Being in a vertical market has other advantages, but you pretty much nailed The Reason right there -- it keeps them from being in a commodity market, and they get more money.
There's an important reason why they're able to get away with this: The 'net. Prior to the 'net, the OS was the standard for apps. Now, things are shifting back to the 70's client-server model of computing, and as long as you have the proper client (3270 emulator then, browser now) you can run all of the server-based apps that exist.
Research does not have to be profit motivated. A lot of research comes from universities which in turn receive funding from the government. I believe this model is better suited to pharmacuetical research than corporations trying to maximize profits.
I won't go as far as T. Boone Pickens' assertion to the Amarillo Rotary Club that "Greed Is Good," but to deny researchers even the option of reward for their endeavors historically leads to slow progress or even a reverse.
In fact, the argument a friend of mine made to me for his EQ subscription was just that: He was previously spending $100s each month on new game titles, now he only pays $12 per month to get the same amount of gameplay and content. And now I understand.
What's more, he's one of a group of friends I hung out with in high school who would always get together and play games. We didn't get together for the purpose of playing games; getting together was the whole point. Playing games -- board games, D&D, Mechwarrior, video games -- was something to do while we were together. It's more interesting than being a mallrat and more social than watching TV.
I'd later see this same dynamic in MUDs, which were essentially chat rooms with some game behind them more than games with chat capability. And MUDs of course are the spiritual predecessor to the MMOG.
Now that all of these friends have moved apart from each other, the MMOG is a place where they can continue to meet and play every night. Hell, before EQ, we were doing the same thing in Diablo.
So not only is the MMOG cheaper, it's more social.
The biggest problem with everything other than capitalism is that, without the promise of reward for the effort and ludicrous expense required to find a cure to a deadly disease, you never get the cure in the first place.
I agree with what you're saying: Political situation is as big of a part of a land's production capacity as the health of the land and techniques used for growing. The Soviet Union had as much production capacity as the USA, but the Soviet system lacked the efficient distribution of the United States. The USA's heartland is inviolate, and could easily produce enough food to feed the whole world's population, but there's just no way to efficiently get it into people's mouths in places that aren't free as in freedom and free as in markets.
So by your own point, Africa is overpopulated. Political and economic systems matter.
I think it's really as simple as that they just don't know anything about games.
Most of the press is over age 30. And for people in the 30-and-up range, video games were a geek hobby -- and geeks don't typically become journalists. It'll be a solid two decades before people who grew up with video gaming as a mainstream form of entertainment will be holding jobs and editor positions in mass media.
The flip side of this is that the (older) gaming-oriented press is awful for the exact opposite reason; they know plenty about games, and so they review it either from the standpoint of fans (leading to all of the ratings inflation), or they review it from the standpoint of elitists ("this game didn't add anything to what its predecessor did" is an invalid critique for the millions of gamers who never played the predecessor). They're too interested in games.
I'll pile on by adding that I grew up in the only area of the USA (at the time, may be different now) that had not implemented any sort of sex education for children in school. The argument against it, of course, is that the class might encourage young kids to have sex. (I know, I know.)
At the same time, it was also the area of the USA that had the highest rate of teen pregnancy.
Good ol' Amarillo. Good ol' too conservative for its own good Amarillo. Of course, now I live in California, and people out here think I'm some kind of sick fundamentalist nazi fascist...
That whole thing sounded like they were taking what they learned -- the concept that if you think you can't, you can't -- and appended to it their own thoughts, unrelated to the study, to make people feel better
Yes; it seems they redefined the wisdom into something it isn't, and then disproved that.
See, the age-old wisdom is not to expect the worst. The age-old wisdom is a two-parter: First, accept the worst to eliminate worry. Then, do what it takes to improve upon the worst that can happen.
But the caveat, also part of the age-old wisdom, is that if you're not worried, you don't bother. It's a technique for handling anxiety, not a method to ensure success. What happens is that you get so anxious about something, that you can't think, and you're not able to prepare for the test/presentation/gig/trial. But if you're not so anxious that you can think clearly, there's no issue, no problem to solve.
So they've built a straw man and knocked it down. Good for them! I'll keep using the age-old wisdom that works, and ignoring the age-old wisdom that doesn't.
I can't get to your linked article, but I'll comment anyway.
I apologize for not making myself clear; if you do RTFA you'll find that...
Implicit in your argument is the idea that the reason these children are disadvantaged is because they do not have a role model for one sex. ...is in fact explicitly made by the research: If the amount of time spent, the amount of money made, and all other factors remain equal, the child raised in a single-parent home is at a disadvantage compared to a child raised in a home with a mother and a father.
Also, to be clear: This is not my argument. I don't have any investment in the issue; if I'm wrong about it, I don't even have my pride to lose. I'd love to hear about further research about these issues in support of any point of view. The evidence in the link above may be distasteful, but that's no reason to dismiss it before even looking at it.
I agree; it seems silly to pick on homosexuality when there are lots of worse things about parents that can put a child at a disadvantage: Drug use, abusive behavior, absence, or flat out being on the shallow end of the gene pool.
The child of the same-sex relationship will have to find a role model of the gender not represented by his or her parents just the same as a child of a single-parent home has to. And in both cases, there's no telling who the child will choose, or if the child will have no strong role model at all. So it's not a particularly devious extrapolation, and until someone is able to do some legitimate research, it seems to me to be a reasonable hypothesis: The child of a same-sex couple will be at a disadvantage compared to one raised by a male and female parent.
It's not very fair, but who said life is fair? My child, for example, will be at a disadvantage because his father's an asshole who spends too much time in flamewars on Slashdot.
"Nintendo is the only game company left who places fun, gameplay, and design over advertising, hype, and corporate greed. "
Considering Nintendo's the only profitable big game hardware company (at just games) out there, I'd instead claim that their focus on fun, gameplay and design makes them much better at corporate greed than the others. (See also: Apple.)
I mean, how greedy can Sony really be when they're shrinking and losing money by the $billion?
In October the board of Infinium Labs reveals that chairman Timothy Roberts is under investigation by the SEC for allegedly sending junk faxes touting penny stocks -- including shares of Infinium, maker of the little-known Phantom game console. The board also announces that financial reports prepared by Roberts, the company's CEO before he resigned in August, should not be relied on. A month later the company's new CEO, Kevin Bachus, also resigns. The board -- which still includes Roberts -- manages to tempt consultant Greg Koler into the CEO hot seat with the tantalizing prize of 4 million shares of Infinium stock, currently worth $68,000.:D
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Amarillo, Texas. I was interested in computers. I wasn't the only one, but it was rare to find someone who had either equipment or interest. There were no businesses, universities, or anything where you could go to, say, connect to the internet. There were a handful of BBSes, and not much more.
But when I made it to Austin for college, I found that the kids from Houston and Dallas who were also into Computer Science had already formed networks, knew about the internet, USENET, irc, the demoscene. They had access to the cutting edge, whereas I had access to mere leftovers. And the reason was because this kind of high-end knowledge happens where the technology centers are. Unless a small town is somehow already a tech center, with both academic and industrial support for it, there won't be the adults, which means there won't be the kids, to grow up in that enivornment.
Small towns just don't have the right environment to develop a Shawn Fanning. That person is much more likely to ditch the small town and move on to a bigger town where his/her interest is likely to have peers.
So no, tech will never save the small town. Not without cutting-edge high-tech industrial support in the form of both industry and academia, and the small towns that have that (e.g., Austin) have already benefitted from it.
When Apple started to have huge success with the iPod, all the naysayers came out of the woodwork and (rightly) pointed out that this very strategy - keep it proprietary and lock it down as best you can - totally backfired on Apple before, in the desktop PC area. Microsoft capitalized (to say the least) on the 'open ecosystem' of PC parts that were more-or-less interchangeable, and that came to rule the market. So for MS to say, let's let all the digital audio player manufacturers chip away at Apple until they are marginal again, and we will concentrate on being the software that powers all these music transactions... it really wasn't such a crazy thought.
Except this time, for whatever reason, it is actually working for Apple.
I've taken the liberty of boldfacing what that "whatever" reason is in your paragraph above: WMA is just as proprietary as AAC/Fairplay. Instead of competing with Apple on an open system, they're using another proprietary system. And that's why it's working for Apple: There is no open DRM standard. Given the nature of openness and the recording industry's digital paranoia, I will be surprised if there ever is.
Ok, but you've basically just undercut your own point by limiting it to just American Fundamentalists: Your original claim is painting all religions with an extremely broad brush when you claim that they're all houses of cards, where you take out one and the rest falls down. If you mean American Fundamentalism, then say American Fundamentalism; don't say "Religion" and mean it to refer to, say, Presbyterians in the US, where you could (oh say) prove me wrong on a couple of serious and significant matters and it wouldn't then logically follow that I'd have to give up belief in God because of it.
In the church in which I grew up, having a different opinion on theological matters was not merely tolerated, but expected. We also expected our beliefs to obey the laws of Physics...
"While science, philosophy can be reworked if facts contradict theories, religion cannot, so I don't understand why you are putting them into the same category."
Why not?
It's a legitimate question. And really think about it, instead of just posting the first answer that comes to mind. For example, you might want to take a look at the Reformation and what that was all about.
You and I both know that MMO's are as much glorified chat rooms as they are games. And you and I both know that games (ALL kinds) have always been more fun when played with friends than played alone. Ever try to play D&D alone? Ever been in a D&D group that had someone you didn't know in it that you DIDN'T get to know well after being in the gang for a while? What about fucking Monopoly?
I guess if your only exposure to gaming is Solitaire and Bejeweled...which seems to be this tool's point of view.
It wouldn't be the first time a so-called "Analyst" was speaking out of his ass without knowing what he was talking about.
I guess how you interpret my position comes down to how you define the terms, but I balk at the terms "faith" and "belief", because to me they represent blinders that become invisible once you put them on. If you fail to question your assumptions about reality, you'll soon be wandering off into a world that exists only in your own mind.
That's fair; the word "faith" really has come to embrace the meaning "blind faith," so I understand your hesitation. That's why ever post I ever make on the subject ends up being 19 pages long: I have to explain: "Wait, look, faith has a meaning other than 'blind.'"
Of course, it could be worse; I could be trying to convince other Christians to go to a Presbyterian church and have to keep re-explaining Predestination. Boy, did that one ever get messed up from its original intent. It was originally intended to show why excommunication from the Catholic Church did not, and could not, lead to eternal damnation. (Hmmm... Now that I look at that, that wasn't that bad after all...maybe there is nothing worse than taking on the meaning of the word "faith!")
I disagree. Using myself as an example, I can say that not everyone needs a religion. I have no faith -- only assumptions.
You are most likely correct that you don't have a religion. As for faith, when you act on your assumptions, believing them to be basically correct, that is faith. (Faith is not "blind belief in some random superstition." There's a better word for that: Arrogance.)
Now isn't ID just another assumption you could have convictions about? Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory based on evidence; it is call to arms against looking for evidence. That includes looking for evidence of God's existence, if you really must know. That makes it, in my mind, the absolute nadir of theological thought: The denial of the value of theological thought itself.
See, I write this as a practicing Christian. But my belief in God is based on evidence that I believe outweighs the evidence (or lack thereof) against God's existence. I know that the evidence I've experienced that God does in fact exist has not undergone the scientific rigor and experimentation that evolutionary theory has. I am willing to concede that I may be wrong about the whole God thing. And that is what separates faith from arrogance.
I recently discovered a quote from St. Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (translated by J.H. Taylor) that I believe is relevant for all of my fellow Christians who would challenge evolutionary theory:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth,... and this knowledge he holds as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
I think it sums up the issue facing Christianity with regard to Science today neatly.
One other thing I've noticed is that the modern-day "pop Jesus" crowd, with their disdain for naturalistic science and earned knowledge, seem to represent a reprisal of the ancient Gnostic Heresy. It's an interesting thought, no? Especially considering their supposed fondness for Genesis 1, the chapter of the Bible that repeats over and over that God created the naturalistic material world and everything in it and said it was GOOD.
So Creationists are worse than hypocrites. They're appalling not just for lack of knowledge about science, but about the Bible as well, even the very verses they claim to support literally...
Oh, our philosophies are quite in agreement. We both agree that the government shouldn't stick it's nose into people's business unless the people pose a clear and present danger to others by their actions. You're definitely preaching to the choir here.
There are plenty of ways to eat Twinkies without getting morbidly obese. I'm a perfect example, and not what you'd call the one that proves the rule. If you have a pair of Twinkies once a week along with a balanced diet, you're not going to get morbidly obese. That is the exact opposite of a "direct causal relationship."
The same is true of marijuana and alcohol. Plenty of people drink alcohol and do just fine -- and there are even health benefits to moderate drinking. And you don't hear much about guys toking up and beating their wives.
This is not true for all drugs, such as heroin. Look, the whole point of taking heroin is to fuck yourself up beyond all other means of fuckedupedness. Once fucked up, you don't give a shit what you do to other people. And the more fucked up the drug gets you, the less likely you are to give a shit if you do something really, really bad.
Now a heroin user is most likely going to lie on the floor and do nothing, so the worst that may happen while high is horrible neglect. (*tries not to think about the scene in Trainspotting with the baby and fails*) But once that first hit is taken, the person almost always spends the next bit of their life looking for the next hit, by any means necessary.
Twinkie eaters don't magically become obese. Heroin users do magically become addicts. Because that's what heroin does to you. If it didn't, no one would bother taking it. It makes you feel teh most bestest wonderful wow! Lah dee dah awesome thing ever and for the rest of your life, it's all about getting that feeling again. Kids hungry? Fuck'em. Wife lonely? Get me more junk or I'll go suck this guy's cock instead. Need money? Steal it. Get it how you get it.
So we're not disagreeing about philosophy. We're disagreeing about facts. And the fact is, there's at least one drug out there that almost always turns the taker into someone who has to be locked up for others' protection.
I agree that they are separate issues, and drinking and driving is the perfect example. You have two perfectly legal behaviors that are illegal -- and rightly so -- when combined.
One way that others are hurt by drug use is when your family and friends are forced to watch you as you destroy your own life. That's not illegal, but it is definitely harmful. Now if you have a heroin habit, you're going to lose the desire for anything other than more heroin; the drug itself is going to incapacitate your ability to keep from harming others. So with heroin, there is a causal relationship between the crimes and the hurt and the use of the drug. Now the use of the drug and the harm to others are separate things, but since you can almost always prevent harm to non-users by preventing one person the use of the drug, why not make it illegal?
That's the truth; in the 70's, programming was considered clerical work.
Nowadays, programs can be much larger, they're more complicated, and they use higher-math concepts (e.g., the late binding that's fundamental to all OO design and programming) that weren't part of established languages back in the day. We're trying to solve more complicated problems now; multithreaded and networked applications are the bulk of the problems we're solving today. You're not just trying to build an accounting system; you're trying to build an accounting system that millions of people will access over the web, that will need to communicate independently (via e.g. email) to all of these people at important times, and it's going to have to provide you the ability to mine the data for marketing research. Oh, and can you use.NET? We hear that's the latest rage...
The fundamentals of programming language design, networking and architecture that you need to adapt to new languages and paradigms don't need to be learned in school, but school's a good way to get that knowledge so that you can keep up with the tech as it changes.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo.
Being in a vertical market has other advantages, but you pretty much nailed The Reason right there -- it keeps them from being in a commodity market, and they get more money.
There's an important reason why they're able to get away with this: The 'net. Prior to the 'net, the OS was the standard for apps. Now, things are shifting back to the 70's client-server model of computing, and as long as you have the proper client (3270 emulator then, browser now) you can run all of the server-based apps that exist.
Research does not have to be profit motivated. A lot of research comes from universities which in turn receive funding from the government. I believe this model is better suited to pharmacuetical research than corporations trying to maximize profits.
The government will always refuse to support vital and important research for various political reasons. It also has limited amounts of money to provide, and what the government determines should be a priority may not be what you think it should be; they may determine that a new weapon is more important than a certain virus pandemic. For these reasons, societies that limit their research dollars to the government's whimsy fall behind technologically, or even destroy their own advances in a government-sponsored fit of nationalism.
I won't go as far as T. Boone Pickens' assertion to the Amarillo Rotary Club that "Greed Is Good," but to deny researchers even the option of reward for their endeavors historically leads to slow progress or even a reverse.
In fact, the argument a friend of mine made to me for his EQ subscription was just that: He was previously spending $100s each month on new game titles, now he only pays $12 per month to get the same amount of gameplay and content. And now I understand.
What's more, he's one of a group of friends I hung out with in high school who would always get together and play games. We didn't get together for the purpose of playing games; getting together was the whole point. Playing games -- board games, D&D, Mechwarrior, video games -- was something to do while we were together. It's more interesting than being a mallrat and more social than watching TV.
I'd later see this same dynamic in MUDs, which were essentially chat rooms with some game behind them more than games with chat capability. And MUDs of course are the spiritual predecessor to the MMOG.
Now that all of these friends have moved apart from each other, the MMOG is a place where they can continue to meet and play every night. Hell, before EQ, we were doing the same thing in Diablo.
So not only is the MMOG cheaper, it's more social.
The biggest problem with everything other than capitalism is that, without the promise of reward for the effort and ludicrous expense required to find a cure to a deadly disease, you never get the cure in the first place.
I agree with what you're saying: Political situation is as big of a part of a land's production capacity as the health of the land and techniques used for growing. The Soviet Union had as much production capacity as the USA, but the Soviet system lacked the efficient distribution of the United States. The USA's heartland is inviolate, and could easily produce enough food to feed the whole world's population, but there's just no way to efficiently get it into people's mouths in places that aren't free as in freedom and free as in markets.
So by your own point, Africa is overpopulated. Political and economic systems matter.
I think it's really as simple as that they just don't know anything about games.
Most of the press is over age 30. And for people in the 30-and-up range, video games were a geek hobby -- and geeks don't typically become journalists. It'll be a solid two decades before people who grew up with video gaming as a mainstream form of entertainment will be holding jobs and editor positions in mass media.
The flip side of this is that the (older) gaming-oriented press is awful for the exact opposite reason; they know plenty about games, and so they review it either from the standpoint of fans (leading to all of the ratings inflation), or they review it from the standpoint of elitists ("this game didn't add anything to what its predecessor did" is an invalid critique for the millions of gamers who never played the predecessor). They're too interested in games.
I'll pile on by adding that I grew up in the only area of the USA (at the time, may be different now) that had not implemented any sort of sex education for children in school. The argument against it, of course, is that the class might encourage young kids to have sex. (I know, I know.)
At the same time, it was also the area of the USA that had the highest rate of teen pregnancy.
Good ol' Amarillo. Good ol' too conservative for its own good Amarillo. Of course, now I live in California, and people out here think I'm some kind of sick fundamentalist nazi fascist...
That whole thing sounded like they were taking what they learned -- the concept that if you think you can't, you can't -- and appended to it their own thoughts, unrelated to the study, to make people feel better
Yes; it seems they redefined the wisdom into something it isn't, and then disproved that.
See, the age-old wisdom is not to expect the worst. The age-old wisdom is a two-parter: First, accept the worst to eliminate worry. Then, do what it takes to improve upon the worst that can happen.
But the caveat, also part of the age-old wisdom, is that if you're not worried, you don't bother. It's a technique for handling anxiety, not a method to ensure success. What happens is that you get so anxious about something, that you can't think, and you're not able to prepare for the test/presentation/gig/trial. But if you're not so anxious that you can think clearly, there's no issue, no problem to solve.
So they've built a straw man and knocked it down. Good for them! I'll keep using the age-old wisdom that works, and ignoring the age-old wisdom that doesn't.
I can't get to your linked article, but I'll comment anyway.
...is in fact explicitly made by the research: If the amount of time spent, the amount of money made, and all other factors remain equal, the child raised in a single-parent home is at a disadvantage compared to a child raised in a home with a mother and a father.
I apologize for not making myself clear; if you do RTFA you'll find that...
Implicit in your argument is the idea that the reason these children are disadvantaged is because they do not have a role model for one sex.
Also, to be clear: This is not my argument. I don't have any investment in the issue; if I'm wrong about it, I don't even have my pride to lose. I'd love to hear about further research about these issues in support of any point of view. The evidence in the link above may be distasteful, but that's no reason to dismiss it before even looking at it.
I agree; it seems silly to pick on homosexuality when there are lots of worse things about parents that can put a child at a disadvantage: Drug use, abusive behavior, absence, or flat out being on the shallow end of the gene pool.
Absence is a particularly interesting one. That bastion of hard-core conservativism, The Atlantic, reported a while back that children raised without both a male and female role model in the home are at a significant disadvantage compared to those who do not (subscription required). Now that was comparing single-parent relationships to two-parent relationships, so it is extrapolation to suggest this applies to homosexual relationships.
The child of the same-sex relationship will have to find a role model of the gender not represented by his or her parents just the same as a child of a single-parent home has to. And in both cases, there's no telling who the child will choose, or if the child will have no strong role model at all. So it's not a particularly devious extrapolation, and until someone is able to do some legitimate research, it seems to me to be a reasonable hypothesis: The child of a same-sex couple will be at a disadvantage compared to one raised by a male and female parent.
It's not very fair, but who said life is fair? My child, for example, will be at a disadvantage because his father's an asshole who spends too much time in flamewars on Slashdot.
"Nintendo is the only game company left who places fun, gameplay, and design over advertising, hype, and corporate greed. "
Considering Nintendo's the only profitable big game hardware company (at just games) out there, I'd instead claim that their focus on fun, gameplay and design makes them much better at corporate greed than the others. (See also: Apple.)
I mean, how greedy can Sony really be when they're shrinking and losing money by the $billion?
71. Phantom menace
:D
In October the board of Infinium Labs reveals that chairman Timothy Roberts is under investigation by the SEC for allegedly sending junk faxes touting penny stocks -- including shares of Infinium, maker of the little-known Phantom game console. The board also announces that financial reports prepared by Roberts, the company's CEO before he resigned in August, should not be relied on. A month later the company's new CEO, Kevin Bachus, also resigns. The board -- which still includes Roberts -- manages to tempt consultant Greg Koler into the CEO hot seat with the tantalizing prize of 4 million shares of Infinium stock, currently worth $68,000.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Amarillo, Texas. I was interested in computers. I wasn't the only one, but it was rare to find someone who had either equipment or interest. There were no businesses, universities, or anything where you could go to, say, connect to the internet. There were a handful of BBSes, and not much more.
But when I made it to Austin for college, I found that the kids from Houston and Dallas who were also into Computer Science had already formed networks, knew about the internet, USENET, irc, the demoscene. They had access to the cutting edge, whereas I had access to mere leftovers. And the reason was because this kind of high-end knowledge happens where the technology centers are. Unless a small town is somehow already a tech center, with both academic and industrial support for it, there won't be the adults, which means there won't be the kids, to grow up in that enivornment.
Small towns just don't have the right environment to develop a Shawn Fanning. That person is much more likely to ditch the small town and move on to a bigger town where his/her interest is likely to have peers.
So no, tech will never save the small town. Not without cutting-edge high-tech industrial support in the form of both industry and academia, and the small towns that have that (e.g., Austin) have already benefitted from it.
I think "general public" includes women themselves....
How does that change anything? It's still true.
I've taken the liberty of boldfacing what that "whatever" reason is in your paragraph above: WMA is just as proprietary as AAC/Fairplay. Instead of competing with Apple on an open system, they're using another proprietary system. And that's why it's working for Apple: There is no open DRM standard. Given the nature of openness and the recording industry's digital paranoia, I will be surprised if there ever is.
Ok, but you've basically just undercut your own point by limiting it to just American Fundamentalists: Your original claim is painting all religions with an extremely broad brush when you claim that they're all houses of cards, where you take out one and the rest falls down. If you mean American Fundamentalism, then say American Fundamentalism; don't say "Religion" and mean it to refer to, say, Presbyterians in the US, where you could (oh say) prove me wrong on a couple of serious and significant matters and it wouldn't then logically follow that I'd have to give up belief in God because of it.
In the church in which I grew up, having a different opinion on theological matters was not merely tolerated, but expected. We also expected our beliefs to obey the laws of Physics...
"While science, philosophy can be reworked if facts contradict theories, religion cannot, so I don't understand why you are putting them into the same category."
Why not?
It's a legitimate question. And really think about it, instead of just posting the first answer that comes to mind. For example, you might want to take a look at the Reformation and what that was all about.
You and I both know that MMO's are as much glorified chat rooms as they are games. And you and I both know that games (ALL kinds) have always been more fun when played with friends than played alone. Ever try to play D&D alone? Ever been in a D&D group that had someone you didn't know in it that you DIDN'T get to know well after being in the gang for a while? What about fucking Monopoly?
I guess if your only exposure to gaming is Solitaire and Bejeweled...which seems to be this tool's point of view.
It wouldn't be the first time a so-called "Analyst" was speaking out of his ass without knowing what he was talking about.
"Is there something more complicated here that I'm not seeing?"
Massachussetts vs. Microsoft, q.v.
I guess how you interpret my position comes down to how you define the terms, but I balk at the terms "faith" and "belief", because to me they represent blinders that become invisible once you put them on. If you fail to question your assumptions about reality, you'll soon be wandering off into a world that exists only in your own mind.
That's fair; the word "faith" really has come to embrace the meaning "blind faith," so I understand your hesitation. That's why ever post I ever make on the subject ends up being 19 pages long: I have to explain: "Wait, look, faith has a meaning other than 'blind.'"
Of course, it could be worse; I could be trying to convince other Christians to go to a Presbyterian church and have to keep re-explaining Predestination. Boy, did that one ever get messed up from its original intent. It was originally intended to show why excommunication from the Catholic Church did not, and could not, lead to eternal damnation. (Hmmm... Now that I look at that, that wasn't that bad after all...maybe there is nothing worse than taking on the meaning of the word "faith!")
You are most likely correct that you don't have a religion. As for faith, when you act on your assumptions, believing them to be basically correct, that is faith. (Faith is not "blind belief in some random superstition." There's a better word for that: Arrogance.)
Now isn't ID just another assumption you could have convictions about? Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory based on evidence; it is call to arms against looking for evidence. That includes looking for evidence of God's existence, if you really must know. That makes it, in my mind, the absolute nadir of theological thought: The denial of the value of theological thought itself.
See, I write this as a practicing Christian. But my belief in God is based on evidence that I believe outweighs the evidence (or lack thereof) against God's existence. I know that the evidence I've experienced that God does in fact exist has not undergone the scientific rigor and experimentation that evolutionary theory has. I am willing to concede that I may be wrong about the whole God thing. And that is what separates faith from arrogance.
I recently discovered a quote from St. Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (translated by J.H. Taylor) that I believe is relevant for all of my fellow Christians who would challenge evolutionary theory:
I think it sums up the issue facing Christianity with regard to Science today neatly.
One other thing I've noticed is that the modern-day "pop Jesus" crowd, with their disdain for naturalistic science and earned knowledge, seem to represent a reprisal of the ancient Gnostic Heresy. It's an interesting thought, no? Especially considering their supposed fondness for Genesis 1, the chapter of the Bible that repeats over and over that God created the naturalistic material world and everything in it and said it was GOOD.
So Creationists are worse than hypocrites. They're appalling not just for lack of knowledge about science, but about the Bible as well, even the very verses they claim to support literally...
Oh, our philosophies are quite in agreement. We both agree that the government shouldn't stick it's nose into people's business unless the people pose a clear and present danger to others by their actions. You're definitely preaching to the choir here.
There are plenty of ways to eat Twinkies without getting morbidly obese. I'm a perfect example, and not what you'd call the one that proves the rule. If you have a pair of Twinkies once a week along with a balanced diet, you're not going to get morbidly obese. That is the exact opposite of a "direct causal relationship."
The same is true of marijuana and alcohol. Plenty of people drink alcohol and do just fine -- and there are even health benefits to moderate drinking. And you don't hear much about guys toking up and beating their wives.
This is not true for all drugs, such as heroin. Look, the whole point of taking heroin is to fuck yourself up beyond all other means of fuckedupedness. Once fucked up, you don't give a shit what you do to other people. And the more fucked up the drug gets you, the less likely you are to give a shit if you do something really, really bad.
Now a heroin user is most likely going to lie on the floor and do nothing, so the worst that may happen while high is horrible neglect. (*tries not to think about the scene in Trainspotting with the baby and fails*) But once that first hit is taken, the person almost always spends the next bit of their life looking for the next hit, by any means necessary.
Twinkie eaters don't magically become obese. Heroin users do magically become addicts. Because that's what heroin does to you. If it didn't, no one would bother taking it. It makes you feel teh most bestest wonderful wow! Lah dee dah awesome thing ever and for the rest of your life, it's all about getting that feeling again. Kids hungry? Fuck'em. Wife lonely? Get me more junk or I'll go suck this guy's cock instead. Need money? Steal it. Get it how you get it.
So we're not disagreeing about philosophy. We're disagreeing about facts. And the fact is, there's at least one drug out there that almost always turns the taker into someone who has to be locked up for others' protection.
I agree that they are separate issues, and drinking and driving is the perfect example. You have two perfectly legal behaviors that are illegal -- and rightly so -- when combined.
One way that others are hurt by drug use is when your family and friends are forced to watch you as you destroy your own life. That's not illegal, but it is definitely harmful. Now if you have a heroin habit, you're going to lose the desire for anything other than more heroin; the drug itself is going to incapacitate your ability to keep from harming others. So with heroin, there is a causal relationship between the crimes and the hurt and the use of the drug. Now the use of the drug and the harm to others are separate things, but since you can almost always prevent harm to non-users by preventing one person the use of the drug, why not make it illegal?
That's the truth; in the 70's, programming was considered clerical work.
.NET? We hear that's the latest rage...
Nowadays, programs can be much larger, they're more complicated, and they use higher-math concepts (e.g., the late binding that's fundamental to all OO design and programming) that weren't part of established languages back in the day. We're trying to solve more complicated problems now; multithreaded and networked applications are the bulk of the problems we're solving today. You're not just trying to build an accounting system; you're trying to build an accounting system that millions of people will access over the web, that will need to communicate independently (via e.g. email) to all of these people at important times, and it's going to have to provide you the ability to mine the data for marketing research. Oh, and can you use
The fundamentals of programming language design, networking and architecture that you need to adapt to new languages and paradigms don't need to be learned in school, but school's a good way to get that knowledge so that you can keep up with the tech as it changes.
There really is no reason why such a decision doesn't also make all drug use legal, ...
Are you claiming that people who abuse drugs don't hurt the people around them?