A farmer must plow his fields to grow his crops. Is he a slave to his land? He must feed the horse that pulls his plow. Is he a slave to his horse? He must keep the plow in good repair, and sharpen its blade on a regular basis. Is he a slave to his plow?
Your definition of "slavery" appears to be directly contrary to the normal usage of the word. You're saying that all ownership is slavery to the thing that is owned, when normal usage defines the thing owned as a slave to its owner.
Reversing the convetional meanings of words is a clever rhetorical trick, and can be useful for shocking an audience into re-thinking of their current paradigm. I assume you have a coherent, well-reasoned argument in support of your position on slavery. Care to share it?
Interesting question. As far as I know, though, the Germans turned out to be laughably far behind us in nuclear bomb technology. By the time Germany was defeated, Heisenberg and his team had barely managed to get a simple fission reactor working, and had no viable bomb program at all.
However, my main source for this is Copenhagen, an excellent play by Michael Frayn. I get the impression his research was thorough and honest, so I believe that Germany or its allies didn't have a suitable device to test at Port Chicago. YMMV, natch.
Re:Interesting as technology
on
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· Score: 2
Feds at your door, just drink the water.. poof
Last time I checked, the Feds wanted us to drink the water:p
"Organic" is also a technician's word, used to indicate that a particular element of a system is an integral component of the whole system, and not an outside element or influence.
For example, the U.S. military refers to battalion-level artillery as "organic" (that is, part of the standard equipment of a standard battalion according to current doctrine). This differentiates it from, say, a division-level artillery battery that has been attached to the battalion for this particular mission or scenario (that is, the division artillery is not organic to the battalion, but "tacked on" as an addiotional, outside resource).
"We had to drop the bomb, because the invasion would have been worse."
"No, it wouldn't have."
"You're right, but we didn't know that at the time."
Proving that we didn't have to drop the bomb seems to have been trivial after the fact. Can we please move on to proofs that the U.S. was reasonably certain that the bomb was unnecessary, but chose to use it anyway?
But is the cop evil, if evidence after the fact contradicts the reasonable conclusion he reached on the evidence available to him at the time? Or is he just doing his job the best he can?
At least we're reasonably certain there will be an investigation of the shooting. The evidence available to the cop, the training he received, and how he applied that training to the evidence, will be carefully reviewed. If he made a good decision, a proper investigation will probably exonerate him, and perhaps the training will be revised to prevent further mistakes of the same nature. If he made the wrong decision, he'll be suitably punished, and maybe training (or hiring practices, or performance reviews) will be adjusted as well.
Better than demonizing the U.S. willy-nilly for making a controversial decision during a major military conflict, would be to actually investigate the matter without bias, and either exonerate or censure the decision-makers (and the nation as a whole--the citizens should bear some responsibility for the behavior of their elected representatives), as the evidence indicates.
What I want to know is this: How much did the Allies know about the German bomb program? It's easy to go back and read documentation that would have been classified at the time the Allies were making their strategic decisions and say something like, "well, obviously the German bomb program was irrelevant, therefore the Allied plans were deliberately malicious and misleading". Hindsight yadda yadda yadda, but seriously--it seems much more likely that the Allies had every reason to believe they were still in a very close arms race with the Germans, and planned accordingly.
Presumably a government could be interested in the practical effects of a nuclear explosion, under real-world conditions. A sufficiently evil goverment might even decide that the "experimental" data obtained by detonating a bomb in a real location would be worth the sacrifice.
But, as other people have pointed out, the timing was all wrong: the middle of WWII was probably the worst time to destroy badly needed war materiel.
Tests in a desert only go so far. Sooner or later, you're going to want to actually nuke a city, if only to find out what the bomb is really like.
Thank you! Though I should warn you that positive responses like yours do little to help me reconsider my aggressive and adversarial approach to Slashdot:)
This articles describes NOTHING about EverQuest...
And you know this because...?
I have never played EverQuest.
Translation: "Don't tell me all of the negative aspects of the game! Just tell me enough about it for me to decide if it's worth playing or not!
If you want to know what the game is about, read the advertising copy on the box (conveniently, the box also includes screenshots). As far as I can tell, it's basically Dungeons&Dragons, with no other goal than eternal leveling. Like Statbuilder, but with more eyecandy in the UI.
Fourth, a computer can lose and lose and lose, and doesn't care.
See, this is one thing that bothers me about single-player games: the computer has one set of strategies, and it sticks to them religiously. After a while, one of two things happens to me: either I figure out how to exploit the flaws in the AI's strategy, and end up trivially defeating it every time, or else the AI becomes more challenging simply by increasing the speed at which it reacts (reflex-based games), or the amount of resources available to it (turn-based strategy games), or both (real-time strategy games), until it is no longer humanly possible to keep up (and even if you could, you'd still be competing against the same old strategy the AI always uses). Both these outcomes are stupendously boring.
At least when you're playing against other humans, there's the possibility that your opponent will use learning and creativity to constantly surprise and challenge you, creating whole new levels of gameplay that an AI would never provide.
A good example of this problem is Virtua Fighter 4. The AI just uses the same set of techniques at all levels, simply increasing its speed and reaction time until you can't keep up. And it always falls to the same cheap shots (until you can't produce them fast enough to exploit whatever opening the AI has left for you).
When I play against my friend, however, the cheap shot that worked yestreday fails today, and I have to come up with a new and surprising technique to keep from getting my ass handed to me. This motivates my friend to improve his own techniques, which then makes it necessary for me to innovate, &c. My skill at the game improved much quicker when playing against humans than it did against the AI.
I still can't beat VF4 (arcade mode) consistently--how sad is that?--but I'll confidently take on any human challenger in a best-of-ten set.
I live in San Diego, if anyone wants to take me up on the offer.
Yeah, Stile was arguably "cool", back when he was posting some kind of fucked-up blog. Now that his site is nothing more than an extended banner ad for various pay-for porn sites, the pitiful remains of his "coolness" pale in comparison to The Hun.
Hrm. When I read the article, I assumed the author was an ex-player, recounting the spooky horrors of the game. I didn't find his statements any less useful or well-put simply because he doesn't tell us whether he was still playing or not.
I also don't see why every essay on the subject has to focus on the player's own problems. Apparently a knowledge of Sony's problems would be very helpful to someone who's considering EQ as a recreational activity, and I'd rather get that information from an addict who's played the game long enough to get a detailed insider's views of what Sony's problems are, than to get that information from a non-player whose analysis is purely theoretical, unsupported by actual experience.
Bashing the author because he's talking about Sony, and not about himself, completely misses the whole point of the article.
You're absolutely right that diabetes isn't like psychological addiction in a large number of very important ways.
What I was attempting to argue (very poorly, I admit), was that psychological addictions may be very difficult to resolve, and not susceptible to willpower alone--that telling someone to "just get over it" may be just as silly when you're talking about a psychological addiction as it is when you're talking about diabetes.
My sincere apologies to any diabetics. I'm not trying to trivialize that condition at all, and I'm very sorry if I've caused offense.
I admit it's not really a good metaphor. What I was trying to get at is that quitting a psychological addiction through willpower alone may be more like trying to cure diabetes through willpower alone than it is like not jaywalking through willpower alone.
That is, if working to stay a step ahead of the creditors, being gainfully employed and commuting in a nice car could be called anything other than slavery.
You've basically said the same thing the author of the article said, only stupid.
One of you presents a well-reasoned position, supported by verifiable factual statements and personal experiences. The other presents a trite invitation to "get a life", with the equally trite option of suicide.
One of you lays out your position on the matter clearly, allowing the reader to consider what you've said, weigh it against what else they know, and make their own decision. The other assumes the matter needs no discussion, and that anybody who doesn't "get it" is better off dead.
One of you, in fact, communicates an idea in a mature, thoughtful manner. The other contents themselves with childish flaming and empty catchphrases.
While I'm sure you're quite proud of your stunning ability to cut through the crap and get straight to the point, I greatly doubt that your insight and wisdom are in high demand anywhere rational people gather to discuss the issues of the day.
Actually, I think the author's point is that nobody's EQ game goes the way they would like. This point seems well supported by numerous examples of the mechanisms by which this happens. He doesn't give much explantion about what keeps most people from figuring this out, or doing anything about it, but that's really not too suprising: from many of the posts here, it's obvious that nobody understands addiction in the first place. At least he had the sense to not mouth off about it anyway. To me, a Slashdot article that sticks to concrete facts and avoids sophomoric speculation is a pleasant change of pace. Naturally, everybody else here hates it.
Or maybe--just maybe!--he hit level 62 before he realized what had happened to him. Then realization hit, he quit the game, and wrote an insightful and informative essay about his experience with EQ's unpleasantness.
He makes his purpose in bashing EQ and Sony quite clear in his essay. What's your purpose in bashing him?
Having read what you both have to say, I'm going with his opinion, not yours. At least his is well-reasond, clearly expressed, and generally pointful.
If you're trying to convince me to reject his opinion, you've failed. If you're trying to convince me to try out EQ after all, you've failed miserably.
If you're just ranting aimlessly as an outlet for some sort of ill-conceived smug superiority... then mission accomplished! I hope it works out well for you.
"Is your thinking irrational? No problem! Just think rationally instead!"
I'm glad it worked for you, but when it comes to habits and addictions, rest assured that you're in the minority. Coming across all smug and superior only demonstrates a certain callous ignorance WRT alchoholism, or smoking, or EQ, or whatever. Your advice isn't simple, it's simplistic.
You don't tell a diabetic to just give up diabetes, do you? Just because the process by which a psychological addiction exerts its hold over you is a black box, that doesn't mean it's any more trivial to resolve.
If Burning Man were truly devoid of any commercialism, you'd make your resources freely available to anyone who wanted them, without regard for receiving value in exchange. You'd move from camp to camp, taking anything that struck your fancy, without any concern for ownership or permission to do so.
As it is, I get the impression that most attendees intentionally bring trade goods which they hope to exchange for the goods and services which they haven't brought. If that isn't commercialism, I don't know what is.
Slashdot Mirror
Please read the sentence as "Proving that we didn't have to drop the bomb seems to have been easy to do after the fact."
I certainly didn't intend to say that the issue is unimportant or irrelevant!
A farmer must plow his fields to grow his crops. Is he a slave to his land? He must feed the horse that pulls his plow. Is he a slave to his horse? He must keep the plow in good repair, and sharpen its blade on a regular basis. Is he a slave to his plow?
Your definition of "slavery" appears to be directly contrary to the normal usage of the word. You're saying that all ownership is slavery to the thing that is owned, when normal usage defines the thing owned as a slave to its owner.
Reversing the convetional meanings of words is a clever rhetorical trick, and can be useful for shocking an audience into re-thinking of their current paradigm. I assume you have a coherent, well-reasoned argument in support of your position on slavery. Care to share it?
However, my main source for this is Copenhagen, an excellent play by Michael Frayn. I get the impression his research was thorough and honest, so I believe that Germany or its allies didn't have a suitable device to test at Port Chicago. YMMV, natch.
Last time I checked, the Feds wanted us to drink the water :p
"Organic" is also a technician's word, used to indicate that a particular element of a system is an integral component of the whole system, and not an outside element or influence.
For example, the U.S. military refers to battalion-level artillery as "organic" (that is, part of the standard equipment of a standard battalion according to current doctrine). This differentiates it from, say, a division-level artillery battery that has been attached to the battalion for this particular mission or scenario (that is, the division artillery is not organic to the battalion, but "tacked on" as an addiotional, outside resource).
"We had to drop the bomb, because the invasion would have been worse."
"No, it wouldn't have."
"You're right, but we didn't know that at the time."
Proving that we didn't have to drop the bomb seems to have been trivial after the fact. Can we please move on to proofs that the U.S. was reasonably certain that the bomb was unnecessary, but chose to use it anyway?
But is the cop evil, if evidence after the fact contradicts the reasonable conclusion he reached on the evidence available to him at the time? Or is he just doing his job the best he can?
At least we're reasonably certain there will be an investigation of the shooting. The evidence available to the cop, the training he received, and how he applied that training to the evidence, will be carefully reviewed. If he made a good decision, a proper investigation will probably exonerate him, and perhaps the training will be revised to prevent further mistakes of the same nature. If he made the wrong decision, he'll be suitably punished, and maybe training (or hiring practices, or performance reviews) will be adjusted as well.
Better than demonizing the U.S. willy-nilly for making a controversial decision during a major military conflict, would be to actually investigate the matter without bias, and either exonerate or censure the decision-makers (and the nation as a whole--the citizens should bear some responsibility for the behavior of their elected representatives), as the evidence indicates.
This is, of course, an utter fantasy.
What I want to know is this: How much did the Allies know about the German bomb program? It's easy to go back and read documentation that would have been classified at the time the Allies were making their strategic decisions and say something like, "well, obviously the German bomb program was irrelevant, therefore the Allied plans were deliberately malicious and misleading". Hindsight yadda yadda yadda, but seriously--it seems much more likely that the Allies had every reason to believe they were still in a very close arms race with the Germans, and planned accordingly.
Presumably a government could be interested in the practical effects of a nuclear explosion, under real-world conditions. A sufficiently evil goverment might even decide that the "experimental" data obtained by detonating a bomb in a real location would be worth the sacrifice.
But, as other people have pointed out, the timing was all wrong: the middle of WWII was probably the worst time to destroy badly needed war materiel.
Tests in a desert only go so far. Sooner or later, you're going to want to actually nuke a city, if only to find out what the bomb is really like.
More like Muddle English.
Thank you! Though I should warn you that positive responses like yours do little to help me reconsider my aggressive and adversarial approach to Slashdot :)
And you know this because...?
I have never played EverQuest.
Translation: "Don't tell me all of the negative aspects of the game! Just tell me enough about it for me to decide if it's worth playing or not!
If you want to know what the game is about, read the advertising copy on the box (conveniently, the box also includes screenshots). As far as I can tell, it's basically Dungeons&Dragons, with no other goal than eternal leveling. Like Statbuilder, but with more eyecandy in the UI.See, this is one thing that bothers me about single-player games: the computer has one set of strategies, and it sticks to them religiously. After a while, one of two things happens to me: either I figure out how to exploit the flaws in the AI's strategy, and end up trivially defeating it every time, or else the AI becomes more challenging simply by increasing the speed at which it reacts (reflex-based games), or the amount of resources available to it (turn-based strategy games), or both (real-time strategy games), until it is no longer humanly possible to keep up (and even if you could, you'd still be competing against the same old strategy the AI always uses). Both these outcomes are stupendously boring.
At least when you're playing against other humans, there's the possibility that your opponent will use learning and creativity to constantly surprise and challenge you, creating whole new levels of gameplay that an AI would never provide.
A good example of this problem is Virtua Fighter 4. The AI just uses the same set of techniques at all levels, simply increasing its speed and reaction time until you can't keep up. And it always falls to the same cheap shots (until you can't produce them fast enough to exploit whatever opening the AI has left for you).
When I play against my friend, however, the cheap shot that worked yestreday fails today, and I have to come up with a new and surprising technique to keep from getting my ass handed to me. This motivates my friend to improve his own techniques, which then makes it necessary for me to innovate, &c. My skill at the game improved much quicker when playing against humans than it did against the AI.
I still can't beat VF4 (arcade mode) consistently--how sad is that?--but I'll confidently take on any human challenger in a best-of-ten set.
I live in San Diego, if anyone wants to take me up on the offer.
Yeah, Stile was arguably "cool", back when he was posting some kind of fucked-up blog. Now that his site is nothing more than an extended banner ad for various pay-for porn sites, the pitiful remains of his "coolness" pale in comparison to The Hun.
Hrm. When I read the article, I assumed the author was an ex-player, recounting the spooky horrors of the game. I didn't find his statements any less useful or well-put simply because he doesn't tell us whether he was still playing or not.
I also don't see why every essay on the subject has to focus on the player's own problems. Apparently a knowledge of Sony's problems would be very helpful to someone who's considering EQ as a recreational activity, and I'd rather get that information from an addict who's played the game long enough to get a detailed insider's views of what Sony's problems are, than to get that information from a non-player whose analysis is purely theoretical, unsupported by actual experience.
Bashing the author because he's talking about Sony, and not about himself, completely misses the whole point of the article.
You're absolutely right that diabetes isn't like psychological addiction in a large number of very important ways.
What I was attempting to argue (very poorly, I admit), was that psychological addictions may be very difficult to resolve, and not susceptible to willpower alone--that telling someone to "just get over it" may be just as silly when you're talking about a psychological addiction as it is when you're talking about diabetes.
My sincere apologies to any diabetics. I'm not trying to trivialize that condition at all, and I'm very sorry if I've caused offense.
Diabetes and EQ are different? Fair enough.
I admit it's not really a good metaphor. What I was trying to get at is that quitting a psychological addiction through willpower alone may be more like trying to cure diabetes through willpower alone than it is like not jaywalking through willpower alone.
Slavery to what, exactly?
You've basically said the same thing the author of the article said, only stupid.
One of you presents a well-reasoned position, supported by verifiable factual statements and personal experiences. The other presents a trite invitation to "get a life", with the equally trite option of suicide.
One of you lays out your position on the matter clearly, allowing the reader to consider what you've said, weigh it against what else they know, and make their own decision. The other assumes the matter needs no discussion, and that anybody who doesn't "get it" is better off dead.
One of you, in fact, communicates an idea in a mature, thoughtful manner. The other contents themselves with childish flaming and empty catchphrases.
While I'm sure you're quite proud of your stunning ability to cut through the crap and get straight to the point, I greatly doubt that your insight and wisdom are in high demand anywhere rational people gather to discuss the issues of the day.
So basically EQ is just Statbuilder, with a UI designed to obfuscate that fact until you've invested too much time and money to just drop it?
If so, it's a a lot different from Chess, I'd say.
Actually, I think the author's point is that nobody's EQ game goes the way they would like. This point seems well supported by numerous examples of the mechanisms by which this happens. He doesn't give much explantion about what keeps most people from figuring this out, or doing anything about it, but that's really not too suprising: from many of the posts here, it's obvious that nobody understands addiction in the first place. At least he had the sense to not mouth off about it anyway. To me, a Slashdot article that sticks to concrete facts and avoids sophomoric speculation is a pleasant change of pace. Naturally, everybody else here hates it.
Or maybe--just maybe!--he hit level 62 before he realized what had happened to him. Then realization hit, he quit the game, and wrote an insightful and informative essay about his experience with EQ's unpleasantness.
He makes his purpose in bashing EQ and Sony quite clear in his essay. What's your purpose in bashing him?
Having read what you both have to say, I'm going with his opinion, not yours. At least his is well-reasond, clearly expressed, and generally pointful.
If you're trying to convince me to reject his opinion, you've failed. If you're trying to convince me to try out EQ after all, you've failed miserably.
If you're just ranting aimlessly as an outlet for some sort of ill-conceived smug superiority... then mission accomplished! I hope it works out well for you.
"Is your thinking irrational? No problem! Just think rationally instead!"
I'm glad it worked for you, but when it comes to habits and addictions, rest assured that you're in the minority. Coming across all smug and superior only demonstrates a certain callous ignorance WRT alchoholism, or smoking, or EQ, or whatever. Your advice isn't simple, it's simplistic.
You don't tell a diabetic to just give up diabetes, do you? Just because the process by which a psychological addiction exerts its hold over you is a black box, that doesn't mean it's any more trivial to resolve.
Barter is still commerce, you know.
If Burning Man were truly devoid of any commercialism, you'd make your resources freely available to anyone who wanted them, without regard for receiving value in exchange. You'd move from camp to camp, taking anything that struck your fancy, without any concern for ownership or permission to do so.
As it is, I get the impression that most attendees intentionally bring trade goods which they hope to exchange for the goods and services which they haven't brought. If that isn't commercialism, I don't know what is.