Introducing preferential voting would help more than tweaking the electoral college. Ignore the title of this link, but consider the basic idea. If you could vote for Stein or Johnson or whomever, and then have your vote flow on to another larger party if they were eliminated, it solves your duopoly problem; the smaller parties aren't wasted votes, and the larger parties have to make deals with them based on their levels of support. Start a Flyover Party for the flyover states if they feel unrepresented. Why not, once the duopoly is broken? Start whatever parties the people actually want.
At least, that looks to be your main problem from my other-side-of-the-world perspective. Fixing the state-based gerrymandering of either side would help also. The parties use that to tilt the electoral college balance.
This and "Just do it" (esp. by sharing the results with school-friends doing the same thing) are the best answers thus far. I'll add a third idea:
No-one has yet mentioned the importance of thinking about the nature of challenges, and so, what games fundamentally are, why they're enjoyable, why there are fundamental limits to that enjoyment in any one game, and how to push them. This book, A Theory of Fun, was extraordinary on those subjects. Might be worth leaving it lying around:
Or better still, go medieval, and just call it patronage.
Support worthy causes (art, architecture, music, science, computing) and receive honour from your peers, who all do the same, at least whenever they need a break from exploiting the peasants.
The real loaded weapons are these people waiting to go off. And without guns, they won't be stopped. They will resort to other things. Poisonings? Gassings? Bombings? Stabbings and slashings? What will we hope to take away from EVERYONE then? Gasoline? Propane?
This argument fails. Unstable people become dangerous when they have an especially depressing week, or they go off the meds. Suicides and homicides happen in this window. If assault weapons aren't at hand then assault weapons won't be used. These are different to bombs, poison or even handguns and rifles. Bombs and mass poisonings take time to plan, by which time a person will usually stabilize again. Stabbings are less likely to be fatal, or numerous, or even successful, and they require more courage. Even handguns or non-automatic rifles take time to load or are harder to aim. But access to an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine mean that almost anyone can reliably put on a massacre. It's much easier to prevent access to such weapons than to make mental illness disappear. When the US Constitution was written, muskets could be loaded and fired three times per minute, if you had practiced well. That was plenty for the purpose of self-defense, or for the people to hold the government to account. There's no constitutional argument for assault weapons, and the "people will just use bombs" argument fails when the dynamics of mental illness are considered.
Mimic was my all-time #1 bad-science movie, for one single, monumental plot hole. In order to develop, the mega-roaches needed selection pressures to favour those that resembled humans, but no humans or other predators were even aware of them, let alone selectively killing off the non-humanoid ones.
We have a winner. There has to be something they themselves want to accomplish by programming. Get that sorted and get out of the way.
I used to have books of (printed!) computer game programs that I would type into my Atari 800XL, which of course led to writing my own once I knew how they worked, and friends with the same interests playing my games and me playing theirs. There was a 1986 edition of Scientific American which had a Mandelbrot set on the cover, and the algorithm inside, and I remember when the first six-hour run successfully produced a 40x40 image of the whole set.
The right tech now depends on what they want to accomplish. But get them to imagine themselves showing their friends their OWN phone app, or web app (whether a game or something else), and you won;t have to worry about their motivation from then on. You just need to be there for questions when they hit a roadblock.
And if they don't like programming, help them be good at what they do like.
I would say mod parent up... But remembered that *I* have mod points. MAHAHAHAHHHH!!!!
Seriously, you just say: "You know that ANYONE can do that, yeah?" when they like something a computer does.
Myself, I took the 1986 Scientific American article with the fractals on the cover and coded up the algorithm on little PC with 64K or RAM, and never looked back. I've used to assume that the question for a ten year old would be "Would you like to write your own game?"... But actually, it's "What do computers do that is cool?" and the realization that literally _anyone_ can do that. It's a level playing field. Anything you can see on a computer, you can take apart or rebuild, and then change to make it do what you want.
Re:Saying "PHP 5.4 Released" isn't that meaningful
on
PHP 5.4 Released
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· Score: 0
well, it's PHP. And the competition is not PHP. So the competition wins.
No, the competition is, for example,.NET, which is unable to win.
Spread across a whole profession that's somewhat more significant that it seems. it's equal to every sixth person getting an hour less sleep. Still not groundbreaking, but at least indicative.
I once made a 13 minute loop of rain sounds for a friend who was in a mental hospital. It was 18 mins originally, but 13 after removing every time a car stopped, or plain flew by, or anything else that would have created a cognizable pattern. Very soothing stuff.
Virtually everyone at my church brings their Bibles on cellphones for when they need to refer to a text; no reason to carry a chunky paper book around as well. Your old eyes can set whatever point size you like.
I suspect that visitors think they're all texting or on Facebook (even when they're not).
Here in Australia, we get American and English magazines equally. I hardly ever burn ISO's for Linux, but rather buy a magazine every few months and so have good-quality boot/install/recover disks around all the time. The articles aren't bad -- I've learned about some cool apps there -- but I buy the mags for the disks mainly. And they're all UK magazines, now that I think about it. This presumably goes back to when Amigas and C64s were hip; there were always gaming magazines with playable demo disks.
I played NetHack for 15 years or so, with two near-ascensions, but have found DungeonCrawl to be more absorbing over the past few years. Vastly more variety and chaos, a better UI (and I mean in console mode) with nav tools like auto-explore, and it's been much more actively maintained.
It's true what they say: NetHack doesn't care if you live or die, but Crawl has a preference. I haven't seen Gran Turismo Faroe Islands, though (that, er, _was_ what you mean by GTFO, ya?)
1) Does copyright apply to random generation? The Shakespeare issue captures the essential point... Would the monkeys hold copyright on their text, having produced it by chance?
2) Is intentionality is required for moral rights of art creation? If I'm camping and a rock falls on my camera and somehow causes a photo to be taken, does the rock have the copyright? What if a monkey falls on the camera, with the same effect? What if the monkey tries to eat the camera, with the same effect? What consciousness of the act of creation is required? In this case, the monkeys framed their reflections in the lens, which was a creative act if using a mirror is a creative act. There can't have been any consciousness of others publishing these images; are the 'portraits' thus portraits to us but not to them?
3) Copyright is a human social construct that prevents the exploitation of creativity to the detriment of authors. Does this have any meaning in whatever system of exchange impresses monkeys?
There must be some kind of case for legal harassment here. If a small company can point to a larger companies doing the same thing written down in the case against them, yet not being sued, then the plaintiff should be asked to show why they have not protected their shareholder's interests and IP -- their ostensible motivation -- by litigating the largest offenders first? Surely the plaintiff would be delighted to catch the biggest, richest fish with their ostensibly valid case? To my mind the only reason to act otherwise would be legal gamesmanship at the literal expense of the smaller defendants.
Slashdot Mirror
I may have a word or two wrong, but from memory, this was the pivotal line in Tehanu, book #4 in Earthsea. Magnificent writing.
Introducing preferential voting would help more than tweaking the electoral college. Ignore the title of this link, but consider the basic idea. If you could vote for Stein or Johnson or whomever, and then have your vote flow on to another larger party if they were eliminated, it solves your duopoly problem; the smaller parties aren't wasted votes, and the larger parties have to make deals with them based on their levels of support. Start a Flyover Party for the flyover states if they feel unrepresented. Why not, once the duopoly is broken? Start whatever parties the people actually want.
http://qz.com/729090/if-america-used-australias-voting-system-theres-no-way-trump-would-win/
At least, that looks to be your main problem from my other-side-of-the-world perspective. Fixing the state-based gerrymandering of either side would help also. The parties use that to tilt the electoral college balance.
I don't mind it.
All changes look bad initially.
Prediction: After a week non-one will notice. We will have always been at war with EastAsia.
This and "Just do it" (esp. by sharing the results with school-friends doing the same thing) are the best answers thus far. I'll add a third idea:
No-one has yet mentioned the importance of thinking about the nature of challenges, and so, what games fundamentally are, why they're enjoyable, why there are fundamental limits to that enjoyment in any one game, and how to push them. This book, A Theory of Fun, was extraordinary on those subjects. Might be worth leaving it lying around:
http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Fun-Game-Design/dp/1932111972
In the moderately glorious Warrumbungles.... http://warrumbungleregion.com....
Or better still, go medieval, and just call it patronage. Support worthy causes (art, architecture, music, science, computing) and receive honour from your peers, who all do the same, at least whenever they need a break from exploiting the peasants.
Too commercial. Add news or something that matters?
This argument fails. Unstable people become dangerous when they have an especially depressing week, or they go off the meds. Suicides and homicides happen in this window. If assault weapons aren't at hand then assault weapons won't be used. These are different to bombs, poison or even handguns and rifles. Bombs and mass poisonings take time to plan, by which time a person will usually stabilize again. Stabbings are less likely to be fatal, or numerous, or even successful, and they require more courage. Even handguns or non-automatic rifles take time to load or are harder to aim. But access to an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine mean that almost anyone can reliably put on a massacre. It's much easier to prevent access to such weapons than to make mental illness disappear. When the US Constitution was written, muskets could be loaded and fired three times per minute, if you had practiced well. That was plenty for the purpose of self-defense, or for the people to hold the government to account. There's no constitutional argument for assault weapons, and the "people will just use bombs" argument fails when the dynamics of mental illness are considered.
Mimic was my all-time #1 bad-science movie, for one single, monumental plot hole. In order to develop, the mega-roaches needed selection pressures to favour those that resembled humans, but no humans or other predators were even aware of them, let alone selectively killing off the non-humanoid ones.
We have a winner. There has to be something they themselves want to accomplish by programming. Get that sorted and get out of the way.
I used to have books of (printed!) computer game programs that I would type into my Atari 800XL, which of course led to writing my own once I knew how they worked, and friends with the same interests playing my games and me playing theirs. There was a 1986 edition of Scientific American which had a Mandelbrot set on the cover, and the algorithm inside, and I remember when the first six-hour run successfully produced a 40x40 image of the whole set.
The right tech now depends on what they want to accomplish. But get them to imagine themselves showing their friends their OWN phone app, or web app (whether a game or something else), and you won;t have to worry about their motivation from then on. You just need to be there for questions when they hit a roadblock.
And if they don't like programming, help them be good at what they do like.
I can't use my mod points when I've posted in the thread.
Mod +1 Informative...
I would say mod parent up... But remembered that *I* have mod points. MAHAHAHAHHHH!!!!
Seriously, you just say: "You know that ANYONE can do that, yeah?" when they like something a computer does.
Myself, I took the 1986 Scientific American article with the fractals on the cover and coded up the algorithm on little PC with 64K or RAM, and never looked back. I've used to assume that the question for a ten year old would be "Would you like to write your own game?" ... But actually, it's "What do computers do that is cool?" and the realization that literally _anyone_ can do that. It's a level playing field. Anything you can see on a computer, you can take apart or rebuild, and then change to make it do what you want.
well, it's PHP. And the competition is not PHP. So the competition wins.
No, the competition is, for example, .NET, which is unable to win.
Spread across a whole profession that's somewhat more significant that it seems. it's equal to every sixth person getting an hour less sleep. Still not groundbreaking, but at least indicative.
I once made a 13 minute loop of rain sounds for a friend who was in a mental hospital. It was 18 mins originally, but 13 after removing every time a car stopped, or plain flew by, or anything else that would have created a cognizable pattern. Very soothing stuff.
His claim to have written "software you use everyday" is giflib; he stopped maintaining it in 1994, but it's in lots of browsers and browsing devices.
Virtually everyone at my church brings their Bibles on cellphones for when they need to refer to a text; no reason to carry a chunky paper book around as well. Your old eyes can set whatever point size you like. I suspect that visitors think they're all texting or on Facebook (even when they're not).
The problem is cracking new languages, often having no written script. That's what Bible Translators mainly do.
Here in Australia, we get American and English magazines equally. I hardly ever burn ISO's for Linux, but rather buy a magazine every few months and so have good-quality boot/install/recover disks around all the time. The articles aren't bad -- I've learned about some cool apps there -- but I buy the mags for the disks mainly. And they're all UK magazines, now that I think about it. This presumably goes back to when Amigas and C64s were hip; there were always gaming magazines with playable demo disks.
Mod parent up. I don't know whether profiling works or not, but that final comment was certainly tacked on without justification.
Their work-week is now in sync with Aust and NZ, rather than only having four days that coincide.
I played NetHack for 15 years or so, with two near-ascensions, but have found DungeonCrawl to be more absorbing over the past few years. Vastly more variety and chaos, a better UI (and I mean in console mode) with nav tools like auto-explore, and it's been much more actively maintained. It's true what they say: NetHack doesn't care if you live or die, but Crawl has a preference. I haven't seen Gran Turismo Faroe Islands, though (that, er, _was_ what you mean by GTFO, ya?)
Q. What are the odds that 50 yrs of technological progress would slash the stellar travel time, so that a 100-yr trip would likely be pointless?
1) Does copyright apply to random generation? The Shakespeare issue captures the essential point... Would the monkeys hold copyright on their text, having produced it by chance?
2) Is intentionality is required for moral rights of art creation? If I'm camping and a rock falls on my camera and somehow causes a photo to be taken, does the rock have the copyright? What if a monkey falls on the camera, with the same effect? What if the monkey tries to eat the camera, with the same effect? What consciousness of the act of creation is required? In this case, the monkeys framed their reflections in the lens, which was a creative act if using a mirror is a creative act. There can't have been any consciousness of others publishing these images; are the 'portraits' thus portraits to us but not to them?
3) Copyright is a human social construct that prevents the exploitation of creativity to the detriment of authors. Does this have any meaning in whatever system of exchange impresses monkeys?
There must be some kind of case for legal harassment here. If a small company can point to a larger companies doing the same thing written down in the case against them, yet not being sued, then the plaintiff should be asked to show why they have not protected their shareholder's interests and IP -- their ostensible motivation -- by litigating the largest offenders first? Surely the plaintiff would be delighted to catch the biggest, richest fish with their ostensibly valid case? To my mind the only reason to act otherwise would be legal gamesmanship at the literal expense of the smaller defendants.