I like they idea, but:
And that's not counting other benefits, like increased productivity, reduced teen pregnancy, and all the other benefits of on-time graduation. Correlation does not causation make. Are these benefits of on-time graduation, or are they simply all part of the same cluster that depends on another variable or - more likely - on a complex set of interdependencies?
But, instead of another "let's give certain groups something special" program, how about raising the general level of education in such fields as math?
Many scams and doubtful business methods (including, btw. many insurances) only work because the general public is frighteningly uneducated in math, for example, and can't do even simple statistics.
One of the reasons this is so is that there is no education science of mathematics. There are special branches of education science for almost every other field, be it art, languages or health. But no one seems to care about how to teach math. So it's taught by people who know general pedagogics and try to apply that to math as best as they can - but we all know that math skills and people skills do not very often go together, so you are really lucky if your math teacher is good at both math and teaching.
And that's not his fault, but a failure of the system, which instead of thinking about why so many people fail in math in school, and improve the teaching techniques, dumbs down the curriculum or makes math optional instead of mandatory.
Judge Posner is probably one of the best legal minds of the age, it's sad that he wasn't one of the nominees to the Supreme Court. And don't you ever think that there might be a correlation between those two facts...
I don't say it wasn't a good business move. Well, ok, being about the only game worth playing on a console marketed with a billion dollar marketing budget certainly doesn't exactly hurt sales.
But see other comment: Everyone anticipating Halo before MS bought ought Bungie expected something very different. Check the archives, both of/. and the Bungie forums - you'll see just how much the old Bungie fans thought of that.
Now Bungie has a new fanbase. Probably a larger one. If it'll be a loyal as the old one, or jump ship the next time someone else comes out with a cool game - we'll see.
The Macbook Pro is the professional powerhouse mobile offering. It has a pretty good (DX10 actually) video card. Err... I own one. The latest MBP is a screaming gaming machine if I've ever seen one. There are few others that compare on the market.
Heck it runs Oblivion in 1680x1050, full details, extra-high-res textures and modded to increase the view distance.:-)
Make it harder to steal and they'll stop stealing it. I dare say you've not been actively fighting spam for the past 10 years or so.
A lot of people have put a lot of effort into making spamming harder. Know what? Spammers have not stopped spamming. They've worked equally hard to get around the anti-spam features.
Credit card fraud is likewise a big, profitable business. So you have this fancy biometrics smart card thing. Then the scammers will run a man-in-the-middle attack, instead of grabbing your CC number they'll steal an actual transaction. Or they will find other, more creative ways to part you and your money.
The misconception here is that git does not require you to have a remote repository; yours is as valid as any other. Under the git development model you don't have a central repository, you just publish the one you have. You still have to publish it. In fact, my "remote" Subversion repository is local, too - to the one machine it is on. No matter if SVN, arch or git, you still have to publish it. That means configuring whatever daemon is listening for inbound connections, setting up the firewall, creating user accounts, whatever.
The difference between centralised and distributed isn't in the work to set it up. Or rather: If anything than a centralised repository is easier, because you only have to set up and run one server.
And, of course, on the client side Subversion has much better support. Point me to a stable git bundle for TextMate and I'll check git out.
True, but that does not mean nothing changes. Among other things, millionaires would then only be 2, 5 or 10 times as wealthy as everyone else, instead of 20, 50 or 100 times.
I've not thought that through, just a quick thought I had.
Unsolicited mass-email is never ok. I'm sure some of the early spammers also thought that people were genuinely interested in their crap.
Your "revelation" might be of interest to some chinese. But I'd be surprised if there weren't a lot of them who really couldn't care less. For example, those who speak no or not enough english to even care about the web outside of China.
Pray, tell: How exactly is Citibank going to prevent John Dumb entering his credit card details into that fake ebay page that tells him they need it right now or all his bids will be cancelled?
Identity theft has many faces, and while some are the result of negligience on the part of corporations too worried about short-term growth and profits, only some of them are, and many others not.
It seems to be talking about a system where anyone can run their own server according to the open standard APIs, and hence will not be centralised. I think that's called HTTP.:-)
Everyone can run their own server, or website (yes, even mum - there are enough myspace-like services where every idiot can create a webpage, and most do).
But people seem to want sharing the same space with each other, even if that space is virtual.
That assumes that the repository is already there. If that's the case, svn is just as trivial.
I was talking about the regular case - a remote repository that you have to set up first. I don't know about git. I know it was a hassle with arch. Disclaimer: That was two years ago, things might have improved since then.
Real hard core gamers make up their own game systems and game worlds. Been there, done that, still got the books but got no T-shirt.
I've since come back to carefully picking a system that is closest to what I want, add a few (very few!) house rules, and concentrate on the roleplaying instead of the game mechanics and world-building.
I found that to be the more satisfying experience, mostly because it is easier to share a good game evening with others than it is to share world creation. That is mostly a solo activity.
He's right about Subversion, but he misses one point:
Putting your project in a Subversion repository takes an hour or two, maybe half a day if you're an idiot. Setting up an arch repository took me at least twice as long. Explaining how to use arch to developers who hadn't worked with it before is an order of magnitude more difficult than explaining Subversion to developers who haven't worked with it before.
Subversion is "good enough", but it's also simple, straightforward and frankly if you have anything that goes beyond a very simple project or where more than one person is involved, I can't think of many reasons to not put it into a Subversion repository.
I still like arch more for the concepts. But I don't use it. I might look at git one of those days, if I have a need Subversion doesn't address.
Until this article, I would've been sure that D&D is dead. I wouldn't even give much on AD&D, with d20 stealing the show and all. But maybe that's just because for the past 5 or 6 years I've been concentrating more on smaller RPGs and found what I had been missing all the time with the "mainstream" stuff: Innovation, creativity and an honest desire to create a good game, above all.
I wonder how much of that's true for MMORPGs as well. I've never played WoW, but I've seen at least 20 MMORPGs and they are all more or less the same. Played one, played 'em all. Which, of course, explains why players concentrate on just a few really large ones - there's no compelling reason to go anywhere else, so you can stay where your friends are.
But in pen-and-paper RPGs, you can be more flexible, can't you?
Here are some of the games that I've enjoyed a lot, and where I would gladly exchange one evening of playing those for a full campaign of any (A)D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire or any other mainstream game:
Amber - though you absolutely have to have read the books Godlike - great setting, interesting and quick game mechanics The Riddle of Steel - has its shortcomings, but for some reason it was a great experience Fireborn - I'd kill for having a regular Fireborn group Sorcerer - consensus opinion of many, not just me: One of the best indie RPGs out there
The problem, of course, is the same why WoW has millions of subscribers, and other (possibly better) games struggle: It's hard to find other players.
one of the draws was Vista - I wouldn't have to pay for it (outright) You really think either HP or MS gave you a free lunch? Of course you paid for it. The price was just hidden in the total price of the machine.
Look, you seem to have trouble with words. "universal" doesn't mean the same as "monopoly". Yes, I know that's hard to dig for people posting to/. as paid-for MS shills to grasp.
I, for one, have no conceptual troubles with multiple, competing and yet universally agreed upon standards.
Have you ever used XP or 2000? It's not "shitty". I have, and it is. Maybe that's because my point of comparison is OS X, not Linux (which, I'll agree, also pretty much sucks as a desktop OS).
Funny thing is: Almost everyone I know who has switched to OS X during the past two years or so agrees completely on this, so it's not that I'm a nutcase. There are hundreds of small details that make up the "user experience", and that make it painfully obvious that XP is just a piece of quickly cobbled-together cheap chinese copy.
You don't notice this when you just "poke around" a Mac in your local hardware store for five minutes. But use a Mac for a week and you'll know why I say XP is shitty.
A standard is just a set of rules. Practically every dictionary disagrees with you. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
Common use of the word standard implies that it is a universally agreed upon set of guidelines for interoperability.
Now you could, if you insist, argue about whether or not anything MS shoves into windos is universal enough to qualify, but most definitely not just any set of rules qualifies as a standard.
"There are some things that Windows does pretty well," Namely?
Zemlin said. Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition.'" Ah! No, wait. None of these are things that windos does well. These are things that Microsoft does well. Totally not the same thing.
Now the quality argument has been eroded away as well, since yes, the copies are made in cheap sweatshops in China. Guess what? SO ARE THE ORIGINALS! That's a major point most people seem to miss.
I, personally, call every company hypocritical if they at the same time complain about chinese fakes and outsource their own production to China.
Slashdot Mirror
Problems over here in Europe are similar.
But, instead of another "let's give certain groups something special" program, how about raising the general level of education in such fields as math?
Many scams and doubtful business methods (including, btw. many insurances) only work because the general public is frighteningly uneducated in math, for example, and can't do even simple statistics.
One of the reasons this is so is that there is no education science of mathematics. There are special branches of education science for almost every other field, be it art, languages or health. But no one seems to care about how to teach math. So it's taught by people who know general pedagogics and try to apply that to math as best as they can - but we all know that math skills and people skills do not very often go together, so you are really lucky if your math teacher is good at both math and teaching.
And that's not his fault, but a failure of the system, which instead of thinking about why so many people fail in math in school, and improve the teaching techniques, dumbs down the curriculum or makes math optional instead of mandatory.
Why sex? Why not, say, eating? Quite a lot of people have eating habits that are more disgusting than at least most porn.
Or why is it borderline-acceptable if a man whips out his piece to piss, but not to jerk off?
We can kiss in public, but not fuck. Some cultures on this earth don't tolerate public kissing.
Why is the male upper body ok, and the female not? While we're at it, I personally think hairy fat bellies to be a much worse sight than nice breasts.
Speaking of which, what is so special about sex? No, seriously. Can you explain?
That's what I remember, too.
I was really, really looking forward to Halo. Keyword being "was".
No, that is a new demographics.
/. and the Bungie forums - you'll see just how much the old Bungie fans thought of that.
I don't say it wasn't a good business move. Well, ok, being about the only game worth playing on a console marketed with a billion dollar marketing budget certainly doesn't exactly hurt sales.
But see other comment: Everyone anticipating Halo before MS bought ought Bungie expected something very different. Check the archives, both of
Now Bungie has a new fanbase. Probably a larger one. If it'll be a loyal as the old one, or jump ship the next time someone else comes out with a cool game - we'll see.
Didn't Halo die when they turned it into an xbox-exclusive FPS?
I know it did to me.
I know it did to the majority of Bungie's fanbase.
Heck it runs Oblivion in 1680x1050, full details, extra-high-res textures and modded to increase the view distance.
A lot of people have put a lot of effort into making spamming harder. Know what? Spammers have not stopped spamming. They've worked equally hard to get around the anti-spam features.
Credit card fraud is likewise a big, profitable business. So you have this fancy biometrics smart card thing. Then the scammers will run a man-in-the-middle attack, instead of grabbing your CC number they'll steal an actual transaction. Or they will find other, more creative ways to part you and your money.
The difference between centralised and distributed isn't in the work to set it up. Or rather: If anything than a centralised repository is easier, because you only have to set up and run one server.
And, of course, on the client side Subversion has much better support. Point me to a stable git bundle for TextMate and I'll check git out.
True, but that does not mean nothing changes. Among other things, millionaires would then only be 2, 5 or 10 times as wealthy as everyone else, instead of 20, 50 or 100 times.
I've not thought that through, just a quick thought I had.
No.
Unsolicited mass-email is never ok. I'm sure some of the early spammers also thought that people were genuinely interested in their crap.
Your "revelation" might be of interest to some chinese. But I'd be surprised if there weren't a lot of them who really couldn't care less. For example, those who speak no or not enough english to even care about the web outside of China.
All the "social networking" sites I know are websites... :-)
Pray, tell: How exactly is Citibank going to prevent John Dumb entering his credit card details into that fake ebay page that tells him they need it right now or all his bids will be cancelled?
Identity theft has many faces, and while some are the result of negligience on the part of corporations too worried about short-term growth and profits, only some of them are, and many others not.
Everyone can run their own server, or website (yes, even mum - there are enough myspace-like services where every idiot can create a webpage, and most do).
But people seem to want sharing the same space with each other, even if that space is virtual.
That assumes that the repository is already there. If that's the case, svn is just as trivial.
I was talking about the regular case - a remote repository that you have to set up first. I don't know about git. I know it was a hassle with arch. Disclaimer: That was two years ago, things might have improved since then.
I've since come back to carefully picking a system that is closest to what I want, add a few (very few!) house rules, and concentrate on the roleplaying instead of the game mechanics and world-building.
I found that to be the more satisfying experience, mostly because it is easier to share a good game evening with others than it is to share world creation. That is mostly a solo activity.
He's right about Subversion, but he misses one point:
Putting your project in a Subversion repository takes an hour or two, maybe half a day if you're an idiot. Setting up an arch repository took me at least twice as long. Explaining how to use arch to developers who hadn't worked with it before is an order of magnitude more difficult than explaining Subversion to developers who haven't worked with it before.
Subversion is "good enough", but it's also simple, straightforward and frankly if you have anything that goes beyond a very simple project or where more than one person is involved, I can't think of many reasons to not put it into a Subversion repository.
I still like arch more for the concepts. But I don't use it. I might look at git one of those days, if I have a need Subversion doesn't address.
Until this article, I would've been sure that D&D is dead. I wouldn't even give much on AD&D, with d20 stealing the show and all. But maybe that's just because for the past 5 or 6 years I've been concentrating more on smaller RPGs and found what I had been missing all the time with the "mainstream" stuff: Innovation, creativity and an honest desire to create a good game, above all.
I wonder how much of that's true for MMORPGs as well. I've never played WoW, but I've seen at least 20 MMORPGs and they are all more or less the same. Played one, played 'em all. Which, of course, explains why players concentrate on just a few really large ones - there's no compelling reason to go anywhere else, so you can stay where your friends are.
But in pen-and-paper RPGs, you can be more flexible, can't you?
Here are some of the games that I've enjoyed a lot, and where I would gladly exchange one evening of playing those for a full campaign of any (A)D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire or any other mainstream game:
Amber - though you absolutely have to have read the books
Godlike - great setting, interesting and quick game mechanics
The Riddle of Steel - has its shortcomings, but for some reason it was a great experience
Fireborn - I'd kill for having a regular Fireborn group
Sorcerer - consensus opinion of many, not just me: One of the best indie RPGs out there
The problem, of course, is the same why WoW has millions of subscribers, and other (possibly better) games struggle: It's hard to find other players.
Look, you seem to have trouble with words. "universal" doesn't mean the same as "monopoly". Yes, I know that's hard to dig for people posting to /. as paid-for MS shills to grasp.
I, for one, have no conceptual troubles with multiple, competing and yet universally agreed upon standards.
Funny thing is: Almost everyone I know who has switched to OS X during the past two years or so agrees completely on this, so it's not that I'm a nutcase. There are hundreds of small details that make up the "user experience", and that make it painfully obvious that XP is just a piece of quickly cobbled-together cheap chinese copy.
You don't notice this when you just "poke around" a Mac in your local hardware store for five minutes. But use a Mac for a week and you'll know why I say XP is shitty.
Common use of the word standard implies that it is a universally agreed upon set of guidelines for interoperability.
Now you could, if you insist, argue about whether or not anything MS shoves into windos is universal enough to qualify, but most definitely not just any set of rules qualifies as a standard.
I, personally, call every company hypocritical if they at the same time complain about chinese fakes and outsource their own production to China.