Oh man. I can second the mind-altering capabilities of Tetris, although I was always partial to the NES version. I had a very bad habit of playing that right before going to bed. As soon as I closed my eyes, the blocks began falling and the incessant, sleep-denying game of mental Tetris began...:)
I also remember playing in a chess tournament in high school. After several preliminary rounds in the evening, all I could see when I tried to sleep was the damned green-on-white chess-board pattern.
Interesting insight into the upper levels of Netrunner strategy. Admittedly, I never played it at anything more than a casual level.
Nevertheless, I think my points hold. Netrunner's competitive scene certainly never grew to the point of Magic's. If it had, I think you would have seen the key uncommons (and to a lesser extent commons) have the same kind of value inflation as key Magic uncommons.
Take for example the Magic card Fact or Fiction. It was just an uncommon, but was an extremely important card in competitive play. As a result, it became a roughly $5+ "chase" uncommon. I would argue that the same would have happened if Netrunner competitive play had ever grown to the level of Magic's.
The fact that the game's rares were essentially useless in competitive play strikes me as a very odd design decision. But, hey... I was always the kind of Magic player that tried to make every deck I built as budget as possible.:)
Regarding a non-card-oriented approach to Netrunner: what about a computer game in the same spirit? R&D agenda's could involve RTS-like development trees or something. That's not a strict translation of the Netrunner CCG gameplay, but it might be interesting.
I agree with you in regards to Netrunner. It was a fantastic game. But your complaints about Magic are rather off base.
In all three cases, if Netrunner had become an extremely popular game with an established competitive scene, you would see that (1) rules lawyering would be necessary to ensure legitimate competition (2) the cards would end up as expensive as Magic cards and (3) to maximize ones competitive chances, theoretically sound deck construction principles would have to be developed and "painstaking" attention would need to be paid to them.
Other than that, yeah. It's a shame Netrunner failed. It really was a brilliant game in my opinion.
I feel pretty much the way you do about Pitchfork. Some of the reviews are really good: informative and pretty objective. Others are these ridiculous "concept" reviews that convey absolutely nothing about the music. But in any event, its' a great way to find out about new music.
I thought the numerical score they gave for the Junior Senior album was ridiculous. That was an extremely enjoyable album. Ah well.
As a frequent reader of Pitchfork's reviews, I think there's a problem with this guy's analysis. See, Pitchfork's reviews basically span three genres: indie rock, electronic music, and hip hop. The author's analysis just takes all of pitchfork's reviews as a whole and draws conclusions. The result is a couple of tracks that sound like bleak, Radiohead-esque indie rock with breakbeats, and unfortunately, I think they fail miserably.
It might be more interesting to divide the reviews based on genre and do an analysis of critical features within, for example, just the reviews of indie rock albums. Unfortunately, the author's analysis ends up ignoring the conventions of the various musical genres and the results guide him towards very unsatisfactory compositional guidelines. Quite an interesting read though.
Yes! The Hikaru no Go manga is great. Having downloaded fansubs of all 70+ episodes of the anime, I was so excited to see the first volume of the manga at my local bookstore. Of course, being a huge fan, I bought the manga compilation, something I never would have done had I never seen the funsubbed anime.
I think that parallels the music industry these days: I can listen to tons of music (for free, of course) on the internet. And when I find something I really love, I can purchase that album and see the band live, something I never would have done without having heard the music beforehand.
I hope that's something that we'll see more of from here on out: people being able to peruse the massive amounts of media that the world's societies produce and put they're money into something they really enjoy, and not just a bunch of mass-marketed crap.
I don't agree. The C-x part is pretty unintuitive. What does the x stand for? It's not readily apparent. With the vi command, you have (w)rite, then (q)uit.
Of course, neither is as intuitive for typical users as selecting "Save" from a menu or clicking a "Save" button on a toolbar. Sine EMACS and vi are typically used by enthusiasts/professionals, the issue of intuitiveness is essentially moot.
I think the idea he is trying to get across is best illustrated by an example from the Russian language. Russian has two words for what we (as English speakers) call 'blue'. One for 'dark blue', one for 'sky blue'. It's not that they are subsets of a larger 'blue' concept (like in english, 'navy blue' is a subset of 'blue'), they are, to native Russian speakers, different colors. They have divided the phenomena of colors differently than English speakers. There are many examples of this in many different natural languages.
Computer Science is pretty much inseparable from formal language theory. On the other hand, computer science and natural languages aren't nearly as intertwined. There is intersection in the field of computational linguistics, but human language is not theoretically fundamental to computer science.
Come on people, these stupid IANA* acronyms are getting out of hand. "IANA NASA Engineer" and such would be okay, because we know what IANA means. But using IANANE like it's an established acronym just makes you look stupid.
I never had a problem getting Audiogalaxy's linux client working in Mandrake, the distro I was using when Audiogalaxy was at it's peak. I'm not sure about any other distro.
As far as the Napster in it's glory days, I was stuck on dialup at home, and I didn't really have a convenient way of taking advantage of my high school's broadband, so obviously, I couldn't take advantage of those uncapped speeds.
On the other hand, Audiogalaxy had great community features. At the time, I had tons of time to scour for new music, so that was a terrific feature. And the web-based interface let me jump onto a computer at school and have the music finished (or at least on its way) when I got home in the afternoon.
For my downloading these days, I use Soulseek, or, rather, the Nicotine client for it. It's home to a lot of dedicated music fans, so you can easily find all kinds of obscure music.
Yes! Audiogalaxy was great. To this day, I haven't downloaded as many MP3s as I did with Audiogalaxy. I'd queue up songs in the computer lab at my high school and they'd be done by the time I got home. It has truly been lean times since the days of Audiogalaxy.
Yes! I was on KGS when the redrose vs. tartrate was going on. There was a big ruckus in the English room about it, so I started watching about 30 moves in. What a game! Of course, it only added to the mystique of tartrate.:)
I'm not on KGS very often, but my user name is tetsujin23. I'm 17k? but I think I'm closer to 15k. Perhaps we should play sometime.
Odd. I've lived in Kentucky all my life and I've never met anyone named Adolph. Although Rupp was a legendary coach, he was hugely racist, in addition to sharing a name with a genocidal dictator.
On the other hand, I know people named Ersel, Eulas, and (no kidding) a guy known by most as Jim Bob.
First, I think your criteria for choosing between a useful change in language and errors are on the right track. I also totally agree with you about the French efforts.
I think that a sort of laissez-faire attitude towards language change is the best bet. Sure, some changes are annoying (evidence: yearly Banished Words Lists), but if you think about it, language change as a whole is merely a case of people adapting a tool for specific needs and environments. As important as language is to human beings, it's doubtful that anyone is going to try to subvert language and try to get it to evolve in a self-destructive way, and even more doubtful that they'd be successful. Over the millenia, speech has evolved to suit its users, and I don't think there's any reason to think that this trend is changing our should change.
Your theory about English becoming a de-facto language because of extensibility is very interesting. It also brought up another question for me: what kind of languages tend to be the most extensible? The two most extensible languages that I'm at least somewhat familiar with are English and Japanese. They're entirely unrelated, but both seem to handle neologisms with ease. Why? Is it the mostly isolating synactic structure? Is it cultural? It's an interesting question.
You bring up a good point, that these mistakes lead to poor writing. But then, writing style is several hundred years behind actual spoken language anyway.
As far as restricting idiomatic usage to maximize understanding, this simply guts the richness that make natural language so interesting. You'd end up with something analagous Ogden's Basic English, functional but rather boring.
Furthermore, just as you say that you shouldn't assume that a someone would know that...intensive purposes..." is a mangled form of "...intents and purposes...", you can't make the assumption someone would know that "RAM" is an abbreviation for "Random Access Memory" or even what the word "cat" means.
Natural language isn't static. It evolves, sometimes very quickly, in complex ways. What you have to realize is that formal written language is not a really a natural language and that the spoken language is necessarily chaotic and hard to understand. That's just how language works. The pedantic types hate that.:)
I think "for all intents and purposes" has become something of a fixed expression. Sure, it's made up of individual words, but it's meaning is no longer really bound to those words. It's gained a meaning of its own. As such, a lot of people who have never seen the expression in print end up mispelling it.
Are they "unthinkingly parroting" this string of syllables? Perhaps. But you have to keep in mind, that's how language works. People repeat a given series of syllables to convey a given meaning. Whether they understand the underlying structure is irrelevant. If, in actual speech, I uttered "for all intensive purposes," at a normal, conversational rate, there would be no loss in understanding. That series of syllables (and close approximations to it) convey the exact same meaning as the fixed expression "for all intents and purposes."
The point: even if the underlying structure of the expression "for all intents and purposes" is lost completely, that string of syllables has taken on a meaning of its own, independent of that structure. Common context is maintained, the intended meaning is conveyed, and the only people who get upset about it are pedantic types like yourself.
"This should have precisely zero advantages over Safari . . . I only use KDE on Linux for the desktop and file manager . .."
You said it yourself. Konqueror is more than just a web browser, it's also a file manager, with a lot of very nice features. While the port is primarily more of a proof of concept than anything, it does have advantages over Safari.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 uses this technique. I can't say it adds a whole lot to the game, however. Nevertheless, it's great purchase for fans of 2D fighters like myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the robber looks great. I just wonder how it's going to fit on those mountains without tipping over...
Anyone else here find the new edition of Settlers of Catan a lot more exciting than a WoW board game? Mmm. Settlers.
I also remember playing in a chess tournament in high school. After several preliminary rounds in the evening, all I could see when I tried to sleep was the damned green-on-white chess-board pattern.
Nevertheless, I think my points hold. Netrunner's competitive scene certainly never grew to the point of Magic's. If it had, I think you would have seen the key uncommons (and to a lesser extent commons) have the same kind of value inflation as key Magic uncommons.
Take for example the Magic card Fact or Fiction. It was just an uncommon, but was an extremely important card in competitive play. As a result, it became a roughly $5+ "chase" uncommon. I would argue that the same would have happened if Netrunner competitive play had ever grown to the level of Magic's.
The fact that the game's rares were essentially useless in competitive play strikes me as a very odd design decision. But, hey... I was always the kind of Magic player that tried to make every deck I built as budget as possible. :)
Regarding a non-card-oriented approach to Netrunner: what about a computer game in the same spirit? R&D agenda's could involve RTS-like development trees or something. That's not a strict translation of the Netrunner CCG gameplay, but it might be interesting.
In all three cases, if Netrunner had become an extremely popular game with an established competitive scene, you would see that (1) rules lawyering would be necessary to ensure legitimate competition (2) the cards would end up as expensive as Magic cards and (3) to maximize ones competitive chances, theoretically sound deck construction principles would have to be developed and "painstaking" attention would need to be paid to them.
Other than that, yeah. It's a shame Netrunner failed. It really was a brilliant game in my opinion.
I thought the numerical score they gave for the Junior Senior album was ridiculous. That was an extremely enjoyable album. Ah well.
It might be more interesting to divide the reviews based on genre and do an analysis of critical features within, for example, just the reviews of indie rock albums. Unfortunately, the author's analysis ends up ignoring the conventions of the various musical genres and the results guide him towards very unsatisfactory compositional guidelines. Quite an interesting read though.
I think that parallels the music industry these days: I can listen to tons of music (for free, of course) on the internet. And when I find something I really love, I can purchase that album and see the band live, something I never would have done without having heard the music beforehand.
I hope that's something that we'll see more of from here on out: people being able to peruse the massive amounts of media that the world's societies produce and put they're money into something they really enjoy, and not just a bunch of mass-marketed crap.
Of course, neither is as intuitive for typical users as selecting "Save" from a menu or clicking a "Save" button on a toolbar. Sine EMACS and vi are typically used by enthusiasts/professionals, the issue of intuitiveness is essentially moot.
Light Saber design... sounds good. But the prerequisites are a bitch.
I think the idea he is trying to get across is best illustrated by an example from the Russian language. Russian has two words for what we (as English speakers) call 'blue'. One for 'dark blue', one for 'sky blue'. It's not that they are subsets of a larger 'blue' concept (like in english, 'navy blue' is a subset of 'blue'), they are, to native Russian speakers, different colors. They have divided the phenomena of colors differently than English speakers. There are many examples of this in many different natural languages.
Subject-verb agreement was actually a huge advance in natural langauge design. :)
Computer Science is pretty much inseparable from formal language theory. On the other hand, computer science and natural languages aren't nearly as intertwined. There is intersection in the field of computational linguistics, but human language is not theoretically fundamental to computer science.
Or perhaps you meant /.ed?
I am not a NASA Engineer?
Come on people, these stupid IANA* acronyms are getting out of hand. "IANA NASA Engineer" and such would be okay, because we know what IANA means. But using IANANE like it's an established acronym just makes you look stupid.
As far as the Napster in it's glory days, I was stuck on dialup at home, and I didn't really have a convenient way of taking advantage of my high school's broadband, so obviously, I couldn't take advantage of those uncapped speeds.
On the other hand, Audiogalaxy had great community features. At the time, I had tons of time to scour for new music, so that was a terrific feature. And the web-based interface let me jump onto a computer at school and have the music finished (or at least on its way) when I got home in the afternoon.
For my downloading these days, I use Soulseek, or, rather, the Nicotine client for it. It's home to a lot of dedicated music fans, so you can easily find all kinds of obscure music.
Yes! Audiogalaxy was great. To this day, I haven't downloaded as many MP3s as I did with Audiogalaxy. I'd queue up songs in the computer lab at my high school and they'd be done by the time I got home. It has truly been lean times since the days of Audiogalaxy.
Yes! I was on KGS when the redrose vs. tartrate was going on. There was a big ruckus in the English room about it, so I started watching about 30 moves in. What a game! Of course, it only added to the mystique of tartrate. :)
I'm not on KGS very often, but my user name is tetsujin23. I'm 17k? but I think I'm closer to 15k. Perhaps we should play sometime.
On the other hand, I know people named Ersel, Eulas, and (no kidding) a guy known by most as Jim Bob.
I think that a sort of laissez-faire attitude towards language change is the best bet. Sure, some changes are annoying (evidence: yearly Banished Words Lists), but if you think about it, language change as a whole is merely a case of people adapting a tool for specific needs and environments. As important as language is to human beings, it's doubtful that anyone is going to try to subvert language and try to get it to evolve in a self-destructive way, and even more doubtful that they'd be successful. Over the millenia, speech has evolved to suit its users, and I don't think there's any reason to think that this trend is changing our should change.
Your theory about English becoming a de-facto language because of extensibility is very interesting. It also brought up another question for me: what kind of languages tend to be the most extensible? The two most extensible languages that I'm at least somewhat familiar with are English and Japanese. They're entirely unrelated, but both seem to handle neologisms with ease. Why? Is it the mostly isolating synactic structure? Is it cultural? It's an interesting question.
As far as restricting idiomatic usage to maximize understanding, this simply guts the richness that make natural language so interesting. You'd end up with something analagous Ogden's Basic English, functional but rather boring.
Furthermore, just as you say that you shouldn't assume that a someone would know that ...intensive purposes..." is a mangled form of "...intents and purposes...", you can't make the assumption someone would know that "RAM" is an abbreviation for "Random Access Memory" or even what the word "cat" means.
Natural language isn't static. It evolves, sometimes very quickly, in complex ways. What you have to realize is that formal written language is not a really a natural language and that the spoken language is necessarily chaotic and hard to understand. That's just how language works. The pedantic types hate that. :)
Are they "unthinkingly parroting" this string of syllables? Perhaps. But you have to keep in mind, that's how language works. People repeat a given series of syllables to convey a given meaning. Whether they understand the underlying structure is irrelevant. If, in actual speech, I uttered "for all intensive purposes," at a normal, conversational rate, there would be no loss in understanding. That series of syllables (and close approximations to it) convey the exact same meaning as the fixed expression "for all intents and purposes."
The point: even if the underlying structure of the expression "for all intents and purposes" is lost completely, that string of syllables has taken on a meaning of its own, independent of that structure. Common context is maintained, the intended meaning is conveyed, and the only people who get upset about it are pedantic types like yourself.
You said it yourself. Konqueror is more than just a web browser, it's also a file manager, with a lot of very nice features. While the port is primarily more of a proof of concept than anything, it does have advantages over Safari.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 uses this technique. I can't say it adds a whole lot to the game, however. Nevertheless, it's great purchase for fans of 2D fighters like myself.