Creativity

News Roundup 8/26/2013

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What have we got today?

Quartz has a look at what’s wrong at Microsoft – and what needs to be done to fix it.  Excellent reading.  I’m still bullish on Microsoft, but they have some things to fix.

Heroes of Cosplay is having a Kerfluffle that looks to be nasty.  It seems NBC and SyFy used photographs without permissions of the photographers.  Then they got threatening towards the Cosplayers over who owned what.  Yeah, kinda ugly.

George Takei wants action on Russia’s Anti-Gay law.  Lending his voice the geek icon is going to be very powerful.

– Steven Savage

News 8/23/2013

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Another reason to take Texas off of your relocation list, if the water problems and other issues weren’t enough, there’s a huge feral pig population that also spreads disease.  I’m not sure I can be funny about this.

Why recruiters need to become matchmakers.  The good ones I know already have.  Maybe you can help out the recruiters you know.

Steve Ballmer plans to retire . . . Microsoft stock leaps.  Kind of sad.  I’ve been bullish on Microsoft career-wise for awhile, and this doesn’t change my mind.

– Steven Savage

Competence Porn In Fiction Versus Gaming

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I loved the article io9 did about the loss of Competence Porn (watching competent people do competent things) in SF. It noted how many SF stories had lost that element, leaving us with assorted “average” guys, non-scientists, and the like facing SF situations. I had to agree, at least on an intuitive level.

I miss tales of scientists and engineers solving stuff. I grew up with Dick Seaton (real name) of the Skylark stories. I, like many, wanted to be Spock or Scotty. I loved the idea of Iron Man and engineers making cool stuff.

I wasn’t into the idea that someone someone who lacks knowledge and skill (and doesn’t acquire them) is going to solve things. Wasn’t believable. Wasn’t a good story really. Didn’t give me anything to aim for.

(I could go into this as part of anti-intellectualism or “My ignorance is the same of your knowledge” trend or whatever, but that’s for later).

This got me thinking about gaming, another form of storytelling.

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