I also strongly encourage listening to the podcasts. You'll get a lot of insight with what RDM and the writers were thinking. He talks about all sorts of interesting things. Plus, there are often smokes and whisky (or whiskey) involved and it's always interesting to hear what's in the glass.
Lost brainstorming session - 2/25/2004
Damon note: We have gathered hippies and provided them with Absinthe and pot. They have been prompted to talk.
Hippie 1: Hey, lets have polar bears on an island!!
Hippie 2: Evil companies are bad. DOWN WITH THE MAN!!!
Hippie 3: SO MANY SCARY NUMBERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hippie 4: (munch munch munch)
Hippie 2: Wars are killing the goodness in the Earth.
Hippie 3: Dude, don't you guys see that man in that chair over there.
Hippie 1&2: No man. There's nothing there.
Hippie 3: I'm serious dudes.
Hippie 4: Anyone want to go to Whitecastle? Might as well get fat as hell, it's awesome.
Hippie 2: What if everyone was interconnected to EVERYONE!
Hippie 1: Man if I crashed on an island, I'd have like no pot.
Hippie 2&3: OH NOES!!!!
Hippie 4: (passed out)
Carlton note: Well Damon, I think we have some good ideas.
Damon note: Yep, let's get started.
Ron Moore already said it would be at most 5 seasons in the podcasts. They know what they want to accomplish so it's not going to be a half-assed ending. Are you saying that you would prefer BSG to run as long as say Stargate?
I have no interest in BSG running 10 seasons. You will likely be unable to keep the entire cast together and let's face it, this cast is solid. You will run out of plot ideas to look at and have to make up the next enemy (Gaould, replicators, Orai) and it just gets silly to me. I used to love Stargate but I lost interest simply because I didn't have time to keep track of everything going on (new development x or superevil badguy y and spinoff z) and some of it just got ridiculous to me.
This is the story that they want to tell and thus far, I have yet to be disappointed. Some episodes aren't as interesting. Some twists were ridiculous. But the story is still there and I believe it will end well.
In a study last year, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that children playing Dance Dance Revolution expended significantly more energy than children watching television and playing traditional video games. I wish I had a job that could deliver obvious results and be considered insightful....
Note: I don't have kids (and won't in the near future). Perhaps my perspective might change but I doubt it.
If I had required a parent to get me games, I can imagine this:
- My father would have never agreed because he thought all games were a waste of time. (He has experienced the Wii and lightened up a lot since) - My mother never had enough free time to do anything and I would have also been gameless except on Christmas/birthday. I helped out where I could but some things I couldn't do and other times she was exhausted.
My mother trusted me and knew what I was buying that she felt I was mature enough to play them. While my dad never really understood anything about the hobby, he often treated me like a young child instead of a young adult - such discussion was a waste. Since I wasn't at his house all that often, it really wasn't a problem.
With those regulations in place, I likely would have found myself doing other things mischief-wise and likely gotten into more trouble than I did. I'm not saying that video games save our youth. But having the ability to purchase said games were a significant help (mid-teens for me).
I completely agree that children under 12 shouldn't be able to buy any game they wish but beyond that, it gets fishy. I think under 18 is ridiculous since honestly, late teens likely friends over 18. But what is the cutoff age? How do we indicate this?
I would imagine that 15/16 is the proper age and the permit/license would be valid. It's not foolproof and it's not perfect but let's be honest, kids are going to get the games through one means or another. Some reasonable barriers are fine but let's not burden everyone else.
The problem is there isn't a reasonable solution to this problem.
If we place this on all media, an adult will be required to purchase this for a minor. In theory, it places responsibility on the parents to at least see what their children want to purchase. However since many parents are not informed consumers when it comes to video games, this solution is not any better than having children simply buying media themselves. Instead, it becomes whatever makes him/her happy and doesn't change the surprise when mommy finds out what it is.
If we place this on all media, it removes the decision making of the parents as to whether they believe their children are mature enough to make decisions on their own. Parents would simply be allowing the state to make another decision for them instead of being involved. If I am 15 but have a solid moral base with the support of my parents, I am punished because there are others out there not mature enough for whatever reason. Instead, parents already involved in their children's lives are hassled.
If things stay as they are, both scenarios will continue to occur. This is an issue that isn't just black and white but the only solutions are. We can't allow some children to make these purchases and not others simply because there isn't any way to evaluate what children are ready for adult media and when. Alas...
Silly Europeans... the Americas are in the Western Hemisphere while Asia and Australia are in the Eastern Hemisphere. You guys like thin the Central Hemisphere. Geez, go to American schools and learn something...
Since you're a CMU alum, I was wondering if their list of changes from the article were even accurate. If so, then what really is the big deal with changing to allow for more diversity within a program. If the student quality coming out is unchanged, how is this bad?
I'm not interested in changing the world, I want antisocial nerds who love to program and solve problems. I'm sure that this would still exist at CMU and those students could easily be determined by some resume sorting. But what about people that who love to program and solve problems but aren't antisocial nerds. Are they really any worse than the antisocial nerds? I'm not involved in hiring at all so I'm just wondering why antisocial nerds are such a big deal for you.
I imagine that if I were a company looking to change the world (and it required programming), I would want to seek out and find people that were more diverse with a programming background. Ultimately, it's really about what work is needed to be done as to what type of person you need. I don't see why both can't exist in the market and can't come out of a school as excellent as CMU.
If CMU developed a reputation for producing CS alumni that had big ideas and the skills to develop some of them, I imagine that would be in their best interest - this is where I think they are trying/wanting to go. Maintaining a monoculture of solely hackers might be awesome but if (likely a big if) suddenly everyone wants diversity in programmers, wouldn't that put CMU alums in a a hard spot? Everyone complains about RIAA, MPAA, etc clinging to a dying business model but couldn't this be a similar example and CMU doesn't want to end up in the same boat?
I don't actually know what their plans are but I would be interested in you thoughts on reputation before and after their admission changes.
Let people decide what they want to do and stuff the perceived lack of equality. This change in the admissions requirement isn't a bad idea at all. I've known some people who quit CS because you had those kids that had years of previous programming making it a "Whose dick is bigger contest?" and mocking those students that didn't have as thorough of a background. I think these measures would help greatly so long as students still are capable graduates.
As long as the excellence bar doesn't drop, equality is irrelevant. When we sacrifice academic quality in the pursuit of equality, then there is a major problem. However, the article creates the impression that quality will remain consistent while only changing admissions. But in the future if these measures prove to not help, will the bar drop to provide "better" results in equality?
This is the real question that needs to be answered. If the only goal is to pump out CS degrees to produce equality, then education is no longer the true objective and it's just another empty political agenda.
Funny, I used to be in the same boat. I live in a college house with a lot of people having gone through it. We used to get a ton of mailings for credit card companies AND we get a ton of junk mail like coupons, etc...
What I do is this:
1) Stack up the credit card offers and stack up the junk mail separately
2) Open all the credit card offers and pull out the contents and add to junk pile
3) Collect all of the prepaid envelopes
4) Start stuffing the prepaids with all the junk
5) If the envelope is full, move to the next one
6) If you are out of things to stuff the envelopes with, just throw in a bunch of pennies
7) Mail them
In theory, the postage pricing will skyrocket for the company. If this approach is adopted by enough people, they might just stop sending them.
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm going to be waiting for the semester to end on the 4th and pick up some games to play, likely: Heatseeker, Rayman, and both Mario Party and Metroid when they release.
A large barrier at this point for Gamecubing are the prices of the wireless gamecube controllers. Hopefully, they drop under thirty at some point in the future.
Unfortunately due to recent judicial events, the Hot Coffee mod will involve the character sitting in on the couch trying to sip the coffee, complaining of the temperature of the coffee. Players will tilt the Wiimote back slowly until the character drinks the coffee. Pour too much too fast and you burn yourself. Pour too slowly and it gets cold.
Interesting perspective. I think there's just a difference in opinion between my generation (I'm 23) and yours (your website says 47). I've never thought it to be a violent word but perhaps I have been overexposed to it growing up and just don't think about it.
Perhaps that's just the problem these days - my generation has been so overexposed to profanity that we don't really register the connotations associated with using them. I don't really think they hold much meaning to any of us; so when we swear, it's meaningless and has become equivalent, in our eyes, to saying "Shitty day." instead of "My day isn't going well." in response to "How's it going?" (just one example). I don't see the problem going away anytime soon in our society especially with regards to censors. I remember when most profanity was censored out but now pretty much almost anything goes except for the f-bomb. I imagine it depends on what channels you watch and when but I've noticed the trend grow in recent years. Perhaps it's always been this way.
Personally, I still swear more than I'd like but I've cleaned it up such that it's a lot less than I did in high school when it was f this and f that. I don't know why I've changed but perhaps I've gotten tired of using these empty words.
I usually go to the one on Howell Mill, although I like the Ponce store better. The outside is so much nicer than Howell Mill. But it's across the connector so unless I'm over there, it's just out of the way.
$10 a year?!? That's it. When I get home, my wii is SO going to stay off. I can find much better uses of $10 dollars a year. Like a large pizza at Fellini's or two beers at McCrays (you're SOL if you don't live in Atlanta on both). Man, how could I possibly live without those additional $10 a year?
I guess I'll have to play hours of Counterstrike on my gaming machine or watch House and 24 pimped out in HD instead while basking in the cool air conditioning in my house for all hours instead.
Unfortunately, I'm not a citizen of U.S., so, I'm not part of the democratic process there. But a lot of you are, and only you could make the difference. I'm a US citizen and I can safely say, neither are we! Apparently you've never heard of Diebold.
In some seriousness, our agriculture business is completely fucked up with all the subsidies and quotas that removing them all would do God knows what to our food prices here. Honestly, USDA should fund a couple of studies (from people not associated with the agriculture industry) to see what the impact of trying to fix everything might be before doing anything first.
One of the major problems I see with identifying the next generation power sources is that everyone seems to think that one power source is going to be our "golden ticket." This is probably the biggest problem in convincing people that we need to invest in all varieties of alternative power sources.
Any "golden ticket" will succumb to the same problems as oil, gas, coal, etc.. Unless we diversify our energy supply, we are prone to the same problems as before. You don't throw your life savings into one stock, why should we throw everything into one energy source?
On the passenger side, airlines generally will lose money domestically and make it up on international flights. Checking the rates right now on Delta for end of next month round trips, flying to LAX is $383 while flying to CDG (Paris) is $710. But this is a month in advance.
Let's say you just found out you need to be a meeting next Friday (fly out Thursday and back Friday night LAX, Sunday for CDG). The LAX flight is $783 while CDG is $2787. And these were just coach!
The businessman is really the cash cows of the airlines since they have to be somewhere and it is often short notice.
But as a grandchild poster of yours has pointed out, cargo is what helps keep your ticket price low. I don't know the air freight rates for shipping purposes and my roommate that might isn't here but it should be a pretty hefty charge. Assuming that the average passenger with baggage is 210 lbs, I would assume that it is more than $1.82/# and perhaps more than $3.73/# for domestic flights and something more for international.
I'm starting to maybe look at some other options like MediaPortal, though. I'm looking into building a media / Tivo-esque PC and I was wondering what these other options are. I was looking at MythTV but if other options present themselves as solid solutions, I would be interested in seeing what could work in it's place. Anyone have information on other options that I could perhaps research in my freetime?
We've got digital TV with HD such that my goal would be to record two digital feeds and one HD feed with PC hardware and cable boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. This is really old news.
I also strongly encourage listening to the podcasts. You'll get a lot of insight with what RDM and the writers were thinking. He talks about all sorts of interesting things. Plus, there are often smokes and whisky (or whiskey) involved and it's always interesting to hear what's in the glass.
Lost brainstorming session - 2/25/2004
Damon note: We have gathered hippies and provided them with Absinthe and pot. They have been prompted to talk.
Hippie 1: Hey, lets have polar bears on an island!!
Hippie 2: Evil companies are bad. DOWN WITH THE MAN!!!
Hippie 3: SO MANY SCARY NUMBERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hippie 4: (munch munch munch)
Hippie 2: Wars are killing the goodness in the Earth.
Hippie 3: Dude, don't you guys see that man in that chair over there.
Hippie 1&2: No man. There's nothing there.
Hippie 3: I'm serious dudes.
Hippie 4: Anyone want to go to Whitecastle? Might as well get fat as hell, it's awesome.
Hippie 2: What if everyone was interconnected to EVERYONE!
Hippie 1: Man if I crashed on an island, I'd have like no pot.
Hippie 2&3: OH NOES!!!!
Hippie 4: (passed out)
Carlton note: Well Damon, I think we have some good ideas.
Damon note: Yep, let's get started.
Ron Moore already said it would be at most 5 seasons in the podcasts. They know what they want to accomplish so it's not going to be a half-assed ending. Are you saying that you would prefer BSG to run as long as say Stargate?
I have no interest in BSG running 10 seasons. You will likely be unable to keep the entire cast together and let's face it, this cast is solid. You will run out of plot ideas to look at and have to make up the next enemy (Gaould, replicators, Orai) and it just gets silly to me. I used to love Stargate but I lost interest simply because I didn't have time to keep track of everything going on (new development x or superevil badguy y and spinoff z) and some of it just got ridiculous to me.
This is the story that they want to tell and thus far, I have yet to be disappointed. Some episodes aren't as interesting. Some twists were ridiculous. But the story is still there and I believe it will end well.
You can love your battlebots but you can't love your battlebots.
Note: I don't have kids (and won't in the near future). Perhaps my perspective might change but I doubt it.
If I had required a parent to get me games, I can imagine this:
- My father would have never agreed because he thought all games were a waste of time. (He has experienced the Wii and lightened up a lot since)
- My mother never had enough free time to do anything and I would have also been gameless except on Christmas/birthday. I helped out where I could but some things I couldn't do and other times she was exhausted.
My mother trusted me and knew what I was buying that she felt I was mature enough to play them. While my dad never really understood anything about the hobby, he often treated me like a young child instead of a young adult - such discussion was a waste. Since I wasn't at his house all that often, it really wasn't a problem. With those regulations in place, I likely would have found myself doing other things mischief-wise and likely gotten into more trouble than I did. I'm not saying that video games save our youth. But having the ability to purchase said games were a significant help (mid-teens for me).
I completely agree that children under 12 shouldn't be able to buy any game they wish but beyond that, it gets fishy. I think under 18 is ridiculous since honestly, late teens likely friends over 18. But what is the cutoff age? How do we indicate this?
I would imagine that 15/16 is the proper age and the permit/license would be valid. It's not foolproof and it's not perfect but let's be honest, kids are going to get the games through one means or another. Some reasonable barriers are fine but let's not burden everyone else.
The problem is there isn't a reasonable solution to this problem.
If we place this on all media, an adult will be required to purchase this for a minor. In theory, it places responsibility on the parents to at least see what their children want to purchase. However since many parents are not informed consumers when it comes to video games, this solution is not any better than having children simply buying media themselves. Instead, it becomes whatever makes him/her happy and doesn't change the surprise when mommy finds out what it is.
If we place this on all media, it removes the decision making of the parents as to whether they believe their children are mature enough to make decisions on their own. Parents would simply be allowing the state to make another decision for them instead of being involved. If I am 15 but have a solid moral base with the support of my parents, I am punished because there are others out there not mature enough for whatever reason. Instead, parents already involved in their children's lives are hassled.
If things stay as they are, both scenarios will continue to occur. This is an issue that isn't just black and white but the only solutions are. We can't allow some children to make these purchases and not others simply because there isn't any way to evaluate what children are ready for adult media and when. Alas...
It also would help if he stopped submitting his briefs and instead submitted his assistant's thongs.
Silly Europeans... the Americas are in the Western Hemisphere while Asia and Australia are in the Eastern Hemisphere. You guys like thin the Central Hemisphere. Geez, go to American schools and learn something...
This is meant as a joke. Like haha funny.
I imagine that if I were a company looking to change the world (and it required programming), I would want to seek out and find people that were more diverse with a programming background. Ultimately, it's really about what work is needed to be done as to what type of person you need. I don't see why both can't exist in the market and can't come out of a school as excellent as CMU.
If CMU developed a reputation for producing CS alumni that had big ideas and the skills to develop some of them, I imagine that would be in their best interest - this is where I think they are trying/wanting to go. Maintaining a monoculture of solely hackers might be awesome but if (likely a big if) suddenly everyone wants diversity in programmers, wouldn't that put CMU alums in a a hard spot? Everyone complains about RIAA, MPAA, etc clinging to a dying business model but couldn't this be a similar example and CMU doesn't want to end up in the same boat?
I don't actually know what their plans are but I would be interested in you thoughts on reputation before and after their admission changes.
As long as the excellence bar doesn't drop, equality is irrelevant. When we sacrifice academic quality in the pursuit of equality, then there is a major problem. However, the article creates the impression that quality will remain consistent while only changing admissions. But in the future if these measures prove to not help, will the bar drop to provide "better" results in equality?
This is the real question that needs to be answered. If the only goal is to pump out CS degrees to produce equality, then education is no longer the true objective and it's just another empty political agenda.
Funny, I used to be in the same boat. I live in a college house with a lot of people having gone through it. We used to get a ton of mailings for credit card companies AND we get a ton of junk mail like coupons, etc...
What I do is this: 1) Stack up the credit card offers and stack up the junk mail separately 2) Open all the credit card offers and pull out the contents and add to junk pile 3) Collect all of the prepaid envelopes 4) Start stuffing the prepaids with all the junk 5) If the envelope is full, move to the next one 6) If you are out of things to stuff the envelopes with, just throw in a bunch of pennies 7) Mail them In theory, the postage pricing will skyrocket for the company. If this approach is adopted by enough people, they might just stop sending them.
The mall?
It's like a third grader's book report... Why don't we just get the water from the well... from GTRI's site
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm going to be waiting for the semester to end on the 4th and pick up some games to play, likely: Heatseeker, Rayman, and both Mario Party and Metroid when they release.
A large barrier at this point for Gamecubing are the prices of the wireless gamecube controllers. Hopefully, they drop under thirty at some point in the future.
Unfortunately due to recent judicial events, the Hot Coffee mod will involve the character sitting in on the couch trying to sip the coffee, complaining of the temperature of the coffee. Players will tilt the Wiimote back slowly until the character drinks the coffee. Pour too much too fast and you burn yourself. Pour too slowly and it gets cold.
If you consume all the coffee, you are the man.
Interesting perspective. I think there's just a difference in opinion between my generation (I'm 23) and yours (your website says 47). I've never thought it to be a violent word but perhaps I have been overexposed to it growing up and just don't think about it.
Perhaps that's just the problem these days - my generation has been so overexposed to profanity that we don't really register the connotations associated with using them. I don't really think they hold much meaning to any of us; so when we swear, it's meaningless and has become equivalent, in our eyes, to saying "Shitty day." instead of "My day isn't going well." in response to "How's it going?" (just one example). I don't see the problem going away anytime soon in our society especially with regards to censors. I remember when most profanity was censored out but now pretty much almost anything goes except for the f-bomb. I imagine it depends on what channels you watch and when but I've noticed the trend grow in recent years. Perhaps it's always been this way.
Personally, I still swear more than I'd like but I've cleaned it up such that it's a lot less than I did in high school when it was f this and f that. I don't know why I've changed but perhaps I've gotten tired of using these empty words.
I usually go to the one on Howell Mill, although I like the Ponce store better. The outside is so much nicer than Howell Mill. But it's across the connector so unless I'm over there, it's just out of the way.
$10 a year?!? That's it. When I get home, my wii is SO going to stay off. I can find much better uses of $10 dollars a year. Like a large pizza at Fellini's or two beers at McCrays (you're SOL if you don't live in Atlanta on both). Man, how could I possibly live without those additional $10 a year?
I guess I'll have to play hours of Counterstrike on my gaming machine or watch House and 24 pimped out in HD instead while basking in the cool air conditioning in my house for all hours instead.
In some seriousness, our agriculture business is completely fucked up with all the subsidies and quotas that removing them all would do God knows what to our food prices here. Honestly, USDA should fund a couple of studies (from people not associated with the agriculture industry) to see what the impact of trying to fix everything might be before doing anything first.
One of the major problems I see with identifying the next generation power sources is that everyone seems to think that one power source is going to be our "golden ticket." This is probably the biggest problem in convincing people that we need to invest in all varieties of alternative power sources.
Any "golden ticket" will succumb to the same problems as oil, gas, coal, etc.. Unless we diversify our energy supply, we are prone to the same problems as before. You don't throw your life savings into one stock, why should we throw everything into one energy source?
Bump that. Let's just settle for second place and use alcohol at 7 to a gram. Beyond powering things you can also have other benefits.
Drinks during your flight pricey? Long meeting going nowhere? Stuck in the library at 3am on a Saturday? Just tap your batteries and you're good.
Fry: Nope. Not vaccinated either! Besides, it's not like one vote ever made a difference.
It's not even just the passengers generally.
On the passenger side, airlines generally will lose money domestically and make it up on international flights. Checking the rates right now on Delta for end of next month round trips, flying to LAX is $383 while flying to CDG (Paris) is $710. But this is a month in advance.
Let's say you just found out you need to be a meeting next Friday (fly out Thursday and back Friday night LAX, Sunday for CDG). The LAX flight is $783 while CDG is $2787. And these were just coach!
The businessman is really the cash cows of the airlines since they have to be somewhere and it is often short notice.
But as a grandchild poster of yours has pointed out, cargo is what helps keep your ticket price low. I don't know the air freight rates for shipping purposes and my roommate that might isn't here but it should be a pretty hefty charge. Assuming that the average passenger with baggage is 210 lbs, I would assume that it is more than $1.82/# and perhaps more than $3.73/# for domestic flights and something more for international.
We've got digital TV with HD such that my goal would be to record two digital feeds and one HD feed with PC hardware and cable boxes.