What would you suggest for someone how has... well, no idea how to do that? I design learning environments; so far curricula, but my main interest is informal learning settings, including video games. I think the DS would be a perfect platform, and have a few ideas that I could develop - but I have no idea how to get further than outlines, mockups, maybe flash versions of parts. I can program a bit, but I have no idea how to make anything like a finished product. Do I need to add a second career as a programmer, or is there any hope of attracting someone's attention with mockups and outlines? If not to publish it from that form, at least to get funding to hire programmers?
It's all based on the latest and greatest in learning research, I swear.:)
Thank you for asking this! I have been wondering the same kind of thing, I'll be bookmarking this page for future reference. I design learning environments and would love to make educational video games but have absolutely no clue how to go from idea to game that you can buy in the store.
My dad (in his 40s) was a Pizza Hut delivery driver for seven or eight years. He recently had to quit, because his pay hadn't increased to cover the rise in gas prices and so he was barely making any money. And tips have gone down in recent years because places have started charging delivery fees - which DON'T go to the driver (or possibly 25c of the dollar does), but the customers assume it does and so don't tip as much or at all. Plenty of the people he worked with are NOT high school students making extra money for the weekend - many of them were people with families who are using PH as a second job in the evenings to make ends meet.
Delivery drivers have been working toward unionizing for a while now - I believe that there are now a few union Pizza Huts. Don't assume that these people are all teenagers who are trying to save up for a nicer car - many of them depended on this money and are now getting screwed over such that their jobs are barely profitable. Somewhat because of the public perceptions you've outlined in your post - not only that these jobs are only held by people who don't need the money, but also that you don't want your pizza to be a dollar more expensive, so the additional cost gets hidden in a "delivery fee" that winds up cutting into tips, so that even if they get a little of the increase it's more than balanced out by the lower tips. I'm not going to say for sure that they should be unionized, but I can see why they are dissatisfied and want to be treated better. They are fronting the money for their own gas, oil, and car repairs, while the pizza places don't care if their policies lead to lower tips.
Reading through the summary, at first I thought that the fact that it was only available with XP was supposed to be a good thing. Then I got further and realized it was being compared to XP + Linux, not XP + Vista.
Yeah, I've discovered that as long as I have a quart-sized bag full of liquids out where the checkers can see it, they don't even notice/care if I have a few other liquids elsewhere in my baggage. Though that's not as big as a knife, they definitely aren't paying attention. I've stopped worrying about whether or not I can get all my liquids in that one tiny bag (yeah, I'm a girl, I travel with lots of liquids).
I could never quite figure out what you were supposed to do on Friendster, other than leave testimonials. At least on Facebook you can play games against your friends and communicate in a few different ways. Maybe Friendster has expanded, but it just seemed like a contact list to me.
Not necessarily - if they are more secure than Vista, but less secure than the current public perception, then why would they want to bring public perception of their security down, even if it's still higher than Vista?
Not a musician, but Mayim Bialik ("Blossom") got her PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA last year. She's still working as an actress, too - mostly voice work in cartoons and guest appearances. As a theater major getting a science PhD, I keep an eye out for these types, they're definitely inspirational.:)
You're pissed off because they die a more humane death than the rest of us, then you claim it's more "civilized" to make them suffer for decades and die a nasty death like you want them to? Your post was coherent until the comma in the next-to-last sentence, and then it sounds like an alternate personality with the opposite opinion took over.
a) Plenty of people will leave in the middle of a crappy movie and ask for their money back because they haven't gotten their money's worth.
b) If you decide a game is crap, you can usually resell it to get at least some of your money back. If some DRM swoops in and makes the game with XXX serial # unplayable, you lose that ability.
Most of your argument is pretty much meaningless in this context anyhow - it doesn't matter exactly how many hours/dollar a person expects, and whether that expectation is too high or low. What matters is that no matter how many any individual person expects, if the company can arbitrarily change that number AFTER the purchase, that's bad. Once you've paid for something, what it is that you paid for shouldn't change.
For $50, you're not getting a cd, you're getting a certain amount of entertainment.
And so what happens if the game gets shut off when you've only gotten half the amount of entertainment you'd expected to get for your $50? When you go to a movie, you know up front how long it is and that you can't take it home with you except in your memory. When you buy a game, you buy it with the expectation that you can spend as many hours playing it and replaying it as you want - if that gets limited AFTER you've put out the money for it, you shouldn't be pissed?
Not to mention the eyestrain-inducing matrix layout of the results. Thanks, Cuil, I was really hoping to have to expend MORE effort to glance through the first ten search results!
I thought the injured pigeon one wasn't too bad either - she obviously wanted to get ahold of some kind of animal control office, and in many cases the animal control is run by the police department, and how do you get ahold of the police department? If the animal was nastily injured and obviously suffering, I can see how someone could be distraught enough to call 911 instead of thinking to dial some directory assistance to get the regular police number.
And because she couldn't whip her pants off immediately (being buckled into the passenger seat and all), the 185 degree coffee was HELD onto her crotch by the fabric for over a minute, giving her third-degree burns.
When I found out the truth about that case, I was pretty horrified.
Sure, they don't actually know what an "OS" is. But they know that their computer is constantly being reformatted due to viruses, and their friend/college-age-kid's computer isn't. They don't know that that's because of the OS, but it's one of the reasons they switch. (Speaking from experience - my mom plans to buy a Mac when her current laptop dies b/c of this very reason. She also uses a Mac at work, though she doesn't like it there b/c she says Excel doesn't handle as well as on Windows - but for home use she doesn't need to worry about that.)
As I said, very few pick up reading in that way. Not none, but very few. Your anecdata is one example. My own experiences are another. The vast majority of children (as shown by research with real statistically significant data) are counterexamples. They do pick up some understanding, of course, because they are exposed to it regularly (in literate cultures, of course), but not in nearly the way they pick up language. A good book on the subject is The Cradle of Culture: What Children Know About Writing and Numbers Before Being Taught, by Liliana Tolchinsky. (Btw, the "reading" you did by memorizing a story is very common. Learning the norms associated with reading, such as flipping pages and going left-to-right, is an important part of the process.)
I doubt that the scientists have actually jumped all the way to the conclusion that these humanoids had modern language. It sounds more like these are the earliest examples of the beginnings of evolution toward language, but still much older than those beginnings were thought to be.
The recency of writing shouldn't be too surprising given the way we learn spoken (or signed) language vs writing. People learn spoken language, period. If a child is exposed enough to a language before puberty, the child will become fluent in it. Nobody has to teach them or explain it to them, and often attempts to do so don't result in acquiring it much faster than otherwise. Gorillas and chimps can learn a basic lexicon, but no amount of teaching gets them to anything resembling the grammatical fluency of an untaught three-year-old human.
Reading and writing, on the other hand, are things that millions of people over the world don't ever learn. Those that do have to be explicitly taught; very few pick up reading naturally from observing others and even fewer writing. For most children learning to read is a very challenging step.
When you compare those two processes, it becomes obvious that spoken language has had time to become very deeply ingrained in our circuitry, whereas reading and writing are not at all. They are things we are capable of, but they are not an integral part of being human.
Wait, what? Really? In Chicago, all the local stations had coverage of the lines at AT&T and Apple stores on their evening news, and the free commuter paper had a huge iPhone taking up the entire cover.
Maybe the geek press thinks the iPhone is old news, but the popular press is still ALL over it. And in the end, which one will drive (or at least reflect) overall sales?
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't that just mean that once it swallows the whole earth it'll only be 1.5cm?
What would you suggest for someone how has... well, no idea how to do that? I design learning environments; so far curricula, but my main interest is informal learning settings, including video games. I think the DS would be a perfect platform, and have a few ideas that I could develop - but I have no idea how to get further than outlines, mockups, maybe flash versions of parts. I can program a bit, but I have no idea how to make anything like a finished product. Do I need to add a second career as a programmer, or is there any hope of attracting someone's attention with mockups and outlines? If not to publish it from that form, at least to get funding to hire programmers?
:)
It's all based on the latest and greatest in learning research, I swear.
Thank you for asking this! I have been wondering the same kind of thing, I'll be bookmarking this page for future reference. I design learning environments and would love to make educational video games but have absolutely no clue how to go from idea to game that you can buy in the store.
My dad (in his 40s) was a Pizza Hut delivery driver for seven or eight years. He recently had to quit, because his pay hadn't increased to cover the rise in gas prices and so he was barely making any money. And tips have gone down in recent years because places have started charging delivery fees - which DON'T go to the driver (or possibly 25c of the dollar does), but the customers assume it does and so don't tip as much or at all. Plenty of the people he worked with are NOT high school students making extra money for the weekend - many of them were people with families who are using PH as a second job in the evenings to make ends meet.
Delivery drivers have been working toward unionizing for a while now - I believe that there are now a few union Pizza Huts. Don't assume that these people are all teenagers who are trying to save up for a nicer car - many of them depended on this money and are now getting screwed over such that their jobs are barely profitable. Somewhat because of the public perceptions you've outlined in your post - not only that these jobs are only held by people who don't need the money, but also that you don't want your pizza to be a dollar more expensive, so the additional cost gets hidden in a "delivery fee" that winds up cutting into tips, so that even if they get a little of the increase it's more than balanced out by the lower tips. I'm not going to say for sure that they should be unionized, but I can see why they are dissatisfied and want to be treated better. They are fronting the money for their own gas, oil, and car repairs, while the pizza places don't care if their policies lead to lower tips.
Reading through the summary, at first I thought that the fact that it was only available with XP was supposed to be a good thing. Then I got further and realized it was being compared to XP + Linux, not XP + Vista.
Yeah, I've discovered that as long as I have a quart-sized bag full of liquids out where the checkers can see it, they don't even notice/care if I have a few other liquids elsewhere in my baggage. Though that's not as big as a knife, they definitely aren't paying attention. I've stopped worrying about whether or not I can get all my liquids in that one tiny bag (yeah, I'm a girl, I travel with lots of liquids).
I could never quite figure out what you were supposed to do on Friendster, other than leave testimonials. At least on Facebook you can play games against your friends and communicate in a few different ways. Maybe Friendster has expanded, but it just seemed like a contact list to me.
Not necessarily - if they are more secure than Vista, but less secure than the current public perception, then why would they want to bring public perception of their security down, even if it's still higher than Vista?
The question is - do you know this to be true from personal industry experience, or are you just quoting Fight Club?
Not a musician, but Mayim Bialik ("Blossom") got her PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA last year. She's still working as an actress, too - mostly voice work in cartoons and guest appearances. As a theater major getting a science PhD, I keep an eye out for these types, they're definitely inspirational. :)
If you watch the old TV movie The Day After, they basically show KC as being the first thing targeted when the nukes come.
Fun to watch as a ninth grade chemistry student... in Kansas City. X^P
That would just be Crazy.
You're pissed off because they die a more humane death than the rest of us, then you claim it's more "civilized" to make them suffer for decades and die a nasty death like you want them to? Your post was coherent until the comma in the next-to-last sentence, and then it sounds like an alternate personality with the opposite opinion took over.
a) Plenty of people will leave in the middle of a crappy movie and ask for their money back because they haven't gotten their money's worth.
b) If you decide a game is crap, you can usually resell it to get at least some of your money back. If some DRM swoops in and makes the game with XXX serial # unplayable, you lose that ability.
Most of your argument is pretty much meaningless in this context anyhow - it doesn't matter exactly how many hours/dollar a person expects, and whether that expectation is too high or low. What matters is that no matter how many any individual person expects, if the company can arbitrarily change that number AFTER the purchase, that's bad. Once you've paid for something, what it is that you paid for shouldn't change.
For $50, you're not getting a cd, you're getting a certain amount of entertainment.
And so what happens if the game gets shut off when you've only gotten half the amount of entertainment you'd expected to get for your $50? When you go to a movie, you know up front how long it is and that you can't take it home with you except in your memory. When you buy a game, you buy it with the expectation that you can spend as many hours playing it and replaying it as you want - if that gets limited AFTER you've put out the money for it, you shouldn't be pissed?
You might try clicking the second of the three links I provided.
One Spore fan told CNN: I consider this very similar to child pornography, at least to the extent of distributing the material to children.
Child pornography: This isn't it.
Not to mention the eyestrain-inducing matrix layout of the results. Thanks, Cuil, I was really hoping to have to expend MORE effort to glance through the first ten search results!
I thought the injured pigeon one wasn't too bad either - she obviously wanted to get ahold of some kind of animal control office, and in many cases the animal control is run by the police department, and how do you get ahold of the police department? If the animal was nastily injured and obviously suffering, I can see how someone could be distraught enough to call 911 instead of thinking to dial some directory assistance to get the regular police number.
When I found out the truth about that case, I was pretty horrified.
Sure, they don't actually know what an "OS" is. But they know that their computer is constantly being reformatted due to viruses, and their friend/college-age-kid's computer isn't. They don't know that that's because of the OS, but it's one of the reasons they switch. (Speaking from experience - my mom plans to buy a Mac when her current laptop dies b/c of this very reason. She also uses a Mac at work, though she doesn't like it there b/c she says Excel doesn't handle as well as on Windows - but for home use she doesn't need to worry about that.)
As I said, very few pick up reading in that way. Not none, but very few. Your anecdata is one example. My own experiences are another. The vast majority of children (as shown by research with real statistically significant data) are counterexamples. They do pick up some understanding, of course, because they are exposed to it regularly (in literate cultures, of course), but not in nearly the way they pick up language. A good book on the subject is The Cradle of Culture: What Children Know About Writing and Numbers Before Being Taught, by Liliana Tolchinsky. (Btw, the "reading" you did by memorizing a story is very common. Learning the norms associated with reading, such as flipping pages and going left-to-right, is an important part of the process.)
I doubt that the scientists have actually jumped all the way to the conclusion that these humanoids had modern language. It sounds more like these are the earliest examples of the beginnings of evolution toward language, but still much older than those beginnings were thought to be.
Reading and writing, on the other hand, are things that millions of people over the world don't ever learn. Those that do have to be explicitly taught; very few pick up reading naturally from observing others and even fewer writing. For most children learning to read is a very challenging step.
When you compare those two processes, it becomes obvious that spoken language has had time to become very deeply ingrained in our circuitry, whereas reading and writing are not at all. They are things we are capable of, but they are not an integral part of being human.
Maybe the geek press thinks the iPhone is old news, but the popular press is still ALL over it. And in the end, which one will drive (or at least reflect) overall sales?