True enough, the Red Hat does not, per se, sell Linux, at least not in the same way that M$ sells Windows, but the software remains for sale, in stores, etc. In a way the presence of boxes of Linux on an aisle shelf works very much as advertisements for Linux and for RedHat. The problem with *not* selling boxes of Linux is to require people to be savvy enough to download an installation and work their way through, or to buy a CheapBytes type CD? Caldara has a very nice solution, in that they have value added support software to their OpenLinux, with their own installer and 'proprietary' dual glib version compatibility. I'd imagine, even if RedHat isn't 'selling' Linux, it's important for someone to carry boxes of Intel Linux, PPC Linux, Alpha Linux, etc, in store aisles... at least until online shopping is the norm, and browsing aisles is relegated, if ever, to the dustbin.
As for an internal independent software house, it's a management and allocation bonus. On demand, no searching or hunting for talent, as well as being able to control/supervise on a daily basis the software programmers. Otherwise the same argument goes for secretaries, management, utility, janatorial, marketing, etc; none of them make any money for the company, they just help to keep the company running. It is *only* the software programmers, the hardware designers, the manufacturing plants, and the distributors that make any money for a company, but the glue layers between all these components is necessary, and a permanent software house is just as useful, to fix bugs in Open Source software utilized internally, to port some Open Source software, to maintain Open Sourced software, etc.
Still, I can see what you're getting at, but I just don't quite believe it will go that far anytime soon, like say the next 10 or so years. There are still shortages of decent technically skilled workers in the Silicon Valley, so no company would be willing to let go of it's talent and allow them to earn 'market' value...
I don't see where some of your extrapolations come from...
So there would be a segment of the software industry (those programs that lend themselves to OpenSource - basically, OS's, business, most things besides big games) that could no longer be "sold", per se.
Linux is an Open Source software now, and it is being sold; why would Open Source software in the future fail to be sold? Support and manuals and setup would ostensibly be the reasoning, but Open Source software should still be sold, in the future.
No HP making copiers and software, no Sun making hardware and software. All these companies would have to drop their software divisions.
I don't imagine this would necessarily hold either; I would think, for internal use, that a permanent 'independent' software house would make more sense than regularly contracting out work to the same company, so in some situations HP would keep their software houses, while in others, like BofA for example, would continue to contract out, perhaps to HP or IBM, for example.
Some companies may shed their software divisions, but if the software divisions are added value ventures that push the sales of hardware and support, I don't see why the big companies, like HP or IBM, would lose them.
I concede never having lived in hurricane country, but the point is to be able to predict, with a $29M in computing hardware, down to the closest mile or something, the timing, the velocities, and the path of the hurricane a few hours in advance, so different parts of the country can react appropriately.
Almost always, when the storm coming towards us and we think about leaving the city and head toward the north, the hurricanes is still too far away and do not know if it is serious or not.
If the technology works, one should know with some 95% accuracy if the hurricane is serious, if it will head your way or not, if it will bring dangerous winds or floods or whatnot. If it can't hit 95%, then the technology isn't working =)
Nor is there a way to tell if it will the hurricane will hit you in Miami, or once you arrive in the other town it will hit you there instead.
Isn't this the point of the Deep Computing initiative, maybe? Being able to tell that the hurricane *will* or *won't* hit with very good accuracy?
It isn't the hours of advance warning that will help, we can already tell that a hurricane exists with standard weather technology. Rather, with Deep Computing, we want to be able to tell residents of different areas *exactly* what to except, when, and where.
US$29M is more than likely going into hardware as well... We are talking world class super computers, and they have the luxury of giving the source away because there probably aren't more than several hundred machines that could do anything useful with this software, I think...
I actually think an opinion/comment seperate from the moderation points would be useful...
Say moderators had unlimited comments but 5 comment points.
General consensus could raise funny, insightful, poor taste, boring, informational stuff(which is useful IMHO), without tying them too much with moderating; some people think off-topic is bad, and other's think it's good.
There are some places really good weather prediction on the scale of only a few hours would be absolutely wonderful:
Hurricane tracking, ie being able to take an enormous amount of ground and satellite data and doing the 'deep processing' IBM is talking about. Even if one can only see for an hour ahead, that could save millions in loss and lives by having that extra hour to prepare.
Tornado tracking, being able to predict the path of a tornado, or even predicting its formation. If a deep procesing unit were permanently spent in each state in the tornado belt, and fed a constant stream of satellite and ground data, even being able to predict a tornado by 5 minutes would be of great benefit, and being able to predict it's path by even a couple hundred meters would be a god send.
Weather for satellite and shuttle launch. If we can see the weather for the next week with reasonable accuracy with today's methods, deep computing may allow us a reasonable view for up to a month or so. Precise weather is not necessary, just as long as we can avoid storms and heavy cloud cover!
Our country, our generation, has a lower crime, murder, and violent crime record now than it has in the last 6 years... It has been dropping according to FBI and government statistics.
I ignore your Bible and its prophecies. I believe in brotherhood, love, and nonviolence, but not in God. At least not yet.
You're rationalizing. justifying. Desensitized. Yes...100X yes. You have the right to do what ever you want to do. But the act of killing another human is ENTERTAINMENT to you.
Well duh; anything I say that disagrees with your own point or belief is rationalization. I am trying to justify it, then it is rationalization; I am not trying to justify anything, this is how the game plays.
You mention heart pumping aggressivness; what aggression. I would play *very* poorly if I were aggressive and angry. If I wanted to kill someone, getting emotional about it would only cloud my abilities and reactions, from experience with violent circumstances.
You make some very broad and general accusations, that paintball and wargames are no different, that adrenaline is somehow violent.
Study some history, okay? Our society is so much less violent now than it ever has, like say a hundred years ago, or in other cultures across oceans, like Chinese cultures, or Western European cultures.
Death and killing is not an aspect of daily life; in those worlds, life was cheap and death was everywhere, disease, bandits, thieves, child birth, etc. I almost believe that we are so peaceful and non-violent because we have channled much of our natural aggressive tendencies into sports, video games, movies, and television, instead of acting it out. This is only my opinion and hypothesis, but recall the wild west, it's lawlessness, or even current day Kosovo, the Balkan states, ethic cleansing within the Czech republics, the government brutalities of the Chinese governments and such.
We are so lucky to live in such a sanitary and clean country!
I'm not sure about you, but I don't play Quake for the 'violence', I play for the thrill of being hunted and the thrill of hunting. Is that violence? It doesn't matter to me how the score occurs, but accuracy, speed, stealth, teamwork, and skill all speak to me in these games.
Teamwork, too!
What is the violence? It is no more violent than a game of paintball or laser tag. Do you count those as violent games? Quake is just a whole bunch cheaper and a whole bunch less stressful on my body than running around through bushes and buildings and leaping over ravines(though in its own way, those are fun too)
I strongly do not believe Quake's primary component is violence.
If it were, I would be disgusted by it, just as I would be disturbed by real life violence.
Instead, I see it as a game; it's fake, it's symbolic, it's representative, but not of violence.
People are without morales, they are brutes, they are ignorant, yadda yadda...
That has always been the case, no? All throughout history, none of this has changed. Today one can use as examples countries in which the govt controls the media, and countries where this does not happen, and compare. The US vs China vs England vs Singapore, etc.
I'm not so convinced we want to live in a country like China or Singapore, for example.
I'm not sure why you believe regulation and control works, because you fail to mention enforcement. How is it enforced? Underage drinking still occurs, illegal possession of firearms still occur, illegal drug use and possession occurs, and all of these are technically not allowed by our legal system. How would adding video games to this list help anything except stunt our computer industry? The growth and spread of video games is very much selling computers and performance, for example, and if we reduce the games available, we reduce the need for consumers to buy powerful computers and the need for manufacturers to produce powerful computers.
Again you mention Quake as violent and addictive. This is a fundamental difference of opinion, I think. I would have to argue that if Quake were violent, it would trigger the same physiological response that violent behavior causes, and I don't know anyone who has actually triggered their fight/flight response via Quake, or adrenaline rushes, or endorphine rushes.
However, even a good session or rollerblading can trigger those responses, so even if Quake could trigger adrenaline and endorphin, it wouldn't necessarily be indicative of any more violence than rollerblading.
What does it mean to say a game is violent?
What does it mean that a game has destructive potential to young minds? Reading the wrong books(existentialist, nihlistic, or even darkly pessimistic works) would be destructive to young minds, but prolly in a different way.
The question remains: what kind of intervention can the government effectively accomplish? What would be the benefits? The side effects? The negative externalities? I would rather not have government intervention in the US; a country for the people by the people, a government created as a minor nuisance only for the benefit of the populace and not for it's detriment. If a government can control media content, that seems only a step away from a government that can control opinion and thought.
The problem that exists is that people want to blame something as causing this violence, without realizing that anything can be the cause, and everything can be the cause.
We can't say that black trenchcoats, Quake, milk, or tv caused or didn't cause these kids to go on a shooting spree.
We can say that these kids who shot people wore black trenchcoats, played Quake, DooM, watched movies like the Matrix, drank milk, ate McDonalds, and wore Hanes underwear. These are all 'facts', but these are not causes. We cannot pinpoint causes.
The problem is that some people assume correlation equals causation. These killers played Quake. They played Doom. They wore black trenchcoats. Those must be reasons.
The logic can be extended; they also drank milk and Coke, wore Hanes, ate Chiquita banannas, and used Caress body wash. These too are just as likely reasons as anything else. Maybe they were allergic, or chemically unbalanced, or whatnot.
Millions of people do all of the same things these teens did, and fail to shoot people. This would seem to indicate that these things are not the cause, per se, though they may have helped.
I personally don't think Quake causes people to kill. I also don't think video game violence is, well, violent. I think football and hockey is violent. I think movies like Aliens is violent. I think being exposed to grade school schoolyard bullies is violent. Video games are, after all, just games, and are symbolic, stylized, sanitized, and mostly, non-violent.
Some games push it; Grand Theft Auto, for example, or Kingpin, or Camaggedon.
But mostly, games are played for fun, entertainment, and enjoyment.
I don't disagree that video games influence people, any more or less than books, media, movies, and real life influences people.
I would be cautious at saying "Games like drugs can be addictive. Someone should stop it, control it, or prevent it. The government can ban it from the kids under 18."
Since when has it been shown that games are addictive? They are pleasurable, sure, they are fun, they are enjoyable; but then so is anything else in life. I assume you only mean violent games; but even then, when has censorship and government intervention solved any social ills? Why should the government control anyone's ability to do something like play video games? It is the realm of the parent, the adult, the guardian to do so, and not the government, else we would also have the government controlling what we watch on TV because it's 'dangerous', what movies we can see, what news we can read, what activities we can partake in... You know, Big Brother? The United States culture is not supposed to be about government regulation and control, but about personal freedom and responsibility, no?
I'd think guns would be a better target than games, btw, by not allowing them in the country, but the guns rights activists are just as right; most people own and use guns without going on rampages. Those who do suffer from problems, and even without the guns, they would still suffer from problems, and need to be dealt with rather than dealing with the tools.
I'm hoping you don't seriously advocate government control and intervention, or else they would also creep into anything subversive, dangerous, and inappropriate, and who has the right or power to decide what is right and wrong?
Fine. Then don't play Wolfenstein and Quake, obviously! However, the choice of entertainment is always up to the individual who is taking responsibility for the actions. For me, I would be; for these Littleton teens, it would be their parents. I don't believe government intervention means anything at all, and is still only the parents and families involved that can and do mean anything.
Do you want to know how/why I got desensitized to violence? Endless bullying on schoolyards while I was a kid, being picked at, yelled at, called racial epithets, at being hit and attacked without a teacher there to stop it.
Violence, and no one to stop it, control it, or prevent it, desensitizes kids to violence. I am no longer afraid to hurt people. If I needed to defend myself, I would not be held back by a fear of killing the other. Its me, or its them, and this was not taught to me by video games... I was like this before Quake, before Wolfenstein. It was the social structure of schoolyard playgrounds.
You tell me what can solve that, as taking away my games just leaves me idle, and idle hands...
Your argument matches just as strongly for idiocy =)
Stop entertainment, progress, and media? US culture thrives on entertainment and technology. The point isn't to expose them to violence; I would argue very strongly that games like Quake and Doom are not violent, as compared to something like football or hockey. Most video games are very clean and sanitized, and even FPS games are still so abstract that I would argue they are still better indicators than inducers of violent tendencies.
Do you really believe that for the protection of 1 or 2 all people should be protected/restricted from video games? That is exactly the whole point of individual responsibility, that parents and families decide and control, and not powerful entities like government and lawmaking institutions. You'd remove cars from society for the threat they pose, due to accidents? You'd remove alcohol as a recreational drink because of the few who abuse it? You'd take away personal choice and control and responsibility, to force them to comply and be safe?
That is so not American. That is so not right. When do people grow up, if everything is always chosen and controlled for them?
I'd argue every generation, every human, has outlets and sources of violence. I really don't believe that video games are any more violent than said football games or hockey games. I believe if you think 'violent' movies and video games should be removed, so too should football, hockey, soccer, water polo, baseball, or many other activites we have taken into US culture.
I want to play games as entertainment. I don't believe in violence or in hurting others. I don't believe video games are 'violent'; you'll have to convince me of that, I think.
Sure, the representation of violence can teach, but it is limited by what the medium itself conveys...
the thought of blowing someone away is a thought NO kid should ever have.
The problem still isn't video games; take away the video games, the media, the television, the sensationalism, and the kid is still psychologically messed up, still having problems. The fact that they draw from these sources isn't the problem, and taking it away just hides some obvious clues that the kid has problems. A stable person can play all these games and watch all these movies and not be driven to murder, and proof exists that millions do partake without actually commiting violence. If there are no violent video games as positive and negative examples, then the kid just draws examples from somewhere else: books, fairy tales, playground bully's, nightmares, horror stories, etc.
I agree that kids should not be thinking about blowing people away. I don't think government intervention with regards to video games solves anything. Parents and adults involved with the children still need to observe and care for them, still need to guide them for any effect to take place.
I'll stand in a crowd of millions and stand up and say : ANYONE who plays a game where killing, graphic killing, is the motive and primary purpose---is OFF. Thats not basic human nature.
I wish I knew what you're talking about. Your speech/grammar is very unclear, so I don't know what it is you agree/disagree on. For example...
It's not basic human nature to indulge in killing?
I agree on that. What I disagree on is that thus far the games Doom and Quake, as oft mentioned, are not examples of graphic killing. They are pixelated, blurry, symbolic, and iconic representations of death. There is no pain, no screams, no suffering, no smell, no blood. Perhaps those who commit violent acts cannot tell the difference, in which case then there is a very big problem. For the rest of humanity who play and watch these things, it is just a game, and in no way representative of reality. It is more realistic than arcade games of yesteryear, but it still is very shallow and unrealistic as well.
We *can* make it more realistic, but again, I don't think psychoes would respond to realistic games becuase then they'd also have to deal with such realisms as fatigue, management of health and strength, caution, and survival issues.
These kids have problems if they cannot distinguish reality from games. Even if we take away their games, their guns, their bombs, they would still have problems. A big issue is, without games, how else would they manifest their problems? Games are indeed simulations of reality, to some extent, but much cleaned up and sanitized, and as such can be useful to tell parents and involved adults that these kids have problems. If little Johnny fixates too much in a game in running every pedastrian over, rather than winning the race, Father should be able to see this when he plays with Johnny. If he isn't playing with Johnny, then there is half the problem, isn't it?
Sure. But the logic necessary used to prove that Quake or DooM caused the Littleton duo to kill can also be used to say that Wonderbread causes killing sprees.
If the Littleton duo, for example, daily partook of Big Macs at McDonalds, the exact same logic you use to point at Quake and Doom can be used to say eating at McDonalds causes violent behavior. Sure, millions eat it without killing people, but these two, who ate there frequently, also killed people... So there MUST be a correlation, and that correlation, by the same logic, is that Big Macs cause teens to go violent.
I don't doubt that games have some sort of effect. However, we cannot yet show what this effect is, either, whether crazy kids play more violent video games(which would actually mean that said video games can be used as an indicator for violent behavior, and by banning said games, we lose a valuable benchmarking tool on teens), or whether violent video games cause more violent kids. For the same reason we cannot rule out Wonderbread, Coke, or Big Macs, as causes for teen violence. Who knows, too much fat, or cholesterol, beef, or saffron vegetable oil could lead to the chemical imbalances that leads to tragedy!
It is the parents sole responsibility for raising their kids. I believe a lot of the problems we see now is because baby boomer parents, who's kids are in high school now, tried to place some of the responsibility on others.
This is very much a cultural issue. It is not the case in Chinese, and I think Latino and Black families, that it is *only* the parent's sole responsibility for raising kids. It is the *family's* responsibility, including elder siblings, grand parents, aunts and uncles, etc, though with decreasing responsibility and attention according to separation from the children.
With that said, I think we should do everything we can to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to excel. What I get ticked off at is that people take our money in the form of taxes and spend it on useless people. If people want to perform private charity, that's fine, but the government shouldn't be in the business of redistributing wealth.
There is some discussion on this point in economic circles, because the government is positioned exactly right to redistribute wealth. Public schools, insurance, health care systems, libraries, hospitals, emergency services, etc. are all examples of redistribution of wealth, though admittedly via provision of services to the citizen and not through welfare checks or monies.
It is a delicate issue, what the government is/should be responsible for, what an individual should be responsible for, and where the overlap/division occurs.
I think we're speaking from two wildly different bases here.
The grandparents are actively involved with the parents and the grandchildren. In your situation, if the grandparents raise the grandchildren, it just offsets the responsibilities by one generation such that the parents will have to deal with their grandchildren instead of their own children. This fails to work because at that age the grandparents, and later the parents, won't have the energy or youth to do so properly...
The situation I speak of is one in which the parents don't just kick out the children at the age of 18 and let them fend for themselves; rather, a strong bond remains despite leaving for college and leaving for work, and grandparents help with the grandchildren without replacing the parents. The social return is that the parents help care for both the grandparents and their own children simultaneously.
It's not an issue about needing assistence from grandparents, its about overlapping the parental cycles of two generations, instead of one; as a parent, I'll raise my kids, and then help when they have their own kids/my grandkids. They in turn provide for me because I will want to retire and pursue other livelihoods, like gardening or sculpture or photography, even as I help watch over their kids. When I am gone, my children will help watch over their own grandkids while pursuing their own second childhoods, as their children enter into the workforce etc.
It works, but it requires parents being able to live/deal with their own kids past the college/working age. Most of my friends have such dysfunctional relationships that I wouldn't be surprised if they only ever saw their parents on Christmas, once a year, if at all.
Hope the title was controversial enough to catch your attention =)
Teen violence is very difficult to pin down and solve. I'm sure that video games may have played some part, but I'm also convinced that even without video games these kids had problems. Couple this with easy access to guns and lack of adult intervention in their life, and tragedies are just ready to happen.
Why do I say games CAN'T cause violence? It's a two way analysis. If these teen shooters played DooM and Quake, reverse the situation. How many people play DooM and Quake, and still don't go out to shoot people?
Id's website brags of 2 million copies of DooM, so at least 2 million people relish digital violence, but only a handful of people actually go out and shoot their teen aged peers because of this.
A stronger example could be said that these teen killers drank Coca Cola, or ate Wonderbread, or drank Minute Maid orange juice, or used Kleenex brand tissues, or partook of Pizza Hut pizzas, or something else as inane as video games, and blame the violence on these objects. For the same reason, it washes out, millions more partake and don't go on shooting sprees.
If (a very big if) games do contribute to violent tendencies, then we have a very big problem as over 2 million people play these games. One might as well ban movies, for all the violent scenes they express, or television, for all the violence on the boob tube, and comic books, and all other entertainment media that uses visceral reactions to grab the attention of consumers.
If these troubled souls didn't have Quake or DooM, would they still go out and shoot people?
Outlyer is right; to show a correlation between two events like high school shootings and people who play DooM requires one to go the other way. Not only should one examine if people who go on rampages play DooM, do people who play DooM go on shooting rampages?
Overwhelmingly, the answer is no. For the same reason one could correlate drinking Coca Cola with people who go on shooting sprees. Or something equivalent, like milk or orange juice.
"Everyone one of these kids drank milk and had their cereal with milk. We think, therefore, that milk is responsible for these tragic shootings, and are seeking to bar advertisments, commercials, and access to milk."
Likewise, these teen shooters played DooM. So what? Millions of other kids play DooM and don't go shooting people either. I'm not arguing games don't influence people, but I'm saying there must be something of higher correlation because of the fact that these millions of kids can play Quake or DooM and not kill people, while these handful of teen gunmen did. Was it their bread? Their sodas? Their games? Why is the video game more culpable than the additives in their water, or genetic imbalances, or social problems, or family issues? Because games are loud, easily targetted, and easy to control, compared to families or high schools or even diet.
The Chinese culture uses their older segments of the population to help raise the younger population...
By involving them I believe their health and lifespan improves, as well as the attention and parenting the kids need, they get. Imagine all that exercise the older folks would get, and all the rich cultural exposure the kids get.
I'm sure other cultures do similar things, Latino, Black, other Asian cultures.
I wonder if there are any statistics for psychopathic rampages across race/culture...
I'm currently biased because of the news to think only white people commit these kinds of sociopathic crimes, but I'm sure your fair share of Chinese, Black, and Latino criminals exist. I wonder if adjusted for income, however, if the white yuppie culture still has the most problems?
Slashdot Mirror
Not trying to start a war here =)
I would imagine that old Apples or Apple IIs would still be the oldest PCs still in *use*, not just functioning...
I know for a fact that an Apple IIs are still being used in old HS for touch typing and stuff!
Anyone know some computer history?
What's the chronology of Altairs, Z-80s, Apples, Macs, XTs, ATs?
-AS
What you say is certainly *possible*...
True enough, the Red Hat does not, per se, sell Linux, at least not in the same way that M$ sells Windows, but the software remains for sale, in stores, etc. In a way the presence of boxes of Linux on an aisle shelf works very much as advertisements for Linux and for RedHat. The problem with *not* selling boxes of Linux is to require people to be savvy enough to download an installation and work their way through, or to buy a CheapBytes type CD? Caldara has a very nice solution, in that they have value added support software to their OpenLinux, with their own installer and 'proprietary' dual glib version compatibility. I'd imagine, even if RedHat isn't 'selling' Linux, it's important for someone to carry boxes of Intel Linux, PPC Linux, Alpha Linux, etc, in store aisles... at least until online shopping is the norm, and browsing aisles is relegated, if ever, to the dustbin.
As for an internal independent software house, it's a management and allocation bonus. On demand, no searching or hunting for talent, as well as being able to control/supervise on a daily basis the software programmers. Otherwise the same argument goes for secretaries, management, utility, janatorial, marketing, etc; none of them make any money for the company, they just help to keep the company running. It is *only* the software programmers, the hardware designers, the manufacturing plants, and the distributors that make any money for a company, but the glue layers between all these components is necessary, and a permanent software house is just as useful, to fix bugs in Open Source software utilized internally, to port some Open Source software, to maintain Open Sourced software, etc.
Still, I can see what you're getting at, but I just don't quite believe it will go that far anytime soon, like say the next 10 or so years. There are still shortages of decent technically skilled workers in the Silicon Valley, so no company would be willing to let go of it's talent and allow them to earn 'market' value...
-AS
I don't see where some of your extrapolations come from...
So there would be a segment of the software industry (those programs that lend themselves to OpenSource - basically, OS's, business, most things besides big games) that could no longer be "sold", per se.
Linux is an Open Source software now, and it is being sold; why would Open Source software in the future fail to be sold? Support and manuals and setup would ostensibly be the reasoning, but Open Source software should still be sold, in the future.
No HP making copiers and software, no Sun making hardware and software. All these companies would have to drop their software divisions.
I don't imagine this would necessarily hold either; I would think, for internal use, that a permanent 'independent' software house would make more sense than regularly contracting out work to the same company, so in some situations HP would keep their software houses, while in others, like BofA for example, would continue to contract out, perhaps to HP or IBM, for example.
Some companies may shed their software divisions, but if the software divisions are added value ventures that push the sales of hardware and support, I don't see why the big companies, like HP or IBM, would lose them.
-AS
Perhaps you miss the point?
I concede never having lived in hurricane country, but the point is to be able to predict, with a $29M in computing hardware, down to the closest mile or something, the timing, the velocities, and the path of the hurricane a few hours in advance, so different parts of the country can react appropriately.
Almost always, when the storm coming towards us and we think about leaving the city and head toward the north, the hurricanes is still too far away and do not know if it is serious or not.
If the technology works, one should know with some 95% accuracy if the hurricane is serious, if it will head your way or not, if it will bring dangerous winds or floods or whatnot. If it can't hit 95%, then the technology isn't working =)
Nor is there a way to tell if it will the hurricane will hit you in Miami, or once you arrive in the other town it will hit you there instead.
Isn't this the point of the Deep Computing initiative, maybe? Being able to tell that the hurricane *will* or *won't* hit with very good accuracy?
It isn't the hours of advance warning that will help, we can already tell that a hurricane exists with standard weather technology. Rather, with Deep Computing, we want to be able to tell residents of different areas *exactly* what to except, when, and where.
-AS
anybody can think of another application for a homemade supercomputing cluster? I think not.
Sure, homebrew movie people who want to render CG special effects, or crunch through SETI data in their spare computing cycles, etc.
I'd love to be able to run 3 or 4 'cheap' Alpha machines for a render farm, and do some movie making!
-AS
US$29M is more than likely going into hardware as well... We are talking world class super computers, and they have the luxury of giving the source away because there probably aren't more than several hundred machines that could do anything useful with this software, I think...
-AS
No, that seems to be the general development pattern in general;
Release working software that *you* can't find any bugs in, and then fix the bugs people tell you about.
The Linux software model is special because if you find a bug, you are also able to fix it yourself!
-AS
I actually think an opinion/comment seperate from the moderation points would be useful...
Say moderators had unlimited comments but 5 comment points.
General consensus could raise funny, insightful, poor taste, boring, informational stuff(which is useful IMHO), without tying them too much with moderating; some people think off-topic is bad, and other's think it's good.
My 2 cents
-AS
There are some places really good weather prediction on the scale of only a few hours would be absolutely wonderful:
Hurricane tracking, ie being able to take an enormous amount of ground and satellite data and doing the 'deep processing' IBM is talking about. Even if one can only see for an hour ahead, that could save millions in loss and lives by having that extra hour to prepare.
Tornado tracking, being able to predict the path of a tornado, or even predicting its formation. If a deep procesing unit were permanently spent in each state in the tornado belt, and fed a constant stream of satellite and ground data, even being able to predict a tornado by 5 minutes would be of great benefit, and being able to predict it's path by even a couple hundred meters would be a god send.
Weather for satellite and shuttle launch. If we can see the weather for the next week with reasonable accuracy with today's methods, deep computing may allow us a reasonable view for up to a month or so. Precise weather is not necessary, just as long as we can avoid storms and heavy cloud cover!
-AS
If you wish to speak further, email me then...
I obviously can't email you =)
Our country, our generation, has a lower crime, murder, and violent crime record now than it has in the last 6 years... It has been dropping according to FBI and government statistics.
I ignore your Bible and its prophecies. I believe in brotherhood, love, and nonviolence, but not in God. At least not yet.
Well, good luck with your life then.
-AS
You're rationalizing. justifying. Desensitized. Yes...100X yes. You have the right to do what ever you want to do. But the act of killing another human is ENTERTAINMENT to you.
Well duh; anything I say that disagrees with your own point or belief is rationalization. I am trying to justify it, then it is rationalization; I am not trying to justify anything, this is how the game plays.
You mention heart pumping aggressivness; what aggression. I would play *very* poorly if I were aggressive and angry. If I wanted to kill someone, getting emotional about it would only cloud my abilities and reactions, from experience with violent circumstances.
You make some very broad and general accusations, that paintball and wargames are no different, that adrenaline is somehow violent.
Study some history, okay? Our society is so much less violent now than it ever has, like say a hundred years ago, or in other cultures across oceans, like Chinese cultures, or Western European cultures.
Death and killing is not an aspect of daily life; in those worlds, life was cheap and death was everywhere, disease, bandits, thieves, child birth, etc. I almost believe that we are so peaceful and non-violent because we have channled much of our natural aggressive tendencies into sports, video games, movies, and television, instead of acting it out. This is only my opinion and hypothesis, but recall the wild west, it's lawlessness, or even current day Kosovo, the Balkan states, ethic cleansing within the Czech republics, the government brutalities of the Chinese governments and such.
We are so lucky to live in such a sanitary and clean country!
-AS
I'm not sure about you, but I don't play Quake for the 'violence', I play for the thrill of being hunted and the thrill of hunting. Is that violence? It doesn't matter to me how the score occurs, but accuracy, speed, stealth, teamwork, and skill all speak to me in these games.
Teamwork, too!
What is the violence? It is no more violent than a game of paintball or laser tag. Do you count those as violent games? Quake is just a whole bunch cheaper and a whole bunch less stressful on my body than running around through bushes and buildings and leaping over ravines(though in its own way, those are fun too)
I strongly do not believe Quake's primary component is violence.
If it were, I would be disgusted by it, just as I would be disturbed by real life violence.
Instead, I see it as a game; it's fake, it's symbolic, it's representative, but not of violence.
-AS
Hm, everyone I know is a cynic in that regards...
People are without morales, they are brutes, they are ignorant, yadda yadda...
That has always been the case, no? All throughout history, none of this has changed. Today one can use as examples countries in which the govt controls the media, and countries where this does not happen, and compare. The US vs China vs England vs Singapore, etc.
I'm not so convinced we want to live in a country like China or Singapore, for example.
I'm not sure why you believe regulation and control works, because you fail to mention enforcement. How is it enforced? Underage drinking still occurs, illegal possession of firearms still occur, illegal drug use and possession occurs, and all of these are technically not allowed by our legal system. How would adding video games to this list help anything except stunt our computer industry? The growth and spread of video games is very much selling computers and performance, for example, and if we reduce the games available, we reduce the need for consumers to buy powerful computers and the need for manufacturers to produce powerful computers.
Again you mention Quake as violent and addictive. This is a fundamental difference of opinion, I think. I would have to argue that if Quake were violent, it would trigger the same physiological response that violent behavior causes, and I don't know anyone who has actually triggered their fight/flight response via Quake, or adrenaline rushes, or endorphine rushes.
However, even a good session or rollerblading can trigger those responses, so even if Quake could trigger adrenaline and endorphin, it wouldn't necessarily be indicative of any more violence than rollerblading.
What does it mean to say a game is violent?
What does it mean that a game has destructive potential to young minds? Reading the wrong books(existentialist, nihlistic, or even darkly pessimistic works) would be destructive to young minds, but prolly in a different way.
The question remains: what kind of intervention can the government effectively accomplish? What would be the benefits? The side effects? The negative externalities? I would rather not have government intervention in the US; a country for the people by the people, a government created as a minor nuisance only for the benefit of the populace and not for it's detriment. If a government can control media content, that seems only a step away from a government that can control opinion and thought.
-AS
The problem that exists is that people want to blame something as causing this violence, without realizing that anything can be the cause, and everything can be the cause.
We can't say that black trenchcoats, Quake, milk, or tv caused or didn't cause these kids to go on a shooting spree.
We can say that these kids who shot people wore black trenchcoats, played Quake, DooM, watched movies like the Matrix, drank milk, ate McDonalds, and wore Hanes underwear. These are all 'facts', but these are not causes. We cannot pinpoint causes.
The problem is that some people assume correlation equals causation. These killers played Quake. They played Doom. They wore black trenchcoats. Those must be reasons.
The logic can be extended; they also drank milk and Coke, wore Hanes, ate Chiquita banannas, and used Caress body wash. These too are just as likely reasons as anything else. Maybe they were allergic, or chemically unbalanced, or whatnot.
Millions of people do all of the same things these teens did, and fail to shoot people. This would seem to indicate that these things are not the cause, per se, though they may have helped.
I personally don't think Quake causes people to kill. I also don't think video game violence is, well, violent. I think football and hockey is violent. I think movies like Aliens is violent. I think being exposed to grade school schoolyard bullies is violent. Video games are, after all, just games, and are symbolic, stylized, sanitized, and mostly, non-violent.
Some games push it; Grand Theft Auto, for example, or Kingpin, or Camaggedon.
But mostly, games are played for fun, entertainment, and enjoyment.
-AS
I don't disagree that video games influence people, any more or less than books, media, movies, and real life influences people.
I would be cautious at saying "Games like drugs can be addictive. Someone should stop it, control it, or prevent it. The government can ban it from the kids under 18."
Since when has it been shown that games are addictive? They are pleasurable, sure, they are fun, they are enjoyable; but then so is anything else in life. I assume you only mean violent games; but even then, when has censorship and government intervention solved any social ills? Why should the government control anyone's ability to do something like play video games? It is the realm of the parent, the adult, the guardian to do so, and not the government, else we would also have the government controlling what we watch on TV because it's 'dangerous', what movies we can see, what news we can read, what activities we can partake in... You know, Big Brother? The United States culture is not supposed to be about government regulation and control, but about personal freedom and responsibility, no?
I'd think guns would be a better target than games, btw, by not allowing them in the country, but the guns rights activists are just as right; most people own and use guns without going on rampages. Those who do suffer from problems, and even without the guns, they would still suffer from problems, and need to be dealt with rather than dealing with the tools.
I'm hoping you don't seriously advocate government control and intervention, or else they would also creep into anything subversive, dangerous, and inappropriate, and who has the right or power to decide what is right and wrong?
No one does.
-AS
Fine. Then don't play Wolfenstein and Quake, obviously! However, the choice of entertainment is always up to the individual who is taking responsibility for the actions. For me, I would be; for these Littleton teens, it would be their parents. I don't believe government intervention means anything at all, and is still only the parents and families involved that can and do mean anything.
Do you want to know how/why I got desensitized to violence? Endless bullying on schoolyards while I was a kid, being picked at, yelled at, called racial epithets, at being hit and attacked without a teacher there to stop it.
Violence, and no one to stop it, control it, or prevent it, desensitizes kids to violence. I am no longer afraid to hurt people. If I needed to defend myself, I would not be held back by a fear of killing the other. Its me, or its them, and this was not taught to me by video games... I was like this before Quake, before Wolfenstein. It was the social structure of schoolyard playgrounds.
You tell me what can solve that, as taking away my games just leaves me idle, and idle hands...
-AS
Your argument matches just as strongly for idiocy =)
Stop entertainment, progress, and media? US culture thrives on entertainment and technology. The point isn't to expose them to violence; I would argue very strongly that games like Quake and Doom are not violent, as compared to something like football or hockey. Most video games are very clean and sanitized, and even FPS games are still so abstract that I would argue they are still better indicators than inducers of violent tendencies.
Do you really believe that for the protection of 1 or 2 all people should be protected/restricted from video games? That is exactly the whole point of individual responsibility, that parents and families decide and control, and not powerful entities like government and lawmaking institutions. You'd remove cars from society for the threat they pose, due to accidents? You'd remove alcohol as a recreational drink because of the few who abuse it? You'd take away personal choice and control and responsibility, to force them to comply and be safe?
That is so not American. That is so not right. When do people grow up, if everything is always chosen and controlled for them?
I'd argue every generation, every human, has outlets and sources of violence. I really don't believe that video games are any more violent than said football games or hockey games. I believe if you think 'violent' movies and video games should be removed, so too should football, hockey, soccer, water polo, baseball, or many other activites we have taken into US culture.
I want to play games as entertainment. I don't believe in violence or in hurting others. I don't believe video games are 'violent'; you'll have to convince me of that, I think.
-AS
Sure, the representation of violence can teach, but it is limited by what the medium itself conveys...
the thought of blowing someone away is a thought NO kid should ever have.
The problem still isn't video games; take away the video games, the media, the television, the sensationalism, and the kid is still psychologically messed up, still having problems. The fact that they draw from these sources isn't the problem, and taking it away just hides some obvious clues that the kid has problems. A stable person can play all these games and watch all these movies and not be driven to murder, and proof exists that millions do partake without actually commiting violence. If there are no violent video games as positive and negative examples, then the kid just draws examples from somewhere else: books, fairy tales, playground bully's, nightmares, horror stories, etc.
I agree that kids should not be thinking about blowing people away. I don't think government intervention with regards to video games solves anything. Parents and adults involved with the children still need to observe and care for them, still need to guide them for any effect to take place.
-AS
I'll stand in a crowd of millions and stand up and say : ANYONE who plays a game where killing, graphic killing, is the motive and primary purpose---is OFF. Thats not basic human nature.
I wish I knew what you're talking about. Your speech/grammar is very unclear, so I don't know what it is you agree/disagree on. For example...
It's not basic human nature to indulge in killing?
I agree on that. What I disagree on is that thus far the games Doom and Quake, as oft mentioned, are not examples of graphic killing. They are pixelated, blurry, symbolic, and iconic representations of death. There is no pain, no screams, no suffering, no smell, no blood. Perhaps those who commit violent acts cannot tell the difference, in which case then there is a very big problem. For the rest of humanity who play and watch these things, it is just a game, and in no way representative of reality. It is more realistic than arcade games of yesteryear, but it still is very shallow and unrealistic as well.
We *can* make it more realistic, but again, I don't think psychoes would respond to realistic games becuase then they'd also have to deal with such realisms as fatigue, management of health and strength, caution, and survival issues.
These kids have problems if they cannot distinguish reality from games. Even if we take away their games, their guns, their bombs, they would still have problems. A big issue is, without games, how else would they manifest their problems? Games are indeed simulations of reality, to some extent, but much cleaned up and sanitized, and as such can be useful to tell parents and involved adults that these kids have problems. If little Johnny fixates too much in a game in running every pedastrian over, rather than winning the race, Father should be able to see this when he plays with Johnny. If he isn't playing with Johnny, then there is half the problem, isn't it?
-AS
Sure. But the logic necessary used to prove that Quake or DooM caused the Littleton duo to kill can also be used to say that Wonderbread causes killing sprees.
If the Littleton duo, for example, daily partook of Big Macs at McDonalds, the exact same logic you use to point at Quake and Doom can be used to say eating at McDonalds causes violent behavior. Sure, millions eat it without killing people, but these two, who ate there frequently, also killed people... So there MUST be a correlation, and that correlation, by the same logic, is that Big Macs cause teens to go violent.
I don't doubt that games have some sort of effect. However, we cannot yet show what this effect is, either, whether crazy kids play more violent video games(which would actually mean that said video games can be used as an indicator for violent behavior, and by banning said games, we lose a valuable benchmarking tool on teens), or whether violent video games cause more violent kids. For the same reason we cannot rule out Wonderbread, Coke, or Big Macs, as causes for teen violence. Who knows, too much fat, or cholesterol, beef, or saffron vegetable oil could lead to the chemical imbalances that leads to tragedy!
-AS
It is the parents sole responsibility for raising their kids. I believe a lot of the problems we see now is because baby boomer parents, who's kids are in high school now, tried to place some of the responsibility on others.
This is very much a cultural issue. It is not the case in Chinese, and I think Latino and Black families, that it is *only* the parent's sole responsibility for raising kids. It is the *family's* responsibility, including elder siblings, grand parents, aunts and uncles, etc, though with decreasing responsibility and attention according to separation from the children.
With that said, I think we should do everything we can to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to excel. What I get ticked off at is that people take our money in the form of taxes and spend it on useless people. If people want to perform private charity, that's fine, but the government shouldn't be in the business of redistributing wealth.
There is some discussion on this point in economic circles, because the government is positioned exactly right to redistribute wealth. Public schools, insurance, health care systems, libraries, hospitals, emergency services, etc. are all examples of redistribution of wealth, though admittedly via provision of services to the citizen and not through welfare checks or monies.
It is a delicate issue, what the government is/should be responsible for, what an individual should be responsible for, and where the overlap/division occurs.
-AS
I think we're speaking from two wildly different bases here.
The grandparents are actively involved with the parents and the grandchildren. In your situation, if the grandparents raise the grandchildren, it just offsets the responsibilities by one generation such that the parents will have to deal with their grandchildren instead of their own children. This fails to work because at that age the grandparents, and later the parents, won't have the energy or youth to do so properly...
The situation I speak of is one in which the parents don't just kick out the children at the age of 18 and let them fend for themselves; rather, a strong bond remains despite leaving for college and leaving for work, and grandparents help with the grandchildren without replacing the parents. The social return is that the parents help care for both the grandparents and their own children simultaneously.
It's not an issue about needing assistence from grandparents, its about overlapping the parental cycles of two generations, instead of one; as a parent, I'll raise my kids, and then help when they have their own kids/my grandkids. They in turn provide for me because I will want to retire and pursue other livelihoods, like gardening or sculpture or photography, even as I help watch over their kids. When I am gone, my children will help watch over their own grandkids while pursuing their own second childhoods, as their children enter into the workforce etc.
It works, but it requires parents being able to live/deal with their own kids past the college/working age. Most of my friends have such dysfunctional relationships that I wouldn't be surprised if they only ever saw their parents on Christmas, once a year, if at all.
-AS
Hope the title was controversial enough to catch your attention =)
Teen violence is very difficult to pin down and solve. I'm sure that video games may have played some part, but I'm also convinced that even without video games these kids had problems. Couple this with easy access to guns and lack of adult intervention in their life, and tragedies are just ready to happen.
Why do I say games CAN'T cause violence? It's a two way analysis. If these teen shooters played DooM and Quake, reverse the situation. How many people play DooM and Quake, and still don't go out to shoot people?
Id's website brags of 2 million copies of DooM, so at least 2 million people relish digital violence, but only a handful of people actually go out and shoot their teen aged peers because of this.
A stronger example could be said that these teen killers drank Coca Cola, or ate Wonderbread, or drank Minute Maid orange juice, or used Kleenex brand tissues, or partook of Pizza Hut pizzas, or something else as inane as video games, and blame the violence on these objects. For the same reason, it washes out, millions more partake and don't go on shooting sprees.
If (a very big if) games do contribute to violent tendencies, then we have a very big problem as over 2 million people play these games. One might as well ban movies, for all the violent scenes they express, or television, for all the violence on the boob tube, and comic books, and all other entertainment media that uses visceral reactions to grab the attention of consumers.
If these troubled souls didn't have Quake or DooM, would they still go out and shoot people?
Why not?
-AS
Bull.
Outlyer is right; to show a correlation between two events like high school shootings and people who play DooM requires one to go the other way. Not only should one examine if people who go on rampages play DooM, do people who play DooM go on shooting rampages?
Overwhelmingly, the answer is no. For the same reason one could correlate drinking Coca Cola with people who go on shooting sprees. Or something equivalent, like milk or orange juice.
"Everyone one of these kids drank milk and had their cereal with milk. We think, therefore, that milk is responsible for these tragic shootings, and are seeking to bar advertisments, commercials, and access to milk."
Likewise, these teen shooters played DooM. So what? Millions of other kids play DooM and don't go shooting people either. I'm not arguing games don't influence people, but I'm saying there must be something of higher correlation because of the fact that these millions of kids can play Quake or DooM and not kill people, while these handful of teen gunmen did. Was it their bread? Their sodas? Their games? Why is the video game more culpable than the additives in their water, or genetic imbalances, or social problems, or family issues? Because games are loud, easily targetted, and easy to control, compared to families or high schools or even diet.
-AS
The Chinese culture uses their older segments of the population to help raise the younger population...
By involving them I believe their health and lifespan improves, as well as the attention and parenting the kids need, they get. Imagine all that exercise the older folks would get, and all the rich cultural exposure the kids get.
I'm sure other cultures do similar things, Latino, Black, other Asian cultures.
I wonder if there are any statistics for psychopathic rampages across race/culture...
I'm currently biased because of the news to think only white people commit these kinds of sociopathic crimes, but I'm sure your fair share of Chinese, Black, and Latino criminals exist. I wonder if adjusted for income, however, if the white yuppie culture still has the most problems?
-AS