People seem to feel that any major setback in our society means that the world and humanity are both done. Even if society totally collapsed, there would be enough information left over for people to rebuild eventually. Sure, things would be a mess for a while. Even if it took a few hundred years for us to bounce back, that would be a tiny blip on geological and historical time. We are social primates that gravitate toward organization, society would rebuild itself eventually as long as there are enough humans left alive to repopulate the Earth. With the amount of places we have to hide and how wily we apes are capable of being (particularly when it comes down to survival), it would take something quite a bit more catastrophic than this to wipe us out. In short, the supervolcano will really suck if it goes off, but it is far from a game ender for us (although it certainly would be curtains for the U.S., the global economy, and western civilization as we know it).
Yes, Newtonian Mechanics were proven wrong, that's why we don't use those formulas anymore. No, jackass, these formulas work perfectly well for what they were intended for -- they explain things very well in what Richard Dawkins refers to as "Middle World", the world we live in in which nothing is too big or too small, and nothing really moves that fast. When you start getting very big or very small, or start approaching a significant fraction of the speed of light, these equations break down. We needed to then write new formulas to explain these phenomena. Keep in mind that in certain places in the Universe, the current formulas we have break down -- inside of a black hole for instance. There is clearly a new physics that will explain the interior of a black hole and unite quantum mechanics with general relativity, but we haven't discovered it yet. Does this make either QM or GR invalid? No! To use a car analogy -- it's kind of like saying that a Mini Cooper is useless because you can't tow a boat with it -- this fact does not keep the Mini from getting you to the grocery store, but you will need to buy a truck when you need to tow a boat.
You need to question science, but you need to question science within the bounds of the facts -- it is not helpful to suggest that 2+2 may indeed equal 5, or that the Earth is actually flat. When all of the evidence points to AGW, it is not science to deny the facts and cherry pick data that suits your goals.
I don't think it is at all in question that some of these folks acted grotesquely inappropriately -- they certainly were in the wrong and deserve to be called out for it, their behavior is the antithesis of what science ought to be. This does not, however, change the facts about global warming. The facts are there for anyone who wishes to analyze them.
A scientific theory also must be proven, e.g. pass through the skeptic's crucible unscathed. The skeptic's crucible is a whole community of scientists who get to analyze all of the relevant data. If there are any inconsistencies, you can be sure that the rest of the community will not be polite about it. There are many, many theories that we can safely consider to be facts -- the germ theory, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity, the theory of evolution. All of these are testable, provable facts of nature, but they are referred to as theory. This is a common misconception and drives me up a wall -- creationists love to say that "evolution is only a theory" as if they have discovered something damning about evolution. Please inform yourself before you attempt to form opinions on such important issues, the rest of the world and our posterity thanks you.
First of all -- you need to define you terms. In science, 'theory' is not used the way it is in common English -- in other words, theories DO NOT graduate to become laws -- laws really only exist on the mathematical side of things. A theory is simply an explanation that encompasses experimental data, natural laws, and mathematical proofs to explain some sort of phenomena in the Universe around us. Theory != educated guess, as it is used in every day English.
You miss the boat on your definition of skepticism as well -- skepticism does not mean blindly questioning and doubting everything you see. It simply means that you demand evidence. The difference seems minor, but it is significant.
Finally, global warming does stand up to skepticism. The data are no longer ambiguous -- global warming deniers are not practicing skepticism, they are simply asserting that their pre-determined philosophical standpoint is correct. This is the opposite of skeptical scrutiny, it is intellectual suicide. It is really no different than the cherry picking that ID nutsacs like Ray Comfort and Michael Behe are so famous for.
There is a HUGE difference between Einstein and global warming deniers -- the evidence really is no longer ambiguous or open to interpretation. Einstein saw that the currently held equations governing the laws of physics fell apart in certain situations and sought to remedy the situation, and ended up rewriting physics as we know it. Global warming deniers want to drive SUVs without feeling bad about it, so they cherrypick data that supports their already determined philosophical standpoint. There is a big difference. This is similar to the reason the evolutionary biology is science and creatio... sorry, intelligent design isn't.
It is all well and good to talk about creative ethics from a philosophical standpoint, but I feel that the appropriate discussion is around the legality, it is only thing that really matters when you get down to it. There are countless numbers of ways to be absurdly unethical and still stay within the bounds of the law. This is a good thing -- it is called freedom. You have the freedom to choose to be a huge dick if you want to. Everyone else has the freedom to not deal with you if you piss them off. If we are going to talk philosophy here, I will say that I would be appalled to find out that such behavior is illegal. It is a breach of our freedom and shits all over the idea of a free marketplace. The best game designers will always make the best games, period. There are enough people that can tell the difference that we don't need to create an artificial scarcity -- game designers that can do no better than rip off the creativity of other game designers are probably going to make shit games that nobody really wants to play anyway. If the knock-off ends up being better, then that is a form of creativity and brilliance in and of itself -- we NEED to have people around to shine, polish, and perfect our best ideas. Without this sort of innovation, we would all still be driving around in Ford Model T's.
It is only plagiarism if the actual code is copied and used without citation. If new code is written from the ground up to create a similar effect to another game, it is not plagiarism. It is not even always sleazy (although it quite often is).
I think that, paradoxically, the tool we have that is inundating us with information (the Internet) is also the greatest weapon against this happening. With the way information is processed, it becomes trivial to sort through all the crap out there and skim the sweet delicious cream from the top of the Intarwebz (ewwww....)
I never said that jackass -- I love GoldenEye -- I am just pointing out that it is retarded to suggest that because A is more popular than B that B is likely better than A.
In the case of Oblivion and Fallout 3, I found lots of mods that, instead of adding content, simply improved what was already there. There are a great many mods for both of these games to drastically increase texture quality, or to re-balance certain aspects of the game to make it more enjoyable.
Not to nitpick, but VirtualBox recently added support for 3D acceleration inside of a VM. I have not yet, had the chance to try it out, though I think I will tonight now that it is on my mind...
Console gaming is fine for most, but for those of us who care, PC gaming will always be far superior. My main reason: user created mods. These will never be easy to create on consoles and will never proliferate the same way we have seen on the PC. Mods extend the shelf-life of a game by several years at the very least. Just look at Half-Life, Doom, Quake, or more recently, Oblivion and Fallout 3. You can completely customize and alter your gaming experience to the point that the game feels completely new. This is not even to mention the increased graphical horsepower you get with a PC -- I have played GTA4 on PC and on PS3, and there is absolutely no comparison. The improvement is actually great enough that it makes it easier to see what you are doing and actually makes it easier and more enjoyable to play the game. There is still a place for PC gaming, and I hope that the game companies will continue to see it (though the chances of this seem slim).
Unfortunately, console games can have bugs too. Unfortunately for you, when they crop up, there is nothing you can do, whereas for PC a patch should be along shortly.
I've run into this same issue and constantly wonder if that is even legal -- how the fsck can they sell you something that DOESN'T WORK and then still tell you that you can't return it? I would think that the sort of thing ought to be covered under consumer protection laws... but I guess not.
Complaining that your extensions make Chrome bloated is like complaining that your car weighs too much after you fill the trunk with cement -- if you want to keep it fast, just don't add extensions! If you would rather sacrifice a little speed for added functionality, go for it! Hell, if you want to install every single extension you find until your browser barely runs, that's your choice too! I can't see why anyone with half a brain, however, would suggest that the option to add extensions puts the browser at risk of becoming bloated.
If the airports and airlines are 'requesting' the security, they can 'hire' people to do it. If airline security is subject to the normal cost/benefit analyses of the free market, it will very quickly become far more streamlined and efficient, which will be better for us all.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't live in a judgmental society which bases its morality on a code of ethics that has been outdated for about 4,000 years now and is purposely designed to make you feel bad for being human.'
There, I said it. Our society looks down upon individuals for engaging in such a wide swath of behaviors that you either have to avoid living your life to the fullest, or keep some things to yourself if you want to be a productive member of society. Hopefully we can get to the point where people learn to mind their own business about such things, but until then, we all have a damn good reason to want some privacy.
Mod parent up to +11 Insightful -- the ONE major terrorist attack that precipitated all of this nonsense was perpetrated by Saudi nationals, yet they are not on this list of nations? That list has no place being in existence, but if it is to exist, it is psychotic to not include Saudi Arabia.
Slashdot Mirror
People seem to feel that any major setback in our society means that the world and humanity are both done. Even if society totally collapsed, there would be enough information left over for people to rebuild eventually. Sure, things would be a mess for a while. Even if it took a few hundred years for us to bounce back, that would be a tiny blip on geological and historical time. We are social primates that gravitate toward organization, society would rebuild itself eventually as long as there are enough humans left alive to repopulate the Earth. With the amount of places we have to hide and how wily we apes are capable of being (particularly when it comes down to survival), it would take something quite a bit more catastrophic than this to wipe us out. In short, the supervolcano will really suck if it goes off, but it is far from a game ender for us (although it certainly would be curtains for the U.S., the global economy, and western civilization as we know it).
Apparently to me, the implication is that a "good Catholic" should support censorship because it leads to a more "moral" society.
Harmless?
Welcome to the Internet -- don't feed the trolls
I'd buy that for a dollar!
Yes, Newtonian Mechanics were proven wrong, that's why we don't use those formulas anymore. No, jackass, these formulas work perfectly well for what they were intended for -- they explain things very well in what Richard Dawkins refers to as "Middle World", the world we live in in which nothing is too big or too small, and nothing really moves that fast. When you start getting very big or very small, or start approaching a significant fraction of the speed of light, these equations break down. We needed to then write new formulas to explain these phenomena. Keep in mind that in certain places in the Universe, the current formulas we have break down -- inside of a black hole for instance. There is clearly a new physics that will explain the interior of a black hole and unite quantum mechanics with general relativity, but we haven't discovered it yet. Does this make either QM or GR invalid? No! To use a car analogy -- it's kind of like saying that a Mini Cooper is useless because you can't tow a boat with it -- this fact does not keep the Mini from getting you to the grocery store, but you will need to buy a truck when you need to tow a boat.
You need to question science, but you need to question science within the bounds of the facts -- it is not helpful to suggest that 2+2 may indeed equal 5, or that the Earth is actually flat. When all of the evidence points to AGW, it is not science to deny the facts and cherry pick data that suits your goals.
I don't think it is at all in question that some of these folks acted grotesquely inappropriately -- they certainly were in the wrong and deserve to be called out for it, their behavior is the antithesis of what science ought to be. This does not, however, change the facts about global warming. The facts are there for anyone who wishes to analyze them.
A scientific theory also must be proven, e.g. pass through the skeptic's crucible unscathed. The skeptic's crucible is a whole community of scientists who get to analyze all of the relevant data. If there are any inconsistencies, you can be sure that the rest of the community will not be polite about it. There are many, many theories that we can safely consider to be facts -- the germ theory, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity, the theory of evolution. All of these are testable, provable facts of nature, but they are referred to as theory. This is a common misconception and drives me up a wall -- creationists love to say that "evolution is only a theory" as if they have discovered something damning about evolution. Please inform yourself before you attempt to form opinions on such important issues, the rest of the world and our posterity thanks you.
First of all -- you need to define you terms. In science, 'theory' is not used the way it is in common English -- in other words, theories DO NOT graduate to become laws -- laws really only exist on the mathematical side of things. A theory is simply an explanation that encompasses experimental data, natural laws, and mathematical proofs to explain some sort of phenomena in the Universe around us. Theory != educated guess, as it is used in every day English.
You miss the boat on your definition of skepticism as well -- skepticism does not mean blindly questioning and doubting everything you see. It simply means that you demand evidence. The difference seems minor, but it is significant.
Finally, global warming does stand up to skepticism. The data are no longer ambiguous -- global warming deniers are not practicing skepticism, they are simply asserting that their pre-determined philosophical standpoint is correct. This is the opposite of skeptical scrutiny, it is intellectual suicide. It is really no different than the cherry picking that ID nutsacs like Ray Comfort and Michael Behe are so famous for.
There is a HUGE difference between Einstein and global warming deniers -- the evidence really is no longer ambiguous or open to interpretation. Einstein saw that the currently held equations governing the laws of physics fell apart in certain situations and sought to remedy the situation, and ended up rewriting physics as we know it. Global warming deniers want to drive SUVs without feeling bad about it, so they cherrypick data that supports their already determined philosophical standpoint. There is a big difference. This is similar to the reason the evolutionary biology is science and creatio... sorry, intelligent design isn't.
It is all well and good to talk about creative ethics from a philosophical standpoint, but I feel that the appropriate discussion is around the legality, it is only thing that really matters when you get down to it. There are countless numbers of ways to be absurdly unethical and still stay within the bounds of the law. This is a good thing -- it is called freedom. You have the freedom to choose to be a huge dick if you want to. Everyone else has the freedom to not deal with you if you piss them off. If we are going to talk philosophy here, I will say that I would be appalled to find out that such behavior is illegal. It is a breach of our freedom and shits all over the idea of a free marketplace. The best game designers will always make the best games, period. There are enough people that can tell the difference that we don't need to create an artificial scarcity -- game designers that can do no better than rip off the creativity of other game designers are probably going to make shit games that nobody really wants to play anyway. If the knock-off ends up being better, then that is a form of creativity and brilliance in and of itself -- we NEED to have people around to shine, polish, and perfect our best ideas. Without this sort of innovation, we would all still be driving around in Ford Model T's.
It is only plagiarism if the actual code is copied and used without citation. If new code is written from the ground up to create a similar effect to another game, it is not plagiarism. It is not even always sleazy (although it quite often is).
I think that, paradoxically, the tool we have that is inundating us with information (the Internet) is also the greatest weapon against this happening. With the way information is processed, it becomes trivial to sort through all the crap out there and skim the sweet delicious cream from the top of the Intarwebz (ewwww....)
That pun was EXTremely bad.
I never said that jackass -- I love GoldenEye -- I am just pointing out that it is retarded to suggest that because A is more popular than B that B is likely better than A.
In the case of Oblivion and Fallout 3, I found lots of mods that, instead of adding content, simply improved what was already there. There are a great many mods for both of these games to drastically increase texture quality, or to re-balance certain aspects of the game to make it more enjoyable.
Not to nitpick, but VirtualBox recently added support for 3D acceleration inside of a VM. I have not yet, had the chance to try it out, though I think I will tonight now that it is on my mind...
Popular != good -- Miley Cyrus is massively popular...
Console gaming is fine for most, but for those of us who care, PC gaming will always be far superior. My main reason: user created mods. These will never be easy to create on consoles and will never proliferate the same way we have seen on the PC. Mods extend the shelf-life of a game by several years at the very least. Just look at Half-Life, Doom, Quake, or more recently, Oblivion and Fallout 3. You can completely customize and alter your gaming experience to the point that the game feels completely new. This is not even to mention the increased graphical horsepower you get with a PC -- I have played GTA4 on PC and on PS3, and there is absolutely no comparison. The improvement is actually great enough that it makes it easier to see what you are doing and actually makes it easier and more enjoyable to play the game. There is still a place for PC gaming, and I hope that the game companies will continue to see it (though the chances of this seem slim).
Unfortunately, console games can have bugs too. Unfortunately for you, when they crop up, there is nothing you can do, whereas for PC a patch should be along shortly.
I've run into this same issue and constantly wonder if that is even legal -- how the fsck can they sell you something that DOESN'T WORK and then still tell you that you can't return it? I would think that the sort of thing ought to be covered under consumer protection laws... but I guess not.
Complaining that your extensions make Chrome bloated is like complaining that your car weighs too much after you fill the trunk with cement -- if you want to keep it fast, just don't add extensions! If you would rather sacrifice a little speed for added functionality, go for it! Hell, if you want to install every single extension you find until your browser barely runs, that's your choice too! I can't see why anyone with half a brain, however, would suggest that the option to add extensions puts the browser at risk of becoming bloated.
If the airports and airlines are 'requesting' the security, they can 'hire' people to do it. If airline security is subject to the normal cost/benefit analyses of the free market, it will very quickly become far more streamlined and efficient, which will be better for us all.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't live in a judgmental society which bases its morality on a code of ethics that has been outdated for about 4,000 years now and is purposely designed to make you feel bad for being human.'
There, I said it. Our society looks down upon individuals for engaging in such a wide swath of behaviors that you either have to avoid living your life to the fullest, or keep some things to yourself if you want to be a productive member of society. Hopefully we can get to the point where people learn to mind their own business about such things, but until then, we all have a damn good reason to want some privacy.
Mod parent up to +11 Insightful -- the ONE major terrorist attack that precipitated all of this nonsense was perpetrated by Saudi nationals, yet they are not on this list of nations? That list has no place being in existence, but if it is to exist, it is psychotic to not include Saudi Arabia.