You're correct. The level of benefit to everyone else really depends on how long you spend seeding the file to others after your download is complete. As I recall, "BitTorrent engages in tit-for-tat with its peers" so even while you're downloading you're helping, but if you leave the transfer running afterwards for a while, you'll be helping more. In general, I leave the torrent running at least long enough for 1:1 upload bytes/download bytes.
Sorry if this is redundant; I looked at the other responses and they all seemed to be about buns and Twinkies.
I proctored a session of the SAT a couple of weeks ago. In the manual it excludes calculators with QWERTY input devices but doesn't exclude graphing calculators per se. It also mentions specifically that students are not required to clear the memory of their calculator before they begin testing.
From looking at the test, I'm not sure that any programs would help. I think the College Board is more worried about portable dictionaries on verbal sections, and therefore makes us go around to check that kids aren't using their calculators on verbal sections.
RL characters continue to kill with impunity in the MV, but discuss the ethics -- isn't it as bad as killing an RL person, since it essentially is? (Why is Neo less than a serial murderer for what he did in the lobby, since those policemen thought they were pretty real?)
I've been wondering this same thing. The way the first movie explains it (if I remember right) is that even though those people don't know they're being controlled by a system, they are still the enemy. So willing or not, they deserve whatever they get for being part of the system. That pretty much ruined the movie for me because it's so flimsy. None of those policemen deserved to die (and somewhere, each of their bodies did actually die, right?), it was just an excuse for lots of gunfire and running around.
The parent post is right on all counts. I have one suggestion though: If you've just arrived at the school, you may want to find out what the atmosphere in the faculty room is like before you knock on the door there. At my old school, everyone ignored kids knocking on the door and would be ill-disposed to one if they knew who it was. At my current school, there isn't that mentality at all. I'm a teacher, btw.
I've often wondered the exact same thing. It would be nice to have my loyalty rewarded in some way other than decreased availability of popular movies:)
There are, after all, competing services popping up a lot lately.
There's sort of a typical American way of thinking that says "fear is weakness." Sometimes fear is adaptive, but only when you have some specific information, like there's an armed thug in front of you so you avoid sudden movements. The problem is that there are things to be afraid of like multiple specific encroachments on intellectual freedom, but the government would like you to have a more general dread. That way, when they eventually say that all searches and seizures should be legal because anything less hampers anti-terrorist efforts, people will think "oh. Well, in that case..."
You probably understand all this already, or you wouldn't have posted that post. It's just frustrating being here now.
When I joined Netflix I remember reading that if two users have the same movie in their queue, then the one who has had it in there longer will receive it first. If the conclusions in this analysis are near the truth, then the priority system doesn't work that way. I can't find any reference to this method of priority decision on the site so it could be that I'm inventing this in my memory.
I actually don't mind so much, since it seems to even out the user experience betweeen customers. People who don't use the system very much one month have greater access the next month, and the inverse is also true, sort of pushing both experiences to the middle. Personally, the order of movies in my rental queue isn't strictly determined and so it doesn't matter much to me whether I get the movies in order or slightly out of order. The only exceptions are with TV series (where a season spans multiple discs) and movies/sequels.
As I understand it, many FPS have linux servers, but not clients. However, if they use a Quake engine then it seems like there will be better chance for a linux client. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on the Linux client vs Linux server answer.
The "forensic watermark" system is designed to be used with digital projectors, which show movies stored on computer discs rather than traditional 35-millimeter film. Only a small number of theaters have digital projectors, although it is expected that most theaters will go digital by the end of the decade.
It seems like metal detectors and tactical espionage action are stopgap measures at best. The distribution of a digital original to theaters pretty much ends the need for a camera at all. Many pirated movies these days are rips (if not outright duplicates) of advance DVD copies. If the industry is worried now about movies being leaked before their major domestic release, wait till the pirates get their hands on the actual discs theaters use to present the films.
These public figures denouncing video games would get a lot farther if they didn't seem to think that games provided actual skill training. Another post in this thread correctly points out that using a gun in a computer game (with auto-aim and mouselook) is infintely different from using a gun in real life.
However, take a game like Hitman, or more recently Hitman 2. In this game, you're trying to figure out how to kill someone without arousing suspicion, and maybe even without being noticed. If you already possess skills with a gun, the mentality you adopt for Hitman would be a bad mix out in the world. I admit it takes a disturbed person to play a game and then start viewing the world that way. As a gamer, I also have to admit that it's much easier in a game than in real life to find situations in real life where you can practice
walking around knocking people out and taking their clothes
planting a car bomb in the sewer under someone's limousine
sneaking up on someone and garrotting them
without fear of any real consequences. I think it's the interaction that differentiates a game from a violent movie.
But the person has to already be somewhat disturbed. So I think it's irresponsible to make games with increasing violence and gore, and sad that those are the games that sell so big, but it shouldn't be illegal.
But...I can't imagine any politician getting up there and saying, "this is irresponsible; I'm not saying it should be illegal though."
You're right my post does make it sound like that. I don't blame ION so much as Eidos for letting Daikatana drag things down the way they did. In their mind. I mean, couldn't they have pulled the plug? If the "internal memos" I read during the Daikatana debacle were anything close to true, Eidos should have pulled the plug. Games have been cancelled for less.
It's also too bad that the whole team was fired as soon as the game shipped. Who gets the money when we buy Anachronox now? Eidos? Screw that. One of the fired devs recommended on some forum somewhere that people pirate the game, since he wasn't going to get any money even if they did buy it. If I hadn't bought it the day it shipped, I would have done that instead. I hope at least some of my money went to the devs. These are, after all, the people who released a patch after they were fired to allow me to play under Windows 2000. Something even Eidos wouldn't do.
Being that it is, at its heart, a console RPG, Anachronox is a really great PC game. I think it just took too long to develop and ION had its own problems at that time. Anybody know what Tom Hall is up to now? PocketPC games. I'm sure they enjoy making those, but I'd much rather see a second Anachronox game. Sorry about this being offtopic:|
I administrate the Pinnacle gradebook at my school, and last year I got 20% of all gradebook questions on the last day of school from people who never used it until it was imperative. You're probably not tech-phobic but please access your gradebook before the last week, if only for troubleshooting purposes.
Schools don't do things like online gradebooks to make life easier for teachers or to provide data for parents. Instead, this is part of a larger trend:
More systems to gather data from the lower levels (teachers being the lowest level)
Fewer systems to disseminate information to the lower levels.
The benefit of these programs for administrations and school boards is that if teachers don't update their electronic gradebooks regularly enough, they're the bad guys. New and old teachers at my school keep detailed paper records but shun the Pinnacle gradebook because it's so unfriendly and frankly a little weird. When you ask someone to take on an extra responsibility, you have a tacit obligation to make it easy for them. Pinnacle doesn't do that, and also makes it very simple for the higher-ups to put new requirements on teachers. For example, this year we went to quarter-finals instead of end-of-year finals. Each time teachers give a quarter final, they must enter raw scores, scale the scores by hand, enter scaled scores, and add a comment to each student interpreting their score on the test. And get this: none of this data entry means anything because those numbers are not used for any computation. It's just record keeping for someone else.
He may not have a choice. I teach public school and I have limited control over what I'm teaching next year. I'm certified in Maryland to teach "Mathematics 7-12" so my principal could assign anything to me, from Algebra I to "Calculus II", or even "Business Math" about which I know even less. In fact, at my old school I was required to teach students how to pass the Maryland Functional Mathematics Test and I found it to be beyond my capability. There's only so much I can do for students in 8th grade who can't subtract whole numbers.
Depending on how this person is employed, it might be a breach of contract to decline to teach a class, regardless of grounds. This would be a way to force someone out: give him a class he can't teach knowing that he can't teach it, then cite poor evaluations by students among whatever other reasons the department might have. I've found that a lot of problems in education are not attributable to teachers. But I'm biased:)
I don't know what "zero tolerance" policies you're talking about. I've only ever seen a "zero tolerance for fighting" policy which translates to "if you fight in school, we're calling the police to come and get you." In those cases, the guilty parties identify themselves. Are there other school-based "zero tolerance" policies that work more like government fishing expeditions?
A few years ago when I was teaching middle school, I wanted a way to show wireframes in 3D games so I could take screenshots and use them with my 6th and 7th graders as examples of geometry in application. Most often, I would write to developers and ask them if there was still a way to view wireframes. They seemed to like this question, and would always send a pretty thoughtful response, but I did notice over the years that the availability of this feature seemed to disappear. I guess cheat potential has something to do with that effect.
By the way, the best screenshots I got were from UltraHLE with N64 ROMs.
Not only is Pikmin a puzzle game, but so are some of these squad-based tactics games. I'm thinking mostly of The Incredible Machine as the prototype for these games, or Lemmings. Take Fallout Tactics (from a couple of years ago.) That was basically The Incredible Machine with rifles and grenades instead of hamster wheels and conveyor belts. The same is true for Star Trek: Away Team (but no one played that so I don't know if it counts), Commandos (the first one, not sure about number 2), and to a certain extent Hitman 1. Any game that requires the player to find the right spot and put the correct piece there is fundamentally a puzzle game, no?
Until people stop putting these elements into their games, I don't think we can count the genre out.
There was Urban Chaos, Drakan, Space Bunnies Must Die (as you pointed out), Heavy Metal FAKK2, um...Oni. Actually I guess a lot of those came out long after Tomb Raider. That's hardly "every other game" though, so you're right.
I think it's more appropriate to attribute all of those games to an older one: Prince of Persia. Many many games today are just Prince of Persia in 3 dimensions. Interestingly, the actual Prince of Persia 3D was not as impressive as many clones of the original's gameplay.
I wouldn't have thought of this if you hadn't said anything, but the cable industry's video-on-demand and headend PVR ambitions could be aided by this. You're right that for end users it doesn't accrue much benefit, but for some of these people who want to provide DVD or HDTV quality on demand, it might.
Also, streaming is only useful if you're prepared to watch the movie at the time you request it. If, instead, this was used as a means of distribution (like the instant-book-printing I heard about a few years ago) it would make sense.
I think he's right that everyone has their own slant. I haven't read all the posts so sorry if this source has already been mentioned, but check Z Magazine for a different slant than you'll get from a lot of places. They also have articles that express a historical context, but keep the slant in mind the whole time, please:)
Slashdot Mirror
You're correct. The level of benefit to everyone else really depends on how long you spend seeding the file to others after your download is complete. As I recall, "BitTorrent engages in tit-for-tat with its peers" so even while you're downloading you're helping, but if you leave the transfer running afterwards for a while, you'll be helping more. In general, I leave the torrent running at least long enough for 1:1 upload bytes/download bytes.
Sorry if this is redundant; I looked at the other responses and they all seemed to be about buns and Twinkies.
Ravi
There's Mechassault for the PC? Or is it in development? I hadn't heard anything about this.
I wonder if he's just blowing smoke on the "synergy between PC and console gaming divisions" answer.
Ravi
I proctored a session of the SAT a couple of weeks ago. In the manual it excludes calculators with QWERTY input devices but doesn't exclude graphing calculators per se. It also mentions specifically that students are not required to clear the memory of their calculator before they begin testing.
From looking at the test, I'm not sure that any programs would help. I think the College Board is more worried about portable dictionaries on verbal sections, and therefore makes us go around to check that kids aren't using their calculators on verbal sections.
Ravi
I've been wondering this same thing. The way the first movie explains it (if I remember right) is that even though those people don't know they're being controlled by a system, they are still the enemy. So willing or not, they deserve whatever they get for being part of the system. That pretty much ruined the movie for me because it's so flimsy. None of those policemen deserved to die (and somewhere, each of their bodies did actually die, right?), it was just an excuse for lots of gunfire and running around.
If you ask me.
Ravi
The parent post is right on all counts. I have one suggestion though: If you've just arrived at the school, you may want to find out what the atmosphere in the faculty room is like before you knock on the door there. At my old school, everyone ignored kids knocking on the door and would be ill-disposed to one if they knew who it was. At my current school, there isn't that mentality at all. I'm a teacher, btw.
Ravi
I've often wondered the exact same thing. It would be nice to have my loyalty rewarded in some way other than decreased availability of popular movies :)
There are, after all, competing services popping up a lot lately.
Ravi
There's sort of a typical American way of thinking that says "fear is weakness." Sometimes fear is adaptive, but only when you have some specific information, like there's an armed thug in front of you so you avoid sudden movements. The problem is that there are things to be afraid of like multiple specific encroachments on intellectual freedom, but the government would like you to have a more general dread. That way, when they eventually say that all searches and seizures should be legal because anything less hampers anti-terrorist efforts, people will think "oh. Well, in that case..."
You probably understand all this already, or you wouldn't have posted that post. It's just frustrating being here now.
Ravi
When I joined Netflix I remember reading that if two users have the same movie in their queue, then the one who has had it in there longer will receive it first. If the conclusions in this analysis are near the truth, then the priority system doesn't work that way. I can't find any reference to this method of priority decision on the site so it could be that I'm inventing this in my memory.
I actually don't mind so much, since it seems to even out the user experience betweeen customers. People who don't use the system very much one month have greater access the next month, and the inverse is also true, sort of pushing both experiences to the middle. Personally, the order of movies in my rental queue isn't strictly determined and so it doesn't matter much to me whether I get the movies in order or slightly out of order. The only exceptions are with TV series (where a season spans multiple discs) and movies/sequels.
Ravi
As I understand it, many FPS have linux servers, but not clients. However, if they use a Quake engine then it seems like there will be better chance for a linux client. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on the Linux client vs Linux server answer.
Assuming anyone reads this :)
Ravi
It seems like metal detectors and tactical espionage action are stopgap measures at best. The distribution of a digital original to theaters pretty much ends the need for a camera at all. Many pirated movies these days are rips (if not outright duplicates) of advance DVD copies. If the industry is worried now about movies being leaked before their major domestic release, wait till the pirates get their hands on the actual discs theaters use to present the films.
Ravi
These public figures denouncing video games would get a lot farther if they didn't seem to think that games provided actual skill training. Another post in this thread correctly points out that using a gun in a computer game (with auto-aim and mouselook) is infintely different from using a gun in real life.
However, take a game like Hitman, or more recently Hitman 2. In this game, you're trying to figure out how to kill someone without arousing suspicion, and maybe even without being noticed. If you already possess skills with a gun, the mentality you adopt for Hitman would be a bad mix out in the world. I admit it takes a disturbed person to play a game and then start viewing the world that way. As a gamer, I also have to admit that it's much easier in a game than in real life to find situations in real life where you can practice
- walking around knocking people out and taking their clothes
- planting a car bomb in the sewer under someone's limousine
- sneaking up on someone and garrotting them
without fear of any real consequences. I think it's the interaction that differentiates a game from a violent movie.But the person has to already be somewhat disturbed. So I think it's irresponsible to make games with increasing violence and gore, and sad that those are the games that sell so big, but it shouldn't be illegal.
But...I can't imagine any politician getting up there and saying, "this is irresponsible; I'm not saying it should be illegal though."
Ravi
You're right my post does make it sound like that. I don't blame ION so much as Eidos for letting Daikatana drag things down the way they did. In their mind. I mean, couldn't they have pulled the plug? If the "internal memos" I read during the Daikatana debacle were anything close to true, Eidos should have pulled the plug. Games have been cancelled for less.
And I blame them generally for just being Eidos :D
Ravi
There used to be. By all accounts they'll be back but I stopped holding my breath about 6 months ago.
Anyone know more?
Ravi
It's also too bad that the whole team was fired as soon as the game shipped. Who gets the money when we buy Anachronox now? Eidos? Screw that. One of the fired devs recommended on some forum somewhere that people pirate the game, since he wasn't going to get any money even if they did buy it. If I hadn't bought it the day it shipped, I would have done that instead. I hope at least some of my money went to the devs. These are, after all, the people who released a patch after they were fired to allow me to play under Windows 2000. Something even Eidos wouldn't do.
Being that it is, at its heart, a console RPG, Anachronox is a really great PC game. I think it just took too long to develop and ION had its own problems at that time. Anybody know what Tom Hall is up to now? PocketPC games. I'm sure they enjoy making those, but I'd much rather see a second Anachronox game. Sorry about this being offtopic :|
Ravi
I administrate the Pinnacle gradebook at my school, and last year I got 20% of all gradebook questions on the last day of school from people who never used it until it was imperative. You're probably not tech-phobic but please access your gradebook before the last week, if only for troubleshooting purposes.
Ravi
Schools don't do things like online gradebooks to make life easier for teachers or to provide data for parents. Instead, this is part of a larger trend:
- More systems to gather data from the lower levels (teachers being the lowest level)
- Fewer systems to disseminate information to the lower levels.
The benefit of these programs for administrations and school boards is that if teachers don't update their electronic gradebooks regularly enough, they're the bad guys. New and old teachers at my school keep detailed paper records but shun the Pinnacle gradebook because it's so unfriendly and frankly a little weird. When you ask someone to take on an extra responsibility, you have a tacit obligation to make it easy for them. Pinnacle doesn't do that, and also makes it very simple for the higher-ups to put new requirements on teachers. For example, this year we went to quarter-finals instead of end-of-year finals. Each time teachers give a quarter final, they must enter raw scores, scale the scores by hand, enter scaled scores, and add a comment to each student interpreting their score on the test. And get this: none of this data entry means anything because those numbers are not used for any computation. It's just record keeping for someone else.Ravi
He may not have a choice. I teach public school and I have limited control over what I'm teaching next year. I'm certified in Maryland to teach "Mathematics 7-12" so my principal could assign anything to me, from Algebra I to "Calculus II", or even "Business Math" about which I know even less. In fact, at my old school I was required to teach students how to pass the Maryland Functional Mathematics Test and I found it to be beyond my capability. There's only so much I can do for students in 8th grade who can't subtract whole numbers.
Depending on how this person is employed, it might be a breach of contract to decline to teach a class, regardless of grounds. This would be a way to force someone out: give him a class he can't teach knowing that he can't teach it, then cite poor evaluations by students among whatever other reasons the department might have. I've found that a lot of problems in education are not attributable to teachers. But I'm biased :)
Ravi
I don't know what "zero tolerance" policies you're talking about. I've only ever seen a "zero tolerance for fighting" policy which translates to "if you fight in school, we're calling the police to come and get you." In those cases, the guilty parties identify themselves. Are there other school-based "zero tolerance" policies that work more like government fishing expeditions?
Ravi
Wow there are already like 50000 responses to this and my threshold only lists 8 worthy ones. Is it now pointless to post? I guess we'll find out:
Ravi
A few years ago when I was teaching middle school, I wanted a way to show wireframes in 3D games so I could take screenshots and use them with my 6th and 7th graders as examples of geometry in application. Most often, I would write to developers and ask them if there was still a way to view wireframes. They seemed to like this question, and would always send a pretty thoughtful response, but I did notice over the years that the availability of this feature seemed to disappear. I guess cheat potential has something to do with that effect.
By the way, the best screenshots I got were from UltraHLE with N64 ROMs.
Ravi
What does this article say besides "some people cheat at online games and developers don't all agree on how it should be handled"?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Ravi
Not only is Pikmin a puzzle game, but so are some of these squad-based tactics games. I'm thinking mostly of The Incredible Machine as the prototype for these games, or Lemmings. Take Fallout Tactics (from a couple of years ago.) That was basically The Incredible Machine with rifles and grenades instead of hamster wheels and conveyor belts. The same is true for Star Trek: Away Team (but no one played that so I don't know if it counts), Commandos (the first one, not sure about number 2), and to a certain extent Hitman 1. Any game that requires the player to find the right spot and put the correct piece there is fundamentally a puzzle game, no?
Until people stop putting these elements into their games, I don't think we can count the genre out.
Ravi
There was Urban Chaos, Drakan, Space Bunnies Must Die (as you pointed out), Heavy Metal FAKK2, um...Oni. Actually I guess a lot of those came out long after Tomb Raider. That's hardly "every other game" though, so you're right.
I think it's more appropriate to attribute all of those games to an older one: Prince of Persia. Many many games today are just Prince of Persia in 3 dimensions. Interestingly, the actual Prince of Persia 3D was not as impressive as many clones of the original's gameplay.
OK, maybe it's not that "interesting."
Ravi
I wouldn't have thought of this if you hadn't said anything, but the cable industry's video-on-demand and headend PVR ambitions could be aided by this. You're right that for end users it doesn't accrue much benefit, but for some of these people who want to provide DVD or HDTV quality on demand, it might.
Also, streaming is only useful if you're prepared to watch the movie at the time you request it. If, instead, this was used as a means of distribution (like the instant-book-printing I heard about a few years ago) it would make sense.
Ravi
I think he's right that everyone has their own slant. I haven't read all the posts so sorry if this source has already been mentioned, but check Z Magazine for a different slant than you'll get from a lot of places. They also have articles that express a historical context, but keep the slant in mind the whole time, please :)
Ravi