I just found out a few days ago that my grandmother, who is in her 70s, used a Nintendo Wii at my brother's house. She is a golfer, and she played Wii Golf for her first time, and she proceeded to play extremely well, and easily beat my brother.
So, Wii is full of win because my non-gaming grandmother can play, and succeed, at a video game without a bunch of hassle.
It wouldn't matter to her if it could play movies or dispense kittens, and I'd imagine those things don't matter much to others, either. Though, kittens would be cute.
I just looked at the epigenetics article, here. If I didn't already know what epigenetics was, it would not be very useful. The entry seemed to be more of a "see what I know about epigenetics and how well I get it" project of the author(s) rather than a starting point for somebody unfamiliar with the topic.
Somebody would have a context for looking it up. But that context could be something as simple as seeing a reference in on a message board, or maybe it was mentioned in the news. The context might not be from a biology major's science class.
This is kind of where I'm coming from. No dumbing down, but there should be different levels of explanation, and people should have the option of digging deeper.
The point of an encyclopedia is to give you a starting point, but many want you to have already started by the time you get there.
While I definitely agree that the quality of knowledge is the most important aspect, I think that readability is nearly just as important.
General understanding of science suffers because it is not accessible (meaning understandable) by the layperson. This is not always because topics require a great deal of background knowledge to understand, but because it is explained poorly or in ways that only somebody familiar with a topic will be able to easily follow.
What use is knowledge if people who will benefit the most cannot understand it? I do not believe in "dumbing down" anything, but sometimes different levels of explanation are necessary, and this is something that wikipedia lacks for most science entries.
Sounds like Ico, which is just fine by me. When I purchased Ico originally, I had no idea what it was about, but once I turned on the machine and started playing, I couldn't stop until it was done. Very unique.
While not a sequel, I have hopes that the team has created another game pulls off the same sense of exploration, puzzles, and adventure.
"Personally, I think evolution is all bunk and not, as one of my more liberal friends said, fact."
Evolution is the change in allele frequencies in a given population over time. This isn't magical and has been observed. Perhaps what you really don't believe happens is speciation, not evolution.
While you might not wish to believe it, the fossil record supports that speciation occurs. The evidence for this goes back before Darwin, even, when archeologists were unable to explain findings in the fossil record that contradicted with the theory of Special Creation.
"And if we all did morph from primordial soup, why are there so many different species of plants and animals around? If the earth was one big hot molten rock, seems to me we'd all be the same species."
Actually, we expect there to be many different organisms at any given time. Perhaps you have heard of the concept, as it's an important one in biology: it's called Natural Selection.
It would take some time to explain how this works properly, as short blurbs do little other than to perpetuate the massive confusion over this topic. As a result, I will let it drop.
The picturisation of these characters and giving them a blessed or cursed look depending on their choices kind of trivializes or cheapens the whole experience in my opinion.
I don't see it as a cheapening of the experience. Instead I think of it as something that games are supposed to be - you know, fun.
It'd be nice to have a concrete representation of how your character has developed over time based on the actions you chose. If I play a character that fights like a champion, I want him to look the part -- based on my chosen actions, not some arbitrary class I selected at the beginning. In how many games does that actually happen? Not many, I'd imagine...I can't think of one that does this to any real end.
But it still comes down to entertainment value, and not any attempt at realism. The game is called Fable, after all.
I am a student and, as such, absolutely require a simple word count function when writing papers. Why must I troll the web looking for some hack-job macro to do this in OO?
I'm curious why you would troll the web looking for a macro that does that as well, when it's a lot easier to just go to Tools->Word Count. Though, that might not be a fair statement to make, since you might not have used a recent version, which has a word count.
Now, I never said that OO.org didn't have problems, and I'm not some Open Source Zealot. I'd be the first to agree that it loads slowly, both on my XP machine and the linux one. However, since I rarely use a word processor for anything that must be done immediately (such as jotting down a note), it's pretty much a non-issue. It can sometimes take a bit to save files, as well, and on KDE it's downright sluggish-to-unresponsive if you let it sit there for a while and you switch back to it, but I'm not sure if that's the software or the window manager.
Though, to be fair to OO.org on loading times, I believe Office preloads some things on start up, like IE does, to give the illusion of a faster load time.
I will also admit that there is a learning curve. It is similar, but not idential to, Word. When I switched to OO.org, I had complaints, too, but those were pretty much just because I wasn't used to the way it was set up. Once I stopped trying to use it exactly like Word, things became easier.
The spell check is also somewhat funky in OO.org, and I still don't like it.
About a year ago, our Office 97 CD vanished (I, too, used Word97), and neither my fiance nor I wanted to pony up cash for another version, and so I decided to give OO.org a try. There was some moaning and bitching (my fiance was unhappy with it at first), but even now she'll recommend it to others who don't have, or don't want to buy, Office (much to my surprise).
The lowdown: the advantage to OO.org is really the price, which can't be beat. And since it works pretty well, there's also some value there, as well.
I've used OpenOffice.org exclusively for nearly a year, and it suits my purposes fine - not perfectly, as any regular user of OO.org surely knows. There's little reason for a home user (or student) to need to pay so much for MS Office (or even just Word alone) when basic functionality is all that's required (Though I will admit that the 'education' edition of Office with a 3 computer license is pretty affordable).
Honestly, I feel many more people would adopt OO.org if they were shown (probably physically, because telling somebody will do little to persuade them) that it existed. Especially if they are informed that you don't have to pay hundreds of dollars.
Perhaps, eventually, there will be a major PC vendor that would do something so bold as to offer OO.org on a preconfigured computer as an alternative to MS Office.
Perhaps I have a somewhat different view of what constitutes illiteracy. The ability to not just read but to effectively communicate thoughts in words, to me, is what makes a person literate.
I've read plenty of university level papers to know that even the "best and brightest" don't really know how to write. This cannot, of course, be entirely blamed on individuals. The school system does not properly train this skill.
Spelling, now...I can't be critical on spelling...In general, I spell like a dyslexic on crack.
Eliminating the 'digital divide' is all well and good, except, in the US at least, that's given as the defining goal rather than a step in the proper direction.
To clarify: It tends to be a situation of, "Here's the Internet, GO!" with no instruction on how to use it as an effective tool. People are not instructed on how to keep computers safe and maintained. They are not instructed to evaluate sources to see if all of the information to which they now have access is even worth anything.
This combined with the virtual illiteracy of Americans can make simple elimination of the "digital divide" somewhat pointless in a lot of cases and rarely translates into a Power of the People scenario.
Hmm...Sensationalized Internet Doomsday plot. If democrats were fingered as the cause, I'd be sure it was a Fox News ploy to assist the Bush administration.
I would consider it invasive if a couple of things were to happen.
First, if items or props were added to a game simply as a vehicle for advertising instead of merely replacing the 'fake advertisements' that are all over games as it is.
Second (really an extension of the first), it would be most displeasing if users were forced in some way to interact with the advertisement, such as a Pepsi Challenge or pop-up ads on an in-game computer terminal or something.
That said, I think that well-conceived sponsorships of brand names can help. For example, it's nice to have an authentic car models in games (as in Grand Turismo.).
Slashdot Mirror
I just found out a few days ago that my grandmother, who is in her 70s, used a Nintendo Wii at my brother's house. She is a golfer, and she played Wii Golf for her first time, and she proceeded to play extremely well, and easily beat my brother.
So, Wii is full of win because my non-gaming grandmother can play, and succeed, at a video game without a bunch of hassle.
It wouldn't matter to her if it could play movies or dispense kittens, and I'd imagine those things don't matter much to others, either. Though, kittens would be cute.
I just looked at the epigenetics article, here. If I didn't already know what epigenetics was, it would not be very useful. The entry seemed to be more of a "see what I know about epigenetics and how well I get it" project of the author(s) rather than a starting point for somebody unfamiliar with the topic.
Somebody would have a context for looking it up. But that context could be something as simple as seeing a reference in on a message board, or maybe it was mentioned in the news. The context might not be from a biology major's science class.
This is kind of where I'm coming from. No dumbing down, but there should be different levels of explanation, and people should have the option of digging deeper.
The point of an encyclopedia is to give you a starting point, but many want you to have already started by the time you get there.
While I definitely agree that the quality of knowledge is the most important aspect, I think that readability is nearly just as important.
General understanding of science suffers because it is not accessible (meaning understandable) by the layperson. This is not always because topics require a great deal of background knowledge to understand, but because it is explained poorly or in ways that only somebody familiar with a topic will be able to easily follow.
What use is knowledge if people who will benefit the most cannot understand it? I do not believe in "dumbing down" anything, but sometimes different levels of explanation are necessary, and this is something that wikipedia lacks for most science entries.
Sounds like Ico, which is just fine by me. When I purchased Ico originally, I had no idea what it was about, but once I turned on the machine and started playing, I couldn't stop until it was done. Very unique.
While not a sequel, I have hopes that the team has created another game pulls off the same sense of exploration, puzzles, and adventure.
While you might not wish to believe it, the fossil record supports that speciation occurs. The evidence for this goes back before Darwin, even, when archeologists were unable to explain findings in the fossil record that contradicted with the theory of Special Creation.
Actually, we expect there to be many different organisms at any given time. Perhaps you have heard of the concept, as it's an important one in biology: it's called Natural Selection.It would take some time to explain how this works properly, as short blurbs do little other than to perpetuate the massive confusion over this topic. As a result, I will let it drop.
You can find a variety of Crazies, Wackos, and Tin Foil Hats on the Information Superhighway here.
I don't see it as a cheapening of the experience. Instead I think of it as something that games are supposed to be - you know, fun.
It'd be nice to have a concrete representation of how your character has developed over time based on the actions you chose. If I play a character that fights like a champion, I want him to look the part -- based on my chosen actions, not some arbitrary class I selected at the beginning. In how many games does that actually happen? Not many, I'd imagine...I can't think of one that does this to any real end.
But it still comes down to entertainment value, and not any attempt at realism. The game is called Fable, after all.
That's cool. I personally doubt I would have willingly moved to OO.org without the push of having lost my Office CD. But I like it just the same.
Perhaps after future releases of suites we might revisit our discussion. Have a nice evening.
I'm curious why you would troll the web looking for a macro that does that as well, when it's a lot easier to just go to Tools->Word Count. Though, that might not be a fair statement to make, since you might not have used a recent version, which has a word count.
Now, I never said that OO.org didn't have problems, and I'm not some Open Source Zealot. I'd be the first to agree that it loads slowly, both on my XP machine and the linux one. However, since I rarely use a word processor for anything that must be done immediately (such as jotting down a note), it's pretty much a non-issue. It can sometimes take a bit to save files, as well, and on KDE it's downright sluggish-to-unresponsive if you let it sit there for a while and you switch back to it, but I'm not sure if that's the software or the window manager.
Though, to be fair to OO.org on loading times, I believe Office preloads some things on start up, like IE does, to give the illusion of a faster load time.
I will also admit that there is a learning curve. It is similar, but not idential to, Word. When I switched to OO.org, I had complaints, too, but those were pretty much just because I wasn't used to the way it was set up. Once I stopped trying to use it exactly like Word, things became easier.
The spell check is also somewhat funky in OO.org, and I still don't like it.
About a year ago, our Office 97 CD vanished (I, too, used Word97), and neither my fiance nor I wanted to pony up cash for another version, and so I decided to give OO.org a try. There was some moaning and bitching (my fiance was unhappy with it at first), but even now she'll recommend it to others who don't have, or don't want to buy, Office (much to my surprise).
The lowdown: the advantage to OO.org is really the price, which can't be beat. And since it works pretty well, there's also some value there, as well.
Honestly, I feel many more people would adopt OO.org if they were shown (probably physically, because telling somebody will do little to persuade them) that it existed. Especially if they are informed that you don't have to pay hundreds of dollars.
Perhaps, eventually, there will be a major PC vendor that would do something so bold as to offer OO.org on a preconfigured computer as an alternative to MS Office.
I've read plenty of university level papers to know that even the "best and brightest" don't really know how to write. This cannot, of course, be entirely blamed on individuals. The school system does not properly train this skill.
Spelling, now...I can't be critical on spelling...In general, I spell like a dyslexic on crack.
To clarify: It tends to be a situation of, "Here's the Internet, GO!" with no instruction on how to use it as an effective tool. People are not instructed on how to keep computers safe and maintained. They are not instructed to evaluate sources to see if all of the information to which they now have access is even worth anything.
This combined with the virtual illiteracy of Americans can make simple elimination of the "digital divide" somewhat pointless in a lot of cases and rarely translates into a Power of the People scenario.
I had surmised perhaps 3 or 4 posts, but I was wrong. It took only 1.
I read Slashdot because it consistently exceeds my expectations. Way to go!
Hmm...Sensationalized Internet Doomsday plot. If democrats were fingered as the cause, I'd be sure it was a Fox News ploy to assist the Bush administration.
First, if items or props were added to a game simply as a vehicle for advertising instead of merely replacing the 'fake advertisements' that are all over games as it is.
Second (really an extension of the first), it would be most displeasing if users were forced in some way to interact with the advertisement, such as a Pepsi Challenge or pop-up ads on an in-game computer terminal or something. That said, I think that well-conceived sponsorships of brand names can help. For example, it's nice to have an authentic car models in games (as in Grand Turismo.).