Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success.
That's true, but how can a semi-literate parent help his kid learn how to read? How can someone barely numerate help his kid learn how to do math? How can a parent working two jobs involve himself with his kids much? And then there are the kids with alcoholic parents, or the kids in foster care.
While my parents could hardly be construed as semi-literate they certainly weren't educated very well when it came to mathematics. I probably surpassed them by 6th grade in the level of mathematics that they had ever seen or had to use. They didn't even understand a summary of calculus yet I was able to take it in high school and do such an ungodly amount of it in college during my BSCS in college to get a minor.
The difference was the constant nagging about homework. Concern over grades. Making sure I was in a challenged level of classes but not over-extended. College was the standard not the exception. If I had to stay later and get help from the teachers they would pick me up. In short, putting an emphasis on education.
My parents attitude is not the standard across all social strata. In a such culturally diverse country such that the US is you are never going to have everyone with the same attitudes and that is why some school districts are much better than others. There is no solution to this, because changing a culture is almost impossible.
I graduated in 2000 with a BS in CS from WSU. I have been very happy with my career so far and I feel the education was top notch. WSU has an excellent EECS department and it's only going to get better with some capital improvements that are going to start on campus in the near future. Maybe WWU's loss with be WSU's gain.
This does go back to an overall problem with the state of Washington and their lack of funding for higher education. When I started school in the Fall of 1995 my in-state semester tuition was about $1300. I think by the time I'd graduate it was about $2400. A little rise over 5 years, but not terrible, and everyone was talking about it being about as high as it could go. Now it's about $4500 a semester and it's going to go up a ton again next year. This isn't exclusive to Washington and is a big problem across the US. If states continue to price students out of educational opportunities then our engineers and scientists will come from overseas.
All that said, Go Cougs!
Figure out how to create a device that can detect common STDs and determine if the person constantly sneezing, has allergies or ebola, and you will be immensely rich.
I have no idea if sneezing is a symptom of Ebola, I was trying to make a point.
I think the bleeding from all of your orifices might rule out allergies.
2. gone straight to amazon (or a bricks and mortar store) and bought something I've never seen an ad for, Like maybe my kid wants Pokemon Black for his birthday. On our way home from our weekend I stop at Game Stop and he buys it.
Thank you for the definition of irony. You do understand that your kid who's 'gotta catch them all!' was marketed to by the tv show? This wasn't a show that capitalized on it's popularity to sell the card game on the side, the show's entire reason for existing was just a big marketing campaign to sell all the merch.
Unlike baseball, basketball and football aren't statistics games. Baseball has statistics for everything and can be number crunched. That's why we live in what's considered the 'Moneyball Era'. Specifically, what can be crunched in baseball that isn't or can't be crunched in other sports is defense and that typically because baseball is on of the very few sports in which the defense has control of the ball.
In football, how do you rate a DB (a defensive back)? There are some defensive statistics, like tackles and interceptions, but there are intangibles that aren't tracked in a statistics line. Marcus Trufant, a DB for the Seattle Seahawks, doesn't have gaudy defensive numbers because he's so good that the offense doesn't even tend to throw the ball to his side of the field. How do you put that into a statistic that can be digested by a computer? It's not that easy.
Basketball is the same way, other than blocks and steals it is very difficult to get a defensive picture of a player. Since it's not just a one-on-one game, you can't quantify points scored against a player. Without some metric to be able to get a defensive picture of a team, which isn't uniform throughout a game, it's very difficult for a computer to figure out what to do.
We can't even get a simulation even close enough to determine who the best teams in college football are at any given moment. Why? Not enough statistics in a game that doesn't lend itself to statistics. Basketball has this same issue but is solved by having a big tournament for both the collegiate and professional ranks at the end of the season.
The government is looking into these for-profit schools due to the amount of student loans they are consuming and the lackluster results that the students are seeing.
Bernie Madoff did his homework - just because it's profitable doesn't mean it's ethical.
The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools.
I don't know which college you went to, but the college I went to (Washington State University) is a research college as are all the universities in the Pac-10 (soon to be Pac-12). They don't tend to make money to do anything other than educate and do more research. You don't see a lot of this research as an undergrad unless you ask, or have a professor who talked about it. I fortunately had both.
Also, a lot of people are talking about how expensive college is. I will say that Washington and Oregon are raising tuition, I know that it's about $9k per year for tuition for the state/public schools in both states. Sure it was only $3k when I started college in 1995, but it's still a great deal for a top-quality education. Meanwhile, It's not like ITT or DeVry are cheap alternatives, they are at about $20k per year for tuition. If money is really a problem, you can always go to a community college for the first 2 (or less if you are smart and driven) and then on to a university for the remainder. Even with student loans, you could probably get out of there with less than $20k of debt and a degree from a respected institution.
My alma mater doesn't pay money to have the naming rights to the stadium of a professional sports franchise. If you wonder where several million dollars worth of Pell Grants have gone, look no further.
Repeat ad infinitum and you never have to know more than 2 languages at a time in order to preserve it.
I get the joke about writing an emulator for an emulator, but even if you wrote a new emulator for PDP-1 every lifecycle iteration, you still only have to know 2 languages: PDP-1 and whatever language you want to write the emulator in.
As far as their credit transactions, they can get pretty hosed fairly quickly.
Scenario: I am someone who accepts credit card payments via PayPal.
In the case of a legitimate business (like Mojang/Minecraft) they give the purchaser something for the money they told PayPal to charge them for. Once that transaction has occurred, the business takes the money from PayPal. Transaction complete (I'm completely ignoring fees, taxes, etc.). Now, Paypal finds out that the transaction was fraudulent and has to return the money to the customer, either through a refund or is forced via a chargeback. Unless they require the business to give the money back, they are going to be out that money (and extra in the case of a chargeback).
In the case of an illegitimate business, let's say they pretend to sell stuff. They take money from customers via PayPal, never deliver, and close up shop. The business is gone - took the money and ran. PayPal is now be forced to refund or chargeback because the customer never got their product or service and be out some serious cash.
I work in this space, although not straight to the customer like PayPal, and the levels of fraud are ridiculous. Credit cards are insanely profitable for criminals and the reason transaction fees for businesses are so high is because whoever is indemnifying the transaction can get hit hard with fraud and lose a ton of money. There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem either which is the most frustrating thing.
They hate America! Or, err, hate those who hate America! Oh, I'm so confused. Someone please tell me how I should feel.
I think I missed the/. memo notifying me to add PayPal to the list of companies I'm supposed to hate.
All joking aside, looks like PayPal had a legitimate reason to suspend the account. The organization was forced to step through a few other hoops to get around thee reasons and are good to go. How was this ever a story in the first place?
This is like when they suspended the Mojang (Minecraft) account and everyone got all up in arms. But look at it from PayPal's view, an account with very little history goes from zero to and insane amount of money in a short amount of time. It tripped their BS alarm and they locked it down to save them money since they are the ones who get fucked in cases of fraud. It got sorted out and it's all good now.
Did you miss the email address of the person you were replying to?
I did not miss that and his email address is irrelevant. Whether he doesn't like the nickname for our city is moot, it's not his place to determine what I call it nor whether it's 'hip'. In fact, the nickname is almost the definition of 'hip'.
I personally don't care what people call our city, why should he? Maybe someone from Atlanta might think it's not cool that someone calls it 'Hotlanta'. But I added that I live there because I like to call it that and I don't care if others, even if they aren't from Portland, call it that.
Frankly, I'm just tired of people being dicks when I post something that isn't controversial. He posted the correction to my post that said they weren't 21 and over until 5pm, and that's fine. Good to know. Then he went into dick mode with his personal opinion of the term 'Portlandia'. Did that comment add anything to his previous addendum? No. He just wanted to be a dick and I called him out on it.
There's always Ground Kontrol! It's Portland so it's really a bar with a lot of great arcade games. I haven't been there in a little while but they just finished remodeling. This thread reminded me to head down there again. My personal fave is Track & Field.
Some might balk at the idea of it being 21 and over only, but realistically anyone less than 21 isn't going to know what a true arcade is. They are used to the mall 'arcades' that are mostly games of moderate skill that spit out tickets that they exchange for some crappy toys when they are done.
... since some blogger realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.
This is how all media is now, you can't have a descent well-structured argument and expect anyone to respect what you are saying. This isn't just the Internet either. Fox/MSNBC feed of this sort of 'journalism'. Politics is all about sensationalism.
Was it ever any better? I like to think that journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were honest, find-the-truth, no-agenda journalists. If they were looking into Watergate now they would've been lambasted as the 'liberal media' with a 'Democrat bias' and the corruption of the Nixon Whitehouse all would've gotten lost in the noise of the day.
My point is that if you are old enough to get the joke it's not like they are corrupting you since you've already been corrupted. As for double standards how about the song 'Crank That' by Soulja Boy where there are various references to 'superman' and 'super soak' 'that ho'. I'll spare you what those mean, you can look that up yourself on Urban Dictionary, but this is (or was, it's about 2 years old) on the radio. There's no parental controls on the radio. No outrage because it isn't the corrupter of this current generation - video games.
A secret formula used by the Byzantines that is lost to history. Sure it's been 1500 years but is still is an example of a useful technology that is no longer produced.
I have to wonder though, the recipe to Coke is a guarded trade secret as well with very few knowing the exact ingredients. In 1500 years will historians argue over what it was made of?
People have been saying that exact same thing since about December, 1975. But somehow, the show is still on the air.
SNL has stretches where it's good, sometimes great, and just plain bad. Checking Wikipedia for the cast list for the years really shows the ebb and flow. Obviously the original cast was great - iconic. After that, in the 80s there are very few recognizable names in there. Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Billy Crystal were the very few that had any great comedy chops. Everyone agrees that the Joe Piscopo era was pretty bad. The 90s were once again pretty good: they had Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Kevin Nealon, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond.
The current batch is pretty terrible, bordering on unwatchable. There's little in what makes comedy - most are tired bits that we saw in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. When an opportunity arises for them to make fun of something politically, they completely whiff. Ask yourself this: The Daily Show and Colbert Report can make funny and insightful political satire 4 days a week for a combined hour, why can't SNL do this for a single 90 minute show every week. It should be even easier since SNL isn't constrained to just be politics. Instead of good political satire, we are forced to watch Fred Armisen do the worst Obama impersonation of anyone on TV. There's just no edginess in the skits.
I think the strength of SNL has always been their star. It was John Belushi the beginning. Then it was Eddie Murphy in the 80s. Phil Hartman was the early 90s with Will Ferrell in the late 90s. I guess Tina Fey was their star in the early 00s, but I really can't pinpoint any actual actors from this time (she was more a writer). The problem for the last few years has been their current 'star' Kristen Wiig. Her skits are blatantly unfunny and repetitive. You only hear the complementary chuckles from the live studio audience. Yet, every week we get more and more Kristen Wiig. The focus should be on Andy Samberg although he's terrible at the live acting bit. The most memorable bits from the last 4 or 5 years have all been from Samberg's Digital Shorts.
The SNL I watch is on the DVR - the way it should be. Give each skit about 30 seconds, unless it's funny fast forward to the next. Problem is, these days it's almost a waste of DVR space since there's about 5 minutes (if that) of comedy in each episode. I imagine it keeps its ratings because of the DVR era, more people watching it the next day and fast forward through it.
Jane McGonigal may may not have a PhD in game design OR in Human Behavior. However, I think she has a brilliant idea and an amazing dream.... Where do you get a pass to criticize someone who has taken on changing the world for the better, despite the nearly impossible odds?
I think the problem most people have with her is that there's not a lot of substance behind the message. I've read a bunch of articles about her, her games, and her ideas, but nothing about if her ideas actually work. I think you'll find a lot of/.ers questioning how a bunch of people on the internet might be able to solve real-world problems that they really have no ability to solve. I watched the TED talk a while ago and she really didn't say anything; like a lot of TED presenters most of it is bullshit dressed up as 'innovation'.
Case in point, I saw a comment on their website from a middle-school teacher saying that they are going to be hosting a bunch of 12-14 year olds in an after school group to play EVOKE. Now, I'm not arguing that games can't be used for education - far from it. But we aren't talking about education here, we are talking about attempting to solve a problem in the real world. I find it hard to believe that a middle school kid is going to be able to understand why some people don't have food or clean water, or why women don't have rights in some countries. Why not ask them how to cure cancer? Why not ask them to invent cold fusion? Why not ask them how to fight fundamental, militant Islam? These are problems that have stymied professionals, they can't be solved by a bunch of nobodies on the internet - whether you dress up the problem as a 'quest' or not.
WTF have you done to try and make the world a better place?
Just about nothing, but at least I didn't go online, play a game and then pretend I did something.
Slashdot Mirror
Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success.
That's true, but how can a semi-literate parent help his kid learn how to read? How can someone barely numerate help his kid learn how to do math? How can a parent working two jobs involve himself with his kids much? And then there are the kids with alcoholic parents, or the kids in foster care.
While my parents could hardly be construed as semi-literate they certainly weren't educated very well when it came to mathematics. I probably surpassed them by 6th grade in the level of mathematics that they had ever seen or had to use. They didn't even understand a summary of calculus yet I was able to take it in high school and do such an ungodly amount of it in college during my BSCS in college to get a minor.
The difference was the constant nagging about homework. Concern over grades. Making sure I was in a challenged level of classes but not over-extended. College was the standard not the exception. If I had to stay later and get help from the teachers they would pick me up. In short, putting an emphasis on education.
My parents attitude is not the standard across all social strata. In a such culturally diverse country such that the US is you are never going to have everyone with the same attitudes and that is why some school districts are much better than others. There is no solution to this, because changing a culture is almost impossible.
* Ability to process lactose as adults
Speak for yourself. Oh, ice cream, you were once a trusted friend and now just a bitter enemy.
I graduated in 2000 with a BS in CS from WSU. I have been very happy with my career so far and I feel the education was top notch. WSU has an excellent EECS department and it's only going to get better with some capital improvements that are going to start on campus in the near future. Maybe WWU's loss with be WSU's gain.
This does go back to an overall problem with the state of Washington and their lack of funding for higher education. When I started school in the Fall of 1995 my in-state semester tuition was about $1300. I think by the time I'd graduate it was about $2400. A little rise over 5 years, but not terrible, and everyone was talking about it being about as high as it could go. Now it's about $4500 a semester and it's going to go up a ton again next year. This isn't exclusive to Washington and is a big problem across the US. If states continue to price students out of educational opportunities then our engineers and scientists will come from overseas. All that said, Go Cougs!
Figure out how to create a device that can detect common STDs and determine if the person constantly sneezing, has allergies or ebola, and you will be immensely rich. I have no idea if sneezing is a symptom of Ebola, I was trying to make a point.
I think the bleeding from all of your orifices might rule out allergies.
Agreed, great looking site. I'm not a car guy but gave a couple click-throughs on a few ads to help him out.
2. gone straight to amazon (or a bricks and mortar store) and bought something I've never seen an ad for, Like maybe my kid wants Pokemon Black for his birthday. On our way home from our weekend I stop at Game Stop and he buys it.
Thank you for the definition of irony. You do understand that your kid who's 'gotta catch them all!' was marketed to by the tv show? This wasn't a show that capitalized on it's popularity to sell the card game on the side, the show's entire reason for existing was just a big marketing campaign to sell all the merch.
So, let's see: Washington, New York, Chicago, Detroit? Or would they put San Francisco on that list? Los Angeles?
I don't think any leader in the world would risk losing his main four cities like that.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?
Unlike baseball, basketball and football aren't statistics games. Baseball has statistics for everything and can be number crunched. That's why we live in what's considered the 'Moneyball Era'. Specifically, what can be crunched in baseball that isn't or can't be crunched in other sports is defense and that typically because baseball is on of the very few sports in which the defense has control of the ball.
In football, how do you rate a DB (a defensive back)? There are some defensive statistics, like tackles and interceptions, but there are intangibles that aren't tracked in a statistics line. Marcus Trufant, a DB for the Seattle Seahawks, doesn't have gaudy defensive numbers because he's so good that the offense doesn't even tend to throw the ball to his side of the field. How do you put that into a statistic that can be digested by a computer? It's not that easy.
Basketball is the same way, other than blocks and steals it is very difficult to get a defensive picture of a player. Since it's not just a one-on-one game, you can't quantify points scored against a player. Without some metric to be able to get a defensive picture of a team, which isn't uniform throughout a game, it's very difficult for a computer to figure out what to do.
We can't even get a simulation even close enough to determine who the best teams in college football are at any given moment. Why? Not enough statistics in a game that doesn't lend itself to statistics. Basketball has this same issue but is solved by having a big tournament for both the collegiate and professional ranks at the end of the season.
Believe me, if we could shut it off, or take a pill to let us have no strings attached sex like guys, the world would be a far sluttier place.
Actually, I think that kill switch is called a wedding ring.
The government is looking into these for-profit schools due to the amount of student loans they are consuming and the lackluster results that the students are seeing.
Bernie Madoff did his homework - just because it's profitable doesn't mean it's ethical.
The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools.
I don't know which college you went to, but the college I went to (Washington State University) is a research college as are all the universities in the Pac-10 (soon to be Pac-12). They don't tend to make money to do anything other than educate and do more research. You don't see a lot of this research as an undergrad unless you ask, or have a professor who talked about it. I fortunately had both.
Also, a lot of people are talking about how expensive college is. I will say that Washington and Oregon are raising tuition, I know that it's about $9k per year for tuition for the state/public schools in both states. Sure it was only $3k when I started college in 1995, but it's still a great deal for a top-quality education. Meanwhile, It's not like ITT or DeVry are cheap alternatives, they are at about $20k per year for tuition. If money is really a problem, you can always go to a community college for the first 2 (or less if you are smart and driven) and then on to a university for the remainder. Even with student loans, you could probably get out of there with less than $20k of debt and a degree from a respected institution.
My alma mater doesn't pay money to have the naming rights to the stadium of a professional sports franchise. If you wonder where several million dollars worth of Pell Grants have gone, look no further.
Repeat ad infinitum and you never have to know more than 2 languages at a time in order to preserve it.
I get the joke about writing an emulator for an emulator, but even if you wrote a new emulator for PDP-1 every lifecycle iteration, you still only have to know 2 languages: PDP-1 and whatever language you want to write the emulator in.
As far as their credit transactions, they can get pretty hosed fairly quickly.
Scenario: I am someone who accepts credit card payments via PayPal.
In the case of a legitimate business (like Mojang/Minecraft) they give the purchaser something for the money they told PayPal to charge them for. Once that transaction has occurred, the business takes the money from PayPal. Transaction complete (I'm completely ignoring fees, taxes, etc.). Now, Paypal finds out that the transaction was fraudulent and has to return the money to the customer, either through a refund or is forced via a chargeback. Unless they require the business to give the money back, they are going to be out that money (and extra in the case of a chargeback).
In the case of an illegitimate business, let's say they pretend to sell stuff. They take money from customers via PayPal, never deliver, and close up shop. The business is gone - took the money and ran. PayPal is now be forced to refund or chargeback because the customer never got their product or service and be out some serious cash.
I work in this space, although not straight to the customer like PayPal, and the levels of fraud are ridiculous. Credit cards are insanely profitable for criminals and the reason transaction fees for businesses are so high is because whoever is indemnifying the transaction can get hit hard with fraud and lose a ton of money. There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem either which is the most frustrating thing.
They hate America! Or, err, hate those who hate America! Oh, I'm so confused. Someone please tell me how I should feel.
/. memo notifying me to add PayPal to the list of companies I'm supposed to hate.
I think I missed the
All joking aside, looks like PayPal had a legitimate reason to suspend the account. The organization was forced to step through a few other hoops to get around thee reasons and are good to go. How was this ever a story in the first place?
This is like when they suspended the Mojang (Minecraft) account and everyone got all up in arms. But look at it from PayPal's view, an account with very little history goes from zero to and insane amount of money in a short amount of time. It tripped their BS alarm and they locked it down to save them money since they are the ones who get fucked in cases of fraud. It got sorted out and it's all good now.
Did you miss the email address of the person you were replying to?
I did not miss that and his email address is irrelevant. Whether he doesn't like the nickname for our city is moot, it's not his place to determine what I call it nor whether it's 'hip'. In fact, the nickname is almost the definition of 'hip'.
I personally don't care what people call our city, why should he? Maybe someone from Atlanta might think it's not cool that someone calls it 'Hotlanta'. But I added that I live there because I like to call it that and I don't care if others, even if they aren't from Portland, call it that.
Frankly, I'm just tired of people being dicks when I post something that isn't controversial. He posted the correction to my post that said they weren't 21 and over until 5pm, and that's fine. Good to know. Then he went into dick mode with his personal opinion of the term 'Portlandia'. Did that comment add anything to his previous addendum? No. He just wanted to be a dick and I called him out on it.
and stop calling Portland, 'Portlandia', it's fucking annoying as hell and it isn't 'hip'.
Don't be such a cunt and shut the fuck up. I'll call it what I want since I live there.
There's always Ground Kontrol! It's Portland so it's really a bar with a lot of great arcade games. I haven't been there in a little while but they just finished remodeling. This thread reminded me to head down there again. My personal fave is Track & Field.
Some might balk at the idea of it being 21 and over only, but realistically anyone less than 21 isn't going to know what a true arcade is. They are used to the mall 'arcades' that are mostly games of moderate skill that spit out tickets that they exchange for some crappy toys when they are done.
... since some blogger realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.
This is how all media is now, you can't have a descent well-structured argument and expect anyone to respect what you are saying. This isn't just the Internet either. Fox/MSNBC feed of this sort of 'journalism'. Politics is all about sensationalism.
Was it ever any better? I like to think that journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were honest, find-the-truth, no-agenda journalists. If they were looking into Watergate now they would've been lambasted as the 'liberal media' with a 'Democrat bias' and the corruption of the Nixon Whitehouse all would've gotten lost in the noise of the day.
my.lawn->get_off(you);
Careful, this is /. and someone will most likely notify you that they can write that with fewer characters in PERL.
There were several quests in WotLK that were sexual innuendo:
Blowing Hodir's Horn, Polishing the Helm, Mounting Hodir's Helm, Raising Hodir's Spear, Thrusting Hodir's Spear, and Going Bearback
And some would say they've stepped it up a notch in Cataclysm:
Camel Tow, A Case of Crabs, A Taste For Tail, Just the Tip, and Premature Explosionation
My point is that if you are old enough to get the joke it's not like they are corrupting you since you've already been corrupted. As for double standards how about the song 'Crank That' by Soulja Boy where there are various references to 'superman' and 'super soak' 'that ho'. I'll spare you what those mean, you can look that up yourself on Urban Dictionary, but this is (or was, it's about 2 years old) on the radio. There's no parental controls on the radio. No outrage because it isn't the corrupter of this current generation - video games.
How we all feel, via PvP Online.
How about Greek Fire?
A secret formula used by the Byzantines that is lost to history. Sure it's been 1500 years but is still is an example of a useful technology that is no longer produced.
I have to wonder though, the recipe to Coke is a guarded trade secret as well with very few knowing the exact ingredients. In 1500 years will historians argue over what it was made of?
People have been saying that exact same thing since about December, 1975. But somehow, the show is still on the air.
SNL has stretches where it's good, sometimes great, and just plain bad. Checking Wikipedia for the cast list for the years really shows the ebb and flow. Obviously the original cast was great - iconic. After that, in the 80s there are very few recognizable names in there. Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Billy Crystal were the very few that had any great comedy chops. Everyone agrees that the Joe Piscopo era was pretty bad. The 90s were once again pretty good: they had Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Kevin Nealon, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond.
The current batch is pretty terrible, bordering on unwatchable. There's little in what makes comedy - most are tired bits that we saw in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. When an opportunity arises for them to make fun of something politically, they completely whiff. Ask yourself this: The Daily Show and Colbert Report can make funny and insightful political satire 4 days a week for a combined hour, why can't SNL do this for a single 90 minute show every week. It should be even easier since SNL isn't constrained to just be politics. Instead of good political satire, we are forced to watch Fred Armisen do the worst Obama impersonation of anyone on TV. There's just no edginess in the skits.
I think the strength of SNL has always been their star. It was John Belushi the beginning. Then it was Eddie Murphy in the 80s. Phil Hartman was the early 90s with Will Ferrell in the late 90s. I guess Tina Fey was their star in the early 00s, but I really can't pinpoint any actual actors from this time (she was more a writer). The problem for the last few years has been their current 'star' Kristen Wiig. Her skits are blatantly unfunny and repetitive. You only hear the complementary chuckles from the live studio audience. Yet, every week we get more and more Kristen Wiig. The focus should be on Andy Samberg although he's terrible at the live acting bit. The most memorable bits from the last 4 or 5 years have all been from Samberg's Digital Shorts.
The SNL I watch is on the DVR - the way it should be. Give each skit about 30 seconds, unless it's funny fast forward to the next. Problem is, these days it's almost a waste of DVR space since there's about 5 minutes (if that) of comedy in each episode. I imagine it keeps its ratings because of the DVR era, more people watching it the next day and fast forward through it.
Jane McGonigal may may not have a PhD in game design OR in Human Behavior. However, I think she has a brilliant idea and an amazing dream. ... Where do you get a pass to criticize someone who has taken on changing the world for the better, despite the nearly impossible odds?
I think the problem most people have with her is that there's not a lot of substance behind the message. I've read a bunch of articles about her, her games, and her ideas, but nothing about if her ideas actually work. I think you'll find a lot of /.ers questioning how a bunch of people on the internet might be able to solve real-world problems that they really have no ability to solve. I watched the TED talk a while ago and she really didn't say anything; like a lot of TED presenters most of it is bullshit dressed up as 'innovation'.
Case in point, I saw a comment on their website from a middle-school teacher saying that they are going to be hosting a bunch of 12-14 year olds in an after school group to play EVOKE. Now, I'm not arguing that games can't be used for education - far from it. But we aren't talking about education here, we are talking about attempting to solve a problem in the real world. I find it hard to believe that a middle school kid is going to be able to understand why some people don't have food or clean water, or why women don't have rights in some countries. Why not ask them how to cure cancer? Why not ask them to invent cold fusion? Why not ask them how to fight fundamental, militant Islam? These are problems that have stymied professionals, they can't be solved by a bunch of nobodies on the internet - whether you dress up the problem as a 'quest' or not.
WTF have you done to try and make the world a better place?
Just about nothing, but at least I didn't go online, play a game and then pretend I did something.