I'm actually like that. Non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, that is. (I'm writing this as I'm winding down from my "day" at 8am, after waking up at 7pm last night.) I'm closer to a 26 hour cycle than a 28, though. Thanks for the link, I might try that out.
How does it compare to just using Remote Desktop client apps?
Speed mostly. You can do things like watching video from a remote player or play graphics intensive games without much lag. The response latency is something like 100ms over 4g, so it's not perfect for games that require twitch reflexes, but I've played Civ 5 and XCOM over Splashtop on my Samsung Galaxy S3 rather smoothly.
I've been producing content and offering it for free since 1994, without ads.
Yeah, I didn't intend to paint with that wide of a brush.
There are, as far as I'm aware, three types of content creators.
1. Those who create for the sake of creating, and expenses be damned. (I wholeheartedly salute such people.)
2. Those who create for the sake of creating, but don't have the means to do so without some income to cover expenses. (I would fall under this category.)
3. Those who create for the sake of earning profit. (While not the greatest motive for creation, it's inevitable that some will fall under this category.)
I don't, personally, see a problem with creation for profit, so long as it's done in a reasonable manner, as it increases the amount of content and innovation. Problems occur, though, when the motive of earning profit eclipses the act of creation entirely. In such cases, innovation and creation is actually stifled, either through fear of straying from a formula, or actively stifling others innovation through excessive and heavy handed use of copyright and/or patents.
Advertisements are a means of subsidizing the cost of free content. People produce content, and want to offer it for free, but running a server costs money (and if producing said content is their full time job and not just a hobby, then there are living expenses to be considered as well). If you want free content, then ads are inevitable.
That said, there is a right way, and a wrong way, to do online advertising. I will block any ad that involves video or sound, animated images, or if a half dozen banner ads appear on one page. I don't block text based ads, such as Google Ads, though. (Within reason, anyway.)
Basically, if your ads don't ruin my browsing experience, I won't block them. Before I had ad block, though, if your ads ruined my browsing experience, I simply would leave the site immediately and never come back.
These Tests are intended to evaluate knowledge of a given subject. The Subjects in question are empirical and universal. This means that having a "passing knowledge" of the subject is an inherently agnostic metric (id est regardless of race, class, State, family status, et cetera).
If there exists evidence of test score disparities across Racial metrics, this is likely an indication of a systemic societal and/or educational defect that needs to be addressed, rather than an indication that certain Races are poor test-takers.
That said, for certain subjects, such as English, there may be Cultural Bias in the content of these tests. However, the solution in said case is to remove the Cultural Bias, rather than simply skewing scores based on Race. The former actually solves the problem, whilst the latter at best hides it, and at worst complicates it.
Moving from grounded reasoning to personal opinion, I believe that a "passing grade" on a Standardized test should be based on a quantitative measurement of an individual's knowledge of that subject, rather than a comparative measurement based on score relative to others. This idea that all students pass or fail together is just simply absurd, and I believe is ruining our education system. Grading curves simply do not make sense when measuring a quantitative knowledge of a subject. If you do not know a subject, you should not pass that subject.
OK then, give me the correct plural and possessive for an object that belongs to a group of people called Chris (using "Chris" as the basis). How about an object belonging to a collective of women who like to identify themselves as "Ms." ?
It doesn't matter if profit margins go down, as long as profits go up at the same time. Adding another profit base to your business isn't bad just because your margins go down.
You are speaking rationally... perception is what matters in stock valuations, especially a stock as widely held by "enthusiast investors" as AAPL. Part of the valuation perception in AAPL is the unusually high profit margin, merge them with a nice profitable entity like Archer Daniels Midland and it will muck up that crystal clear picture of what makes AAPL such a desirable stock to hold.
Apple could always acquire Sharp through a subsidiary company. That way Apple's profit margins (and hence, stock price) are firewalled from Sharp.
Did the same thing myself the moment I saw the comment. Didn't combine them into a single image, but got every bit of detail within a 100x100 panel square. Nothing was found further than 25 panels from the center, though.
Here's the python script I threw together. It's crude, but gets the job done. (Note that it needs wget on the path or in the same directory, didn't feel like tinkering with binary writes.)
import os, urllib
baseUrl="http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/"
def convert(coords): st = '' if coords[0]>0: st+=str(coords[0])+'n' else: st+=str(abs(coords[0]))+'s'
if coords[1]>0: st+=str(coords[1])+'e' else: st+=str(abs(coords[1]))+'w'
st+='.png'
return st
x=1 y=1 flipX = 1 flipY = 1 while True: coords = (x*flipX, y*flipY) print coords u = urllib.urlopen(baseUrl+convert(coords))
firstLine = True img = False for line in u: if firstLine: firstLine = False if line == '\x89PNG\r\n': print 'Found Image!' os.spawnl(os.P_WAIT, "wget"," -nc ",baseUrl+convert(coords)) elif line == '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>\n': pass else: print line u.close() if flipY==-1: flipY = 1 y+=1 if y>x: y=1 if flipX==-1: flipX=1 x+=1 else: flipX=-1 else: flipY = -1
Yeah, I've been kind of disgusted with major game companies for the past few years as well. The only games I buy any more are developed by Indie devs. Gotta love the Humble Bundle. DRM like this always costs the company more by pissing off legitimate customers than it could ever hope to regain by preventing piracy. In order to profit by preventing piracy, you not only need to stop an individual from pirating the game, but convince them to buy a legitimate copy of the game.
First off, it's effectively impossible to completely prevent piracy. You can make it more difficult, but it will always still be possible if the pirates are determined enough. There are in general three types of people who play PC games. Those that refuse to pirate anything (let's call them Consumers), those who will sometimes purchase games, or sometimes pirate them (Casual Pirates), and those who never pay for games (Hardcore Pirates). Those Hardcore Pirates are inherently lost. No matter what the company does, they will not gain any profit from them.
The optimal solution is to stop Casual Pirates as well as possible, while not losing any of the Consumers. DRM like Ubisoft is pushing is going at it backwards. They need to incentivize purchasing rather than attempting (futilely) to prevent piracy. The old-school method of having an activation key tied to your install, and simply preventing the same key from playing multiplayer at the same time worked well in my opinion. It wasn't an onerous burden on legitimate users, and those who pirated did not have full usage of the software.
Fair enough. I'm not claiming to be an expert on criminal reintegration or anything. Points 2 and 3 make sense, though point 1 sounds a little far fetched, In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what the person in question was imprisoned for. If you've been sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, for instance, I don't think you deserve luxury. For prisoners who are more likely to be successfully reformed, though, luxuries as a reward for good behavior does make sense.
Maybe not permanently, but it wouldn't be that hard for someone to visit the prison who has a smart phone with tethering or one of those pocket wi-fi dealies and create a wifi network temporarily so their compatriot can do whatever they need to do.
Ummm.... yes it would. It's a prison.
Not that I really think prisoners should be given video games, internet connectivity or no.
The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.
Yeah, I remember those games. They sucked too. Amusing for about 6 minutes, then I would move on to something more engaging.
"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
Can you explain that one away? You may be technically correct in your arguments, but there is essentially zero chance that the author is well versed in the historic etymology of English. Even a broken clock et cetera, et cetera...
As an avid gamer who doesn't really get to play video games much any more, I can say that this idea appeals to me. However, only if the games are priced accordingly.
If my options are $10 for a 10-hour good game, or $60 for a 60-hour good game, I'll probably go with the $10 one.
However, if they're talking about $60 for a 10-hour game versus $60 for a 60-hour game, then I have two words for those developers: frak you.
Helping near-blind people see is all well and good, but, when will this technology be available to the average consumer? I want my heads-up display. Think about it, glasses that can overlay contact information on people you meet via facial recognition, price comparisons simple by looking at a barcode, IMs or emails scrolling across your vision. I want. I want now.
I haven't seen many new first-person dungeon crawlers recently. I can only think of one, Demise, which was a sequel to an old 95-era roguelike called Mordor.
I agree there's still plenty of traditional roguelikes in active development, I even made a passable roguelike engine (framework, but little content) myself.
The problem with existing adventure games is just that, they've been around for a long while, and I've finished any of them with actual worth. They don't exactly have great replay value.
Tie Fighter was awesome. I still have my original 3.25" discs laying about somewhere, but I don't own a single floppy drive at this point. A few other old-school gems like Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master (basically any of the original First Person dungeon adventures) would be fun to play again with all the advances in technology since then. As far as I'm aware, the genre has pretty much died, like adventure games.
Some people just don't like to play games where the objective is "shoot stuff".
Obviously you've never played fallout 3. While, yes, there's a lot of emphasis on "shooting stuff", "shooting stuff" is not actually necessary to play, enjoy, or even win the game. There as much emphasis on character interaction, conversation, trade, science, morality, evil, hope, loss, trust, lies, and the essence of humanity.
Heavy Spoiler Below, Read at Your Own Peril.
-
-
-
-
-
-
As a matter of fact, in my Fallout 3 game, I managed to convince both President Eden and Colonel Autumn, that, because Eden was an AI, he was never actually elected president. Eden destroyed the Enclave base and himself, and Autumn (at Project Purity) walked away without a fight.
It's a great game. A fusion of puzzle and fast paced action, set to a soundtrack of any music you have on hand (a number of audio formats are supported, mp3s of course, as well as flac, ogg, and likely several others). Pick a slow, steady song, and the track will be generated accordingly, and be a simple, leisurely game. On the other hand, pick a fast paced, high tempo song (Dragonforce songs are popularized amongst the community as some of the most difficult songs available), and the game will be fast and dangerous, you will soar downhill, barely managing to avoid overflowing your playing area. In addition of any songs you have on hand, a number of songs are provided by Audiosurf for free (from Audiosurf Radio), for players to enjoy.
The game has three difficulty levels (Casual, Pro, and Expert), so anyone can enjoy the game, regardless of skill. Each difficulty has several characters, each with their own nuances and special abilities. Audiosurf maintains a scoreboard for each song every played, so players may compete with each other. You can compete with only friends, your local area, or across the globe. Scores are separated by difficulty, but not by character.
Audiosurf is available on Steam, bundled with the Orange Box soundtrack (some nice songs, if you're a fan of video game music, as I am), and is very cheap. $10 (USD), last I checked. It's the best music game I've seen yet (though I'm not a fan of the genre, really), so I'm sorry if this post seems a bit like an advertisement, but, no, I'm not getting paid for this (I wish I was, though:-/).
(I know it would have been pithier to just leave this post at "Audiosurf", and I admit I considered it, but I felt an actual description of the game would be more useful.)
I agree with most of your points, except one. For what reason do you believe that face to face communication is "healthier" than transmitted communication? To avoid a separate philosophical debate, for the purposes of this argument I will agree that social interaction is beneficial to the mental well-being of an individual. However, how does the physical presence of person nearby alter one's mental state? Social interaction is a purely mental domain, physicality has no effect. The exchange of ideas with another person, shared experiences and feelings may be psychologically required for a well-adjusted, socially acceptable person, but how does physical nearness change this?
As a first example, let us consider video chat. In such a situation, you can see and hear another person, and they can see and hear you. How, in any way, does this differ from standing next to the person in question? How can you deny that this is full social interaction?
Let us now scale it back slightly. Consider voice chat, telephone calls. Yes, you cannot see the other person, but we are verbal creatures. We have evolved language over many thousands of years, in order to express our thoughts and our selves. Unless you consider standing near a person without any communication a form of meaningful social interaction, you must agree that speech is the core of all social and psychological predispositions to interaction. In such a case, taking away visual stimuli will only remove gesticulation as a form of communication, a form which I contend has no further psychological value. If you would consider a blind man, with no access to these effects, you should see that lack of sight does in no way preclude the ability for social stability.
Finally, one step further back. Let us now consider text only interaction. To begin, do you deny the power of the written word? It's ability to evoke any emotion that we may feel? Even reading this very discourse, you must have had an emotional response, whether you agree or not. Do you consider a movie more evoking than a book? Even if so, how does the content of the message change according to the means of it's transmission? Do you believe that the actual physical process of hearing sound is handled differently by the psyche? In my own experience, I recall more vividly the words and thoughts conveyed, rather than the actual sounds. I contend that, apart from music, sound does not provide a distinctiveness to communication that cannot otherwise be conveyed.
As for the other issues at hand, I would like to illuminate that there are two distinct types of addiction, physical dependencies, and emotional dependencies. Clearly, internet addiction would fall under the category of emotional dependencies. If the dependency becomes debilitating, then it is the duty of the parents to render aid. I can only hope that the effort was given to fully comprehend these children's individual situations and that full determination was used in the conclusion of a debilitating condition. I fear it is only too likely, though, that these parents decided upon mere observation of extended time online that their children needed "help", and did not attempt to fully understand why their children proceeded so. Simply spending six hours a day online does not indicate an addiction, nor does depression if one's favorite pastime is taken away without just cause.
...the research in the article has nothing to do with predicting primes...
The article states that a new pattern was found in prime numbers. A pattern by it's nature is a predicting element, if you know the pattern, you can determine it's elements. In this case, it's the first digit of prime numbers. According to the article, about 30% of primes start with the number 1, while about 5% start with 9. Therefore if you are trying generate a prime number, you are six times more likely to do so if the number you choose starts with a 1, than with a 9. The article is a direct application of the generation of prime numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually like that. Non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, that is. (I'm writing this as I'm winding down from my "day" at 8am, after waking up at 7pm last night.) I'm closer to a 26 hour cycle than a 28, though. Thanks for the link, I might try that out.
How does it compare to just using Remote Desktop client apps?
Speed mostly. You can do things like watching video from a remote player or play graphics intensive games without much lag. The response latency is something like 100ms over 4g, so it's not perfect for games that require twitch reflexes, but I've played Civ 5 and XCOM over Splashtop on my Samsung Galaxy S3 rather smoothly.
I've been producing content and offering it for free since 1994, without ads.
Yeah, I didn't intend to paint with that wide of a brush.
There are, as far as I'm aware, three types of content creators.
I don't, personally, see a problem with creation for profit, so long as it's done in a reasonable manner, as it increases the amount of content and innovation. Problems occur, though, when the motive of earning profit eclipses the act of creation entirely. In such cases, innovation and creation is actually stifled, either through fear of straying from a formula, or actively stifling others innovation through excessive and heavy handed use of copyright and/or patents.
.
Advertisements are a means of subsidizing the cost of free content. People produce content, and want to offer it for free, but running a server costs money (and if producing said content is their full time job and not just a hobby, then there are living expenses to be considered as well). If you want free content, then ads are inevitable.
That said, there is a right way, and a wrong way, to do online advertising. I will block any ad that involves video or sound, animated images, or if a half dozen banner ads appear on one page. I don't block text based ads, such as Google Ads, though. (Within reason, anyway.)
Basically, if your ads don't ruin my browsing experience, I won't block them. Before I had ad block, though, if your ads ruined my browsing experience, I simply would leave the site immediately and never come back.
These Tests are intended to evaluate knowledge of a given subject. The Subjects in question are empirical and universal. This means that having a "passing knowledge" of the subject is an inherently agnostic metric (id est regardless of race, class, State, family status, et cetera).
If there exists evidence of test score disparities across Racial metrics, this is likely an indication of a systemic societal and/or educational defect that needs to be addressed, rather than an indication that certain Races are poor test-takers.
That said, for certain subjects, such as English, there may be Cultural Bias in the content of these tests. However, the solution in said case is to remove the Cultural Bias, rather than simply skewing scores based on Race. The former actually solves the problem, whilst the latter at best hides it, and at worst complicates it.
Moving from grounded reasoning to personal opinion, I believe that a "passing grade" on a Standardized test should be based on a quantitative measurement of an individual's knowledge of that subject, rather than a comparative measurement based on score relative to others. This idea that all students pass or fail together is just simply absurd, and I believe is ruining our education system. Grading curves simply do not make sense when measuring a quantitative knowledge of a subject. If you do not know a subject, you should not pass that subject.
OK then, give me the correct plural and possessive for an object that belongs to a group of people called Chris (using "Chris" as the basis). How about an object belonging to a collective of women who like to identify themselves as "Ms." ?
Chrises' and Misses'
What are you talking about? Here's its entry in a dictionary from the year 1806. Please don't give the rest of us spelling/grammar Nazis a bad name.
Excuse me, but the proper term is "Logomachist".
It doesn't matter if profit margins go down, as long as profits go up at the same time. Adding another profit base to your business isn't bad just because your margins go down.
You are speaking rationally... perception is what matters in stock valuations, especially a stock as widely held by "enthusiast investors" as AAPL. Part of the valuation perception in AAPL is the unusually high profit margin, merge them with a nice profitable entity like Archer Daniels Midland and it will muck up that crystal clear picture of what makes AAPL such a desirable stock to hold.
Apple could always acquire Sharp through a subsidiary company. That way Apple's profit margins (and hence, stock price) are firewalled from Sharp.
Did the same thing myself the moment I saw the comment. Didn't combine them into a single image, but got every bit of detail within a 100x100 panel square. Nothing was found further than 25 panels from the center, though.
Here's the python script I threw together. It's crude, but gets the job done. (Note that it needs wget on the path or in the same directory, didn't feel like tinkering with binary writes.)
import os, urllib
baseUrl="http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/"
def convert(coords):
st = ''
if coords[0]>0:
st+=str(coords[0])+'n'
else:
st+=str(abs(coords[0]))+'s'
if coords[1]>0:
st+=str(coords[1])+'e'
else:
st+=str(abs(coords[1]))+'w'
st+='.png'
return st
x=1
y=1
flipX = 1
flipY = 1
while True:
coords = (x*flipX, y*flipY)
print coords
u = urllib.urlopen(baseUrl+convert(coords))
firstLine = True
img = False
for line in u:
if firstLine:
firstLine = False
if line == '\x89PNG\r\n':
print 'Found Image!'
os.spawnl(os.P_WAIT, "wget"," -nc ",baseUrl+convert(coords))
elif line == '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>\n':
pass
else:
print line
u.close()
if flipY==-1:
flipY = 1
y+=1
if y>x:
y=1
if flipX==-1:
flipX=1
x+=1
else:
flipX=-1
else:
flipY = -1
Seriously... Have these people never taken an Algebra class?
Bat + Ball = $1.10
Bat = Ball + $1.00
Ball + $1.00 + Ball = $1.10
2*Ball + $1.00 = $1.10
2*Ball = $0.10
Ball = $0.05
Bat = $0.05 + $1.00 = $1.05
Yeah, I've been kind of disgusted with major game companies for the past few years as well. The only games I buy any more are developed by Indie devs. Gotta love the Humble Bundle. DRM like this always costs the company more by pissing off legitimate customers than it could ever hope to regain by preventing piracy. In order to profit by preventing piracy, you not only need to stop an individual from pirating the game, but convince them to buy a legitimate copy of the game.
First off, it's effectively impossible to completely prevent piracy. You can make it more difficult, but it will always still be possible if the pirates are determined enough. There are in general three types of people who play PC games. Those that refuse to pirate anything (let's call them Consumers), those who will sometimes purchase games, or sometimes pirate them (Casual Pirates), and those who never pay for games (Hardcore Pirates). Those Hardcore Pirates are inherently lost. No matter what the company does, they will not gain any profit from them.
The optimal solution is to stop Casual Pirates as well as possible, while not losing any of the Consumers. DRM like Ubisoft is pushing is going at it backwards. They need to incentivize purchasing rather than attempting (futilely) to prevent piracy. The old-school method of having an activation key tied to your install, and simply preventing the same key from playing multiplayer at the same time worked well in my opinion. It wasn't an onerous burden on legitimate users, and those who pirated did not have full usage of the software.
Fair enough. I'm not claiming to be an expert on criminal reintegration or anything. Points 2 and 3 make sense, though point 1 sounds a little far fetched, In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what the person in question was imprisoned for. If you've been sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, for instance, I don't think you deserve luxury. For prisoners who are more likely to be successfully reformed, though, luxuries as a reward for good behavior does make sense.
Maybe not permanently, but it wouldn't be that hard for someone to visit the prison who has a smart phone with tethering or one of those pocket wi-fi dealies and create a wifi network temporarily so their compatriot can do whatever they need to do.
Ummm.... yes it would. It's a prison.
Not that I really think prisoners should be given video games, internet connectivity or no.
The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.
Yeah, I remember those games. They sucked too. Amusing for about 6 minutes, then I would move on to something more engaging.
Obviously not the problem, but the Wifi would be.
"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
Can you explain that one away? You may be technically correct in your arguments, but there is essentially zero chance that the author is well versed in the historic etymology of English. Even a broken clock et cetera, et cetera...
As an avid gamer who doesn't really get to play video games much any more, I can say that this idea appeals to me. However, only if the games are priced accordingly. If my options are $10 for a 10-hour good game, or $60 for a 60-hour good game, I'll probably go with the $10 one. However, if they're talking about $60 for a 10-hour game versus $60 for a 60-hour game, then I have two words for those developers: frak you.
Helping near-blind people see is all well and good, but, when will this technology be available to the average consumer? I want my heads-up display. Think about it, glasses that can overlay contact information on people you meet via facial recognition, price comparisons simple by looking at a barcode, IMs or emails scrolling across your vision. I want. I want now.
I haven't seen many new first-person dungeon crawlers recently. I can only think of one, Demise, which was a sequel to an old 95-era roguelike called Mordor.
I agree there's still plenty of traditional roguelikes in active development, I even made a passable roguelike engine (framework, but little content) myself.
The problem with existing adventure games is just that, they've been around for a long while, and I've finished any of them with actual worth. They don't exactly have great replay value.
>>> 3.25"
No such animal. The standard sizes for home PCs were "five and a quarter inch" (5 1/4") floppies and "three point five" (3.5) floppies.
You're right, I got them mixed up. Like I said, it's been a while. Thanks for the correction.
Tie Fighter was awesome. I still have my original 3.25" discs laying about somewhere, but I don't own a single floppy drive at this point. A few other old-school gems like Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master (basically any of the original First Person dungeon adventures) would be fun to play again with all the advances in technology since then. As far as I'm aware, the genre has pretty much died, like adventure games.
Some people just don't like to play games where the objective is "shoot stuff".
Obviously you've never played fallout 3. While, yes, there's a lot of emphasis on "shooting stuff", "shooting stuff" is not actually necessary to play, enjoy, or even win the game. There as much emphasis on character interaction, conversation, trade, science, morality, evil, hope, loss, trust, lies, and the essence of humanity.
Heavy Spoiler Below, Read at Your Own Peril.
-
-
-
-
-
-
As a matter of fact, in my Fallout 3 game, I managed to convince both President Eden and Colonel Autumn, that, because Eden was an AI, he was never actually elected president. Eden destroyed the Enclave base and himself, and Autumn (at Project Purity) walked away without a fight.
It's a great game. A fusion of puzzle and fast paced action, set to a soundtrack of any music you have on hand (a number of audio formats are supported, mp3s of course, as well as flac, ogg, and likely several others). Pick a slow, steady song, and the track will be generated accordingly, and be a simple, leisurely game. On the other hand, pick a fast paced, high tempo song (Dragonforce songs are popularized amongst the community as some of the most difficult songs available), and the game will be fast and dangerous, you will soar downhill, barely managing to avoid overflowing your playing area. In addition of any songs you have on hand, a number of songs are provided by Audiosurf for free (from Audiosurf Radio), for players to enjoy.
The game has three difficulty levels (Casual, Pro, and Expert), so anyone can enjoy the game, regardless of skill. Each difficulty has several characters, each with their own nuances and special abilities. Audiosurf maintains a scoreboard for each song every played, so players may compete with each other. You can compete with only friends, your local area, or across the globe. Scores are separated by difficulty, but not by character.
Audiosurf is available on Steam, bundled with the Orange Box soundtrack (some nice songs, if you're a fan of video game music, as I am), and is very cheap. $10 (USD), last I checked. It's the best music game I've seen yet (though I'm not a fan of the genre, really), so I'm sorry if this post seems a bit like an advertisement, but, no, I'm not getting paid for this (I wish I was, though
Some links:
(I know it would have been pithier to just leave this post at "Audiosurf", and I admit I considered it, but I felt an actual description of the game would be more useful.)
I agree with most of your points, except one. For what reason do you believe that face to face communication is "healthier" than transmitted communication? To avoid a separate philosophical debate, for the purposes of this argument I will agree that social interaction is beneficial to the mental well-being of an individual. However, how does the physical presence of person nearby alter one's mental state? Social interaction is a purely mental domain, physicality has no effect. The exchange of ideas with another person, shared experiences and feelings may be psychologically required for a well-adjusted, socially acceptable person, but how does physical nearness change this?
As a first example, let us consider video chat. In such a situation, you can see and hear another person, and they can see and hear you. How, in any way, does this differ from standing next to the person in question? How can you deny that this is full social interaction?
Let us now scale it back slightly. Consider voice chat, telephone calls. Yes, you cannot see the other person, but we are verbal creatures. We have evolved language over many thousands of years, in order to express our thoughts and our selves. Unless you consider standing near a person without any communication a form of meaningful social interaction, you must agree that speech is the core of all social and psychological predispositions to interaction. In such a case, taking away visual stimuli will only remove gesticulation as a form of communication, a form which I contend has no further psychological value. If you would consider a blind man, with no access to these effects, you should see that lack of sight does in no way preclude the ability for social stability.
Finally, one step further back. Let us now consider text only interaction. To begin, do you deny the power of the written word? It's ability to evoke any emotion that we may feel? Even reading this very discourse, you must have had an emotional response, whether you agree or not. Do you consider a movie more evoking than a book? Even if so, how does the content of the message change according to the means of it's transmission? Do you believe that the actual physical process of hearing sound is handled differently by the psyche? In my own experience, I recall more vividly the words and thoughts conveyed, rather than the actual sounds. I contend that, apart from music, sound does not provide a distinctiveness to communication that cannot otherwise be conveyed.
As for the other issues at hand, I would like to illuminate that there are two distinct types of addiction, physical dependencies, and emotional dependencies. Clearly, internet addiction would fall under the category of emotional dependencies. If the dependency becomes debilitating, then it is the duty of the parents to render aid. I can only hope that the effort was given to fully comprehend these children's individual situations and that full determination was used in the conclusion of a debilitating condition. I fear it is only too likely, though, that these parents decided upon mere observation of extended time online that their children needed "help", and did not attempt to fully understand why their children proceeded so. Simply spending six hours a day online does not indicate an addiction, nor does depression if one's favorite pastime is taken away without just cause.
...the research in the article has nothing to do with predicting primes...
The article states that a new pattern was found in prime numbers. A pattern by it's nature is a predicting element, if you know the pattern, you can determine it's elements. In this case, it's the first digit of prime numbers. According to the article, about 30% of primes start with the number 1, while about 5% start with 9. Therefore if you are trying generate a prime number, you are six times more likely to do so if the number you choose starts with a 1, than with a 9. The article is a direct application of the generation of prime numbers.