Your analogy is flawed. How about this: Oh my god, you overpaid for a ten year supply of gas two years ago and now it's way more expensive. Guess you were right at the time.
One of the things you're supposed to learn in school is that it doesn't always matter if you're right...sometimes you have to ignore the truth and accept the bullshit.
You've never removed WoW from an addict, have you?
They get tremors, shakes, even worse sleep patterns than when they were on WoW (yes, it's possible), and so on. I know, early on I tried to stop her by force a couple times and that's what I got -- and I'm not the only person who has reported physical symptoms. I didn't manage to get close enough to measure her heart rate. All the endorphins, adrenaline, and other neurochemical (seratonin?) rushes in the game have a real physical effect on the gamer.
It's worse than other behavioural addictions in that way because it is possible for the gamer to immerse all day and all night in the game. With gambling, for example, the gambler must stop on a daily basis, and after not too long runs out of money and is incapable of gambling more. In fact, the gambler probably must stop many times in the day -- and they certainly have to spend some of their waking time driving or walking to the casino. The gamer sits in their chair getting obese and abusing caffeine and junk food, and some even end up with health problems that are a direct result of sitting there all the time. They roll out of bed and into the gaming chair and then back into bed 22 hours later, get two hours sleep (in which they dream and talk about WoW), and start over again.
Children go uncared for who would otherwise be supervised and kept in health. There are reports posted regularly of children wandering off into the street, falling down stairs, and so on while not being supervised by someone who used to supervise them before WoW. Pregnant wives are even worse off; they are universally neglected by their gamer much more than they were before their gamer had WoW.
If you want to argue that WoW is not addictive, the proof is in the pudding.
If you want to argue that it is a good idea to design games to be even more addictive, then you need to hang out in a WoW widow support group long enough to see a few such examples and the effect on the lives of real people. The fact is that people who were fine family members while using other games can very easily become monsters while playing WoW.
Maybe if a game is made that is really more addictive than WoW, there will be enough proof going around for everybody to see, and gaming addiction will get taken more seriously like other behavioural addictions.
Actually, I sought help no less than a month after she began playing. I went to a psychiatrist and I went to the Yahoo WOW_widow support group. I was unable to get her to get help, though, and she refused to see a marriage counselor until months later when things were too far gone to be fixed easily.
Now it's seven months later and I'm living in my camper (more comfortable than I expected, BTW). I'd like to go home and she really wants the marriage to work but she's incapable of choosing me over WoW. She has said that she cannot stop playing WoW! She is seeing a therapist, who seems mostly effective, but doesn't seem to understand the WoW addiction -- although maybe she hasn't told the therapist all about that. The WoW addiction led to other, worse things and maybe she's been dealing mostly with those things.
WoW encourages (not forces) people to have horrible priorities, and sucks them in strongly -- and then exposes them (and forces them to work with and become friends with) other addicts. Those relationships become the most important things in the gamer's life, much more important than real life relationships.
I'm not proposing the abolishment of WoW, as much as that would please me. My original post's point was that we don't need games that are more addictive than WoW.
Perhaps the real point here is, "games that have problems with addiction shouldn't result in games being designed to, *for some people*, be more addicting"?
I don't like a self-reinforcing, carrot-stick game at all, and now that it's destroyed my marriage I have every right to villanize it. The game is designed specifically to be addictive so that they can be sure not only to get their monthly fees, but to get it spread by the users like an illicit drug. The game is nefarious, but the word "game" doesn't just mean a bunch of C code and some graphics, it means the community that Blizzard created, the types of people they brought together, and the way they attack very specific weaknesses in peoples' minds and souls.
Ever hear of "honor decay"? There's one very concrete example of a "feature" designed specifically to encourage addiction. Oh, and now new games will come out that attempt to beat WoW at its own game -- to be more addictive. You'll have to excuse me while I gather my buddies into a guild and we go on a raid of Blizzard's headquarters (and anybody trying to compete with more addictive games), where we'll sack, loot, pillage, and fucking burn the place down. Now there's an instance for you.
Yes, I blame my wife too, and I blame the previously minor relationship issues we had...but it's damn hard not to blame the people who designed something specifically to take advantage of her weakness while taking her away from me and putting her in situations to destroy our marriage.
I'm sure that's written on the "Under penalty of law, do not remove" tag. Doesn't IPv6 have one of those?
I bet the bum didn't bother reading the tag on the mattress before he flicked the cigarrette...or maybe someone removed it and should have gone to jail.
So should the "insert row" function be in the "insert" menu or the "table" menu?
I don't know...but in ribbons, should it be in the second random blob of silly icons or the fifth random blob of silly icons?
I mean, even take practical restaurant menus: you sit at a table, the waiter hands you a menu and now you sit there staring at the thing for 5 to 10 minutes. Who in their right minds thought that this menu would ever be efficient unless the user studied and memorized the stupid thing.
I'm sorry, if you have difficulty with restaurant menus then you do not have the mental capacity to be operating complex machinery. I have never had difficulty using restaurant menus.
Now I haven't use the ribbon myself
Oh.
learning curve and consistency (the topics that agrivate people the most) are just a few of the many things that need to be accounted for
Are you trying to suggest that the things that aggravate people the most are not the things that should have the most effort put into them?
Now you say "give me my old interface." But I say to you, "tough luck, learn it over again." Chances are, at least with this version, Microsoft put a whole lot of effort into fixing it and getting it right. Had they left in the old interface, that would accomplish nothing. People would laugh at the ribbon and continue using the "old way" for the sake of avoiding learning something new when they could take the time to learn the new way, find out it is actually much more efficient than the old way, and embrace the change because it is actually helping them.
"We know what's good for you better than you do. We are your benevolent parents." Thanks, but no thanks, I prefer to make my own choices. Which other big companies know what's better for me? Toyota? The RIAA? Maybe we should all drive a Corolla with an RIAA-approved two-button radio that has a credit-card slot instead of a CD slot.
Why do I say this without even having tried the interface? I'm no MS shill, but I admit that their Office suite is unfortunately the standard among office suites because there is no competitor with a good enough feature set.
I'm no "give me choices" shill, but give me choices!
There's a tone through your whole comment that implies that the computer is more important than the user or the output. As a geek, it's easy to forget that it's about getting stuff done. It's not about improving the computer for the computer's sake.
You do know that you can turn off all the autoformat crap, right? That much is not impossible to turn off.
IIRC, Word has a "paste as" or "paste special" option that will offer "unformatted text" as a possibility. OpenOffice does. Else, there's always notepad as a middleman...
No more hunting around in nested menus trying to find features - everything is right there in plain sight.
You haven't actually tried to use this crap, have you? Everything presumably is right there in a jumbled mess of tiny unintuitive icons, grouped in some weird way, with a default ribbon (or front piece of a ribbon, or whatever) that comes back after you do one command once. I can't find a damn thing.
Drop-down menus have been around so long because they work!
If, for example, I wanted to change how I was looking at stuff, I'd click on the "view" menu and my command would be right there, spelled out in english text. What hunting around? It never took me more than two clicks to find the command I wanted. Now it takes me anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes, after which I give up and find somebody that's got an older version.
I hope that ClassicMenu works on Access, because I have a project to do for my database class...okay, after reading TFA I think I'm SOL.:( How am I ever going to figure out how to do the silly crap I'm supposed to do?
Really? Here's some data, direct from the hydra's mouth, that makes me think it might be working after all: The overall retail value of the U.S. record industry was $11.5 billion in 2006, a 6.2 percent decline compared to 2005. There were 615 million CDs shipped to retail and specialty outlets in 2006, a 12.8 percent drop from the previous year.
They also blame a major portion of that on a decline in latin music sales; maybe people are finally tired of buying "Rico Suave".
They don't get any CD or download sales from me. They do get the incidental types of revenue you describe, and also some from Sirius -- although much of what I listen to on Sirius is non-RIAA (which doesn't necessarily mean that they're not collecting for it). Oh, and I occasionally borrow a RIAA CD from the library.
I'm not sure how this headline means anything new anyway; nearly everything SomaFM plays on their station to which I listen is non-RIAA but they are definitely paying royalties.
The incident involving the stage setting for "Stonehenge" demonstrates the importance of making sure everyone involved with a project is using the same units of measure. This is an invaluable lesson that all programmers should absorb.
I have mod points and I wish I could mod you up more. Too bad 5 is the limit.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 1
I propose that all money from certain miscellaneous traffic offenses like speeding, seat belt violations (for adults only, not children), and red light cameras, be collected into a national- or state-level fund. The money would be held in an account, and only disbursed for certain good causes (disaster relief, maybe, or scholarships, or something like that).
Maybe the money collected from traffic fines should be used to study the road's speed limit to see if it's appropriate, and to improve the safety of the road so the limit can be raised...
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy is flawed. How about this:
Oh my god, you overpaid for a ten year supply of gas two years ago and now it's way more expensive. Guess you were right at the time.
Is eleventy billion larger than a googol? Is it larger than a googolplex?
I can't believe I had to scroll down five pages of comments before I saw one about the metaverse gated communities in Snow Crash...
One of the things you're supposed to learn in school is that it doesn't always matter if you're right...sometimes you have to ignore the truth and accept the bullshit.
Blame Canada!
Blame The Vain!
Blame It On The Rain!
Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang! Blame Blame Blame!
You've never removed WoW from an addict, have you?
They get tremors, shakes, even worse sleep patterns than when they were on WoW (yes, it's possible), and so on. I know, early on I tried to stop her by force a couple times and that's what I got -- and I'm not the only person who has reported physical symptoms. I didn't manage to get close enough to measure her heart rate. All the endorphins, adrenaline, and other neurochemical (seratonin?) rushes in the game have a real physical effect on the gamer.
It's worse than other behavioural addictions in that way because it is possible for the gamer to immerse all day and all night in the game. With gambling, for example, the gambler must stop on a daily basis, and after not too long runs out of money and is incapable of gambling more. In fact, the gambler probably must stop many times in the day -- and they certainly have to spend some of their waking time driving or walking to the casino. The gamer sits in their chair getting obese and abusing caffeine and junk food, and some even end up with health problems that are a direct result of sitting there all the time. They roll out of bed and into the gaming chair and then back into bed 22 hours later, get two hours sleep (in which they dream and talk about WoW), and start over again.
Children go uncared for who would otherwise be supervised and kept in health. There are reports posted regularly of children wandering off into the street, falling down stairs, and so on while not being supervised by someone who used to supervise them before WoW. Pregnant wives are even worse off; they are universally neglected by their gamer much more than they were before their gamer had WoW.
If you want to argue that WoW is not addictive, the proof is in the pudding.
If you want to argue that it is a good idea to design games to be even more addictive, then you need to hang out in a WoW widow support group long enough to see a few such examples and the effect on the lives of real people. The fact is that people who were fine family members while using other games can very easily become monsters while playing WoW.
Maybe if a game is made that is really more addictive than WoW, there will be enough proof going around for everybody to see, and gaming addiction will get taken more seriously like other behavioural addictions.
Actually, I sought help no less than a month after she began playing. I went to a psychiatrist and I went to the Yahoo WOW_widow support group. I was unable to get her to get help, though, and she refused to see a marriage counselor until months later when things were too far gone to be fixed easily.
Now it's seven months later and I'm living in my camper (more comfortable than I expected, BTW). I'd like to go home and she really wants the marriage to work but she's incapable of choosing me over WoW. She has said that she cannot stop playing WoW! She is seeing a therapist, who seems mostly effective, but doesn't seem to understand the WoW addiction -- although maybe she hasn't told the therapist all about that. The WoW addiction led to other, worse things and maybe she's been dealing mostly with those things.
WoW encourages (not forces) people to have horrible priorities, and sucks them in strongly -- and then exposes them (and forces them to work with and become friends with) other addicts. Those relationships become the most important things in the gamer's life, much more important than real life relationships.
I'm not proposing the abolishment of WoW, as much as that would please me. My original post's point was that we don't need games that are more addictive than WoW.
Grinding and farming are fun?
So, you're saying that it's okay for them to design games to be addictive because they don't make every player an addict?
Perhaps the real point here is, "games that have problems with addiction shouldn't result in games being designed to, *for some people*, be more addicting"?
I don't like a self-reinforcing, carrot-stick game at all, and now that it's destroyed my marriage I have every right to villanize it. The game is designed specifically to be addictive so that they can be sure not only to get their monthly fees, but to get it spread by the users like an illicit drug. The game is nefarious, but the word "game" doesn't just mean a bunch of C code and some graphics, it means the community that Blizzard created, the types of people they brought together, and the way they attack very specific weaknesses in peoples' minds and souls.
Ever hear of "honor decay"? There's one very concrete example of a "feature" designed specifically to encourage addiction. Oh, and now new games will come out that attempt to beat WoW at its own game -- to be more addictive. You'll have to excuse me while I gather my buddies into a guild and we go on a raid of Blizzard's headquarters (and anybody trying to compete with more addictive games), where we'll sack, loot, pillage, and fucking burn the place down. Now there's an instance for you.
Yes, I blame my wife too, and I blame the previously minor relationship issues we had...but it's damn hard not to blame the people who designed something specifically to take advantage of her weakness while taking her away from me and putting her in situations to destroy our marriage.
Fuck no! We do NOT need games more addicting than Warcrack.
o m-top.html
Links about WoW addiction:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/WOW_widow
http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-fr
http://wowdetox.com/
http://wowrecovery.com/
http://deletewow.com/
One out of many particularly sad stories: http://www.wowdetox.com/view.php?number=13640
I bet the bum didn't bother reading the tag on the mattress before he flicked the cigarrette...or maybe someone removed it and should have gone to jail.
"He's not dead, he's metaphysically challenged!"
I can't. I've never needed to have Office on my own computer until I took this class, and then 2007 was what I could get.
Oh.Are you trying to suggest that the things that aggravate people the most are not the things that should have the most effort put into them?"We know what's good for you better than you do. We are your benevolent parents." Thanks, but no thanks, I prefer to make my own choices. Which other big companies know what's better for me? Toyota? The RIAA? Maybe we should all drive a Corolla with an RIAA-approved two-button radio that has a credit-card slot instead of a CD slot.I'm no "give me choices" shill, but give me choices!
There's a tone through your whole comment that implies that the computer is more important than the user or the output. As a geek, it's easy to forget that it's about getting stuff done. It's not about improving the computer for the computer's sake.
You do know that you can turn off all the autoformat crap, right? That much is not impossible to turn off.
IIRC, Word has a "paste as" or "paste special" option that will offer "unformatted text" as a possibility. OpenOffice does. Else, there's always notepad as a middleman...
Oh and for sure, you will hate ribbons.
Drop-down menus have been around so long because they work!
If, for example, I wanted to change how I was looking at stuff, I'd click on the "view" menu and my command would be right there, spelled out in english text. What hunting around? It never took me more than two clicks to find the command I wanted. Now it takes me anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes, after which I give up and find somebody that's got an older version.
I hope that ClassicMenu works on Access, because I have a project to do for my database class...okay, after reading TFA I think I'm SOL.
Really? Here's some data, direct from the hydra's mouth, that makes me think it might be working after all:
The overall retail value of the U.S. record industry was $11.5 billion in 2006, a 6.2 percent decline compared to 2005. There were 615 million CDs shipped to retail and specialty outlets in 2006, a 12.8 percent drop from the previous year.
They also blame a major portion of that on a decline in latin music sales; maybe people are finally tired of buying "Rico Suave".
They don't get any CD or download sales from me. They do get the incidental types of revenue you describe, and also some from Sirius -- although much of what I listen to on Sirius is non-RIAA (which doesn't necessarily mean that they're not collecting for it). Oh, and I occasionally borrow a RIAA CD from the library.
I'm not sure how this headline means anything new anyway; nearly everything SomaFM plays on their station to which I listen is non-RIAA but they are definitely paying royalties.
Ugh, why do I know that...
I have mod points and I wish I could mod you up more. Too bad 5 is the limit.