(via A friend’s husband just built this iPhone charging station. - Imgur)
Kids, back in 2012, your aunt Robin wanted to do something more with her life. So she took her love of guns to an organization called S.H.I.E.L.D and fought alongside the Avengers.
Now, your Uncle Barney and I took it pretty hard; she was getting to spend a lot of time with another billionaire playboy, this guy named Tony Stark. Your Uncle Barney almost went crazy when he found out the guy had a metal suit.
“It shoots fireballs, Ted! He looks like a freakin’ storm trooper!”
Then your uncle Barney decided to fight back.
(via wilwheaton)
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Before the words “namby-pamby”, “weenie”, or “not the way they did things in my day” start flowing across your lips, take a look at these numbers:
2009-2010 (Before new approach)
798 suspensions (days students were out of school)
50 expulsions
600 written referrals
2010-2011 (After new approach)
135 suspensions (days students were out of school)
30 expulsions
320 written referrals
“It sounds simple,” says Sporleder about the new approach. “Just by asking kids what’s going on with them, they just started talking. It made a believer out of me right away
http://acestoohigh.com/2012/04/23/lincoln-high-school-in-walla-walla-wa-tries-new-approach-to-school-discipline-expulsions-drop-85/
I WISH EVERY TEACHER IN THE WORLD WOULD READ THIS ARTICLE. AND PARENTS, TOO. AND YOU.
(via neil-gaiman)
What Makes Valve Software the Best Office Ever? -
That sounds like a GREAT place to work. Just check out the employee handbook. Sounds neat!
[video]
The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America of 2012: Voters Say EA
After over 250,000 votes were pulled in, The Consumerist, a large business-oriented website that offers news to the everyday consumer, has officially branded the worst company of 2012: Electronic Arts. EA was a finalist alongside Bank of America and won out against other companies such as Comcast, UPS, Chase, Verizon, PayPal, and AT&T.
The overall message that this vote delivers?
Now, after years of being ignored and relegated to steerage, game-players have voted to send a message to Electronic Arts and the gaming business as a whole: Stop treating your loyal customers like crap.
The website also offered a heap of the gaming industry’s related faults (with some quick jabs at the company most responsible):
To those who might sneer at something as “non-essential” as a video game company winning the Worst Company In America vote: It’s that exact kind of attitude that allows people to ignore the complaints as companies like EA to nickel and dime consumers to death.
For years, while movies and music became more affordable and publishers piled on bonus content — or multiple modes of delivery — as added value to entice customers to buy, video games have continued to be priced like premium goods.
There have even been numerous accusations that EA and its ilk deliberately hold back game content with the sole intent of charging a fee for it at a later date. It’s one thing to support a game with new content that is worth the price. It’s another to put out an inferior — and occasionally broken — product with the mindset of “ah, we’ll fix it later and make some money for doing so.”
New, independent game companies do pop up all the time, but the cost of entering the market has historically been too expensive, making these indie innovators prime targets for acquisition by mega-publishers like EA. Our hope is that the growth of app-based gaming and downloadable games will continue to make it easier for developers to get their products out without the backing of companies that don’t care a lick about the people who fork over their cash.
Oh well, Worst Company In America 2012 is officially in the books. All that’s left to do is send off the Golden Poo to EA.
Traditionally, the Poo has been delivered on its little red pillow. But this year, we’ll give EA three different color options for its pillow, though in the end it’s still the same old Poo.
Pay attention, EA and other game companies. Your new policies of nickel and diming your loyal customers have been recognized not just by gamers, but by the entire business industry and consumers worldwide, casual and hardcore alike.
Perhaps the new attention will finally sway some bigger name titles and policies to change for the better of all of us.
(via fizgig1202)
CreativeAmerica, the astroturfing group that pretends it’s a “grassroots” operation — but which is funded by the major Hollywood studios and run by former studio/MPAA execs — is amazingly inept at communicating with the public, especially considering these guys are supposed to be communications experts. Remember, this is the same group who, while fighting for stronger laws against copying, flat out copied the email of anti-SOPA activists, and changed a few words to push their own pro-SOPA message.
Their latest move is even more bizarre. The group is touting its latest slickly produced propaganda film, insisting that SOPA/PIPA are needed for a variety of reasons — almost none of which are true. It throws out the bogus claim of jobs being at risk, even though the evidence shows otherwise. But where it gets totally ridiculous is that the video focuses mostly on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom/Schmitz. The point of focusing on Megaupload? To claim that it can’t be reached under existing law. Seriously. It talks about Megaupload for a while (claiming that it brings in $300 million per year — which turns out to be 10x the actual number, by the way) and then says:US law enforcement is only permitted to shut down US-based IP addresses. Overseas sites, like Megaupload and Megavideo, and the Swedish-based Pirate Bay, are out of reach.Yes. And they’re releasing this video five whole days after the US government showed that existing laws actually do allow them to reach Megaupload and shut it down. So, um, why do we need these new laws again?
Quick! Someone get Chuck123 on the phone! We need more lawmakin’!
Maybe instead of using FUD to terrify Tumblr users into uninstalling Missing E, Tumblr could use that time and energy to give Tumblr users the functionality they installed Missing E to get in the first place.
What more needs to be said?
I picked this up from Algo actually :: End artificial scarcities to boost productivity -
It’s also why I leave stacks of 3x5 cards at every desk, cups full of pens at every desk (and in every conf room) and a heap of markers at every whiteboard. I can see it interrupt their flow when one of my devs has to stop and look around to find something to write with or on.
Now I have to get them the pick up the same habit…
This is also just one type of scarcity - Jon Tran got me thinking about abundance, to quote him: “When you’ve made something abundant you haven’t just made something better, you’ve made something completely different”. That has really stuck with me. I try to make the dev tools and environments for my team abundant usually through heavy automation and reduction of steps. It really makes a qualitative difference to be able to have a single button or step to perform repetitive tasks.
This reminds me of you introducing me to git. The speed & qualitative difference completely transformed my workflow.
