I've been using Google Docs lately to share my notes with other people. They can add comments on specific items that show up on the side of the document, and you can respond or resolve the comment to hide it.
Of course this is Google, so there's always the chance they retire it, though I think Docs and Sheets are likely to stick around as long as Office does.
How are you going to figure out an exciting new ways to integrate FB, Twitter, or Instagram if you don't even use it?
You should have left it there and I would have modded this Funny
Wat? Last time I checked, Nebraska didn't have a rain forest. Aside from the climate alarmists worried about emissions, the real environmental concern that people in the Midwest have about the pipeline is that it will be laid directly over the Ogalalla aquifer which provides fresh drinking water and irrigation for a large portion of the country. As well, there is little to no direct or indirect economic benefit to the states through which the pipeline will flow - and as many others have mentioned here, will likely result in the increased price of domestic oil.
While it's debatable how far reaching the effects of multiple nearly guaranteed leaks and spills will have on the aquifer over the years, local communities will have to deal with wells and irrigation contaminated by such leaks and spills, and as we've seen with BP, getting the companies involved to provide recompense is no easy matter.
Think about up the next generation of game developers - kids growing up right now. If they're gaming on a console and using a tablet or smart phone for their other computing need, they have no real exposure to programming, 3D modeling, audio software or any of the other things that go in to designing games. If Windows and MacOS are moving towards closed software ecosystems and a mobile interface type of simplified UI that hides everything but Twitter and a browser from the user as they both seem to be, Linux is going to have to play a larger part in gaming development in the future. The more devices and distributions tailored for different purposes and specific hardware while still allowing users to peel back the curtains to access everything available on the OS, the better off we'll all be. Kids are curious and will do what they've always done since the advent of personal computing; making cool stuff for fun and to impress people, and unless some change like this takes place, fewer and fewer people will ever be exposed to these tools.
I know my nephew got his parents to buy an iPad just so he could play Minecraft. While the mobile versions of Minecraft make it hard (impossible?) to use addons and mods, I'm sure more than a few kids have been pushed in to building a PC or getting a gaming laptop to really take advantage of what that game has to offer. It'll just take one killer app that allows people to be creative and do things on a Steambox(/Windows/MacOS/Linux) that can't be done on a closed platform to start moving these things.
And in the meantime, Valve will be taking things slow and steady like they always have and building partnerships with hardware and software developers to get SteamOS ready to take over when the inevitable decline of support from MS and Apple for desktop users pushes the hardcore audience over where the games will necessarily follow. Totally agree with the article's author, Valve isn't trying to win a war but positioning itself for a future that's seeming pretty likely if not certain. The Steam machines that are launching now are a low risk investment from everyone involved. Free advertising for Valve, and a simple rebranding of exisiting hardware for the manufacturers. The real test will be how seamlessly and well the streaming works to entice hardcore gamers into putting a HTPC or steam box in their living room, and so far we haven't seen anything there.
Perhaps it might be worth reflecting on the probability that the majority of people on either side of the debate have no real justification for their belief for or against evolution than that they identify with a social group who holds a particular stance on the issue. It's just as easy to fall in to the trap of thinking you're more intelligent and learned by looking down on creationists - while never having applied any kind of personal critical analysis on evolution except to think that God doesn't exist therefore the theory of evolution must be true - as it is for creationists to accept a thousands of years old interpretation of creation - without sharing the cultural context in which it was written and understood - from the book of Genesis.
We see the same thing with politics. Very few people have any real idea what the Republican and Democratic parties really believe, except for lazy mischaracterizations of the opposing party fueled by whatever echo chamber a person tends to consume their news and media from. Meanwhile we're completely distracted from the abuses of both parties in nearly every single newly passed piece of legislation pandering to lobbyists and campaign donors.
The obvious solution is to raise citizens who are able to critically think for themselves, but we're only getting worse in this regard the more we see the government intervening in public education, and things aren't looking much better in the private education sector.
It's a bit silly to compare game sales to more traditional mediums like music, television and film. Just on the PC side, we don't even have educated guestimations on the kind of money and sales that are really taking place. WoW alone still must gross around $2 billion a year when taking in to account micro-transactions and unit sales along with subscription fees, and AFAIK we have no real idea how much money (other than obscene truckloads) the big MOBAs are pulling in. Steam, GoG, Desura, GMG, Humble Store and scores of smaller digital distributors further obscure how many sales are actually taking place, though if Valve were to open up their numbers that would help account for the majority of PC sales across most distributors who usually provide Steam keys. In the east, tens of millions of players are throwing billions at F2P games that people in the west have never even heard of. Then you have the attendant industries that are growing up around gaming (PC in particular) like Youtube and Twitch streamers and esports, indie merchandising, conventions, etc.
The numbers articles like this pull up tend to rely almost entirely on physical boxed sales which at this point must only account for a tiny fraction of actual PC game sales, though they do tend to fairly accurately reflect the health of each individual console. The gaming market is so fluid right now that the only safe conclusions we can make are that gamers are increasingly less interested in the same old fare from AAA developers, and that they need to start taking more risks with their games or lower their development and marketing budgets to account for the decline. The mass exodus of talent from AAA developers to the indie scene is a good thing, and a natural response to the current market trend. When games like Binding of Isaac that can be developed by a handful of people over a few months and sell millions of copies and provide a far more interesting and compelling experience than nearly any AAA game released in years, you have to wonder who but your average console dude-bro really would care if every last AAA publisher and developer were to go under.
its just that the movies being produced today are unappealing garbage compared to what they were 25 years ago
No they're not. They're about at the same level of quality as they were 25 years ago. You just remember the really good ones, you forget the stinkers that came out to the theaters every weekend. Good movies stuck around longer too, these days a movie has a month or two to earn almost everything, but 25 years ago a good movie could stick around for 6+ months. So they were more "present."
The summers of 1982 and 1984 were spectacular years for movies, but otherwise I think the movie quality is about the same. Production values are way way up though, which is part of the problem. No way should The Lone Ranger have had that high a budget. I know they were trying to recapture the Pirates magic, but still... Sounds like it had the same problems as John Carter -- decent movie that was budgeted way too high for it to be able to break even on modest returns.
I don't go to the movies often anymore, but I still rent them more than I should - and there have only been a few of them that I want to watch again or even remember much about, like the first LotR, Anchorman or Lincoln. And only one out of those relied on big budget special effects. Quality in Hollywood's eyes nowadays is determined by how much money is thrown at CGI explosions and annoying post-processing effects, while the original Star Wars movies (pre Special Edition) still manage to look more realistic and visually interesting than anything made since, while telling an original story with incredibly unique and memorable characters. It's almost an analagous state of affairs to the current video game industry, where big budget studios keep churning out repetitive sequels or clones of existing titles with ever increasing budgets for graphical improvements, at the same time ignoring to focus at all on new and interesting game mechanics and stories. There have only been a few AAA titles in the last ten years that anyone will still want to - or more sadly even be able to - play another ten years from now. Thankfully for gaming, indie games lately are proving to be much more interesting than indie movies, which in my possibly limited experience rarely manage to avoid being pretentious art-house productions.
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal." - Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
