Even more so in kiosks where the company that put it there (or the library in this case) has branded their interface. When I go to Best Buy and look something up on one of their computers, it is irrelevant that it's a Windows machine because their frontend is plastered with their logo and lots of graphics to make it look cool.
When people use publically available computers, I don't think we expect them to look and feel like what we have at home.
The kind of education you describe in your last line does not yield quantifiable, measurable results and is therefore worthless to current education reform. This is why arts programs are being cut. Well it's the latest reason. In a more specific example, my current school district needs money to meet No Child Left Behind requirements and cut interscholastic sports from middle schools to get it.
Another example of this is Messiah, which if you don't remember was Shiny's (MDK, Sacrifice, Enter the Matrix) 3D "action game" that they said would scale infinitely. That is, the complexity of the scene would dynamically adjust to the computing power (vague I know) available at any given moment. This is better I guess than the frame rate adjusting dynamically. According to them, the game could look better than it did on their own hardware if sufficient computing power was given to it.
Sadly the game was um buggy and a little um not very good. This doesn't diminish their ambitions though. They also pledged to support software renderers until every computer that shipped came with hardware 3D acceleration. When Sacrifice was released in 2000 I don't think that was yet the case. But they tried...
Amenities? Clean air and water are not amenities. Other less obvious environmental causes are important because they will come back to bite you later.
Pollution (if I remember from Econ 110) is a market failure. That is, the monetary cost of pollution does not match its actual cost, because the excess is borne by society in general. Who should pay for this excess cost though? Both the buyer and seller. The market's invisible hand won't make them do it, so someone else's hand has to. Or their foot.
The alternative is for a company like VIA to assume the cost up front to avoid this kind of pollution.
Their doctor is the first alien ST crewmember who seems to fit in as a castmember instead of the token alien.
I think Quark wins that prize. I guess he's not a crewmember though. When Worf was on Deep Space Nine he fit in much better than when he was on TNG. So there's that. They might as well have put him in a clown suit on TNG. You remember in Insurrection he got that zit? Ohohoho!
But then since you think Enterprise is any good whatsoever you're probably not the DS9 fanboy that I seem to be.
I think it's a little misguided to think of the Democrat and Republican parties as two strong parties. They are very much the same in their obeisance to paymasters. I don't know if the situation in India is similar, with monied interests having huge influence. The fact of the two major parties in the US creates barriers to entry into the election market (let's not pretend) which you can see in the fact that Ralph Nader was not allowed to attend presidential candidate debates in the 2000 race. Attend. Like sit in the audience. Both parties had their reasons for keeping him out I guess, but they shouldn't be in control of who gets to participate in the debate. In a larger sense as well.
Ravi
Zork (was Re:For those using linx...)
on
SimChurch
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· Score: 1
The colection basket has been passed to you. There are no exits because you chose to sit in the middle of the pew. What do you want to do?
Donate O$5 O$10 @$50 via PayPal
Deftly pass it along while hanging your head in virtual shame
>pass plate and hang head
You pass the plate to the next worshiper and mumble something about not seeing the radio buttons in your browser. The section of pew you are seated on falls away, and you tumble down a narrow chute onto a hard stone floor.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
This is kind of an obvious dig, but pray it does not go to ION. Years ago, the joke would have been John Romero. While he's still a joke, this time the joke is Deus Ex: Invisible War. I can completely see a company wanting to "update the production values and gameplay of a popular franchise to bring it in line with other AAA titles on the market."
At least in my state, math education is turning away from what I consider math and towards a few (but growing) number of techniques to memorize. Witness schools' emphasis on how many students take AP calculus and then take the AP test. In elementary schools you're absolutely right. Teachers didn't have to learn much math for their major and didn't like having to do that.
I'm secondary ed. and I had to major in math. Because that was what I wanted. I would love to be able to teach in the way you describe but the "business stakeholders" in the state Ed. department have a different vision. It's called Standardized-test-o-vision.
Teachers don't make all that many policy decisions.
What about the little paper dust that builds up in anything that move paper rapidly? The copiers here at school build up an impressive amount of powder over time. I guess Sony's not using copy paper, but still...
Oh but it is good business practice. What the government does or not has nothing to do with what makes a business a towering success. The goal of the capitalist is to obtain a monopoly. Artificially restricting their ability to do that doesn't make sense if you _really_ want a free market.
It's called "whatever the market will bear."
Mind you, I believe as you do that the government should do something about this, but it's misguided to say that MS's desire to win by any means necessary is somehow out of context.
I dunno Icewind Dale II didn't have much to do with Icewind Dale.
Besides, in the same way that Sun is using "Java desktop" when it's not Java, they'll probably use Baldur's Gate as a brand name. But really it's not so bad since Baldur's Gate is a city and certainly they could come up with some story about/in it. Unless Baldur's Gate gets destroyed at the end of ToB I couldn't say I never finished it.
Another poster is exactly right about games being a behavior mod designed to keep you at your computer. What's puzzling me is what you expected? What do you expect from a game after you finish playing it? Are there other games that have handled the postgame well? I'm pretty familiar with games but I don't know of any that continue to reward you after you've received all the awards in the game.
I am, incidentally, considering WoW because I read somewhere at bliz that they're adding new content each month. If that's true, it would justify the monthly fee. Depending on the fee.
The decision to name it the Java desktop was apparently based on a marketing study. The study showed that more people recognize the Java brand than the Sun brand. I read that actually in another post here but I can't seem to find it. So this is hearsay.
But mod chips were really designed with one thing in mind - allowing you to circumvent the in-built protection of consoles, to play copied games.
I know others have mentioned this already but the console's protections prevent playing games from other regions, in addition to preventing playing copied games. Certainly there's a significant portion of console modders (if the posts here mean anything) who use mod chips to play out of region.
Now whether or not that's a valid use is another question, but it's at least worth mentioning that the console's protections aren't completely about stopping piracy.
Buy or rent Mr. Show on DVD since it's not on anymore. Most of the time they're satirizing television genres but sometimes they have some very very incisive stuff in there about God, Queen, and Country.
I think the grandparent post meant the computer itself should be transparent as in not drawing attention to itself. Not a physically transparent case for the computer. Maybe a better word would have been "unobtrusive."
It's odd that you bring that up. At my old school district the contract with Microsoft was such that teachers could take home the OS and the Office. My new school is in a much smaller district (3 high schools here versus maybe 40 before) and has no such arrangement. From what I can find out from the higher ups, MS doesn't do that in schools anymore. So they're even actively not giving to schools, it's not just an omission.
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Even more so in kiosks where the company that put it there (or the library in this case) has branded their interface. When I go to Best Buy and look something up on one of their computers, it is irrelevant that it's a Windows machine because their frontend is plastered with their logo and lots of graphics to make it look cool.
When people use publically available computers, I don't think we expect them to look and feel like what we have at home.
RaviThe kind of education you describe in your last line does not yield quantifiable, measurable results and is therefore worthless to current education reform. This is why arts programs are being cut. Well it's the latest reason. In a more specific example, my current school district needs money to meet No Child Left Behind requirements and cut interscholastic sports from middle schools to get it.
RaviAnother example of this is Messiah, which if you don't remember was Shiny's (MDK, Sacrifice, Enter the Matrix) 3D "action game" that they said would scale infinitely. That is, the complexity of the scene would dynamically adjust to the computing power (vague I know) available at any given moment. This is better I guess than the frame rate adjusting dynamically. According to them, the game could look better than it did on their own hardware if sufficient computing power was given to it.
Sadly the game was um buggy and a little um not very good. This doesn't diminish their ambitions though. They also pledged to support software renderers until every computer that shipped came with hardware 3D acceleration. When Sacrifice was released in 2000 I don't think that was yet the case. But they tried...
RaviAmenities? Clean air and water are not amenities. Other less obvious environmental causes are important because they will come back to bite you later.
Pollution (if I remember from Econ 110) is a market failure. That is, the monetary cost of pollution does not match its actual cost, because the excess is borne by society in general. Who should pay for this excess cost though? Both the buyer and seller. The market's invisible hand won't make them do it, so someone else's hand has to. Or their foot.
The alternative is for a company like VIA to assume the cost up front to avoid this kind of pollution.
RaviI think Quark wins that prize. I guess he's not a crewmember though. When Worf was on Deep Space Nine he fit in much better than when he was on TNG. So there's that. They might as well have put him in a clown suit on TNG. You remember in Insurrection he got that zit? Ohohoho!
But then since you think Enterprise is any good whatsoever you're probably not the DS9 fanboy that I seem to be.
RaviI think it's a little misguided to think of the Democrat and Republican parties as two strong parties. They are very much the same in their obeisance to paymasters. I don't know if the situation in India is similar, with monied interests having huge influence. The fact of the two major parties in the US creates barriers to entry into the election market (let's not pretend) which you can see in the fact that Ralph Nader was not allowed to attend presidential candidate debates in the 2000 race. Attend. Like sit in the audience. Both parties had their reasons for keeping him out I guess, but they shouldn't be in control of who gets to participate in the debate. In a larger sense as well.
RaviThis is kind of an obvious dig, but pray it does not go to ION. Years ago, the joke would have been John Romero. While he's still a joke, this time the joke is Deus Ex: Invisible War. I can completely see a company wanting to "update the production values and gameplay of a popular franchise to bring it in line with other AAA titles on the market."
RaviAt least in my state, math education is turning away from what I consider math and towards a few (but growing) number of techniques to memorize. Witness schools' emphasis on how many students take AP calculus and then take the AP test. In elementary schools you're absolutely right. Teachers didn't have to learn much math for their major and didn't like having to do that.
I'm secondary ed. and I had to major in math. Because that was what I wanted. I would love to be able to teach in the way you describe but the "business stakeholders" in the state Ed. department have a different vision. It's called Standardized-test-o-vision.
Teachers don't make all that many policy decisions.
RaviI've noticed this too in dialing a phone number, entering my PIN at an ATM, or opening a combination lock. Sadly, I can't answer your question.
RaviWhat about the little paper dust that builds up in anything that move paper rapidly? The copiers here at school build up an impressive amount of powder over time. I guess Sony's not using copy paper, but still...
RaviGet Serious Sam. Also, read the interview at Old Man Murray: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/73.html
RaviFoods. That's what's been missing from the online and offline games that I've been playing. More foods.
RaviOh but it is good business practice. What the government does or not has nothing to do with what makes a business a towering success. The goal of the capitalist is to obtain a monopoly. Artificially restricting their ability to do that doesn't make sense if you _really_ want a free market.
It's called "whatever the market will bear."
Mind you, I believe as you do that the government should do something about this, but it's misguided to say that MS's desire to win by any means necessary is somehow out of context.
RaviI dunno Icewind Dale II didn't have much to do with Icewind Dale.
Besides, in the same way that Sun is using "Java desktop" when it's not Java, they'll probably use Baldur's Gate as a brand name. But really it's not so bad since Baldur's Gate is a city and certainly they could come up with some story about/in it. Unless Baldur's Gate gets destroyed at the end of ToB I couldn't say I never finished it.
RaviAnother poster is exactly right about games being a behavior mod designed to keep you at your computer. What's puzzling me is what you expected? What do you expect from a game after you finish playing it? Are there other games that have handled the postgame well? I'm pretty familiar with games but I don't know of any that continue to reward you after you've received all the awards in the game.
I am, incidentally, considering WoW because I read somewhere at bliz that they're adding new content each month. If that's true, it would justify the monthly fee. Depending on the fee.
RaviThe decision to name it the Java desktop was apparently based on a marketing study. The study showed that more people recognize the Java brand than the Sun brand. I read that actually in another post here but I can't seem to find it. So this is hearsay.
RaviMy, what a great idea you just had!
And such a lovely post about it!
Say, what kind of razor will you be using?
:)
RaviI know others have mentioned this already but the console's protections prevent playing games from other regions, in addition to preventing playing copied games. Certainly there's a significant portion of console modders (if the posts here mean anything) who use mod chips to play out of region.
Now whether or not that's a valid use is another question, but it's at least worth mentioning that the console's protections aren't completely about stopping piracy.
RaviSomewhere at some development house a creative director is being sacked.
RaviBuy or rent Mr. Show on DVD since it's not on anymore. Most of the time they're satirizing television genres but sometimes they have some very very incisive stuff in there about God, Queen, and Country.
RaviI think the grandparent post meant the computer itself should be transparent as in not drawing attention to itself. Not a physically transparent case for the computer. Maybe a better word would have been "unobtrusive."
Correct me if I'm wrong though, grandparent.
RaviThere are orcs?
I'd actually watch a show where the the DOJ orced Microsoft to break apart.
RaviSee if you can find some I'll Fly Away episodes to watch. It kind of tanked at the end, but at the beginning it was a great show about a lawyer.
RaviIt's odd that you bring that up. At my old school district the contract with Microsoft was such that teachers could take home the OS and the Office. My new school is in a much smaller district (3 high schools here versus maybe 40 before) and has no such arrangement. From what I can find out from the higher ups, MS doesn't do that in schools anymore. So they're even actively not giving to schools, it's not just an omission.
Ravi