mirror of
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removed rants
This commit is contained in:
muflax
parent
4f25b3d774
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f67e2ce93f
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@ -3,6 +3,9 @@
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All major changes on the site
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=============================
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- 2010/10/27: Removed rants. This is part of a personal change, which will
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trickle down, slowly, into the site.
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- 2010/10/02: I wanted to condense all essential insights into one little
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list, so I wrote my [Gospel of Muflax].
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@ -21,7 +24,7 @@ All major changes on the site
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- 2010/07/13: Notes on how I fixed my [Concentration] issues. Also, I filled
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out PhilPapers' excellent [Philosophical Survey].
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- 2010/05/28: New rant on why [Square Circles Exist].
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- 2010/05/28: New rant on why *Square Circles Exist* (removed).
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- 2010/04/26: Reworked the whole site, turning it into a proper site instead
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of a rambling blog.
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@ -32,8 +35,8 @@ All major changes on the site
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*Argument from Spirituality*, a *Safer Use* section and changed my position
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somewhat.
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My [Rants] have now become an official part of the site (the internet wouldn't
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work without unnecessarily strong opinions and emotions).
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My *Rants* (removed) have now become an official part of the site (the
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internet wouldn't work without unnecessarily strong opinions and emotions).
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I rewrote and greatly extended my thoughts on Dennett's [Consciousness
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Explained]. Yes, I'm finally done with the book.
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@ -48,11 +51,9 @@ All major changes on the site
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[vim]: /software/vim.html
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[Philosophical Survey]: /reflections/survey.html
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[Concentration]: /experiments/concentration.html
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[Square Circles Exist]: /rants/square_circles.html
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[Consciousness Explained]: /reflections/con_exp.html
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[Determinism]: /reflections/determinism.html
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[Poetry]: /poetry/
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[Rants]: /rants/
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[Good Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/good_sleep.html
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[Speed Reading]: /experiments/speedreading.html
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[Letting Go of Music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
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|
|
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@ -50,18 +50,6 @@ Some of the stuff I wrote.
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- [ashuku], a personal statistics tool
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- [saneo], my keyboard layout
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[Rants]
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=======
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The fuel of the internet.
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- [Square Circles Exist], so stop using them as an argument!
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- [Python], I hate your creeping dementia
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- The [Singularity] is Very Far Away
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- [Perl], we are finished
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- [Game Design Sins], because the whole business is incompetent
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- why [Neo 2] is retarded
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[Changelog]: /changelog.html
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[RSS]: /rss.xml
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[Contact]: /about.html
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@ -74,14 +62,6 @@ The fuel of the internet.
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[Good Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/good_sleep.html
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[Polyphasic Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/polyphasic_sleep.html
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[Rants]: /rants
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[Square Circles Exist]: /rants/square_circles.html
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[Game Design Sins]: /rants/game_sins.html
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[Python]: /rants/python.html
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[Perl]: /rants/perl.html
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[Singularity]: /rants/singularity.html
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[Neo 2]: /rants/neo.html
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[Reflections]: /reflections
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[Philosophical Survey]: /reflections/survey.html
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[Letting Go of Music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
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@ -1,155 +0,0 @@
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% Game Design Sins
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Recently, I've been reading a lot of stuff about game design and I even started
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playing a few of the games that have been lying around here for positively ages
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now (アウターワールド (originally Another World), SMB, Dig Dug 2, plenty of
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stuff on the NDS). I started noticing a small set of Deadly Sins. If a game
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commits one, it stinks. If the rest is done exceptionally well, it might still
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be enjoyable, but there already is a bad aftertaste. Commit two or more and
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it's hopeless. The game is shit. Interestingly, most of them apply to TV as
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well.
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Shut up already!
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=================
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Aka Navy syndrome aka All Players Are Retards. Never, ever tell me how to play
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your game or how all that stupid stuff works or what I'm seeing. "Hey, I bet
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you can JUMP up there!" "Hey Link, that's a VASE. You can TOUCH it and then
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THROW it on the ground to SMASH it." Will you shut up already! I can figure it
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out myself! If your game is so complicated that it needs half a college course
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to get used to, then your design stinks. If you think I might be to stupid to
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understand the simplest of concepts, then I don't anything to do with you. If
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you fear I might miss some part of your awesome game and you need to explain
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everything to me, then this might be because your game is shallow, stupid and
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*boring*!
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This applies to more than just gameplay. Ever heard of "show, don't tell"?
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Doesn't look like it. Never use text (or worse: speech), when you can show.
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Learn a thing or two from Half Life 2. Instead of telling me about oppression,
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show it. You *could* go on hours and hours about your angst and loneliness, or
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you *could* show me one woman desperately waiting at the train station for her
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husband that will never come. One of the two approaches works, the other is
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annoying. Can you tell which is which? Never explain and tell, when you can
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imply and show.
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Now, this doesn't mean "don't talk". I'm a pretty big fan of Planescape:
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Torment and Arcanum and *boy* do these games talk. But what they have to say is
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interesting. PS:T never explains any game mechanic. It never explains stuff to
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you, the player (though it does explain a few things to the main character).
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Many main plot points are never made explicit at all and lots of information
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can be missed. If you are not actively looking for it, you might even miss 2
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of the 3 classes your character can be. So "Shut up already" and 'talky" are
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not opposites. But when you can do without words, do so.
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Sure, take your time
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=====================
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Yeah, you have this awesome feature. Say, in your game, you can reverse time at
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any point. Then it's a good idea to take it slow and don't give me this feature
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or anything. Let me do a dozen or so tutorial levels first. And talk to me.
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Maybe a nice, long intro. Or really long loading times. Anything goes, as long
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as you can prevent the player from *actually enjoying your game*. I'm looking
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at you, Braid. A couple of minutes before the first enemy, really?
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When I play a game for the first time, I give it about 30, maybe 60 seconds.
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During this time, something cool has to happen. If it doesn't, that's it. The
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game is over, it's boring and it can bugger off. Mario's main skill is jumping.
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How long does it take to jump? A couple of seconds, at most. You move a bit,
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start running to the right, press a button and there it is. You jump. Or take
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Another World. You get a short establishing shot of some research lab and the
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character, 10 seconds later, some weird shit happens and you are sucked into a
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parallel dimension. You don't know what the fuck is going on and without
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warning materialize in a pool of water. If you don't react immediately, and you
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won't because you will still try to figure out what is going on, a bunch of
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tentacles grabs you and you are dead. Not even a minute in and already dead.
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You continue, this time swimming up. A strange world awaits you and you are
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attacked by a beast right away. From this moment on, you will be constantly on
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the run, trying to survive. You are never given a chance to get bored. If it
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weren't for the intro, I'd mention God of War, too. You are thrown right into
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a battle and encounter your first boss within 2 minutes or so. That's how it
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should be.
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You know what? It's not enough for something cool to happen. I, the player,
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must do something cool. Which brings me to the next sin.
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Don't let me play the game
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===========================
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Take control away from me at any time you feel like it. Throw in a cutscene! Let
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the character do something automatically that I could have done instead. Even
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better, let another character do it for me! In a cutscene!
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I get it. You are way cooler than I could ever be. It's for my own best if you
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do all the awesome stuff and I just watch. Like in Oblivion, where the final
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battle is fought between two NPCs in a cutscene. Don't get any of this hideous
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game stuff in your movie, Mister Game Designer. It could be, you know, *fun*.
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Big Numbers
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===========
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It's really important for any self-respecting game to have as many Big Numbers
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as possible. You must have 16x anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, 50,000
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polygons per character, not just one, but several layers of shaders and at least
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10 different buttons and if you can count the number of axes on one hand, than
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it's not enough and you need to throw in another analog stick. NOT.
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Pick one
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feature. Do this one feature well. SMB has 2 buttons and one D-pad.
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Portal can do with 3 buttons (blue / orange portal and grab). If
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you need much more than that, you are doing it wrong. If you think
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that a top-notch graphics engine matters at all, you are doing it
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wrong. Many designers seem to think that the less people can
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actually play their game, the better. Especially PC games are
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affected by this. Many modern games run on less than 1% of all
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machines. That's, like, really smart. And don't even get me started
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on DRM and digital distribution (read: renting games). But anyone
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who thinks that publishing games on the PC is a good thing in the
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first place must be insane.
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I like buttons
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==============
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This is the one that I understand the least. Don't people *play* the games they
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make? Then how come many are so cumbersome and slow to use? Buttons after
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buttons, multiple seconds of blackout between each screen and a HUD that was
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seemingly designed on LSD. The one that really annoys me right now is
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Scribblenauts. If you want to change your avatar in the middle of the game, you
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have to go through *5* menus and then go all the way back again. Fail a puzzle
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and you have to not just watch the introduction again, but click away a pop-up,
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too. Every. Single. Time. How do they test this? Didn't someone try to smash
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their NDS after a week or so of playtesting and trying a puzzle over and over
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again?
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Rape the setting
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================
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To be fair, this sin is not as common as the other ones, but it's so horrible
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that it is a complete deal breaker for me. I'm not talking about "Don't dare to
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be different when working in an established franchise!" bullshit. What I mean is
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the sheer lack of respect for what you are creating. A good example would be
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Jade "make it Asian, but not *too* Asian" Empire. Or Fallout 3. Inconsistent
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worlds that don't have any kind of respect for themselves. Throw in whatever
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crap you can think of. Pile stereotype on stereotype. I don't want to drift into
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a violent rant about constant sexism, racism and just plain ignorance about
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anything, or offering "moral choices" that only a 3 year old could think of as
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intriguing ("Do you want to be a *NICE GUY* or a *BIG MEANIE*?"), or making
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characters expendable and "funny", or throwing in stuff because a market
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analysis indicates that the target demography might want it (and not because you
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like it or anything), or confusing violence with maturity, or..., so I'll stop
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here.
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Just... don't. I've played enough games that even /b/ couldn't have made more
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stupid and offensive. Just stop it already, ok?
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Bad Actors
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===========
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Voice acting. Nuff said. Bad writing is one thing (and not necessarily a show
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stopper because games don't always need writing). But bad actors physically
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hurt. In my paradise, I'm allowed to club 3 line-readers to death with a metal
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reinforced Model M keyboard per day. I'm going to start with Bethesda, then work
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through the entire JRPG genre and finally take out however voices the people in
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FPS cutscenes. You guys make my ears bleed. Take some classes, seriously. You
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*suck*. And insist on getting your lines in context, please, so that you can at
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least pretend you could convey any emotion at all.
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@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
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% Rants
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Rants
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=====
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The fuel of the internet.
|
||||
|
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- [Square Circles Exist], so stop using them as an argument!
|
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- [Python], I hate your creeping dementia
|
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- The [Singularity] is Very Far Away
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- [Perl], we are finished
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- [Game Design Sins], because the whole business is incompetent
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- why [Neo 2] is retarded
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[Square Circles Exist]: /rants/square_circles.html
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[Game Design Sins]: /rants/game_sins.html
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[Python]: /rants/python.html
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[Perl]: /rants/perl.html
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[Singularity]: /rants/singularity.html
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[Neo 2]: /rants/neo.html
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@ -1 +0,0 @@
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title: Rants
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@ -1,67 +0,0 @@
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% Why NEO 2 is retarded
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[Neo 2] claims to be an ergonomic keyboard layout. I have been using it until
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about a month ago when I forked it and created my own layout, [saneo]. I don't
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contend its claim as far as the letters are concerned. However, level 3 aka
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Mod3, containing the punctuation characters, is totally fucked up. How fucked
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up? Let me demonstrate.
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First, let's get some data. What's a typical use for Mod3? Programming and
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normal texts. I decided on analyzing C (representing curly-bracket languages),
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Python (representing pseudo-code and list languages), my shell history and shell
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files (representing Unix usage) and Perl (representing line noise).
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Additionally, I included my local Usenet cache to represent normal texts. I took
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several thousand files each and in the end averaged them all together.
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Second, we do a little experiment. Say, if Neo 2 is actually ergonomically
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optimized, we would expect the most frequent characters to be on the easiest to
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reach positions. Of course, it depends a little on personal taste, keyboard form
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and hand size how easy each position is, but let's go with the arrangement the
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Neo devs chose for their letters.
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If the layout is optimized, the most frequent letters and the most frequent
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punctuation characters should be on the same physical keys. Let's see if this is
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true. Here is a little table, showing the letters sorted by (German) frequency
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and the corresponding Mod3 character. I've put the keys with "." and ","
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according to their left-hand equivalent. Green means 5% or more, yellow down to
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1.5% and the rest is red (which is often around .01%). Have a look.
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Great fucking job, guys. The 7 best keys get only 2 frequent characters. 6
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frequent characters are in the middle of fucking nowhere. You decided to place
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an obsolete character, the long S, that no one in my fucking news cache even
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used *at all*, in a better position than **,**, **.**, **"**, **'**[^3] and
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**\#**, which together make up a good **40%** of all punctuation. [^0]
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The one character that is more frequent in many cases than any letter except the
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friggin' E, and more frequent than 2/3 of the letters in general, the
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underscore, isn't even anywhere near a good position.[^1]
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Way to go, Neo, way to go.[^2]
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[^0]: Some of the reasoning behind this is that any Mod1 key is
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easier to reach than any Mod3 key. If you think that Mod3+N is harder to
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type than Ö, then I wouldn't let you design *a wooden stick* because it
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seems your brain is barely able to use
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2 fingers at the same time.
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|
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[^1]: "But I don't program! I rarely need an underscore!" But you constantly use
|
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curly brackets, more often than any other bracket?!
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[^2]: To be fair, it's impossible to optimize for punctuation-heavy
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curly-bracket languages and normal text at the same time. However, this
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half-assed mess makes it hard for *both* groups. That's clearly not a good
|
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solution. I chose to optimize for the programming languages because a) I use
|
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them more and b) they tend to be so rich in punctuation that they simply
|
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overshadow normal text.
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[^3]: Which are not even normal punctuation, if the Neo devs weren't so
|
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inconsistent in their design. If you want to follow official guidelines (but
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only prescriptionist dipshits would want to), you should use the German
|
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quotation marks „ and “, and the proper accent ’. Which are even harder to
|
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reach. Which makes the whole thing even more retarded.
|
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[Neo 2]: http://neo-layout.org/
|
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|
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[saneo]: /software/saneo.html
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Binary file not shown.
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Before Width: | Height: | Size: 17 KiB |
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@ -1,25 +0,0 @@
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% Perl
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Perl, we're finished. I want nothing to do with you, ever again.
|
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|
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I'd like to say "It's not you; it's me.", but this wouldn't be true. It *is*
|
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you. You just suck beyond reason, suck more than I could have ever imagined.
|
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|
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You know, Perl. It's the year 2010. Unicode is almost 20 years old. Do you speak
|
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it? Of course not. So why do you pretend you do?
|
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|
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You lie to me. "man perlretut" tells me:
|
||||
|
||||
> \\w matches a word character (alphanumeric or \_), not just [0-9a-zA-Z\_] but
|
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> also digits and characters from non-roman scripts
|
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|
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But you don't. "\\w+" doesn't match any Japanese string whatsoever. Not even
|
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"Freischütz". Like, really.
|
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|
||||
I tell you, explicitely, to use Unicode. You don't. You match what the fuck you
|
||||
want to match. You really don't care at all.
|
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|
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Nor can you handle Unicode in a string anyway. You don't understand how long it
|
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is. Or how to print it correctly. Or how to split it. Nothing.
|
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|
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Perl, it's over. I'm leaving. And I'm not coming back.
|
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|
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@ -1,127 +0,0 @@
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% Stuff I hate about Python
|
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|
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Python may be my favorite language, but there sure are some things seriously
|
||||
wrong with it.
|
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|
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(This is all Python 3.1 code, unless otherwise noted.)
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|
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Discordianism
|
||||
=============
|
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|
||||
I thought a bit about which programming language is the most Discordian one, and
|
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it must be Python. "Python?! Python is clear and precise, how can it be
|
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Discordian?! Shouldn't it be something like Brainfuck, or Malbolge, or PHP?" No,
|
||||
those are simply evil. They are, in Discordian lingo, destructive chaos. But a
|
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proper Discordian language must be creatively chaotic, instead. Instead of just
|
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screwing up because of incompetence or malice, it needs to actively take apart
|
||||
order to achieve something greater.
|
||||
|
||||
"So why not Perl, or maybe Ruby? They sure have a culture that looks very
|
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Discordian." True, but that's exactly the problem: you can not mindfuck someone
|
||||
if they are _expecting_ it. A [Bavarian Fire Drill] doesn't work if you prepare
|
||||
people for it. It works only _because_ it is a completely legit action in
|
||||
_absolutely the wrong context_.
|
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|
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And that's why you need a language that pretends to be serious and orderly, but
|
||||
that can also go all Eris on your ass. Like Python. Lemme show you them:
|
||||
|
||||
> GP: Is Eris true?
|
||||
> M2: Everything is true.
|
||||
> GP: Even false things?
|
||||
> M2: Even false things are true.
|
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> GP: How can that be?
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> M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
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> -- [Principia Discordia]
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|
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In Python 2.x, you can do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
True = False
|
||||
# This enables us to do:
|
||||
if True:
|
||||
print "All Hail Eris!"
|
||||
if False:
|
||||
print "And Ewige Blumenkraft!"
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Even more fun, add a little
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
True, False = False, True
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
to your code and enjoy the confusion and self-doubt the next maintainer will
|
||||
face! (Or add it to your own code while drunk, making sure to forget about it
|
||||
afterwards!)[^haskell]
|
||||
|
||||
[^haskell]: On the other hand, there's Haskell, which allows you to redefine
|
||||
functions in a context, so that you can have
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.haskell}
|
||||
let 2 + 2 = 5
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
, which is very Orwellian indeed.
|
||||
|
||||
Pokemon-Speak
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
What I mean is stuff like this:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
import datetime
|
||||
|
||||
d = datetime.datetime(2012, 12, 21)
|
||||
now = datetime.datetime.now()
|
||||
dt = (d - now).days
|
||||
print("Only {} days left until the end of the world!".format(dt))
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Sure, I can abbreviate it, but that obfuscates the code somewhat. Related to
|
||||
this is the explicit _self_. I mean, seriously? Sure, it makes it clear what you
|
||||
are calling, but still, stuff like this really gets on my nerves:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
def make_website(self):
|
||||
self.make_html_files(self.src, self.dst)
|
||||
self.make_css_files(self.src, self.dst)
|
||||
self.upload(self.ftp)
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Half that code is just pure noise!
|
||||
|
||||
Long Code is Long
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
||||
"There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it." leads to
|
||||
some seriously overlong code sometimes. I mean, the shortest way to check
|
||||
whether a file is newer than another is this:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
import datetime, os
|
||||
|
||||
def a_newer_than_b(a, b):
|
||||
return (datetimet.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.stat(a).st_mtime)
|
||||
> datetimet.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.stat(b).st_mtime))
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
This is a bad joke. In Perl, you do "if ($a -ot $b) {...}". Why can't I have
|
||||
something just as simple?
|
||||
|
||||
Another good example is some list comprehension inconsistency. I can do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
l = [x for x in haystack if isinstance(x, Needle)]
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
, but I can't do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
for f in files if os.path.exists(f):
|
||||
mangle(f)
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Why not?
|
||||
|
||||
[Bavarian Fire Drill]: http://s23.org/wiki/Bavarian_Fire_Drill
|
||||
[Principia Discordia]: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/6.php
|
||||
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|
|
@ -1,108 +0,0 @@
|
|||
% The Singularity is Near!
|
||||
|
||||
The Singularity is Near! (and alle so: yeah...)
|
||||
===============================================
|
||||
|
||||
Science fiction is dead to me. I can not stand the weak ethics, ridiculous
|
||||
predictions, massive biases and total disconnect with science since at least 50
|
||||
years any more. At first, that depressed me a little. Losing a whole genre is
|
||||
always tragic, but I have survived the death of horror; I will make it without
|
||||
science fiction, too. But actually, I found something to replace it with:
|
||||
Futurology! In fact, retro-futurology. Find some futurologist, at least some
|
||||
years old, and compare their vision of the future with now - it will be
|
||||
hilariously wrong! No exceptions. Kurzweil is amazing in that he is wrong even
|
||||
after only half a decade! Clarke at least is sometimes correct when predicting
|
||||
stuff half a century away, but Kurzweil couldn't even design a five-year-plan
|
||||
for a socialist utopia. He even gets his own data wrong in determining the date
|
||||
for the singularity. That's mind-boggling. It's really takes a special kind of
|
||||
intelligence to be so stupid. Based on [JBR]'s scoring system, I'll award
|
||||
between 0 to 1 point per prediction, depending on how good it was. Of course, I
|
||||
only rate predictions that can already be judged (and exclude those that are so
|
||||
vacuus that they don't say anything at all, like "The rate of paradigm shift
|
||||
(technical innovation) is accelerating, right now doubling every decade.").
|
||||
"Partially borrowed" from Wikipedia.
|
||||
|
||||
[JBR]: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/retro/
|
||||
|
||||
1. "We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with
|
||||
supercomputers by the end of this decade." Not even a single component of
|
||||
the brain can be emulated. 0 points.
|
||||
2. "Automatic Speech-Recognition Software with good accuracy in 2000." Muahaha.
|
||||
This one is a postdiction and yet, "good"? Yeah, right. Well, it isn't
|
||||
entirely awful, but "good"?! 0.5 points.
|
||||
3. "Computers will start to disappear as distinct physical objects, meaning
|
||||
many will have nontraditional shapes or will be embedded in clothing and
|
||||
everyday objects." No. I still don't have a fridge that orders new milk and
|
||||
I've been promised one since I was born! 0 points.
|
||||
4. "Full-immersion audio-visual virtual reality will exist." No. In fact,
|
||||
entertainment systems are rapidly moving away from "immersion" (thank
|
||||
gods!). As far as I know, there isn't any full-immersion for training
|
||||
purposes either. 0 points.
|
||||
5. "Glasses that beam images onto the users' retinas to produce virtual reality
|
||||
will be developed." Alright, "developed" is correct, but in actual use?
|
||||
Personally, I expect VR to be integrated into phones instead. 0.5 points.
|
||||
6. "Real-time language translation in which words spoken in a foreign language
|
||||
would be translated into text that would appear as subtitles to a user
|
||||
wearing the glasses." Muahahaha! The smartest company on the planet, Google,
|
||||
can't even correctly generate subtitles in the *same* language. 0 points.
|
||||
7. "Cell phones will be built into clothing and will be able to project sounds
|
||||
directly into the ears of their users." Yeah, right. 0 points.
|
||||
8. "Exoskeletal, robotic leg prostheses allow the paraplegic to walk." Ok,
|
||||
prototypes exist and work well. The reason they are still rare isn't so much
|
||||
the robot, but rather the energy source. 1 point.
|
||||
9. "Telephone calls are routinely screened by intelligent answering machines
|
||||
that ask questions to determine the call's nature and priority." If only! 0
|
||||
points.
|
||||
10. "'Cybernetic chauffeurs' can drive cars for humans." Even humans can't drive
|
||||
well, but robots are going to do it before they have mastered *vision*?!
|
||||
That's... optimistic. 0 points.
|
||||
11. "The classroom is dominated by computers." No, just no. Laptops might have
|
||||
replaced paper notebooks by now, but it's very rare for a teacher to be even
|
||||
aware of useful software, like SRS. 0 points. Personal prediction: this
|
||||
won't be true, ever. School will go extinct before teachers apply science to
|
||||
their job.
|
||||
12. "A small number of highly skilled people dominates the entire production
|
||||
sector." Yes and no. Specialization is going strong, but companies are also
|
||||
larger than ever. 0.5 points.
|
||||
13. "Tailoring of products for individuals is common." To a degree and for a
|
||||
price, yes. 0.75 points.
|
||||
14. "Drugs are designed and tested in simulations that mimic the human body."
|
||||
Nope. This is impossible *in principle*. You can only simulate what you
|
||||
understand well; understanding by simulation is a contradiction in terms.
|
||||
You must know the detailed rules of a system to simulate it well (small
|
||||
derivations will often lead to largely different results), but then you
|
||||
already understand it. 0 points.
|
||||
15. "Blind people navigate and read text using machines that can visually
|
||||
recognize features of their environment." Nope. Unless you count "dogs" as
|
||||
machines. Because, face it, that's how good you have to be to compete on
|
||||
this market. 0 points.
|
||||
16. "PCs are capable of answering queries by accessing information wirelessly
|
||||
via the Internet." 1 point.
|
||||
17. "By 2020, there will be a new world government." While there is still some
|
||||
time, just think of all the paperwork! The UN is breaking apart, the EU is
|
||||
becoming irrelevant and there aren't any two superpowers speaking with each
|
||||
other. I think we can judge this one. 0 points.
|
||||
|
||||
Alright, that's about it. 3.75 out of 17. I especially like that he is still
|
||||
convinced that translation software is *just around the corner*. Yes, futurology
|
||||
will fill the void left by science fiction nicely. \*chuckles\*
|
||||
|
||||
Holy Cow!
|
||||
========
|
||||
|
||||
I studied Kurzweil's analysis a bit more in-depth and finally realized - by
|
||||
gods, the man is right! If you plot major milestones, you can clearly see a
|
||||
trend! Unfortunately, Kurzweil's plot is a little outdated and some details are
|
||||
wrong, so I updated it. Here is his version:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Here is the fixed version:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I can see it now! The Sincowlarity is near! Transbovines are already emerging!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Kurzweil, you are a genius!
|
||||
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|
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|
|
@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
|
|||
% Square Circles Exist
|
||||
|
||||
Please, for the love of gods, stop using this phrase. *Please*. Like in, "Can an
|
||||
omnipotent god create even logically impossible things, like a square circle?"
|
||||
or something like that. Because the metaphor is **wrong**. And I'm gonna show this
|
||||
by drawing you a square circle.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
"But wait, this is just a square? It's clearly not a circle." Are you sure? *In
|
||||
what world?*
|
||||
|
||||
First, let's see the definition of what a square and a circle actually *are*.
|
||||
|
||||
A **circle** is a shape on a plane[^plane] consisting of all points which are of the
|
||||
same distance from a given point, called the center. A **square** is a shape on
|
||||
a plane with 4 equal sides and 4 equal angles.
|
||||
|
||||
And now comes the crucial point: the world I drew this in is **[Nethack]**. Yes,
|
||||
Nethack. You see, Nethack's world behaves pretty much like any grid you would
|
||||
expect, but there is one tricky aspect - distance works different than you might
|
||||
think. The thing is, *all* 8 fields around any given field are defined as being
|
||||
at the distance of 1. All 16 fields surrounding *those* are at a distance of 2
|
||||
from the center and so on. In other words, a diagonal move is the same distance
|
||||
as a horizontal or vertical move.
|
||||
|
||||
So the shape I drew clearly has 4 sides, at equal angles. It's a square. And all
|
||||
it's 8 points are 1 field away from the center, thus forming a circle. It's a
|
||||
square circle. It doesn't require omnipotence to make one.
|
||||
|
||||
[^plane]:
|
||||
Those definitions can be generalized to spaces beside planes, making a
|
||||
3-dimensional sphere a circle as well. This is, however, irrelevant to my
|
||||
point.
|
||||
|
||||
[Nethack]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethack
|
||||
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|
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|
|
@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
|
|||
% saneo - putting the sane back into Neo
|
||||
|
||||
As outlined in my [rant], [Neo 2] sucks. So I designed my own keyboard layout.
|
||||
I was kinda (read: a lot) unhappy with my old keyboard layout, [Neo 2]. So I
|
||||
designed my own keyboard layout.
|
||||
|
||||
Design Principles
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
|
@ -64,4 +65,3 @@ characters and the rest is mostly spam. ;)
|
|||
|
||||
[github]: http://github.com/muflax/saneo
|
||||
[Neo 2]: http://neo-layout.org/
|
||||
[rant]: /rants/neo.html
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue