"People who try and let their kids skip that whole 'experience' thing, and jump right into the understanding part are doing their children a great injustice."
I've heard this before, and to me it's nonsensical. By saying that, you're asserting that teaching and writing have zero value. The advancement of civilization intrinsically runs on being able to communicate highly condensed lessons from one person's experience, to many others, through language. While it may not work for *some* boneheaded kids, I'm pretty confident that there's suficient evidence to conclude that overall the process does work very well indeed.
Personally, looking back on my teenage years, my primary complaint is not that people didn't give me enough understanding; it's that there was plenty of stuff they knew damned well, never thought to tell me, and wasted years of my life finding out myself.
Excellent post! I totally agree, it's the way I've voted throughout the Northeast -- New York, Massachusetts, and Maine are all like that (line through name on a list, no timestamp).
Check out Ryan Dancey's blog from this week. He's a major game industry consultant, former CEO of Wizards when they bought D&D and then sold to Hasbro. He's dumped a major 6-part blog or so on how D&D needs to change to compete with WOW.
Even if you think the game experiences are different, all of the business people involved are almost maniacally obsessed with how to get a slice of those millions of monthly WOW subscriptions. Everything they're doing right now has that as an objective.
For 20 years of D&D's history, it was unclimbable. By the end of the century, technological change made an attempt on it possible. That techology is the internet. While men struggled up the slopes of mountains, other men learned how to go farther, faster, and higher, than any before them. Eventually, a dozen walked on the moon. Likewise, just as the potential for technology to revolutionize tabletop roleplaying emerged, other people used that same technology to get bigger, and massively multiplayer, moving the entire game into the virtual domain. Earlier this summer, the current leader in that market, Blizzard, announced that there are more than 9 million people playing World of Warcraft. This is the equivalent of telling people on the summit of Everest that Armstrong just made a giant leap on their behalf.
Actually, you're more correct than you may realize. A major part of 4E is that it's tied into a "Digital Initiative", with Dragon & Dungeon magazines online-only, and character generation, mapping, and campaign utilities all online, for a monthly $10 subscription fee (think WOW).
Q: WHAT DO YOU WANT? M: Well, I was told outside that... Q: Don't give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings! M: What? Q: Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!! M: Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!! Q: OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse. M: Oh, I see, well, that explains it. Q: Ah yes, you want room 12A, Just along the corridor. M: Oh, Thank you very much. Sorry. Q: Not at all. M: Thank You. (Under his breath) Stupid git!!
The main point of the "d20 System" (which underlies 3E D&D from 7 years ago) is to get rid of things like THACO. In 3E, you always have some "bonus", add it to a rolled d20, and compare to an enemy's target number to determine success. See: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#theCoreMec hanic
The combat cycle is still attempting to get a hit, roll damage, and subtract from hit points. Armor does make you harder to hit, not reduce damage. Many people have tried the "damage reduction" variant, and the company officially published the alternative in more than one venue. However, the majority of people who tried it tend to come back thinking that it's too complicated for tabletop play (considering that it adds another statistic and another lookup-and-subtraction to every attack in combat). See: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armo rAsDamageReduction.htm
I'm sorry, but the data I have regarding my interactions with cops shows that in general they do an extremely poor job. I'm a scrupulous law-abiding, even cowardly citizen. I've never been arrested. Nonetheless:
- I got harassed as a teenager as revenge from the local chief of police after my dad fought him in court. - When my girlfriend had her car smashed up (overnight while parked on the street) by a drunk cabbie, with numerous witnesses, the cops barely wanted to talk to her or give her a copy of the police report. - When I ask for directions in a given city, I practically get insulted. - When I'm on the subway with a half-dozen police trainees and a homeless guy is so drunk he keels face-forward into the floor unmoving, they all sit and point and laugh at him for the rest of the trip. - The primary time I see cops in force is at a political demonstration, looking like they'd really like to crack heads together -- activity which is supposed to be the primary reason that America is good and other countries are bad. - I watch "COPS" and it sure looks like no criminal could be caught unless they're drunk, high, currently bleeding and in need of medical care, and also blurt out a confession as soon as the police come around.
So frankly, all the data I have is that they do a really poor job. Maybe they're not paid remotely enough to attract high-quality law enforcement officers. But everything I see is that local cops are barely a half-step above club bouncers, or basically street toughs. Maybe I've just had bad luck with may interactions, but I pretty much doubt it.
"Drones are what are going to lead in dramatic drops in civilian casualties. Civilians die when scared soldiers either make poor snap judgments about a threat, or soldiers have to pick between returning fire into an area that might kill civilians or dying."
Here is my counterargument. It's well established that when safety features are widely distributed -- like helmets for bikers, or airbags for car drivers -- injuries actually go up, because people feel free to engage in more risky behavior. (http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/2 /2/bicycleHelmetsMoreHarmThanGood)
The same will happen here. While soldiers will feel safer using the robot drones, that means that they'll feel free to run more missions, penetrations, and infiltrations. When the USA is suffering fewer casualties, politically and economically we'll feel free to run more invasions, longer counterinsurgency campaigns, and so forth. Even though any single incident may in fact have fewer casualties, over time the expected value will go up, just because more missions are being run against civilian areas. Just like with bicycle helmets.
As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."
Ouch. Clearly spoken by someone who's only worked in Hollywood. As distressing and counter-intuitive as it may be in this culture, that's how it works in every industry that I've seen (notably software, computer games). The only place I haven't seen that happen severely is in my college teaching gigs.
A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions "in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for."
Do completely inactive shells that cannot be used count as WMDs? Note that "all the weapons" are in such a state, according your own referenced article. The amount of hypocrisy among you neo-cons is of truly astounding, Orwellian proportions.
This isn't about believing in WMDs before the invasion. This is about believing that we found WMDs AFTER the invasion. In an October 2003 poll, for example, 7 months after the invasion, 33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion. That's 10% higher than the next most confused media viewership. This is what some of us would really love to see explained by you "nothing to see here" apologists. Or else, it sounds like you still maintain that's a reasonable belief today?
Weapons of Mass Destruction
As discussed, when respondents were asked whether the US has "found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" since the war had ended, 22% of all respondents over June-September mistakenly thought this had happened. Once again, Fox viewers were the highest with 33% having this belief. A lower 19-23% of viewers who watch ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN had the perception that the US has found WMD. Seventeen percent of those who primarily get their news from print sources had the misperception, while only 11% of those who watch PBS or listen to NPR had it.
"But as far as I'm concerned small business's getting stung by this have only themselves to blame. Its not hard to ask a performer for a list of songs they plan to play at your venue, its not hard to google those songs and make sure that your not infringing copyright by letting them play..."
LOL! There are days when I truly wonder how people can think some of things they do. This is like the guy yesterday who firmly concluded that half the population of Qatar must have died in honor killings.
First, I'm a musician in New York City, where indie music is more on the minds of people and played at more venues than any place I can think of. There's so much of it here, that the clubs barely even know who's playing from night to night... I swear I could walk into a random establishment with gear, tell them I was scheduled that night, and they'd put me on stage. The barkeepers and door people are not educated in the details of copyright law, compulsory licensing, etc. They don't have time to track the name of the band, never mind every individual song.
Here's the first set of things I can think of that make your crazy idea impossible: - Club workers don't have time to make this viable. - Club workers are insufficiently educated to make legal decisions. - Players might fail to submit songlist, are they barred from playing? - Players might lie, change, or take requests on fly about what they're playing. - Club workers can't identify all songs in the world by ear to verify what's being played. - Song title doesn't ID a given song, since many titles can and have been used multiple times. - Simple Googling is insufficient to determine date, ownership, public domain status of a song.
And most importantly: - The publishing companies *won't care* if you Googled the song names. They'll demand payment regardless, or legal proof that no licensed songs are being played. Saying that your barkeeper Googled some song titles will not be accepted as legal proof to BMI or ASCAP. It will *laughably far away* from being so accepted.
Section 6: "One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. "
"Our nation for the past 75 years has been controlled by people who want to expand the power and influence of government at the expense of our liberties. Anything in the Constitution that limits the power of the federal government (e.g., the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) have been ignored consistently for the past 70 years. The federal government's growth has gone nearly unchecked since 1933. What we've been getting for decades is 'government by the politicians, for the politicians.'"
You know, I disagree. I think the current right-wing activists are intentionally confusing you with their propaganda -- namely verbalizing that they want "less government, less taxes" but in practice causing "more beauracracy, more spending".
The truth is that they don't want either. Want they want is *Unrestricted power for the Executive*. If they need new laws and restrictions, so be it. If they need to demolish watchdog agencies, so be it. It's not that it's more government (which would require rule by law), it's just pure and unfettered power in the hands of one semi-religious king-like figure.
Their propaganda is cunningly constructed to make people think about "both sides of a debate", when neither one does anything but obscure the main goal. Unrestricted personal power for the President, and unrestricted economic power for the biggest corporate interests.
Mod this up, y'all. About the 5th time I read this talking-point script I wrote off the whole interview as complete corporate marketing bullshit.
It's really funny that the headline says, "The response from these executives should lay to rest for you the issue of whether this was a marketing ploy or not." I guess I should've known even then that the exact opposite woyld happen -- hadn't considered it before, but now 100% convinced that it's complete marketing ploy bullshit and zero useful content.
Hypnosis not working here, marketers, bad doggies.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I go to http://www.time.gov/ .
"People who try and let their kids skip that whole 'experience' thing, and jump right into the understanding part are doing their children a great injustice."
I've heard this before, and to me it's nonsensical. By saying that, you're asserting that teaching and writing have zero value. The advancement of civilization intrinsically runs on being able to communicate highly condensed lessons from one person's experience, to many others, through language. While it may not work for *some* boneheaded kids, I'm pretty confident that there's suficient evidence to conclude that overall the process does work very well indeed.
Personally, looking back on my teenage years, my primary complaint is not that people didn't give me enough understanding; it's that there was plenty of stuff they knew damned well, never thought to tell me, and wasted years of my life finding out myself.
Not so. The demonstrable effects of the "abstinence only" campaign is to make kids liars and delusional about their own behavior.
Excellent post! I totally agree, it's the way I've voted throughout the Northeast -- New York, Massachusetts, and Maine are all like that (line through name on a list, no timestamp).
Check out Ryan Dancey's blog from this week. He's a major game industry consultant, former CEO of Wizards when they bought D&D and then sold to Hasbro. He's dumped a major 6-part blog or so on how D&D needs to change to compete with WOW.
Even if you think the game experiences are different, all of the business people involved are almost maniacally obsessed with how to get a slice of those millions of monthly WOW subscriptions. Everything they're doing right now has that as an objective.
http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/iWeb/RSDanceyBlog/BloActually, you're more correct than you may realize. A major part of 4E is that it's tied into a "Digital Initiative", with Dragon & Dungeon magazines online-only, and character generation, mapping, and campaign utilities all online, for a monthly $10 subscription fee (think WOW).
g e=1&pp=40
There's even an online gaming table -- the demo is a native Wiondows desktop application, and it does indeed rely on DirectX: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204368&pa
(Walks down the hall. Opens door.)
7 195969915
Q: WHAT DO YOU WANT?
M: Well, I was told outside that...
Q: Don't give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!
M: What?
Q: Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!
M: Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!!
Q: OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
M: Oh, I see, well, that explains it.
Q: Ah yes, you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.
M: Oh, Thank you very much. Sorry.
Q: Not at all.
M: Thank You.
(Under his breath) Stupid git!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-57207790
The main point of the "d20 System" (which underlies 3E D&D from 7 years ago) is to get rid of things like THACO. In 3E, you always have some "bonus", add it to a rolled d20, and compare to an enemy's target number to determine success. See: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#theCoreMec hanic
o rAsDamageReduction.htm
The combat cycle is still attempting to get a hit, roll damage, and subtract from hit points. Armor does make you harder to hit, not reduce damage. Many people have tried the "damage reduction" variant, and the company officially published the alternative in more than one venue. However, the majority of people who tried it tend to come back thinking that it's too complicated for tabletop play (considering that it adds another statistic and another lookup-and-subtraction to every attack in combat). See: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/arm
Definitely, we should all look very carefully as to what *Florida* and *Mississippi* are doing in their state school systems.
And then we should all run in the opposite direction as fast as possible.
This is starting to look like SCO writ large...
I'm sorry, but the data I have regarding my interactions with cops shows that in general they do an extremely poor job. I'm a scrupulous law-abiding, even cowardly citizen. I've never been arrested. Nonetheless:
- I got harassed as a teenager as revenge from the local chief of police after my dad fought him in court.
- When my girlfriend had her car smashed up (overnight while parked on the street) by a drunk cabbie, with numerous witnesses, the cops barely wanted to talk to her or give her a copy of the police report.
- When I ask for directions in a given city, I practically get insulted.
- When I'm on the subway with a half-dozen police trainees and a homeless guy is so drunk he keels face-forward into the floor unmoving, they all sit and point and laugh at him for the rest of the trip.
- The primary time I see cops in force is at a political demonstration, looking like they'd really like to crack heads together -- activity which is supposed to be the primary reason that America is good and other countries are bad.
- I watch "COPS" and it sure looks like no criminal could be caught unless they're drunk, high, currently bleeding and in need of medical care, and also blurt out a confession as soon as the police come around.
So frankly, all the data I have is that they do a really poor job. Maybe they're not paid remotely enough to attract high-quality law enforcement officers. But everything I see is that local cops are barely a half-step above club bouncers, or basically street toughs. Maybe I've just had bad luck with may interactions, but I pretty much doubt it.
"Drones are what are going to lead in dramatic drops in civilian casualties. Civilians die when scared soldiers either make poor snap judgments about a threat, or soldiers have to pick between returning fire into an area that might kill civilians or dying."
2 /2/bicycleHelmetsMoreHarmThanGood)
Here is my counterargument. It's well established that when safety features are widely distributed -- like helmets for bikers, or airbags for car drivers -- injuries actually go up, because people feel free to engage in more risky behavior. (http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/
The same will happen here. While soldiers will feel safer using the robot drones, that means that they'll feel free to run more missions, penetrations, and infiltrations. When the USA is suffering fewer casualties, politically and economically we'll feel free to run more invasions, longer counterinsurgency campaigns, and so forth. Even though any single incident may in fact have fewer casualties, over time the expected value will go up, just because more missions are being run against civilian areas. Just like with bicycle helmets.
"Punish restrictive practices through the market, not by breaking the law."
Individual purchasing decisions have never changed a damn thing. Civil disobediance, however, definitely has.
As Kevin Smith said, "Hollywood is the only place where you fail upwards."
Ouch. Clearly spoken by someone who's only worked in Hollywood. As distressing and counter-intuitive as it may be in this culture, that's how it works in every industry that I've seen (notably software, computer games). The only place I haven't seen that happen severely is in my college teaching gigs.
From the very article that you link:
Do completely inactive shells that cannot be used count as WMDs? Note that "all the weapons" are in such a state, according your own referenced article. The amount of hypocrisy among you neo-cons is of truly astounding, Orwellian proportions.
This isn't about believing in WMDs before the invasion. This is about believing that we found WMDs AFTER the invasion. In an October 2003 poll, for example, 7 months after the invasion, 33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion. That's 10% higher than the next most confused media viewership. This is what some of us would really love to see explained by you "nothing to see here" apologists. Or else, it sounds like you still maintain that's a reasonable belief today?
http://www.americanassembler.com/issues/media/docs /Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf
"I would guess that this would really put some terror into the enemy..."
Yay terrorism!
Might as well throw in this review of "The Myth of the Rational Voter" from the last New Yorker magazine:0 7/09/070709crbo_books_menand
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/
"But as far as I'm concerned small business's getting stung by this have only themselves to blame. Its not hard to ask a performer for a list of songs they plan to play at your venue, its not hard to google those songs and make sure that your not infringing copyright by letting them play..."
LOL! There are days when I truly wonder how people can think some of things they do. This is like the guy yesterday who firmly concluded that half the population of Qatar must have died in honor killings.
First, I'm a musician in New York City, where indie music is more on the minds of people and played at more venues than any place I can think of. There's so much of it here, that the clubs barely even know who's playing from night to night... I swear I could walk into a random establishment with gear, tell them I was scheduled that night, and they'd put me on stage. The barkeepers and door people are not educated in the details of copyright law, compulsory licensing, etc. They don't have time to track the name of the band, never mind every individual song.
Here's the first set of things I can think of that make your crazy idea impossible:
- Club workers don't have time to make this viable.
- Club workers are insufficiently educated to make legal decisions.
- Players might fail to submit songlist, are they barred from playing?
- Players might lie, change, or take requests on fly about what they're playing.
- Club workers can't identify all songs in the world by ear to verify what's being played.
- Song title doesn't ID a given song, since many titles can and have been used multiple times.
- Simple Googling is insufficient to determine date, ownership, public domain status of a song.
And most importantly:
- The publishing companies *won't care* if you Googled the song names. They'll demand payment regardless, or legal proof that no licensed songs are being played. Saying that your barkeeper Googled some song titles will not be accepted as legal proof to BMI or ASCAP. It will *laughably far away* from being so accepted.
Section 6: "One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. "
"Our nation for the past 75 years has been controlled by people who want to expand the power and influence of government at the expense of our liberties. Anything in the Constitution that limits the power of the federal government (e.g., the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) have been ignored consistently for the past 70 years. The federal government's growth has gone nearly unchecked since 1933. What we've been getting for decades is 'government by the politicians, for the politicians.'"
You know, I disagree. I think the current right-wing activists are intentionally confusing you with their propaganda -- namely verbalizing that they want "less government, less taxes" but in practice causing "more beauracracy, more spending".
The truth is that they don't want either. Want they want is *Unrestricted power for the Executive*. If they need new laws and restrictions, so be it. If they need to demolish watchdog agencies, so be it. It's not that it's more government (which would require rule by law), it's just pure and unfettered power in the hands of one semi-religious king-like figure.
Their propaganda is cunningly constructed to make people think about "both sides of a debate", when neither one does anything but obscure the main goal. Unrestricted personal power for the President, and unrestricted economic power for the biggest corporate interests.
These are the words of the idealistic researcher, before their work is bought out by the forces of concentrated capital power, as usual.
Mod this up, y'all. About the 5th time I read this talking-point script I wrote off the whole interview as complete corporate marketing bullshit.
It's really funny that the headline says, "The response from these executives should lay to rest for you the issue of whether this was a marketing ploy or not." I guess I should've known even then that the exact opposite woyld happen -- hadn't considered it before, but now 100% convinced that it's complete marketing ploy bullshit and zero useful content.
Hypnosis not working here, marketers, bad doggies.
"the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power"
That, sir, is a beautiful turn of phrase. I salute you for giving me my moment of genius insight for the day.
Jesus Christ, don't give them any more ideas!!