Think_Long: So, this is a student loan, but it passes on the default risk from the federally guaranteed loan program to the institution itself? I don't see why this is a bargain for anyone involved.

That's exactly what you want. The company providing the goods is also providing the warranty. They're making the claim, indirectly, that a college education will make you a lot of money, so it's worth a lot of money. By charging a percentage of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 1:04 PM on February 10, 2012

Tim Schafer has consistently made games that didn't sell well at the time they came out, but were very well-loved. Brutal Legend is probably the only game he's made that didn't fully gel, and I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

He's been so beaten down by the game industry over the years, though, that I wonder if he's got another Grim Fandango or Psychonauts left in him.

If he does do a Psychonauts 2, my only request would be to not make all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:17 AM on February 7, 2012

You know, a lot of it's our fault -- Tim made these absolutely phenomenal games, and we didn't show up to buy them until it was way too late.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:18 AM on February 7, 2012

There aren't very many people in the game industry who could say, "Hey, folks. I wanna make a game. Adventure game. Dunno what it'll be about. Dunno when it'll be done. Wanna help fund it?" and then get a million bucks shoved in his face.

Actually, it's $1.1 million as of right now, and climbing steadily.

About goddamn time that man started to get some good feedback for the awesome games he's done.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:51 PM on February 9, 2012

I should say -- get a million bucks from customers, since being funded by distributors and/or angel investors is the way it's done right now. So the amount isn't particularly astonishing, but the source sure is.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:53 PM on February 9, 2012

God, the amount of work in making a game like Planescape:Torment would be fiendishly difficult to cover in Kickstarter. I dunno if you've played through that game recently, but the Infinity engine (D&D 2E rules) was incredibly complex, and then you had an assload of content to go with it.

They were able to amortize the cost of making that engine over a number of games, but that doesn't work until game two and later... you have to make the whole thing to get game 1... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:40 AM on February 10, 2012

It's always possible there's something more hidden behind veils of secrecy, but given what we know now, it's quite possible that Alan Turing did more to win World War 2 than any other single person. His word on codebreaking had a wildly disproportionate impact. It's one thing to have a huge armed force, it's an entirely separate thing to have it in the right place at the right time, and Alan Turing's work made sure that, over and over, we did.

Then... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:26 PM on February 8, 2012

AC;DR?
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 1:14 AM on February 8, 2012

got to remind him that the First Amendment protects Mormons like him from anti-LDS legislation,

One of the complaints about gay marriage is that it will slippery-slope to polygamy, so an LDSer being against gay marriage is rather amusing.

Of course, I actually kind of think it IS a slippery slope toward letting adults arrange their lives any way they want. There's a lot of total bullshit that the conservatives throw around... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 10:58 AM on February 7, 2012

I am an Obama supporter, but nothing he has done has disappointed me more than failing to get us out of this mess.

There's a list of things you can criticize Obama for that's as long as your arm, and mine, and two dozen of your closest friends. I'm a frequent and loud Obama basher.

But he was very clear that he planned to stay in Afghanistan during his campaign. It's one of the rare times where what he... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 5:12 AM on February 7, 2012

Miko: Holding racist beliefs, whether they're learned or -- wait, where else would they come from? just invented on the spot? -- is in itself evidence of an absence of observational and reasoning ability that isn't consistent with a meaningful definition of 'intelligence'.

Conditioning and intelligence are not at all the same thing, and it is conditioning that drives nearly all routine behavior. It takes a great deal of intelligence and, often,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:40 PM on February 6, 2012

Ironmouth: Let's be quite frank--the content industry is taking a beating due to illegal downloading. The idea that it "won't kill you" is a laugh. Jobs are being lost.

But the total money being spent on music goes up, every year. It's just more of it goes into the pockets of actual artists, instead of people who demand to be paid for copying bits.

Copying bits doesn't offer much value. Anyone... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:58 PM on February 4, 2012

but for me that doesn't change the fact that the makers of creative works should be compensated.

Okay, but that doesn't mean the makers of creative works have special powers to fuck up my computer or Internet to get it.

If they want to get paid, fine, all of us do -- but if they want to get paid for making copies, they're competing with hundreds of millions of factories that can make the exact same product for free. Trying... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 12:24 AM on February 5, 2012

mach: The DMCA already goes too far. However I think that content providers should be able to charge more than just the distribution costs of the media. if you don't agree with that then you'd have to say that the creative content itself has no value.

They can charge whatever they want. But if the business model is around bankrolling the creation of something, and then selling zillions of copies, they're asking to get paid for making copies. They can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 2:51 AM on February 5, 2012

unSane, the business model isn't "work for free", it's "work for sane amounts of money and then sell cheap copies directly to everyone you possibly can". Or, alternately, to do something like Kickstarter, where you get a lot of people who help fund the creation of the movie.

You can't charge much for copying bits, so you either need to charge for something else, or shift enough bits that you make it up through volume. Louis C.K. came up with 200,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:35 AM on February 5, 2012

And unSane, regardless of anything else, the fact that you want to make movies of a certain quality does not give you the right or the power to break into everyone else's computers and websites. Either figure out how to make movies profitably in a world where copying bits is as easy as breathing, or go find something else to do.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:53 AM on February 5, 2012

If you're really comparing the amount of effort required to make a $5 iphone games to the amount of effort required to produce a movie I really don't know what to tell you.

Batman: Arkham Asylum has been on sale multiple times now for $5, and that's as AAA as they get.

It's not just iPhone games. They move a LOT of copies when they knock 'big' games down that cheap.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 8:07 AM on February 5, 2012

None of these movies paid wages to their principals.

Who says they have to pay wages? They could pay shares of revenue instead. Big risk/big reward scenarios.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 8:08 AM on February 5, 2012

Certainly, but it is by no means clear that the so-called wisdom of the crowd will choose the $10k indie breakout over the $100m studio turd.

So what? What's the alternative?
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:03 PM on February 5, 2012

Wow, the Monkey Island theme is perfect for the accordion.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 5:25 PM on February 5, 2012

You know, I was thinking the other day about how amazing a modern car would look to someone from WW2. My Toyota is big, extremely comfortable, gets excellent highway mileage (not so hot in-city, sadly), is just about weatherproof, even at highway speed, and with occasional maintenance, will run for probably a million miles. And it'll do an extremely good job of protecting me if I get into a crash.

When you look at these cars, I think maybe the most interesting bit... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:56 PM on February 4, 2012

He'd probably be more amazed by a Mitsubishi.

Just being snarky, or is there some substance to that comment?
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 2:17 AM on February 5, 2012

Good link, MartinWisse.... but they cheated. An American car was the first one to come up with the standard arrangement, but they gave the credit to a British manufacturer because they made it cheaper. Bah.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 2:28 AM on February 5, 2012

It's only in the last 20 years or so that cars have gotten hugely better.

Actually, it's my understanding that US cars were shitty on purpose, to encourage you to buy a new one. I don't know if the Japanese were competing on quality purposely, or by accident -- it could have been either, as U.S. cars were just that bad.

I haven't owned an American car in my entire life. I really seriously considered one for the first time... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:20 AM on February 5, 2012

I thought it was kind of funny at first, because, hey, bloody Legos is inherently somewhat amusing. But it went on too long, and got really gross. If it had stayed more subtle, I'd have liked it, but tearing arms off and leaving hamburger behind goes well over the line.

Of course, I've also carefully avoided all the Tarantino films, so my line is nowhere near that of most folks.

Technically, it was very good. Man, that must have taken FOREVER.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 7:47 AM on February 4, 2012

I think this game is a troll.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 5:02 AM on February 3, 2012

Ironic that the two large World Trade Center buildings that fell were essentially an homage to the minaret.

What? Weren't they just kinda featureless rectangles jutting into the sky? I remember them as being pretty ugly.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 4:47 PM on February 2, 2012

Heh, what's funny here is that they're being penalized for something that was made legal, some time after they did it.

For awhile, banks were expected to 'mark to market', to value securities at the present market value for them. During the crisis, many of the securities were valueless, because they were illiquid. (most of them are, fundamentally, worth MUCH less than the notional value.) So, because being honest about valuations would have destroyed the banks, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:32 PM on February 1, 2012

In 2001, that required an invasion. Now, with the use of drones, terrorism can be effectively suppressed without needing thousands of boots on the ground. Of course drone strikes will continue, as they should.

I'm not sure I've ever seen so much outright evil in so few sentences.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:52 PM on February 1, 2012

I've said this before, but I'll say it again... in my view, voting for Obama is treasonous. He's far more dangerous than Bush ever was -- he goes even further than Bush did, and the thing that makes him dangerous is that liberals just swallow the exact same shit that Bush spewed, whole. This is, I think, because he looks and sounds professorial while telling you to bend over and grab your ankles.

Rather -- while telling you that he's going to make... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:09 PM on February 1, 2012

I mean, another way of putting it is... people talk about how terrible it would be if the conservatives won again, because of all the imaginary terrible things they might do -- while ignoring the many horrific things Obama has actually done.

I'll trust in the concrete over my imagination, and Obama is concretely the worst president for civil liberties in American history. Therefore, I absolutely cannot vote for him, and I think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:14 PM on February 1, 2012

There's nothing about a billion dead ants in the video. The only billion I heard referred to was the number of loads carried to the surface to excavate the nest, about 40 tons of dirt in total. That may be an editorial addition by Joe in Australia, or perhaps he's seen more of the video that snippet came from.

I don't think it was a dead nest, though, as there certainly appeared to be many live ants on top of the initial mound, and you see at least one live ant during... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:35 PM on January 31, 2012

It's a bloody hole in the ground, six-or-six-thirty, and once they pull the concrete out, and fill it back in, all that will be left is a depression from the missing dirt. The grass will grow back within a month or two, and after a few years the topsoil will be re-enriched. Right after fill-in, it'll be mixed in with the less fertile dirt from deeper down, so maybe the grass won't grow as high for a while, but it'll all heal up.

It's not like they're moving square... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:47 PM on January 31, 2012

Would you be okay blowing up a planet, using a fully armed and operational battle station, to save an Empire?
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 5:13 AM on February 1, 2012

What Really Happened At Occupy Oakland, an eyewitness account on Reddit that contradicts the media and police summaries quite drastically. One quote:

Tonight was different. When I fell behind the group, I knew they were going to arrest a very large number of peaceful protesters without declaring an unlawful assembly at the location. And then they did. I thought this sh*t was reserved for G20's and WTO meetings. I felt shame for being intimidated away from my... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 5:19 PM on January 30, 2012

Smashing downtown and setting fires in the streets? Stupid, violent.

Remember that this may not be the protestors at all -- the police departments are known to place agents provocateur among protestors.... these agents then break windows and burn things, for which the protestors are blamed.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 1:49 PM on January 31, 2012

I remember when it was only illegal to make a joke at the airline counter, immediately before boarding a flight.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:48 PM on January 30, 2012

Right, that's what I was going to say.... he's not playing sheepdog, he's trying to scare the sheep out of his territory. He owns that spot, apparently.

That's not friendly behavior, that's an aggressive little asshole rabbit.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 12:57 PM on January 29, 2012

That might be the best version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Like, the single best one. Ever.

I'm actually not kidding. That's amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:35 PM on January 28, 2012

You know, as Heinlein pointed out in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, anyone with a moon base has the absolutely commanding position in a war. If you get annoyed with someone, lifting rocks out of the lunar gravity well is cheap, and they turn into insanely devastating weapons when dropped from 250,000 miles up. If big enough, they become the equivalent of nukes, but without the radiation -- the biggest conventional explosives imaginable. And it's just rocks, no high tech... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 3:31 PM on January 27, 2012

For me, this whole article really boils down to this little snippet:

She had grown up in Newport News, Va., in an area much like the Baltimore neighborhoods in which “The Wire” was set. Cops were not the good guys where she came from, so even acting the part was unnerving. The show’s broader message made it palatable, says Simon. “I think that was a great relief to her, because I think she had some latent sense of horror that she was going to be working on a cop... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 2:56 PM on January 27, 2012

I think it's super-cool that Minecraft has turned into such a collaborative thing. I hope the devs start pulling some of that code in from the community. They've had some really neat ideas.

Seems like it's moving faster since Notch delegated the project to one of his cohorts. With a new lead dev, it seems to be under good steam.

You know, the Minecraft wiki just bugs me. I dunno what it is about it, but they are just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:23 PM on January 26, 2012

Minecraft is just fun and useless and THAT'S IT.

Minecraft is a toy, not a game. It's like a top, or Legos, or a rocking horse... something that's supposed to be inherently fun to tinker with. If you want to then play an actual game with your toy, you can do so, but it's all up to you to define.

I get kinda bored with singleplayer, but multiplayer is fun -- you can show off your creations to all and sundry.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:44 PM on January 26, 2012

Specifically, Linksys/Cisco routers have a setting for disabling WPS that does not work. That is, the radio button changes to disabled, but the protocol remains active. You can still be hacked, even though you think you've turned off the protocol. Presumably, updates will be out soon, f they aren't already, but if you have an old router, it's possible you may be SOL.

If your hardware will run the open source DD-WRT or Tomato firmwares, neither has this problem, as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2012

mrzarquon: Huh, yeah, you're right, Apple did not just push out an update. Rather, my computer just finally noticed the update a few days ago. I don't use my laptop on my home wireless network that much, and I guess it just randomly happened to notice the outdated firmware at the same time that this stuff was hitting the wires.

Sorry for the misinformation, if anyone was worried.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:10 PM on January 25, 2012

Banking, as presently constituted, is a field where nice people go to get eaten.

If you're in a deal with a investment banker, and you don't know who the sucker is, it's you. Because of the bailout mentality, the system rewards nasty, aggressive liars first and foremost. The crashes we keep trying to have would kill these roaches dead, but the bailouts mean that we never find out which of them were lying -- so the biggest and boldest liars get to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 1:40 AM on January 25, 2012

Am I a bad person for thinking these aren't very good coins?
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 6:20 PM on January 23, 2012

It looks like she's damn accurate, too. If I'm understanding what I'm seeing correctly, she's torn a hole about the size of a man's fist in the blanket she's shooting at.

Boy, I really wouldn't want to argue with that girl.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 8:06 AM on January 23, 2012

One likely byproduct of this is to make it a lot harder to crack root on a phone you've bought. The NSA may be doing this to help the supercitizens (corporations) not people.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 2:39 AM on January 22, 2012

Okay, it works if you actively enslave your population, preventing them from having access to computers.

If you think that's workable, let me introduce you to the close cousin of that idea, the War on Drugs.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 9:37 PM on January 20, 2012