"the iPod is king and will remain king - the Zune, in it's wildest dreams, may become a distant also ran in the top 20 selling."
Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from, as your statement is at odds with the actual situation that's occurring. As of this writing, Zune models occupy the #1 (yeah, #1), #9, #16 and #20 slots in the Amazon top 100. This matches up with the NPD industry data (available via subscription only), which consistently shows that Microsoft has no problem keeping Zune models in the top ten.
This makes it sound as if there is data which puts the Zune in the current overall #1 position over the iPod by equivocating between the authoritative industry data (which non-subscribers conveniently cannot check, and presumably you can't give the actual position due to the terms of use) and the Amazon.com sales rank. Zune is #1 on Amazon in part because it is a cheap 30GB mp3 player, but chiefly because a lot of people buy them at the Apple Store.
Man, I tell you, I just wasn't eating at the right places when I went into Spain. I had a great time at the local markets - I especially appreciated the cheap produce in the inland regions and the seafood in Barcelona - and if I wanted to get a serrano ham sandwich it was delicious, but it seemed that the restaurant food was bland and composed primarily of meats and starches. I also looked high and low for the tortillas I'd heard about, but I couldn't find any. I think the best time I had was when we had an apartment in Salamanca and cooked our own food from the farmer's market.
Now, I ate at quite a few places of varying quality in four different cities, but I'll allow that maybe I wasn't eating at the right joints (despite asking some of the locals where to go) or that I was silly to assume I'd get anything with, say, a vegetable in it any kind of establishment. I'll also admit that I live in an area with better-than-average food all around and a diverse array of ethnic foods to choose from, that I have not traveled the US extensively, and that I'm a food snob to boot. So, perhaps I'm committing not one but two hasty generalization errors. That sounds fair. But what I ate was pretty bad compared to what I'm used to. I guess I should just do better research next time.
I will, however agree that the quality of ingredients available there was higher, that jamon iberico beats the socks off of any ham I've ever tasted, and that the seafood was great.
"Now, I'm not turning into one of those wanna-be expatriates who thinks everything in Europe is great and everything in America is crap. Most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting. But, everyone I saw over there is very thin, so they're clearly doing something right."
Yeah, American food is very tasty. I think you could take away most of the sweeteners - which, as I was saying in another post, are in almost everything - then make the portions smaller, and the meat servings a bit more modest, and it'd be just as good. The problem with that is that it's not profitable for any restaurant to lower their portion sizes and a lot of young people just plain don't know how to cook. Since I'm a borderline socialist, the obvious answer for me is government nannying, but I'm open to suggestions.
Well, yeah. That's the basic message that the food lobby has been trying to suppress for decades because it would undermine their business. I forget the actual case, but some scientist was commissioned by the US Congress to study nutrition, and came up with "Eat less, eat less meat, and eat more vegetables." The food lobby put so much pressure on him that he had to change it to "Eat more vegetables." As a result, people started eating more, then they got more fat.
Anyway, forgive me if this sounds like a personal attack, but if you think that the human body is that simple you're daft. Don't assume that just because you know something about physics and thermodynamics that the body is as simple as an engine or a gas lamp. Yes, people should eat less. No, all foods are not equal. I don't claim any expertise on the subject, but particularly, refined sugars cause people to be more hungry by increasing their insulin levels and making them sedentary, which makes makes it easier to overeat and makes your body store more energy. That knowledge is useful - just as useful as the knowledge that it's better to eat early in the day and avoid certain carcinogenic food dyes. It's not about the HFCS bandwagon, or the low-carb bandwagon, or fad diets, it's about understanding nutrition, which - believe it or not - is still a very murky area of science.
the countries that start to follow the "american way of life" (fast food, sedentary life, high-calory carb snacks) tend to follow american's fatness.
The palate in America is very sweet. Granted, I only have a few weeks in Spain to base my opinion on, but it seemed quite conclusive and corroberates with what I've heard from some family members who've traveled more than I have.
Take a churro. In America, it's a deep-fried dough stick rolled in sugar and cinnamon. In Spain, it's a deep-fried dough stick. It's savory by our standards. You get a cup of hot chocolate, and it tastes almost like coffee. You get ham, and it's not the artificially sweetened ham we're used to, it's just a big hunk of organically-fed pig that's been sitting in a barrel of salt for a few years. Even bread in America has high fructose corn syrup in it. Now, most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting, but everyone I saw over there is very thin.
Generally speaking, people who do stupid things as a result of of undue influence from things under the broad category of "new media" are mentally or emotionally abnormal.
Let's use the example of Megan Meier, that 13-year-old girl who committed suicide after an imposter on MySpace she'd known for six weeks spurned her. She was clinically depressed. Now, last I remember (which wasn't TOO long ago), being a teenager really, really sucks, and even normal teenagers are incredibly fragile and self-conscious by adult standards, and are often genuinely shitty to each other - often enough that some kind of emotional crisis occurs on an almost weekly basis. Given this, it seems to me that the primary reason she killed herself was because she was emotionally disturbed, and that sooner or later something just as trying would have come along which put her over the edge. Or, one would only hope, she would develop to the point where she wouldn't do something like that.
That's my opinion. Plug in whatever mental condition, trigger and abnormal reaction you like, I think these kids are just sick.
Psychologists beat this dead horse because it grabs headlines. Professors at research institutions, unless they are very lucky, are under constant pressure to publish, and sexy research gets more grants and publication deals than boring research. Seriously, if you were one of these publishers, what would you rather publish: a paper which tells Middle America that their children are little shits because of an across the board decrease in hope, parental involvement, social mobility, and community strength along with an increase in consumerism, political cynicism, chemical mood intervention and isolation - or a paper which tells them to grab their pitchforks and march on game developers?
For the record, I'm aware that this is an ad hominem argument, but I just cannot see this as anything but reactionary fearmongering. Every time society changes in any way and someone happens to perish in relation to it, people want to hear about how that change definitely and directly precipitated that death, ignoring completely the presence of far more onerous factors such as mental illness. It's just easier to look for easy scapegoats such as rock music, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons, e-mail, usenet, cartoons, movies, anime, video games, MySpace. You could practical make a book of madlibs out of it.
That's interesting and well-argued, but I believe the post you responded to is talking about economic protectionism, not invading other countries and installing favorable governments in them. I don't think there are any economic benefits to "nation-building" in and of itself.
China sells lots of stuff to other countries and doesn't allow other countries to sell it very much stuff. They do this in many ways, some official and some not. For example, it's very difficult to open up a business in China as an outsider. They also peg their currency's exchange rate to the dollar, to ensure that it is easy for Americans to buy Chinese and difficult for Chinese to buy American. And on the shady side of things, I'm sure that bureaucrats go out of their way to make things difficult for foreigners, and then there's the whole issue of piracy and their general attitude towards our notions of "intellectual property." There's other stuff, such as them owning large amounts of foreign currency which, if they dumped it, would be very bad for our economy, but I'm not so well-versed in that.
That's what they mean by "have the world by the balls." It ain't military. It's the fact that if they wanted to, they could make our economies crash.
I can buy your argument, but the developers have to accept some level of responsibility, if only that they weren't smart enough. Maybe Marketing/Management was daft to think they could get someone talented enough to pull it off for what they pay, but that doesn't remove the fact that they made a crappy game.
That's the way I like to think, anyway. It at least leaves the door open for self-improvement.
Maybe not, but as you continue to cheat, the negative externalities of cheating grow. Sure, cheating to graduate high school is victimless. But by cheating to get into a good 4-year or grad school, you deny spots to honest students (as well as less intelligent cheaters). Cheating in school means you get a better job when you graduate that could've gone to an honest person. Cheat at that job, and you're screwing your employer and clients out of money - in some cases, an astronomical amount of money - as well as causing their them non-monetary distress (brownouts, unnecessary surgery, etc).
Well, I give you points for using a Star Wars quote to illustrate part of your argument. And I agree that sentencing guidelines are a mistake in general.
Some type harsh monetary fine, or at the very least barring from any type of academic study is appropriate, but the sentence was arrived at for the wrong reasons. We are not hard enough on academic fraud. "It's just a letter," one might say, or "Everybody does it," or "It's just to get into a good school, no harm done." Bullshit. One, for every liar who gets a spot in a good school by trickery, there is one less spot for an honest student. And little cheaters in school grow up to become crooked dentists or doctors who recommend unnecessary, costly and painful procedures, Enron employees and politicians. Normal people who know that a) the rich are corrupt and b) the rich face no consequences for breaking the law are more likely to put the screws on each other in mimicry of them. But most importantly, someone who thinks nothing of damaging the truth with respect to a letter will probably think nothing of falsifying research if they grow up to become real academics, which hurts the whole human race.
Fuck 'em. I wouldn't wish prison on anyone, but I sincerely hope that they are viewed with suspicion, distrust and contempt for the rest of their natural lives.
Also, letting children near a computer is mind-bogglingly dangerous. My nephews would be the best QA engineers in the world if only they didn't answer, "I didn't do anything!" any time you asked them how they broke the computer.
What cannot be stated loudly enough is that when advertisers and content providers attempt to game the system, they have a negative impact on the users.
There was a time when Google was unmatched at getting you what you were looking for. As soon as people started to hack their PageRank, that web search Garden of Eden was destroyed. They're still pretty good, but many off-the-beaten-path keywords churn up increasingly suboptimal results, and I can only conclude that this is because they're attempting to inflate their PageRank.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who gets bitten in the ass by their own attempts to cheat has it coming. I suppose you could say that you are putting yourself at a disadvantage by not cheating, but this does not negate the fact that you are doing a disservice to search users. And furthermore, it's in the best interests of EVERYONE that Google attempts to get search users what they want. As soon as they stop doing that, users will stop being curious about what the net has to offer, and then they stop spending money in new and interesting places on the web, then commerce drives up and so does advertising.
I can see how you could take those statements as somewhat inconsistent. I'm pretty young. At the time the PS2 was really big I was a starving student, so any type of electronic entertainment beyond what could also be used for schoolwork was a luxury. I suppose I should add that I still try to be pretty frugal even now that I have a real job with a comfortable salary - I'll now allow myself a game system, but I went for the best perceived value.
Well, I don't know. I bought my first PS2 a few months ago, because 1) the system itself and all the games I wanted to play are cheap, 2) there is still far more entertainment value in the PS2's library than all of the next-generation consoles combined, 3) I have a better job, 4) I don't have an HDTV and 5) I needed a new dvd player. I can't believe what I was missing all of these years! Seems like the PS2 is still a good choice in the cheap-nostalgic-non-cutting-edge-need-a-DVD-player demographic.
Gee, try as I might I can't find any statistics. It is important to bear in mind that for a long time Apple had that demographic sewn up, so some older users have equally arbitrary reasons to continue to use the Mac.
Anyway, I wouldn't go off bitching and moaning as reliable indicators of what people would prefer to use. DASH a secondary school, right? In my experience, teenagers just like to complain:).
and at least half the people using your product are using pirated versions
That is irrelevant to any comparison between Mac and PC.
but their weak pathetic market share is the reason Adobe abandoned the platform
Inaccurate and inflammatory. Adobe has not abandoned the platform, they elected not to port Premier or Framemaker and have a few fringe apps that are Windows-only. Either that, or my recollection of having CS3 installed on my Mac at home is the result of delusional psychosis.
that seems like any investment in the platform is a waste of time and money.
That is a baseless conclusion. I find it difficult to believe that it is a "waste of time and money" (i.e., an unprofitable endeavor), since they continue to make new versions of their core products for the Mac and show no signs of stopping.
Adobe has thrived after dumping Apple.
Again, they only dumped support for a few major applications (good alternatives to which exist on the platform already), and secondly, I fail to see any causal link between the two.
Apple would buy a profitable Adobe, then just strap them into making software to stuff into Apple's $150 OSX service packs.
I don't know if it's fair to call them service packs, because I was a lot more excited about any of them than XP SP2. Furthermore, that's an unreasonable conclusion. iLife is basically just Logic Pro Lite, Final Cut Pro Lite, a photo album and a web authoring tool. In the case of the professional apps, full versions do, in fact, exist. What would be more likely to happen in that situation is that every Adobe application would be forked into a home version and a pro version, just like with the other apps.
I basically agree that it's pointless for Apple to acquire Adobe, but your post was just littered with so many half-truths, twisted facts and blatant omissions that I had to break it down.
Well, you're not entirely alone, and the situation isn't entirely hopeless. thought Disgaea was a very refreshing departure from post-FFVII RPGs. Properly speaking, it's a tactical RPG, but the tactical RPG is really the proper successor to classic RPGs. They're games for people who thought that the idea of commanding an army of wizards, barbarians, ninjas and monsters was cool in and of itself, and made that aspect of the game take center stage instead of an obtuse, inscrutable plot.
The tricky part is that it is more difficult for a game to stand on the merit of its plot or production values than it being an actual enjoyable gaming experience. Prolific authors like Terry Pratchett and Stephen King prove that half-decent fiction can be made rapidly and reliably if you have the right writer in on your team. Basic innovation in gameplay, by contrast, is more rare - even improvement and refinement are less common than stagnation.
Students (undergrad and grad): Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) works made while receiving pay from the university or another entity.
Faculty: Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) explicitly funded works, in which they retain some degree of ownership. I'm sure they have various other ways to turn the work of professors into money, such as publication agreements and lectures, but by and large professors receive many more privileges than we're used to in the private sector.
I suppose the key is how quickly you get bored, or, put differently, how enjoyable the game is in terms of its actual gameplay.
In my opinion, the cutscenes and strict scripting (you must agree that while all games have constraints, some have more strict constraints than others) also serve the insidious purpose of disguising how bad, unfun or non-innovative the game is. They are a kind of crutch. You end up playing to advance the storyline, not for the sheer joy of playing. And I think this kind of story-heavy game-lite type of video game is bad for video games as a craft, because it focuses on churning out an endless series of thinly-veiled clones as opposed to games which will stand as classics.
Points (i.e., statements, premises) cannot be valid, they can only be true or false. Only arguments can be valid. Just so I'm not being too aloof, I'll clarify: in a valid argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion follows by necessity. For example, this is a valid argument:
the best way to help something is not necessarily to defend its current practices, if they are flawed.
Or:
P1 Flawed practices do not help Wikipedia.
P2 You want to help wikipedia.
You should not support its flawed practices. (denying the consequent or modus tollens)
P3 X is a flawed practice of wikipedia.
Therefore, you should not support X. (categorical syllogism)
I assert that you're deliberately misusing logical jargon in an attempt to nit-pick his argument. I admit that I am properly using logical jargon in an attempt to nit-pick your argument, mostly because I think it's fun and amusing. But in all seriousness: P3 is not an assumption in the sense you are using. It is a premise which he is using as part of his valid argument, and one which he offers support for in the first few paragraphs. What you should be debating is whether X is, in fact, a flawed practice.
Oh, and by the way, if there are better thinkers out there who want to tell me I'm full of shit, go ahead, just be nice about it:) I'm just practicing for class.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from, as your statement is at odds with the actual situation that's occurring. As of this writing, Zune models occupy the #1 (yeah, #1), #9, #16 and #20 slots in the Amazon top 100. This matches up with the NPD industry data (available via subscription only), which consistently shows that Microsoft has no problem keeping Zune models in the top ten.
This makes it sound as if there is data which puts the Zune in the current overall #1 position over the iPod by equivocating between the authoritative industry data (which non-subscribers conveniently cannot check, and presumably you can't give the actual position due to the terms of use) and the Amazon.com sales rank. Zune is #1 on Amazon in part because it is a cheap 30GB mp3 player, but chiefly because a lot of people buy them at the Apple Store.
Successful, yes, but not first place.
Man, I tell you, I just wasn't eating at the right places when I went into Spain. I had a great time at the local markets - I especially appreciated the cheap produce in the inland regions and the seafood in Barcelona - and if I wanted to get a serrano ham sandwich it was delicious, but it seemed that the restaurant food was bland and composed primarily of meats and starches. I also looked high and low for the tortillas I'd heard about, but I couldn't find any. I think the best time I had was when we had an apartment in Salamanca and cooked our own food from the farmer's market.
Now, I ate at quite a few places of varying quality in four different cities, but I'll allow that maybe I wasn't eating at the right joints (despite asking some of the locals where to go) or that I was silly to assume I'd get anything with, say, a vegetable in it any kind of establishment. I'll also admit that I live in an area with better-than-average food all around and a diverse array of ethnic foods to choose from, that I have not traveled the US extensively, and that I'm a food snob to boot. So, perhaps I'm committing not one but two hasty generalization errors. That sounds fair. But what I ate was pretty bad compared to what I'm used to. I guess I should just do better research next time.
I will, however agree that the quality of ingredients available there was higher, that jamon iberico beats the socks off of any ham I've ever tasted, and that the seafood was great.
Lemme rephrase that.
"Now, I'm not turning into one of those wanna-be expatriates who thinks everything in Europe is great and everything in America is crap. Most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting. But, everyone I saw over there is very thin, so they're clearly doing something right."
Yeah, American food is very tasty. I think you could take away most of the sweeteners - which, as I was saying in another post, are in almost everything - then make the portions smaller, and the meat servings a bit more modest, and it'd be just as good. The problem with that is that it's not profitable for any restaurant to lower their portion sizes and a lot of young people just plain don't know how to cook. Since I'm a borderline socialist, the obvious answer for me is government nannying, but I'm open to suggestions.
Well, yeah. That's the basic message that the food lobby has been trying to suppress for decades because it would undermine their business. I forget the actual case, but some scientist was commissioned by the US Congress to study nutrition, and came up with "Eat less, eat less meat, and eat more vegetables." The food lobby put so much pressure on him that he had to change it to "Eat more vegetables." As a result, people started eating more, then they got more fat.
Anyway, forgive me if this sounds like a personal attack, but if you think that the human body is that simple you're daft. Don't assume that just because you know something about physics and thermodynamics that the body is as simple as an engine or a gas lamp. Yes, people should eat less. No, all foods are not equal. I don't claim any expertise on the subject, but particularly, refined sugars cause people to be more hungry by increasing their insulin levels and making them sedentary, which makes makes it easier to overeat and makes your body store more energy. That knowledge is useful - just as useful as the knowledge that it's better to eat early in the day and avoid certain carcinogenic food dyes. It's not about the HFCS bandwagon, or the low-carb bandwagon, or fad diets, it's about understanding nutrition, which - believe it or not - is still a very murky area of science.
The palate in America is very sweet. Granted, I only have a few weeks in Spain to base my opinion on, but it seemed quite conclusive and corroberates with what I've heard from some family members who've traveled more than I have.
Take a churro. In America, it's a deep-fried dough stick rolled in sugar and cinnamon. In Spain, it's a deep-fried dough stick. It's savory by our standards. You get a cup of hot chocolate, and it tastes almost like coffee. You get ham, and it's not the artificially sweetened ham we're used to, it's just a big hunk of organically-fed pig that's been sitting in a barrel of salt for a few years. Even bread in America has high fructose corn syrup in it. Now, most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting, but everyone I saw over there is very thin.
Don't forget Tyra.
Generally speaking, people who do stupid things as a result of of undue influence from things under the broad category of "new media" are mentally or emotionally abnormal.
Let's use the example of Megan Meier, that 13-year-old girl who committed suicide after an imposter on MySpace she'd known for six weeks spurned her. She was clinically depressed. Now, last I remember (which wasn't TOO long ago), being a teenager really, really sucks, and even normal teenagers are incredibly fragile and self-conscious by adult standards, and are often genuinely shitty to each other - often enough that some kind of emotional crisis occurs on an almost weekly basis. Given this, it seems to me that the primary reason she killed herself was because she was emotionally disturbed, and that sooner or later something just as trying would have come along which put her over the edge. Or, one would only hope, she would develop to the point where she wouldn't do something like that.
That's my opinion. Plug in whatever mental condition, trigger and abnormal reaction you like, I think these kids are just sick.
Psychologists beat this dead horse because it grabs headlines. Professors at research institutions, unless they are very lucky, are under constant pressure to publish, and sexy research gets more grants and publication deals than boring research. Seriously, if you were one of these publishers, what would you rather publish: a paper which tells Middle America that their children are little shits because of an across the board decrease in hope, parental involvement, social mobility, and community strength along with an increase in consumerism, political cynicism, chemical mood intervention and isolation - or a paper which tells them to grab their pitchforks and march on game developers?
For the record, I'm aware that this is an ad hominem argument, but I just cannot see this as anything but reactionary fearmongering. Every time society changes in any way and someone happens to perish in relation to it, people want to hear about how that change definitely and directly precipitated that death, ignoring completely the presence of far more onerous factors such as mental illness. It's just easier to look for easy scapegoats such as rock music, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons, e-mail, usenet, cartoons, movies, anime, video games, MySpace. You could practical make a book of madlibs out of it.
That's interesting and well-argued, but I believe the post you responded to is talking about economic protectionism, not invading other countries and installing favorable governments in them. I don't think there are any economic benefits to "nation-building" in and of itself.
China sells lots of stuff to other countries and doesn't allow other countries to sell it very much stuff. They do this in many ways, some official and some not. For example, it's very difficult to open up a business in China as an outsider. They also peg their currency's exchange rate to the dollar, to ensure that it is easy for Americans to buy Chinese and difficult for Chinese to buy American. And on the shady side of things, I'm sure that bureaucrats go out of their way to make things difficult for foreigners, and then there's the whole issue of piracy and their general attitude towards our notions of "intellectual property." There's other stuff, such as them owning large amounts of foreign currency which, if they dumped it, would be very bad for our economy, but I'm not so well-versed in that.
That's what they mean by "have the world by the balls." It ain't military. It's the fact that if they wanted to, they could make our economies crash.
I can buy your argument, but the developers have to accept some level of responsibility, if only that they weren't smart enough. Maybe Marketing/Management was daft to think they could get someone talented enough to pull it off for what they pay, but that doesn't remove the fact that they made a crappy game.
That's the way I like to think, anyway. It at least leaves the door open for self-improvement.
Maybe not, but as you continue to cheat, the negative externalities of cheating grow. Sure, cheating to graduate high school is victimless. But by cheating to get into a good 4-year or grad school, you deny spots to honest students (as well as less intelligent cheaters). Cheating in school means you get a better job when you graduate that could've gone to an honest person. Cheat at that job, and you're screwing your employer and clients out of money - in some cases, an astronomical amount of money - as well as causing their them non-monetary distress (brownouts, unnecessary surgery, etc).
So, probably not nuclear war, but maybe Enron.
IANAL: If I recall, only in cases for which mandatory sentencing is in effect. In other cases, it is established by legal precedence.
Well, I give you points for using a Star Wars quote to illustrate part of your argument. And I agree that sentencing guidelines are a mistake in general.
Some type harsh monetary fine, or at the very least barring from any type of academic study is appropriate, but the sentence was arrived at for the wrong reasons. We are not hard enough on academic fraud. "It's just a letter," one might say, or "Everybody does it," or "It's just to get into a good school, no harm done." Bullshit. One, for every liar who gets a spot in a good school by trickery, there is one less spot for an honest student. And little cheaters in school grow up to become crooked dentists or doctors who recommend unnecessary, costly and painful procedures, Enron employees and politicians. Normal people who know that a) the rich are corrupt and b) the rich face no consequences for breaking the law are more likely to put the screws on each other in mimicry of them. But most importantly, someone who thinks nothing of damaging the truth with respect to a letter will probably think nothing of falsifying research if they grow up to become real academics, which hurts the whole human race.
Fuck 'em. I wouldn't wish prison on anyone, but I sincerely hope that they are viewed with suspicion, distrust and contempt for the rest of their natural lives.
Plug: http://www.cheatingculture.com/
Also, letting children near a computer is mind-bogglingly dangerous. My nephews would be the best QA engineers in the world if only they didn't answer, "I didn't do anything!" any time you asked them how they broke the computer.
What cannot be stated loudly enough is that when advertisers and content providers attempt to game the system, they have a negative impact on the users.
There was a time when Google was unmatched at getting you what you were looking for. As soon as people started to hack their PageRank, that web search Garden of Eden was destroyed. They're still pretty good, but many off-the-beaten-path keywords churn up increasingly suboptimal results, and I can only conclude that this is because they're attempting to inflate their PageRank.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who gets bitten in the ass by their own attempts to cheat has it coming. I suppose you could say that you are putting yourself at a disadvantage by not cheating, but this does not negate the fact that you are doing a disservice to search users. And furthermore, it's in the best interests of EVERYONE that Google attempts to get search users what they want. As soon as they stop doing that, users will stop being curious about what the net has to offer, and then they stop spending money in new and interesting places on the web, then commerce drives up and so does advertising.
Girlfriend and I were playing with a Wii at her friend's house, and she demands we get one:) I'm still happy with my decision to buy a PS2, though.
I can see how you could take those statements as somewhat inconsistent. I'm pretty young. At the time the PS2 was really big I was a starving student, so any type of electronic entertainment beyond what could also be used for schoolwork was a luxury. I suppose I should add that I still try to be pretty frugal even now that I have a real job with a comfortable salary - I'll now allow myself a game system, but I went for the best perceived value.
Well, I don't know. I bought my first PS2 a few months ago, because 1) the system itself and all the games I wanted to play are cheap, 2) there is still far more entertainment value in the PS2's library than all of the next-generation consoles combined, 3) I have a better job, 4) I don't have an HDTV and 5) I needed a new dvd player. I can't believe what I was missing all of these years! Seems like the PS2 is still a good choice in the cheap-nostalgic-non-cutting-edge-need-a-DVD-player demographic.
Gee, try as I might I can't find any statistics. It is important to bear in mind that for a long time Apple had that demographic sewn up, so some older users have equally arbitrary reasons to continue to use the Mac.
Anyway, I wouldn't go off bitching and moaning as reliable indicators of what people would prefer to use. DASH a secondary school, right? In my experience, teenagers just like to complain :).
That is irrelevant to any comparison between Mac and PC.
but their weak pathetic market share is the reason Adobe abandoned the platformInaccurate and inflammatory. Adobe has not abandoned the platform, they elected not to port Premier or Framemaker and have a few fringe apps that are Windows-only. Either that, or my recollection of having CS3 installed on my Mac at home is the result of delusional psychosis.
that seems like any investment in the platform is a waste of time and money.That is a baseless conclusion. I find it difficult to believe that it is a "waste of time and money" (i.e., an unprofitable endeavor), since they continue to make new versions of their core products for the Mac and show no signs of stopping.
Adobe has thrived after dumping Apple.Again, they only dumped support for a few major applications (good alternatives to which exist on the platform already), and secondly, I fail to see any causal link between the two.
Apple would buy a profitable Adobe, then just strap them into making software to stuff into Apple's $150 OSX service packs.I don't know if it's fair to call them service packs, because I was a lot more excited about any of them than XP SP2. Furthermore, that's an unreasonable conclusion. iLife is basically just Logic Pro Lite, Final Cut Pro Lite, a photo album and a web authoring tool. In the case of the professional apps, full versions do, in fact, exist. What would be more likely to happen in that situation is that every Adobe application would be forked into a home version and a pro version, just like with the other apps.
I basically agree that it's pointless for Apple to acquire Adobe, but your post was just littered with so many half-truths, twisted facts and blatant omissions that I had to break it down.
You are clearly not a philosopher. Of course it's possible, it's just very difficult and unlikely :)
Well, you're not entirely alone, and the situation isn't entirely hopeless. thought Disgaea was a very refreshing departure from post-FFVII RPGs. Properly speaking, it's a tactical RPG, but the tactical RPG is really the proper successor to classic RPGs. They're games for people who thought that the idea of commanding an army of wizards, barbarians, ninjas and monsters was cool in and of itself, and made that aspect of the game take center stage instead of an obtuse, inscrutable plot.
The tricky part is that it is more difficult for a game to stand on the merit of its plot or production values than it being an actual enjoyable gaming experience. Prolific authors like Terry Pratchett and Stephen King prove that half-decent fiction can be made rapidly and reliably if you have the right writer in on your team. Basic innovation in gameplay, by contrast, is more rare - even improvement and refinement are less common than stagnation.
This was the IP policy at my university:
Staff: Own nothing.
Students (undergrad and grad): Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) works made while receiving pay from the university or another entity.
Faculty: Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) explicitly funded works, in which they retain some degree of ownership. I'm sure they have various other ways to turn the work of professors into money, such as publication agreements and lectures, but by and large professors receive many more privileges than we're used to in the private sector.
I suppose the key is how quickly you get bored, or, put differently, how enjoyable the game is in terms of its actual gameplay.
In my opinion, the cutscenes and strict scripting (you must agree that while all games have constraints, some have more strict constraints than others) also serve the insidious purpose of disguising how bad, unfun or non-innovative the game is. They are a kind of crutch. You end up playing to advance the storyline, not for the sheer joy of playing. And I think this kind of story-heavy game-lite type of video game is bad for video games as a craft, because it focuses on churning out an endless series of thinly-veiled clones as opposed to games which will stand as classics.
Points (i.e., statements, premises) cannot be valid, they can only be true or false. Only arguments can be valid. Just so I'm not being too aloof, I'll clarify: in a valid argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion follows by necessity. For example, this is a valid argument:
the best way to help something is not necessarily to defend its current practices, if they are flawed.Or:
P1 Flawed practices do not help Wikipedia.
P2 You want to help wikipedia.
You should not support its flawed practices. (denying the consequent or modus tollens)
P3 X is a flawed practice of wikipedia.
Therefore, you should not support X. (categorical syllogism)
I assert that you're deliberately misusing logical jargon in an attempt to nit-pick his argument. I admit that I am properly using logical jargon in an attempt to nit-pick your argument, mostly because I think it's fun and amusing. But in all seriousness: P3 is not an assumption in the sense you are using. It is a premise which he is using as part of his valid argument, and one which he offers support for in the first few paragraphs. What you should be debating is whether X is, in fact, a flawed practice.
Oh, and by the way, if there are better thinkers out there who want to tell me I'm full of shit, go ahead, just be nice about it:) I'm just practicing for class.