This means that, further, individuals with expertise will be probably undone when correcting common myth, perpetuating more falsehood.
I used to be one of those gung-ho wikipedia defenders until I started trying to participate. THAT was an eye-opening experience. You know the type of person that is commonly known as the "bureaucratic fuck?" The type of person you find in government that is nothing more than a peanut in the system but has power over you so they wield it like a tot with a lightsaber toy? That is the wikipedia "bureaucrat" in a nutshell. They don't care about what the actual facts are (and are quite proud to say so), they care more about rules being followed and WILL revert or otherwise defend false information if it's corrected in a manner they deem against the rules. I was editing out obvious bias and conspiracy theory nonsense and got reprimanded for undoing his edit three times. The guy had a fetish for the article in question because he had some kook bias and watched it like a hawk adding in his garbage all the time. The wiki staff told me to "let the community sort it out" but a month later his garbage was still on the page and they wouldn't do anything about it and I still couldn't revert it out over three times.
Eventually I did win especially when wiki started requiring more stringent citations, but I lost faith in the sham of their "arbitration" process. I once heard that wikipedia was just a bunch of nerds roleplaying a bureaucracy, and I'm convinced that's true. I'm sure the moderators and such watching over article revisions will be much like how the rest of WP works--the pro-Israel and anti-Israel crowds warring over the Israel article, the pedophiles whitewashing the pedophilia article (this occurs, I shit you not), and so on. This time though, whomever has the most moderators, wins.
We have the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world for a developed nation. That still isn't enough I guess.
Ok, so you picked one factor out of many, care to tell us why we should only concentrate on that one? I'm no fan of big business--they always collude with the government--but ignoring that, they don't owe you anything, a job or their product. If you buy it, you're coming out ahead, so quit the "help help I'm oppressed!" routine.
Yeah, but just because Bush was as much or more of a problem than Obama doesn't justify a damn thing, and Obama is the guy playing king now. How many years have to pass before people stop pointing the finger at Bush (for as awful a president as he was) and concentrate on the current administration, whatever it will be then? Also, a newsflash: the entire "system" didn't start with Bush. Bush is not even close to the root of the problem. Who cares who the actor is here when the part is always played the same?
I said "for most gamers." The Wii simply isn't aimed at -gamers- as a whole. It's aimed to the more casual crowd. I don't know why I got modded down trolling for stating a fact. Probably some Nintendo Internet Warrior...
If the Xbox360 gets Wii emulation then MS may have an incentive not to stop homebrew on it as (obviously) it will hurt one of their competitors.
Now, if only Wii's gaming library didn't suck for most gamers. (And mods, no, I'm not trolling--the only console I own is the Wii, and I'm disappointed).
They do business with people within those nations, but are not actually situated within those nations, unless of course they have some headquarters in that nation (or locality).
The principle here that applies to facebook also applies to Joe Normals' personal website where he allows people to post comments or perhaps even has his own message board. As he is collecting and storing user information, he, as per the parent's suggestion, as the obligation to go through each and every legal district in the world (as anyolne can visit his website). It doesn't matter if he's a commercial entity or not; the concerns behind privacy violations are still the exact same.
The only other solution is, of course, to restrict websites only to nations or localities where the legality of the website can be ensured. Is this how you want the internet to look? Sounds like a great way to censor oppressed peoples...! After all, I suppose there's a lot of people trying to say *illegal* things about the Iranian government (from within)...! I suppose when search engines are asked by oppressive foreign governments like the Chinese for information on what users have done or posted with them, it's a GOOD THING they are complying with the local laws--they are, after all, doing business with them, no?
There's a strange premise behind all this, and that's that *FACEBOOK* should be responsible. Why not shift the onus on Canadian citizens so only they can go to websites with government-approved "privacy" schemes, with penalties or fines for citizens that do not comply. That's very progressive, right? Social responsibility? Yes? No?
Or, how about, users research what they are getting into in the first place? Do you seriously expect facebook to go through the law books on every national and local level and state which laws, where, they are in compliance with, AND keep up-to-date on them? That's impossible, and ridiculous. I can't seriously fathom how you could seriously consider forcing someone to go through laws everywhere stating how they are in compliance with them.
Do you own a web site? Any sort of a web site? Good, because that same onus is now upon YOU to do the very same thing, if you collect any sort of user data. Have fun!
Summary doesn't make it clear that the Sheriff in question is Joe Arpaio, a sadistic, authoritarian monster that that believes in making prison as demeaning and painful affair as possible no matter what the offense. He's a sick, twisted psychopath that needs to be stopped at all cost.
Everyone is a "self-interested fuck" and you should NEVER blindly trust ANYONE. The parent you are responding to is right on the mark. Laws are very frequently interpreted in interested ways to get DAs another notch on their belt, and every message board I've been at, the moderators and admins would use gaps in the rules to enforce their own agendas (and of course then all the other moderators and admins would stand up for them). Rules against "insulting people," for example, are always extremely bad laws as one person's insult is another person's compliment or may at least be neutral. The label "racist" is highly appropriate but (political example incoming) I once accused someone of being "racist" by them supporting Israel's policy of favoring (racial) Jews, as all immigration policies that factor in race for whatever reason are racist. I was, of course, punished, yet they would also punish me if I said that to a skinhead if one were to be on the forums because it's an "insulting" word (despite the hypothetical skinhead highly favoring the word) as if words and their meanings had some sort of objective component and connotation. Other words of this type include "fag," "nerd" (which some of us/.'s take with pride), and even words such as "feminist", "socialist," and "anarchist." Then there are rules like "don't be a jerk," and laws IRL like "disorderly conduct" and "disturbing the peace" which anyone at any time can be convicted of simply because of how loose and subjective they are.
My point here is that any broad rule that is subject to moderator or admin or law/rulemaker interpretation can easily screw you over. And it doesn't even take an entire organization, one person within that organization can do it and the rest likely back them up. I've seen a fair lot of this so I'm assuming it's a sort of universal. If you're the odd man out arguing something unpopular or are not conforming properly you're a target and often a big one. Anyone who tells you we are a nation of laws is naive, and anyone who tells you you can ever trust an organization faithfully is idealistic.
Well, if they are going to use virtual currencies for virtual "property," they might as well settle this through a virtual court or at least beforehand let a (virtual) third party somehow be able to serve as a court with virtual enforcement. I'm serious.
Remember that they followed the constellations and stuff? Strange that "Old Earth"'s constellations are -our- constellations too!
Further, the shot of "Our Earth" in "Daybreak, Part II" makes it very unlikely (and stupid) that the "other Earth" would be the one shown in "Crossroads, Part II", because that would mean that both Earths would have to be twins with identical geographies.
You want to talk about identical geographies, let's talk about identical constellations in the skies! After all, they found "old" Earth via zodiac constellations that would be in -our- sky in the same relative positions that would be in -our- sky.
Doubtful, since it was pretty obvious they were making it up as they went along. First Earth was obviously supposed to be our Earth because one of the shots they gave of the planet had Earth's recognizable continents. Second, "real" Earth was a sort-of retcon they made up along the way. They didn't really know where they were going with the story.
As a psychology student I can already tell you that the idea of "universal expression" only lives on in pop culture, the idea was invalidated in science a fair while ago. While it is debatable whether emotions are natural or culturally generated it is complete uncontroversial to say that expression of emotion is culturally bound.
I have not personally heard this, and everything I've heard contradicts that. What is this?
Finally, the study in the article establishes that faces are READ differently, not that people are making different facial expressions. This is a big difference from the headline being given, but that's science reporting for you.
Facial expressions are, for the most part, universal; from what I see Ekman's studies have for the most part still held up. What are you basing your claim that the idea of universal facial expressions has been "invalidated by science a fair while ago?"
And a whole 'nother ending, to boot. The show's ending was awful, not just for reasons of plausibility and deus ex machina storytelling but because it ended on a very idiotic "moral" that should rightly offend any technology-loving slashdot nerd. The show managed to go along the entire time without really being preachy and muddying the waters on social issues... then BAM! It hits you with "OK THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS THE BEST KIND OF LIFE IS LIVING A SHORT, BRUTAL, DISEASE-FILLED EXISTENCE, LETS GET RID OF ALL OUR TECHNOLOGY!" and everyone agrees (despite nobody agreeing on anything else in the course of the show) and everyone goes their separate ways to die their eventual brutal deaths. Also, WATCH OUT YOUR ROOMBA WILL GET YOU.
For what it's worth, I think Bioware's KOTOR Online thing will have huge box sales and big initial numbers, and it will be a great Bioware RPG, but static content does not make for MMO subscriber retention.
What do you mean? The world in WoW is very static and we see how well that has done.
AoC was a terrible, shit game and flopped for many other reasons than you stated. One, a lot of stuff advertised was not in launch, I don't even know if DX10 is implemented yet, I stopped paying attention to that wreck a long time ago. Two, there were bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I've seen games in beta FAR more polished than AoC was. Three, the big attractions to the game, like sieges, just didn't work right. Four, the GMs were volunteers and were brats that didn't know what the rules and would suspend people on FFA PVP servers because they personally felt that people shouldn't gank lowbies, or such. WoW had a much better GM staff.
Warhammer just got boring after awhile and the questing world is no-where near as fun or as interesting as WoW's. Kind of ironic given that WoW's world (or at least elements from it) are obvious ripoffs from the Warhammer universe, and they didn't offer enough incentives for capturing areas. I don't know what the current state of the game is, I quit because of lack of interest and (college) classes.
A random aside: Of all the MMOs I played, WoW really was the best, and whether WoW was enjoyable or not is completely contingent on the people you play with. I had a lot of fun playing WoW back with my (old, now disbanded) guild, probably more fun than I'm having now. I still chat with people I met in the game years later. I don't really know where the game has gone now.
I have faith in KOTOR, though, because Bioware always seems to release truly great stuff. But only time will tell. As for Aion, I'm not really sure what is supposed to be unique about it. I have to say I doubt it will hit WAR's launch numbers...
My recent trip to the zoo, while somewhat entertaining and good exercise, reminded me just how much I hate little children and idiots. I swear, if I hear ANYONE say, "LOOK, A MONKEY!" again and point to an orangutan or gorilla I'm going to kill someone.
Uh, are you familiar with gaming print media at all....? He's basically giving a real-life example of what everyone already knows.
You are quite right about online reviews sites being "pray" to the whims of sponsors... Kane & Lynch, anyone? But unlike magazines, websites also offer reader views, and the ease and variety of reviews makes this much less of a problem.
Just think--an end to war, violence, depravity, poverty, oppression. Everyone will TRULY become equal then. Who knew the sun could be so... so... progressive?
Video game magazines have always been rubbish, at least until the internet came out, especially with broadband. Biased reviews in favor of anticipated big hits (review our game bad and we'll just see who gets preview copies of this game we're working on next time!), terrible, corny humor and transparent attempts to be "edgy" corny than anything else, useless information, outdated information (since almost all gaming magazines came out monthly), useless strategy guides since they had obviously limited space and a variety of games to cover. Many pages going over a game you'll never give a crap about on a system you don't even own. Cheat codes have increasingly become less about punching in the right button sequences and now tend to be earned bonuses. Any game help is more quickly found online, and instead of taking the word of one or a few people that write for the magazine you can see how much people in general tend to rate the game on websites. Combine that with the fact that an important part of gaming is actual in-game action and magazines can only provide still photos (unless they come with a bonus DVD) there's really no reason at all to waste time with a gaming magazine. Oh, and the fact that every other page in a gaming magazine was an advertisement? Yeah.
I'm sure most of the stories broken earlier in video game magazines is usually just due to promised exclusive deals with the magazines and that without the magazines the information would have been released through some other channel (hey, instead of you announcing that game publicly let us break the news first...). How much of "gaming journalism" is really actually journalism? Not much, I think, especially since the industry so heavily guards its secrets.
Slashdot Mirror
This means that, further, individuals with expertise will be probably undone when correcting common myth, perpetuating more falsehood.
I used to be one of those gung-ho wikipedia defenders until I started trying to participate. THAT was an eye-opening experience. You know the type of person that is commonly known as the "bureaucratic fuck?" The type of person you find in government that is nothing more than a peanut in the system but has power over you so they wield it like a tot with a lightsaber toy? That is the wikipedia "bureaucrat" in a nutshell. They don't care about what the actual facts are (and are quite proud to say so), they care more about rules being followed and WILL revert or otherwise defend false information if it's corrected in a manner they deem against the rules. I was editing out obvious bias and conspiracy theory nonsense and got reprimanded for undoing his edit three times. The guy had a fetish for the article in question because he had some kook bias and watched it like a hawk adding in his garbage all the time. The wiki staff told me to "let the community sort it out" but a month later his garbage was still on the page and they wouldn't do anything about it and I still couldn't revert it out over three times.
Eventually I did win especially when wiki started requiring more stringent citations, but I lost faith in the sham of their "arbitration" process. I once heard that wikipedia was just a bunch of nerds roleplaying a bureaucracy, and I'm convinced that's true. I'm sure the moderators and such watching over article revisions will be much like how the rest of WP works--the pro-Israel and anti-Israel crowds warring over the Israel article, the pedophiles whitewashing the pedophilia article (this occurs, I shit you not), and so on. This time though, whomever has the most moderators, wins.
We have the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world for a developed nation. That still isn't enough I guess.
Ok, so you picked one factor out of many, care to tell us why we should only concentrate on that one? I'm no fan of big business--they always collude with the government--but ignoring that, they don't owe you anything, a job or their product. If you buy it, you're coming out ahead, so quit the "help help I'm oppressed!" routine.
Yeah, but just because Bush was as much or more of a problem than Obama doesn't justify a damn thing, and Obama is the guy playing king now. How many years have to pass before people stop pointing the finger at Bush (for as awful a president as he was) and concentrate on the current administration, whatever it will be then? Also, a newsflash: the entire "system" didn't start with Bush. Bush is not even close to the root of the problem. Who cares who the actor is here when the part is always played the same?
Don't forget the classic, A Confederacy of Dunces.
I'm one of the people that was conned into buying the game waaay back when it had problems. Does it still have problems? What's the game like now?
I said "for most gamers." The Wii simply isn't aimed at -gamers- as a whole. It's aimed to the more casual crowd. I don't know why I got modded down trolling for stating a fact. Probably some Nintendo Internet Warrior...
If the Xbox360 gets Wii emulation then MS may have an incentive not to stop homebrew on it as (obviously) it will hurt one of their competitors.
Now, if only Wii's gaming library didn't suck for most gamers. (And mods, no, I'm not trolling--the only console I own is the Wii, and I'm disappointed).
They do business with people within those nations, but are not actually situated within those nations, unless of course they have some headquarters in that nation (or locality).
The principle here that applies to facebook also applies to Joe Normals' personal website where he allows people to post comments or perhaps even has his own message board. As he is collecting and storing user information, he, as per the parent's suggestion, as the obligation to go through each and every legal district in the world (as anyolne can visit his website). It doesn't matter if he's a commercial entity or not; the concerns behind privacy violations are still the exact same.
The only other solution is, of course, to restrict websites only to nations or localities where the legality of the website can be ensured. Is this how you want the internet to look? Sounds like a great way to censor oppressed peoples...! After all, I suppose there's a lot of people trying to say *illegal* things about the Iranian government (from within)...! I suppose when search engines are asked by oppressive foreign governments like the Chinese for information on what users have done or posted with them, it's a GOOD THING they are complying with the local laws--they are, after all, doing business with them, no?
There's a strange premise behind all this, and that's that *FACEBOOK* should be responsible. Why not shift the onus on Canadian citizens so only they can go to websites with government-approved "privacy" schemes, with penalties or fines for citizens that do not comply. That's very progressive, right? Social responsibility? Yes? No?
Or, how about, users research what they are getting into in the first place? Do you seriously expect facebook to go through the law books on every national and local level and state which laws, where, they are in compliance with, AND keep up-to-date on them? That's impossible, and ridiculous. I can't seriously fathom how you could seriously consider forcing someone to go through laws everywhere stating how they are in compliance with them.
Do you own a web site? Any sort of a web site? Good, because that same onus is now upon YOU to do the very same thing, if you collect any sort of user data. Have fun!
Sorry, forgot link:
http://www.arpaio.com/index.php
There's a reason this asshole has such a critical website over him. I firmly believe he's a sociopath.
Summary doesn't make it clear that the Sheriff in question is Joe Arpaio, a sadistic, authoritarian monster that that believes in making prison as demeaning and painful affair as possible no matter what the offense. He's a sick, twisted psychopath that needs to be stopped at all cost.
Everyone is a "self-interested fuck" and you should NEVER blindly trust ANYONE. The parent you are responding to is right on the mark. Laws are very frequently interpreted in interested ways to get DAs another notch on their belt, and every message board I've been at, the moderators and admins would use gaps in the rules to enforce their own agendas (and of course then all the other moderators and admins would stand up for them). Rules against "insulting people," for example, are always extremely bad laws as one person's insult is another person's compliment or may at least be neutral. The label "racist" is highly appropriate but (political example incoming) I once accused someone of being "racist" by them supporting Israel's policy of favoring (racial) Jews, as all immigration policies that factor in race for whatever reason are racist. I was, of course, punished, yet they would also punish me if I said that to a skinhead if one were to be on the forums because it's an "insulting" word (despite the hypothetical skinhead highly favoring the word) as if words and their meanings had some sort of objective component and connotation. Other words of this type include "fag," "nerd" (which some of us /.'s take with pride), and even words such as "feminist", "socialist," and "anarchist." Then there are rules like "don't be a jerk," and laws IRL like "disorderly conduct" and "disturbing the peace" which anyone at any time can be convicted of simply because of how loose and subjective they are.
My point here is that any broad rule that is subject to moderator or admin or law/rulemaker interpretation can easily screw you over. And it doesn't even take an entire organization, one person within that organization can do it and the rest likely back them up. I've seen a fair lot of this so I'm assuming it's a sort of universal. If you're the odd man out arguing something unpopular or are not conforming properly you're a target and often a big one. Anyone who tells you we are a nation of laws is naive, and anyone who tells you you can ever trust an organization faithfully is idealistic.
Well, if they are going to use virtual currencies for virtual "property," they might as well settle this through a virtual court or at least beforehand let a (virtual) third party somehow be able to serve as a court with virtual enforcement. I'm serious.
Remember that they followed the constellations and stuff? Strange that "Old Earth"'s constellations are -our- constellations too!
You want to talk about identical geographies, let's talk about identical constellations in the skies! After all, they found "old" Earth via zodiac constellations that would be in -our- sky in the same relative positions that would be in -our- sky.
Doubtful, since it was pretty obvious they were making it up as they went along. First Earth was obviously supposed to be our Earth because one of the shots they gave of the planet had Earth's recognizable continents. Second, "real" Earth was a sort-of retcon they made up along the way. They didn't really know where they were going with the story.
So... basically, they're trying to create the very first politician AI?
I have not personally heard this, and everything I've heard contradicts that. What is this?
Finally, the study in the article establishes that faces are READ differently, not that people are making different facial expressions. This is a big difference from the headline being given, but that's science reporting for you.
Facial expressions are, for the most part, universal; from what I see Ekman's studies have for the most part still held up. What are you basing your claim that the idea of universal facial expressions has been "invalidated by science a fair while ago?"
She killed the baby as a sort of strange act of mercy.
And a whole 'nother ending, to boot. The show's ending was awful, not just for reasons of plausibility and deus ex machina storytelling but because it ended on a very idiotic "moral" that should rightly offend any technology-loving slashdot nerd. The show managed to go along the entire time without really being preachy and muddying the waters on social issues... then BAM! It hits you with "OK THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS THE BEST KIND OF LIFE IS LIVING A SHORT, BRUTAL, DISEASE-FILLED EXISTENCE, LETS GET RID OF ALL OUR TECHNOLOGY!" and everyone agrees (despite nobody agreeing on anything else in the course of the show) and everyone goes their separate ways to die their eventual brutal deaths. Also, WATCH OUT YOUR ROOMBA WILL GET YOU.
For what it's worth, I think Bioware's KOTOR Online thing will have huge box sales and big initial numbers, and it will be a great Bioware RPG, but static content does not make for MMO subscriber retention.
What do you mean? The world in WoW is very static and we see how well that has done.
AoC was a terrible, shit game and flopped for many other reasons than you stated. One, a lot of stuff advertised was not in launch, I don't even know if DX10 is implemented yet, I stopped paying attention to that wreck a long time ago. Two, there were bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I've seen games in beta FAR more polished than AoC was. Three, the big attractions to the game, like sieges, just didn't work right. Four, the GMs were volunteers and were brats that didn't know what the rules and would suspend people on FFA PVP servers because they personally felt that people shouldn't gank lowbies, or such. WoW had a much better GM staff.
Warhammer just got boring after awhile and the questing world is no-where near as fun or as interesting as WoW's. Kind of ironic given that WoW's world (or at least elements from it) are obvious ripoffs from the Warhammer universe, and they didn't offer enough incentives for capturing areas. I don't know what the current state of the game is, I quit because of lack of interest and (college) classes.
A random aside: Of all the MMOs I played, WoW really was the best, and whether WoW was enjoyable or not is completely contingent on the people you play with. I had a lot of fun playing WoW back with my (old, now disbanded) guild, probably more fun than I'm having now. I still chat with people I met in the game years later. I don't really know where the game has gone now.
I have faith in KOTOR, though, because Bioware always seems to release truly great stuff. But only time will tell. As for Aion, I'm not really sure what is supposed to be unique about it. I have to say I doubt it will hit WAR's launch numbers...
My recent trip to the zoo, while somewhat entertaining and good exercise, reminded me just how much I hate little children and idiots. I swear, if I hear ANYONE say, "LOOK, A MONKEY!" again and point to an orangutan or gorilla I'm going to kill someone.
Uh, are you familiar with gaming print media at all....? He's basically giving a real-life example of what everyone already knows.
You are quite right about online reviews sites being "pray" to the whims of sponsors... Kane & Lynch, anyone? But unlike magazines, websites also offer reader views, and the ease and variety of reviews makes this much less of a problem.
Just think--an end to war, violence, depravity, poverty, oppression. Everyone will TRULY become equal then. Who knew the sun could be so... so... progressive?
er, should be
"..terrible, corny humor and transparent attempts to be "edgy" that were more ridiculous than anything else,"
Video game magazines have always been rubbish, at least until the internet came out, especially with broadband. Biased reviews in favor of anticipated big hits (review our game bad and we'll just see who gets preview copies of this game we're working on next time!), terrible, corny humor and transparent attempts to be "edgy" corny than anything else, useless information, outdated information (since almost all gaming magazines came out monthly), useless strategy guides since they had obviously limited space and a variety of games to cover. Many pages going over a game you'll never give a crap about on a system you don't even own. Cheat codes have increasingly become less about punching in the right button sequences and now tend to be earned bonuses. Any game help is more quickly found online, and instead of taking the word of one or a few people that write for the magazine you can see how much people in general tend to rate the game on websites. Combine that with the fact that an important part of gaming is actual in-game action and magazines can only provide still photos (unless they come with a bonus DVD) there's really no reason at all to waste time with a gaming magazine. Oh, and the fact that every other page in a gaming magazine was an advertisement? Yeah.
I'm sure most of the stories broken earlier in video game magazines is usually just due to promised exclusive deals with the magazines and that without the magazines the information would have been released through some other channel (hey, instead of you announcing that game publicly let us break the news first...). How much of "gaming journalism" is really actually journalism? Not much, I think, especially since the industry so heavily guards its secrets.