DN3D was also ported to XBLA, adding achievements and XBL multiplayer and such. I've played it through and I must say it translated pretty well to the dual-analog stick control scheme, with less fuss than getting the PC version working (which I played to death, including the Plutonium Pack expansion). So I'd recommend that if you're looking for an easy, current gen DN3D fix - coming from a guy who built multiple levels for DN3D on PC back in the day
I don't know how anyone can be aware of such times as the Red Scare and McCarthyism, or the modus operatus of groups like the CIA and KGB, and yet believe that this doesn't happen to people.
I hadn't heard of it before this story, but the CIA definitely did this kind of stuff heavily back in the 50's and 60's. It was called Project MKULTRA. One of the goals was to create a "Manchurian Candidate" subject through mind control. Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and (supposedly) Ted Kaczynski participated. Interesting stuff, though I'm not in any hurry to find myself a tinfoil hat.
Right on. System Shock 2 is in my top 5 games of all time.
Sorry to hijack your point, but I picked up Dead Space yesterday mainly due to the decent reviews it was getting and the fact that it shared a lot with SS2 (RPG elements, sci-fi setting, horror) and about 3-4 hours in I'm sorely disappointed. I replayed SS2 a few months ago, and was absolutely engrossed over the few days it took me to finish it. The screeches of those fucking monkeys still creep me out. Dead Space just kind of feels lacking.
I want to be scared by Dead Space, but so far I've only gotten startled once by a loud noise while turning a corner. Keep in mind, I've been playing in a dark room with the sound turned up and the difficulty on hard. People claiming it's the scariest game of all time clearly haven't played SS2, Call of Cthulu, Silent Hill 2, etc. It feels a lot like Doom 3 in 3rd person and awkward controls, while I was expecting a cross between SS2 and RE4. That said, I'm enjoying it quite a bit even if it is a bit disappointing.
There are definitely some cool things about the game - the fact that there's no HUD (your health is displayed as a meter on your back) definitely helps immersion, but Call of Cthulu pulled it off better (and is FAR scarier than Dead Space). The Zero G bits have potential, but I've only been in one so I haven't had a chance to see what they do with it. The stasis effects are nifty too. I like the gore, even though it can get a bit silly sometimes. I've yet to see anything as visceral as getting decapitated by one of the chainsaw sisters in RE4 - though a few death animations come close.
SO yeah, to sum it up DS is pretty fun, not scary (so far), but probably not a must buy at this point. GOTY contender it is not in my eyes.
Hmm... Just tried one here (from the US) and it stalled while loading - after a refresh it played ok. Didn't see the error message you got, so cbs.com also looks region-specific. Bummer.
I use PlayOn and my PS3 to stream all the shows listed in the summary (including some other good ones - Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks...) from CBS.com to my TV. The wireless PS3 remote works fine for me, and I know there are other remotes available. The UI works pretty well also - it's the same UI used for DVD/Bluray playback on the PS3. Not sure what the resolution CBS streams those videos at, but they are definitely watchable on my 1080p TV...
PlayOn can also stream from YouTube, but it seems kind of clumsy and I haven't messed around with it much. The interface for the CBS shows is pretty slick though.
Have you tried CBS.com? Full-length versions of all the shows listed in the summary have been available on the CBS website for quite awhile - including original Trek. They've also got most of the original Twilight Zone series, which I've been working though myself. It could still be region-locked though - I'm in the US.
Treyarch Community Manager JD took to the webs to clarify rampant rumors regarding this "Day One Advantage"; it's not a way to earn experience quicker; it's not a DLC pack available on "day one" ("we are putting absolutely all of the content we can onto the disc"); and it's not a free backrub from the developers at Treyarch. Instead, it's "immediate access to a high-level rifle (for pre-orders) or LMG (for collector's edition) that other players will have to unlock via ranking up in multiplayer."
So basically they're giving an extra incentive to pre-order or spring the extra $10 for the CE. This is not a new concept (how many MMO's have given exclusive items to people who pre-order?), and I personally still think it's BS, but it's not nearly as bad as the summary (and original article) make it out to be.
It's sentiments like this one:
Over time, we'll qualify more opportunities to increase the monetization of these activities.
by Activision's publishing CEO Mike Griffith that worry/scare the crap out of me (anyone who uses the phrase "increase the monetization of these activities" referring to gaming should be kicked in the nuts). On the other hand, the "3x content" bit FTS leads me to believe that the extra "monetized" content is likely to be extra maps. As a PC player who got the CoD4 maps for free, I'm not terribly concerned. If I buy it, I'm going to wait until the first rounds of actual DLC come out anyway, just to see how big of an issue it really is. But given Treyarch's history with the franchise, I'll probably give it a pass and stick with CoD4 and TF2 for online FPSing.
Reminds me of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a post-apocalyptic book that won the Hugo in 1961. In the book, an order of monks worship the scraps of knowledge (a shopping list, circuit diagrams they don't understand, etc) that remain after most knowledge/books/scientists were burned in the "Great Simplification" to prevent another nuclear war from ever occurring. Great book, written in a humorous tone, and still very relevant - I recommend it.
I do understand your point - I don't disagree that such organizations, attached to a public university, should have public accountability regarding their finances (I haven't done much digging on what's publicly available on WARF).
Your argument RE: accountants holds true for any arrangement where large sums of money are negotiated and transferred behind closed doors. But from my experience, WARF is on the up and up in this regard.
My comments regarding dramatic effect generally reflect my indignation regarding slashdotters who make assumptions about posters (myself) based on a 2-sentence post. I've run into it before, but in you're case I can see how you meant to emphasize your point rather than accuse me of ignorance. No hard feelings - I probably wouldn't have put all that effort into my reply without the indignation, FWIW:)
I've submitted a patent with WARF (ultimately declined), so I'm familiar with the institution. I know a number of researchers who hold patents through WARF, and I've really heard nothing but good things. I know you asked me not to do research, but I knew the following when I originally posted from my dealing with them, and just looked up the reference for legitimacy.
Inventors' Share The inventors receive 20 percent of the gross royalty revenue generated by a licensed invention.
After deducting this portion, a certain percentage goes to their operating costs - I'm sure keeping a number of patent lawyers around isn't cheap. The good thing is that 20% is BEFORE those costs. The rest goes into a grant given to the university, distributed as such.
Laboratory Share of the Annual Grant Of the first $100,000 generated by each license agreement, the inventors' laboratories receive a grant equaling 70 percent of the gross royalties. For example, if an agreement generated $50,000 in royalty revenue over its lifetime, the inventors' laboratories would receive 70 percent of $50,000, or $35,000.
Graduate School Share After the laboratory and department shares have been allocated, the remainder of WARF's annual grant is given to the UW-Madison Graduate School. The Graduate School uses this money to support a variety of projects and programs each year, including:
* The Graduate School Research Competition
* The Romnes Early Career Awards and the Kellett Mid-Career Awards
* Named professorships and graduate fellowships
* Campus building projects
Whether or not shady accounting occurs in these settlements and grants I have no idea, but I have no reason to believe so. As I said before, everyone I know who holds a patent through WARF has been quite happy with the arrangement.
At UW, if no federal funding was involved, the intellectual property generated from research is the researcher's (unless there were strings attached to the private funding) - they don't HAVE to deal with WARF at all. I know this for a fact from my dealings with them - my collegues and I chose to work with them because the benefits of going through WARF FAR outweighed the the cons.
Sure, most settlements are confidential to the public, but not to the patent holder (who would include the inventor/researcher along with WARF).
From your post:
Most of the money of goes back to research? You don't know that.
I appreciate your skepticism, and can understand where you're coming from except for this comment - you have no clue what I do or do not know - don't pretend you do for dramatic effect. I did my research on WARF when my personal interests were on the line, and from what I was able to discern it's a GOOD deal for the researchers/inventors, the University, and the student body.
I talk about hormesis a bit in this thread from about 6 months ago (yes, I'm too lazy to retype or even copy paste any of it...), and have a few references thrown in there (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235925&cid=19247375). Basically, the low-dose data we've got (that I've seen) generally supports radiation hormesis, but the studies haven't been controlled enough to be conclusive. The fact that it is a lot easier to regulate based on a linear no-threshold model and general FUD regarding radiation have been the main factors holding back the hypothesis, as far as I can tell.
For people in the business, I'm sure this particular machine is not news, because they are aware of the general trend and this doesn't indicate a big bump or sudden change in the trend.
I'm a medical physicist, so I do know my share about CT (and other medical imaging) - I guess you could say I'm "in the business." And yes, the trend of adding more slices has been going on for years, and yes, it is good, but in my opinion more slices does not make this a "super-scanner" that is going to change medicine as we know it as TFA and summary imply.
To beat the dead horse of the car analogy, it's like this year's model gets a few more mpg than last year's (and maybe a TV in the seat, just for the "cool" factor of having a 256 slice CT)... A practical improvement that is good for everybody concerned, but not revolutionary.
Also, in another post you mention new car models as marketing hype - medical devices are a BIG business, and have a huge marketing machine. RSNA (mentioned in the article and summary) is the biggest trade show for medical devices in the country (possibly the world) - there are huge booths, displays, free swag, etc, and glitz definitely comes into play there. I wasn't at RSNA this year (last time was 2005), but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Philips had a display model of this unit on a rotating platform, a la a car show. The article sound eerily similar to the Philips press release (found here:http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi_menuItemID=887566059a3aedb6efaaa9e27a808a0c&ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId=1000052&newsId=20071125005033&newsLang=en).
I'm fully aware of the importance of developing better CT imaging, but this isn't really a huge improvement over existing 64-slice CT scanners. As another poster pointed out, CT angiography has been around awhile and Toshiba already has a production 256-slice unit. The dose given is incrementally lower, which is a good thing, but not nearly enough to make CT screening for cardiac disease commonplace. When it comes to CT, novel sampling and reconstruction algorithms are as important on the dose reduction front IMO.
But my impression of the original comment was that it was made by someone who wasn't even aware of the importance of the general trend of multislice CT machines towards faster, better, and lower-radiation imaging, and thought vaguely that the whole trend was merely towards a more expensive and flashier way to diagnose knee problems in NFL running backs.
Heh, ouch... don't know where you got that from my post (I said in my OP "Don't get me wrong - the advances are useful and worthwhile, but just not the revolution TFA and summary make it out to be.")
A cheap, low/no-dose, fast, and effective means to screen for cardiac disease would be a public-health breakthrough - this machine ain't it (which you have said yourself).
By the way, I stand behind everything in my OP, and fail to see how I am "totally wrong" as the subject of your reply suggests.
The article makes this out to be a huge breakthrough in medical imaging, but (to use the obligatory car analogy) it's basically like announcing the 2008 Toyota Camry is a super-car; sure, it's better than the last year's model, but the improvements are incremental and other manufacturers have similar products available. More detectors, spins faster, upgrades in reconstruction software, etc are the only differences from their existing models, and other companies showed similar tech at RSNA. Don't get me wrong - the advances are useful and worthwhile, but just not the revolution TFA and summary make it out to be.
Looks like the BBC got suckered into issuing a press release for Philips...
If you buy things from Amazon that indicate that you will buy fancy stuff in the future, your order will get pushed out the door faster.
Very interesting thought - say your first experience with Amazon was buying textbooks in college. Is there incentive for them to ship, say, medical textbooks faster than philosophy textbooks, since doctors are generally going to have more expendable income than philosophers?
This example isn't perfect (philosophers may buy more books, philosophy as pre-law, etc), but there is almost certainly a correlation between the types of textbooks purchased and future disposable income...
I personally enjoyed Crimson Skies as well - I thought the controls were very solid, good environments, and (most importantly) was a lot of fun to play. I preferred it to both Psychonauts and Indigo Prophecy actually (though they are both great games also).
Opinions about what's good for humanity in the future are not science
I agree - the opinion that the pursuit of science is good for humanity is faith in science.
You're missing my point in the context of the OP and child which I replied to. The OP implied that faith in the pursuit of science exists, the child (which I replied to) stated that faith in science doesn't exist because science is absolute.
I assert that a fervent belief that advancing human knowledge is for the good of mankind can be considered a faith (it's the closest thing to a religion I've personally got). We don't know everything about existence, so the best course of action is to learn as much as possible about it, and put what we learn to good use. I think this belief is far more productive that faith in an arbitrary deity. But lets not fool ourselves - it's faith in either case. To play my own devil's advocate, if humankind were to wipe itself out via nuclear holocaust, that faith would have been false. I don't see that happening though.
I never said that faith in science is science - but both DO exist.
My opinions are not based on the video games I mentioned - they were simply examples of faith in science in popular culture. I know a fair bit about the history of science, and I'm in full agreement that it has had the single greatest impact on improving the lives of humans. But without the belief that these advances in knowledge would benefit humanity, would the scientists responsible feel the drive to pursue them? If I didn't think that increasing human knowledge would improve peoples' lives, I wouldn't be pursuing my PhD right now.
Then, of course, there is faith in science itself. It is an act of faith... there's no proof that knowledge makes us happier, only that, knowledge lets us have more stuff, at least until recently.
I agree that faith isn't a component in the scientific method - but the OP illustrates that the view that scientific progress is for the best for humankind is not universal. There is definitely a distinction between science and faith in science - the OP was referring to the latter, and the child (which I was responding to) claimed that it didn't exist.
My response simply claimed that that faith in science does exist, and furthermore is a GOOD thing because it gives people the drive to devote their lives to it. I disagree with your statement that it is detrimental to real science. In order to pursue a career at a high level in a scientific field, you have to believe that science is not only real, but good. If I strongly believed in Catholicism I would become a priest - I strongly believe *that scientific advances are to the benefit of mankind*, and so I am working on my PhD.
What about the faith that science is the societal factor that has the largest impact on the growth of mankind? I think in that sense you could say it requires faith.
Scientists who believe in cloning, genetic research, altering DNA, etc have faith that the practice will further the race, and improve the world. There are those who oppose it and believe that these practices could harm our quality of life as a species hundreds of years down the line. Both groups have faith in those beliefs, and who can say who is right at this point?
To use some video game references, look at Bioshock - I don't want to include any spoilers for those who haven't played, but the ethics of genetic modification is definitely a theme in the game, and in some sense the concept of faith in science can be seen in the narrative. Or look at the science faction in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - that faction essentially was a church of science (and who I always always played as I might add). Faith plays a definite role in the pursuit of science in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
DN3D was also ported to XBLA, adding achievements and XBL multiplayer and such. I've played it through and I must say it translated pretty well to the dual-analog stick control scheme, with less fuss than getting the PC version working (which I played to death, including the Plutonium Pack expansion). So I'd recommend that if you're looking for an easy, current gen DN3D fix - coming from a guy who built multiple levels for DN3D on PC back in the day
Ship them off on the B-Ark. Although we then have to deal with the prospect of being wiped out by a virulent disease spread by dirty telephones...
Amazing - I can still hear the whooshing noise even with the amps turned up to 11.
I hadn't heard of it before this story, but the CIA definitely did this kind of stuff heavily back in the 50's and 60's. It was called Project MKULTRA. One of the goals was to create a "Manchurian Candidate" subject through mind control. Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and (supposedly) Ted Kaczynski participated. Interesting stuff, though I'm not in any hurry to find myself a tinfoil hat.
Right on. System Shock 2 is in my top 5 games of all time.
Sorry to hijack your point, but I picked up Dead Space yesterday mainly due to the decent reviews it was getting and the fact that it shared a lot with SS2 (RPG elements, sci-fi setting, horror) and about 3-4 hours in I'm sorely disappointed. I replayed SS2 a few months ago, and was absolutely engrossed over the few days it took me to finish it. The screeches of those fucking monkeys still creep me out. Dead Space just kind of feels lacking.
I want to be scared by Dead Space, but so far I've only gotten startled once by a loud noise while turning a corner. Keep in mind, I've been playing in a dark room with the sound turned up and the difficulty on hard. People claiming it's the scariest game of all time clearly haven't played SS2, Call of Cthulu, Silent Hill 2, etc. It feels a lot like Doom 3 in 3rd person and awkward controls, while I was expecting a cross between SS2 and RE4. That said, I'm enjoying it quite a bit even if it is a bit disappointing.
There are definitely some cool things about the game - the fact that there's no HUD (your health is displayed as a meter on your back) definitely helps immersion, but Call of Cthulu pulled it off better (and is FAR scarier than Dead Space). The Zero G bits have potential, but I've only been in one so I haven't had a chance to see what they do with it. The stasis effects are nifty too. I like the gore, even though it can get a bit silly sometimes. I've yet to see anything as visceral as getting decapitated by one of the chainsaw sisters in RE4 - though a few death animations come close.
SO yeah, to sum it up DS is pretty fun, not scary (so far), but probably not a must buy at this point. GOTY contender it is not in my eyes.
Hmm... Just tried one here (from the US) and it stalled while loading - after a refresh it played ok. Didn't see the error message you got, so cbs.com also looks region-specific. Bummer.
I use PlayOn and my PS3 to stream all the shows listed in the summary (including some other good ones - Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks...) from CBS.com to my TV. The wireless PS3 remote works fine for me, and I know there are other remotes available. The UI works pretty well also - it's the same UI used for DVD/Bluray playback on the PS3. Not sure what the resolution CBS streams those videos at, but they are definitely watchable on my 1080p TV...
PlayOn can also stream from YouTube, but it seems kind of clumsy and I haven't messed around with it much. The interface for the CBS shows is pretty slick though.
Have you tried CBS.com? Full-length versions of all the shows listed in the summary have been available on the CBS website for quite awhile - including original Trek. They've also got most of the original Twilight Zone series, which I've been working though myself. It could still be region-locked though - I'm in the US.
So basically they're giving an extra incentive to pre-order or spring the extra $10 for the CE. This is not a new concept (how many MMO's have given exclusive items to people who pre-order?), and I personally still think it's BS, but it's not nearly as bad as the summary (and original article) make it out to be. It's sentiments like this one:
by Activision's publishing CEO Mike Griffith that worry/scare the crap out of me (anyone who uses the phrase "increase the monetization of these activities" referring to gaming should be kicked in the nuts). On the other hand, the "3x content" bit FTS leads me to believe that the extra "monetized" content is likely to be extra maps. As a PC player who got the CoD4 maps for free, I'm not terribly concerned. If I buy it, I'm going to wait until the first rounds of actual DLC come out anyway, just to see how big of an issue it really is. But given Treyarch's history with the franchise, I'll probably give it a pass and stick with CoD4 and TF2 for online FPSing.
Reminds me of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a post-apocalyptic book that won the Hugo in 1961. In the book, an order of monks worship the scraps of knowledge (a shopping list, circuit diagrams they don't understand, etc) that remain after most knowledge/books/scientists were burned in the "Great Simplification" to prevent another nuclear war from ever occurring. Great book, written in a humorous tone, and still very relevant - I recommend it.
147 comments and not a single mention of Lightspeed Briefs...
Wow, first Watership Down reference I've seen on slashdot. Accurate too - right on.
I do understand your point - I don't disagree that such organizations, attached to a public university, should have public accountability regarding their finances (I haven't done much digging on what's publicly available on WARF).
:)
Your argument RE: accountants holds true for any arrangement where large sums of money are negotiated and transferred behind closed doors. But from my experience, WARF is on the up and up in this regard.
My comments regarding dramatic effect generally reflect my indignation regarding slashdotters who make assumptions about posters (myself) based on a 2-sentence post. I've run into it before, but in you're case I can see how you meant to emphasize your point rather than accuse me of ignorance. No hard feelings - I probably wouldn't have put all that effort into my reply without the indignation, FWIW
From http://www.warf.org/inventors/index.jsp?cid=7
After deducting this portion, a certain percentage goes to their operating costs - I'm sure keeping a number of patent lawyers around isn't cheap. The good thing is that 20% is BEFORE those costs. The rest goes into a grant given to the university, distributed as such.
Whether or not shady accounting occurs in these settlements and grants I have no idea, but I have no reason to believe so. As I said before, everyone I know who holds a patent through WARF has been quite happy with the arrangement.
At UW, if no federal funding was involved, the intellectual property generated from research is the researcher's (unless there were strings attached to the private funding) - they don't HAVE to deal with WARF at all. I know this for a fact from my dealings with them - my collegues and I chose to work with them because the benefits of going through WARF FAR outweighed the the cons.
Sure, most settlements are confidential to the public, but not to the patent holder (who would include the inventor/researcher along with WARF).
From your post:
I appreciate your skepticism, and can understand where you're coming from except for this comment - you have no clue what I do or do not know - don't pretend you do for dramatic effect. I did my research on WARF when my personal interests were on the line, and from what I was able to discern it's a GOOD deal for the researchers/inventors, the University, and the student body.
IBM (http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=2201) and Sony (http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5097776.html) have also faced the wrath of WARF. Both were settled out of court for a pretty significant chunk of change. Luckily, most of that money goes back to University research and the inventors...
I talk about hormesis a bit in this thread from about 6 months ago (yes, I'm too lazy to retype or even copy paste any of it...), and have a few references thrown in there (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235925&cid=19247375). Basically, the low-dose data we've got (that I've seen) generally supports radiation hormesis, but the studies haven't been controlled enough to be conclusive. The fact that it is a lot easier to regulate based on a linear no-threshold model and general FUD regarding radiation have been the main factors holding back the hypothesis, as far as I can tell.
IIAM(edical)P, FWIW.
I'm a medical physicist, so I do know my share about CT (and other medical imaging) - I guess you could say I'm "in the business." And yes, the trend of adding more slices has been going on for years, and yes, it is good, but in my opinion more slices does not make this a "super-scanner" that is going to change medicine as we know it as TFA and summary imply.
To beat the dead horse of the car analogy, it's like this year's model gets a few more mpg than last year's (and maybe a TV in the seat, just for the "cool" factor of having a 256 slice CT)... A practical improvement that is good for everybody concerned, but not revolutionary.
Also, in another post you mention new car models as marketing hype - medical devices are a BIG business, and have a huge marketing machine. RSNA (mentioned in the article and summary) is the biggest trade show for medical devices in the country (possibly the world) - there are huge booths, displays, free swag, etc, and glitz definitely comes into play there. I wasn't at RSNA this year (last time was 2005), but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Philips had a display model of this unit on a rotating platform, a la a car show. The article sound eerily similar to the Philips press release (found here:http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi_menuItemID=887566059a3aedb6efaaa9e27a808a0c&ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId=1000052&newsId=20071125005033&newsLang=en).
I'm fully aware of the importance of developing better CT imaging, but this isn't really a huge improvement over existing 64-slice CT scanners. As another poster pointed out, CT angiography has been around awhile and Toshiba already has a production 256-slice unit. The dose given is incrementally lower, which is a good thing, but not nearly enough to make CT screening for cardiac disease commonplace. When it comes to CT, novel sampling and reconstruction algorithms are as important on the dose reduction front IMO.
Heh, ouch... don't know where you got that from my post (I said in my OP "Don't get me wrong - the advances are useful and worthwhile, but just not the revolution TFA and summary make it out to be.")
A cheap, low/no-dose, fast, and effective means to screen for cardiac disease would be a public-health breakthrough - this machine ain't it (which you have said yourself).
By the way, I stand behind everything in my OP, and fail to see how I am "totally wrong" as the subject of your reply suggests.
The article makes this out to be a huge breakthrough in medical imaging, but (to use the obligatory car analogy) it's basically like announcing the 2008 Toyota Camry is a super-car; sure, it's better than the last year's model, but the improvements are incremental and other manufacturers have similar products available. More detectors, spins faster, upgrades in reconstruction software, etc are the only differences from their existing models, and other companies showed similar tech at RSNA. Don't get me wrong - the advances are useful and worthwhile, but just not the revolution TFA and summary make it out to be.
Looks like the BBC got suckered into issuing a press release for Philips...
Very interesting thought - say your first experience with Amazon was buying textbooks in college. Is there incentive for them to ship, say, medical textbooks faster than philosophy textbooks, since doctors are generally going to have more expendable income than philosophers?
This example isn't perfect (philosophers may buy more books, philosophy as pre-law, etc), but there is almost certainly a correlation between the types of textbooks purchased and future disposable income...
I personally enjoyed Crimson Skies as well - I thought the controls were very solid, good environments, and (most importantly) was a lot of fun to play. I preferred it to both Psychonauts and Indigo Prophecy actually (though they are both great games also).
I can't even consistently write my signature, let alone some arbitrary picture.
I agree - the opinion that the pursuit of science is good for humanity is faith in science.
You're missing my point in the context of the OP and child which I replied to. The OP implied that faith in the pursuit of science exists, the child (which I replied to) stated that faith in science doesn't exist because science is absolute.
I assert that a fervent belief that advancing human knowledge is for the good of mankind can be considered a faith (it's the closest thing to a religion I've personally got). We don't know everything about existence, so the best course of action is to learn as much as possible about it, and put what we learn to good use. I think this belief is far more productive that faith in an arbitrary deity. But lets not fool ourselves - it's faith in either case. To play my own devil's advocate, if humankind were to wipe itself out via nuclear holocaust, that faith would have been false. I don't see that happening though.
I never said that faith in science is science - but both DO exist.
My opinions are not based on the video games I mentioned - they were simply examples of faith in science in popular culture. I know a fair bit about the history of science, and I'm in full agreement that it has had the single greatest impact on improving the lives of humans. But without the belief that these advances in knowledge would benefit humanity, would the scientists responsible feel the drive to pursue them? If I didn't think that increasing human knowledge would improve peoples' lives, I wouldn't be pursuing my PhD right now.
I agree that faith isn't a component in the scientific method - but the OP illustrates that the view that scientific progress is for the best for humankind is not universal. There is definitely a distinction between science and faith in science - the OP was referring to the latter, and the child (which I was responding to) claimed that it didn't exist.
My response simply claimed that that faith in science does exist, and furthermore is a GOOD thing because it gives people the drive to devote their lives to it. I disagree with your statement that it is detrimental to real science. In order to pursue a career at a high level in a scientific field, you have to believe that science is not only real, but good. If I strongly believed in Catholicism I would become a priest - I strongly believe *that scientific advances are to the benefit of mankind*, and so I am working on my PhD.
What about the faith that science is the societal factor that has the largest impact on the growth of mankind? I think in that sense you could say it requires faith.
Scientists who believe in cloning, genetic research, altering DNA, etc have faith that the practice will further the race, and improve the world. There are those who oppose it and believe that these practices could harm our quality of life as a species hundreds of years down the line. Both groups have faith in those beliefs, and who can say who is right at this point?
To use some video game references, look at Bioshock - I don't want to include any spoilers for those who haven't played, but the ethics of genetic modification is definitely a theme in the game, and in some sense the concept of faith in science can be seen in the narrative. Or look at the science faction in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - that faction essentially was a church of science (and who I always always played as I might add). Faith plays a definite role in the pursuit of science in my opinion.