That is where you start to explain the numerals we use and give examples of the symbols we use for equality, divison, subtraction etc. It shoudl convey we have a decimal system with symbols (numerals) indicating quanity and how the scale progresses.
The for a given language (say english) you would put in a condensed:
(Picture of an apple)
APPLE
(Recording of somone saying Apple)
A is for Apple, Ape, Achivement,b is for boy, bag, bong, baby,c is for cat, can, color,... , x,y,z
(recording of someone saying the alphabet with an example of a word with it)
This will help express that symbols have sounds associated with them and that stringing together letters make words.
(red colored square) Red Colored Square
(red colored triangle) Red colored Triangle
With the Red example we assume they have figured out that we are A: Intelligent and B: Trying to explain things to them at this point.
The Red Colored Square and Red Colored Triangle is telling them two basic grammar points: adjectives and nouns.
Then we would do a:
(Picture of a horse standing)
Horse
"The Horse is standing"
(Picture of a horse running)
"The horse is running"
From that point they could quickly develop a noun, verb, adjective, adverb understanding of a language. Then they just have to pull a Leeloo and watch a bazillion years worth of TV to get the idea.
I subscribed to a variety of Usenet groups. I used that nice Freeagent software for year. Still do on my Museum PC (Packard Bell running Windows 95 with a tape drive and 128 MB of RAM).
I have a spam filter on my gateway so spam messages vanish.
I haven't gotten a new post in 3 years...
Usenet isn't dying. It's dead with nothing but ghosts left...
In a world of violence, famine, plagues, tryanny, bigotry, hate... I really wish "scientist" could find practical things to bitch about like millions starving, etc. Seriously of all the things to whine about... light pollution.
Oh crap Johnny can't see the milky way, we need to do something about that! Of course Johnny can't go outside at night because of gangs and his dad can't afford to buy him shoes but those problems are small in comparison to... light pollution?
Listen, there are always trade offs in life. I for one have no issue with the view because I am too busy working to walk around with my eyes staring at the sky. Some of us have jobs. When we get home we do dishes, laundry, clean, and... if we are lucky get an hour to catch the news and a TV show. That's the trade off living near cities.
Yeah light pollution is a problem like Brittney Spears getting a Grammy. How about feeding people, reducing traffic etc... There are plenty of real issues to worry about...
Better yet "scientist" when you are done bitching about light pollution why don't you do something about that 'other' kind of pollution that acutally harms people.
Jesus Christ People Get Your Priorities Straight!? Has the Ivory Tower crowd finally jumped the shark these days? LIGHT POLLUTION?! Damn must be a slow news day...
If you want to go see the Milk Way, DRIVE AWAY FROM THE CITIES!? I know those urbanites think there is no universe outside of the shadow of a sky scraper but you can get in this thing called a vechicle (if your aching green earth worrshipping moral code allows you to sit in one) and drive yourself about 40 minutes outside your crime infested rotting from the inside steel wasteland and look up and see it. They also have these HUGE collections of trees called FORESTS you might get to see.../RANT
The Illuminati is now eliminating the few members that participated in the summoning of the Zhug Jung Kai entity. Notice that both Carridine and now this poor man have ben hung to prevent the Ruthi spirit escaping their lungs, damning the Ruthi to eternity until the Zhug Jung Kai consumes them.
With the spawn of evil growing in power it will force the Illuminati to desparate measures. It falls to you adventure to put a stop to this!
Seek out the Oracle of Shando who currently is posing as Steve Jobs. He will not reval his true self unless you posess the Diamond Apple of Agamerrinon. You can find the Apple in possession of the Dark Obtennebator. He serves his dark master Bill Gate and resides in the Valley of Sorrow on the Mountain of Pain in the Cave of Agony beyond the Doors of Eternal Discomfort. He has occasionally also tried to Ebay the Apple but none seems interested in it for $221,134,110 USD.
Go now and save us all from Terrorists, Bad Remakes, and watered down soft core from Cinemax!
1 laptop capable of reading etext along with basic word processing running on an ARM processor will cost you about $200 bucks.
The school, per student, will spend about $30 dollars PER BOOK, PER STUDENT.
The average high school student has 9 book.
9 x $30 = $270 dollars
Each student will cost the school, on average, in print outs, copies, and other non-book related costs and addition $50 a year per student
$270 + $50 = $320 dollars
Now factor in electricity costs and I am will to say that "Doing this would probably cost the same if not 10% more then books. Initially."
That said the quality of material the student has access to is greater along with videos, presentations, and multimedia learning tools that students can watch to assist with their studies.
If student attendance increases just 5% that overall this reduces costs as an un-used text book is a waste of money.
From a licensing standpoint then, a digital publisher, with non-existent manufacturing costs, can license a professionally written textbook at a cost of $5 a student rather then $30. Assuming the laptops are usable for 5 years the cost saving are INSAINE. We are talking slashing at least $200 dollars PER STUDENT PER 5 YEAR PERIOD.
Pro-rating that is $40 PER student savings per year and can ELMINATE the space and need for a computer lab! Giving the student the opportunity to buy the laptop at the end of the year you could even break even then.
This has to be one of the smartest ideas I've seen come out of california in 20 years...
Have people become so ignorant to think EQ was original IP? No no it had no resembalance to Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, Conan, Authurian Legend, Dune, Arabian Knights, etc...
Original is hardly the word. I think kids these days call it a "Mashup" of existing IP.
Starcraft was dangerously close to directly lifting Warhammer 40k with Eldar=Protoss, Terran=Imperium, Zerg=Tyrannids.
WoW while building a decent mythology still is a rip off of most fantasy fiction that came before. In fact I cannot think of one original creation in it. I think the only remotely, and I do mean remotely unique thing WoW came up with was ummm... errr... shit...
Well anyway DAOC was British and Norse mythologies. It's IP was not all that original.
Conan was rather unique in putting together a period of time from which there was little documentation going that far back. (Cuniform anyone?)
Eve is hardly original, nor was planetfall. AO was cyberpunk pulled damn near out of several novels. Can't speak to Guild Wars or Shadowbane, didn't play either.
UO and Garriot's Ultima world was unique in the representation of gargoyles and the exploration of secular humanism as a religion. The world as best I can remember it lacked a real sense of high fantasy like Lord of the Rings. It was still fantasy but was a bit more low key.
The problem with developing new IP is that breaking from 'tradition' in fantasy can cause a good % of fans to say, "Elves would never act like that" kind of statement. If it's IP then it is a product and maximizing sales trumps creativity. I spent 15 years developing the MRL world and had 5 book agents complain after reading several drafts that, "I don't think fantasy readers are going to by a book that has evles as a bunch of slave owning, mercenary hiring, progressively going insaine butchers..."
IP as a concept means that your creation is a product and will be treated as such. They talk numbers, this type of story will move X units, you need these 7 characters to move an additional Y units, we need this type of cover art with these colors to get the book to stand out against the following J books that will be adjactent to it on Barnes and Nobles shelves.
Nothing feels worse then having a book agent tell you to rewrite the book because, "Demographics indicate you need a child to have effective interplay against your protaganist and the merchant in chapter 7 otherwise the reader will fatigue on the drama. Metrics also indicate that you are going to need some comic relief mid-way through chapters 4 and 9." That was the break point for me ever writing professionally.
The only ORIGINAL IP\games I've seen come out in the last 20 years was: Pixelart and Darwinia but nether have extensive Lore attached to the IP so far.
"We as a society have become so risk adverse we have made art and creativity a liability."
Holy crap, get the stick out holmes, that whole speech was salt and pepper leading up to the "no sex jokes" part. Jebus rice man, not everything I write is gospel... just most of it!:)
In the USA public education is now just used as a tool for political indoctrination. With extremists at both ends vying to brainwash children.
"You have to get to the children when they are young and impressionable."
and #5
#5: Schools have now been regulated to substitute parents for a generation of deliquents who are incapable of parenting. Those children just get worse until they end up in high school with no sense of personal responsibility as their parents showed none.
Now teachers are being asked to change diapers for kids who's dead beat parents never bothered to teach how to use a toilet.
... When money is involved people tend to try and maximize the opportunity to get money.
I'd be more apt to belive that by offering money you are raising the stakes and you'll get more people cutting corners to get the money.
I'd wager more cheating then more intelligence, once you add money into the picture.
By adding money as a reward you are raising the stakes. At some point, the risk vs. reward line is passed and the reward is now worth cheating.
I've busted plenty of people trying to cheat and I have seen on serveral occassions the reason they cheat was "If I got all As I could go to cancun, or I get a new bike, or I get a car for graduation, etc.....".
FYI: Baseball caps are not the way to cheat. Neither is your cell phone on vibrate.
Example: (They would send an SMS to the cheaters based on which 10 second span was the answer so:
1-10: A 11-20: B 21-30: C 31-40: D 41-50: E 51-60: Pause between questions.
So I sat there looking at the answer sheet and sure enough the SMS messages were coming in. Wasn't hard to throw out all 9 of them.
The problem is: VIBRATE IS ACTUALLY LOUD WHEN 9 PHONES ALL GO OFF AT THE SAME TIME.
Oh great Lionsgate is involved. That means 99.9995% of the content will be crap..0001% will be decent and.0004% will do nicely in overseas markets when put on DVD.
A "Polished Turd" will stink up the basket no matter how many flowers you put in the basket with it....
We are in the earliest stages of undesrtanding how the universe works. For the first 8-10 thousand years we have looked what that which is in our universe and how it functions within our universe. Only in the last 3000 years have we started to look at how the universe (or if you prefer reality) itself works.
Based on our understanding the very fundamental laws of our universe at some point has changed. The laws, as we call them, 5 seconds before the big bang may have been very different then at the time of the big bang and vastly different a billion years afterwards.
We look to oddities like black holes to try and grasp and dredge out what additional laws that may exist to better understand how to exist within a system of laws. We must be ever so careful though as we go forward in collecting and looking at data. Who knows, perhaps we will find a white hole adding mass to our universe potentially signalling an escape from heat death or the big rip. Perhaps the graviton will be found... perhaps not.
The question all this begs is crucial to the core of our own existence, and is the harbinger to the meaning of life. The question must be asked after observing this article:
How could we miss an opportunity for a sexual joke with this?
If a patient is immediate harm and in need of triage they take the paitient regardless. They don't even get to trying to pull meidcal records till they are in the door.
I've worked and grew up in hospitals all my life with an RN for a mother, aunt, with brother in central services, maintinance, even a dental assistant. I grew up litterally at Saint Joseph's hospital in Saint Paul (Back when the nuns ran it).
The majority of turn aways I have seen in my life (I still paint part time at hospitals and clinics), computer or otherwise, which many people do not understand, is transfer paitents.
If a hospital has 40 beds lets say and they need to try and keep 5 beds open for intake at 39 paitients it may be necessary to transfer patients based on needs but are prefectly stable and not in immediate danger. For rural hospitals this is a must (some as few at 10 beds). If the system is down, they cannot process the transfer and pull the records. It is in the paitent's best interests to be returned to the original hospital. Without the transfer of information, no one at the new hospital would even know what is wrong with their new patient.
In over 30 years I've never heard of a patient dying as a result of a down system. I HAVE see several cases where someone died as a result of not getting transferred to a specialist but not as the result of a computer failure.
Specifically I remember a story of a patient that needed to be transfered to Rochester. (This may or may not have been Saint Joseph's, I got it from a Cardio doc when I was young) Due to his condition (I was not privvy to that mind you) he had to be air lifted. The problem was, weather. They waited 10 minutes to see if it was going to clear up. It only got worse and with hail they couldn't drive him there either. His family had to sit there with the staff and basically watch him die. They simply didn't have the equipment nor the surgeon needed apparently.
Medical care is not a simple system and there are far more factors that no one can control. The creed "Do no harm" may mean sending patients back or not accepting them at all.
At a level 1 Trauma center (say Region's Hospital) may have a requirement of having X number of beds open. They would likely transfer to Saint Joe's or Saint Johns. If Saint Johns filled while the patient was enroute then the ambluance might get bumped the the Woodbury hospital or bounced to St. Joes. They may also get bounced to HCMC. It all depends on the condition of the patient. Hug your HUC (Hospital Unit Corrdinator) and intake nurse and staff.
Region's also has a better burn unit for recovery so it may be that a burn victim at St. John's might need to be transferred to Regions if they developed complications as they may be better equipped to handle the recovery.
Patients can get moved around, showing up in an ambulance doesn't imply you are an fresh intake suffering from trauma.
... "But even leaving that aside - why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients?"
Lawyers...
No, you one word answer is "Plaintiffs."
Lawyers normally cannot bring a suit themselves on their own, they have to have a client they work for. That person, paying the lawyer, is the douche. Next thing you'll tell me is the gun killed the victim rather then the guy firing the gun. Lawyers=Guns in this analogy... ahem the wife would also like to point out that the paralegal working for the Lawyer is the bullet. The gun gets the glory, but the bullet is up until 4 am pulling the data the lawyer needs...
Re:Mentioned as "Greatest Adventure Games"
on
Vintage Games
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In defense of the author the games you listed with the exception of Paper Boy were not "game changing", popular yes, but game changing? Not so much.
Space Invaders didn't have any game changing aspect to it. Plently of ASCII console games existed prior to SI that had stuff like that. Compare missle command, Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Robotron, and at the most base level, still have a fundamental and common 2D structure. The top down shooting concept was not much different then any other 2D game. Centipede was innovative for the track ball, but you didn't see a deluge of track ball games as a result. Dig Dig was another popular, but not profound game. Paperboy on the other hand I must say was not only innovative, but also one if the earliest isometric view games (2.5D so to speak...)
Paddle controls\knobs and trackballs were innovative but the ancient Bowling game used a track ball before Centipede.
For a Top Down Shooter for innovation Spy Hunter or Zaxxon would be better choices for influential. Space Invaders influenced the video game industry, not gameplay I'd wager in the author's eyes. But that is my best guess as to their omission of those...
To be fair they also forgot MARBLE MADNESS and the still to this day unique 720 game.
Console Only
on
Vintage Games
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It would appear that the title would be better read "Vintage Console Games"
VGA Planets and L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) where some of the earliest Time Share MMO type games only now being ressurected in the form of Mob Wars\Mafia Wars on places like Facebook.
Oddly one of the first "3D" space flight games "Star Voyager" for the NES is missing and would have even settled for Descent or Wing Commander for the first space combat games to really change the nature of flight games. Especially with the mention of Ultima but laps the Wing Commander series...
The Gold Box series of D&D games is also absent.
But most of all, oddly enough, where are the edutainment games from Math Munchers, Carmen Sandiego, and Oregon Trail? The edutainment section is absent...
Just some thoughts for the second release.
Also Battle Chess made Chess accessable to millions of players over the years and took Chess from stuffy to damn near cool as the Fonz for its time...
Lets not forget the niche area of historical sims that kept KOEI staff employed with Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunga's Ambition.
Another lacking one is Populous now I think of it...
Dungeon Keeper, Tecmo's Deception...
Shin Mega whateverthehell it is called (Devil Summoner series) broke some new ground...
And let us not forget several games (regardless of theme) that contributed:
Password based continues Battery Backup saves light zappers and other specialized periphrials First game with multi-layered backgrounds Paper Mario being one of the first games to switch the whole perspective concept
What no gauntlet on of the first 4 player games I can think of?
Killer Instinct for first major use of pre-rendered 3D environments?
Mortal Kombat for the first grusome death option (fatalities) and as far as I can tell one of the first to have an option (hidden or not) to FINISH an opponent?
Rush series of arcade games I think were the first to use a force feedback steering wheel.. In fact I think the arm wrestling game was the first to use any form of force feedback....
If we are looking to measure games that 'change the nature of gaming' they have missed quite a few story telling options and some very odd exclusions.
Case in point, Bowling. One of the first games to use the over-grown track ball that golden tee owes it's sorry ass too...
Ikari warriors to use a rotating joystick?
I don't even know which game was the first to use analog controls for a joystick rather then digital...
How about the first arcade game that allowed players to save their game data on a card?
Such a minor sample of game changers...
Even from a content standpoint:
First to swear? First to have someone die? FIrst to have someone have children in the game?
Breaking the old literary norms of games change a lot and opened up a historical chance that game developers took to expand their story telling.
Lots of missed opportunities... I wait till a second revision...
Yes I was thinking more Lojack rather then the rice sized RFDI type.
A transmitter powerful enough to be detected outside of a van or similar vechicle is not going to be under-the-skin but a tad larger. There are several locations where a quarter sized impant could go. Unless we are talking very sophisticated criminals they would first have to try and figure out where the transmitter is and remove it.
The problem with impants is that motivates the abductors to multilate their victim in an effort to remove the chipping quickly when even if the child is recovered the hack surgery attempts pose a serious infection and survivability issue (Not to mention mental trauma).
Yeah 'Taken' had me wondering quite a few things about that scenario. A possible location would be on the upper portion of the hip bone where the scar could double as an apendix scar. With a device small enough and with enough possible locations if could pose a life saver.
Based on some crude math though, the transmitter has to have a range of at least 5 miles and detectors need to be placed at least every 3 miles. Assuming a perfect grid over the United States (as an example) I don't see it being viable after crunching the numbers. Too many dead zones emerge in rural areas. Any transmitter larger and the device would be considerably larger then a quarter and you still are replacing the batteries every year or two...
I run a simulation that I am reasearching that takes the spawns of creatures and moves, add, deletes them as a result of activity.
Simple version: Spawn X criteria Damage Done to Players: + 1 per 100 Players Killed: + 10 per 1 Dmage Done to Mobs: +1 per 50 Mobs Killed: +5 per 1 Damage Taken by players: -1 per 80 Times Killed by players: -1 per 1 Damage Taken by Mobs: - 1 per 50 Times Killed by Mobs: -1 per 5
The location of Spawn X is then shifted a random direction away from the last J spawns where J was negative and towards the last M spawns where M was positive.
If the last spawn was positive the level of the mob spawn is +1, if the last spawn was negative then -1. The last 5 spawns are active at all times. For every 3 in a row positive spawn we turn the oldest of those three spawns into a new roaming spawn (e.g. the population went up by one.)
If a spawn hits a streak of 5 negative spawns we expire the current roaming spawn.
Over simplified (we actually track males and females, level averaging, migratory behavior, etc..)
There is a lot of interest in ecology modelling in games these days, don't ask how much the consultant ask for these days...
I kid you not, real life saver for the dog, reflective tape vest.
Like so:
relective tape on the collar reflective tape on the vest that says the word DOG reflective tape around the ankles
That way someone at a distance can see the word DOG and the flicker from the feet. Sadly I've seen some monsters actually floor it when they see that (I sat it along a road near my house as a test and the guy in front of me gunned it when he saw that. sicko...)
you do realize that if someone was to abduct her the first thing they would do is probably throw the phone in the back of a passing pickup truck.
With kids you need something that is going to be concealed. I've read letter from pedophiles when I was studying criminal justice. The first thing they look for is a phone (and usually toss the backpack in a remote location as a red herring.)
I suggest something that resembles jewlery like a pendant. In the most grim of situations there is a chance the attacker would keep it as a trophy and at least find the monster. Same with teddy bears or anything that would seem personal to the child.
Hell the black berry would stick out like a sore thumb. Even something built into a shoe or belt... earrings if they are old enough...
As creepy as it is I think chipping people till 18 is a damn good idea. Throw out an Amber Alert and have positioning systems with good coverage.
Activate the Amber Alert and have a Google map EVERYONE can see the location of the reported child within a few hundred yards.
Hell the infrastructure wouldn't be too hard to deploy if you needed supplimental sensors (e.g. the overpass signs on the highway could be part of the sensor network with a 1/2 mile radius for instance.
From what I remember it is the first 6 hours that matter most in abductions and I wouldn't mind having my kids (if I had any) being chipped till 18. You could by the same token load the bus with an expected passenger manifest and scan each student as they got on with a report available (bus driver can then ask "are you sure your supposed to be on this bus? It says you are supposed to be on the Blue Hippo bus not the Yellow Giraff bus")
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Gen-X:
You don't GET respect. You EARN it.
"Don't make me call Chuck Norris you green blooded cowards!"
# ## ###
1 2 3
# + ## = ###
1 + 2 = 3
# = 1
## = 2
### = 3
1,2,...,9,10,11,...,18,19,20,21,...,98,99,100,101,...
That is where you start to explain the numerals we use and give examples of the symbols we use for equality, divison, subtraction etc. It shoudl convey we have a decimal system with symbols (numerals) indicating quanity and how the scale progresses.
The for a given language (say english) you would put in a condensed:
(Picture of an apple)
APPLE
(Recording of somone saying Apple)
A is for Apple, Ape, Achivement,b is for boy, bag, bong, baby,c is for cat, can, color, ... , x,y,z
(recording of someone saying the alphabet with an example of a word with it)
This will help express that symbols have sounds associated with them and that stringing together letters make words.
(red colored square)
Red Colored Square
(red colored triangle)
Red colored Triangle
With the Red example we assume they have figured out that we are A: Intelligent and B: Trying to explain things to them at this point.
The Red Colored Square and Red Colored Triangle is telling them two basic grammar points: adjectives and nouns.
Then we would do a:
(Picture of a horse standing)
Horse
"The Horse is standing"
(Picture of a horse running)
"The horse is running"
From that point they could quickly develop a noun, verb, adjective, adverb understanding of a language. Then they just have to pull a Leeloo and watch a bazillion years worth of TV to get the idea.
screen shot or it didn't happen ;)
I subscribed to a variety of Usenet groups. I used that nice Freeagent software for year. Still do on my Museum PC (Packard Bell running Windows 95 with a tape drive and 128 MB of RAM).
I have a spam filter on my gateway so spam messages vanish.
I haven't gotten a new post in 3 years...
Usenet isn't dying. It's dead with nothing but ghosts left...
In a world of violence, famine, plagues, tryanny, bigotry, hate... I really wish "scientist" could find practical things to bitch about like millions starving, etc. Seriously of all the things to whine about... light pollution.
Oh crap Johnny can't see the milky way, we need to do something about that! Of course Johnny can't go outside at night because of gangs and his dad can't afford to buy him shoes but those problems are small in comparison to ... light pollution?
Listen, there are always trade offs in life. I for one have no issue with the view because I am too busy working to walk around with my eyes staring at the sky. Some of us have jobs. When we get home we do dishes, laundry, clean, and ... if we are lucky get an hour to catch the news and a TV show. That's the trade off living near cities.
Yeah light pollution is a problem like Brittney Spears getting a Grammy. How about feeding people, reducing traffic etc... There are plenty of real issues to worry about...
Better yet "scientist" when you are done bitching about light pollution why don't you do something about that 'other' kind of pollution that acutally harms people.
Jesus Christ People Get Your Priorities Straight!? Has the Ivory Tower crowd finally jumped the shark these days? LIGHT POLLUTION?! Damn must be a slow news day...
If you want to go see the Milk Way, DRIVE AWAY FROM THE CITIES!? I know those urbanites think there is no universe outside of the shadow of a sky scraper but you can get in this thing called a vechicle (if your aching green earth worrshipping moral code allows you to sit in one) and drive yourself about 40 minutes outside your crime infested rotting from the inside steel wasteland and look up and see it. They also have these HUGE collections of trees called FORESTS you might get to see... /RANT
The Antichrist has been made manifest!
The Illuminati is now eliminating the few members that participated in the summoning of the Zhug Jung Kai entity. Notice that both Carridine and now this poor man have ben hung to prevent the Ruthi spirit escaping their lungs, damning the Ruthi to eternity until the Zhug Jung Kai consumes them.
With the spawn of evil growing in power it will force the Illuminati to desparate measures. It falls to you adventure to put a stop to this!
Seek out the Oracle of Shando who currently is posing as Steve Jobs. He will not reval his true self unless you posess the Diamond Apple of Agamerrinon. You can find the Apple in possession of the Dark Obtennebator. He serves his dark master Bill Gate and resides in the Valley of Sorrow on the Mountain of Pain in the Cave of Agony beyond the Doors of Eternal Discomfort. He has occasionally also tried to Ebay the Apple but none seems interested in it for $221,134,110 USD.
Go now and save us all from Terrorists, Bad Remakes, and watered down soft core from Cinemax!
1 laptop capable of reading etext along with basic word processing running on an ARM processor will cost you about $200 bucks.
The school, per student, will spend about $30 dollars PER BOOK, PER STUDENT.
The average high school student has 9 book.
9 x $30 = $270 dollars
Each student will cost the school, on average, in print outs, copies, and other non-book related costs and addition $50 a year per student
$270 + $50 = $320 dollars
Now factor in electricity costs and I am will to say that "Doing this would probably cost the same if not 10% more then books. Initially."
That said the quality of material the student has access to is greater along with videos, presentations, and multimedia learning tools that students can watch to assist with their studies.
If student attendance increases just 5% that overall this reduces costs as an un-used text book is a waste of money.
From a licensing standpoint then, a digital publisher, with non-existent manufacturing costs, can license a professionally written textbook at a cost of $5 a student rather then $30. Assuming the laptops are usable for 5 years the cost saving are INSAINE. We are talking slashing at least $200 dollars PER STUDENT PER 5 YEAR PERIOD.
Pro-rating that is $40 PER student savings per year and can ELMINATE the space and need for a computer lab! Giving the student the opportunity to buy the laptop at the end of the year you could even break even then.
This has to be one of the smartest ideas I've seen come out of california in 20 years...
Have people become so ignorant to think EQ was original IP? No no it had no resembalance to Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, Conan, Authurian Legend, Dune, Arabian Knights, etc...
Original is hardly the word. I think kids these days call it a "Mashup" of existing IP.
Starcraft was dangerously close to directly lifting Warhammer 40k with Eldar=Protoss, Terran=Imperium, Zerg=Tyrannids.
WoW while building a decent mythology still is a rip off of most fantasy fiction that came before. In fact I cannot think of one original creation in it. I think the only remotely, and I do mean remotely unique thing WoW came up with was ummm... errr... shit...
Well anyway DAOC was British and Norse mythologies. It's IP was not all that original.
Conan was rather unique in putting together a period of time from which there was little documentation going that far back. (Cuniform anyone?)
Eve is hardly original, nor was planetfall. AO was cyberpunk pulled damn near out of several novels. Can't speak to Guild Wars or Shadowbane, didn't play either.
UO and Garriot's Ultima world was unique in the representation of gargoyles and the exploration of secular humanism as a religion. The world as best I can remember it lacked a real sense of high fantasy like Lord of the Rings. It was still fantasy but was a bit more low key.
The problem with developing new IP is that breaking from 'tradition' in fantasy can cause a good % of fans to say, "Elves would never act like that" kind of statement. If it's IP then it is a product and maximizing sales trumps creativity. I spent 15 years developing the MRL world and had 5 book agents complain after reading several drafts that, "I don't think fantasy readers are going to by a book that has evles as a bunch of slave owning, mercenary hiring, progressively going insaine butchers..."
IP as a concept means that your creation is a product and will be treated as such. They talk numbers, this type of story will move X units, you need these 7 characters to move an additional Y units, we need this type of cover art with these colors to get the book to stand out against the following J books that will be adjactent to it on Barnes and Nobles shelves.
Nothing feels worse then having a book agent tell you to rewrite the book because, "Demographics indicate you need a child to have effective interplay against your protaganist and the merchant in chapter 7 otherwise the reader will fatigue on the drama. Metrics also indicate that you are going to need some comic relief mid-way through chapters 4 and 9." That was the break point for me ever writing professionally.
The only ORIGINAL IP\games I've seen come out in the last 20 years was: Pixelart and Darwinia but nether have extensive Lore attached to the IP so far.
"We as a society have become so risk adverse we have made art and creativity a liability."
Holy crap, get the stick out holmes, that whole speech was salt and pepper leading up to the "no sex jokes" part. Jebus rice man, not everything I write is gospel... just most of it! :)
you forgot to add #4:
In the USA public education is now just used as a tool for political indoctrination. With extremists at both ends vying to brainwash children.
"You have to get to the children when they are young and impressionable."
and #5
#5: Schools have now been regulated to substitute parents for a generation of deliquents who are incapable of parenting. Those children just get worse until they end up in high school with no sense of personal responsibility as their parents showed none.
Now teachers are being asked to change diapers for kids who's dead beat parents never bothered to teach how to use a toilet.
... When money is involved people tend to try and maximize the opportunity to get money.
I'd be more apt to belive that by offering money you are raising the stakes and you'll get more people cutting corners to get the money.
I'd wager more cheating then more intelligence, once you add money into the picture.
By adding money as a reward you are raising the stakes. At some point, the risk vs. reward line is passed and the reward is now worth cheating.
I've busted plenty of people trying to cheat and I have seen on serveral occassions the reason they cheat was "If I got all As I could go to cancun, or I get a new bike, or I get a car for graduation, etc.....".
FYI: Baseball caps are not the way to cheat. Neither is your cell phone on vibrate.
Example:
(They would send an SMS to the cheaters based on which 10 second span was the answer so:
1-10: A
11-20: B
21-30: C
31-40: D
41-50: E
51-60: Pause between questions.
So I sat there looking at the answer sheet and sure enough the SMS messages were coming in. Wasn't hard to throw out all 9 of them.
The problem is: VIBRATE IS ACTUALLY LOUD WHEN 9 PHONES ALL GO OFF AT THE SAME TIME.
Sadly these were adult students to boot...
Oh great Lionsgate is involved. That means 99.9995% of the content will be crap. .0001% will be decent and .0004% will do nicely in overseas markets when put on DVD.
A "Polished Turd" will stink up the basket no matter how many flowers you put in the basket with it....
Checked the school, no astrophysics.
The article is peppered with some glaring political agendas to boot.
I am also curious how a 4 year college would let a kid this smart end up in a community college.
There is too much to this that lacks reason.
Something smells...
We are in the earliest stages of undesrtanding how the universe works. For the first 8-10 thousand years we have looked what that which is in our universe and how it functions within our universe. Only in the last 3000 years have we started to look at how the universe (or if you prefer reality) itself works.
Based on our understanding the very fundamental laws of our universe at some point has changed. The laws, as we call them, 5 seconds before the big bang may have been very different then at the time of the big bang and vastly different a billion years afterwards.
We look to oddities like black holes to try and grasp and dredge out what additional laws that may exist to better understand how to exist within a system of laws. We must be ever so careful though as we go forward in collecting and looking at data. Who knows, perhaps we will find a white hole adding mass to our universe potentially signalling an escape from heat death or the big rip. Perhaps the graviton will be found... perhaps not.
The question all this begs is crucial to the core of our own existence, and is the harbinger to the meaning of life. The question must be asked after observing this article:
How could we miss an opportunity for a sexual joke with this?
Yes and if they don't win, no money. Even laywers have to eat. They have no incentive to take a case that is going to lose flat out.
But there are plenty of gamblers in the lawsuit lottery that will pay a lawyer upfront to take their case.
If a patient is immediate harm and in need of triage they take the paitient regardless. They don't even get to trying to pull meidcal records till they are in the door.
I've worked and grew up in hospitals all my life with an RN for a mother, aunt, with brother in central services, maintinance, even a dental assistant. I grew up litterally at Saint Joseph's hospital in Saint Paul (Back when the nuns ran it).
The majority of turn aways I have seen in my life (I still paint part time at hospitals and clinics), computer or otherwise, which many people do not understand, is transfer paitents.
If a hospital has 40 beds lets say and they need to try and keep 5 beds open for intake at 39 paitients it may be necessary to transfer patients based on needs but are prefectly stable and not in immediate danger. For rural hospitals this is a must (some as few at 10 beds). If the system is down, they cannot process the transfer and pull the records. It is in the paitent's best interests to be returned to the original hospital. Without the transfer of information, no one at the new hospital would even know what is wrong with their new patient.
In over 30 years I've never heard of a patient dying as a result of a down system. I HAVE see several cases where someone died as a result of not getting transferred to a specialist but not as the result of a computer failure.
Specifically I remember a story of a patient that needed to be transfered to Rochester. (This may or may not have been Saint Joseph's, I got it from a Cardio doc when I was young) Due to his condition (I was not privvy to that mind you) he had to be air lifted. The problem was, weather. They waited 10 minutes to see if it was going to clear up. It only got worse and with hail they couldn't drive him there either. His family had to sit there with the staff and basically watch him die. They simply didn't have the equipment nor the surgeon needed apparently.
Medical care is not a simple system and there are far more factors that no one can control. The creed "Do no harm" may mean sending patients back or not accepting them at all.
At a level 1 Trauma center (say Region's Hospital) may have a requirement of having X number of beds open. They would likely transfer to Saint Joe's or Saint Johns. If Saint Johns filled while the patient was enroute then the ambluance might get bumped the the Woodbury hospital or bounced to St. Joes. They may also get bounced to HCMC. It all depends on the condition of the patient. Hug your HUC (Hospital Unit Corrdinator) and intake nurse and staff.
Region's also has a better burn unit for recovery so it may be that a burn victim at St. John's might need to be transferred to Regions if they developed complications as they may be better equipped to handle the recovery.
Patients can get moved around, showing up in an ambulance doesn't imply you are an fresh intake suffering from trauma.
... "But even leaving that aside - why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients?"
Lawyers...
No, you one word answer is "Plaintiffs."
Lawyers normally cannot bring a suit themselves on their own, they have to have a client they work for. That person, paying the lawyer, is the douche. Next thing you'll tell me is the gun killed the victim rather then the guy firing the gun. Lawyers=Guns in this analogy. .. ahem the wife would also like to point out that the paralegal working for the Lawyer is the bullet. The gun gets the glory, but the bullet is up until 4 am pulling the data the lawyer needs...
In defense of the author the games you listed with the exception of Paper Boy were not "game changing", popular yes, but game changing? Not so much.
Space Invaders didn't have any game changing aspect to it. Plently of ASCII console games existed prior to SI that had stuff like that. Compare missle command, Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Robotron, and at the most base level, still have a fundamental and common 2D structure. The top down shooting concept was not much different then any other 2D game. Centipede was innovative for the track ball, but you didn't see a deluge of track ball games as a result. Dig Dig was another popular, but not profound game. Paperboy on the other hand I must say was not only innovative, but also one if the earliest isometric view games (2.5D so to speak...)
Paddle controls\knobs and trackballs were innovative but the ancient Bowling game used a track ball before Centipede.
For a Top Down Shooter for innovation Spy Hunter or Zaxxon would be better choices for influential. Space Invaders influenced the video game industry, not gameplay I'd wager in the author's eyes. But that is my best guess as to their omission of those...
To be fair they also forgot MARBLE MADNESS and the still to this day unique 720 game.
It would appear that the title would be better read "Vintage Console Games"
VGA Planets and L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) where some of the earliest Time Share MMO type games only now being ressurected in the form of Mob Wars\Mafia Wars on places like Facebook.
Oddly one of the first "3D" space flight games "Star Voyager" for the NES is missing and would have even settled for Descent or Wing Commander for the first space combat games to really change the nature of flight games. Especially with the mention of Ultima but laps the Wing Commander series...
The Gold Box series of D&D games is also absent.
But most of all, oddly enough, where are the edutainment games from Math Munchers, Carmen Sandiego, and Oregon Trail? The edutainment section is absent...
Just some thoughts for the second release.
Also Battle Chess made Chess accessable to millions of players over the years and took Chess from stuffy to damn near cool as the Fonz for its time...
Lets not forget the niche area of historical sims that kept KOEI staff employed with Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunga's Ambition.
Another lacking one is Populous now I think of it...
Dungeon Keeper, Tecmo's Deception...
Shin Mega whateverthehell it is called (Devil Summoner series) broke some new ground...
And let us not forget several games (regardless of theme) that contributed:
Password based continues
Battery Backup saves
light zappers and other specialized periphrials
First game with multi-layered backgrounds
Paper Mario being one of the first games to switch the whole perspective concept
What no gauntlet on of the first 4 player games I can think of?
Killer Instinct for first major use of pre-rendered 3D environments?
Mortal Kombat for the first grusome death option (fatalities) and as far as I can tell one of the first to have an option (hidden or not) to FINISH an opponent?
Rush series of arcade games I think were the first to use a force feedback steering wheel.. In fact I think the arm wrestling game was the first to use any form of force feedback....
If we are looking to measure games that 'change the nature of gaming' they have missed quite a few story telling options and some very odd exclusions.
Case in point, Bowling. One of the first games to use the over-grown track ball that golden tee owes it's sorry ass too...
Ikari warriors to use a rotating joystick?
I don't even know which game was the first to use analog controls for a joystick rather then digital...
How about the first arcade game that allowed players to save their game data on a card?
Such a minor sample of game changers...
Even from a content standpoint:
First to swear?
First to have someone die?
FIrst to have someone have children in the game?
Breaking the old literary norms of games change a lot and opened up a historical chance that game developers took to expand their story telling.
Lots of missed opportunities... I wait till a second revision...
Yes I was thinking more Lojack rather then the rice sized RFDI type.
A transmitter powerful enough to be detected outside of a van or similar vechicle is not going to be under-the-skin but a tad larger. There are several locations where a quarter sized impant could go. Unless we are talking very sophisticated criminals they would first have to try and figure out where the transmitter is and remove it.
The problem with impants is that motivates the abductors to multilate their victim in an effort to remove the chipping quickly when even if the child is recovered the hack surgery attempts pose a serious infection and survivability issue (Not to mention mental trauma).
Yeah 'Taken' had me wondering quite a few things about that scenario. A possible location would be on the upper portion of the hip bone where the scar could double as an apendix scar. With a device small enough and with enough possible locations if could pose a life saver.
Based on some crude math though, the transmitter has to have a range of at least 5 miles and detectors need to be placed at least every 3 miles. Assuming a perfect grid over the United States (as an example) I don't see it being viable after crunching the numbers. Too many dead zones emerge in rural areas. Any transmitter larger and the device would be considerably larger then a quarter and you still are replacing the batteries every year or two...
THey did that in UO early on.
I run a simulation that I am reasearching that takes the spawns of creatures and moves, add, deletes them as a result of activity.
Simple version:
Spawn X criteria
Damage Done to Players: + 1 per 100
Players Killed: + 10 per 1
Dmage Done to Mobs: +1 per 50
Mobs Killed: +5 per 1
Damage Taken by players: -1 per 80
Times Killed by players: -1 per 1
Damage Taken by Mobs: - 1 per 50
Times Killed by Mobs: -1 per 5
The location of Spawn X is then shifted a random direction away from the last J spawns where J was negative and towards the last M spawns where M was positive.
If the last spawn was positive the level of the mob spawn is +1, if the last spawn was negative then -1. The last 5 spawns are active at all times. For every 3 in a row positive spawn we turn the oldest of those three spawns into a new roaming spawn (e.g. the population went up by one.)
If a spawn hits a streak of 5 negative spawns we expire the current roaming spawn.
Over simplified (we actually track males and females, level averaging, migratory behavior, etc..)
There is a lot of interest in ecology modelling in games these days, don't ask how much the consultant ask for these days...
Try a small rattle on the collar to simulate rattle snake. That noise scares the hell out of my cats fyi...
I kid you not, real life saver for the dog, reflective tape vest.
Like so:
relective tape on the collar
reflective tape on the vest that says the word DOG
reflective tape around the ankles
That way someone at a distance can see the word DOG and the flicker from the feet. Sadly I've seen some monsters actually floor it when they see that (I sat it along a road near my house as a test and the guy in front of me gunned it when he saw that. sicko...)
you do realize that if someone was to abduct her the first thing they would do is probably throw the phone in the back of a passing pickup truck.
With kids you need something that is going to be concealed. I've read letter from pedophiles when I was studying criminal justice. The first thing they look for is a phone (and usually toss the backpack in a remote location as a red herring.)
I suggest something that resembles jewlery like a pendant. In the most grim of situations there is a chance the attacker would keep it as a trophy and at least find the monster. Same with teddy bears or anything that would seem personal to the child.
Hell the black berry would stick out like a sore thumb. Even something built into a shoe or belt... earrings if they are old enough...
As creepy as it is I think chipping people till 18 is a damn good idea. Throw out an Amber Alert and have positioning systems with good coverage.
Activate the Amber Alert and have a Google map EVERYONE can see the location of the reported child within a few hundred yards.
Hell the infrastructure wouldn't be too hard to deploy if you needed supplimental sensors (e.g. the overpass signs on the highway could be part of the sensor network with a 1/2 mile radius for instance.
From what I remember it is the first 6 hours that matter most in abductions and I wouldn't mind having my kids (if I had any) being chipped till 18. You could by the same token load the bus with an expected passenger manifest and scan each student as they got on with a report available (bus driver can then ask "are you sure your supposed to be on this bus? It says you are supposed to be on the Blue Hippo bus not the Yellow Giraff bus")