Yeah, that's a load of meaningless gobbledygook. I'd like to see how quickly a class of students tunes *that* out if you tried to deliver it in class.
From the studies I've seen only a very small amount of "critical thinking" preparation (like, just a few hours) has any helpful effect on students. Past that, it's specifically how much rich content is delivered that determines how smart they end up.
Also, "atom" in the original Greek means "uncuttable" or "the smallest indivisible particle of matter". Therefore people who use it to refer to a collection of protons and neutrons with an electron cloud are using the term incorrectly. They can only properly use "atom" to refer to the smallest piece of matter, perhaps quarks are something as-yet undiscovered.
Or wait... maybe sticking purely to original etymology is a mistake.
Only quibble is how far back "cyberpunk" goes, any grandfather is certainly older than Max Headroom. Check out Larry McCaffery's anthology "Storming the Reality Studio" and its Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide. It starts with 1818's Frankenstein and goes up from there. Viewable at Google Book Search:
P.S. This is on my mind because I just recently finished Burrough's "The Soft Machine" from 1961 which is also listed as a grandfather of cyberpunk, and provides the name to that anthology:
"See, preventing me from using your resources to spread my message isn't censorship, because you aren't preventing me from spreading my message, you are preventing me from using your resources, which you have every right to do."
You are totally incorrect. All censorship occurs in some context -- some censorship is small, others large. But it is censorship just the same.
Would you say, "My message gets blocked by the US government, but I can still publish it in Canada, so my message gets out somewhere, hence it's not censorship."? Or, "the NBC censor blocked that scene, but the CBS censor did not, therefore it doesn't qualify as censorship"? Ridiculous.
"It's more like 'If you want to make and sell products for Vista, you can't make and sell products for XP.' Both products are made the the same company..."
No, that's incorrect. The OGL *license* was originally made by WOTC. But there are now many products that are completely unique games published under that license. In some cases they have zero to do with any of the WOTC brands or products.
Say you created a brand-new piece of software and released it under the Sun Public License (or something). Later, Sun starts aggressively trying to stop publishing of any software ever released under the SPL, including yours. That's what this is most like.
In general, that's a very good summary of what's blown up over the weekend (WOTC made an announcement that a GSL would be coming last Thursday). However, a couple things to keep in mind:
- WOTC spokespeople have made conflicting and contradictory statements and backtracking on their plans since last November. First there was to be a revised OGL, then a GSL with publisher buy-in of $5,000, then no GSL, now GSL with no buy-in, etc.
- WOTC hasn't officially confirmed the "poison pill" clause yet (publishing for 4E prohibits you from any more Open Game License publishing). This was related second-hand by Clark Peterson, the well-regarded head of Necromancer Games (and a lawyer), as being delivered to him by WOTC staff members. Two WOTC spokespeople have been posting in the same thread over the weekend, but have ambiguously neither directly confirmed nor denied that statement.
- No one's seen the actual new license yet. WOTC has been saying all year long that it was within a week of being released. Clearly the GSL is intended to be far more restrictive than the OGL (one thing they've been consistent on is that it must directly support the Dungeons & Dragons brand, that it restricts product types, has a community standards clause, is revocable by WOTC, etc., none of which existed in the OGL). But once again after all the riot with the new announcement last week, the speaking Brand Manager for WOTC revealed Saturday that he *still* hadn't received the actual text of the license!
- Physical D&D 4E books are at the printers, to be released in June. A true conspiracist would think that the ongoing confusion might be WOTC FUD to delay third-party publisher business plans until 4E has already been purchased widely by the customer base. (But I think that's a low-probability bet.)
So what's coming out of WOTC is pretty messed up. My observation is that it's been clear since January that WOTC was going to take some shot at attacking the Open Game community. I'm guessing it's at least 80% likely that this company-wide "poison pill" restriction is in fact present in the new GSL. But everything that's come out of WOTC so far this year on the issue has turned out to be incorrect and later retracted. So we'll see about this latest one.
So you're saying that somehow I magically choose Door 1 twice as often as any other door? The door that just happens to have the car behind it? That's not right. Each of "my" initial choices must be of equal probability for this analysis to make any sense.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen this a bunch of times when pro wrestling is promoted. The heel "retires" and then comes back as a celebrity referee or manager, so he's still in your face all the time. C'mon, people!
Someday this guy will have a big component of his ships, missiles, and robot vehicles taken down by a friggin' virus spawned by two guys in a garage somewhere in Asia.
And he'll go "Oh my god! We were totally taken by surprise! Who could have ever imagined or prepared for something as astounding as this!", for about the 4,000th time in the history of this administration.
Seriously, this is so exponentially insane the first thing I thought of was SCO.
- "The company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.'" Fuckin' bullshit. Total horseshit. Lies, lies, lies. Classic smokescreen to try to create some kind of peer pressure. There is no risk. There are no such ISPs. That's why they must go nameless.
- What ISP would open themselves to this kind of blackmail? Wouldn't that be an obvious signal to the movie industry, the book publishing industry, the software industry, "come get in line and bilk us for money, we're weak and easily intimidated"?
- "Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime." What the fuck? How do those ads get on my system from the ISP? Across Firefox? Through my email? In my WOW packets? Take over my OS? WTF is that?
This guy should be in protective custody, under observation for a few weeks. He's clearly lost his grip on reality and must be a danger to himself. But then, that didn't stop SCO.
They gain honor, prestige, and recognition. And if you think those are less important than money... well, there's your cultural divide, right there in a nutshell.
Since that time, WOTC announced that there will be NO OGL for 4E. (A more restrictive license called the GSL will be used, to date the language in that is a secret). http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=218031
The game will not be freely available even after its release. No one will be allowed to make comptaible products without a $5000 licensing fee until at least January, 2009. http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=215976
YOU missed the point about what a monumental waste of trust and time that exercise is.
I *am* a college teacher. I teach a sophomore-level statistics class. On the first day of class I hand everyone a formula card and say, "The point of this class is not to memorize formulas, it's to learn how to use them. You can use this card on all your tests." Done.
Same lesson -- 1 minute flat. Then I also get in a full lecture about organizing data. And I don't have to lie to them about made-up, never-recorded grades.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you really know how to spew out a lot of content-free gobbledeygook.
Yeah, that's a load of meaningless gobbledygook. I'd like to see how quickly a class of students tunes *that* out if you tried to deliver it in class.
From the studies I've seen only a very small amount of "critical thinking" preparation (like, just a few hours) has any helpful effect on students. Past that, it's specifically how much rich content is delivered that determines how smart they end up.
"If you try to apply peacetime's morals to a war zone you're just going to lose a lot of lives and accomplish nothing."
Of course, a primary problem is how the lead neocons now define this particular war to be all the time and everywhere.
Also, "atom" in the original Greek means "uncuttable" or "the smallest indivisible particle of matter". Therefore people who use it to refer to a collection of protons and neutrons with an electron cloud are using the term incorrectly. They can only properly use "atom" to refer to the smallest piece of matter, perhaps quarks are something as-yet undiscovered.
Or wait... maybe sticking purely to original etymology is a mistake.
Wow, I didn't know that MODOK was a GOP Precinct Chair in the state of Texas. Sort of makes sense, though.
Client: I can't login.
Troubleshooting Step #1: Make sure it's plugged in.
Ergo, there will always be a need for IT staff co-located with the boxes.
No, it has to do with keeping a well-regulated militia. Learn to read.
Yeah, this is basically the same con that organized religion plays with the whole "heaven" hypothesis.
In general I agree with your observations.
Only quibble is how far back "cyberpunk" goes, any grandfather is certainly older than Max Headroom. Check out Larry McCaffery's anthology "Storming the Reality Studio" and its Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide. It starts with 1818's Frankenstein and goes up from there. Viewable at Google Book Search:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qcd-pFFEtHIC&dq=storming+the+reality+studio&pg=PP1&ots=M6Iri6TXg6&sig=PV88FEsDxjZROKv_Xl9yQJv5vdw&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dstorming%2Bthe%2Breality%2Bstudio&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail
P.S. This is on my mind because I just recently finished Burrough's "The Soft Machine" from 1961 which is also listed as a grandfather of cyberpunk, and provides the name to that anthology:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=65175992&blogID=398162984
Tax-exempt = Collecting money but not paying taxes on it.
"See, preventing me from using your resources to spread my message isn't censorship, because you aren't preventing me from spreading my message, you are preventing me from using your resources, which you have every right to do."
You are totally incorrect. All censorship occurs in some context -- some censorship is small, others large. But it is censorship just the same.
Would you say, "My message gets blocked by the US government, but I can still publish it in Canada, so my message gets out somewhere, hence it's not censorship."? Or, "the NBC censor blocked that scene, but the CBS censor did not, therefore it doesn't qualify as censorship"? Ridiculous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
Definitions & Axioms: Invented.
Theorems: Discovered.
Proofs: Invented.
"It's more like 'If you want to make and sell products for Vista, you can't make and sell products for XP.' Both products are made the the same company..."
No, that's incorrect. The OGL *license* was originally made by WOTC. But there are now many products that are completely unique games published under that license. In some cases they have zero to do with any of the WOTC brands or products.
Say you created a brand-new piece of software and released it under the Sun Public License (or something). Later, Sun starts aggressively trying to stop publishing of any software ever released under the SPL, including yours. That's what this is most like.
In general, that's a very good summary of what's blown up over the weekend (WOTC made an announcement that a GSL would be coming last Thursday). However, a couple things to keep in mind:
- WOTC spokespeople have made conflicting and contradictory statements and backtracking on their plans since last November. First there was to be a revised OGL, then a GSL with publisher buy-in of $5,000, then no GSL, now GSL with no buy-in, etc.
- WOTC hasn't officially confirmed the "poison pill" clause yet (publishing for 4E prohibits you from any more Open Game License publishing). This was related second-hand by Clark Peterson, the well-regarded head of Necromancer Games (and a lawyer), as being delivered to him by WOTC staff members. Two WOTC spokespeople have been posting in the same thread over the weekend, but have ambiguously neither directly confirmed nor denied that statement.
- No one's seen the actual new license yet. WOTC has been saying all year long that it was within a week of being released. Clearly the GSL is intended to be far more restrictive than the OGL (one thing they've been consistent on is that it must directly support the Dungeons & Dragons brand, that it restricts product types, has a community standards clause, is revocable by WOTC, etc., none of which existed in the OGL). But once again after all the riot with the new announcement last week, the speaking Brand Manager for WOTC revealed Saturday that he *still* hadn't received the actual text of the license!
- Physical D&D 4E books are at the printers, to be released in June. A true conspiracist would think that the ongoing confusion might be WOTC FUD to delay third-party publisher business plans until 4E has already been purchased widely by the customer base. (But I think that's a low-probability bet.)
So what's coming out of WOTC is pretty messed up. My observation is that it's been clear since January that WOTC was going to take some shot at attacking the Open Game community. I'm guessing it's at least 80% likely that this company-wide "poison pill" restriction is in fact present in the new GSL. But everything that's come out of WOTC so far this year on the issue has turned out to be incorrect and later retracted. So we'll see about this latest one.
"This one has been debated over and over, and is a classic example of lies, bloody lies and statistics."
Wrong on all counts. Including the fact that it's not even statistics -- it's probability.
So you're saying that somehow I magically choose Door 1 twice as often as any other door? The door that just happens to have the car behind it? That's not right. Each of "my" initial choices must be of equal probability for this analysis to make any sense.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen this a bunch of times when pro wrestling is promoted. The heel "retires" and then comes back as a celebrity referee or manager, so he's still in your face all the time. C'mon, people!
Someday this guy will have a big component of his ships, missiles, and robot vehicles taken down by a friggin' virus spawned by two guys in a garage somewhere in Asia.
And he'll go "Oh my god! We were totally taken by surprise! Who could have ever imagined or prepared for something as astounding as this!", for about the 4,000th time in the history of this administration.
Seriously, this is so exponentially insane the first thing I thought of was SCO.
- "The company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.'" Fuckin' bullshit. Total horseshit. Lies, lies, lies. Classic smokescreen to try to create some kind of peer pressure. There is no risk. There are no such ISPs. That's why they must go nameless.
- What ISP would open themselves to this kind of blackmail? Wouldn't that be an obvious signal to the movie industry, the book publishing industry, the software industry, "come get in line and bilk us for money, we're weak and easily intimidated"?
- "Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime." What the fuck? How do those ads get on my system from the ISP? Across Firefox? Through my email? In my WOW packets? Take over my OS? WTF is that?
This guy should be in protective custody, under observation for a few weeks. He's clearly lost his grip on reality and must be a danger to himself. But then, that didn't stop SCO.
They gain honor, prestige, and recognition. And if you think those are less important than money... well, there's your cultural divide, right there in a nutshell.
Fuck Milton Friedman.
He's about as much of a rot on the heart of America as the Disney Corporation.
Your link is out of date.
Since that time, WOTC announced that there will be NO OGL for 4E. (A more restrictive license called the GSL will be used, to date the language in that is a secret).
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=218031
The game will not be freely available even after its release. No one will be allowed to make comptaible products without a $5000 licensing fee until at least January, 2009.
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=215976
YOU missed the point about what a monumental waste of trust and time that exercise is.
I *am* a college teacher. I teach a sophomore-level statistics class. On the first day of class I hand everyone a formula card and say, "The point of this class is not to memorize formulas, it's to learn how to use them. You can use this card on all your tests." Done.
Same lesson -- 1 minute flat. Then I also get in a full lecture about organizing data. And I don't have to lie to them about made-up, never-recorded grades.
It's *full* of stars.