ImperatorLunae

"This is, however, a really fantastically designed website."

I disagree. At first glance, I thought this was another zombo.com. I'm guessing it's a text adventure, but the site spends more time bragging about its legacy, not explaining what the game is, as if the legendary status of this game should be obvious to us mere mortals. The design is good from an aesthetic point of view, but not from a "getting your point across" view.

First of all I fail to see how taxing people sustains jobs. You said it, "When you make military cuts, you're not just removing tanks and guns. You're also sending a lot of people to the unemployment line." So, to fund the military, you have to either sell bonds or levy taxes. Playing World Police for 60 years has been fun, but it's getting a little expensive.

I know it's obvious but... It's not obvious. What if those tax dollars were reinvested in universal health care? A small business wouldn't have to incur the cost of insuring its full-time employees. That would help stimulate growth, as it would cost less to hire each employee.

The premise that your argument stems from--lower taxes means more jobs--has been, time and time again, false in practice. Trickle-down economics are theoretically sound, but in 30 years of attempted trickle, nothing statistically significant has come down.

you sure as hell don't tax people to create jobs vs military cuts ... sending a lot of people to the unemployment line.

so, you don't tax people to sustain jobs, yet you don't cut jobs to lower spending. That is paradoxical.

I love it when the "quirks" break the whole theory. This is what happened in the late 1800's; there were only minor flaws in Physics that needed to be ironed out.

Of course, when that started, the garment caught on fire.

Does anyone else see the irony in responding to pg with a list of n things? http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html

I think the object of the game must be to fit as much “content” onto the page as possible in an effort to overwhelm the reader, tricking them into believing that the NY Times is just bursting with a mindbogglingly-bottomless array of important information.

That's just what paper newspapers look like. I don't think that's an accident, either.

thanks!

<i>otherwise although it is a loophole I am pretty sure it is illegal.</i>

It would <i>seem</i> that this is illegal, but I've never heard of a law protecting one's right to be listed in a search engine.

Perhaps, if this process requires you to be the owner, it qualifies as fraud?

"Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers."

I don't know where these critics have been, but that description sums up most of my math instruction in school.

This is not bad for everyone. Such blatant abuse of data capping rules is excellent ammunition for net neutrality advocates.

That is a good idea. I heard once that the younger generations of fighter pilots--those that grew up with flight simulator video games--made better pilots than when their elder counterparts were starting out. It would truly be awesome if kids playing Minecraft grow up to be better electrical engineers like the pilots.

or the games of late have been without substance. TF2 was the last game I bought... until Minecraft, that is.

PR firms don't plant news stories about botnets; actually using botnets to take down high-profile targets does.

In that case, the publicity could translate into dollars.

"Documents you’ve written, presentations you’ve prepared, spreadsheets you’ve made — your iWork apps can store them in iCloud. Which means you can view and edit the same document, in its latest state, on all your devices. And since iCloud automatically updates any changes you make, you don’t even have to remember to save your work."

But I already do this on Google Docs, and I don't have to buy a Mac to do it. In fact, I don't have to buy anything to do it; I already have a desktop/laptop/phone, and Google Docs is free of charge. Plus, most people I know already have Google Accounts, so sharing is already implemented.

"I've never heard of a mugging in Virginia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Virginia : Richmond was ranked overall as the 5th most dangerous city and the 12th-most dangerous metropolitan area in the United States for the year of 2005.

"The entire point of SL is that the users should be able to build the world. Yes, this results in less than ideal environments, yes if an engineer designed the world there would be less polygon popping, better cache utilization, better hidden loading times, etc., but you would get a video game. Not the crazy world that second life is."

You haven't seen Minecraft then, have you? The users, in fact, can build the environments on their own, and the game loads and runs at a playable speed.

Perhaps Minecraft has greater "video gameness" than Second Life, but couldn't the designers of Second Life have focused on user experience instead of delivering laissez-faire, polygon jungle? Although Second Life wouldn't fare well reverting to voxels, there are other approaches to optimize a user-developed game experience and maintain flexibility; it seems the developers aren't looking hard enough, if at all.

My gut reaction was "this is useless."

Then I actually thought about unlocking my door with my phone. This is a great idea.

It's good design, and good design is a recurring theme on Hacker News.

In Soviet Russia, Color sees you?

"An elderly Oklahoma man landed himself in jail after using bolt cutters to break his prized pooch from the pound."

http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9027221

Alright then. I'll keep an eye on you guys. I like the payment system you've got set up; the service I currently use takes a rather large cut, and I need all the cash I can get right now.

From the FAQ: "...only experienced educators - PhD's, high school teachers, special education instructors, and professors with real classroom experience - can list themselves on Tutorspree."

Really? This seems a little stringent. High school teachers are busy teaching high school; PhD's are busy conducting research or teaching their own classes. Of course, some of them are going to pick up tutoring on the side for some extra money, but you're screening out huge portions of the available pool of tutors.

Consider my position; I have a BS in Physics and currently tutor a few students--mostly in calculus and geometry. Of course, I don't have "classroom experience," but I've been tutoring students for a while. I know my stuff, and I know when my students don't. I know how to read their math, catch mistakes, and work through their errors with them. I know how to identify recurring mistakes students make and prescribe problems to remedy those errors. I'm not an educator, but I know the subjects I'm teaching. That's as good as any grad student working as a TA, and they're teaching at the university level.

Why the high requirements? I understand the need for quality, but I sense, more often than not, students are looking for someone who knows the material to correct and guide them. You don't need a PhD to do that.

Apocalyptic articles like these only continue to be published because people read them; they rarely reflect anything real except a linear projection of current trends.

Take, for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/poll/2008... http://www.noozhawk.com/mark_shields/article/1109_mark_shiel...

These predictions have clearly proven false; they are mere protractions of two recent events glued together.

Humans do not necessarily reproduce exponentially. Hans Rosling's TED talks feature, as a central theme, that the population can stabilize at 9 billion with the right initiatives and social changes. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...

Here's what will kill this:

When a social network starts, its membership is sparse. Not everyone uses it, and the odds that your best friends will all pick up and use it off the bat are improbable. Therefore, in the lonely wasteland of a newly colonized social network, people tend to make friends with acquaintances. Of course, you're not super good friends with these people, but it would be rude to deny their requests as well.

What do you do when your real friends finally show up? Frump your acquaintances? Sure, you weren't really good friends with these people, but you don't want to isolate yourself from them either. Frumping/defriending/depathing actively demonstrates to them that the budding friendship you could have had is not there. People in real life move on, but they also get back in touch too. Having to squeeze back into someone's "path" is unnatural. Sure, it happens in real life, but to have to actively mimic that on a website--what if you are overestimating the value another person sees in you? That could have disastrous consequences. I don't maintain 500+ friendships at once, but I wouldn't want to tell 500 people "sorry, we're not friendly enough to be pathed."

Path really seems to have a flawed premise. Considering the hype, they've probably got quite a big chunk of funding too. I see it degenerating into a popularity contest--social groups have an ebb and flow, but they rarely have official declarations. What happens when people wander apart? Do you declare, "our friendship is not important enough to be in my path anymore?" I could never imagine doing that to anyone. What if you have forty relatives you'd like to keep in touch with? Can you only have ten friends?

I thought about trying to do this for something like groceries, but grocery stores don't list all their prices in an accessible manner.

I don't think they want to, either. Every grocery store, I'm sure, calculates how much they can discount some items to draw you into the store so you pay exorbitant prices for others. In the end, they profit. If all prices were accessible online, it would be possible to write an application to minimize consumer spending, but this would cause the whole system to collapse. If all consumers could get all the deals everywhere--throughout their whole shopping list--the grocery stores wouldn't profit.

"Visual feedback gives you the illusion of speed, like a progress bar reduces the impression of waiting, but that’s all it is: an illusion."

I read an article once about elevators ( http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_... ). It was spun-off the "man getting stuck in an elevator for 41 hours" story.

In the article, the writer cites a particular anecdote about an elevator company installing faster elevators in a particular building. Patrons of the building, however, complained that the elevators were now slower. The company was confused--how was this possible? It turns out, the new elevators lacked mirrors. People couldn't straighten their hair and pick their teeth while standing in it, so the ride felt longer.

People perceive time in odd ways. Google's taking a stab at this perception; the illusion of speed in the eyes of the user counts more than physical speed. The user is the yard stick, not engineers with stopwatches.

The author here casts aside illusion like it's meaningless, but that's far from the truth. Look at the Parthenon, whose columns are tapered to make it look bigger, or magicians, who stun audiences with clever distraction. Casting aside illusion is on par with casting aside mathematics; it may be difficult to understand at times and require a large amount of labor to learn, but neither can be avoided without losing some room to maneuver.

This reminds me of a group of roommates I had in college. They played Super Smash Brothers: Melee for the Nintendo Game Cube perpetually. They played the same level--a flat level without platforms or items--over and over again for one reason--to get better. They had little interest in having fun and cared more about being the best.

One of our other roommates suggested that they play the game to have fun. They liked the suggestion and, as they began playing again, started to compete over who was having the most fun. My other roommate's comments had completely missed them.

I like that I'm thrown immediately into the interface. I don't have to "just sign-up, it's free" to try it out. Signing up for something means giving someone else my e-mail, verifying the e-mail, logging back in... all of this just to see how something works, when in all likelihood, I won't touch it again.

This though, this is a good idea. I've already made the website, and I'd have to sign up if I wanted to save it. I have something invested in it; it's now worth my time to save the site.

It's intuitive, easy, and useful. You guys have a good shot at survival.

"Atomic Fart" sounded good. It has thirty fart sounds and a "drum set" mode where you can play five different fart sounds without scrolling through the list.