You've got a fair point that underage sexual activity is largely irrelevant to the topic of pedophilia. I think bluefoxlucid may have taken antifoidulus's text a bit out of context, or gone off-topic a bit. But his point, as I understood it, is that there's a distinction between underage sex and sexual abuse - and that it's not the act of underage sex that's harmful, but the scenario of being raped.
The law can put out a blanket definition that classifies any sex with a minor as "rape" - and that can be a very useful thing, since law and its execution are inherently imperfect - but when I use the word "rape" I refer specifically and exclusively to cases where the sexual activity is non-consensual.
It's fine if you don't believe bluefoxlucid's stories are typical of actual reality. It doesn't reflect my world view either. But I think if you (I assume you're the same coward) want to bitch about how his anecdotes contradict piles of research, you should at least make sure it's the right research, that's all.
Let me ask you this very simple question: Would you want somebody who can say these things teaching *your* 12 year old daughter about sex?
This seems like a ridiculous and somewhat vague question.
No, I wouldn't want my daughter to have sex when she's 12, at all. I expect I'd do my best to prevent that. But if she chose to do so, I don't think it would then be right to say the other party had committed "rape". Whatever the law says, I think 12 is old enough that a child should be able to take a certain level of personal responsibility for their decisions. If my daughter makes a decision and then finds she regrets it, is it right then to use the law to ruin someone else's life for it? I don't think that's something to be taken lightly.
But there's how I view the issue in principle, and how I'd actually react when this is no longer an abstract question, and there's decisions I might be obligated to make based on other facets of the law. I honestly don't know what I would do in that situation. I hope I'll never have to find out.:)
Well, since you have a few anecdotes to share, I guess that means the reams of studies and statistics demonstrating the very real, long term, and harmful consequences of sexual abuse of children is invalidated!
Don't be a douche. He was talking about underage sexual activity, not sexual abuse. The law doesn't distinguish the two, partly because it's hard to do so. But if you have have studies and statistics about the long-term aftereffects of consensual underage sex that you'd care to (not) cite, that could be different, you know?
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not trying to minimize molestation, it's a real and terrible thing.
I find rather annoying that you had to be that explicit and make that statement even here on Slashdot.
Basically we're so screwed up about how we deal with this issue that people don't dare talk about it without constantly, defensively, and preemptively asserting their non-pedophile status in the clearest ways possible. We don't dare handle this issue for fear of being tainted by it, we just kind of prod it with a ten-foot pole.
> When the polygon counts do get high enough, there will be no looking back.
Academic fairy land. Polycounts will never get high enough. There is a physical limit on how many polygons a animator/modeller/rigger can actually handle in a sane way. The higher the number of polygons in a character, the more time an artist has to spend painting the skin weights and mapping the UV coords. The relationship between the number of polygons and the asset creation time is exponential. Double the poly count, and expect the modelling/uv mapping alone to take 4 or 5 times longer.
I think the current workflow for creating 3-D graphics for games puts a heavy emphasis on runtime optimization - making the polycount suitable for the hardware and software that will be displaying it. When the hardware is capable of a substantially higher polycount, the workflow will change. More emphasis will be placed on creating high-detail models, with less emphasis on optimizing their topography, and more reliance on automated tools to handle things like polygon layout and UV mapping. The work style will adjust to fit the new hardware capabilities.
It is a metaphor. It is a virtual slap in the face, an expression of the deepest loathing and utter disrespect for everything they believe in. It's like talking trash about someone's mom.
So what? "Deepest loathing and utter disrespect" is what prominent Christians and Muslims express for atheists.
Doesn't make it right.
I don't think there's a conflict with the idolatry rules, either. I always interpreted those rules to mean nothing else should come ahead of one's commitment to god. I don't agree with the idea that many people seem to have, that the rules of their faith should apply to everyone else, too... But that doesn't mean it's OK to be an asshole, either.
To me there's a much more significant conflict, which is that this kind of behavior is (as I see it) against Jesus's teachings. Love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Of course these guidelines aren't exclusively Christian - really rules like that are just the most basic principles for people to be able to get along with each other - but to me those are among the most essential teachings of Christianity.
People like you...
You shouldn't be too quick to assume you know what sort of person I am. You might just get it wrong.
I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.
One problem with this approach is that, in terms of development, QA, and (to some extent) art resources, you're basically remaking the entire game. You have to rewrite all the software, redraw all the sprites, rearrange the music, and make sure it all works right in the end. If you're going to do all that, why not make a new game featuring the popular old character instead?
Look at Super Mario All Stars, for instance. You'd think it would be pretty hard to screw that up, right? And yet, they did... Somehow they managed to screw up the game mechanics for smashing bricks.
Besides which, giving an old game a simple face-lift isn't always enough to attract a new audience, and maybe the old audience would rather have their old favorite stay the way it was...
Of course, that's not to say good things can't come from this kind of approach. I'm generally quite happy with Street Fighter HD Remix, for instance. I never played the PSP versions of Rockman and Rockman X, but I think they look fun, too...
The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. has inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick
I think that *all* Mario games have inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick. If they used accurate physics, Mario would fall to the ground unconscious immediately after whacking his head.
First, Mario punches the bricks with his fist when he jumps. Second, he's saying that All Stars' version of Super Mario Brothers is an incorrect reproduction of the original game. Basically when you jump up and break a block, you keep moving up instead of getting bounced back down. It's kind of an annoying bug once you notice it. But yeah, his word choice was incorrect.:)
Personally I think the NES games didn't look so great on the SNES, particularly the first two. (Super Mario 1 and the game that was released in Japan as Super Mario 2) The simple soundtrack and graphics don't lend themselves well to embellishment IMO. The SNES version of the overworld theme in particular, with the different instruments and stuff, to me it sounds almost like a parody.
I never played much Super Mario Bros., but go all the way back to Mario Bros. (without the "Super"), and I remember dumping $20 into that machine in a single afternoon— and $20 was an outrageous amount of money for an 11-year old in 1983.
You know, one of the truly great things about Mario Bros., one of the reasons I still play it today, from time to time... The two-player mode is great if you want to be a vindictive bastard to your friends.:)
One of the towns you can access at the very beginning of the game, there's a kid who tells you to go West. He tells you this even if you haven't been to the first castle yet - which is really annoying because you need to beat the first castle in order to get the jump boots you'll need if you go West...
I spent some time this year replaying Zelda II from the beginning. I made it to the final palace but I haven't beaten the game (in this run) yet. I got frustrated and switched to Castlevania III. XD
I think the Mega Man games also "tell your players that you're not screwing around." I have only played them on the PS2 collection, but the first one is very difficult (I haven't even gotten to the later ones).
I think the first Rockman was a little less forgiving than the sequels. It was certainly a lot less polished overall. Then again, it could just be that since I started the series with Rockman 2, it may be that I think the first game is harder just because I haven't played it as much.
But while I will use a screwdriver as a hammer when a hammer isn't handy, I won't phone up Sears and say they need to make their screwdrivers with claw peens.
Actually, I called and asked them about this. They say I should try the screwdrivers from their hammers section.
Any service is invalid when it goes down. Why give a url at all? That host could go down, rendering your link invalid.
Right, but by using a URL shortener, you've added a second possible point of failure. So instead of your content being unavailable when your site is down, your content is unavailable when your site is down and also when the shortening site is down.
There's this online shop I buy stuff from - they've been around a long time. They've got a three letter domain in.com - yet rather than host shorthand links on their own site when they post stuff to Twitter, they use bit.ly and save one character of space. Less than that when you consider, if they did their own shortening, their URLs would only have to be unique for their own content... So instead of "http://bit.ly/" followed by five characters they could have "http://---.com/" followed by three or four characters... I don't get why companies are apparently so eager to put their business in someone else's hands.
Unless you work in education, you don't really see what work goes into improving the current education system.
I don't, and therefore I believe that most of the time, my interest in making sure the school system is providing a good education is more often than not best served by staying out of the way of the people doing the work.:) Still, I am a bit skeptical about the idea that giving computers to students is a good use of funds. Among other things, hardware goes obsolete in a relatively short period of time... As I said, though, I try to keep an open mind about it.
The ten commandments, and similar passages in the koran, specifically prohibit the worship of material things via the "Thou Shall Not Make False Idols" commandment. Worshiping the bible, or the crucifix or the koran is not only stupid, its hypocritical by its own standards.
What's your point? Was there something here about worshipping the various holy books?
The relevant issue about burning someone's holy book isn't that you've removed one copy of the book from the world, it isn't (really) that you've destroyed something that is, by their standards, holy. It is a metaphor. It is a virtual slap in the face, an expression of the deepest loathing and utter disrespect for everything they believe in. It's like talking trash about someone's mom.
Slashdot Mirror
bra underwire (I wouldn't expect most Slashdotters to have practical experience with any of these, of course).
Well, you've got to remember that your mom usually plans ahead, removing those pesky undergarments in advance of a visit...
But I mean, misleading headline much? Why not say all OSes got 64-bit.
Maybe whoever submitted the article just didn't care that the other OSes were getting it as well? I can't say that I do either.
You've got a fair point that underage sexual activity is largely irrelevant to the topic of pedophilia. I think bluefoxlucid may have taken antifoidulus's text a bit out of context, or gone off-topic a bit. But his point, as I understood it, is that there's a distinction between underage sex and sexual abuse - and that it's not the act of underage sex that's harmful, but the scenario of being raped.
The law can put out a blanket definition that classifies any sex with a minor as "rape" - and that can be a very useful thing, since law and its execution are inherently imperfect - but when I use the word "rape" I refer specifically and exclusively to cases where the sexual activity is non-consensual.
It's fine if you don't believe bluefoxlucid's stories are typical of actual reality. It doesn't reflect my world view either. But I think if you (I assume you're the same coward) want to bitch about how his anecdotes contradict piles of research, you should at least make sure it's the right research, that's all.
Let me ask you this very simple question: Would you want somebody who can say these things teaching *your* 12 year old daughter about sex?
This seems like a ridiculous and somewhat vague question.
No, I wouldn't want my daughter to have sex when she's 12, at all. I expect I'd do my best to prevent that. But if she chose to do so, I don't think it would then be right to say the other party had committed "rape". Whatever the law says, I think 12 is old enough that a child should be able to take a certain level of personal responsibility for their decisions. If my daughter makes a decision and then finds she regrets it, is it right then to use the law to ruin someone else's life for it? I don't think that's something to be taken lightly.
But there's how I view the issue in principle, and how I'd actually react when this is no longer an abstract question, and there's decisions I might be obligated to make based on other facets of the law. I honestly don't know what I would do in that situation. I hope I'll never have to find out. :)
But hasn't he molested OVER 9000! children?
...8000 in the original Japanese...
Well, since you have a few anecdotes to share, I guess that means the reams of studies and statistics demonstrating the very real, long term, and harmful consequences of sexual abuse of children is invalidated!
Don't be a douche. He was talking about underage sexual activity, not sexual abuse. The law doesn't distinguish the two, partly because it's hard to do so. But if you have have studies and statistics about the long-term aftereffects of consensual underage sex that you'd care to (not) cite, that could be different, you know?
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not trying to minimize molestation, it's a real and terrible thing.
I find rather annoying that you had to be that explicit and make that statement even here on Slashdot.
Basically we're so screwed up about how we deal with this issue that people don't dare talk about it without constantly, defensively, and preemptively asserting their non-pedophile status in the clearest ways possible. We don't dare handle this issue for fear of being tainted by it, we just kind of prod it with a ten-foot pole.
But you can't beat the lady that invites you over her house to "recover you". Link can't wait around for Zelda forever!
That's true! And if you're into it, you can even spend some time getting "replenished" by the old lady, too!
But Link doesn't have to wait around for Zelda - this time around he knows exactly where she is. All he needs to get to her is those jump boots...
> When the polygon counts do get high enough, there will be no looking back.
Academic fairy land. Polycounts will never get high enough. There is a physical limit on how many polygons a animator/modeller/rigger can actually handle in a sane way. The higher the number of polygons in a character, the more time an artist has to spend painting the skin weights and mapping the UV coords. The relationship between the number of polygons and the asset creation time is exponential. Double the poly count, and expect the modelling/uv mapping alone to take 4 or 5 times longer.
I think the current workflow for creating 3-D graphics for games puts a heavy emphasis on runtime optimization - making the polycount suitable for the hardware and software that will be displaying it. When the hardware is capable of a substantially higher polycount, the workflow will change. More emphasis will be placed on creating high-detail models, with less emphasis on optimizing their topography, and more reliance on automated tools to handle things like polygon layout and UV mapping. The work style will adjust to fit the new hardware capabilities.
it means newfags can't triforce.
SIERPINSKI TRIFORCE!
Mom, can I buy a new cloud to play Halo 10 ?
Don't be silly. You can't play Halo on a cloud... it's a Varse-based game! Why don't you play with one of your game dials instead?
It is a metaphor. It is a virtual slap in the face, an expression of the deepest loathing and utter disrespect for everything they believe in. It's like talking trash about someone's mom.
So what? "Deepest loathing and utter disrespect" is what prominent Christians and Muslims express for atheists.
Doesn't make it right.
I don't think there's a conflict with the idolatry rules, either. I always interpreted those rules to mean nothing else should come ahead of one's commitment to god. I don't agree with the idea that many people seem to have, that the rules of their faith should apply to everyone else, too... But that doesn't mean it's OK to be an asshole, either.
To me there's a much more significant conflict, which is that this kind of behavior is (as I see it) against Jesus's teachings. Love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Of course these guidelines aren't exclusively Christian - really rules like that are just the most basic principles for people to be able to get along with each other - but to me those are among the most essential teachings of Christianity.
People like you...
You shouldn't be too quick to assume you know what sort of person I am. You might just get it wrong.
I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.
One problem with this approach is that, in terms of development, QA, and (to some extent) art resources, you're basically remaking the entire game. You have to rewrite all the software, redraw all the sprites, rearrange the music, and make sure it all works right in the end. If you're going to do all that, why not make a new game featuring the popular old character instead?
Look at Super Mario All Stars, for instance. You'd think it would be pretty hard to screw that up, right? And yet, they did... Somehow they managed to screw up the game mechanics for smashing bricks.
Besides which, giving an old game a simple face-lift isn't always enough to attract a new audience, and maybe the old audience would rather have their old favorite stay the way it was...
Of course, that's not to say good things can't come from this kind of approach. I'm generally quite happy with Street Fighter HD Remix, for instance. I never played the PSP versions of Rockman and Rockman X, but I think they look fun, too...
With special guest stars, The Great Giana Sisters!
What if we don't count bundles but only stand-alone sales?
Then your mom would probably win.
What, are you saying his mom hasn't had a substantial number of pack-in sales?
Probably The Sims series (125 million) or authentic Tetris games (70 million).
Yeah, but the SMB record was for one game...
The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. has inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick
I think that *all* Mario games have inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick. If they used accurate physics, Mario would fall to the ground unconscious immediately after whacking his head.
First, Mario punches the bricks with his fist when he jumps. :)
Second, he's saying that All Stars' version of Super Mario Brothers is an incorrect reproduction of the original game. Basically when you jump up and break a block, you keep moving up instead of getting bounced back down. It's kind of an annoying bug once you notice it. But yeah, his word choice was incorrect.
Personally I think the NES games didn't look so great on the SNES, particularly the first two. (Super Mario 1 and the game that was released in Japan as Super Mario 2) The simple soundtrack and graphics don't lend themselves well to embellishment IMO. The SNES version of the overworld theme in particular, with the different instruments and stuff, to me it sounds almost like a parody.
I never played much Super Mario Bros., but go all the way back to Mario Bros. (without the "Super"), and I remember dumping $20 into that machine in a single afternoon— and $20 was an outrageous amount of money for an 11-year old in 1983.
You know, one of the truly great things about Mario Bros., one of the reasons I still play it today, from time to time... The two-player mode is great if you want to be a vindictive bastard to your friends. :)
Zelda: The Adventure of Link
I dare you name a harder game than that.
You know what I found really hard in that game?
One of the towns you can access at the very beginning of the game, there's a kid who tells you to go West. He tells you this even if you haven't been to the first castle yet - which is really annoying because you need to beat the first castle in order to get the jump boots you'll need if you go West...
I spent some time this year replaying Zelda II from the beginning. I made it to the final palace but I haven't beaten the game (in this run) yet. I got frustrated and switched to Castlevania III. XD
I think the Mega Man games also "tell your players that you're not screwing around." I have only played them on the PS2 collection, but the first one is very difficult (I haven't even gotten to the later ones).
I think the first Rockman was a little less forgiving than the sequels. It was certainly a lot less polished overall. Then again, it could just be that since I started the series with Rockman 2, it may be that I think the first game is harder just because I haven't played it as much.
How do you pronounce "T.co"
It's an abbreviation. I prefer to just write the whole thing out, "Tiberius Conglomerate"
Shirly.
But while I will use a screwdriver as a hammer when a hammer isn't handy, I won't phone up Sears and say they need to make their screwdrivers with claw peens.
Actually, I called and asked them about this. They say I should try the screwdrivers from their hammers section.
Any service is invalid when it goes down. Why give a url at all? That host could go down, rendering your link invalid.
Right, but by using a URL shortener, you've added a second possible point of failure. So instead of your content being unavailable when your site is down, your content is unavailable when your site is down and also when the shortening site is down.
I dislike unnecessarily shortened URLs.
Yeah, seriously.
There's this online shop I buy stuff from - they've been around a long time. They've got a three letter domain in .com - yet rather than host shorthand links on their own site when they post stuff to Twitter, they use bit.ly and save one character of space. Less than that when you consider, if they did their own shortening, their URLs would only have to be unique for their own content... So instead of "http://bit.ly/" followed by five characters they could have "http://---.com/" followed by three or four characters... I don't get why companies are apparently so eager to put their business in someone else's hands.
Unless you work in education, you don't really see what work goes into improving the current education system.
I don't, and therefore I believe that most of the time, my interest in making sure the school system is providing a good education is more often than not best served by staying out of the way of the people doing the work. :) Still, I am a bit skeptical about the idea that giving computers to students is a good use of funds. Among other things, hardware goes obsolete in a relatively short period of time... As I said, though, I try to keep an open mind about it.
The ten commandments, and similar passages in the koran, specifically prohibit the worship of material things via the "Thou Shall Not Make False Idols" commandment. Worshiping the bible, or the crucifix or the koran is not only stupid, its hypocritical by its own standards.
What's your point? Was there something here about worshipping the various holy books?
The relevant issue about burning someone's holy book isn't that you've removed one copy of the book from the world, it isn't (really) that you've destroyed something that is, by their standards, holy. It is a metaphor. It is a virtual slap in the face, an expression of the deepest loathing and utter disrespect for everything they believe in. It's like talking trash about someone's mom.