Ballistic Wars is a lot of fun. I also liked Absolute Awesome Ball Game though beware that most of the fun lies in figuring out what the heck you're supposed to be doing.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:09 PM on November 7, 2007

See also Firebug.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:26 AM on January 25, 2007

rdr: ... If you believe what Graham tells us, a major chunk of his competetive advantage over others when creating Stores was using ancient (a language slightly younger that FORTRAN) technology.

It's not like he was using McCarthy's original Lisp implementation. In any event, the major advantage he claims he got from Lisp is the ability to write code in continuation-passing style. If you want to argue that, you'll either have to argue that it's easier... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 1:26 PM on March 4, 2006

I thought level 3 was impossible for a while, but once I broke through that I was able to sort of get the internal logic of the levels and finished it without too much trouble. (By the way, those of you who were stuck on level 3, think "rolling.") Fun!
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:48 PM on January 19, 2006

Happy Xmas! I love you.

(This one seems a lot easier than the other grows, though I love all of them.)
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:39 PM on December 17, 2005

Hm ... you know that part in Star Wars III where Palpatine is like "execute plan 66" and all the Storm Troopers throughout the galaxy know exactly what to do, but somehow it has completely escaped the entire league of Jedi knights?

This theory is kind of like that.

The quotes from the Washington Post indicate that Bush wanted to have complete control of the relief effort and Blanco didn't want to give it to him. Okay,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:14 PM on September 6, 2005

Probably not worth another FPP, but here is another wiki-esque Katrina-related site that I hadn't seen before. It ties Google Maps to freeform text entry so that people can ask for and receive information about particular areas.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 1:32 PM on September 5, 2005

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event.

Can anybody find this on ZDF's site itself? I tried and failed, but I don't speak German so that's not too surprising. (Also, is ZDF a TV channel or show, or a newspaper, or just the website, or what?)
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 10:27 AM on September 5, 2005

(Belatedly: thanks for digging that up, muckster.)
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 12:35 PM on September 5, 2005

There's a huge psychological difference between living in an awful circumstance temporarily, and living in the same awful circumstance with nobody in charge and no expectation that anything will get better. I'd bet that the problem wasn't that these people were crammed in the Superdome for five days, but that they suddenly, completely lost all social order.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 12:38 PM on September 4, 2005

You know what I would have done? I would have gathered a bunch of people together and stormed the checkpoint. I would have said "no, I will not allow my daughter, sister, mother, (whatever) to be raped and murdered. I will not revert to a two year old. I and my friends will carry the sick on out backs, and push them in their wheel chairs.
<snark>Damn, Livewire, too bad you weren't there then.</snark>

Seriously, it's really easy to speculate... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 12:43 PM on September 4, 2005

As for you jacobm: maybe you would have been in there so you could do some on the spot counselling or the rapists. You could have brought your sister, girlfriend or mother along. That shoe can very easily fit on the other foot.

Wha? I feel like this is some sort of barb, but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. All I was trying to suggest was that we know from copious experience that people are very bad at estimating how they would react when placed under extreme... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 1:09 PM on September 4, 2005

I am the winner!

At least until someone else finishes the board ...

I have to admit to being a complete sucker for breakout games, and the ability to make your own levels seems pretty cool. I'm a bit weirded out that it's connected to VeggieTales, though ...
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:20 AM on July 10, 2005

And, is anyone else wondering why, when he writes about bisexuals or transsexuals, he seems to fail to notice that they aren’t exclusively men?

I've talked to Dr. Bailey a couple of times about this -- he certainly doesn't "fail to notice it", but he views male and female sexuality as being very different and he's more interested in studying male sexuality than female. The arousal study NYT is talking about is a male-only study but it is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 4:00 PM on July 5, 2005

kyrademon:

Bailey admits to having simply made up at least one key section of the book

Which one? Is there any url or anything I could read? (I've read the book and I'm curious, not accusing you of anything.)

Even in this latest study quoted in the NYT, if nothing else, his population sample seems very, very small.

I don't think 100 people is small for a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 5:48 PM on July 5, 2005

It doesn't sound even remotely scientific, in the least.

nightchrome: the editors of at least one prestigous psychology journal disagree with you. Something to consider.

Toekneesan: I think the NYT article mentions somewhere that a sizable fraction weren't turned on by any of the porn at all, that might account for your observation.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:04 PM on July 5, 2005

kyrademon -

As for the "prestigious psychology journal" comment ... well, I'm not a psychologist, but a neuropsychologist friend of mine, commenting on the article, mentioned that "Psychological Science is not usually a journal that warrants a mention in the NYT." Make of that whatever you will.

Could be. My only point in making that comment was in response to nightchrome's "not remotely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 5:34 AM on July 6, 2005

KirkJobSluder - I've both reviewed and been reviewed academic papers in my life, and I certainly know that bogus claims can sneak through. But in my experience the filter is really pretty good, and certainly things that seem "not remotely scientific" aren't going to be accepted. Now, things that sound scientific but can't back their claims up are a whole different ballgame ... really my whole point in saying that was just to counter nightchrome's unsupported and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:28 AM on July 6, 2005

cytherea:

It was originally touted as a work of science. Since it's received criticism, it's been promoted a bit differently.

I dunno how it was advertised, I'm just saying what I read. It never seemed like it was trying to be a science book as much as a reporting-of-science book to me.

The book rests entirely on two dated publications by Blanchard. Blanchard's findings have not been duplicated... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 5:46 PM on July 6, 2005

cytherea: about your comments in regards to Bailey's book, thanks for the info about the research aspect. I've become interested enough that I'm going to try to get the other side of the story from somebody at NWU psych; I'll post back here if I'm able.

About the sexual selection paper, thanks for the pointer, no need to put *cough* marks around the gay eugenics phrase; that's what the paper's about, and it says so. Honestly, though I can't say I agree with the paper, it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:52 PM on July 7, 2005

The interesting thing about REM is that everybody agrees that they were once awesome, and everybody agrees that they now suck, but nobody agrees on exactly where the transition from good to suck was. Personally, I think it was with New Adventures in Hi-Fi -- I didn't like Monster the first time I heard it but it has grown on me -- but I think I've heard claims all the way from Murmur to Reveal as the tipping point.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:19 AM on March 16, 2005

This is totally awesome. The absolute best feedback you can get about your writing is honest feedback about how your story hits an unbiased audience by a reader who can identify why she feels the way she does. Not many people can give that sort of feedback, and those who can tend to demand payment for the service. I'll submit an old short story of mine to her, in fact, if I can find it. (Unfortunately, an old incident involving a hard drive makes that unlikely.)
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:20 PM on September 9, 2004

juv3nal: 1690 first time following your strategy, after a previous best of 350something over 10 or so attempts the collecting-bubbles way. So ... yes.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:41 PM on July 10, 2004

Blue Stone: When they first announced they were giving away GTA, I gave them my details, and they gave me a link to download the game and no spam.

Maybe they screwed up and sent all the download links to me and all the spam to you?
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:53 AM on July 9, 2004

kenko: There's a CS professor at Chicago who I'm pretty certain has a number of 1.

Do you mean Laci Babai? He's got an Erdos number of 1 three times over, in fact.

L. Babai, P. Erdos, S.M. Selkow: Random graphs isomorphism, SIAM J. on Computing 9 (1980), 628-635.

L. Babai, F.R.K. Chung, P. Erdos, R.L. Graham, J. Spencer: On graphs which contain all sparse graphs, in: "Theory and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 1:40 PM on April 22, 2004

HANDY BANDWIDTH SAVER!

From now on, whenever a PETA thread pops up, use these convenient numbers:

1: "PETA are a bunch of morons, as is self-evident from the FPP"
2: "PETA are a bunch of morons, as is evident from last month's FPP"
3: "Cats/dogs/farm animals AREN'T PEOPLE! DUH!"
4: "Thanks to PETA, now I eat MORE MEAT! TASTY ANIMALS FOR EATING!! LOL!"
5:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 10:11 AM on April 7, 2004

That you have the right to speak freely doesn't oblige me to provide you with a forum, and there are a huge number of great institutions (Harvard, the Smithsonian, every television, radio, or movie company, etc etc) that would collapse if it did.

I absolutely agree that the government has no legitimate right to tell anyone they can't say anything they want, and I'm troubled by the idea that there are fewer and fewer legitimately distinct forums for getting a message... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 12:58 PM on March 25, 2004

jokeefe: if a woman buying season tickets to the WNBA is sufficient proof that she's a lesbian, what does that say about all the beer-bellied family guys with season tickets to the regular NBA?

Umm ... err ... never mind.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:20 PM on June 28, 2002

It means I am a very happy homewrecker ;-)

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine too many beer-bellied sports fans I know who'd be on my list if I decided to jump the fence. Brad Pitt, on the other hand ... or Tom Cruise ... now there's a dynamic duo that could turn me. Or the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, to bring the thread ever-so-slowly back towards on-topicness.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:46 PM on June 28, 2002

Red58: yeah, that bugged the group I was with a little too, but I was willing to forgive the movie a lot of practicalities like that. Not the zany-cars so much, because they were so freakin' cool and I want one, but the questionable access policies their buildings have. Won't say more on the subject, but I'm sure people who've seen the movie know what I mean.

And racial minorities were invisible, I agree, which is especially ironic given that the movie title makes it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:19 AM on June 24, 2002

Red58: I wish I could mention specifics, but without spoiling things I don't think there's any way I can meaningfully argue the point with you. Suffice it to say that I can think of a couple scenes that could be used as evidence against your position.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:43 AM on June 24, 2002

kozad: I don't think the point is to make fun of William Safire; IIRC, William Satire is a name Hofstadter used for a number of satirical articles of all kinds.

peeping_Thomist: why don't you like the article? You've expressed that opinion twice but haven't said anything about why you hold it. Care to share?

Happydaz: why do you think the difference you point out is relevant? (That's not a barb. I'm curious.)
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:59 PM on June 18, 2002

The 10% number isn't true. I can't find a source with a more credible URL in a very quick googling, so here's something you may want to take with a grain of salt.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 2:26 PM on May 30, 2002

The Mountain Goats have a new album out? Goddammit, nobody told me! I need to be on the Mountain Goats New Album Paging Service, dammit! And here I was thinking I was such a good fanboy because I found a copy of Martial Arts Weekend. Sob sob sob!
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 1:00 PM on March 6, 2002

Jonmc: the eyehategod piece is just his latest; he's written about death metal many times. Dig through the archives.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:33 AM on March 7, 2002

KTRU, the college radio station I volunteered at as an undergrad, has had a live Internet stream of our on-air broadcasts for about three years now. Just today I heard that our station manager is extremely worried about the legislation's effect on KTRU and stations like it. It's not that the fees would be high -- we qualify for low rates and could probably pay -- but that we'd have to do lots of extra work to report things in the appropriate way. I'm not very familiar with the details, but our... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:48 PM on February 23, 2002

unkindly seismologist for 270,900,000. Boo-yeah!
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 8:38 AM on January 25, 2002

I used to think that performance pay was a good idea until a friend of mine asked me this question: "How do you tell how good a teacher is?" At first, it seemed like a simple enough question, but for every strategy I could devise he came up with a way it could be unfair and end up punishing teachers that I knew intuitively were 'better.' Since then, I've come to the conclusion that teacher quality is, indeed, qualitative rather than quantitative and so any attempt to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:52 AM on December 2, 2001

mlinksva:

Why is it so hard to work around this problem for teachers, yet so easy for most other professions with equally hard to quantify results?"

Well, I don't think I would go so far as to say it's easy to work around the problem in other fields, but the fundamental reason why education performance is harder to measure than programming is that in any business environment, there's a bottom line --... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 12:03 AM on December 3, 2001

Does anyone but me hear this story and immediately think, 'Good ole Shoe!'?
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:10 PM on November 15, 2001

Page you are trying to view cannot be displayed right now.
Contact help@slate.com.

Seems like the semantic equivalent of a 404 to me.

But then, I'm running Netscape on Solaris. Given the fantastic quality of the renderer in this thing, it's entirely possible that it's downloading a perfectly fine page and just drawing it like that ...
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:46 AM on October 29, 2001

I would just like everyone to know that I just kicked the little blue guy's ass 6-2. This is the crowning achievement of my life.
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:05 PM on October 4, 2001

<center> is still a bad idea. Actually, pretty much everything that's been done to HTML since its introduction has been a bad idea with the exception of CSS, but that's too little too late. Oh well. What are the odds that somebody will build an alternative to the world wide web that uses a stateful underlying protocol and a content language that actually separates content from form? And what are the odds that it will catch on?

posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 7:10 AM on September 28, 2001

I play this game under the name Mafia every Sunday at Rice University where I used to go to school. The Rice Mafia group is pretty large -- we usually play with between seven and fourteen people -- and we always have a lot of fun. We play a variant on the rules set forth in the link: we have three mafia members (rather than two werewolves), a policeman (exactly like the seer), and a healer (this is the wolfsbane-sprinkled-at-other-people's-doorsteps variant mentioned at the bottom of the link).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 6:15 PM on August 31, 2001

junkster, I second your thoughts completely. The worst part of PETA is that non-vegetarians tend to think PETA speaks for all of us, and that everything vegan or vegetarian is somehow PETA's doing. It's amazing what sorts of things people ascribe to PETA -- I've been told before in all seriousness (by a meat-eater, of course) that PETA was the legitimate face of the Animal Liberation Front. Even in this discussion, Theoform comments on how well he thinks the phrase 'Militant Vegan Fuckers'... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacobm at 9:34 AM on August 31, 2001