Cue the "where are MY games" whining
on
The Gym Arcade
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The crowd that has labeled themselves the "hardcore" gamers is going to be upset about this. Innovation in games and getting new people interested in gaming drives the improvement of games directly and indirectly, both because as the market gets bigger, people start taking games more seriously and putting more effort into them and directly because more money from wider releases means more development money for future projects. There are people upset gaming moved out of 16 bit, people who still think final fantasy sold out when they made the leap to the 3rd dimension. Not sure why they don't realize there are still games being made for them, there are just additional games now. I guess they'd prefer to have all games released explicitly for them even if it meant they never got any better.
Just a few observations. "Casual" gamer interest is improving games, not degrading them.
The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.
It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.
I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.
More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.
Somehow, after discovering these molecules, everyone forgets to follow up.
Come to think of it, yeah, I do remember something about making a virus that will temporarily get rid of myosin Vb to test in rats. But maybe that was just a dream. Hmm... well that sounds like a good logical next experiment to try. What could possibly go wrong?
It's kind of like calling BMW the "nazi motor company." Yes, they did make planes for their country (germany... I hope no one was wondering that)during WWI and WWII (if I can trust wikipedia), but they make cars now.
Hey, lookit that, I goodwin'd, used a car analogy, AND made a bad metaphor ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Just for good measure, here's a youtube video, I PROMISE it's not rick astley
I bet if we had a Libertarian executive would have a whole lot of opening of government.
Closed doors and government opaqueness aren't intrinsic properties of being republican or democrat, they're intrinsic properties of power-hungry politicians. Guess what: 3rd party candidates are still politicians. Someone can say they want a small government and still want to have all the power, including the power to spy on you. There are THOUSANDS of ways a libertarian politician could rationalize it to himself and other libertarians.
I think they would take money from different bribes and do different things. The point is not that a 3rd-party would be saintly. The point is that they would do things differently, which would help to balance things out.
Or else it would just add more types of incompetence and corruption to the government.
It's not a non-story. If in the US the house had approved a bill to do something ridiculous, say only teach creationism in schools, even if it were definitely going to die in the senate, that's still a scary situation. Here, the story is important because one of the two houses passed such a dumb law. That's only one legislative body away from internet fascism.
Something is wrong with you. The law as it's worded IS actually that vague. If it passes, it won't be enforced like that, but technically it could be. His question is not stupid, you are.
I'm not sure they can call this a "memory molecule" so much as a "molecule responsible for changing the receptors at the synapse to make a memory." The molecule itself is not what memories are actually made of, which is what I would think of. The changed activity of the neuron is more akin to that. And it's also not specific to memories. The process of myosin Vb bringing endosomes to the surface is not unique to neurons, that's been known for a while (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11408590).
That said, it's really interesting that they've identified this, as it not only tells you how the change is made, but also tells you the stimulus to change it.
Aw man, I thought of that and meant to mention it, then forgot! I'd have to point out that there were some other flaws going on there. The polling stopped a week before the election if I'm not mistaken, because of poor polling methods it was assumed that Dewey had it sewn up, the newspaper jumped the gun based on that partly. I wouldn't say that's a reason to stay up to the minute though, look at the 2000 election again, even WITH instant reporting, they called that one early.
do you agree or disagree with the arrest of the two students for hanging an effigy of Obama at the University of Kentucky? Aren't universities supposed to be places where free exchange of idea occurs? Or is that only allowed so long as no one is offended and the ideas being exchanged are politically correct?
Don't put words in my mouth. I used to belong to the ACLU and would still be a member (boring story.) I support free speech with the obvious restrictions (the old "fire in a theater" example, and physically threatening someone of course.) Speech that is offensive is okay, and is necessary. I'm not too up on that case, I had only read a short news story about it not too closely, but I do disagree with their being punished. I have little sympathy for the individuals for obvious reasons, but I'm not convinced it made for a disruption that interfered with normal buisness, which I'm assuming is why the university said they were punishing them.
I guess I should have clarified I meant the idiots who hang effigies of Obama as in "with a noose." That's a not-too-subtle statement of "Lets lynch this..." and you know the rest. That's pretty racist and stupid if you ask me.
The two men who hung an effigy of Palin were idiots. I don't know their sexuality, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.
And we're getting off topic here, the obama effigy example was only to illustrate the point that just because it's fiction and not real doesn't mean it's not offensive, but the offensiveness is not a good reason to censor it.
Surely someone isn't just marking this thread down because the idea that you SHOULDN'T be following the news up-to-the-second is so offensive to them? I suspect hacking on the part of CNN.com.
What possible use could you have for being THAT up to date? Even the media itself could really benefit from cooling down on the refresh rate, so to speak. Remember way back when they called the election for Bush, then had to take it back, then called it again, then took it back, then the supreme court decided? I remember watching CNN as the supreme court was ruling, they literally had reporters on the steps skipping around in the ruling, trying to figure out who won. ON LIVE TV. They looked like idiots.
"Uh... so it says here... uh... Well justice... uh... scalia says 'the decision in this case came down to whether or not the evi'... no wait, that's not it. Um... well Mark, as you can see, we have not had time to read the ruling in depth. I hear my colleagues from the Fox news network cheering so that would indicate a Bush victory. No, I'm sorry, that was actually a fraternity from Georgetown drinking from what appear to be brown bags... Ooh, maybe the last page has a summary... no, I don't know what those words mean.... We're going to have to get back to you..."
On live TV. I and most of america really wanted to know what the ruling was, but we could have waited 5 minutes for you to skim it and get the gist of it before fumbling around live.
And it's not just because journalists often have egg on their faces when they report on things before they know what it is they're reporting on. The important points in a news story get lost in the chaos, cutting from story to story, cutting from a speech by someone who might know something to go live to something that's "breaking" only to find out, no, wait, that McCain supporter wasn't actually attacked by an Obama supporter who carved a B into her face, she did that herself.
Sure it's breaking news, but ultimately, whatever they cut away from to cover that, was likely of much greater importance.
If you're watching the race that closely, you're going to get all the unimportant fluff crap and miss understanding the larger picture.
I'm not a neurosurgeon - I'm a computer geek, of sorts, so I program stuff. Does my programming stuff save lives? probably not.. it may make some people's lives easier, but that's about it. So would you tell me to go to medical school and study neurosurgery so I can do something important like save lives?
You're a computer geek and NOT a neurosurgeon? Well then, I'm going to have to cancel my thursday appointment.
This whole "the human race is incapable of doing two things at once" BS never ceases to amaze me. How do you even get out of bed in the morning? Make coffee... take a crap... which to do first? Gaah! I'm paralyzed! Which is the most important fish to fry?
Er... are you saying there's a way to take a crap and make coffee at the same time? I'm curious, but at the same time I don't think I want to know...
That doesn't mean it's not offensive to some people. I'm sure those racist idiots hanging effigies of Obama would say "It's a fucking EFFIGY people! Get over it!" Not to equate complex moral issues in videogames with racism of course, just trying to illustrate that saying it's a game and not real does not make it not offensive.
The argument needs to be that censorship is not justified ever, this is free expression, if you don't like it don't buy it, this isn't a game for kids, and hey, by the way, you censors have yet to prove your thesis that you made back in the 70s that violent movies make people violent, do that before you say the same about games.
I know I might be in the minority here, but I don't think DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea. Implemented poorly, yes obviously, but trying to limit piracy of a game you spent years making does not strike me as an evil or selfish notion at it's core. It seems to me that at least SOME people are merely using the problems DRM has had as an excuse to rationalize stealing the game.
This is a prime example. It may be that the venerable "sanityinanarchy" misread the article, and thought the DRM was going to be something it's not, but the summary even was clear that the DRM was not intrusive. I get the sense that he read "DRM" and thought "there's my reason."
And you know, it's none of my buisness whether he gets it for free or not, I'm of course not convinced it's a 1:1 thing that piracy = lost money. But this does weaken the argument when we gamers say "Hey EA, stop putting REAL annoying DRM in your games." We're not Robin Hood here, if you have a legitimate beef with an implementation of DRM, get a boycott together.
Pirating the game is not an act of civil disobedience, and DRM should not be an excuse to steal a game you were going to steal anyway.
ESRB: Ohhh, you can't release a game that shows killing kids. After all, if someone sees it done in a game, SURELY that must mean that they will follow up with going on a child-slaughtering rampage through the countryside.
To their credit, the ESRB WAS going to do a controlled experiment where they had 50 teens playing "baby killer 5" and 50 playing "diaper changer 2" followed by putting the teens in a daycare environment and observing any reduction in the number of babies, but some government regulations got in the way, so they decided to avoid the whole problem.
I joke, and of course it's no reason to censor, but let's not act as if it's impossible that games can influence people's behavior. I mean, teenagers ARE idiots, so it's not out of the realm of possibilty that one dumbass would kill a kid and then try to blame it on games. Our arguments should stay based on "Just because the weakest link might not be able to control themselves is no reason to censor what I can see."
It's also a rather weak argument to say "Why take out the most offensive examples of something in a game when the rest of the game is about it." The moral nannies would say "Let's just get rid of the whole game then."
You know, I'm not going to take off points because a company is stealing a good idea and using it themselves rather than a worse idea. First of all, there are courts that take care of that. Second, innovation is good, but if one is clearly better than the other one, the worse one should go extinct. The next generation of consoles are probably all going to have motion controls, and there will be people who complain about ripping off the wii, but if we consumers get better games, better controls, better start menus, better ANYTHING, then I say rip off more.
The way that this is done with films, books, etc, is that everything must be reviewed before it can be made available to the public. Consider how fucked the internet would be if they applied that standard.
I'd be interested in getting a position with the australian government in monitoring the internet, specifically the porn portion. I have extensive experience.
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The crowd that has labeled themselves the "hardcore" gamers is going to be upset about this. Innovation in games and getting new people interested in gaming drives the improvement of games directly and indirectly, both because as the market gets bigger, people start taking games more seriously and putting more effort into them and directly because more money from wider releases means more development money for future projects. There are people upset gaming moved out of 16 bit, people who still think final fantasy sold out when they made the leap to the 3rd dimension. Not sure why they don't realize there are still games being made for them, there are just additional games now. I guess they'd prefer to have all games released explicitly for them even if it meant they never got any better.
Just a few observations. "Casual" gamer interest is improving games, not degrading them.
The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.
It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.
I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.
More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.
Somehow, after discovering these molecules, everyone forgets to follow up.
Come to think of it, yeah, I do remember something about making a virus that will temporarily get rid of myosin Vb to test in rats. But maybe that was just a dream. Hmm... well that sounds like a good logical next experiment to try. What could possibly go wrong?
It's kind of like calling BMW the "nazi motor company." Yes, they did make planes for their country (germany... I hope no one was wondering that)during WWI and WWII (if I can trust wikipedia), but they make cars now.
Hey, lookit that, I goodwin'd, used a car analogy, AND made a bad metaphor ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Just for good measure, here's a youtube video, I PROMISE it's not rick astley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnOt4aN2uyc
FIRST POST
1. Do something
2. do something else
3. ???
4. Profit!
Linux.
Sorry, but I'm not willing to go the whole 9 yards and risk seeing goatse.
In space, you can't hear your PC scream.
I bet if we had a Libertarian executive would have a whole lot of opening of government.
Closed doors and government opaqueness aren't intrinsic properties of being republican or democrat, they're intrinsic properties of power-hungry politicians. Guess what: 3rd party candidates are still politicians. Someone can say they want a small government and still want to have all the power, including the power to spy on you. There are THOUSANDS of ways a libertarian politician could rationalize it to himself and other libertarians.
I think they would take money from different bribes and do different things. The point is not that a 3rd-party would be saintly. The point is that they would do things differently, which would help to balance things out.
Or else it would just add more types of incompetence and corruption to the government.
It's not a non-story. If in the US the house had approved a bill to do something ridiculous, say only teach creationism in schools, even if it were definitely going to die in the senate, that's still a scary situation. Here, the story is important because one of the two houses passed such a dumb law. That's only one legislative body away from internet fascism.
Something is wrong with you. The law as it's worded IS actually that vague. If it passes, it won't be enforced like that, but technically it could be. His question is not stupid, you are.
I'm not sure they can call this a "memory molecule" so much as a "molecule responsible for changing the receptors at the synapse to make a memory." The molecule itself is not what memories are actually made of, which is what I would think of. The changed activity of the neuron is more akin to that. And it's also not specific to memories. The process of myosin Vb bringing endosomes to the surface is not unique to neurons, that's been known for a while (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11408590).
That said, it's really interesting that they've identified this, as it not only tells you how the change is made, but also tells you the stimulus to change it.
Aw man, I thought of that and meant to mention it, then forgot! I'd have to point out that there were some other flaws going on there. The polling stopped a week before the election if I'm not mistaken, because of poor polling methods it was assumed that Dewey had it sewn up, the newspaper jumped the gun based on that partly. I wouldn't say that's a reason to stay up to the minute though, look at the 2000 election again, even WITH instant reporting, they called that one early.
do you agree or disagree with the arrest of the two students for hanging an effigy of Obama at the University of Kentucky? Aren't universities supposed to be places where free exchange of idea occurs? Or is that only allowed so long as no one is offended and the ideas being exchanged are politically correct?
Don't put words in my mouth. I used to belong to the ACLU and would still be a member (boring story.) I support free speech with the obvious restrictions (the old "fire in a theater" example, and physically threatening someone of course.) Speech that is offensive is okay, and is necessary. I'm not too up on that case, I had only read a short news story about it not too closely, but I do disagree with their being punished. I have little sympathy for the individuals for obvious reasons, but I'm not convinced it made for a disruption that interfered with normal buisness, which I'm assuming is why the university said they were punishing them.
I guess I should have clarified I meant the idiots who hang effigies of Obama as in "with a noose." That's a not-too-subtle statement of "Lets lynch this..." and you know the rest. That's pretty racist and stupid if you ask me.
The two men who hung an effigy of Palin were idiots. I don't know their sexuality, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.
And we're getting off topic here, the obama effigy example was only to illustrate the point that just because it's fiction and not real doesn't mean it's not offensive, but the offensiveness is not a good reason to censor it.
Surely someone isn't just marking this thread down because the idea that you SHOULDN'T be following the news up-to-the-second is so offensive to them? I suspect hacking on the part of CNN.com.
What possible use could you have for being THAT up to date? Even the media itself could really benefit from cooling down on the refresh rate, so to speak. Remember way back when they called the election for Bush, then had to take it back, then called it again, then took it back, then the supreme court decided? I remember watching CNN as the supreme court was ruling, they literally had reporters on the steps skipping around in the ruling, trying to figure out who won. ON LIVE TV. They looked like idiots.
"Uh... so it says here... uh... Well justice... uh... scalia says 'the decision in this case came down to whether or not the evi'... no wait, that's not it. Um... well Mark, as you can see, we have not had time to read the ruling in depth. I hear my colleagues from the Fox news network cheering so that would indicate a Bush victory. No, I'm sorry, that was actually a fraternity from Georgetown drinking from what appear to be brown bags... Ooh, maybe the last page has a summary... no, I don't know what those words mean.... We're going to have to get back to you..."
On live TV. I and most of america really wanted to know what the ruling was, but we could have waited 5 minutes for you to skim it and get the gist of it before fumbling around live.
And it's not just because journalists often have egg on their faces when they report on things before they know what it is they're reporting on. The important points in a news story get lost in the chaos, cutting from story to story, cutting from a speech by someone who might know something to go live to something that's "breaking" only to find out, no, wait, that McCain supporter wasn't actually attacked by an Obama supporter who carved a B into her face, she did that herself.
Sure it's breaking news, but ultimately, whatever they cut away from to cover that, was likely of much greater importance.
If you're watching the race that closely, you're going to get all the unimportant fluff crap and miss understanding the larger picture.
When I read things such as this I like to take a moment to let the dumbfounded feeling wash over me.
This is just not that important.
You only say that because you have yet to be involved in a serious shoe-tying accident.
I'm not a neurosurgeon - I'm a computer geek, of sorts, so I program stuff. Does my programming stuff save lives? probably not.. it may make some people's lives easier, but that's about it. So would you tell me to go to medical school and study neurosurgery so I can do something important like save lives?
You're a computer geek and NOT a neurosurgeon? Well then, I'm going to have to cancel my thursday appointment.
Let politicians work on politics, soldiers work on war, and mathematicians work on math.
I have to say that I think current affairs would at least be more interesting if we had scientists work on politics and politicians work on research.
This whole "the human race is incapable of doing two things at once" BS never ceases to amaze me. How do you even get out of bed in the morning? Make coffee... take a crap... which to do first? Gaah! I'm paralyzed! Which is the most important fish to fry?
Er... are you saying there's a way to take a crap and make coffee at the same time? I'm curious, but at the same time I don't think I want to know...
but I'd hardly call it an age old question. Never heard of it.
Does that mean you're knot interested in it?
It's a fucking game people! Get over it!
That doesn't mean it's not offensive to some people. I'm sure those racist idiots hanging effigies of Obama would say "It's a fucking EFFIGY people! Get over it!" Not to equate complex moral issues in videogames with racism of course, just trying to illustrate that saying it's a game and not real does not make it not offensive.
The argument needs to be that censorship is not justified ever, this is free expression, if you don't like it don't buy it, this isn't a game for kids, and hey, by the way, you censors have yet to prove your thesis that you made back in the 70s that violent movies make people violent, do that before you say the same about games.
I know I might be in the minority here, but I don't think DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea. Implemented poorly, yes obviously, but trying to limit piracy of a game you spent years making does not strike me as an evil or selfish notion at it's core. It seems to me that at least SOME people are merely using the problems DRM has had as an excuse to rationalize stealing the game.
This is a prime example. It may be that the venerable "sanityinanarchy" misread the article, and thought the DRM was going to be something it's not, but the summary even was clear that the DRM was not intrusive. I get the sense that he read "DRM" and thought "there's my reason."
And you know, it's none of my buisness whether he gets it for free or not, I'm of course not convinced it's a 1:1 thing that piracy = lost money. But this does weaken the argument when we gamers say "Hey EA, stop putting REAL annoying DRM in your games." We're not Robin Hood here, if you have a legitimate beef with an implementation of DRM, get a boycott together.
Pirating the game is not an act of civil disobedience, and DRM should not be an excuse to steal a game you were going to steal anyway.
There is a game where half of the game is putting a needle into your wrist? Sounds almost as fun as "Applying bandages to papercuts 5."
ESRB: Ohhh, you can't release a game that shows killing kids. After all, if someone sees it done in a game, SURELY that must mean that they will follow up with going on a child-slaughtering rampage through the countryside.
To their credit, the ESRB WAS going to do a controlled experiment where they had 50 teens playing "baby killer 5" and 50 playing "diaper changer 2" followed by putting the teens in a daycare environment and observing any reduction in the number of babies, but some government regulations got in the way, so they decided to avoid the whole problem.
I joke, and of course it's no reason to censor, but let's not act as if it's impossible that games can influence people's behavior. I mean, teenagers ARE idiots, so it's not out of the realm of possibilty that one dumbass would kill a kid and then try to blame it on games. Our arguments should stay based on "Just because the weakest link might not be able to control themselves is no reason to censor what I can see."
It's also a rather weak argument to say "Why take out the most offensive examples of something in a game when the rest of the game is about it." The moral nannies would say "Let's just get rid of the whole game then."
Uh... did it give you any radiation though?
You know, I'm not going to take off points because a company is stealing a good idea and using it themselves rather than a worse idea. First of all, there are courts that take care of that. Second, innovation is good, but if one is clearly better than the other one, the worse one should go extinct. The next generation of consoles are probably all going to have motion controls, and there will be people who complain about ripping off the wii, but if we consumers get better games, better controls, better start menus, better ANYTHING, then I say rip off more.
The way that this is done with films, books, etc, is that everything must be reviewed before it can be made available to the public. Consider how fucked the internet would be if they applied that standard.
I'd be interested in getting a position with the australian government in monitoring the internet, specifically the porn portion. I have extensive experience.