Political pundits often claim that part of the reason you pick the VP candidate should be to help win a key state. Obviously that wasn't an issue with Palin in 08 since Alaska is dark red, but Wisconsin has been light blue the last couple elections, and with Scott Walker surviving his recall election here, perhaps Romney is hoping Ryan will help flip the state red? As a native Wisconsinite I don't think it's too likely... The state hasn't gone red that often, in fact you'd have to go back to 1984 to find Wisconsin flipping red in a Presidential election. Still, past performance isn't always a guarantee and the Romney team might feel energized by Walker's recall victory. Then again it could just be that Romney is afraid the base thinks he's too moderate and wants a loyal Tea Party running mate to fire up the base. That has the potential to backfire though, since moderate voters might shy away from Ryan, and elderly voters will almost certainly have a hard time voting for the guy that prioritizes tax-breaks for millionaires over social security and medicare. And of course Ryan is now going to be thrust into the spotlight more than he's ever been in the past, with every last detail of his life examined and scrutinized. I have no reason to believe there's any skeletons in his closet, but if there are you can bet the media will dig them up. Overall though the VP pick is really only important in what it shows about the Presidential candidate, and Romney has had a problem of never really wanting to commit on issues since he's likely afraid whatever he says will come back to bite him. His VP pick is obviously something he can't easily walk away from, but I think it's too early to tell if it will help or hurt him.
How timely, I just read a blog post about brain plasticity. Basically, the list of activities that do not alter the brain is probably much shorter than the list of activities that do. The human brain is constantly rewiring itself. Here's an article about a study that shows brain plasticity may be even more radical than we thought, possibly even reprogramming the genomes of individual neurons:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/11/genome.html
Funny that I had to read about this on Slashdot. You think they could send out a mass email to everyone with a Steam account, especially when credit card numbers are involved (even if they're encrypted). I hate inbox clutter as much as the next guy, but Gabe himself says to watch your credit cards for suspicious activity (which is never a bad idea), but how are Steam users supposed to know to do so if we don't read the Steam forums, or read Slashdot? Seems like they kinda dropped the ball on the whole communication thing here...
I know this is horribly OT but I can't resist. Rick Perry says evolution is full of holes and that nobody knows how old the Earth is (with the clear implication that he's pandering to the fundamentalists that say it's 6000 years old). So when I see an article like this about the real, actual science behind human origins I can't help but feel a combination of shame and rage that a candidate for the highest office in the United States is essentially sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "La la la, I can't hear you, reality."
I agree with everything you wrote. Why Netflix is going to offer game rentals, and then I went to make a sandwich. Hey look a bunny rabbit.
I have to admit, that's pretty funny. Except, dear AC, in my post I did warn you that I was about veer offtopic in parenthesis (like these) in hopes that I would preemptively prevent comments such as yours. Bravo though, that was better than I was expecting. I fully admit that my style of communication is rather rambling, both online and in real life, because I tend to see abstract connections to topics that most people view as entirely unrelated. In fact going from Netflix offering game rentals to a rant about game demos is a pretty short stretch compared to most of my ramblings. So consider yourself lucky!
What's going to be entertaining (in the sense that the sad circus of American politics is entertaining) about this whole thing is to watch the about-face the conservatives will make about how much money it takes to be rich. Recently, various state governments have been going after unions, and you see conservative commentators on the various shows talking about how teachers make enough money, how $30-40k a year is plenty when you consider union benefits, blah blah. Now these same exact people are going to go on the same exact shows and, with a straight face, say how those poor folks making a million a year are just struggling to get by and really need a break in this kind of economy while completely ignoring the fact they've spent a better part of a year telling us a teacher's salary is downright lavish. How does a conservative's head not explode from the cognitive dissonance? Do they actually simultaneously believe these polar opposite stances they take, or are they (like all politicians) simply bought and paid for by their masters and puppet whatever talking points they are fed?
For those of you who are going to dispute my point, here are some preemptive replies. First, I know that folks on the left do this shit all the time too. I remember Kerry's "flip flopping" helping cost him the 2004 election. But pointing to the other side and saying "See, they do the same reprehensible thing we do" does not actually make it okay. It's still downright disingenuous. My point is simple: How much money does it take to be rich? Because the conservatives in America have two different definitions that depend not on the amount income, but essentially on class. The fact that these same conservatives are the first to scream "Class Warfare!" at this kind of proposal is deliciously ironic and the whole thing would be fucking hilarious if the stakes weren't so high.
Reality check: to solve the long-term debt crisis, two things need to happen. Taxes need to go up, and spending needs to go down. Either side that says you can do one but not the other is living in some magical fairy-tale land where facts are superseded by what they wish were true.
Missing from this submission is the news that Netflix/Qwikster will now offer game rentals. I suppose that's not a big deal to everyone. I'm sure gamefly isn't happy about it, but competition should be great right? Personally I rarely if ever rent games, since I tend to play a demo first (and if there isn't one, pirate) and if I like the game I purchase it through Steam, so that I can get up-to-date patches, play online, and have that warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the developers. I wish the industry was more receptive to demos, because they do work, for good games at least.
For example (an off-topic gaming story follows here), I recently watched X-Men: First Class and the American/Soviet ships primed for battle with each other put me in a Red Alert mood. I had never played the third game in the franchise, because when it came out I was raiding heavily in WoW and not playing anything else. Anyway, I went to check the price on Steam to find out if I had to get a pirated version as a sampler first, and to my surprise there was a free demo. The demo only offered two missions, but after spending an hour messing around with the various units in one mission I decided it was certainly worth the $20. Moral here is, game demos make sales, at least if the game is any good. But it seems to me like the industry simply expects you to rent the game if you want a sample, or else pay the full price, which is likely one of the driving forces of game piracy. Obviously the whole "free of charge" thing is a major draw for pirates, but I can imagine I'm not the only person who buys games, but won't waste $20-$50 until I'm certain it's something I will get several hours out of.
I think the biggest barrier for entry for women gamers isn't the games themselves, but the gaming community. We all know of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but women get presented an even uglier side of online gaming. This site has some good examples: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
It seems the moment a female gamer reveals her gender she's automatically the target of the most vile and despicable comments the online community has to offer. Granted, most gamers are thick skinned and can brush this stuff off. But it makes me wonder how many women have tried playing a game, had an experience similar to the ones at the site above, and gave up entirely. It would be nice if the online community were a little friendlier. We would all have more fun that way, regardless of gender.
Obviously there are a lot of things about the workings of the human mind that we don't understand. So how can we be so sure that new physics isn't involved?
Of course we can't be sure, but that's not the point. We can't be sure that the motion of the planets isn't governed by hard-working angels keeping them on their orbits, in the metaphysical-certitude sense of being "sure." That's not a criterion that is useful in science. Rather, in the face of admittedly incomplete understanding, we evaluate the relative merits of competing hypotheses. In this case, one hypothesis says that the operation of the brain is affected in a rather ill-defined way by influences that are not described by the known laws of physics, and that these effects will ultimately help us make sense of human consciousness; the other says that brains are complicated, so it's no surprise that we don't understand everything, but that an ultimate explanation will fit comfortably within the framework of known fundamental physics. This is not really a close call; by conventional scientific measures, the idea that known physics will be able to account for the brain is enormously far in the lead. To persuade anyone otherwise, you would have to point to something the brain does that is in apparent conflict with the Standard Model or general relativity. (Bending spoons across large distances would qualify.) Until then, the fact that something is complicated isn't evidence that the particular collection of atoms we call the brain obeys different rules than other collections of atoms.
I love Star Trek, a lot. I'm sure I fit every possible stereotype of a Trek nerd, including ones that are contradictory. But there was one thing that always, always bugged me about Star Trek, even as a kid.
Phasers are essentially inferior to contemporary firearms. For starters, they are actually slower than bullets. You cannot dodge a bullet (in real life, anyway). But there are several examples of the Enterprise crew dodging phaser/disrupter blasts in TNG. Granted, it's possible to retcon this by saying it's some sort of charged plasma that doesn't travel at the speed of light blah blah. But my point is not that it doesn't travel at light speed (which is obvious) but that it's actually SLOWER than a bullet. Which raises the question, why on Earth (or in the Alpha Quadrant, for that matter) would they use essentially inferior technology? If our present day firearms are superior to phasers, why the switch? It defies all logic.
And don't even get me started on the horrible scene in Star Trek: First Contact where the Borg have adapted to Picard's phaser so he lures them into the holodeck and mows them down with a tommy gun. So, 1940s machine gun > 24th century phaser. And they don't keep a stash of machine guns in a weapon's locker? Hell, they can't even replicate a few dozen? Sigh.
Really, it's easier to suspend disbelief about Warp Drive even though that violates everything we know about relativity and modern physics than it is to accept the concept of the phaser replacing the superior firepower we already have in this century.
Anyway, angry Trek nerd rant mode off. Sorry about that.
Is anyone shocked when one of those "family values" politicians, preaching about the sanctity of marriage and the evilness of a culture that glamorizes homosexuality comes out of the closet? Or in the case of Larry Craig, gets busted trying to have sex in a men's room? It doesn't shock me anymore, since it seems the most passionate moral crusaders are really crusading against their own personal desires.
Hell, look at "culture warrior" Bill O'Reilly. Remember the Andrea Mackris thing? She had transcripts of alleged phone conversations that are clear examples of sexual harassment (and the detailed nature of the transcripts lead people to believe she had recordings). Bill O paid her a bunch of money to shut up and never spoke of it again. Sexual harassment is wrong when anyone does it, but it seems doubly wrong when you preach day in and out about morals and the "dangers" of things like rap music.
I guess, essentially, the gist of my post here is that people are often hypocrites, so hypocritical behavior does not shock me at all. So a group of extremist Muslims who feel strongly enough about their religion to blow up thousands of innocent (including Muslim) Americans happen to enjoy porn when nobody is looking. Not surprised. In fact, it makes me wonder aloud here if the religion is just an excuse for the killings, and if what people like bin Laden were really upset about was Israel and our support of it, that it's more of a territorial dispute than a religious one, but it's just a lot easier to get people to fly planes into buildings if you tell them 72 virgins will greet them afterward. I mean, I tend to notice the folks at the top of these terrorist organizations aren't the ones blowing themselves up. Think maybe they have some doubts about whether or not they end up anywhere afterward?
But then again I shouldn't read too much into this one incident, it is after all just some porn. Just a thought though - maybe if bin Laden's wives didn't have to be covered head to toe, he wouldn't need a stash to get off.
funny, my opinion is that wow is in the best state it has ever been in. granted, with a game as old as wow, it is hard to recapture that shiny newness that a fresh mmo has. but wows endgame has never been better. now 10man raids are on equal footing with 25 mans since the loot is identical. this means players no longer feel forced to run both 10 and 25 mans to advance. this gives smaller guilds a huge advantage, making wows endgame more accessable than it has ever been. at the same time, the game is far from dumbed down - the heroic 5 mans are quite challenging (at least for pugs) and the raids have a mix of easy, somewhat hard, and crazy insane bosses. there is literally something for everyone now. anyway, if any slashdotters read this, i play as raymer on whisperwind alliance and will gladly help run you through some quests or dungeons and whatnot.
Gaming on the PC is not dead, even though some have been claiming the end is near for at least ten years now. But, gaming on the PC has changed quite a bit in the last decade. If you look at the gaming environment on the PC a decade ago, a bit longer even, in the late 90s with the launch of the first GeForce... gaming on the PC was a much larger affair - big budget games that took a big budget PC to play. Developers expected PC gamers to be on the bleeding edge, and for the most part they were. Sure, some developers tried to market to the low-end niche. But the general sense seemed to be, if you were gaming on the PC you had a beast of a rig for it, and all the big budget developers tailored their games with that in mind.
Now things have really changed. There a lot more PCs out there, but the high-end gaming enthusiast is a very small portion of computer users. So developers, with a few exceptions, tend to target those low to mid range systems out there, since that's where the market is... it's no longer reasonable for developers to expect a gamer to have a state of the art system. As a good example to this, I can't help but mention the elephant in the room when it comes to PC gaming: World of Warcraft. Easily one of the most popular PC games in the world. While WoW obviously requires more hardware than your average Facebook game, it's really not by much. They've made sure to design the game so it will run on a very low end machine, like the kind you can pick up at Walmart for under $500. Now, a game like WoW does have advanced shader features and DX11 stuff that can be toggled on for those with higher end systems, but none of it is required. Sure, the higher end machines make it look better and run faster, but it's a huge shift from the late 90s where developers just expected gamers to have high end machines to play their games at all.
Now, before someone points out that my example, WoW, is already several years old, I would point that Blizzard just released an expansion at the end of 2010, and if they wanted they could have totally reworked the game engine for high end systems (while that would be an expensive endeavour, if anyone could afford to it's Blizzard). They did not though, because Blizzard knows that having more systems able to run the game increases the potential market.
That's not to say games for high end systems don't exist on the PC anymore, since they obviously do, but they seem to be the exception instead of the norm these days. And a lot of those high end games are cross-platform, so they only require high end systems because they're competing with the current generation of consoles (which, I admit, isn't hard given this generation of consoles seems to have outlived all previous generations). I guess my long-winded point here is that the landscape of the PC gaming world has changed. High end systems are no longer the default assumption like they were a decade ago. I think overall this is good for gamers, since instead of being an expensive niche hobby, PC gaming is within the reach of anyone who can own a very modest PC.
I have only one complaint...
on
Tron: Legacy
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· Score: 1
My only complaint was the movie took a bit too long to get started. A lot of the intro scenes seemed kind of redundant. I felt like the audience didn't really need a background on the original Tron. Even people that haven't seen the first movie are going to know the basics because it's a movie that's sort of embedded into the culture somewhat. Sure, not to the extent of films like Star Wars, but if you haven't seen the first movie the time they wasted recapping it at the start isn't going to help you much anyway. And it's just a bit boring for everyone else. I did like that young Flynn felt ENCOM's new OS should be free, while the corporate drones wanted to charge for it. Seemed like a subtle nod to Windows and its free rivals. And I get that they want to establish him as kind of a rebel without a cause, so he can find himself a cause in the grid world. But it just dragged on a bit too long for me. Once he gets in though, wow. The visuals are stunning, and not just in the Avatar sense that it's really photo realistic (in some cases it's not, but that make sense). But it's visually creative. Watching them activate the bikes or planes, it's just amazing. The light-plane that they're flying too, it's a bit surreal. One very smart thing they did with this movie is after he gets out it's basically over. There's very few scenes in the real world afterward, because the filmmakers were smart enough to know it couldn't compare to what you've just seen on The Grid. Is the plot far fetched? Sure, but it for the most part is internally consistent and there weren't any issues with the plot that I found too distracting. If you want creative visuals with a surreal quality, this is the movie. As a piece of story-telling, there are better films, but it's not terrible in that regard, or at least not so bad that it distracts from the visuals.
Oh, and I know it's popular to bash 3D on Slashdot, but I saw it in 3D and I feel like it added something to it. One thing though, there's a bit of a disclaimer at the start saying some scenes were filmed in 2D (like the intro scenes) but to leave your 3D glasses on the whole time. Whatever - take them off for the intro scenes, you don't need them and it makes the film look a bit brighter anyway. But once he gets inside, definitely put them on and keep them on. It's worth it.
I essentially agree with the content of your post, but this comment makes me want to post some off-topic and pedantic remarks:
God damn there outta be an IQ requirement to post here!
That might not help a whole lot. IQ doesn't really measure intelligence, but rather the capacity for it. A person can have an extremely high IQ but know next to nothing about certain topics, or be just plain wrong about a lot of them. A good example of that is Bobby Fischer, a chess genius with an IQ of 180, but he wasn't immune to xenophobic paranoia. Personally, I've taken two IQ tests and was in the 130 range both times, well above average, but there are a lot of things I know next to nothing about. For example, even though I have the capacity to understand it, I never learned much advanced mathematics because I simply lacked the motivation. An above average IQ doesn't make a person immune to other mental pitfalls. IQ also does not measure experience. I wouldn't tell a plumber or electrician how to do their job, since I lack the expertise they possess. Something that makes Slashdot discussions interesting is the fact that people have a variety of expertise here, and it's not uncommon to find people employed in whatever topic the article is discussing. It would be a mistake to discount the insight of those people if they failed to meet some arbitrary cutoff.
Anyway, I'm sure you weren't really serious and it was just a flippant remark, but I thought I'd comment anyway.
For a dystopian look at the inevitable progression of endless consumerism, read Brave New World. It's a good book on multiple levels, but when I first read it 10 years ago, I thought the satire of consumerism was a bit extreme, bordering even on the absurd. Sadly, I don't think so anymore.
The Denver man who proposed the measure, Jeff Peckman, says the government is tracking alien sightings but refuses to make the reports public. Peckman is a meditation instructor and promoter of new technology, including something he says reduces the "chaos of electromagnetic fields."
And his evidence for any of this is...? Maybe the voters rejected this because, after 60 or so years of the modern UFO "movement" we are no closer to any hard evidence than when it started. In that time real science has landed men on the Moon, conquered the atom and used computers to connect the world. I think the lesson here is that science works: it produces real, tangible results. Pseudoscience produces nothing, save the false sense of superiority in those that practice it. People that believe UFOs are alien spacecraft, and that the government covers it up, aren't interested in facts. They believe it in the same mode of thought people use for religion. And that's not to disparage religious folk; while I am not religious myself, I understand the desire to believe and the strength people can draw from that belief. But some modes of thought, such as accepting things on faith, are not useful for real science.
Here's a major mistake UFO proponents make. They tend to believe, if science can't explain away every single detail about a UFO sighting, then it "must" be an alien spacecraft. It doesn't work that way though, because alien spacecraft are not known to exist. So, jumping to that conclusion is as absurd as saying it was elves or unicorns that caused the lights in the sky. And yet UFO proponents think explanations like "marsh gas" are absurd. But guess what: marsh gas is known to exist. So what's really more absurd? From the vantage point of science, we have to presume something does not exist until we have evidence it does. So until we have an alien spacecraft to examine up close, the default assumption will always be that they do not exist, and that will continue to be sound scientific reasoning until we have more than lights in the sky to support the alien spacecraft hypothesis.
Here is physicist Richard Feynman's take on the meaning of life. For more insights, check out his page on wikiquote here.
I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
I get that we want to think that military officers are supposed to be more reliable than your average Joe Schmuckatellii, but come on.
Everyone thinks that because it sounds like a "common sense" notion, right? But guess what actual, scientific studies on the subject of eyewitness testimony has shown? The answer: It does not matter who you are or what you do for a living, your brain is subject to the same logical fallacies as anyone else, and eyewitness testimony from air force pilots is statistically on equal footing as the testimony from cab drivers.
Here's a big problem that comes from interviewing eyewitnesses. If you interview them more than once, you get more data. However that data is almost always unintentionally fabricated. The human mind likes to subconsciously add details that fit a particular cognitive narrative. For example, say you witness a flock of geese but are convinced they are alien spacecraft. Your mind will then add subtle details to your recollections in an effort to more closely fit that narrative.
And herein lies the problem with most UFO "researchers" when it comes to eyewitness testimony. They do not attempt to filter out the cognitive bias at all. The typical "research" consists of 1) listen to fantastic story of UFO sighting and 2) believe story. That's not research.
UFO proponents always gripe that science doesn't take UFOs seriously, but that's exactly what the scientific community does when it applies harsh critiques to eyewitness testimony. Should we not apply the same techniques to filter out unreliable eyewitness accounts that we apply to aircraft accidents or murder trials? So really, when the UFO crowd says science isn't taking it seriously, what they mean is, we're applying too harsh a standard - a scientific standard - to their fantasies. They would rather we lower the bar so that speculation, supposition and circular reasoning all substitute for real science.
In the 50 odd years since modern UFO proponents have been trying to prove their case they have come no closer to proving anything. In that same time human beings have landed men on the Moon, remotely explored the outer solar system, and unraveled the history of the universe to its infant stages. And it didn't require a lower standard of proof to do any of those things. So why apply it to UFOs?
Kids swearing reminds me of a great scene in Misery. If you haven't seen the film it's worth watching, it's both intringuing horror and somewhat comical (both intentionally and unintentioally). Anyway, romance novel writer Paul Sheldon is being held captive by his insane fan Annie Wilks. She reads a manuscript for his as yet unpublished novel with a more serious tone, and this is her reaction:
Annie Wilkes: It's the swearing, Paul. It has no nobility.
Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that.
Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! At the feedstore do I say, "Oh, now Wally, give me a bag of that F-in' pig feed, and a pound of that bitchly cow corn"? At the bank do I say, "Oh, Mrs. Malenger, here is one big bastard of a check, now give me some of your Christ-ing money!" THERE, LOOK THERE, NOW SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!
It's a great scene, mainly because Kathy Bates is so convincing as the mentally deranged Annie. But it does bring up the sort of cognitive dissonance about swearing. What does it really damage? From a philosophical standpoint, it's kind of odd that we humans make words that are considered taboo in the first place. Words have only the power that people give them. For example, others have already mentioned how what's acceptable has changed, and on that subject, I recall talking to my grandmother once about movies she saw when she was a kid. One of them was Gone with the Wind, and when Clark Cable uttered his famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line, she said there was audible gasp in the theater. I can't even imagine the string of profanities needed to make a modern movie-going audience gasp. Actually, I think a string of profanities would have the opposite impact today, people would likely find it absurd at start laughing. So yes, language evolves, but so does society. Perhaps we've moved beyond assigning such power to words. The only exception I can think of is racial slurs, those are more offensive today to many people than they ever were in the past. It's not uncommon to find elderly folks that drop the N-word, not out of hatred or malice, but because that was just what "everyone" called black people when they were growing up. Granted, some elderly folks that use racial slurs are also racists, but it's not necessarily the case either. Things change, and not everyone can or will adapt.
While it can be funny to poke fun at Creationists, part of me doesn't find them funny at all. I've met some and they really, truly believe they are right, and that modern science is some evil hegemony determined to discredit religion. They believe it as strongly as say, extremists that believe they will meet 72 virgins if they die in a suicide bombing. I find that more frightening than amusing, especially since some of the Creationist folks have ventured into politics, like Christine O'Donnell, with her dismissal of evolution by calling it "only a theory." Gravity is also "only a theory" but that doesn't mean you can fly if you don't "believe" in it. I don't like the idea of people who have a fundamental flaw in their understanding of the universe making decisions that impact millions of people. That's more frightening than funny, so while I can still laugh at a Creationist joke like this, it's kind of a nervous laugh since there is this constant reminder that people exist who want to turn the clock on human knowledge back hundreds of years.
I suppose it is "nifty" for folks that actually like the instant search feature, but I've been happily avoiding it by doing my searches through the URL bar in Chrome. Guess they'll take that option away, too? Oh well, I'm not going to nerd-rage about it like some of the posts I've seen on Slashdot. It's just a minor annoyance to me but I'll likely still use Chrome to browse and Google to search. I really like Chrome, mainly because it's one of the few browsers that's lightning fast when I have lots of tabs with Flash heavy content open. That's probably only because of my aging hardware, and it's not like Firefox is really sluggish on my system, just noticeably slower.
Plus Chrome has other neat features, like when I type the URL of a site I have searched before, you can search that site again by pressing tab, so I don't need to have a bunch of different search boxes for different sites like I do in Firefox. Anyway, I guess I'll reserve my judgement until it's actually implemented, maybe they'll do it in a way that isn't too irksome or distracting.
Only if you want collaborators, advisers and influencers that are idiots and use Twitter.
Tribalism much? Making a broad, sweeping generalization about millions of people is generally a good way to be wrong. While I personally believe twitter isn't much more than a noteworthy fad, and there are obviously a lot of morons using it for inane banter, there are also very intelligent people making the most of those 140 characters and you can't dismiss them with mere hand-waving.
He's also not very good at metaphysics, since he seems sometimes unable to understand that physics can't ultimately answer "why" questions.
Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan were also unable to "understand" that notion, which makes me wonder: If some of history's greatest minds have trouble with it, perhaps there's some merit to it after all? I mean, if with physics we can determine some powerful, penetrating truth of the universe, does that not have the potential to answer some "why" questions? We live in the universe, but it also lives in us. We are conscious molecules formed from stardust billions of years old. As we learn about the universe, we learn about ourselves. "Why" just might be something we learn, too.
I know this isn't the way the real world works, which is why the permit system is bullshit.
Pretty much. At least it's not quite as bullshit as say, EULAs, right? Andrea recently bought a copy of StarCraft II to see the pretty graphics on her gaming laptop (unfortunately the game runs pretty awful on her Mac Mini), and I think the EULA takes up more pages in the manual than game lore portion. It's pretty fun though, even if it's essentially the same game. Ironically she hasn't even played it yet because the Zerg are "too scary" or something. There's a "casual" difficulty setting though, I think it would work for her, haha.
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Political pundits often claim that part of the reason you pick the VP candidate should be to help win a key state. Obviously that wasn't an issue with Palin in 08 since Alaska is dark red, but Wisconsin has been light blue the last couple elections, and with Scott Walker surviving his recall election here, perhaps Romney is hoping Ryan will help flip the state red? As a native Wisconsinite I don't think it's too likely... The state hasn't gone red that often, in fact you'd have to go back to 1984 to find Wisconsin flipping red in a Presidential election. Still, past performance isn't always a guarantee and the Romney team might feel energized by Walker's recall victory. Then again it could just be that Romney is afraid the base thinks he's too moderate and wants a loyal Tea Party running mate to fire up the base. That has the potential to backfire though, since moderate voters might shy away from Ryan, and elderly voters will almost certainly have a hard time voting for the guy that prioritizes tax-breaks for millionaires over social security and medicare. And of course Ryan is now going to be thrust into the spotlight more than he's ever been in the past, with every last detail of his life examined and scrutinized. I have no reason to believe there's any skeletons in his closet, but if there are you can bet the media will dig them up. Overall though the VP pick is really only important in what it shows about the Presidential candidate, and Romney has had a problem of never really wanting to commit on issues since he's likely afraid whatever he says will come back to bite him. His VP pick is obviously something he can't easily walk away from, but I think it's too early to tell if it will help or hurt him.
How timely, I just read a blog post about brain plasticity. Basically, the list of activities that do not alter the brain is probably much shorter than the list of activities that do. The human brain is constantly rewiring itself. Here's an article about a study that shows brain plasticity may be even more radical than we thought, possibly even reprogramming the genomes of individual neurons: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/11/genome.html
Funny that I had to read about this on Slashdot. You think they could send out a mass email to everyone with a Steam account, especially when credit card numbers are involved (even if they're encrypted). I hate inbox clutter as much as the next guy, but Gabe himself says to watch your credit cards for suspicious activity (which is never a bad idea), but how are Steam users supposed to know to do so if we don't read the Steam forums, or read Slashdot? Seems like they kinda dropped the ball on the whole communication thing here...
I know this is horribly OT but I can't resist. Rick Perry says evolution is full of holes and that nobody knows how old the Earth is (with the clear implication that he's pandering to the fundamentalists that say it's 6000 years old). So when I see an article like this about the real, actual science behind human origins I can't help but feel a combination of shame and rage that a candidate for the highest office in the United States is essentially sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "La la la, I can't hear you, reality."
I agree with everything you wrote. Why Netflix is going to offer game rentals, and then I went to make a sandwich. Hey look a bunny rabbit.
I have to admit, that's pretty funny. Except, dear AC, in my post I did warn you that I was about veer offtopic in parenthesis (like these) in hopes that I would preemptively prevent comments such as yours. Bravo though, that was better than I was expecting. I fully admit that my style of communication is rather rambling, both online and in real life, because I tend to see abstract connections to topics that most people view as entirely unrelated. In fact going from Netflix offering game rentals to a rant about game demos is a pretty short stretch compared to most of my ramblings. So consider yourself lucky!
What's going to be entertaining (in the sense that the sad circus of American politics is entertaining) about this whole thing is to watch the about-face the conservatives will make about how much money it takes to be rich. Recently, various state governments have been going after unions, and you see conservative commentators on the various shows talking about how teachers make enough money, how $30-40k a year is plenty when you consider union benefits, blah blah. Now these same exact people are going to go on the same exact shows and, with a straight face, say how those poor folks making a million a year are just struggling to get by and really need a break in this kind of economy while completely ignoring the fact they've spent a better part of a year telling us a teacher's salary is downright lavish. How does a conservative's head not explode from the cognitive dissonance? Do they actually simultaneously believe these polar opposite stances they take, or are they (like all politicians) simply bought and paid for by their masters and puppet whatever talking points they are fed?
For those of you who are going to dispute my point, here are some preemptive replies. First, I know that folks on the left do this shit all the time too. I remember Kerry's "flip flopping" helping cost him the 2004 election. But pointing to the other side and saying "See, they do the same reprehensible thing we do" does not actually make it okay. It's still downright disingenuous. My point is simple: How much money does it take to be rich? Because the conservatives in America have two different definitions that depend not on the amount income, but essentially on class. The fact that these same conservatives are the first to scream "Class Warfare!" at this kind of proposal is deliciously ironic and the whole thing would be fucking hilarious if the stakes weren't so high.
Reality check: to solve the long-term debt crisis, two things need to happen. Taxes need to go up, and spending needs to go down. Either side that says you can do one but not the other is living in some magical fairy-tale land where facts are superseded by what they wish were true.
Missing from this submission is the news that Netflix/Qwikster will now offer game rentals. I suppose that's not a big deal to everyone. I'm sure gamefly isn't happy about it, but competition should be great right? Personally I rarely if ever rent games, since I tend to play a demo first (and if there isn't one, pirate) and if I like the game I purchase it through Steam, so that I can get up-to-date patches, play online, and have that warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the developers. I wish the industry was more receptive to demos, because they do work, for good games at least.
For example (an off-topic gaming story follows here), I recently watched X-Men: First Class and the American/Soviet ships primed for battle with each other put me in a Red Alert mood. I had never played the third game in the franchise, because when it came out I was raiding heavily in WoW and not playing anything else. Anyway, I went to check the price on Steam to find out if I had to get a pirated version as a sampler first, and to my surprise there was a free demo. The demo only offered two missions, but after spending an hour messing around with the various units in one mission I decided it was certainly worth the $20. Moral here is, game demos make sales, at least if the game is any good. But it seems to me like the industry simply expects you to rent the game if you want a sample, or else pay the full price, which is likely one of the driving forces of game piracy. Obviously the whole "free of charge" thing is a major draw for pirates, but I can imagine I'm not the only person who buys games, but won't waste $20-$50 until I'm certain it's something I will get several hours out of.
I think the biggest barrier for entry for women gamers isn't the games themselves, but the gaming community. We all know of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but women get presented an even uglier side of online gaming. This site has some good examples: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
It seems the moment a female gamer reveals her gender she's automatically the target of the most vile and despicable comments the online community has to offer. Granted, most gamers are thick skinned and can brush this stuff off. But it makes me wonder how many women have tried playing a game, had an experience similar to the ones at the site above, and gave up entirely. It would be nice if the online community were a little friendlier. We would all have more fun that way, regardless of gender.
From a blog post at Cosmic Variance: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/
I've copy/pasted the relevant portion here:
Obviously there are a lot of things about the workings of the human mind that we don't understand. So how can we be so sure that new physics isn't involved? Of course we can't be sure, but that's not the point. We can't be sure that the motion of the planets isn't governed by hard-working angels keeping them on their orbits, in the metaphysical-certitude sense of being "sure." That's not a criterion that is useful in science. Rather, in the face of admittedly incomplete understanding, we evaluate the relative merits of competing hypotheses. In this case, one hypothesis says that the operation of the brain is affected in a rather ill-defined way by influences that are not described by the known laws of physics, and that these effects will ultimately help us make sense of human consciousness; the other says that brains are complicated, so it's no surprise that we don't understand everything, but that an ultimate explanation will fit comfortably within the framework of known fundamental physics. This is not really a close call; by conventional scientific measures, the idea that known physics will be able to account for the brain is enormously far in the lead. To persuade anyone otherwise, you would have to point to something the brain does that is in apparent conflict with the Standard Model or general relativity. (Bending spoons across large distances would qualify.) Until then, the fact that something is complicated isn't evidence that the particular collection of atoms we call the brain obeys different rules than other collections of atoms.
I love Star Trek, a lot. I'm sure I fit every possible stereotype of a Trek nerd, including ones that are contradictory. But there was one thing that always, always bugged me about Star Trek, even as a kid.
Phasers are essentially inferior to contemporary firearms. For starters, they are actually slower than bullets. You cannot dodge a bullet (in real life, anyway). But there are several examples of the Enterprise crew dodging phaser/disrupter blasts in TNG. Granted, it's possible to retcon this by saying it's some sort of charged plasma that doesn't travel at the speed of light blah blah. But my point is not that it doesn't travel at light speed (which is obvious) but that it's actually SLOWER than a bullet. Which raises the question, why on Earth (or in the Alpha Quadrant, for that matter) would they use essentially inferior technology? If our present day firearms are superior to phasers, why the switch? It defies all logic.
And don't even get me started on the horrible scene in Star Trek: First Contact where the Borg have adapted to Picard's phaser so he lures them into the holodeck and mows them down with a tommy gun. So, 1940s machine gun > 24th century phaser. And they don't keep a stash of machine guns in a weapon's locker? Hell, they can't even replicate a few dozen? Sigh.
Really, it's easier to suspend disbelief about Warp Drive even though that violates everything we know about relativity and modern physics than it is to accept the concept of the phaser replacing the superior firepower we already have in this century.
Anyway, angry Trek nerd rant mode off. Sorry about that.
Is anyone shocked when one of those "family values" politicians, preaching about the sanctity of marriage and the evilness of a culture that glamorizes homosexuality comes out of the closet? Or in the case of Larry Craig, gets busted trying to have sex in a men's room? It doesn't shock me anymore, since it seems the most passionate moral crusaders are really crusading against their own personal desires.
Hell, look at "culture warrior" Bill O'Reilly. Remember the Andrea Mackris thing? She had transcripts of alleged phone conversations that are clear examples of sexual harassment (and the detailed nature of the transcripts lead people to believe she had recordings). Bill O paid her a bunch of money to shut up and never spoke of it again. Sexual harassment is wrong when anyone does it, but it seems doubly wrong when you preach day in and out about morals and the "dangers" of things like rap music.
I guess, essentially, the gist of my post here is that people are often hypocrites, so hypocritical behavior does not shock me at all. So a group of extremist Muslims who feel strongly enough about their religion to blow up thousands of innocent (including Muslim) Americans happen to enjoy porn when nobody is looking. Not surprised. In fact, it makes me wonder aloud here if the religion is just an excuse for the killings, and if what people like bin Laden were really upset about was Israel and our support of it, that it's more of a territorial dispute than a religious one, but it's just a lot easier to get people to fly planes into buildings if you tell them 72 virgins will greet them afterward. I mean, I tend to notice the folks at the top of these terrorist organizations aren't the ones blowing themselves up. Think maybe they have some doubts about whether or not they end up anywhere afterward?
But then again I shouldn't read too much into this one incident, it is after all just some porn. Just a thought though - maybe if bin Laden's wives didn't have to be covered head to toe, he wouldn't need a stash to get off.
funny, my opinion is that wow is in the best state it has ever been in. granted, with a game as old as wow, it is hard to recapture that shiny newness that a fresh mmo has. but wows endgame has never been better. now 10man raids are on equal footing with 25 mans since the loot is identical. this means players no longer feel forced to run both 10 and 25 mans to advance. this gives smaller guilds a huge advantage, making wows endgame more accessable than it has ever been. at the same time, the game is far from dumbed down - the heroic 5 mans are quite challenging (at least for pugs) and the raids have a mix of easy, somewhat hard, and crazy insane bosses. there is literally something for everyone now. anyway, if any slashdotters read this, i play as raymer on whisperwind alliance and will gladly help run you through some quests or dungeons and whatnot.
Gaming on the PC is not dead, even though some have been claiming the end is near for at least ten years now. But, gaming on the PC has changed quite a bit in the last decade. If you look at the gaming environment on the PC a decade ago, a bit longer even, in the late 90s with the launch of the first GeForce... gaming on the PC was a much larger affair - big budget games that took a big budget PC to play. Developers expected PC gamers to be on the bleeding edge, and for the most part they were. Sure, some developers tried to market to the low-end niche. But the general sense seemed to be, if you were gaming on the PC you had a beast of a rig for it, and all the big budget developers tailored their games with that in mind.
Now things have really changed. There a lot more PCs out there, but the high-end gaming enthusiast is a very small portion of computer users. So developers, with a few exceptions, tend to target those low to mid range systems out there, since that's where the market is... it's no longer reasonable for developers to expect a gamer to have a state of the art system. As a good example to this, I can't help but mention the elephant in the room when it comes to PC gaming: World of Warcraft. Easily one of the most popular PC games in the world. While WoW obviously requires more hardware than your average Facebook game, it's really not by much. They've made sure to design the game so it will run on a very low end machine, like the kind you can pick up at Walmart for under $500. Now, a game like WoW does have advanced shader features and DX11 stuff that can be toggled on for those with higher end systems, but none of it is required. Sure, the higher end machines make it look better and run faster, but it's a huge shift from the late 90s where developers just expected gamers to have high end machines to play their games at all.
Now, before someone points out that my example, WoW, is already several years old, I would point that Blizzard just released an expansion at the end of 2010, and if they wanted they could have totally reworked the game engine for high end systems (while that would be an expensive endeavour, if anyone could afford to it's Blizzard). They did not though, because Blizzard knows that having more systems able to run the game increases the potential market.
That's not to say games for high end systems don't exist on the PC anymore, since they obviously do, but they seem to be the exception instead of the norm these days. And a lot of those high end games are cross-platform, so they only require high end systems because they're competing with the current generation of consoles (which, I admit, isn't hard given this generation of consoles seems to have outlived all previous generations). I guess my long-winded point here is that the landscape of the PC gaming world has changed. High end systems are no longer the default assumption like they were a decade ago. I think overall this is good for gamers, since instead of being an expensive niche hobby, PC gaming is within the reach of anyone who can own a very modest PC.
My only complaint was the movie took a bit too long to get started. A lot of the intro scenes seemed kind of redundant. I felt like the audience didn't really need a background on the original Tron. Even people that haven't seen the first movie are going to know the basics because it's a movie that's sort of embedded into the culture somewhat. Sure, not to the extent of films like Star Wars, but if you haven't seen the first movie the time they wasted recapping it at the start isn't going to help you much anyway. And it's just a bit boring for everyone else. I did like that young Flynn felt ENCOM's new OS should be free, while the corporate drones wanted to charge for it. Seemed like a subtle nod to Windows and its free rivals. And I get that they want to establish him as kind of a rebel without a cause, so he can find himself a cause in the grid world. But it just dragged on a bit too long for me. Once he gets in though, wow. The visuals are stunning, and not just in the Avatar sense that it's really photo realistic (in some cases it's not, but that make sense). But it's visually creative. Watching them activate the bikes or planes, it's just amazing. The light-plane that they're flying too, it's a bit surreal. One very smart thing they did with this movie is after he gets out it's basically over. There's very few scenes in the real world afterward, because the filmmakers were smart enough to know it couldn't compare to what you've just seen on The Grid. Is the plot far fetched? Sure, but it for the most part is internally consistent and there weren't any issues with the plot that I found too distracting. If you want creative visuals with a surreal quality, this is the movie. As a piece of story-telling, there are better films, but it's not terrible in that regard, or at least not so bad that it distracts from the visuals.
Oh, and I know it's popular to bash 3D on Slashdot, but I saw it in 3D and I feel like it added something to it. One thing though, there's a bit of a disclaimer at the start saying some scenes were filmed in 2D (like the intro scenes) but to leave your 3D glasses on the whole time. Whatever - take them off for the intro scenes, you don't need them and it makes the film look a bit brighter anyway. But once he gets inside, definitely put them on and keep them on. It's worth it.
God damn there outta be an IQ requirement to post here!
That might not help a whole lot. IQ doesn't really measure intelligence, but rather the capacity for it. A person can have an extremely high IQ but know next to nothing about certain topics, or be just plain wrong about a lot of them. A good example of that is Bobby Fischer, a chess genius with an IQ of 180, but he wasn't immune to xenophobic paranoia. Personally, I've taken two IQ tests and was in the 130 range both times, well above average, but there are a lot of things I know next to nothing about. For example, even though I have the capacity to understand it, I never learned much advanced mathematics because I simply lacked the motivation. An above average IQ doesn't make a person immune to other mental pitfalls. IQ also does not measure experience. I wouldn't tell a plumber or electrician how to do their job, since I lack the expertise they possess. Something that makes Slashdot discussions interesting is the fact that people have a variety of expertise here, and it's not uncommon to find people employed in whatever topic the article is discussing. It would be a mistake to discount the insight of those people if they failed to meet some arbitrary cutoff.
Anyway, I'm sure you weren't really serious and it was just a flippant remark, but I thought I'd comment anyway.
For a dystopian look at the inevitable progression of endless consumerism, read Brave New World. It's a good book on multiple levels, but when I first read it 10 years ago, I thought the satire of consumerism was a bit extreme, bordering even on the absurd. Sadly, I don't think so anymore.
The Denver man who proposed the measure, Jeff Peckman, says the government is tracking alien sightings but refuses to make the reports public. Peckman is a meditation instructor and promoter of new technology, including something he says reduces the "chaos of electromagnetic fields."
And his evidence for any of this is...? Maybe the voters rejected this because, after 60 or so years of the modern UFO "movement" we are no closer to any hard evidence than when it started. In that time real science has landed men on the Moon, conquered the atom and used computers to connect the world. I think the lesson here is that science works: it produces real, tangible results. Pseudoscience produces nothing, save the false sense of superiority in those that practice it. People that believe UFOs are alien spacecraft, and that the government covers it up, aren't interested in facts. They believe it in the same mode of thought people use for religion. And that's not to disparage religious folk; while I am not religious myself, I understand the desire to believe and the strength people can draw from that belief. But some modes of thought, such as accepting things on faith, are not useful for real science.
Here's a major mistake UFO proponents make. They tend to believe, if science can't explain away every single detail about a UFO sighting, then it "must" be an alien spacecraft. It doesn't work that way though, because alien spacecraft are not known to exist. So, jumping to that conclusion is as absurd as saying it was elves or unicorns that caused the lights in the sky. And yet UFO proponents think explanations like "marsh gas" are absurd. But guess what: marsh gas is known to exist. So what's really more absurd? From the vantage point of science, we have to presume something does not exist until we have evidence it does. So until we have an alien spacecraft to examine up close, the default assumption will always be that they do not exist, and that will continue to be sound scientific reasoning until we have more than lights in the sky to support the alien spacecraft hypothesis.
Here is physicist Richard Feynman's take on the meaning of life. For more insights, check out his page on wikiquote here.
I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Everyone thinks that because it sounds like a "common sense" notion, right? But guess what actual, scientific studies on the subject of eyewitness testimony has shown? The answer: It does not matter who you are or what you do for a living, your brain is subject to the same logical fallacies as anyone else, and eyewitness testimony from air force pilots is statistically on equal footing as the testimony from cab drivers.
Here's a big problem that comes from interviewing eyewitnesses. If you interview them more than once, you get more data. However that data is almost always unintentionally fabricated. The human mind likes to subconsciously add details that fit a particular cognitive narrative. For example, say you witness a flock of geese but are convinced they are alien spacecraft. Your mind will then add subtle details to your recollections in an effort to more closely fit that narrative.
And herein lies the problem with most UFO "researchers" when it comes to eyewitness testimony. They do not attempt to filter out the cognitive bias at all. The typical "research" consists of 1) listen to fantastic story of UFO sighting and 2) believe story. That's not research.
UFO proponents always gripe that science doesn't take UFOs seriously, but that's exactly what the scientific community does when it applies harsh critiques to eyewitness testimony. Should we not apply the same techniques to filter out unreliable eyewitness accounts that we apply to aircraft accidents or murder trials? So really, when the UFO crowd says science isn't taking it seriously, what they mean is, we're applying too harsh a standard - a scientific standard - to their fantasies. They would rather we lower the bar so that speculation, supposition and circular reasoning all substitute for real science.
In the 50 odd years since modern UFO proponents have been trying to prove their case they have come no closer to proving anything. In that same time human beings have landed men on the Moon, remotely explored the outer solar system, and unraveled the history of the universe to its infant stages. And it didn't require a lower standard of proof to do any of those things. So why apply it to UFOs?
Kids swearing reminds me of a great scene in Misery. If you haven't seen the film it's worth watching, it's both intringuing horror and somewhat comical (both intentionally and unintentioally). Anyway, romance novel writer Paul Sheldon is being held captive by his insane fan Annie Wilks. She reads a manuscript for his as yet unpublished novel with a more serious tone, and this is her reaction:
Annie Wilkes: It's the swearing, Paul. It has no nobility.
Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that.
Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! At the feedstore do I say, "Oh, now Wally, give me a bag of that F-in' pig feed, and a pound of that bitchly cow corn"? At the bank do I say, "Oh, Mrs. Malenger, here is one big bastard of a check, now give me some of your Christ-ing money!" THERE, LOOK THERE, NOW SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!
It's a great scene, mainly because Kathy Bates is so convincing as the mentally deranged Annie. But it does bring up the sort of cognitive dissonance about swearing. What does it really damage? From a philosophical standpoint, it's kind of odd that we humans make words that are considered taboo in the first place. Words have only the power that people give them. For example, others have already mentioned how what's acceptable has changed, and on that subject, I recall talking to my grandmother once about movies she saw when she was a kid. One of them was Gone with the Wind, and when Clark Cable uttered his famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line, she said there was audible gasp in the theater. I can't even imagine the string of profanities needed to make a modern movie-going audience gasp. Actually, I think a string of profanities would have the opposite impact today, people would likely find it absurd at start laughing. So yes, language evolves, but so does society. Perhaps we've moved beyond assigning such power to words. The only exception I can think of is racial slurs, those are more offensive today to many people than they ever were in the past. It's not uncommon to find elderly folks that drop the N-word, not out of hatred or malice, but because that was just what "everyone" called black people when they were growing up. Granted, some elderly folks that use racial slurs are also racists, but it's not necessarily the case either. Things change, and not everyone can or will adapt.
While it can be funny to poke fun at Creationists, part of me doesn't find them funny at all. I've met some and they really, truly believe they are right, and that modern science is some evil hegemony determined to discredit religion. They believe it as strongly as say, extremists that believe they will meet 72 virgins if they die in a suicide bombing. I find that more frightening than amusing, especially since some of the Creationist folks have ventured into politics, like Christine O'Donnell, with her dismissal of evolution by calling it "only a theory." Gravity is also "only a theory" but that doesn't mean you can fly if you don't "believe" in it. I don't like the idea of people who have a fundamental flaw in their understanding of the universe making decisions that impact millions of people. That's more frightening than funny, so while I can still laugh at a Creationist joke like this, it's kind of a nervous laugh since there is this constant reminder that people exist who want to turn the clock on human knowledge back hundreds of years.
I suppose it is "nifty" for folks that actually like the instant search feature, but I've been happily avoiding it by doing my searches through the URL bar in Chrome. Guess they'll take that option away, too? Oh well, I'm not going to nerd-rage about it like some of the posts I've seen on Slashdot. It's just a minor annoyance to me but I'll likely still use Chrome to browse and Google to search. I really like Chrome, mainly because it's one of the few browsers that's lightning fast when I have lots of tabs with Flash heavy content open. That's probably only because of my aging hardware, and it's not like Firefox is really sluggish on my system, just noticeably slower.
Plus Chrome has other neat features, like when I type the URL of a site I have searched before, you can search that site again by pressing tab, so I don't need to have a bunch of different search boxes for different sites like I do in Firefox. Anyway, I guess I'll reserve my judgement until it's actually implemented, maybe they'll do it in a way that isn't too irksome or distracting.
Only if you want collaborators, advisers and influencers that are idiots and use Twitter.
Tribalism much? Making a broad, sweeping generalization about millions of people is generally a good way to be wrong. While I personally believe twitter isn't much more than a noteworthy fad, and there are obviously a lot of morons using it for inane banter, there are also very intelligent people making the most of those 140 characters and you can't dismiss them with mere hand-waving.
He's also not very good at metaphysics, since he seems sometimes unable to understand that physics can't ultimately answer "why" questions.
Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan were also unable to "understand" that notion, which makes me wonder: If some of history's greatest minds have trouble with it, perhaps there's some merit to it after all? I mean, if with physics we can determine some powerful, penetrating truth of the universe, does that not have the potential to answer some "why" questions? We live in the universe, but it also lives in us. We are conscious molecules formed from stardust billions of years old. As we learn about the universe, we learn about ourselves. "Why" just might be something we learn, too.
I know this isn't the way the real world works, which is why the permit system is bullshit.
Pretty much. At least it's not quite as bullshit as say, EULAs, right? Andrea recently bought a copy of StarCraft II to see the pretty graphics on her gaming laptop (unfortunately the game runs pretty awful on her Mac Mini), and I think the EULA takes up more pages in the manual than game lore portion. It's pretty fun though, even if it's essentially the same game. Ironically she hasn't even played it yet because the Zerg are "too scary" or something. There's a "casual" difficulty setting though, I think it would work for her, haha.