It can! Think about it, Hitler was an artist first, got stymied in that (due to lack of talent). The genocide and warmongering came afterwards. If the internet had been around, he would have been able to get his art published online and his art degree from university of phoenix. Even if he still got rejected from art, he may have set up an emo myspace page, an antisemitic/ conspiracy theory blog, and troll on/., and that would be as far as it got. In other words, if he had an outlet for his crap, he might never have gotten around to taking control of the government and the holocaust.
The internet: great at distracting would-be dictators with pr0n, lolcatz, and angry blog posts.
I honestly don't understand why the music industry gets to tax Canadians as a whole for the behavior of a few. Why do media sources get different treatment than the other industries? Shouldn't canadians be paying a Photoshop tax at this point?
More to the point, why should they get to collect a toll off the internet but not me? I didn't make any music that is getting pirated by a few individuals, and neither did these guys.
If people are graduating high school with a 6th grade level education, all the broadband in the world won't help them.
Or... maybe there is more than one problem with education, and fixing one problem at a time while refusing to make any other improvements because they'll increase our tax burdens by about ten dollars will never solve anything.
It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets. We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.
It's a fallacy to use logic and anectodal evidence instead of controlled studies when coming to conclusions about education. You obviously don't NEED computers to teach, but they might improve a system that is clearly not where we need it.
Moreover, learning how to use computers is in and of itself important, not just as a teaching tool. I've heard korean schools teach their students programming while they're in high school. The internet as you know is useful and is already the standard for research and communication. Computer operation is already a basic skill that is needed for jobs.
It's absurd to say we don't need to be teaching kids to use computers because 20 years ago we weren't: the marketplace and our educational needs have changed rapidly. Kids in public schools who are unable to use computers aren't going to be competitive, we may as well eliminate public education and start handing kids shovels or mops if we're not going to give them the skills they'll need to get real jobs.
Yeah, sure will provide a ton of jobs to the Chinese who manufacture these things.
With how buisnesses work today, ANYTHING we do will be making jobs for chinese. Buy an american car or bail out american automakers: much of the car parts originate in China. Bailout the banks: some of it makes its way back to china, not to mention that we borrowed some of the bailout money from china in the first place. Don't give any economic stimulus to american buisnesses: they use it as an excuse to cut costs by shipping the jobs overseas to china. Do give an economic stimulus package to american industries: they find another excuse to cut costs by shipping the jobs overseas, and use the money you gave them to grease the way.
I'm not communist, but it would at least be satisfying for a few moments to execute some CEOs. Right before a depression of massive scale.
Just kidding - sometimes I wonder how the people who publish these articles even graduated high school.
Let's hope not. It seems to me that more than half of what's taught in high school science classes are either outright wrong or are so oversimplified as to miss the important points. More dangerous though is the dogmatic approach high school biology classes tend to teach. "DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which gets translated into proteins" is correct a lot of the time, but it's far from the complete picture, we've known exceptions to that central dogma for quite some time. That doesn't stop schools from presenting it as if no exceptions existed. It's this same approach which invites attacks from creationists. More than that though, it's discouraging people who would make good scientists.
For what it's worth, some of the studies they cite have been demonstrated to have no statistical validity, including the ones that claim that exposure to a particular chemical (phthalates) cause guys to have small junk. Also, they try to make these unifying claims that "chemicals" cause these problems, when each chemical has very different properties that affect people in different ways. The stuff on PCBs is solid, but then they get vague.
Part of me is so alarmed by the mere implication that phthalates and other pollutants may be affecting my unborn children, or even my ability to have children, that I'm okay with taking action even though the statistics aren't there. For one thing, it's fairly clear that these things aren't HELPING our health, so there's not any harm in getting rid of them (aside from short-term economics, which is not a powerful reason to endanger everyone). Second, if we wait until we know for sure, massive damage may already occour.
Third, the buisnesses that use these chemicals certainly aren't waiting for the data to get in before pumping it out, and are spending lots of money to try to divert our attention, and keep their pollutants legal. I was talking to a professor investigating potential links between these pollutants and nondisjunction events in egg production in mammals. I got the sense that his studies were very preliminary, but what interested me more was that he said plastics manufacturers were already positioning themselves to mitigate findings which would threaten them. Like funding research themselves (because that will be unbiased), lobbying to reduce funding for studies like this.
Basically I think the strongest reason for acting before we're sure is that either way, buisness is charging ahead with what's in it's best interests and may be clouding not only our ability to reproduce, but also our ability to even determine the effects of their meddling.
Each state is different, some are better than others. None are as bad as the Federal government however.
I don't know about specific to drug laws, but several states have seriously considered teaching that creationism and evolution are about the same. It seems to me that there are 3 differences between state and federal governments
1. Difference in scale, naturally 2. Less talented / less experienced charlatans work in state government than in federal government 3. There is less media scrutiny on the state level
2 cuts both ways, but it's 3 that really screws up state government. More room for special interests, because the focus is on the federal level. I guess that's optimistic, I should maybe say IF anyone is paying attention to government, it's to what the federal government is doing, except for those occasions when the state government does something so moronic it makes national news. That's why I trust state governments much less.
It seems to me that if we leave it up to states, things in say, California would improve, but Texas might continue to build prisons and continue to put non-violent pot smokers in them.
Nintendo has the Classic Controller that plugs into the Wii Remote. Is the Classic Controller selling dead last? Or perhaps I completely misunderstand what you're trying to say.
The classic controller is a seperate purchase, not included with the original wii. I'm guessing that a lot of developers don't think porting a game will be worth it if not everyone with the console can play it. Of course, with the amount of consoles the wii has sold, you've got to think that the fraction of wii owners with the classic controller rivals the number of people with PS3s or 360s. But then, I don't think I've seen a game that can be used with the classic controller that isn't a virtual console game, so maybe nintendo restricts it's usage to the VC.
Whatever the case, it's a weak reason by itself to not put the game out on the wii. Another weak reason is the graphics issue. Another weak reason is the difference in user base. All three weak excuses though translate into few 3rd party games being made for the wii as well as the other 2 consoles.
The third consists of those who want to watch beautiful cheerleaders perform routines that emphasize their feminine, athletic and desirable traits, while wearing the skimpiest possible outfits
Hey, come on, quit trolling! They could be a LOT skimpier!
Nothing mysterious about it eh? Have everything about empathy already figured out do we? Even if we knew about this before, it's still a fairly strange application of a strange phenomena, in my book.
Same behaviour, really -- putting yourself in the place of your onscreen avatar's viewpoint to the point that you lose track of which body you actually inhabit, and react as if the avatar is real and YOU.
In soviet russia, avatar in first person shooter IS YOU!
Nintendo has proven graphics don't have to matter.
When there's a more interesting improvement, at least to the novice gamers. The touch screen and the wiimote are new control devices that attracted a lot of attention and sold a lot of consoles. If nintendo had a standard controller for the wii, it would be selling dead last. That would be partially because of the graphics issue, but I think more because of the dearth of quality games for it.
Of course, you could argue that more people would make games for the wii if it weren't for the controller situation. I really don't know, all I know is that on the wii, most of the games that are worth your time are basically made by nintendo, or else are wii-ware games that are much shorter than a regular release.
That's pretty much the opposite of the other two. Microsoft did own bungie, which made Halo, and Sony has a few of their own, but by and large, you don't buy a PS3 for sony games, or a 360 for microsoft games.
I can't fathom nintendo going back to a more traditional control scheme completely, since it's a great possibility. I could see them making a more traditional controller standard, in addition to the wiimote style controller, to encourage lazy developers to include the wii in their releases.
It would be nice in my opinion if the next nintendo was compatible with the current wiimote, but was graphically more capable, to allow the wii to get all the 3rd party games that were being released on the other consoles... of course then the price would be out of the current range of the current customer base. Oh well, I still want to have my cake and eat it too. Next wii will be more powerful than an XBOX 720, have the wiimote, and will be $20, that's my hope.
New Hampshire's state motto is actually "Live free or die," (obviously adopted before the RIAA was around and contributing to campaigns.) I'm unclear as to the connection between "don't tread on me" and new hampshire. Did someone from NH say it first?
To all you gun lovers don't worry I don't want to pry one out of your hands but if your too old to hold a plastic glock, how can we count on your aim?
I personally am more concerned with their abilities behind the wheel. If you're going to die because of a senior citizen, it will most likely be in a driving accident. The AARP does it's best to keep states from requiring vision tests for drivers licens renewal after a certain age.
There isn't one because they all know old people are a huge voting block and they'd be out of office faster than they could blink.
There might also be a few that want to see fewer elderly citizens forced to live in homeless shelters, and a few more who support it because most people who are thinking clearly do too.
Uh, you consider this a conservative victory? Big government buying crazy old people handguns, under medicaid?
Gee, I was expecting a conservative conspiracy theory amounting to "they're just trying to trick us into supporting socialized healthcare while making gun owners look ridiculous." I keep promising myself I won't overestimate trolls...
Well, if we start labeling everything terrorism, maybe we'll get over our national obsession with it sooner and pols won't be able to manipulate us so easily by using that word.
But the player isn't shooting them because they're black but because they want to kill him (and are probably infected with something). That they're black comes mostly because the game takes place in Africa where that's expected.
Capcom made the game set up the scenario themselves, the in game explanation for what's going on doesn't change anything. You can imagine ways of justifying in game any scenario you've created: okay, yes, you are shooting up the columbine school, but, uh, your character is posessed by the devil. And all the students are actually demons.
Again I have to point out that I don't think capcom did this, I'm certain that no one said "Hey, I really want to shoot a bunch of black people, because I hate them. Lets make a game around that, and I guess we should say they're zombies, and if we set it in africa, it will just make sense!" I mean, this is the 5th one, and you were shooting european/american zombies in the first ones, as gamers everywhere started screaming when they thought someone was standing between them and an unreleased game.
You have to admit though that the setup to potentially offensive situations in games don't make them non-offensive, and that kids playing this game might still get the wrong ideas, reguardless of the logic in the game, and decide black people are less than human. Once more, not defending that hypothesis, only playing devil's advocate here since the gamer response to these honest concerns has been ridiculous.
I guess that means those same people complaining about that pretty much lost their right to complain, after not standing up for racism against white people in resident evil 1-3, and the racism against whites and Hispanics in #4.
As I said to the previous guy, the OP was talking about racial differences being taboo, which is not at all what the objections were about in the case of RE5. I only brought up the controversy about RE5 because QuantumG was basically off-topic.
Also as I said to the previous response, it's really not the same. A white guy shooting white people is not racist, whereras a white guy shooting black people could be construed as racist. Again, I don't endorse that view, and think it's wrong, but overreacting to it doesn't help our side any.
I don't think anyone was going on TV and demanding that the game be boycotted and "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" All the comments about the trailer, at least that I read, appeared to be honest concerns by GAMERS, not rabble rousing, attention whoring, or trying to sell a book about a new societal evil. The tone of the objections was quite respectful and rational. By contrast, the gamer response has been anything but. Stop trying to cast these people as hypocrites, and stop mischaracterizing their concerns. They're not trying to take away your rights to buy the game, don't get so defensive. At best, this makes gamers look immature (which maybe we are.) At worst, it erodes sympathy for gamers and someone decides to get serious about regulating videogame content.
Slashdot Mirror
So tell us, what exactly IS yourSQL?
It can! Think about it, Hitler was an artist first, got stymied in that (due to lack of talent). The genocide and warmongering came afterwards. If the internet had been around, he would have been able to get his art published online and his art degree from university of phoenix. Even if he still got rejected from art, he may have set up an emo myspace page, an antisemitic/ conspiracy theory blog, and troll on /., and that would be as far as it got. In other words, if he had an outlet for his crap, he might never have gotten around to taking control of the government and the holocaust.
The internet: great at distracting would-be dictators with pr0n, lolcatz, and angry blog posts.
I honestly don't understand why the music industry gets to tax Canadians as a whole for the behavior of a few. Why do media sources get different treatment than the other industries? Shouldn't canadians be paying a Photoshop tax at this point?
More to the point, why should they get to collect a toll off the internet but not me? I didn't make any music that is getting pirated by a few individuals, and neither did these guys.
If people are graduating high school with a 6th grade level education, all the broadband in the world won't help them.
Or... maybe there is more than one problem with education, and fixing one problem at a time while refusing to make any other improvements because they'll increase our tax burdens by about ten dollars will never solve anything.
It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets. We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.
It's a fallacy to use logic and anectodal evidence instead of controlled studies when coming to conclusions about education. You obviously don't NEED computers to teach, but they might improve a system that is clearly not where we need it.
Moreover, learning how to use computers is in and of itself important, not just as a teaching tool. I've heard korean schools teach their students programming while they're in high school. The internet as you know is useful and is already the standard for research and communication. Computer operation is already a basic skill that is needed for jobs.
It's absurd to say we don't need to be teaching kids to use computers because 20 years ago we weren't: the marketplace and our educational needs have changed rapidly. Kids in public schools who are unable to use computers aren't going to be competitive, we may as well eliminate public education and start handing kids shovels or mops if we're not going to give them the skills they'll need to get real jobs.
the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
I like how Obama hasn't even taken office or done much of anything, and already people are complaining about "nanny-state" policies.
Yeah, sure will provide a ton of jobs to the Chinese who manufacture these things.
With how buisnesses work today, ANYTHING we do will be making jobs for chinese. Buy an american car or bail out american automakers: much of the car parts originate in China. Bailout the banks: some of it makes its way back to china, not to mention that we borrowed some of the bailout money from china in the first place. Don't give any economic stimulus to american buisnesses: they use it as an excuse to cut costs by shipping the jobs overseas to china. Do give an economic stimulus package to american industries: they find another excuse to cut costs by shipping the jobs overseas, and use the money you gave them to grease the way.
I'm not communist, but it would at least be satisfying for a few moments to execute some CEOs. Right before a depression of massive scale.
Just kidding - sometimes I wonder how the people who publish these articles even graduated high school.
Let's hope not. It seems to me that more than half of what's taught in high school science classes are either outright wrong or are so oversimplified as to miss the important points. More dangerous though is the dogmatic approach high school biology classes tend to teach. "DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which gets translated into proteins" is correct a lot of the time, but it's far from the complete picture, we've known exceptions to that central dogma for quite some time. That doesn't stop schools from presenting it as if no exceptions existed. It's this same approach which invites attacks from creationists. More than that though, it's discouraging people who would make good scientists.
For what it's worth, some of the studies they cite have been demonstrated to have no statistical validity, including the ones that claim that exposure to a particular chemical (phthalates) cause guys to have small junk. Also, they try to make these unifying claims that "chemicals" cause these problems, when each chemical has very different properties that affect people in different ways. The stuff on PCBs is solid, but then they get vague.
Part of me is so alarmed by the mere implication that phthalates and other pollutants may be affecting my unborn children, or even my ability to have children, that I'm okay with taking action even though the statistics aren't there. For one thing, it's fairly clear that these things aren't HELPING our health, so there's not any harm in getting rid of them (aside from short-term economics, which is not a powerful reason to endanger everyone). Second, if we wait until we know for sure, massive damage may already occour.
Third, the buisnesses that use these chemicals certainly aren't waiting for the data to get in before pumping it out, and are spending lots of money to try to divert our attention, and keep their pollutants legal. I was talking to a professor investigating potential links between these pollutants and nondisjunction events in egg production in mammals. I got the sense that his studies were very preliminary, but what interested me more was that he said plastics manufacturers were already positioning themselves to mitigate findings which would threaten them. Like funding research themselves (because that will be unbiased), lobbying to reduce funding for studies like this.
Basically I think the strongest reason for acting before we're sure is that either way, buisness is charging ahead with what's in it's best interests and may be clouding not only our ability to reproduce, but also our ability to even determine the effects of their meddling.
Each state is different, some are better than others. None are as bad as the Federal government however.
I don't know about specific to drug laws, but several states have seriously considered teaching that creationism and evolution are about the same. It seems to me that there are 3 differences between state and federal governments
1. Difference in scale, naturally
2. Less talented / less experienced charlatans work in state government than in federal government
3. There is less media scrutiny on the state level
2 cuts both ways, but it's 3 that really screws up state government. More room for special interests, because the focus is on the federal level. I guess that's optimistic, I should maybe say IF anyone is paying attention to government, it's to what the federal government is doing, except for those occasions when the state government does something so moronic it makes national news. That's why I trust state governments much less.
It seems to me that if we leave it up to states, things in say, California would improve, but Texas might continue to build prisons and continue to put non-violent pot smokers in them.
So the army is headed into the virtual world as Reuters is headed out.
In real world news, the Army is pulling out of Iraq, and Reuters is going in.
I think you may have missed the point (AKA ridiculous sex fantasy simulator) if you're concerning yourself with the engine.
Nintendo has the Classic Controller that plugs into the Wii Remote. Is the Classic Controller selling dead last? Or perhaps I completely misunderstand what you're trying to say.
The classic controller is a seperate purchase, not included with the original wii. I'm guessing that a lot of developers don't think porting a game will be worth it if not everyone with the console can play it. Of course, with the amount of consoles the wii has sold, you've got to think that the fraction of wii owners with the classic controller rivals the number of people with PS3s or 360s.
But then, I don't think I've seen a game that can be used with the classic controller that isn't a virtual console game, so maybe nintendo restricts it's usage to the VC.
Whatever the case, it's a weak reason by itself to not put the game out on the wii. Another weak reason is the graphics issue. Another weak reason is the difference in user base. All three weak excuses though translate into few 3rd party games being made for the wii as well as the other 2 consoles.
I'm guessing this AC feels your description of category 2 was insulting to him and his frat brothers.
(no offense, I just couldn't resist)
The third consists of those who want to watch beautiful cheerleaders perform routines that emphasize their feminine, athletic and desirable traits, while wearing the skimpiest possible outfits
Hey, come on, quit trolling! They could be a LOT skimpier!
Nothing mysterious about it eh? Have everything about empathy already figured out do we? Even if we knew about this before, it's still a fairly strange application of a strange phenomena, in my book.
Same behaviour, really -- putting yourself in the place of your onscreen avatar's viewpoint to the point that you lose track of which body you actually inhabit, and react as if the avatar is real and YOU.
In soviet russia, avatar in first person shooter IS YOU!
Sorry, that was mostly uncalled for.
Or, they have, and have realized that far, far better than "real" sci fi are
Nintendo has proven graphics don't have to matter.
When there's a more interesting improvement, at least to the novice gamers. The touch screen and the wiimote are new control devices that attracted a lot of attention and sold a lot of consoles. If nintendo had a standard controller for the wii, it would be selling dead last. That would be partially because of the graphics issue, but I think more because of the dearth of quality games for it.
Of course, you could argue that more people would make games for the wii if it weren't for the controller situation. I really don't know, all I know is that on the wii, most of the games that are worth your time are basically made by nintendo, or else are wii-ware games that are much shorter than a regular release.
That's pretty much the opposite of the other two. Microsoft did own bungie, which made Halo, and Sony has a few of their own, but by and large, you don't buy a PS3 for sony games, or a 360 for microsoft games.
I can't fathom nintendo going back to a more traditional control scheme completely, since it's a great possibility. I could see them making a more traditional controller standard, in addition to the wiimote style controller, to encourage lazy developers to include the wii in their releases.
It would be nice in my opinion if the next nintendo was compatible with the current wiimote, but was graphically more capable, to allow the wii to get all the 3rd party games that were being released on the other consoles... of course then the price would be out of the current range of the current customer base. Oh well, I still want to have my cake and eat it too. Next wii will be more powerful than an XBOX 720, have the wiimote, and will be $20, that's my hope.
New Hampshire's state motto is actually "Live free or die," (obviously adopted before the RIAA was around and contributing to campaigns.) I'm unclear as to the connection between "don't tread on me" and new hampshire. Did someone from NH say it first?
I personally am more concerned with their abilities behind the wheel. If you're going to die because of a senior citizen, it will most likely be in a driving accident. The AARP does it's best to keep states from requiring vision tests for drivers licens renewal after a certain age.
There isn't one because they all know old people are a huge voting block and they'd be out of office faster than they could blink.
There might also be a few that want to see fewer elderly citizens forced to live in homeless shelters, and a few more who support it because most people who are thinking clearly do too.
Uh, you consider this a conservative victory? Big government buying crazy old people handguns, under medicaid?
Gee, I was expecting a conservative conspiracy theory amounting to "they're just trying to trick us into supporting socialized healthcare while making gun owners look ridiculous." I keep promising myself I won't overestimate trolls...
Well, if we start labeling everything terrorism, maybe we'll get over our national obsession with it sooner and pols won't be able to manipulate us so easily by using that word.
But the player isn't shooting them because they're black but because they want to kill him (and are probably infected with something). That they're black comes mostly because the game takes place in Africa where that's expected.
Capcom made the game set up the scenario themselves, the in game explanation for what's going on doesn't change anything. You can imagine ways of justifying in game any scenario you've created: okay, yes, you are shooting up the columbine school, but, uh, your character is posessed by the devil. And all the students are actually demons.
Again I have to point out that I don't think capcom did this, I'm certain that no one said "Hey, I really want to shoot a bunch of black people, because I hate them. Lets make a game around that, and I guess we should say they're zombies, and if we set it in africa, it will just make sense!" I mean, this is the 5th one, and you were shooting european/american zombies in the first ones, as gamers everywhere started screaming when they thought someone was standing between them and an unreleased game.
You have to admit though that the setup to potentially offensive situations in games don't make them non-offensive, and that kids playing this game might still get the wrong ideas, reguardless of the logic in the game, and decide black people are less than human. Once more, not defending that hypothesis, only playing devil's advocate here since the gamer response to these honest concerns has been ridiculous.
I guess that means those same people complaining about that pretty much lost their right to complain, after not standing up for racism against white people in resident evil 1-3, and the racism against whites and Hispanics in #4.
As I said to the previous guy, the OP was talking about racial differences being taboo, which is not at all what the objections were about in the case of RE5. I only brought up the controversy about RE5 because QuantumG was basically off-topic.
Also as I said to the previous response, it's really not the same. A white guy shooting white people is not racist, whereras a white guy shooting black people could be construed as racist. Again, I don't endorse that view, and think it's wrong, but overreacting to it doesn't help our side any.
I don't think anyone was going on TV and demanding that the game be boycotted and "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" All the comments about the trailer, at least that I read, appeared to be honest concerns by GAMERS, not rabble rousing, attention whoring, or trying to sell a book about a new societal evil. The tone of the objections was quite respectful and rational. By contrast, the gamer response has been anything but. Stop trying to cast these people as hypocrites, and stop mischaracterizing their concerns. They're not trying to take away your rights to buy the game, don't get so defensive. At best, this makes gamers look immature (which maybe we are.) At worst, it erodes sympathy for gamers and someone decides to get serious about regulating videogame content.