War is not healthy for fancy chickens and other living things.
Sponsored by
L337.com
A superb example of freakishly booger-filled, clip art-based “educational software,” this little gem is sure to cause night terrors for years to come amongst our already warped young nippers. No longer will they dream of happy leprechauns cavorting with studious beavers. Their dreams will be haunted by warped grammar-impaired little people glowering over their glowing pots of gold in a dank Irish bar with several hefty log-rolling dam-builders.
The sound effects are more suitable for Beauregard’s House of Unemployed Clowns than an educational application for elementary students. These innocents will be corrupted before they even learn basic skills of arithmetic. Further, we judge the likelihood of children actually enjoying math after experiencing this travesty to be extremely low. Lower than a dog on the highway with no legs, served with a refreshing mint jelly. Snappy lines like “you’re a whizz, Liz” and “you’re an ace, Jason” which appear as the drill exercises are attempted, are sure to confuse and frustrate all but the most stalwart of learners, who are statistically unlikely to be named Liz, Jason, and Trevor ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Even if you succeed in plunging your way through this yak-leech which was engorged with sinus fluid before fossilizing, you will still be left feeling as though you’ve consumed a bushel of licorice-infused malt balls in lieu of the water you so desperately need. As your parched, cracked throat begins to undergo the desertification process, you hear the unmistakable howl of a pandemonius cartload of rhesus monkeys on the hunt. This can only mean one thing: the global monkey conspiracy has begun to infililtrate our childrain’s learning institutations, caussing many bad learnings, and poor mathemative describements. Not even suitable for really basic math teaching, it makes us want to expungetorate.
Perhaps children exposed to MathGo could grow up to be the next President of the Americanian people. OR SUPREME MONKEY DICTATOR FOR LIFE!!??! REWRITING THE RULES OF MATH IS WITHIN YOUR GRASP! GODSPEED, YOU APE EMPEROR! Whatever the outcome, we cannot suppose that it will be wholesome. This application is not worth the mutton it is written on, and should expunged, wherever it, or its fowl spawn, may chance to appear on the screens of our young chilblains.
Interactio, you are dumb dumb! I wad up Apple II software floppy and ping it off your head with a melodious thwack! Scrummy jernippity, I feel worse than a 400 pound blood clot stuck in my palatial mansion’s ornamental drain spout, which rarely ever happens anymore, now that I’ve eliminated the most egregious of my substantial pool of enemies. The software industry may be powerful, but they are no match for my clammy connections in the vinyl repair industry. Watch the “stinging flea triple spin attack,” it burns worse than a 12" diameter defecation which cannot decide on the proper direction of travel.
At $21.00 (360.36 Honduran Lempira), this gob of muddled manure ought to polish my shoes, and LEARN MATH FOR ME. This is unacceptable, you insipid so-called “Interactio.” I feel you require a corpulent 10.7 to satiate your barely concealed desire for punishment.
Posted by ladd at April 7, 2003 12:39 AM | TrackBackCan you say "over the top"... c'mon... that's good, I knew you could...
See children, this is an example of hyperbole; the use of language that exaggerates the point until the point is lost completely in the mutton guts filled with excrement and foul smelling sinus fuild.
See shildren, I can do it too, and it is just as stupid.
Mr. Rogers
Posted by: Mr. Rogers on April 7, 2003 02:47 AMRogers, you poltroon! Of course this is over the top. OTT is its raison d'etre.
This site's sole mission to tickle one's whimsy, make one's entrails quiver with malicious glee ... and mock those who would take life so seriously as to think that they actually need to point out that the hyperbolic ramblings in this lungworm infested pile of rancid cuscus carcases are actually hyperbolic. In short, my good fellow, it is designed wholly and solely to take the piss!
Now go and take your piss, before your bladder implodes, and think twice before returning hence!
Belvedere, release the Taswegian Devils!
Posted by: aussie boy on April 7, 2003 03:12 AMNevertheless, the current article's lack of content has just barely been camouflaged by the superfluous inundation of whacky synonyms, similes and monkey lore. Review rating: Booming ball of ooze.
Posted by: Thuros M. on April 7, 2003 03:32 AMI did have a hard time trying to pick out where the suckage lies in that diatribe. I didn't see anything in the review to indicate it was worth a 10.7. I had to actually download it and experience the burning myself.
The site is a bit disturbing for kids. Nothing quite like pictures of an exposed brain and a "intentful" divorcee teacher pressed up close to an innocent youth to get one in the mood for math. The download page greets me with a selection of f'ing hqx'd self-extracting OS 9 archives. Bloody welcome to OS X, you dolts! At least I was able to use StuffIt Expander to avoid having to start up Classic to get this running. This is the kind of StuffIt abuse that makes mention alongside RealBASIC appropriate.
The pixelated icon and setting folder alongside the app scream OS 9, but the interface just screams. Nothing makes a student all warm an fuzzy like being referred to as "User data" in an entry dialog that doesn't have a place on even Mac OS 1.0. It suffers from a terrible one-size-fits-all interface, but that ends up cutting off a number of text fields and leaving the app focussed on the speed in which a person can type and/or click buttons. It doesn't do a good job at teaching math. It doesn't even allow you to set up a "lesson plan" to have students run specific drills.
The only educational thing about this app is the app itself. It feels like it was written by students. And not even B students at that. But because I'll always need someone to flip my burgers for me, I can only give this app an 8.8 and highly recommend it to all manner of schools that read pVT for purchasing advice. Way to go, MathGo!
Posted by: Kinda Agree on April 7, 2003 03:32 AMWhat is with the author's snot/puss fetish?
Posted by: on April 7, 2003 03:35 AMKinda agree, thank you for your comment. It is better than today's review, which seems like it was written mainly in honor of aussie boy's antics.
Posted by: Thuros M. on April 7, 2003 03:42 AM>Perhaps children exposed to MathGo could grow up to be the next
>President of the Americanian people.
Looks like this has already happened.
Posted by: LKM on April 7, 2003 04:55 AMWow. And I always thought the term "boring geek" was an oxymoron -- how wrong, oh how horribly wrong, I've been. I must go out forthwith and French kiss all my non-boring geek friends in gratitude for their daily struggles against the dull doofs who recognize that this site is "over the top" and yet have the goddamn crusty nerve to COMPLAIN about that!
You are just bitter because you don't dream about whooping cartloads of rhesus monkeys in hot pursuit. Instead you dream of winning the calculus competition and going out afterward for hot wings, and for that I pity you. The sorrows of your empty lives cannot be ameliorated by this website.
You know this, surely, and yet you return again and again to clog the comments with your pasty-faced whining. Why? Why do you waste your valuable time when instead you could be organizing your sock drawer by size, color, fiber, and relative thickness?
Only thus will you find happiness and peace. Go now, small grasshoppers -- go and seek your true path.
Posted by: tiny goddess on April 7, 2003 08:03 AMhahaha... and what's with the "dancing angels" reaching towards the sky? lol
Posted by: hugo l on April 7, 2003 11:19 AMCan we really blame ladd for not writing a superior article after all the mind numbing programs he has had to review? Its a miracle the guy is still alive afer all that mental abuse!
So in conclusion, a few too many mentions of puss or other odd bodily fluids/fluidish materials won't hurt us.
But ladd, you forgot to compare the program to the kurent kwality of edumakation at the publik skools in dis 'ere grand kuntry called ameerika.
Wait, shouldn't that be "GODSPEED YOU! APE EMPEROR"?
Posted by: carsont on April 7, 2003 03:08 PMIf we are to worship this site and its visionaries, then they must all be perfect, lest our dreams and hopes be shattered like a tiny goddess which has been submerged in liquid oxygen and then dropped forty floors into the hard, unforgiving pavement.
Posted by: Thuros M. on April 7, 2003 03:11 PMThere is no conspiracy.
Pick me, goddess, pick ME
Posted by: Rk on April 7, 2003 05:39 PMBob McPoop, nice!
Posted by: on April 7, 2003 07:14 PMThere has never been a conspiracy, simian or otherwise.
French kissing is an act of sedition.
Posted by: R.S. Monki on April 7, 2003 07:24 PMOscar Goldman: "Evacuate the town!"
Posted by: Double Worsted on April 7, 2003 08:14 PMI have to agree with Mr Rogers... It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, but my constipation has made me excessively serious.
As the Apple Turns and CARS are both incredibly boring, and therefore they suit me, since I too am incredibly boring. I like my oatmeal with vinegar.
Regrettably, evil Venusians have taped my eyelids open and forced me to read PvT. My only recourse is to complain about the lack of humor that I am forced to read. Pity me. Please?
Although I generally despise definition quoting, Mr. Rogers claims this review was filled with "hyperbole" which caused it to lose its original point. Unfortunately for Mr. Rogers, our least favorite, and most mucus-endowed Canadian friend, hyperbole is actually "a statement exaggerated fancifully, through excitement, or for effect." which certainly does not guarantee a loss of effect, unless you are a pasty canuck.
Further, as I have previously stated, nobody is in any way compelled to read PerversionTracker. If they find it does not suit their inadequate intellectual abilities or incomplete emotional development, they are directed to immediately consume three pages of the Wall Street Journal, and retreat to their ramen-noodles-in-the-parent's-basement fantasy land, where a unrivaled collection of 12-sided dice are waiting.
One additional thing I have not previously stated, which may not be clear to the less capable humorists amongst the audience, is that the software reviewed is merely a comic foil. As such, we don't actually try to offer a complete description, or a measured critique of our selection.
That beaver in the MathGo application is so seriously mis-drawn that it doesn't look so much 'fluffy' as if it is infected with a bad case of neurofibromitosis. Maybe it should be the Perversion Tracker Mascot.
All Hail Bob Macpoop!
Dice is plural. Die is singular. Get with it. Unless, of course, it's a collection of one die, in which case it would hardly be unrivaled.
That said, I love the site, and I pity you, Ladd, for having to stoop to responding to a review of a review, intended only to amuse, of a piece of software which should consider it an honor to appear on any page other than the indiscriminate VersionTracker.
Posted by: The Valrus on April 7, 2003 10:50 PM'Tis true 'tis a pity, and 'tis a pity 'tis true.
Come on hombres -- ignore this snarky griping from the soft ramen-filled underbelly of geekdom, and get on with the vicious snot-laden reviews! I don't read this site for my health, you know!
Remember: PvT is a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. Its intrinsic worth shall not be sullied by the nattering nabobs of negativism with too much time on their greasy mitts.
And ye gods, what kind of monster would even think of seriously critiquing an unserious critique? It seems nauseatingly postmodern, and postmodernism is yesterday's news. Out with the old, in with the PvT!
Love & smooches,
Yr sstr
Despite my supposed ongoing college education, I have failed to read the disclaimer, and I continue to inflict my boring epistles on others.
Note: next time I will read the disclaimer about the whims of the proprietors.
Posted by: fishdoc on April 8, 2003 10:41 AMIt is a die collection not a dice collection, just as it is a coin collection, not a coins collection.
Posted by: The Anti-Valrus on April 8, 2003 10:46 AMfair enough - at least now I know you are reading it, and you hopefully will take a moment to reflect and maybe even improve your writing (as I said - your site CAN be funny, but usually beats a joke into the ground, or substitutes supposedly wacky analogies for real humor).
read ATAT and CARS and try to learn from them. Good luck.
Posted by: fishdoc on April 8, 2003 10:56 AMyeah!! down with canada!!
Posted by: tom on April 8, 2003 11:40 AMMathGo? Run away! Run away!
Posted by: King Arthur on April 8, 2003 12:14 PMyou have bursted my bubble
you have doubled my floss
my flight is a bedweather
my gold; lichen moss.
who's hog has unblossomed?
long log of green ice
your juggernaut marblesauce
overlearned my device.
This is not fair. It's not my fault I had to take a day off to scrape the necrotic scraps of flesh from a suppurating fistula. And I come back to find a fully-fledged battle has taken place between those of a bent more dour and humourless than a New Zealander whose favourite sheep has died, and others for whom each day's weirdness brings the pleasure that only true pain can bring! PerversionTracker gives the deepest pain, and hence the purest pleasure! And I missed the lot.
I hope you insufferable plebians rot to bits in the seventh circle of hell, your giblets aflame, your naughty bits frozen!
Belvedere, an urn of Chateau Yakshat '96! I must drown my sorrows at once!
Posted by: aussie boy on April 8, 2003 05:03 PMwow - I feel like I can't understand big words, and it scares me. Why not try writing something boring with 3-4 letter words that I can understand more easily?
Posted by: dour one on April 8, 2003 06:03 PMdour one. I like you. You one funny man. What mean "understand"? Too many little word bits ...
Posted by: aussie boy on April 8, 2003 07:46 PMWow. I never thought so many numbers could appear on a screen at once, it's almost as big as:
1654981894651687981654897913456764165789461321604984189004989490
I'm stunned.
Posted by: PerversionTracker is Perverted on April 8, 2003 09:01 PMHow flattering that I seem to spawn nemeses everywhere I go. You will note, Mr. Anti-Valrus, that while one may have a "coin collection," it is highly unlikely that you will ever hear anyone boasting about their "collection of coin," unless they are using some new young-person slang with which I'm not familiar. To continue the analogy, then, "collecion of die" would be just as incorrect. You will note also that Ladd has altered his original post, apparently as per my suggestion. Victory is mine!
Posted by: The Valrus on April 9, 2003 12:39 AMNo, my delusional popinjay! Victory is MINE!
Or rather, it will be, just as soon as you turn your back to that window...