Things that were not immediately obvious to me

Editorial note: If you’re wondering about the Minesweeper project, an update is coming on Friday. We’re in the implementation phase, so I’m going to do a single large update to the project then, instead of doing two smaller ones today and tomorrow.

Consumer-grade long-wave radio clocks are one of those ideas that sound neat in theory and fall apart in practice. The theory is that, since these devices set themselves based upon an authoritative radio-borne time signal, they will be more accurate and less hassle than a conventional clock. Neither is really true.

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Ebert’s gone and shot his mouth off again, opining that “no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium [of video games] as an art form”. He repeats his statement that: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets[sic].”

Bunk. Trinity.

Below, I briefly explain why Trinity is art and Ebert, therefore, wrong. Be warned: I’m going to talk about the game’s denouement, and you’re cheating yourself if you read this before playing the game. If you’ve beaten it, and/or will never play a text adventure, please read on.

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A few days ago, Seth Godin wrote this piece, in which he discusses a proposed “soda tax” in New York:

If I worked at Pepsi, I’d be actively lobbying for the obesity sweet soda tax (a penny an ounce) being proposed in New York. Instead, in a no-surprise knee jerk reaction, almost everyone in the industry is lobbying like crazy to stop it. This is dumb marketing.

The benefit of a tax is that it affects you and your competitors at the same time, so you all benefit from doing the right thing, as opposed to having to compete against someone who doesn’t care as much as you do.

This is bad analysis.

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