You can point out to your coworker that you're not the only one. I stopped buying CDs probably around the same time you did, for the same reason. And, likewise, most of my mp3s (oggs, actually) are ripped from my own old CDs.
I remember a few years ago, I was walking around a mall with my friend/roommate. We went into a music store, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I haven't bought a CD in a really long time, I should look for something I'd like." I found a CD I wanted, and was horrified to notice that it was something like $19 or $20. What really got to me was realizing that, since the CD was released (IIRC) in the early 90's, it is actually more expensive now than it was when it was new!
That sealed it for me. That's when I transitioned from not buying CDs because I was too poor, to formally making the decision to never buy CDs whether I can spare the money or not.
How does that make her centrist? Democrats and Republicans are both into censorship pretty much equally; scapegoating media is the easiest thing for them to agree on.
What's particularly strange is that although this "kill the hooker in GTA" meme is now well known, it is only ever mentioned by people who don't actually play the game. Nobody who plays the game would ever do it because there's no point.
Hey, that's not true. When I get my fiancee to play GTA, killing hookers is all she wants to do. Actually, not even just hookers, but any woman who happens to be scantily clad. She doesn't care about the missions, races, etc., she just wants to run around killing "sluts".
Even among people who play the game more seriously than my fiancee (like me, for example), the ability to commit violent acts at will is part of the appeal of the game. What those who scapegoat video games (and movies, music, etc.) fail to understand is that the game is a safe and healthy way to release your aggressive urges without having to hurt real people. For the most part, the people committing the real murders and rapes out on the streets aren't the people who have the latest ultra-violent video games to come home to.
Not to be Freudian or anything, but almost all of our entertainment-oriented media (and even much of the media that's not supposed to be about entertainment, like the NEWS) is filled with sex and/or aggression, because ultimately that's what humans get off on. Whether you're talking about movies, video games, sports, gladiators in the arena, or whatever, that's how human entertainment has always been and how it will always be. And there's nothing wrong with that.
And I strongly suspect that even the 12-year old mentioned by the grandparent post understands the difference between play/fantasy violence and real violence. Personally, I think a positive chat about the subject would have done him far more good than resorting to the silly and unproductive send-him-to-his-room tactic.
Then you discover Debian and recover your time, realizing that except for special cases, compiling yourself isn't worth it.
Recover what time? The vast majority of the compiling I do in Gentoo happens at night while I'm sleeping.
As for "then you discover Debian"--I discovered Debian years before I discovered Gentoo, and Debian was my favorite distro for a while. I actually find Gentoo easier to maintain than Debian (fewer upgrade problems, and when problems do arise they're easier to fix). I'm not saying Gentoo is necessarily better, just that I have had a better and less painful experience with it.
Debian is still my second favorite distro, though.
Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.
He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.
When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.
Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.
It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.
It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.
Seemingly inexplicable?! I always keep an open mind about these things, but this supposed example of precognition is too easy to explain.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think any beginning Psychology student should be able to recognize those results as a simple example of classical conditioning. After being shown several "provocative" images in succession, it should be expected that participants will begin to anticipate another such image before they see it.
It would have been more interesting if they used some provocative and some non-provocative pictures, and saw different pre-reactions depending on which image was coming up. Sadly, the description in the article makes it sound like that research (and the similar research the article explains next) didn't bother mixing in different types of pictures. So much for control groups....
Except the whole TCO crap is not an issue for an office suite the way that it could be for an OS. No one needs high-priced experts to administer OpenOffice for them. It is a drop-in replacement for MS Office, as long as you don't need perfect compatibility with MS Office formats.
I actually find it humorous to watch so called "experts" in science change their theories of "pre-historic" events to suit every new finding that doesn't match with their previous theory.
Errr, isn't that the point of science? You get new evidence, you revise/expand/whatever your theories to fit that evidence. As opposed to dogmatic belief systems, where you persist in holding on to your original theory no matter how much contradicting evidence you see.
I have my own spiritual beliefs, but as far as what gets taught publically, I'll choose the scientific way.
Especially when in fact all these findings can be attributed to a Divine creation and a world-wide flood (as accurately recorded in the Bible).
Yeah yeah, and they can be just as easily attributed to the creation myths of dozens of other religions. Which one is right? Oh, yeah, the one you grew up with. How open-minded.
One of my favorite sayings I heard frequently from one of my more experimentally-oriented Psychology professors: "A theory that explains everything explains nothing." If you truly "love science" as you say, then you should spend some time thinking about that.
And then there's the base question for all you evolutionists.... where did all the stuff that the universe is made of come from. No matter have far back you go... where did what that came from come from?
Okay, and I'll throw that question back at you: Where did "God" come from?
This philosophical dilemma is the same whether you believe in any kind of divinity or not. Any time you imagine a Beginning--whether it's God or The Big Bang (or a combination of both!)--you have to ask yourself "But what came before that?" God is no more or less exempt from that question than The Big Bang is.
Peace may require the end of Islam, because it is based on the Qur'an and the Hadiths. These works are based on an Arabic flavor of theocratic fascism and there is no room for competing ideologies.
Hey, as long as we're throwing out religions with sacred texts that promote hatred and intolerantly condemn those of all other religions, why stop at Islam? Might as well get rid of Judaism and Christianity too.
In addition to what allism said, this test seems to rely on the test-taker not knowing how it is scored. This is the kind of test in which the taker will naturally want to give whatever answer is most socially desirable, so the test has to trick them. The test-taker is told that it is scored by how they rate the pictures, so they lie (assuming deviant desires) in their ratings and then the oh-so-clever test catches them in their lie by measuring how long they looked at each picture for.
If you know they're measuring the time, then the test is probably worthless for you.
Personally, I suspect the test is very flawed anyway... for example, I would _expect_ Roy's results (slightly higher attraction to adolescent girls than adult women) to be typical. I'd imagine a typical guy taking the test might signal an immediate repulsive reaction to the very young children, a positive reaction to the adult women after maybe looking for a couple seconds, and to pictures of adolescent girls I imagine many men might pause to ponder, "How old is she? Is this one okay to like, or is she too young?" (Keep in mind that the writer of the article noted that many of the adolescents in the test looked like they could have been young adults.)
Whoa! No need to get so defensive their sparky. I never said their was anything wrong with liking them, I just asked what people saw in them.
Okay, I'll buy your assertion that you at least didn't _intend_ to be insulting, but you should be aware that:
I guess if you don't have any friends who are willing to play for real the computer version might make for a really, really lame substitute.
I guess this is just part of the "hoop-dreams" fantasy. I wish I were a famous athlete, but I am too lazy to get off the couch. I guess I'll just play video games and fantasize or something.
certainly makes it sound like you are trying to portray football video game players as pathetic and lame. But I'll believe that you didn't intend it that way.
My name isn't Sparky, though.
I do enjoy FPS games, although admittedly not as much as a good paintball game. Maybe I'll give one of the newest football games another try some day, but my expectations are low. As you said, to each their own.
Yep, to each his own, so don't feel obligated to give it another try. If you don't like it, you don't like it, and that's fine.
Well, I suppose it depends on what your idea of "very few" is.
My idea of "very few" in this case is "not enough to be profitable, or even cover development costs". With that definition, I suspect I am right. The only reason EA bothers with NCAA Football is because it doesn't require any effort for them. They just take the engine being developed for the next Madden, slap on the NCAA-specific content, and release it before Madden to make a quick buck off the people who are happy to spend $100/yr on football games instead of just $50, and who want to get their hands on the latest and greatest and can't wait for the next Madden release.
And a lot of the people who buy EA's NCAA game are hardcore Madden players who like to import NCAA-created drafts into Madden.
Now, for another company to put the development effort into creating a college football game good enough to compete with Madden, without the above advantages that EA has, would be expensive. And the niche market that would buy it wouldn't be big enough to make it worthwhile. I'm not surprised no one other than EA is bothering to make college football games; and if someone else does try, I won't be surprised when they give up on it.
Maybe you don't lose, but Sega (and other would-be football-game developers) sure lost. Even as you say you can imagine buying Sega's game over EA's, you admit that part of the advantage for you is not feeling compelled to buy it every year--which means less money for Sega.
And that on top of the people who won't buy it at all without the NFL license means that Sega might have to completely give up on making football games, which means maybe you really will lose.
Okay, you've got some things mixed up here, so let me try to explain....
ESPN has nothing to do with EA's right to use the names of NFL teams and players in their games. EA has to have a deal with the NFL to use team names, and a deal with the NFLPA (Players Association) to use player names. The REAL problem here isn't the ESPN deal, it's the other deal EA made--the deal they made with the NFL to get _exclusive_ rights to team and player names. (I assume that's the 5-year deal you read about; that deal has nothing to do with ESPN.)
To my knowledge, a single video game company locking out other game companies from being able to get a license from a sports league is unprecedented.
Anyway, the deal with ESPN allows them to use ESPN's shows (like Sportscenter), with ESPN's personalities. IMO, EA doesn't really care so much about using ESPN content in their games--this deal was more to put the nail in the coffin of their biggest competition, which was the ESPN-branded football games from Sega. Now Sega can't use NFL teams/players OR ESPN.
I hope that makes sense; I know I'm neither clear nor concise.
Games like Madden are much more popular than games like NFL Blitz or Backyard Football for a reason.
The serious sports gamers--the guys who are willing to fork over $50 to re-buy their favorite football franchise year after year--want the game to be as realistic as possible.
The people who are interested in playing football with mutants or Mario or whatever are more of a niche market, and generally won't keep buying new versions of the game on a yearly basis.
ESPN was THE cable sports channel, MTV was really Teenager Television, Microsoft's operating system was on nearly every PC, we had a president named George Bush, and we had U.S. troops fighting a war in Iraq.
Not that I disagree with your general point that things change, but you didn't pick the best example. And it's probably a good bet that ESPN will still be the most popular cable sports network; more importantly, that doesn't even matter, because it's really the exclusive NFL deal, and not the ESPN deal, that is going to kill off EA's football competition. The profit they will make from that deal will make the money they gave ESPN look like little more than spare change.
Translation of your post: "I don't enjoy football video games, so there must be something wrong with people who do enjoy them."
You realize that different people enjoy different things, right? And you also realize that there are plenty of people who think _your_ favorite genres of games (assuming you play games at all) are lame and pointless, right?
Well, I'll give you credit for at least ending your post with a question. So I'll give you one answer.
I used to really enjoy watching football and baseball, though as I get older I'm losing my interest in watching sports. Baseball I'm practically boycotting because I'm sick of my favorite team having a different roster every year; I just can't root for a guy knowing that in a year or two, he'll bitch about not getting enough money and go play for the Yankees. But it's an easy boycott because I'm honestly bored of baseball anyway.
Football I still like to watch, but I only bother watching if my favorite team is playing--which isn't often enough since I'm living on the wrong coast now, and my team has fallen so far under crappy ownership that watching them is more depressing than entertaining.
But I still really enjoy playing video football games, though my standards are getting increasingly higher. No, I have no desire to be a "famous athlete" (hell, I don't want to be a famous anything!). Playing the game isn't about fulfilling a fantasy.
Rather, I enjoy the STRATEGY of football. I enjoy planning out passing and rushing attacks. I enjoy having to read the defense, anticipate what each defender is doing, then dropping back to pass and having to memorize where my receivers are going. And then in the second or two before I get sacked or have to flee the pocket, I have to continue reading the defense and pick out the best receiver to throw to, and then I have to decide whether to throw the ball hard (to try to squeeze it into tight coverage), or soft (to get it to sail over a leaping linebacker), or somewhere in between to accomplish both.
As long as the challenge level is appropriate (not too easy, not unfairly hard), that can provide a thrill very similar, I imagine, to trying to out-think and out-shoot an opponent in an FPS. I hate FPSes, BTW; I guess anyone who plays them just has no friends and fantasizes about being a real killer/marine/whatever!:P
Also, at this point I won't buy a football game unless it has a thorough "franchise" mode in which I can play several seasons, drafting players between seasons. Drafting and trading players to try to build a better team gives me the same kind of satisfaction I get from building a character in a CRPG.
So, there's an answer to your question, which I'm sure you can probably spin into something negative; there's probably something wrong with me if I enjoy something that you don't.:)
EA's NCAA football game is weak and has no competition because few people want college football video games. Most players, when faced with a choice between NFL and college, will choose the NFL game.
I do have issue with people who make a choice to raise families and expect everyone else to accomodate their choice unequally. You want special time off because you have kids? No problem, provided I get the same time off when I don't have kids. Equality. Fairness. That's all I'm asking for.
No, what you're asking for isn't fairness or equality. You're asking that for every emergency that someone else has to deal with, you should get a day off to screw around and do whatever you want. That's not equality.
Equality is men with children being given the same freedom to tend to family emergencies as women--I do agree that our society needs to allow more of that, and I do think that geomon exaggerates how easy it is to find an employer who is good about that.
Then maybe they shouldn't have had any kids, hmmm? That's not being sanctimonious, just planning.
Are you really suggesting that a couple should only be allowed to have children if they can support them on one income?? Considering how increasingly difficult that is to do, that's very disturbing! You might as well come right out and say that only upper middle class to wealthy people should be allowed to have children.
Well, let's speculate about that. Why do people have children? Why do you need to speculate about rational reasons? People have children because they are born with an innate desire to do so. Granted, there are some people who probably wouldn't want children if our culture didn't coerce them into it--and THOSE people are probably better off not having children. But, aside from that, most people have a biologically-driven desire to mate, and to suggest that they should have to back that up with some kind of rational reasoning is... disturbing.
Give me one specific reason why you had children that DOESN'T have to do with emotions.
That's a ridiculous thing to demand. It can be very convincingly argued that EVERYTHING ANYBODY does has SOMETHING to do with emotions. Even if someone can concoct a rational argument in favor of doing something, it still comes back to emotions on some level. Hell, most of the time people do come up with rational arguments for something, it's really just to justify what they want emotionally.
The question comes back always to why you believe you are on this earth. I guarantee you it is not to be good in your career.
Wow, so the meaning of life to you is just procreating? That's such a depressing and empty view of the world. All this time I thought the meaning of life was to learn, overcome challenges, better yourself, and help other people. Having and raising children can be a part of that, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. The world's population is certainly large enough that we don't need everyone to reproduce.
But now you're telling us that the point of life _isn't_ overcoming challenges and trying to do good things with your life, but instead it's spawning the next generation, whose sole point of existence is to spawn the next generation after them, and then THAT generation's sole purpose is spawning yet another... geez, it seems so depressing to imagine that all the other things we humans do is pointless! I should give up on my hopes of being a Psychologist and helping people with therapy, now that I know that all that really matters in life is getting my future wife knocked up. I might as well be working at Burger King, so then I can knock the woman up sooner instead of working on my doctorate degree first.
As with most things these days, political or otherwise, it will ultimately come down to what you believe. I believe in God, and God says be fruitful and multiply. Not kill yourself to get highest paycheck possible.
Ohhh, I should have known that it was going to come down to religious beliefs. Why else would you be so inspired to put someone down for what she's doing with her life? BTW, to many of us, having a "successful" career _isn't_ about the size of the paycheck.
I doubt there was any comraderie between ESPN and Sega aside from Sega just forking over cash for the license.
As it was, even though Sega was selling "ESPN" football games, ESPN used Madden on their shows when demonstrating plays etc. They were already in EA's pocket even while Sega was using their name.
I've been boycotting CDs (no, I don't use Kazaa either) because of the ridiculous prices for many years now, and the prices haven't gone down. Actually, CDs are MORE expensive now than before I started boycotting.
I avoided paying to see movies in the theatres for years too, but that doesn't seem to have changed anything either.
Likewise, I can boycott Madden football games, ESPN, and the NFL. I completely agree with you that we have the choice to do this.
However, any support I could conceivably get for my boycott would just be a drop in the bucket, so let's be honest about the result: Me, or any other Slashdotter (most Slashdotters hate sports games anyway, so this is kinda moot) boycotting EA, the NFL, and ESPN doesn't mean that those companies are going to change their policies. It just means that I'll never be watching football or playing football video games again.
No, I have no stats on that, other than the fact that I very rarely hear about anyone actually defending themselves with a gun (and I mean innocent victims, not gang fights)--and, specifically, having to pull the trigger. Though I suppose you could argue that situations in which one would have to pull a trigger in self-defense are really quite common, but that most people end up victimized because they don't have guns.
To that I would say that you are right, though I suspect that, more often than not, just having a gun and showing a willingness to use it will scare off an attacker. Or, alternatively, there are also the situations when the attacker has such an advantage (e.g. from surprise) that a victim wouldn't be able to take advantage of having a gun.
With that said, though, I am completely open to the possibility that I might be wrong, and if you have any sources/stats I would be glad to see them.
And it's completely aside from my main point, anyway. I only threw that comment in there for people who might pick on me for making it sound like shooting at muggers is an everyday occurrence. I should have known someone would instead pick on me for throwing that comment in.
The point is, that if I were to buy a gun for self-defense--whether the chance of me having to use it is large or small--I want to feel reasonably certain that it's going to work. I feel no such certainty with these "smart" guns.
Another form of biometric--the dynamic biometric--depends on both physical markers and behavior. "This is about who you are and how you do something." said Sebastian. This biometric is the foundation of Dynamic Grip Recognition. The technology measures not only the size, strength and structure of a person's hand, but also the reflexive way in which the person acts. For smart gun, the observed actions are how the person squeezes something to produce a unique and measurable pattern. Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed.
Holy crap. I can't even make my hand-written signature look the same every time; I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable trusting my life to a method of self-defense that depends on me having to apply the same amount of force, speed-of-movement, etc. every time.
Yeah yeah, I know--it's supposed to be all reflexive, something I'm not consciously controlling. But, let's say I buy a gun for self-defense, and, as unlikely as it may be, I end up having to use it. Somehow, I suspect that with my heart racing as I'm trying to defend myself from a mugger/car-jacker/whatever, I won't be pulling the trigger quite the same way as I would be in, say, target practice.
Now, the cases when an innocent citizen actually needs to pull a trigger in self-defense are exceedingly rare, but still--if I were to get a gun for that purpose, I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with a supposed "smart" gun.
It's amazing how misunderstood the article is here. (Okay, I guess it isn't amazing since it's so typical, but I'm trying to close my eyes and pretend I'm in a world where people are reasonable.)
For those who didn't read the article, or who read it with preconceived notions about its purpose and thus didn't understand it very well, here are some important points:
Zoe is not taking a Feminist, Morale Outrage, censorship-promoting position. For the most part, her disposition is one of curiosity and neutrality. She at no point insults the games that use sexy female characters, and the point of her article isn't to try to convince people that there's a huge problem that needs to be changed. Instead, the article is basically her musing the questions of why it is the norm in the gaming industry, what the appeal is for both male and female gamers, and what (if anything) can be done to get more females into games.
Zoe also at no point suggests that men are solely (or even mostly) at fault. Hell, she spends several paragraphs on discussing a couple female lead designers who quite happily created female sex objects in games, and she mentions that those sexy female characters were generally well-received by female playtesters. In one case she mentions that some female playtesters liked the character, but complained that she was perhaps showing a little too much skin. The game designers explained that seduction is one of the things the character uses to her advantage in the game, and the female playtesters "bought into [the character] completely and were really excited about playing her".)
Zoe also at no point tries to suggest that game characters should be ugly and/or fat. She uses the female protagonist from Beyond Good and Evil--who is thin, but doesn't have big bouncy boobies or run around in lingerie--as a character that she doesn't think is being used as a sex object.
Now that those silly misconceptions are cleared up (yeah, right..), let me interject my own thoughts:
I am a man, and I am more bothered by the objectification of women in games than Zoe seems to be. Please note that I don't advocate censorship at all, and I don't think there is anything _ethically_ wrong with either creating or playing a game that uses women or men as sex objects. People like sex, which is why it sells.
I just wish that it wasn't so pervasive. I feel like my intelligence is being insulted when game designers are asking me to accept that their superbly athletic, heroic female main character is running around with floppy lard-filled breasts, and chooses flimsy lingerie as her outfit of choice when going into dangerous battles. There are games I've chosen not to buy/play because I felt like they were insulting my intelligence in this way (Tomb Raider and BloodRayne come to mind, not to mention the completely ridiculous DoA).
And that's unfortunate, because for so long we have gone with a scarcity of female main characters in games. And now that we have them, they are sex symbols more often than positive, empowering role models. I'm not saying I want characters in games to look fat or ugly; there's nothing wrong with making the characters attractive. But dressing female characters up in revealing lingerie, with unrealistically huge breasts hanging out, takes the focus of the heroine away from her strength, competence, accomplishments, etc., and puts the focus on her role as eye candy.
And, while I don't like male bashing feminists anymore than anyone else does, I still don't like the fact that our culture trains women to base their self-esteem on their appearance. And, FWIW, I think women are as much (if not more) at fault for this as men are. I see/hear women criticizing other women for their fashion sense, appearance, etc. more than I see/hear men doing the same. And women's magazines like Cosmopolitan are put together by women, reach a larger audience than any of these games do (hell, probably a larger audience than all of the games put together), and not only portray women as sex objects (without the accompanying heroic qualities you see in games), but also are filled with articles on how you, too, can reduce yourself to a mindless sex object.
Slashdot Mirror
You can point out to your coworker that you're not the only one. I stopped buying CDs probably around the same time you did, for the same reason. And, likewise, most of my mp3s (oggs, actually) are ripped from my own old CDs.
I remember a few years ago, I was walking around a mall with my friend/roommate. We went into a music store, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I haven't bought a CD in a really long time, I should look for something I'd like." I found a CD I wanted, and was horrified to notice that it was something like $19 or $20. What really got to me was realizing that, since the CD was released (IIRC) in the early 90's, it is actually more expensive now than it was when it was new!
That sealed it for me. That's when I transitioned from not buying CDs because I was too poor, to formally making the decision to never buy CDs whether I can spare the money or not.
How does that make her centrist? Democrats and Republicans are both into censorship pretty much equally; scapegoating media is the easiest thing for them to agree on.
What's particularly strange is that although this "kill the hooker in GTA" meme is now well known, it is only ever mentioned by people who don't actually play the game. Nobody who plays the game would ever do it because there's no point.
Hey, that's not true. When I get my fiancee to play GTA, killing hookers is all she wants to do. Actually, not even just hookers, but any woman who happens to be scantily clad. She doesn't care about the missions, races, etc., she just wants to run around killing "sluts".
Even among people who play the game more seriously than my fiancee (like me, for example), the ability to commit violent acts at will is part of the appeal of the game. What those who scapegoat video games (and movies, music, etc.) fail to understand is that the game is a safe and healthy way to release your aggressive urges without having to hurt real people. For the most part, the people committing the real murders and rapes out on the streets aren't the people who have the latest ultra-violent video games to come home to.
Not to be Freudian or anything, but almost all of our entertainment-oriented media (and even much of the media that's not supposed to be about entertainment, like the NEWS) is filled with sex and/or aggression, because ultimately that's what humans get off on. Whether you're talking about movies, video games, sports, gladiators in the arena, or whatever, that's how human entertainment has always been and how it will always be. And there's nothing wrong with that.
And I strongly suspect that even the 12-year old mentioned by the grandparent post understands the difference between play/fantasy violence and real violence. Personally, I think a positive chat about the subject would have done him far more good than resorting to the silly and unproductive send-him-to-his-room tactic.
Then you discover Debian and recover your time, realizing that except for special cases, compiling yourself isn't worth it.
Recover what time? The vast majority of the compiling I do in Gentoo happens at night while I'm sleeping.
As for "then you discover Debian"--I discovered Debian years before I discovered Gentoo, and Debian was my favorite distro for a while. I actually find Gentoo easier to maintain than Debian (fewer upgrade problems, and when problems do arise they're easier to fix). I'm not saying Gentoo is necessarily better, just that I have had a better and less painful experience with it.
Debian is still my second favorite distro, though.
Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.
He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.
When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.
Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.
It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.
It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.
Seemingly inexplicable?! I always keep an open mind about these things, but this supposed example of precognition is too easy to explain.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think any beginning Psychology student should be able to recognize those results as a simple example of classical conditioning. After being shown several "provocative" images in succession, it should be expected that participants will begin to anticipate another such image before they see it.
It would have been more interesting if they used some provocative and some non-provocative pictures, and saw different pre-reactions depending on which image was coming up. Sadly, the description in the article makes it sound like that research (and the similar research the article explains next) didn't bother mixing in different types of pictures. So much for control groups....
Except the whole TCO crap is not an issue for an office suite the way that it could be for an OS. No one needs high-priced experts to administer OpenOffice for them. It is a drop-in replacement for MS Office, as long as you don't need perfect compatibility with MS Office formats.
The majority of people in this country do not care about anything outside the scope of their own lives.
I agree, though I'd replace "in this country" with "on this planet" or perhaps even "throughout all of human history".
I actually find it humorous to watch so called "experts" in science change their theories of "pre-historic" events to suit every new finding that doesn't match with their previous theory.
Errr, isn't that the point of science? You get new evidence, you revise/expand/whatever your theories to fit that evidence. As opposed to dogmatic belief systems, where you persist in holding on to your original theory no matter how much contradicting evidence you see.
I have my own spiritual beliefs, but as far as what gets taught publically, I'll choose the scientific way.
Especially when in fact all these findings can be attributed to a Divine creation and a world-wide flood (as accurately recorded in the Bible).
Yeah yeah, and they can be just as easily attributed to the creation myths of dozens of other religions. Which one is right? Oh, yeah, the one you grew up with. How open-minded.
One of my favorite sayings I heard frequently from one of my more experimentally-oriented Psychology professors: "A theory that explains everything explains nothing." If you truly "love science" as you say, then you should spend some time thinking about that.
And then there's the base question for all you evolutionists.... where did all the stuff that the universe is made of come from. No matter have far back you go... where did what that came from come from?
Okay, and I'll throw that question back at you: Where did "God" come from?
This philosophical dilemma is the same whether you believe in any kind of divinity or not. Any time you imagine a Beginning--whether it's God or The Big Bang (or a combination of both!)--you have to ask yourself "But what came before that?" God is no more or less exempt from that question than The Big Bang is.
Peace may require the end of Islam, because it is based on the Qur'an and the Hadiths. These works are based on an Arabic flavor of theocratic fascism and there is no room for competing ideologies.
Hey, as long as we're throwing out religions with sacred texts that promote hatred and intolerantly condemn those of all other religions, why stop at Islam? Might as well get rid of Judaism and Christianity too.
In addition to what allism said, this test seems to rely on the test-taker not knowing how it is scored. This is the kind of test in which the taker will naturally want to give whatever answer is most socially desirable, so the test has to trick them. The test-taker is told that it is scored by how they rate the pictures, so they lie (assuming deviant desires) in their ratings and then the oh-so-clever test catches them in their lie by measuring how long they looked at each picture for.
If you know they're measuring the time, then the test is probably worthless for you.
Personally, I suspect the test is very flawed anyway... for example, I would _expect_ Roy's results (slightly higher attraction to adolescent girls than adult women) to be typical. I'd imagine a typical guy taking the test might signal an immediate repulsive reaction to the very young children, a positive reaction to the adult women after maybe looking for a couple seconds, and to pictures of adolescent girls I imagine many men might pause to ponder, "How old is she? Is this one okay to like, or is she too young?" (Keep in mind that the writer of the article noted that many of the adolescents in the test looked like they could have been young adults.)
Whoa! No need to get so defensive their sparky. I never said their was anything wrong with liking them, I just asked what people saw in them.
Okay, I'll buy your assertion that you at least didn't _intend_ to be insulting, but you should be aware that:
I guess if you don't have any friends who are willing to play for real the computer version might make for a really, really lame substitute.
I guess this is just part of the "hoop-dreams" fantasy. I wish I were a famous athlete, but I am too lazy to get off the couch. I guess I'll just play video games and fantasize or something.
certainly makes it sound like you are trying to portray football video game players as pathetic and lame. But I'll believe that you didn't intend it that way.
My name isn't Sparky, though.
I do enjoy FPS games, although admittedly not as much as a good paintball game. Maybe I'll give one of the newest football games another try some day, but my expectations are low. As you said, to each their own.
Yep, to each his own, so don't feel obligated to give it another try. If you don't like it, you don't like it, and that's fine.
Well, I suppose it depends on what your idea of "very few" is.
My idea of "very few" in this case is "not enough to be profitable, or even cover development costs". With that definition, I suspect I am right. The only reason EA bothers with NCAA Football is because it doesn't require any effort for them. They just take the engine being developed for the next Madden, slap on the NCAA-specific content, and release it before Madden to make a quick buck off the people who are happy to spend $100/yr on football games instead of just $50, and who want to get their hands on the latest and greatest and can't wait for the next Madden release.
And a lot of the people who buy EA's NCAA game are hardcore Madden players who like to import NCAA-created drafts into Madden.
Now, for another company to put the development effort into creating a college football game good enough to compete with Madden, without the above advantages that EA has, would be expensive. And the niche market that would buy it wouldn't be big enough to make it worthwhile. I'm not surprised no one other than EA is bothering to make college football games; and if someone else does try, I won't be surprised when they give up on it.
Maybe you don't lose, but Sega (and other would-be football-game developers) sure lost. Even as you say you can imagine buying Sega's game over EA's, you admit that part of the advantage for you is not feeling compelled to buy it every year--which means less money for Sega.
And that on top of the people who won't buy it at all without the NFL license means that Sega might have to completely give up on making football games, which means maybe you really will lose.
Okay, you've got some things mixed up here, so let me try to explain....
ESPN has nothing to do with EA's right to use the names of NFL teams and players in their games. EA has to have a deal with the NFL to use team names, and a deal with the NFLPA (Players Association) to use player names. The REAL problem here isn't the ESPN deal, it's the other deal EA made--the deal they made with the NFL to get _exclusive_ rights to team and player names. (I assume that's the 5-year deal you read about; that deal has nothing to do with ESPN.)
To my knowledge, a single video game company locking out other game companies from being able to get a license from a sports league is unprecedented.
Anyway, the deal with ESPN allows them to use ESPN's shows (like Sportscenter), with ESPN's personalities. IMO, EA doesn't really care so much about using ESPN content in their games--this deal was more to put the nail in the coffin of their biggest competition, which was the ESPN-branded football games from Sega. Now Sega can't use NFL teams/players OR ESPN.
I hope that makes sense; I know I'm neither clear nor concise.
Games like Madden are much more popular than games like NFL Blitz or Backyard Football for a reason.
The serious sports gamers--the guys who are willing to fork over $50 to re-buy their favorite football franchise year after year--want the game to be as realistic as possible.
The people who are interested in playing football with mutants or Mario or whatever are more of a niche market, and generally won't keep buying new versions of the game on a yearly basis.
Okay, thinking back roughly 15 years....
ESPN was THE cable sports channel, MTV was really Teenager Television, Microsoft's operating system was on nearly every PC, we had a president named George Bush, and we had U.S. troops fighting a war in Iraq.
Not that I disagree with your general point that things change, but you didn't pick the best example. And it's probably a good bet that ESPN will still be the most popular cable sports network; more importantly, that doesn't even matter, because it's really the exclusive NFL deal, and not the ESPN deal, that is going to kill off EA's football competition. The profit they will make from that deal will make the money they gave ESPN look like little more than spare change.
Translation of your post: "I don't enjoy football video games, so there must be something wrong with people who do enjoy them."
:P
:)
You realize that different people enjoy different things, right? And you also realize that there are plenty of people who think _your_ favorite genres of games (assuming you play games at all) are lame and pointless, right?
Well, I'll give you credit for at least ending your post with a question. So I'll give you one answer.
I used to really enjoy watching football and baseball, though as I get older I'm losing my interest in watching sports. Baseball I'm practically boycotting because I'm sick of my favorite team having a different roster every year; I just can't root for a guy knowing that in a year or two, he'll bitch about not getting enough money and go play for the Yankees. But it's an easy boycott because I'm honestly bored of baseball anyway.
Football I still like to watch, but I only bother watching if my favorite team is playing--which isn't often enough since I'm living on the wrong coast now, and my team has fallen so far under crappy ownership that watching them is more depressing than entertaining.
But I still really enjoy playing video football games, though my standards are getting increasingly higher. No, I have no desire to be a "famous athlete" (hell, I don't want to be a famous anything!). Playing the game isn't about fulfilling a fantasy.
Rather, I enjoy the STRATEGY of football. I enjoy planning out passing and rushing attacks. I enjoy having to read the defense, anticipate what each defender is doing, then dropping back to pass and having to memorize where my receivers are going. And then in the second or two before I get sacked or have to flee the pocket, I have to continue reading the defense and pick out the best receiver to throw to, and then I have to decide whether to throw the ball hard (to try to squeeze it into tight coverage), or soft (to get it to sail over a leaping linebacker), or somewhere in between to accomplish both.
As long as the challenge level is appropriate (not too easy, not unfairly hard), that can provide a thrill very similar, I imagine, to trying to out-think and out-shoot an opponent in an FPS. I hate FPSes, BTW; I guess anyone who plays them just has no friends and fantasizes about being a real killer/marine/whatever!
Also, at this point I won't buy a football game unless it has a thorough "franchise" mode in which I can play several seasons, drafting players between seasons. Drafting and trading players to try to build a better team gives me the same kind of satisfaction I get from building a character in a CRPG.
So, there's an answer to your question, which I'm sure you can probably spin into something negative; there's probably something wrong with me if I enjoy something that you don't.
EA's NCAA football game is weak and has no competition because few people want college football video games. Most players, when faced with a choice between NFL and college, will choose the NFL game.
I do have issue with people who make a choice to raise families and expect everyone else to accomodate their choice unequally. You want special time off because you have kids? No problem, provided I get the same time off when I don't have kids. Equality. Fairness. That's all I'm asking for.
No, what you're asking for isn't fairness or equality. You're asking that for every emergency that someone else has to deal with, you should get a day off to screw around and do whatever you want. That's not equality.
Equality is men with children being given the same freedom to tend to family emergencies as women--I do agree that our society needs to allow more of that, and I do think that geomon exaggerates how easy it is to find an employer who is good about that.
Then maybe they shouldn't have had any kids, hmmm? That's not being sanctimonious, just planning.
Are you really suggesting that a couple should only be allowed to have children if they can support them on one income?? Considering how increasingly difficult that is to do, that's very disturbing! You might as well come right out and say that only upper middle class to wealthy people should be allowed to have children.
Well, let's speculate about that. Why do people have children?
Why do you need to speculate about rational reasons? People have children because they are born with an innate desire to do so. Granted, there are some people who probably wouldn't want children if our culture didn't coerce them into it--and THOSE people are probably better off not having children. But, aside from that, most people have a biologically-driven desire to mate, and to suggest that they should have to back that up with some kind of rational reasoning is... disturbing.
Give me one specific reason why you had children that DOESN'T have to do with emotions.
That's a ridiculous thing to demand. It can be very convincingly argued that EVERYTHING ANYBODY does has SOMETHING to do with emotions. Even if someone can concoct a rational argument in favor of doing something, it still comes back to emotions on some level. Hell, most of the time people do come up with rational arguments for something, it's really just to justify what they want emotionally.
The question comes back always to why you believe you are on this earth. I guarantee you it is not to be good in your career.
Wow, so the meaning of life to you is just procreating? That's such a depressing and empty view of the world. All this time I thought the meaning of life was to learn, overcome challenges, better yourself, and help other people. Having and raising children can be a part of that, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. The world's population is certainly large enough that we don't need everyone to reproduce.
But now you're telling us that the point of life _isn't_ overcoming challenges and trying to do good things with your life, but instead it's spawning the next generation, whose sole point of existence is to spawn the next generation after them, and then THAT generation's sole purpose is spawning yet another... geez, it seems so depressing to imagine that all the other things we humans do is pointless! I should give up on my hopes of being a Psychologist and helping people with therapy, now that I know that all that really matters in life is getting my future wife knocked up. I might as well be working at Burger King, so then I can knock the woman up sooner instead of working on my doctorate degree first.
As with most things these days, political or otherwise, it will ultimately come down to what you believe. I believe in God, and God says be fruitful and multiply. Not kill yourself to get highest paycheck possible.
Ohhh, I should have known that it was going to come down to religious beliefs. Why else would you be so inspired to put someone down for what she's doing with her life? BTW, to many of us, having a "successful" career _isn't_ about the size of the paycheck.
I doubt there was any comraderie between ESPN and Sega aside from Sega just forking over cash for the license.
As it was, even though Sega was selling "ESPN" football games, ESPN used Madden on their shows when demonstrating plays etc. They were already in EA's pocket even while Sega was using their name.
I've been boycotting CDs (no, I don't use Kazaa either) because of the ridiculous prices for many years now, and the prices haven't gone down. Actually, CDs are MORE expensive now than before I started boycotting.
I avoided paying to see movies in the theatres for years too, but that doesn't seem to have changed anything either.
Likewise, I can boycott Madden football games, ESPN, and the NFL. I completely agree with you that we have the choice to do this.
However, any support I could conceivably get for my boycott would just be a drop in the bucket, so let's be honest about the result: Me, or any other Slashdotter (most Slashdotters hate sports games anyway, so this is kinda moot) boycotting EA, the NFL, and ESPN doesn't mean that those companies are going to change their policies. It just means that I'll never be watching football or playing football video games again.
No, I have no stats on that, other than the fact that I very rarely hear about anyone actually defending themselves with a gun (and I mean innocent victims, not gang fights)--and, specifically, having to pull the trigger. Though I suppose you could argue that situations in which one would have to pull a trigger in self-defense are really quite common, but that most people end up victimized because they don't have guns.
To that I would say that you are right, though I suspect that, more often than not, just having a gun and showing a willingness to use it will scare off an attacker. Or, alternatively, there are also the situations when the attacker has such an advantage (e.g. from surprise) that a victim wouldn't be able to take advantage of having a gun.
With that said, though, I am completely open to the possibility that I might be wrong, and if you have any sources/stats I would be glad to see them.
And it's completely aside from my main point, anyway. I only threw that comment in there for people who might pick on me for making it sound like shooting at muggers is an everyday occurrence. I should have known someone would instead pick on me for throwing that comment in.
The point is, that if I were to buy a gun for self-defense--whether the chance of me having to use it is large or small--I want to feel reasonably certain that it's going to work. I feel no such certainty with these "smart" guns.
Another form of biometric--the dynamic biometric--depends on both physical markers and behavior. "This is about who you are and how you do something." said Sebastian. This biometric is the foundation of Dynamic Grip Recognition. The technology measures not only the size, strength and structure of a person's hand, but also the reflexive way in which the person acts. For smart gun, the observed actions are how the person squeezes something to produce a unique and measurable pattern. Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed.
Holy crap. I can't even make my hand-written signature look the same every time; I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable trusting my life to a method of self-defense that depends on me having to apply the same amount of force, speed-of-movement, etc. every time.
Yeah yeah, I know--it's supposed to be all reflexive, something I'm not consciously controlling. But, let's say I buy a gun for self-defense, and, as unlikely as it may be, I end up having to use it. Somehow, I suspect that with my heart racing as I'm trying to defend myself from a mugger/car-jacker/whatever, I won't be pulling the trigger quite the same way as I would be in, say, target practice.
Now, the cases when an innocent citizen actually needs to pull a trigger in self-defense are exceedingly rare, but still--if I were to get a gun for that purpose, I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with a supposed "smart" gun.
It's amazing how misunderstood the article is here. (Okay, I guess it isn't amazing since it's so typical, but I'm trying to close my eyes and pretend I'm in a world where people are reasonable.)
For those who didn't read the article, or who read it with preconceived notions about its purpose and thus didn't understand it very well, here are some important points:
Zoe is not taking a Feminist, Morale Outrage, censorship-promoting position. For the most part, her disposition is one of curiosity and neutrality. She at no point insults the games that use sexy female characters, and the point of her article isn't to try to convince people that there's a huge problem that needs to be changed. Instead, the article is basically her musing the questions of why it is the norm in the gaming industry, what the appeal is for both male and female gamers, and what (if anything) can be done to get more females into games.
Zoe also at no point suggests that men are solely (or even mostly) at fault. Hell, she spends several paragraphs on discussing a couple female lead designers who quite happily created female sex objects in games, and she mentions that those sexy female characters were generally well-received by female playtesters. In one case she mentions that some female playtesters liked the character, but complained that she was perhaps showing a little too much skin. The game designers explained that seduction is one of the things the character uses to her advantage in the game, and the female playtesters "bought into [the character] completely and were really excited about playing her".)
Zoe also at no point tries to suggest that game characters should be ugly and/or fat. She uses the female protagonist from Beyond Good and Evil--who is thin, but doesn't have big bouncy boobies or run around in lingerie--as a character that she doesn't think is being used as a sex object.
Now that those silly misconceptions are cleared up (yeah, right..), let me interject my own thoughts:
I am a man, and I am more bothered by the objectification of women in games than Zoe seems to be. Please note that I don't advocate censorship at all, and I don't think there is anything _ethically_ wrong with either creating or playing a game that uses women or men as sex objects. People like sex, which is why it sells.
I just wish that it wasn't so pervasive. I feel like my intelligence is being insulted when game designers are asking me to accept that their superbly athletic, heroic female main character is running around with floppy lard-filled breasts, and chooses flimsy lingerie as her outfit of choice when going into dangerous battles. There are games I've chosen not to buy/play because I felt like they were insulting my intelligence in this way (Tomb Raider and BloodRayne come to mind, not to mention the completely ridiculous DoA).
And that's unfortunate, because for so long we have gone with a scarcity of female main characters in games. And now that we have them, they are sex symbols more often than positive, empowering role models. I'm not saying I want characters in games to look fat or ugly; there's nothing wrong with making the characters attractive. But dressing female characters up in revealing lingerie, with unrealistically huge breasts hanging out, takes the focus of the heroine away from her strength, competence, accomplishments, etc., and puts the focus on her role as eye candy.
And, while I don't like male bashing feminists anymore than anyone else does, I still don't like the fact that our culture trains women to base their self-esteem on their appearance. And, FWIW, I think women are as much (if not more) at fault for this as men are. I see/hear women criticizing other women for their fashion sense, appearance, etc. more than I see/hear men doing the same. And women's magazines like Cosmopolitan are put together by women, reach a larger audience than any of these games do (hell, probably a larger audience than all of the games put together), and not only portray women as sex objects (without the accompanying heroic qualities you see in games), but also are filled with articles on how you, too, can reduce yourself to a mindless sex object.