I absolutely second that endorsement. We've been using NetApp Filers for about five years now for everything from direct FC storage for Oracle, to back-end storage for media streaming/serving, to a fileserver acting as a gateway between two LANs to give us a virus-checking point and cross-platform access for Win, Mac, Linux, and Solaris clients.
The Filers perform outstandingly and do everything they're touted to do (no vaporware yet!). The machines themselves, however, are nothing compared to the service from NetApp. The Admin (only half-jokingly) has said "when a package from NetApp shows up on my desk, I know I must have lost a drive in one of the Filers." I guess it's not the cheapest storage available, though their pricing is certainly competitive, but what you get for the money isn't available anywhere else I've found, and I spend a lot of time evaluating and buying storage.
Not that you asked, but their NetCache product is outstanding as well.
As the head of IT for a nonprofit organization, I managed to hook up with a local college with an internship program. I've had one or more interns a year for about five years now. For one reason or another they've been willing to work for the experience. Since I can't afford to pay much (sometimes not at all), I try to get the interns projects in their areas of interest. It's been great to have them, there's always a lot more work than the time/manpower to do it. The interns get mentors who treat them like people and give them a lot of attention, and at the end they get a fair recommendation from me if they want one. I'll bet that approaching other nonprofits would get similar results. "You're willing to work as a volunteer? Sure, what do you want to do!"
I know a lot of students (most students) can't afford to work for nothing, but maybe squeezing in an hour or two a week of volunteer work (you could cut out a little Slashdot reading;-)) could net you experience, networking, and a little good Karma (not on Slashdot). Plus it would be a really good habit to have, and to keep.
I have three or four watches that hang on necklaces as pendants. The antique ones are best because when these were common, the makers figured out to make the clock face upside-down so it can be easily read by the wearer. The modern makers seem to have forgotten the practicalities, since they're more "please look at my chest to find out what time it is" with the 12 at the top.
What I've been keeping an eye out for years to find is a pendant watch on a pin clasp. The kind that British nurses, and others with better things to do with their hands, used to wear (at least they did on TV and in movies). It really seems as if that ought to be a more common configuration since it seems as if it would be useful. I have found several clip watches, some in the shape of interesting steel animals and such. Just nothing really jewelry-like.
Back when I wore a lot of vests to work (gotta love the 80's) I enjoyed pocket watches. Those are less functional than most, requiring a lot of motions to figure out what time it is, but they are fun, and always attract notice.
Maybe Fuze could make a blue-LED, swarovski crystal, binary, kinetic watch on a necklace. I'd buy one.
As someone firmly addicted to PerplexCity (perplexcity.com), which is a cruelly addicting crossover between ARG and CCG, I'd have to say that there's something to this ARG thing.
So apparently an artist should endeavor to have his work appeal to as few people as possible?
I read that quote to mean that art is an expression by the artist of something personal, without respect to whether that expression resonates with the audience. It seems to me that videogames transcend that "one way" definition of art. Really new and innovative games come from creators who express personal concepts and images in ways that are inherently interactive. Unlike passive forms of quasi-art, like commercials or billboards, videogames, to be successful as both art and game, demand that the audience be pulled into the vision. Anticipating the reactions of the audience while maintaining a consistent expression of an idea and working to deliberately create that "resonance" is a highly complex form of art. Rather than leaving the audience blindly interpreting in order to see an idea as the artist did, the videogame artist has created a world in which the audience can participate in expressing the idea. The player is part of the art.
Obviously the quality of videogames-as-art differs a lot. Many games are just a rehash of previous games, with unimaginitive elements. IMHO that should be the larger part of the "art/not-art" discrimination. We've all had games that inspired our sense of "beauty" enough to be as memorable as any painting on a wall. It would be hard to play Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Lunatic Fringe, or even some primitive prehistoric games like Centipede and not feel that the creators had expressed something beautiful.
I used vi for note-taking. When studying for the Bar, I could easily grep all of the files in my class directory structure to find quick specific information wherever it resided.
I also used a few specific key character combinations in my notes all the way through school so that I could search for certain kinds of information (indicating items I expected to see on exams, good quotes from professors, references to books I'd like to read, that kind of thing). As long as you have a method for taking notes, text files are perfectly sufficient!
Note-taking software is just today's version of the padded three-ring Garfield binder of yesterday (erm...maybe a few yesterdays ago).
I've never liked the phrase "information wants to be free." I prefer "ideas want to be free." Art, music, theories, paradigms, processes, designs, schemas...those are the things that have the potential to grow and be useful only if shared. They get combined into larger and more complex ideas. They're hopelessly complicated to attribute, and nearly every new idea is composed of bits of old ideas. Assigning "ownership" to creative works, and particularly for long periods of time, simply prevents new ideas from occurring (or gets new-idea-creators sued into oblivion). Ideas should be free, as in air.
Data, on the other hand, comes in a lot of forms. Some of those forms, like data collected in government-sponsored studies, should ALSO be free. Free because we've already paid for it. Free, as in beer. Other forms of data don't "want to be free," and personal information like medical records are surely one of those. Of course, there are some reasonable exceptions. Like aggregated disease statistics.
With data, I think there is a balance. I'm a privacy fanatic, but I'd surely hate to see us in as big a mess with regulating the use of personal information as we have with copyright regulation. Good grief, can you imagine if we all acted like the RIAA, suing friends for telling other friends about our lousy bowling scores?
Part of where the line is drawn for me (and the "fair use" doctrine relies heavily on this) is the use to which data is put. Since uses for others'personal information is almost entirely either prurient or commercial in nature, I strongly disfavor that sort of "sharing." It's not cognitive dissonance to dislike seeing people getting personal monetary or "prurient" gain from the uncompensated work of other people, but to be totally fine with non-selfish uses.
Just because this can't be reduced to a short catch-phrase doesn't mean it's inconsistent. Life is complicated. Millions of people who would never STEAL anything under any circumstances instinctively realize that while downloading a song they haven't paid for isn't WRONG, but that downloading and using someone else's credit card number IS wrong. It should be obvious that this is complicated, but that reasonable rules can be derived.
I'll point out your post to my husband. Always nice when a customer likes the product enough to recommend it!
Put the credit where it's due though;-) Not with executives or cheap contract coders. They have a consummately professional and skilled in-house development staff.
You beat me to it. My husband works for them, they're sort of the Microsoft of staff scheduling, but only in the corporation sense, not the bad product sense;-).
They're actually pretty forward-thinking when it comes to technology. I've been impressed with what I know of the staff scheduling product, ANSOS One-Staff and how well it's developed and maintained. These people are serious about good software maintenance. The product is evolving well too, my husband did a substantial amount of the design on the Web interface for the current version.
I've been told not to start an "EA wives" sort of thread here, so I'll stop at just complimenting the product.;-).
My Department manages mail servers with ~400 mail accounts. We would say that the spam problem has increased (along with the virus-generated-email problem) because we see the reports generated by the mailserver and filter. Our users, however, seem to have forgotten that spam is a problem at all. They have forgotten that mere months ago they received dozens (or in some cases hundreds) of spam messages per day. Now they receive few or none, and when they do they send them to us as trouble tickets! At the same time, looking at the growing number of messages hitting our servers (we filter out ~90% as spam at this point) it's pretty clear that spam has gotten worse since CAN-SPAM rather than better.
So it really depends on who you ask. Users may not even realize that their ISP or employer is aggressively filtering. To them it just looks as if spam has evaporated.
I wonder if we're actually filtering TOO well. With bosses having only slightly pointier hair, it might be hard to justify the budget amount we plow into spam/virus filtering. I've been tempted to knock the filter down a few percent to admit more spam, just to keep people remembering it's a problem! (except then I'd get more too)
I've toyed with the idea of what it might be like if people driving could hear each other. People are certainly un-civil in face-to-face situations as well, but not nearly as un-civil as they are in quasi-anonymous settings like driving in dense traffic. If people could hear what others are saying to them when they're rude, maybe we'd be less rude. Most people who cut off other drivers or do other blatantly selfish (and stupid) things to "get ahead" in traffic, would never attempt the equivalent in person. For instance, in a grocery store line: if someone cut in, they'd be given to understand that their behavior was not ok.
Plus, I bet that if we could hear each other in cars, a lot of what we take for rudeness would just turn out to be stupidity or inattentiveness. I get a lot less angry at someone who screws up because they're stupid or weren't paying attention than I do at someone who intended to be a jerk. I bet that it would cut way down on so-called "road rage."
I did RTFA, but I think intra-car voice communications would be an interesting outgrowth to pursue.
Uh, yeah, the problem must be with four-year-olds playing violent video games. That's the FIRST problem with what you said. Because of course, most kids enter school around age five. Sure, some kids may start that early (my three-year-old is rather talented with some games that don't require a lot of manual dexterity) but I think we're really talking about kids with money and access. Surely not younger than say, seven or eight. So those kids are in school. Why, exactly, should we be condemning women (or anyone else) to a horrid life trapped in the home just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the kiddies to come home from school? School-aged kids are in supervised institutional settings during the day whether their parents work or not.
The second thing wrong with what you posted is that you seem to think that this alleged "nuclear family" was, at any point in our history, the "norm." That would be incorrect. Maybe at one time it was more the norm on TV shows than it is now, but it has never been the norm in actual society. So again, not a valid argument that some dire change in families has caused some alleged increase in bad-kid-ness. I highly recommend Stephanie Coontz's 1992 book _The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap_. It's full of beautiful and verifiable hard data about family groups in the US.
Finally, take a look at the horrors created in the 1950's by the attempt to persuade people to live Leave it to Beaver family lives, essentially what you seem to be advocating. There's nothing quite like compulsory housewifery to cause alcoholism, drug addiction, mental disorders, suicide, and extremely bad parenting. Those poor Fifties women, trying to build this mythical nuclear family ideal...ouch. That's the LAST thing we need. (Heck, if those women had had more violent video games themselves, maybe THEY would have been killing their spouses in greater numbers!;-))
Obviously some people enjoy that sort of lifestyle, and if they can afford it, more power to them. As for who might be left to raise the kids for the rest of us...well, maybe you should be pointing fingers at all of the early-retiree grandparents who don't lift a finger to take care of their families as grandparents-past used to do.;-)
That's what I say...get those terrible aging politicians OUT of office and BACK into the home where they BELONG!!!
You're simply wrong. Wrong on just about every level. I know several Republicans who, like the other members of the ACLU, value our political heritage and our constitutional rights. Without those rights, we're nothing.
I should not be compelled to fund religious organizations with my tax dollars. That is an obscenity. If the BSA is a religious organization, as it appears to be, then it should not benefit in any way from public funds. That was the gist of the argument in Dale v. BSA. Public group = no discrimination.
If Bible-thumpers want to evangelize, then they should do it honestly and honorably and WITH THEIR OWN FUNDS. I have IMMENSE respect for the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who go out knocking on doors, using THEIR OWN FUNDS to communicate with people about their beliefs. Or the Gideons, how 'bout them? No tax dollars there! And the ACLU defends the first amendment rights of religious organizations fervently. You don't give a rip about genuine religious expression within the context of a democracy. You want a theocracy. That'd be the form of government that causes the Middle East to be such a hellish place. Actual Christians (of the Jehovah's Witness/Mormon/Gideon variety for instance) recognize that and see that religion belongs in the private sphere. Persuasion, not compulsion. You cannot compel faith.
You're simply wrong. You prefer to use MY money to espouse YOUR beliefs, and exclude MY children from your hypocritical organizations while doing it. For people who oppose confiscatory taxation, boy, you seem to be very much for confiscatory taxation.
Had Dale been successful, the BSA would have to choose between getting off the public teat and continuing their bigoted exclusivity. Homosexual boys and troop leaders would be treated with the respect and dignity that the BSA pretends to instill in its members. Everyone would win, the BSA would be a less hypocritical organization, and millions of boys excluded from membership would have opportunities they otherwise wouldn't. It wouldn't be a hollow victory for "one person" but a victory for what the Boy Scouts have always CLAIMED to value. Not this hacked-up bull they came up with in the lawsuit, but the REAL values applicable to all boys. Please note, the Girl Scouts don't have any such bullshit membership requirements, and they're a damned sight better organization than the BSA.
As for the other organizations you mention...you're wrong about most of those as well. I have it on good authority that boys can join the girl scouts, but that conflicts with what their web site says. I bet if a boy pushed the issue though, he could. There are no religious or homophobe restrictions. Planned Parenthood has no membership qualifications I'm aware of. Pay your money, be a member. A Catholic probably could join many synogogues. Can't imagine why he'd want to, but he probably could. Others might require an affirmation of belief he'd be unwilling to make. AA, probably likewise. Do you think they accept gay alcoholics though? You betcha. So what interest could a non-alcoholic have in AA? Especially since they can join Alanon, an org under the same umbrella. I'm guessing a hunter would feel pretty hated by PETA, but if he sent in his money, I bet he'd get a membership card. But hmmm...why would a gay 10-year-old boy want to join the Boy Scouts? Hmmmm...maybe because every other boy in his class is doing it? Maybe so he could go to summer camp when no other option exists? Maybe because he genuinely believes in the values hollowly espoused by the leadership of the BSA (though often genuinely espoused by the local chapters that ignore the BSA bigotry and admit any boy). Hm. See the difference? The OTHER difference here is that none of the organizations you mention, except occasionally PPA and the Girl Scouts, get public funds or represent themselves as a general membership organization. When my TAX money pays a membership organization, then they had damned well better not restrict membership on any sexist/racis
Along the same lines, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (au.org). AU is perhaps more interested in maintaining the wall of separation for the purpose of perserving both religion and state than is FFRF.
So if you're not a nontheist, AU might be a choice you're more comfortable with. Traditional conservatives, people who grasp the concept of democracy, liberals of all kinds, the religious and the non should all be working together to protect our right to be free from each OTHER'S religion and free to practice our OWN. When the government advocates any religion, it hurts every religion (or rather, every person).
Thanks for suggesting FFRF though, my "nontheist" father might appreciate a donation on his behalf for our nonsectarian winter holiday gift giving;-).
Thank you! You beat me to it. You should be able to contribute to your local Public Television station/network using their web site, and I doubt any would turn down a check that arrived unsolicited in the mail either.
I got hooked on science and technology as a kid watching Nova, Doctor Who, 3-2-1 Contact, Zoom, and a host of other science and sci-fi programs on Public Television. It may not be quite what it used to be, but it's still the first and best source of early GOOD TV science hooks for kids. Actual science, not corporate dreck (or at least not as much).
A good gift would also be a letter or email to your favorite state and Federal legislators telling them how MUCH you appreciate Public Television, or appreciated it as a kid and want it to be there for the kids who will be professional geeks in a couple of decades (and the ones who won't). Maybe CC the letter to the local paper and the local station as well.
Seems like something that librarians have been doing for centuries. "If you liked that Trixie Belden book, why don't you try Nancy Drew?" I've seen reading lists along the same lines to suggest other works to people on waiting-lists to borrow the most popular books.
If there's one thing about geeks, it's the need to try stuff that sounds like fun. Now running current through my head doesn't sound like fun to ME, but I'm guessing there'll be a few slashdotters for whom that would be just an evening's entertainment.
I trust that the authorities won't link the seemingly-coincidental scattering of accidental self-electrocutions and emergency room visits for forehead burns to overzealous/. reading.
You make good points. I don't disagree with several of them. I have not played Citadels (it's on my list) so I can't compare intelligently, but agree that Illuminati v. Ricochet Robots is a bad example.
I think that the Illuminati Brainwash expansion did a lot to balance the game. It took the alignment rules up a notch, and can help to balance a game in which one player has gotten too many powerful groups. OTOH, it does tend to delay the end in that "you've almost won, and suddenly you're back to the beginning" sense. If you don't like that, Illuminait just isn't the right game for you (and it sounds like it isn't).
I just love the Illuminati mechanic of having a regular "public" goal that anyone can reach, and a "private" goal for each player. Especially in large games, it's all about being able to keep each possible way to win in your head and monitor everyone else's progress without being seen doing so. I love that.
I just can't think of a really BAD Steve Jackson game. I've got a couple I don't play much, but I've never regretted the cost.
I agree that few SJ games are playable when you have a limited time to play. Though there are time-limiting rules for some of them that work pretty well (including Illuminati).
of course, game art can't make a bad game good, but it can tip the balance for me, and if it's Foglio, it's a must-buy. Plus, I really like games that parody/spoof as long as they've got good mechanics too.
Oh agreed, SJ Games is cheap, but their games are expensive. The old Illuminati came with nice plastic poker "megabuck" chips, the new comes with badly-perforated cardboard megabucks. They couldn't possibly find smaller (read "cheaper") dice to include with the games, and the game "boards" in most games have devolved into large pieces of folded paper. All that for a mere $3X.XX. Still, if you're in to board gaming (and what customers of SJ Games are NOT into gaming of various kinds) then you've got plenty of counters, dice, paper, pencils, and assorted extraneous bits around the house to play boardgames.
SJ Games are usually impressively designed and great to play. I wouldn't choose what to play based on whether they include stubby pencils and pads of paper in the box, or on the quality of the game board (though those are NICE THINGS and game companies SHOULD CONSIDER THEM. ESPECIALLY IF THEY CHARGE $3X.XX PER GAME).
Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, and Tigris and Euphrates are great games and should be played for their own merits, (haven't tried Through the Desert, thanks for the suggestion!) but those games differ from each other and from the SJ Games. If you can't buy every game, I suppose these are all factors to consider. I'd pick an SJ game for other reasons. I just got Greed Quest, haven't played it yet, but IMHO the Phil Foglio art very much balances out the likely cheap contents of the box. WoTC tends to get it completely right (Robo Rally with Foglio art and NICE game boards). So if mechanics are good either way, I'd probably pick a nice-art SJ Game over a nice-board Carcassonne. Valid choice either way.
As for deep, I think that's in the eye of the beholder. People claim Chess is deep, and in a way it probably is. Straightforward rules, but capable of allowing someone to plumb the depths of their intellect while playing. Good stuff. Is Ricochet Robot really more "deep" than Illuminati? Illuminati works at multiple levels. It's been years since I or my friends payed much attention to the names of the groups or their reflection on the real world. For us it's a strategy game fully as deep as Chess. Part of that is fantastic game design, but I think for any well-designed game it comes down to "you get out of it as much as you put into it." I can play chess with a Grand Master (and get whomped). He can play a deep thoughtful game, and I can move the pretty castles around the board. Just because the premise of "Ninja Burger" is flip, doesn't mean it can't be played with the focus and intellect of a Ninja Burger Master.
My husband and I collect board games, and will try any game (within reason) once. IMHO the way to make board games social is to have a set of friends who will also try anything once and consider the time fun, even if the game sucks. Then, once you know what to expect of a game, you can figure out who would enjoy it.
Often if you ASK people what games they enjoy, or what they enjoy in a game, you can figure out what else they'd enjoy.
My mom is a self-avowed game-hater, but she likes Scrabble and will tolerate games that are just excuses to hang out and talk with friends. "Apples to Apples" is a great one (it even plays well with kids), and a little-known Richard Garfield game, "What Were You Thinking?"
For game geeks, anything by Steve Jackson Games is excellent. Illuminati (not INWO) is my all-time favorite. "Ninja Burger," however, is a brand new and darned awesome game.
The "Chez" series (Chez Geek, Chez Grunt, Chez Greek...) are a lot of fun for a group of 20-30somethings. They're more about shared experience than about real gaming, but they've got enough game elements to keep a geek happy.
For IT folk, I love Management Material (Zipwhaa Games) and now IT Management Material. I got a copy for one of my co-workers as a gift and we all spent the rest of the afternoon locked in an office playing it (poor users couldn't find a single sysadmin anywhere). Again, more about shared experience than the game, but beautifully balanced and with nice mechanics.
Fluxx is another one that you can play with anyone, plus it's very portable. Easy to learn (starts with a single rule) but deep enough that someone who loves strategy can have a blast with it.
In the same geographical region, I spend too much money and not enough time at Cerebral Hobbies in Chapel Hill. They just moved out of the hard-to-park student-infested downtown and into a nice accessible strip mall...three blocks from my house. Doh.
They stock a goodly number of Rio Grande "Games for Two" including some great German games (with translations enclosed). The Germans have the boardgame business down to a science. I particularly like anything at all by Reiner Knizia. (favorite is "Lost Cities"). There used to be a giant void in the two-player-games market, but these days it's perfectly possible to be a game-loving couple and play a variety of games even if you can't lure your friends to the house...
Was?! Steve Jackson Games certainly does push INWO, but they still sell good 'ol Illuminati too. In fact, they just released a variant based on the same rules. They've had expansions for Illuminati itself as well (Illuminati Y2K and Brainwash). It's a fantastic game. It tends to grow "house rules" (my gang of college friends played regularly and usually do still manage a game when we get together for reunions). It's also a lot of fun to play with strangers (I always try to get into a game at GenCon when I can go). It's just got a great array of mechanics and the base game has had decades of playtesting.
The only thing I'd add is that it's very important to clarify whether the "cheating" rule is in effect or whether it's a "non-cheating" game....um...I've heard...
I'm not sure that this article is asking the right question. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms because Windows is losing its market dominance? No. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms for other reasons? Absolutely.
When I evaluate applications for procurement at work, I heavily favor multiplatform apps because we WANT to escape from Windows. At the very least, I don't want my software applications to become "legacy," and force my platform decisions. I regularly refuse to purchase apps that are NOT available for at least linux and OSX as well as Windows. I've been hearing more and more from sales people that they're hearing that more and more from customers. Why should customers tolerate the lazy old "Windows is easy so that's all we did" business from vendors? With the same effort, they probably could have produced a multiplatform Java app. Browser-based applications just make sense, it's a great development model, much better than thick-client for most client-server applications. Makes desktop administration a breeze, and saves all kinds of headaches. Vendors who understand that show that they're interested in their customers' needs.
There's simply more competition in most areas of the Windows market. Why be just one of an array of providers of a similar application or service, when you might potentially be the only one going after the for-now-smaller linux and Mac markets? Grab the niche, become the top provider of XYZ application/service/product, and trust that good sense will eventually mean an overwhelming majority of linux and Mac users in the market. There are plenty of Mac-first and Mac-only software providers out there, they survive by being the big fish in a smaller pond.
There are other reasons as well, but I think the answer to your real question is "yes." Small companies should be motivated to develop across platforms, even when it's hardware drivers and other blood-and-guts development rather than cheerful high-level applications that easily become platform-neutral or multiplatform. Focus less on market "share" and more on "market." There are a lot of Mac and linux (and other) users out there who need good products. It's a NUMBERS game, not a percentage game.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely second that endorsement. We've been using NetApp Filers for about five years now for everything from direct FC storage for Oracle, to back-end storage for media streaming/serving, to a fileserver acting as a gateway between two LANs to give us a virus-checking point and cross-platform access for Win, Mac, Linux, and Solaris clients.
The Filers perform outstandingly and do everything they're touted to do (no vaporware yet!). The machines themselves, however, are nothing compared to the service from NetApp. The Admin (only half-jokingly) has said "when a package from NetApp shows up on my desk, I know I must have lost a drive in one of the Filers." I guess it's not the cheapest storage available, though their pricing is certainly competitive, but what you get for the money isn't available anywhere else I've found, and I spend a lot of time evaluating and buying storage.
Not that you asked, but their NetCache product is outstanding as well.
As the head of IT for a nonprofit organization, I managed to hook up with a local college with an internship program. I've had one or more interns a year for about five years now. For one reason or another they've been willing to work for the experience. Since I can't afford to pay much (sometimes not at all), I try to get the interns projects in their areas of interest. It's been great to have them, there's always a lot more work than the time/manpower to do it. The interns get mentors who treat them like people and give them a lot of attention, and at the end they get a fair recommendation from me if they want one. I'll bet that approaching other nonprofits would get similar results. "You're willing to work as a volunteer? Sure, what do you want to do!"
;-)) could net you experience, networking, and a little good Karma (not on Slashdot). Plus it would be a really good habit to have, and to keep.
I know a lot of students (most students) can't afford to work for nothing, but maybe squeezing in an hour or two a week of volunteer work (you could cut out a little Slashdot reading
I have three or four watches that hang on necklaces as pendants. The antique ones are best because when these were common, the makers figured out to make the clock face upside-down so it can be easily read by the wearer. The modern makers seem to have forgotten the practicalities, since they're more "please look at my chest to find out what time it is" with the 12 at the top.
What I've been keeping an eye out for years to find is a pendant watch on a pin clasp. The kind that British nurses, and others with better things to do with their hands, used to wear (at least they did on TV and in movies). It really seems as if that ought to be a more common configuration since it seems as if it would be useful. I have found several clip watches, some in the shape of interesting steel animals and such. Just nothing really jewelry-like.
Back when I wore a lot of vests to work (gotta love the 80's) I enjoyed pocket watches. Those are less functional than most, requiring a lot of motions to figure out what time it is, but they are fun, and always attract notice.
Maybe Fuze could make a blue-LED, swarovski crystal, binary, kinetic watch on a necklace. I'd buy one.
~
As someone firmly addicted to PerplexCity (perplexcity.com), which is a cruelly addicting crossover between ARG and CCG, I'd have to say that there's something to this ARG thing.
Darnit.
-kian
P.S. Help on #251 would be very welcome.
~
So apparently an artist should endeavor to have his work appeal to as few people as possible?
I read that quote to mean that art is an expression by the artist of something personal, without respect to whether that expression resonates with the audience. It seems to me that videogames transcend that "one way" definition of art. Really new and innovative games come from creators who express personal concepts and images in ways that are inherently interactive. Unlike passive forms of quasi-art, like commercials or billboards, videogames, to be successful as both art and game, demand that the audience be pulled into the vision. Anticipating the reactions of the audience while maintaining a consistent expression of an idea and working to deliberately create that "resonance" is a highly complex form of art. Rather than leaving the audience blindly interpreting in order to see an idea as the artist did, the videogame artist has created a world in which the audience can participate in expressing the idea. The player is part of the art.
Obviously the quality of videogames-as-art differs a lot. Many games are just a rehash of previous games, with unimaginitive elements. IMHO that should be the larger part of the "art/not-art" discrimination. We've all had games that inspired our sense of "beauty" enough to be as memorable as any painting on a wall. It would be hard to play Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Lunatic Fringe, or even some primitive prehistoric games like Centipede and not feel that the creators had expressed something beautiful.
~
Most community colleges have beginning programming classes. It's a way to get started before branching out on your own.
~
Feh, you emacs people :-)
I used vi for note-taking. When studying for the Bar, I could easily grep all of the files in my class directory structure to find quick specific information wherever it resided.
I also used a few specific key character combinations in my notes all the way through school so that I could search for certain kinds of information (indicating items I expected to see on exams, good quotes from professors, references to books I'd like to read, that kind of thing). As long as you have a method for taking notes, text files are perfectly sufficient!
Note-taking software is just today's version of the padded three-ring Garfield binder of yesterday (erm...maybe a few yesterdays ago).
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I've never liked the phrase "information wants to be free." I prefer "ideas want to be free." Art, music, theories, paradigms, processes, designs, schemas...those are the things that have the potential to grow and be useful only if shared. They get combined into larger and more complex ideas. They're hopelessly complicated to attribute, and nearly every new idea is composed of bits of old ideas. Assigning "ownership" to creative works, and particularly for long periods of time, simply prevents new ideas from occurring (or gets new-idea-creators sued into oblivion). Ideas should be free, as in air.
Data, on the other hand, comes in a lot of forms. Some of those forms, like data collected in government-sponsored studies, should ALSO be free. Free because we've already paid for it. Free, as in beer. Other forms of data don't "want to be free," and personal information like medical records are surely one of those. Of course, there are some reasonable exceptions. Like aggregated disease statistics.
With data, I think there is a balance. I'm a privacy fanatic, but I'd surely hate to see us in as big a mess with regulating the use of personal information as we have with copyright regulation. Good grief, can you imagine if we all acted like the RIAA, suing friends for telling other friends about our lousy bowling scores?
Part of where the line is drawn for me (and the "fair use" doctrine relies heavily on this) is the use to which data is put. Since uses for others'personal information is almost entirely either prurient or commercial in nature, I strongly disfavor that sort of "sharing." It's not cognitive dissonance to dislike seeing people getting personal monetary or "prurient" gain from the uncompensated work of other people, but to be totally fine with non-selfish uses.
Just because this can't be reduced to a short catch-phrase doesn't mean it's inconsistent. Life is complicated. Millions of people who would never STEAL anything under any circumstances instinctively realize that while downloading a song they haven't paid for isn't WRONG, but that downloading and using someone else's credit card number IS wrong. It should be obvious that this is complicated, but that reasonable rules can be derived.
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I'll point out your post to my husband. Always nice when a customer likes the product enough to recommend it!
;-) Not with executives or cheap contract coders. They have a consummately professional and skilled in-house development staff.
Put the credit where it's due though
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You beat me to it. My husband works for them, they're sort of the Microsoft of staff scheduling, but only in the corporation sense, not the bad product sense ;-).
;-).
They're actually pretty forward-thinking when it comes to technology. I've been impressed with what I know of the staff scheduling product, ANSOS One-Staff and how well it's developed and maintained. These people are serious about good software maintenance. The product is evolving well too, my husband did a substantial amount of the design on the Web interface for the current version.
I've been told not to start an "EA wives" sort of thread here, so I'll stop at just complimenting the product.
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My Department manages mail servers with ~400 mail accounts. We would say that the spam problem has increased (along with the virus-generated-email problem) because we see the reports generated by the mailserver and filter. Our users, however, seem to have forgotten that spam is a problem at all. They have forgotten that mere months ago they received dozens (or in some cases hundreds) of spam messages per day. Now they receive few or none, and when they do they send them to us as trouble tickets! At the same time, looking at the growing number of messages hitting our servers (we filter out ~90% as spam at this point) it's pretty clear that spam has gotten worse since CAN-SPAM rather than better.
So it really depends on who you ask. Users may not even realize that their ISP or employer is aggressively filtering. To them it just looks as if spam has evaporated.
I wonder if we're actually filtering TOO well. With bosses having only slightly pointier hair, it might be hard to justify the budget amount we plow into spam/virus filtering. I've been tempted to knock the filter down a few percent to admit more spam, just to keep people remembering it's a problem! (except then I'd get more too)
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I've toyed with the idea of what it might be like if people driving could hear each other. People are certainly un-civil in face-to-face situations as well, but not nearly as un-civil as they are in quasi-anonymous settings like driving in dense traffic. If people could hear what others are saying to them when they're rude, maybe we'd be less rude. Most people who cut off other drivers or do other blatantly selfish (and stupid) things to "get ahead" in traffic, would never attempt the equivalent in person. For instance, in a grocery store line: if someone cut in, they'd be given to understand that their behavior was not ok.
Plus, I bet that if we could hear each other in cars, a lot of what we take for rudeness would just turn out to be stupidity or inattentiveness. I get a lot less angry at someone who screws up because they're stupid or weren't paying attention than I do at someone who intended to be a jerk. I bet that it would cut way down on so-called "road rage."
I did RTFA, but I think intra-car voice communications would be an interesting outgrowth to pursue.
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Uh, yeah, the problem must be with four-year-olds playing violent video games. That's the FIRST problem with what you said. Because of course, most kids enter school around age five. Sure, some kids may start that early (my three-year-old is rather talented with some games that don't require a lot of manual dexterity) but I think we're really talking about kids with money and access. Surely not younger than say, seven or eight. So those kids are in school. Why, exactly, should we be condemning women (or anyone else) to a horrid life trapped in the home just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the kiddies to come home from school? School-aged kids are in supervised institutional settings during the day whether their parents work or not.
;-))
;-)
The second thing wrong with what you posted is that you seem to think that this alleged "nuclear family" was, at any point in our history, the "norm." That would be incorrect. Maybe at one time it was more the norm on TV shows than it is now, but it has never been the norm in actual society. So again, not a valid argument that some dire change in families has caused some alleged increase in bad-kid-ness. I highly recommend Stephanie Coontz's 1992 book _The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap_. It's full of beautiful and verifiable hard data about family groups in the US.
Finally, take a look at the horrors created in the 1950's by the attempt to persuade people to live Leave it to Beaver family lives, essentially what you seem to be advocating. There's nothing quite like compulsory housewifery to cause alcoholism, drug addiction, mental disorders, suicide, and extremely bad parenting. Those poor Fifties women, trying to build this mythical nuclear family ideal...ouch. That's the LAST thing we need. (Heck, if those women had had more violent video games themselves, maybe THEY would have been killing their spouses in greater numbers!
Obviously some people enjoy that sort of lifestyle, and if they can afford it, more power to them. As for who might be left to raise the kids for the rest of us...well, maybe you should be pointing fingers at all of the early-retiree grandparents who don't lift a finger to take care of their families as grandparents-past used to do.
That's what I say...get those terrible aging politicians OUT of office and BACK into the home where they BELONG!!!
My $.02
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You're simply wrong. Wrong on just about every level. I know several Republicans who, like the other members of the ACLU, value our political heritage and our constitutional rights. Without those rights, we're nothing.
I should not be compelled to fund religious organizations with my tax dollars. That is an obscenity. If the BSA is a religious organization, as it appears to be, then it should not benefit in any way from public funds. That was the gist of the argument in Dale v. BSA. Public group = no discrimination.
If Bible-thumpers want to evangelize, then they should do it honestly and honorably and WITH THEIR OWN FUNDS. I have IMMENSE respect for the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who go out knocking on doors, using THEIR OWN FUNDS to communicate with people about their beliefs. Or the Gideons, how 'bout them? No tax dollars there! And the ACLU defends the first amendment rights of religious organizations fervently. You don't give a rip about genuine religious expression within the context of a democracy. You want a theocracy. That'd be the form of government that causes the Middle East to be such a hellish place. Actual Christians (of the Jehovah's Witness/Mormon/Gideon variety for instance) recognize that and see that religion belongs in the private sphere. Persuasion, not compulsion. You cannot compel faith.
You're simply wrong. You prefer to use MY money to espouse YOUR beliefs, and exclude MY children from your hypocritical organizations while doing it. For people who oppose confiscatory taxation, boy, you seem to be very much for confiscatory taxation.
Had Dale been successful, the BSA would have to choose between getting off the public teat and continuing their bigoted exclusivity. Homosexual boys and troop leaders would be treated with the respect and dignity that the BSA pretends to instill in its members. Everyone would win, the BSA would be a less hypocritical organization, and millions of boys excluded from membership would have opportunities they otherwise wouldn't. It wouldn't be a hollow victory for "one person" but a victory for what the Boy Scouts have always CLAIMED to value. Not this hacked-up bull they came up with in the lawsuit, but the REAL values applicable to all boys. Please note, the Girl Scouts don't have any such bullshit membership requirements, and they're a damned sight better organization than the BSA.
As for the other organizations you mention...you're wrong about most of those as well. I have it on good authority that boys can join the girl scouts, but that conflicts with what their web site says. I bet if a boy pushed the issue though, he could. There are no religious or homophobe restrictions. Planned Parenthood has no membership qualifications I'm aware of. Pay your money, be a member. A Catholic probably could join many synogogues. Can't imagine why he'd want to, but he probably could. Others might require an affirmation of belief he'd be unwilling to make. AA, probably likewise. Do you think they accept gay alcoholics though? You betcha. So what interest could a non-alcoholic have in AA? Especially since they can join Alanon, an org under the same umbrella. I'm guessing a hunter would feel pretty hated by PETA, but if he sent in his money, I bet he'd get a membership card. But hmmm...why would a gay 10-year-old boy want to join the Boy Scouts? Hmmmm...maybe because every other boy in his class is doing it? Maybe so he could go to summer camp when no other option exists? Maybe because he genuinely believes in the values hollowly espoused by the leadership of the BSA (though often genuinely espoused by the local chapters that ignore the BSA bigotry and admit any boy). Hm. See the difference? The OTHER difference here is that none of the organizations you mention, except occasionally PPA and the Girl Scouts, get public funds or represent themselves as a general membership organization. When my TAX money pays a membership organization, then they had damned well better not restrict membership on any sexist/racis
Along the same lines, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (au.org). AU is perhaps more interested in maintaining the wall of separation for the purpose of perserving both religion and state than is FFRF.
;-).
So if you're not a nontheist, AU might be a choice you're more comfortable with. Traditional conservatives, people who grasp the concept of democracy, liberals of all kinds, the religious and the non should all be working together to protect our right to be free from each OTHER'S religion and free to practice our OWN. When the government advocates any religion, it hurts every religion (or rather, every person).
Thanks for suggesting FFRF though, my "nontheist" father might appreciate a donation on his behalf for our nonsectarian winter holiday gift giving
userfriendly.org
;-)).
They have the BEST premiums...plus it's a good thing to do. How many comic strip artists publish with O'Reilly?
Illiad is awesome. (I am in no way affiliated with User Friendly, I'm just a fangirl
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Thank you! You beat me to it. You should be able to contribute to your local Public Television station/network using their web site, and I doubt any would turn down a check that arrived unsolicited in the mail either.
I got hooked on science and technology as a kid watching Nova, Doctor Who, 3-2-1 Contact, Zoom, and a host of other science and sci-fi programs on Public Television. It may not be quite what it used to be, but it's still the first and best source of early GOOD TV science hooks for kids. Actual science, not corporate dreck (or at least not as much).
A good gift would also be a letter or email to your favorite state and Federal legislators telling them how MUCH you appreciate Public Television, or appreciated it as a kid and want it to be there for the kids who will be professional geeks in a couple of decades (and the ones who won't). Maybe CC the letter to the local paper and the local station as well.
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Seems like something that librarians have been doing for centuries. "If you liked that Trixie Belden book, why don't you try Nancy Drew?" I've seen reading lists along the same lines to suggest other works to people on waiting-lists to borrow the most popular books.
Don't mess with the librarians.
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If there's one thing about geeks, it's the need to try stuff that sounds like fun. Now running current through my head doesn't sound like fun to ME, but I'm guessing there'll be a few slashdotters for whom that would be just an evening's entertainment.
/. reading.
I trust that the authorities won't link the seemingly-coincidental scattering of accidental self-electrocutions and emergency room visits for forehead burns to overzealous
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You make good points. I don't disagree with several of them. I have not played Citadels (it's on my list) so I can't compare intelligently, but agree that Illuminati v. Ricochet Robots is a bad example.
I think that the Illuminati Brainwash expansion did a lot to balance the game. It took the alignment rules up a notch, and can help to balance a game in which one player has gotten too many powerful groups. OTOH, it does tend to delay the end in that "you've almost won, and suddenly you're back to the beginning" sense. If you don't like that, Illuminait just isn't the right game for you (and it sounds like it isn't).
I just love the Illuminati mechanic of having a regular "public" goal that anyone can reach, and a "private" goal for each player. Especially in large games, it's all about being able to keep each possible way to win in your head and monitor everyone else's progress without being seen doing so. I love that.
I just can't think of a really BAD Steve Jackson game. I've got a couple I don't play much, but I've never regretted the cost.
I agree that few SJ games are playable when you have a limited time to play. Though there are time-limiting rules for some of them that work pretty well (including Illuminati).
of course, game art can't make a bad game good, but it can tip the balance for me, and if it's Foglio, it's a must-buy. Plus, I really like games that parody/spoof as long as they've got good mechanics too.
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Oh agreed, SJ Games is cheap, but their games are expensive. The old Illuminati came with nice plastic poker "megabuck" chips, the new comes with badly-perforated cardboard megabucks. They couldn't possibly find smaller (read "cheaper") dice to include with the games, and the game "boards" in most games have devolved into large pieces of folded paper. All that for a mere $3X.XX. Still, if you're in to board gaming (and what customers of SJ Games are NOT into gaming of various kinds) then you've got plenty of counters, dice, paper, pencils, and assorted extraneous bits around the house to play boardgames.
:-)
SJ Games are usually impressively designed and great to play. I wouldn't choose what to play based on whether they include stubby pencils and pads of paper in the box, or on the quality of the game board (though those are NICE THINGS and game companies SHOULD CONSIDER THEM. ESPECIALLY IF THEY CHARGE $3X.XX PER GAME).
Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, and Tigris and Euphrates are great games and should be played for their own merits, (haven't tried Through the Desert, thanks for the suggestion!) but those games differ from each other and from the SJ Games. If you can't buy every game, I suppose these are all factors to consider. I'd pick an SJ game for other reasons. I just got Greed Quest, haven't played it yet, but IMHO the Phil Foglio art very much balances out the likely cheap contents of the box. WoTC tends to get it completely right (Robo Rally with Foglio art and NICE game boards). So if mechanics are good either way, I'd probably pick a nice-art SJ Game over a nice-board Carcassonne. Valid choice either way.
As for deep, I think that's in the eye of the beholder. People claim Chess is deep, and in a way it probably is. Straightforward rules, but capable of allowing someone to plumb the depths of their intellect while playing. Good stuff. Is Ricochet Robot really more "deep" than Illuminati? Illuminati works at multiple levels. It's been years since I or my friends payed much attention to the names of the groups or their reflection on the real world. For us it's a strategy game fully as deep as Chess. Part of that is fantastic game design, but I think for any well-designed game it comes down to "you get out of it as much as you put into it." I can play chess with a Grand Master (and get whomped). He can play a deep thoughtful game, and I can move the pretty castles around the board. Just because the premise of "Ninja Burger" is flip, doesn't mean it can't be played with the focus and intellect of a Ninja Burger Master.
Agreed on the "to each his/her own"
Thanks for replying!
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My husband and I collect board games, and will try any game (within reason) once. IMHO the way to make board games social is to have a set of friends who will also try anything once and consider the time fun, even if the game sucks. Then, once you know what to expect of a game, you can figure out who would enjoy it.
Often if you ASK people what games they enjoy, or what they enjoy in a game, you can figure out what else they'd enjoy.
My mom is a self-avowed game-hater, but she likes Scrabble and will tolerate games that are just excuses to hang out and talk with friends. "Apples to Apples" is a great one (it even plays well with kids), and a little-known Richard Garfield game, "What Were You Thinking?"
For game geeks, anything by Steve Jackson Games is excellent. Illuminati (not INWO) is my all-time favorite. "Ninja Burger," however, is a brand new and darned awesome game.
The "Chez" series (Chez Geek, Chez Grunt, Chez Greek...) are a lot of fun for a group of 20-30somethings. They're more about shared experience than about real gaming, but they've got enough game elements to keep a geek happy.
For IT folk, I love Management Material (Zipwhaa Games) and now IT Management Material. I got a copy for one of my co-workers as a gift and we all spent the rest of the afternoon locked in an office playing it (poor users couldn't find a single sysadmin anywhere). Again, more about shared experience than the game, but beautifully balanced and with nice mechanics.
Fluxx is another one that you can play with anyone, plus it's very portable. Easy to learn (starts with a single rule) but deep enough that someone who loves strategy can have a blast with it.
Mmmmm...games....
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In the same geographical region, I spend too much money and not enough time at Cerebral Hobbies in Chapel Hill. They just moved out of the hard-to-park student-infested downtown and into a nice accessible strip mall...three blocks from my house. Doh.
They stock a goodly number of Rio Grande "Games for Two" including some great German games (with translations enclosed). The Germans have the boardgame business down to a science. I particularly like anything at all by Reiner Knizia. (favorite is "Lost Cities"). There used to be a giant void in the two-player-games market, but these days it's perfectly possible to be a game-loving couple and play a variety of games even if you can't lure your friends to the house...
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Was?! Steve Jackson Games certainly does push INWO, but they still sell good 'ol Illuminati too. In fact, they just released a variant based on the same rules. They've had expansions for Illuminati itself as well (Illuminati Y2K and Brainwash). It's a fantastic game. It tends to grow "house rules" (my gang of college friends played regularly and usually do still manage a game when we get together for reunions). It's also a lot of fun to play with strangers (I always try to get into a game at GenCon when I can go). It's just got a great array of mechanics and the base game has had decades of playtesting.
The only thing I'd add is that it's very important to clarify whether the "cheating" rule is in effect or whether it's a "non-cheating" game....um...I've heard...
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I'm not sure that this article is asking the right question. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms because Windows is losing its market dominance? No. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms for other reasons? Absolutely.
When I evaluate applications for procurement at work, I heavily favor multiplatform apps because we WANT to escape from Windows. At the very least, I don't want my software applications to become "legacy," and force my platform decisions. I regularly refuse to purchase apps that are NOT available for at least linux and OSX as well as Windows. I've been hearing more and more from sales people that they're hearing that more and more from customers. Why should customers tolerate the lazy old "Windows is easy so that's all we did" business from vendors? With the same effort, they probably could have produced a multiplatform Java app. Browser-based applications just make sense, it's a great development model, much better than thick-client for most client-server applications. Makes desktop administration a breeze, and saves all kinds of headaches. Vendors who understand that show that they're interested in their customers' needs.
There's simply more competition in most areas of the Windows market. Why be just one of an array of providers of a similar application or service, when you might potentially be the only one going after the for-now-smaller linux and Mac markets? Grab the niche, become the top provider of XYZ application/service/product, and trust that good sense will eventually mean an overwhelming majority of linux and Mac users in the market. There are plenty of Mac-first and Mac-only software providers out there, they survive by being the big fish in a smaller pond.
There are other reasons as well, but I think the answer to your real question is "yes." Small companies should be motivated to develop across platforms, even when it's hardware drivers and other blood-and-guts development rather than cheerful high-level applications that easily become platform-neutral or multiplatform. Focus less on market "share" and more on "market." There are a lot of Mac and linux (and other) users out there who need good products. It's a NUMBERS game, not a percentage game.
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