One of the greatest things about Japan is the fact they keep up-to-date and will take on cool technologies
Not always. Yeah, we've got MDs, and yeah we've got a lot of very cool (and expensive) toys to play with here, but the Internet access costs a LOT and is dominated by stupid corporate politics. NTT (Japan's biggest phone company, used to be state-run, now is publicly-owned and could teach MS a thing or two about how to abuse a monopoloy) invested a lot of money into setting-up ISDN in Japan and now is actively preventing the deployment of DSL and high bandwidth connections. Cable came out just a few months ago and is available only to a lucky few.
Heh... maybe I'm just bitter that I'm still on a trashy connection
The role of the United Nations is not confined to doling out aid to third-world nations. The creation of a telescope under the auspices and control of the United Nations means that use of the telescope will not be hampered by national interests and the information found will be available to everyone. As a citizen of a country other than the United States, it sort of gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that 'my' telescope is doing the searching. Sounds like somebody doesn't want to share the fun.
Besides, the whole "science is stupid when people are starving" argument has been proven on countless occasions to be invalid. ---
I'm inclined to believe that the good Mr. Murdoch is incorrect in claiming that English will not emerge as the lingua franca of the "digital world". Tailoring content to a small group of users/customers is fine for small-time operations, but part of the attraction of operating on the Web is being able to offer your products/services to the entire planet, as opposed to just your immediate viscinity. In order for such global enterprises to become possible for even the proverbial Little Guy, we need to have a language that anyone, anywhere in the world, can understand.
English seems to be this language, not because of its merits (although it *is* the most eloquent language in the world) but because it has a head start on every other language. English is already being spoken (and taught) around the world (heck, even Japan is adopting it as a second language).
I'm not saying that we should all abandon our current languages in favour of English... just that it would be nice to have one common language that we can all understand each other in. ---
In my AP calculus class, there is an alarming tendency for students to ignore learning theory in favour of learning which buttons to press to get the correct answer for a particular type of problem.
I'm not opposed to using technology to make our lives easier, but I'm concerned that the emergence of products like this mother-of-all-calculators will eliminate the need to really learn anything. Issues about ignorance aside, being able to perform many of these mathematical operations mentally promotes logical thinking, discipline, etc. all of which are crucial skills in the knowledge-centric workplace which seems to be emerging.
Bring on the tech, but please, teachers, don't let students get away with simple button-pressing
Then a lot of websites lose their income, and that will be the end of them - including your beloved slashdot.
Touchee. If a corporate entity closes down/loses income because it is providing a service that I and the general public do not desire, too bad. Neither DoubleClick nor any other business enjoys any rights whatsoever (which means that they do not have any intrinsic right to being, like I do).
When corporations like DoubleClick come to realize that a significant portion of the web-surfing public does not appreciate being tracked (said realization being precipitated, to some degree, by the use of products like Junkbuster to filter out advertisements), they will either terminate the offensive practices or collapse and everyone can get back to their hot grits.
Well... 12:00 AM just rolled around and I am still alive and connected to the Net. No services seem to have been interrupted, and I doubt any will be.
I don't know if it's just plain silly or oddly appropriate that I'm ushering in the new year/decade/century/millennium on the Internet (something which will likely have a profound influence on our future).
A lot of people will be feeling very silly tomorrow morning. Happy New Year everyone!
I hate to break it to you all, but GAMES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. Parents, religious leaders, politicians, and heck, even some of us are more than happy to pin the blame for various social phenomena (including an escalating crime rate among teenagers) on computer games, but it seems to me that they are looking for a convenient scapegoat without really considering the problem.
True, many computer games involve violence. True, this may have a tendency to rub-off on an individual. But only a person who is mentally unstable will be unable to differentiate between what is happening on the computer screen and what happens in Real Life. Most computer games I know of (whether they be FPSs or sims) involve a keyboard, a mouse and/or a joystick. The gamer sits behind his computer manipulating these devices, while viewing a bunch of coloured dots on his monitor. Should he/she be 'slain', he/she will return with a click of the mouse to play on. Last time I checked, the Real World isn't perceived through a monitor, and I don't control objects through a keyboard-mouse interface. And I don't make annoying noises when I jump (ala the Quake guy) and run at 90+ mph.
I play computer games, and as someone (who shall remain anonymous because I can't remember his name, sorry) pointed out, I still don't know how to operate a rifle. I haven't even held one, let alone pulled the trigger. And I, like everyone else I know, understand that once you die, you're dead. No coming back. For me and countless others, the difference between computers and Real Life is clear and inviolable. I can walk away from a nice Quake deathmatch and not feel any inexplicable urges to gib someone, and I strongly suspect that 98% percent of gamers are the same.
Although computer games are not the problem, they may be a symptom of the problem. I tend to agree with TheFitz when he suggests that the lack of attention (and guidance) from parents is, at least partially, responsible for the situation.
Many people will point to the horrible events that transpired at various schools (you all know the ones) and to the clearly deranged youths who perpetrated them. They will go to great lengths to emphasize the connection between said youths and computer games (which most teenagers, and many adults I have met frequently play). They will go to equal, if not greater pains to conceal the fact that the shooters are part of a negligible minority of society that suffers from certain mental difficulties. But they will conveniently avoid examining the deeper, and more important issues. If, as they would have us believe, the idea of violence was derived from games and movies, why did this idea ever cease to be a mere idea, and how did they achieve the means to effect this idea? Where did the weapons necessary for the brutal attack come from? Why were the parents so completely ignorant of the preparations being made by their children? Why were school officials (hehehe... I know a LOT of/.ers will have strong opinions about THIS) oblivious to the fact that some of their students were experiencing difficulties, and why weren't the parents alerted to this fact?
Computer games are not to blame in this, and countless other situations. Their parents, and to a certain extent, Society in general, are responsible.
I am sorry to disappoint you, ladies and gentlemen, but violence does not stem from computer games. I will likely be moderated down for this, but we, as a society, have all but turned our collective back on things like morals (I'm not talking about religion... just MORALS... you know, things like COURTESY, HONESTY, etc.). It's no wonder that violence is rampant. If, as befits their responsibility, the parents were to inculcate said virtues into their children, we'd be complaining less about violence among children, then, say, their grades;-) Stop blaming games for a problem YOU have created, and open your proverbial eyes to the reality of the situation. Games are nothing but a physical manifestation of the dilemma. Start teaching the children what it means to be just, to be trustworthy and see what happens. Take away the firearms and weapons and see what happens. Start talking with YOUR children about the problems they may be having (and not just, "oh... how was your day?" type of thing, but a deep, sincere discussion that shows you care) and, who knows, we may not have to worry about this again.
And for those who care, I'm a high school student, and I'm sorry for the long-winded post.
Slashdot Mirror
Not always. Yeah, we've got MDs, and yeah we've got a lot of very cool (and expensive) toys to play with here, but the Internet access costs a LOT and is dominated by stupid corporate politics. NTT (Japan's biggest phone company, used to be state-run, now is publicly-owned and could teach MS a thing or two about how to abuse a monopoloy) invested a lot of money into setting-up ISDN in Japan and now is actively preventing the deployment of DSL and high bandwidth connections. Cable came out just a few months ago and is available only to a lucky few.
Heh... maybe I'm just bitter that I'm still on a trashy connection
---
If the RIAA hadn't made such a big fuss about Napster, do you really think it would be one-tenth as popular as it is now? muhahahahahaha
---
Besides, the whole "science is stupid when people are starving" argument has been proven on countless occasions to be invalid.
---
English seems to be this language, not because of its merits (although it *is* the most eloquent language in the world) but because it has a head start on every other language. English is already being spoken (and taught) around the world (heck, even Japan is adopting it as a second language).
I'm not saying that we should all abandon our current languages in favour of English... just that it would be nice to have one common language that we can all understand each other in.
---
I'm not opposed to using technology to make our lives easier, but I'm concerned that the emergence of products like this mother-of-all-calculators will eliminate the need to really learn anything. Issues about ignorance aside, being able to perform many of these mathematical operations mentally promotes logical thinking, discipline, etc. all of which are crucial skills in the knowledge-centric workplace which seems to be emerging.
Bring on the tech, but please, teachers, don't let students get away with simple button-pressing
Touchee. If a corporate entity closes down/loses income because it is providing a service that I and the general public do not desire, too bad. Neither DoubleClick nor any other business enjoys any rights whatsoever (which means that they do not have any intrinsic right to being, like I do).
When corporations like DoubleClick come to realize that a significant portion of the web-surfing public does not appreciate being tracked (said realization being precipitated, to some degree, by the use of products like Junkbuster to filter out advertisements), they will either terminate the offensive practices or collapse and everyone can get back to their hot grits.
I don't know if it's just plain silly or oddly appropriate that I'm ushering in the new year/decade/century/millennium on the Internet (something which will likely have a profound influence on our future).
A lot of people will be feeling very silly tomorrow morning. Happy New Year everyone!
I hate to break it to you all, but GAMES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. Parents, religious leaders, politicians, and heck, even some of us are more than happy to pin the blame for various social phenomena (including an escalating crime rate among teenagers) on computer games, but it seems to me that they are looking for a convenient scapegoat without really considering the problem.
True, many computer games involve violence. True, this may have a tendency to rub-off on an individual. But only a person who is mentally unstable will be unable to differentiate between what is happening on the computer screen and what happens in Real Life. Most computer games I know of (whether they be FPSs or sims) involve a keyboard, a mouse and/or a joystick. The gamer sits behind his computer manipulating these devices, while viewing a bunch of coloured dots on his monitor. Should he/she be 'slain', he/she will return with a click of the mouse to play on. Last time I checked, the Real World isn't perceived through a monitor, and I don't control objects through a keyboard-mouse interface. And I don't make annoying noises when I jump (ala the Quake guy) and run at 90+ mph.
I play computer games, and as someone (who shall remain anonymous because I can't remember his name, sorry) pointed out, I still don't know how to operate a rifle. I haven't even held one, let alone pulled the trigger. And I, like everyone else I know, understand that once you die, you're dead. No coming back. For me and countless others, the difference between computers and Real Life is clear and inviolable. I can walk away from a nice Quake deathmatch and not feel any inexplicable urges to gib someone, and I strongly suspect that 98% percent of gamers are the same.
Although computer games are not the problem, they may be a symptom of the problem. I tend to agree with TheFitz when he suggests that the lack of attention (and guidance) from parents is, at least partially, responsible for the situation.
Many people will point to the horrible events that transpired at various schools (you all know the ones) and to the clearly deranged youths who perpetrated them. They will go to great lengths to emphasize the connection between said youths and computer games (which most teenagers, and many adults I have met frequently play). They will go to equal, if not greater pains to conceal the fact that the shooters are part of a negligible minority of society that suffers from certain mental difficulties. But they will conveniently avoid examining the deeper, and more important issues. If, as they would have us believe, the idea of violence was derived from games and movies, why did this idea ever cease to be a mere idea, and how did they achieve the means to effect this idea? Where did the weapons necessary for the brutal attack come from? Why were the parents so completely ignorant of the preparations being made by their children? Why were school officials (hehehe... I know a LOT of /.ers will have strong opinions about THIS) oblivious to the fact that some of their students were experiencing difficulties, and why weren't the parents alerted to this fact?
Computer games are not to blame in this, and countless other situations. Their parents, and to a certain extent, Society in general, are responsible.
I am sorry to disappoint you, ladies and gentlemen, but violence does not stem from computer games. I will likely be moderated down for this, but we, as a society, have all but turned our collective back on things like morals (I'm not talking about religion... just MORALS... you know, things like COURTESY, HONESTY, etc.). It's no wonder that violence is rampant. If, as befits their responsibility, the parents were to inculcate said virtues into their children, we'd be complaining less about violence among children, then, say, their grades ;-) Stop blaming games for a problem YOU have created, and open your proverbial eyes to the reality of the situation. Games are nothing but a physical manifestation of the dilemma. Start teaching the children what it means to be just, to be trustworthy and see what happens. Take away the firearms and weapons and see what happens. Start talking with YOUR children about the problems they may be having (and not just, "oh... how was your day?" type of thing, but a deep, sincere discussion that shows you care) and, who knows, we may not have to worry about this again.
And for those who care, I'm a high school student, and I'm sorry for the long-winded post.