Boring artist statements aside, arts and engineering/sciences have always been fused together. The music we take for granted today (Well Temperment) with different keys and chromaticisms wouldn't have been able to exist without developments of mathematics in the Rennaisance, and likewise the instruments we take for granted today are the results of engineering, metalwork and so forth (the piano would not exist without such developments). Likewise all the electronic music we listen to today is the result of engineers (or maybe I should say Rennaisance men/women/polymaths) messing about with large-scale DIY projects in the 20th century.
Think of it like 'general research' in the Sciences. General research is important because that's how new ideas are discovered. You fuck around and play with ideas and eventually something good comes out of it. And there's definitely a dedicated crowd of enthusiasts for this kind of exploration.
Agreed. Finding any sort of real facts takes a lot of effort.. it's almost like being a historian, reading clearly biased accounts of ancient events. You have to be willing to put in the work to separate the facts from the fiction and even then there are no guarantees.
What I do find interesting though, is that many people who subscribe to conspiracy theories are very critical of the mainstream media, but as soon as you put together a YouTube video with scary music, they completely turn off that little part of the brain that engages in critical thinking and accept whatever they are being fed completely and unquestioningly, and even become adamant that it is factual.
Really, as soon as we got more than one TV channel with the news on it, we had the option of picking and choosing the news that causes us the least discomfort and appeals to our personal biases. The internet has of course taken this to the extreme, now we have news and information sites tailor-made to appeal to the cognitive biases of whatever demograph you fit into. You can spend your entire life on the internet as a young-earth creationist and never challenge your beliefs once.
The problem of course is human nature. If you are a conspiracy theorist there is plenty of media available depending on your political spectrum, from the Obama Deception to Zeitgeist. Both examples take advantage of the ability our human brains have for associating things that may have no relation to each other at all. All you have to do is take little snippets of media, string them together into some kind of narrative complete with Scary Music (tm) and you can make up any kind of "facts" you want. I've actually heard some people on the net defend the absurdity that is Zeitgeist by claiming it is anti-propaganda, as if there is some kind of information war going on and we must fight 'bad' information with 'good' information.
Nowadays I frequently run into people who believe in 2012, and they provide me with tons of videos full of 'proof' of their conjecture. I run into people who believe that Obama is not an American citizen, they likewise have tons of 'proof'. This is just the beginning of a phenomenon made possible by information customized to appeal to cognitive bias. The article above is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Very true, and hence Japan was the centerpiece for a great deal of popular cyberpunk from that era. So many of us grew up with imagery of Japan as some kind of technotropolis when in reality the imagery we were presented of was just representative of a few commercial districts in downtown Tokyo.
I'm not sure what point it is you are attempting to convey. That because there have been no useful therapies or medicines developed as of yet, this line of research should be abandoned?
When it comes to the race to develop new technologies, I'm always reminded of the (easily missed) quote at the beginning of Deus Ex: "Their... 'ethical inflexibility' has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider."
For example China does not have the ethical hangups about stem cell research that we do here in the west. Perhaps they will be developing new medicines and cures based on their research--and we will end up using it in the end as well.
Personally, I think that's exactly what they want... absolute control over the distribution of their software. It sucks for those of us who are genuinely interested in the history of gaming.
...that will probably exist to meet the needs of us gamers who can't be bothered with having to jump through hoops to play a game. For example, I'm frequently on the go, my gaming PC is a laptop, and there is nothing more annoying than having to rely on finding a sketchy wi-fi signal coming from somewhere just to be able to play my Steam-powered games. (And no, realistically, offline mode in steam is simply not reliable). So, given the choice to buy say for example Bioshock off of steam or from a system such as Direct2Drive that gives me a download and an install key, I'll avoid Steam when I can.
I'm sure there are going to be the usual 'if we lived longer civilization would collapse' arguments, forgetting that if I can live into my 100's.. I'm going to be aging a lot slower, hence working a lot longer as well. If I have the body of a 50 y/o and I'm 100, why would I stop working? The whole point would be to keep busy and active throughout my longer, healthier life.
I'm all for reducing waste and saving the environment, but so often it seems that the best way to make money off of customers is to invent some kind of 'environment' related fee.. if you are against it, you must not care about the environment! Nevermind the profit.. Pay your $0.25 per plastic bag, and save the environment at the same time by donating $0.245 to the chain *cough* environment.. (Maybe I'm getting a little bitter in my old age here.)
I don't think there's anything new there. As the anecdote goes, when Galileo presented the telescope to some of his peers, they didn't even bother looking at the sky, they didn't care. Instead they started using it to snoop on their neighbors.
I'm glad the article mentions this aspect of the problem. I work in a university maintaining computer equipment. Just last week I was in a biology class as it was ending, and the professor got into a heated debate with a student who was clearly a creationist. And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science, rather, they distract from the actual questions that need to be asked. (For the record, I was raised a creationist and I am certainly not one now, if I am religious in any sense it is perhaps in the vein of Einstein's 'god'.. and I can tell you that if anything impedes the creationist coming to understand evolution, it is belligerent atheists who do not understand the creationist mindset.)
As an example.. back to my anecdote: The creationist assumes that all scientists are acting out of some personal vendetta to get god, that's what his bible literature and church has told him. The teacher immediately makes the tactical blunder of outright implying 'you can't scientifically prove your myths' and as correct as that may be, saying this outright only confirms the fears of the student, making the student become defensive, hence confirming the fears the teacher has that his student is living in a delusion. And the conversation can go in circles for hours, the teacher not really helping the student, the student not learning anything about scientific methodology.
How different that conversation would have gone if the teacher simply started things off by saying 'science is simply a method for testing and observing the world. it cannot prove or disprove the existence of your god. that's not what it's for. some religious people think god exists and used evolution and the big bang to create the universe. scientifically, we can't know. all we know is that pretty much all observational evidence points out that the universe is expanding and that life is evolving. it doesn't tell us how/why/where it all came from.'
I don't know if this would convince the student, but it would at least be a start, rather than arguing about the student's internal belief system, which will certainly not get the student to crack that textbook and start analyzing the facts for himself.
'EA has finally decided to simply send editors of prominent gaming sites checks for $200. The point? If the checks are cashed, the gaming press is greedy. If they're not, the gaming press is wasteful.'..Donate your checks to an art scholarship fund, or some sort of constructive charity/service. No waste, no greed!
In the Real World (tm) there is no such thing as a person who is always right. Being correct means you have put the work in to learn about something and understand it correctly. Which means you were wrong or ignorant once, and you decided to improve yourself at some point.
I'm much more into people who are well-balanced in their decision-making processes: open to learning new ideas, able to consider different opinions and make a careful and rational choice without their egos getting (too) involved. Those are the ones who will continuously make the best decisions in the long term.
Growing up in the 20th century the mission to mars was always just around the corner when presented in science books and media in general. At some point I got used to hearing the so-called predicted dates for when this could happen being pushed back yet another decade after yet another decade. The cold war race to the moon was one thing. But I think the only way we will ever conceivably branch out into space beyond the moon (and to mars) is for nations to work together sharing resources and knowledge. Nice to see these steps being taken in the right direction.
.. a strategy as old as the hills. Aim as high as you can. Aim for the moon. Demand absolutely draconian laws.
Then bend a bit to get what it was you originally wanted. Look, we're compromising.. it's still a criminal offense to mod your cell phone so you can play your own MP3s on it instead of being limited to the DRM ringtones, but at least there's no three strikes you're out rule!
Slashdot Mirror
Boring artist statements aside, arts and engineering/sciences have always been fused together. The music we take for granted today (Well Temperment) with different keys and chromaticisms wouldn't have been able to exist without developments of mathematics in the Rennaisance, and likewise the instruments we take for granted today are the results of engineering, metalwork and so forth (the piano would not exist without such developments). Likewise all the electronic music we listen to today is the result of engineers (or maybe I should say Rennaisance men/women/polymaths) messing about with large-scale DIY projects in the 20th century. Think of it like 'general research' in the Sciences. General research is important because that's how new ideas are discovered. You fuck around and play with ideas and eventually something good comes out of it. And there's definitely a dedicated crowd of enthusiasts for this kind of exploration.
Agreed. Finding any sort of real facts takes a lot of effort.. it's almost like being a historian, reading clearly biased accounts of ancient events. You have to be willing to put in the work to separate the facts from the fiction and even then there are no guarantees. What I do find interesting though, is that many people who subscribe to conspiracy theories are very critical of the mainstream media, but as soon as you put together a YouTube video with scary music, they completely turn off that little part of the brain that engages in critical thinking and accept whatever they are being fed completely and unquestioningly, and even become adamant that it is factual.
Really, as soon as we got more than one TV channel with the news on it, we had the option of picking and choosing the news that causes us the least discomfort and appeals to our personal biases. The internet has of course taken this to the extreme, now we have news and information sites tailor-made to appeal to the cognitive biases of whatever demograph you fit into. You can spend your entire life on the internet as a young-earth creationist and never challenge your beliefs once. The problem of course is human nature. If you are a conspiracy theorist there is plenty of media available depending on your political spectrum, from the Obama Deception to Zeitgeist. Both examples take advantage of the ability our human brains have for associating things that may have no relation to each other at all. All you have to do is take little snippets of media, string them together into some kind of narrative complete with Scary Music (tm) and you can make up any kind of "facts" you want. I've actually heard some people on the net defend the absurdity that is Zeitgeist by claiming it is anti-propaganda, as if there is some kind of information war going on and we must fight 'bad' information with 'good' information. Nowadays I frequently run into people who believe in 2012, and they provide me with tons of videos full of 'proof' of their conjecture. I run into people who believe that Obama is not an American citizen, they likewise have tons of 'proof'. This is just the beginning of a phenomenon made possible by information customized to appeal to cognitive bias. The article above is really just the tip of the iceberg.
"That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been." So you expected the project to fail outright from the start.
Very true, and hence Japan was the centerpiece for a great deal of popular cyberpunk from that era. So many of us grew up with imagery of Japan as some kind of technotropolis when in reality the imagery we were presented of was just representative of a few commercial districts in downtown Tokyo.
I should really get that fixed.
I'm not sure what point it is you are attempting to convey. That because there have been no useful therapies or medicines developed as of yet, this line of research should be abandoned?
Ouch. That's like going cold turkey on the smack and the cigarettes at the same time.
When it comes to the race to develop new technologies, I'm always reminded of the (easily missed) quote at the beginning of Deus Ex: "Their... 'ethical inflexibility' has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider." For example China does not have the ethical hangups about stem cell research that we do here in the west. Perhaps they will be developing new medicines and cures based on their research--and we will end up using it in the end as well.
Personally, I think that's exactly what they want... absolute control over the distribution of their software. It sucks for those of us who are genuinely interested in the history of gaming.
...that will probably exist to meet the needs of us gamers who can't be bothered with having to jump through hoops to play a game. For example, I'm frequently on the go, my gaming PC is a laptop, and there is nothing more annoying than having to rely on finding a sketchy wi-fi signal coming from somewhere just to be able to play my Steam-powered games. (And no, realistically, offline mode in steam is simply not reliable). So, given the choice to buy say for example Bioshock off of steam or from a system such as Direct2Drive that gives me a download and an install key, I'll avoid Steam when I can.
I'm sure there are going to be the usual 'if we lived longer civilization would collapse' arguments, forgetting that if I can live into my 100's.. I'm going to be aging a lot slower, hence working a lot longer as well. If I have the body of a 50 y/o and I'm 100, why would I stop working? The whole point would be to keep busy and active throughout my longer, healthier life.
Sounds like he shares the same kind of kink as the famous cartoonist, who was notorious for his piggy-back rides.
Yes, some prereading required before filtering the data!
90% of everything (you read) is horsepucky.
I'm all for reducing waste and saving the environment, but so often it seems that the best way to make money off of customers is to invent some kind of 'environment' related fee.. if you are against it, you must not care about the environment! Nevermind the profit.. Pay your $0.25 per plastic bag, and save the environment at the same time by donating $0.245 to the chain *cough* environment.. (Maybe I'm getting a little bitter in my old age here.)
I don't think there's anything new there. As the anecdote goes, when Galileo presented the telescope to some of his peers, they didn't even bother looking at the sky, they didn't care. Instead they started using it to snoop on their neighbors.
I'm glad the article mentions this aspect of the problem. I work in a university maintaining computer equipment. Just last week I was in a biology class as it was ending, and the professor got into a heated debate with a student who was clearly a creationist. And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science, rather, they distract from the actual questions that need to be asked. (For the record, I was raised a creationist and I am certainly not one now, if I am religious in any sense it is perhaps in the vein of Einstein's 'god'.. and I can tell you that if anything impedes the creationist coming to understand evolution, it is belligerent atheists who do not understand the creationist mindset.)
As an example.. back to my anecdote: The creationist assumes that all scientists are acting out of some personal vendetta to get god, that's what his bible literature and church has told him. The teacher immediately makes the tactical blunder of outright implying 'you can't scientifically prove your myths' and as correct as that may be, saying this outright only confirms the fears of the student, making the student become defensive, hence confirming the fears the teacher has that his student is living in a delusion. And the conversation can go in circles for hours, the teacher not really helping the student, the student not learning anything about scientific methodology.
How different that conversation would have gone if the teacher simply started things off by saying 'science is simply a method for testing and observing the world. it cannot prove or disprove the existence of your god. that's not what it's for. some religious people think god exists and used evolution and the big bang to create the universe. scientifically, we can't know. all we know is that pretty much all observational evidence points out that the universe is expanding and that life is evolving. it doesn't tell us how/why/where it all came from.'
I don't know if this would convince the student, but it would at least be a start, rather than arguing about the student's internal belief system, which will certainly not get the student to crack that textbook and start analyzing the facts for himself.
'EA has finally decided to simply send editors of prominent gaming sites checks for $200. The point? If the checks are cashed, the gaming press is greedy. If they're not, the gaming press is wasteful.' ..Donate your checks to an art scholarship fund, or some sort of constructive charity/service. No waste, no greed!
In the Real World (tm) there is no such thing as a person who is always right. Being correct means you have put the work in to learn about something and understand it correctly. Which means you were wrong or ignorant once, and you decided to improve yourself at some point. I'm much more into people who are well-balanced in their decision-making processes: open to learning new ideas, able to consider different opinions and make a careful and rational choice without their egos getting (too) involved. Those are the ones who will continuously make the best decisions in the long term.
Funny how probably just about anyone who grew up in the 80's could hum out the theme songs to these two bleepy and catchy-as-hell soundtracks.
Growing up in the 20th century the mission to mars was always just around the corner when presented in science books and media in general. At some point I got used to hearing the so-called predicted dates for when this could happen being pushed back yet another decade after yet another decade. The cold war race to the moon was one thing. But I think the only way we will ever conceivably branch out into space beyond the moon (and to mars) is for nations to work together sharing resources and knowledge. Nice to see these steps being taken in the right direction.
.. a strategy as old as the hills. Aim as high as you can. Aim for the moon. Demand absolutely draconian laws. Then bend a bit to get what it was you originally wanted. Look, we're compromising.. it's still a criminal offense to mod your cell phone so you can play your own MP3s on it instead of being limited to the DRM ringtones, but at least there's no three strikes you're out rule!
Once you got the ability to jump, there were spots in the game where you could jump right over the walls and run around outside the level
True. Evidently a work in progress.