I've always thought of children and adults as naturally watching the exact kinds of films targeted at each other. The "adult" movies really don't entertain well once you've seen your first 20, whereas more artistic effort goes into children's films.
For example, my mother really liked the art quality and style in "Digimon: the Movie", something that scores a 0 out of 10 on the "well-written story" meter as well as the bad-ass meter. Now that I'm older, I appreciated Ratatoullie (spelling?) in the same way.
Accordingly, I've always bought Nintendo consoles because they tend to release far more creative games. Even just considering franchises, compare the fully-realized Hyrule of "Zelda: Twilight Princess" to say... a Resident Evil game. I can't imagine real people living in Racoon City, but I can watch Hylean civilization run.
Well until Rare got bought they had Diddy Kong Racing. I don't care what you say, cart racing in airplanes is fun! Even if they could have made it a bit harder...
Speaking of Pokemon, I've always thought of its USA versions as the most egregious abusers of side-quests. The Japanese originals reward the player for obtaining every last Pokemon by giving them a very powerful bonus Pokemon that can learn any skill in the game. Nintendo of America wanted to milk their cash-cow for every last red cent, so they deleted those bonus Pokemon from the games and replaced them with "Pokemon diplomas". American players who wanted the bonuses had to attend official Pokemon events or buy a Gameshark (I forgot which cost more money.).
But try to understand what that means in terms of incentives. The Japanese version rewarded players for putting in the effort of completing the game 100%, even if it means asking for a friend's help (something Pokemon explicitly required). The American version rewarded monetary investment and attendance at promotional events.
Now you tell me which of those models works better for games as a whole.
Speaking of games and ROMs... The copyright system should allow copyrighted materials made exclusively for outdated media formats to lapse into the public domain unless the copyright holder re-releases them unchanged for a new format. I've had it with being told I can't play one of my old N64 games by ROM (for netplay, you see) just because the Wii VC or the DS might get some remake (almost always altered from the original) released.
And if the copyright holder wants to update the format of an old work, they should be obligated to send a re-release copy to anyone who owns an old-format copy in exchange for that old copy. You re-released Zelda64 for the VC and want to maintain copyrights? Fine, but you better give me a free copy when I show you my original cartridge.
Because very many math nerds like to refer to CS as "a branch of math". Some of these math nerds are the founders of university CS departments that budded from math departments due to shared expertise.
They're right, as long as one accepts a sufficiently broad definition of "mathematics".
Now you look here. I've been through fairly reasonable amounts of trauma -- certainly more than you and most of Slashdot, if not most of the civilized world. I won't go into details, but let's just say I've faced about 8 severely traumatic events in a life 18 years long.
I tell you, we have a drug-obsessed culture. Particularly, we have a culture that would rather treat a person's unhappiness as a medical issue and drug that person rather than attempt to provide that person with the tools to make their life happier. Why? Because many, if not most, of such people do, will, and/or would choose to live in ways that most other people wouldn't agree with.
Though that does leave out rape victims or the families of murder victims, who experience a trauma after which they cannot move forwards as a person. This drug could very well help them.
But for most people who get stuck seeing psychiatrists, drugs are the wrong answer to the simple question of "Why can't I live a life closer to the life I want?"
And no, I'm not a Scientologist; you can tell by my signature.
The general problem with your cure for being a rape victim is that most rape victims carry far too much trauma to ever think the event over logically and decide to change whatever behaviors had increased their probability of being raped.
Are you implying there's something wrong with nationalism and petty self-interest?
Re:Holiness Unto the Prophet
on
GPLv3 Released
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· Score: 1
Liar and terrorist!
Truly Richie was the greatest of all n'viyim that HaShem ever sent among men, though the noble men of Berkeley did follow him with their Software Distribution, and the Open Source Software movement did receive and do interpret that Torah.
And truly did Richie reward dominion over his Eretz Internet to his Chosen People, the Hackers.
It's more like the "The educated get richer and the ignorant go nowhere". The problem with that is that the number of people obtaining a truly solid higher education follows a "hill-shaped" curve over time. When a solid higher education in engineering, science, mathematics wins entrance to the upper-middle or upper class, every qualified individual who can pay for the education obtains one. However, degree inflation tends to occur over time and the economic water-line of education tends to rise, so you eventually slide from the previous maximum downwards as more and more people go into liberal-arts programs and only a professional degree (like a doctorate of medicine or law) actually creates social mobility.
IMHO, we're currently in the downward slide. We've got more students in university than ever, but a smaller percentage than ever study the hard subjects that entitled their own parents and grandparents to call themselves educated.
Who thinks this is going to flop? Not at all. The iPhone will flop just like the first-generation iPods did. Then, when Apple opens the software platform and/or cuts the umbilical cord from AT&T, it will take off just like the iPod did. I'll give them a gold meddle if they add DS-type gaming capabilities in the second generation.
All real advances of technology are the result of changing ordinary everyday things because those are the things people do all the time, and a little improvement has a big effect. I'm not astroturfing: that statement just screams "iPhone", or at least "highly computerized, software-platform mobile phone with excellent user interface".
Because why do I need a separate date-book, P.D.A., cell phone, portable video-game console, and digital-audio player? Eventually every personal communication or organization activity will be yet another function performed in software (hopefully free software) on an easy-to-use portable device that connects wirelessly to whatever network necessary.
And where do you live, that you address us as "your society"?
I take offense at your remark about the Midwest. I'm planning to move out of this country. Know any good places to go?
Your society is dying. Face facts! For the record, I agree. Life is still OK inside, but little things have started to go already. Little things like our civil liberties... or the fact that one now needs unpaid internships completely aside from one's education to obtain the "experience" vitally necessary to become employable. Or the education itself becoming so expensive that the majority of the population has to take out student loans. Or the fact that nobody puts any money into science, making it utterly worthless to train as a scientist, requiring our nation to import its scientists right alongside its cheap plastic chatchkes. Or the complete lack of proper, honorable leaders.
I'd like to respond to your last two points:
3) The belief that everyone has infinite potential : Not everyone gets to be an astronaut. In order to remain competitive, we have to leave kids behind in a more intelligent fashion. Right now we just pretend it doesn't happen and that nobody is left behind. We lower all standards to accommodate the lowest common denominator. In a more ideal system, we identify the pathological problem cases and instead of failing them upwards, we should weed them out of the general education pool, and give them a way to earn a decent living (trade schools?). This would not only raise the lowest common denominator in our general education pool, but also produce more healthy and productive members of society. I demand one condition to implement this: tracking cannot be permanent. If a kid gets stuck in remedial classes, decides to study hard and passes his remedial classes and some kind of "moving up" exam, they should let him back into normal-level classes. Ditto for normal->accelerated movement.
Unfortunately, most schools that implement some form of tracking today (usually for math classes) allow movement downwards, but not upwards. At my local high school, you fail out of accelerated math for having an average lower than 85%. The school says that this keeps only smart, motivated students in advanced math. I say that they should expect lower grades in a higher-level class, and that a student with 85% or greater average in normal math can reasonably have a lower average in an accelerated class. I also say that dropping everyone who averages below 85% also statistically ensures that all of their advanced math classes will show a B+-to-A average, making the school look very good for no actual work.
In fact, I once met a sophomore from that very school when I was taking my SATs. He had decided he didn't like the high school's math classes (he was one-year accelerated track) and had taken Pre-Calculus at the local community college over the summer. Now he was in Calculus since the school accepted the credits, and after that the high school could now longer offer math classes advanced enough for him. But the school had tracked him as "one-year accelerated".
My point? Let people both fall and rise on their merits.
Also, we need more vocational high schools. I turned one down in 8th grade since it would take me out into the countryside, out of my home district. It was just one regional vo-tech school, but it did a ton of good to provide those not inclined to academic work with employable skills for no extra tuition.
4) Decision Makers : In my experience, the smartest people that I know want absolutely nothing to do with politics, public policy, or decision making. I can tell you from experience that it takes more than brains to lead people well. As much as Americans overemphasize it (oy gevalt do we overemphasize it!), leadership is a real skill. So I have to say: the smartest people you know want nothing to do with civic leadership, and the best leaders I know also want nothing to do with it. We're getting the worst of both worlds now.
Look, we've given those fascist 'think of the children' asshats every damn thing they wanted, and, magically, they always want more. Don't negotiate with terrorists.
In fact, I find the whole thing completely politicized because who dissents against the idea that gravity exists is immediately labeled a wacko and there's no room for debate on the subject. Indeed. Just because the consensus postulates a force of gravity to explain the acceleration of mass towards mass doesn't stop general relativity from providing the real culprit: curved space-time.
(one event! We lived with the threat of IRA bombings for *decades*!) If the United States really cared about protecting itself from terrorism, it would ask the three 'I-Countries': Ireland, India, and Israel. They've done nothing of the sort. That says something, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I've always thought of children and adults as naturally watching the exact kinds of films targeted at each other. The "adult" movies really don't entertain well once you've seen your first 20, whereas more artistic effort goes into children's films.
For example, my mother really liked the art quality and style in "Digimon: the Movie", something that scores a 0 out of 10 on the "well-written story" meter as well as the bad-ass meter. Now that I'm older, I appreciated Ratatoullie (spelling?) in the same way.
Accordingly, I've always bought Nintendo consoles because they tend to release far more creative games. Even just considering franchises, compare the fully-realized Hyrule of "Zelda: Twilight Princess" to say... a Resident Evil game. I can't imagine real people living in Racoon City, but I can watch Hylean civilization run.
People are really just complaining because Nintendo will release their big-franchise titles a year into the life of the system instead of at launch.
Also, Zelda: Twilight Princess really is too easy compared to older Zelda games.
Well until Rare got bought they had Diddy Kong Racing. I don't care what you say, cart racing in airplanes is fun! Even if they could have made it a bit harder...
Nights: Journey of Dreams. It kind of helps that Nintendo seems to get the best Sega games nowadays.
Speaking of Pokemon, I've always thought of its USA versions as the most egregious abusers of side-quests. The Japanese originals reward the player for obtaining every last Pokemon by giving them a very powerful bonus Pokemon that can learn any skill in the game. Nintendo of America wanted to milk their cash-cow for every last red cent, so they deleted those bonus Pokemon from the games and replaced them with "Pokemon diplomas". American players who wanted the bonuses had to attend official Pokemon events or buy a Gameshark (I forgot which cost more money.).
But try to understand what that means in terms of incentives. The Japanese version rewarded players for putting in the effort of completing the game 100%, even if it means asking for a friend's help (something Pokemon explicitly required). The American version rewarded monetary investment and attendance at promotional events.
Now you tell me which of those models works better for games as a whole.
Speaking of games and ROMs... The copyright system should allow copyrighted materials made exclusively for outdated media formats to lapse into the public domain unless the copyright holder re-releases them unchanged for a new format. I've had it with being told I can't play one of my old N64 games by ROM (for netplay, you see) just because the Wii VC or the DS might get some remake (almost always altered from the original) released.
And if the copyright holder wants to update the format of an old work, they should be obligated to send a re-release copy to anyone who owns an old-format copy in exchange for that old copy. You re-released Zelda64 for the VC and want to maintain copyrights? Fine, but you better give me a free copy when I show you my original cartridge.
Just because a conflict has two sides does not mean the solution lies in the middle.
Actually, the study of programming languages draws heavily on the linguistic theory of formal languages.
Because very many math nerds like to refer to CS as "a branch of math". Some of these math nerds are the founders of university CS departments that budded from math departments due to shared expertise.
They're right, as long as one accepts a sufficiently broad definition of "mathematics".
Well yes, but now every computer scientist gets to achieve his true dream of being a wizard.
And we can eat big dinners in the Great Hall of Unseen University!
Do you really think that most rapes take place in dark alleys?
Now you look here. I've been through fairly reasonable amounts of trauma -- certainly more than you and most of Slashdot, if not most of the civilized world. I won't go into details, but let's just say I've faced about 8 severely traumatic events in a life 18 years long.
I tell you, we have a drug-obsessed culture. Particularly, we have a culture that would rather treat a person's unhappiness as a medical issue and drug that person rather than attempt to provide that person with the tools to make their life happier. Why? Because many, if not most, of such people do, will, and/or would choose to live in ways that most other people wouldn't agree with.
Though that does leave out rape victims or the families of murder victims, who experience a trauma after which they cannot move forwards as a person. This drug could very well help them.
But for most people who get stuck seeing psychiatrists, drugs are the wrong answer to the simple question of "Why can't I live a life closer to the life I want?"
And no, I'm not a Scientologist; you can tell by my signature.
The general problem with your cure for being a rape victim is that most rape victims carry far too much trauma to ever think the event over logically and decide to change whatever behaviors had increased their probability of being raped.
Are you implying there's something wrong with nationalism and petty self-interest?
Liar and terrorist!
Truly Richie was the greatest of all n'viyim that HaShem ever sent among men, though the noble men of Berkeley did follow him with their Software Distribution, and the Open Source Software movement did receive and do interpret that Torah.
And truly did Richie reward dominion over his Eretz Internet to his Chosen People, the Hackers.
Sh'ma Hackers! C, lashoneinu, C echad!
IMHO, we're currently in the downward slide. We've got more students in university than ever, but a smaller percentage than ever study the hard subjects that entitled their own parents and grandparents to call themselves educated.
Because why do I need a separate date-book, P.D.A., cell phone, portable video-game console, and digital-audio player? Eventually every personal communication or organization activity will be yet another function performed in software (hopefully free software) on an easy-to-use portable device that connects wirelessly to whatever network necessary.
You KNOW, I JUST love the ranDOM capITALization.
I take offense at your remark about the Midwest. I'm planning to move out of this country. Know any good places to go? Your society is dying. Face facts! For the record, I agree. Life is still OK inside, but little things have started to go already. Little things like our civil liberties... or the fact that one now needs unpaid internships completely aside from one's education to obtain the "experience" vitally necessary to become employable. Or the education itself becoming so expensive that the majority of the population has to take out student loans. Or the fact that nobody puts any money into science, making it utterly worthless to train as a scientist, requiring our nation to import its scientists right alongside its cheap plastic chatchkes. Or the complete lack of proper, honorable leaders.
Come to think of it... anyone up for a drink?
Unfortunately, most schools that implement some form of tracking today (usually for math classes) allow movement downwards, but not upwards. At my local high school, you fail out of accelerated math for having an average lower than 85%. The school says that this keeps only smart, motivated students in advanced math. I say that they should expect lower grades in a higher-level class, and that a student with 85% or greater average in normal math can reasonably have a lower average in an accelerated class. I also say that dropping everyone who averages below 85% also statistically ensures that all of their advanced math classes will show a B+-to-A average, making the school look very good for no actual work.
In fact, I once met a sophomore from that very school when I was taking my SATs. He had decided he didn't like the high school's math classes (he was one-year accelerated track) and had taken Pre-Calculus at the local community college over the summer. Now he was in Calculus since the school accepted the credits, and after that the high school could now longer offer math classes advanced enough for him. But the school had tracked him as "one-year accelerated".
My point? Let people both fall and rise on their merits.
Also, we need more vocational high schools. I turned one down in 8th grade since it would take me out into the countryside, out of my home district. It was just one regional vo-tech school, but it did a ton of good to provide those not inclined to academic work with employable skills for no extra tuition. 4) Decision Makers : In my experience, the smartest people that I know want absolutely nothing to do with politics, public policy, or decision making. I can tell you from experience that it takes more than brains to lead people well. As much as Americans overemphasize it (oy gevalt do we overemphasize it!), leadership is a real skill. So I have to say: the smartest people you know want nothing to do with civic leadership, and the best leaders I know also want nothing to do with it. We're getting the worst of both worlds now.