and navigate through Support->Documents->API->executeFoo
Thumb through a dead-tree SomeLibrary book until reaching executeFoo
I've tried all three, and vastly prefer the simple Google search. Not only will SomeLibrary.com be in the first 3 results (assuming their documentation doesn't suck), but there's a good chance you'll find a StackOverflow thread that not only explains executeFoo, but also covers the caveats and options better than the documentation.
Code samples tend to be more elegant than my own code. Many questions have multiple samples by multiple authors refined by multiple editors over multiple years. In comparison, I find API documentation often turns stale, or the samples are too simple to cover the cases I'm interested in. I don't "spend my life copy-pasting" - code samples tend to be useless for any real-life task. But I do get to see a gallery of how other people have solved similar problems.
Damn right I'll be outraged. This type of astroturfing hurts both sides of the argument by preventing an actual exchange of ideas. It's FUD designed to reduce the credibility of any claims, making it harder for an uninformed person to become informed.
I was recently reading a very interesting article about paid Russian trolls. They'll go to all the small-town Russian blogs and post the same types of rants. But they don't just post pro-gov't rants. They've got this whole cast of characters and script where one person makes a seemingly-well-reasoned pro-gov't argument, while the anti-gov't "villain" will respond with something ridiculous or completely off-point.
It's not enough to make your side seem strong, you also have to make your opponents look foolish.
So when I see a seemingly-well-reasoned-but-wrong "government regulation is bad" argument followed by a "higher taxes and more expensive ISPs are good" argument - both by Anonymous Cowards - I think Soviet Russia. You guys are the worst kind of scum.
Yes, the link includes studies showing a correlation with something that could conceivably cause weird behaviour (sleep cycles), but haven't actually found a correlation with the weird behaviour.
So either there's no "lunar effect", or whatever effect there is results in a nonexistent/negligible increase in hospital/police activity.
Ask any police officer or health care provider how people act during the full moon. They will almost always tell you that they are busier and people are crazier around that time of the month - consistently - although they can't quite explain why.
Snowpiercer was based on a graphic novel, which IMHO is a medium that lends itself to suspension of disbelief. Once I accepted the ridiculous premise I actually found the movie...well, kinda bad in general, but not because of the premise:)
We just had a story about low-level improvements to the BSD kernel, and now we get an article about chip-level features and how compilers use them?
Is this some sort of pre-April-Fools/. in 2000 joke? Where are my Slashvertisements for gadgets I'll never hear about again? My uninformed blog posts declaring this the "year of Functional Declarative Inverted Programming in YAFadL"? Where the hell are my 3000-word/. editor opinions on the latest movie?
If this keeps up, this site might start soaking up some of my time instead of simply being a place I check due to old habits.
You asked about the timeline. I kept my response limited to the timeline You're right - I'm a goalpost-moving jerk, and I'm sorry.
From what I can tell, Depression Quest was released on the day of Williams' death. That's not taking advantage, that's an unhappy coincidence. I'm pretty sure release dates are set more than 24 hours in advance. Quinn had to option of pushing the release, but it's such a quagmire of morality, I can't bring myself to judge whether that would have been the right decision or not.
As for the "coverup", that's another item I just haven't seen evidence of. It felt entirely organic to me - a bunch of people saw a witch hunt and shut it down. It doesn't take a conspiracy for an idea to spread between reddit, gamasutra, kotaku, fark, 4chan, and wherever the hell else - these communities have plenty of overlap. The first idea to spread was the Quinnspiracy, and the second was that it was toxic, with moderators acting accordingly Now, I haven't seen the original threads (and I think at this point it would be a good idea for everyone involved to republish any of the original material), but from what I've seen in subsequent threads, I suspect "toxic" was a valid judgement.
This is exactly the type of response I'm talking about. Rather than point to any actual breach of ethics, you:
Nitpick on when the (still-alleged, and completely-irrelevant) cheating occurred
Assert that the game sucked - a completely subjective opinion
Effectively state that reviewers cannot have friendships with developers, or it's a breach of ethics (at least this one was on-topic)
Accuse a developer (not a journalist) of taking advantage of a suicide
I suppose I can see the argument that reviewers should disclose their relationships with developers, but 90% of the response was a complete non-sequitor, which is why I have such a low opinion of #GG. It seems to be an excuse to pile on a developer who made a game they don't like, and any journalistic concerns are an afterthought.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interesting definition of the word "waste" - choosing no effect over a small effect.
Maybe you're suggesting that *everyone* do that? In that case, the effect of your vote is dwarfed by the massive effort you'll need to invest to get *everyone* to vote third-party.
What I'm saying is: be realistic; it's not so simple. Simply voting third-party is a waste, by any practical definition of the word. The effect is more negligible by an order of magnitude than an R/D vote. If you want to make a change, come up with a better idea and push that. Your position basically amounts to taking your ball and going home, while ignoring the millions of other people still playing.
Want to make a real difference? Primaries. A ton of people are going to vote R/D, and you have almost no power to change that. But you can change what R and D stand for. The differences between primary candidates can be immense - far more than the difference between "Generic R" and "Generic D".
Actually, as far as I can tell, the only problem is securing the endpoint, and that's a simple fix. Rather than opening the floodgates and letting *all* devices access online voting portals, we could set aside public spaces on election day for online voting. Private booths could be provided to avoid prying eyes.
I assume you've been applying to train their Offtopic Asshole Who Doesn't Use Preview detection system?
If so, feel free to contact me for a reference.
If I need to know about executeFoo() in SomeLibrary, I can:
I've tried all three, and vastly prefer the simple Google search. Not only will SomeLibrary.com be in the first 3 results (assuming their documentation doesn't suck), but there's a good chance you'll find a StackOverflow thread that not only explains executeFoo, but also covers the caveats and options better than the documentation.
Code samples tend to be more elegant than my own code. Many questions have multiple samples by multiple authors refined by multiple editors over multiple years. In comparison, I find API documentation often turns stale, or the samples are too simple to cover the cases I'm interested in. I don't "spend my life copy-pasting" - code samples tend to be useless for any real-life task. But I do get to see a gallery of how other people have solved similar problems.
I wish I had mod points. An Informative post straight from the source is what's sorely missing from most of these debates.
Tell me how OUR society continues to benefit form ordinance detonated over IRAQ 13 years ago..
Without that, there wouldn't be any demand for the ordnance detonated over Iraq today.
Damn right I'll be outraged. This type of astroturfing hurts both sides of the argument by preventing an actual exchange of ideas. It's FUD designed to reduce the credibility of any claims, making it harder for an uninformed person to become informed.
I was recently reading a very interesting article about paid Russian trolls. They'll go to all the small-town Russian blogs and post the same types of rants. But they don't just post pro-gov't rants. They've got this whole cast of characters and script where one person makes a seemingly-well-reasoned pro-gov't argument, while the anti-gov't "villain" will respond with something ridiculous or completely off-point.
It's not enough to make your side seem strong, you also have to make your opponents look foolish.
So when I see a seemingly-well-reasoned-but-wrong "government regulation is bad" argument followed by a "higher taxes and more expensive ISPs are good" argument - both by Anonymous Cowards - I think Soviet Russia. You guys are the worst kind of scum.
Maybe they'll name it after their favourite development aid. BingBong!
I'm afraid you'll find that measurement to produce a purely imaginary result.
You get this:
http://localroger.com/prime-in...
Yes, the link includes studies showing a correlation with something that could conceivably cause weird behaviour (sleep cycles), but haven't actually found a correlation with the weird behaviour.
So either there's no "lunar effect", or whatever effect there is results in a nonexistent/negligible increase in hospital/police activity.
Ask any police officer or health care provider how people act during the full moon. They will almost always tell you that they are busier and people are crazier around that time of the month - consistently - although they can't quite explain why.
Confirmation bias. I've heard the same thing from nurses, but the fact is, no correlation has been found.
Snowpiercer was based on a graphic novel, which IMHO is a medium that lends itself to suspension of disbelief. Once I accepted the ridiculous premise I actually found the movie...well, kinda bad in general, but not because of the premise :)
Speaking of which, that's enough /. for me today :)
Well, clearly *that's* an exception. I'd forgotten because in that case, I'd normally a a u's (.
We just had a story about low-level improvements to the BSD kernel, and now we get an article about chip-level features and how compilers use them?
Is this some sort of pre-April-Fools /. in 2000 joke? Where are my Slashvertisements for gadgets I'll never hear about again? My uninformed blog posts declaring this the "year of Functional Declarative Inverted Programming in YAFadL"? Where the hell are my 3000-word /. editor opinions on the latest movie?
If this keeps up, this site might start soaking up some of my time instead of simply being a place I check due to old habits.
Wait - you're using a computer to create content instead of just consume it? ...are you a wizard?
(I may well hold the record for longest time playing without an ascension)
I think I started Hack around '92, and finally ascended in 2009. I've been trying to ascend about once a year since then.
Don't worry, that would never happen.
G's are only ever gnomes (of differing ranks), but a g might be a gargoyle, flying gargoyle, or gremlin.
I hope that clears things up. And for god's sake, don't genocide G's if you're playing as a gnome.
But it came with a free frogurt!
That puts him in the same state as the comet, assuming all goes well.
I came close - I kept thinking "But eChocolate is a noun, not a verb!"
You asked about the timeline. I kept my response limited to the timeline
You're right - I'm a goalpost-moving jerk, and I'm sorry.
From what I can tell, Depression Quest was released on the day of Williams' death. That's not taking advantage, that's an unhappy coincidence. I'm pretty sure release dates are set more than 24 hours in advance. Quinn had to option of pushing the release, but it's such a quagmire of morality, I can't bring myself to judge whether that would have been the right decision or not.
As for the "coverup", that's another item I just haven't seen evidence of. It felt entirely organic to me - a bunch of people saw a witch hunt and shut it down. It doesn't take a conspiracy for an idea to spread between reddit, gamasutra, kotaku, fark, 4chan, and wherever the hell else - these communities have plenty of overlap. The first idea to spread was the Quinnspiracy, and the second was that it was toxic, with moderators acting accordingly Now, I haven't seen the original threads (and I think at this point it would be a good idea for everyone involved to republish any of the original material), but from what I've seen in subsequent threads, I suspect "toxic" was a valid judgement.
This is exactly the type of response I'm talking about. Rather than point to any actual breach of ethics, you:
I suppose I can see the argument that reviewers should disclose their relationships with developers, but 90% of the response was a complete non-sequitor, which is why I have such a low opinion of #GG. It seems to be an excuse to pile on a developer who made a game they don't like, and any journalistic concerns are an afterthought.