Well, the Quran is pretty explicit in it's world view.
IANARS (I Am Not A Religious Scholar), but do not believe that Islamic extremists are the only people to take religious texts out of context.
IIRC, the Bible is quite okay with slavery. Plus, your rights and privileges largely depend on whether you are one of the chosen people or not. I believe that the Bible actually instructs how a man should sell his daughter into slavery.
Are the two religious texts so different, I wonder...
Women do not achieve equal status in a society unless they have access to education and wealth. Deny either (or both) and women are oppressed - regardless of the prevailing political, economic or religious practices.
As with any issue, the problem is with the extremists. The majority of people are quite reasonable, provided that they are sufficiently well-informed.
I really think the key difference is that we do not dance in the streets when our enemy is killed.
Just before the start of the invasion of Iraq, I remember reading about a number of pro-war rallies in various US cities. People were actually praying for war!
If we could find a way to peacefully coexist in freedom, we would.
I think that opinion is not consistent with the reality of US foreign policy...
I would venture to say that before 9/11, most muslims shared a significant level of responsibility for terrorism.
Following this spurious logic, should we also hold most Catholics responsible for the terrorist attacks committed by the IRA? Are most Asian people responsible for the genocide of the Khmer Rouge? Islam is not a monolithic whole you know...
They were not terrorists, but neither were they fighting against it.
Are you suggesting that a person is automatically in favour of ideas/actions that he or she does not actively oppose?
We in the West have committed more than our fair share of crimes against humanity in turn. Do you accept responsibility for what was done in your name, regardless of whether you were aware of what was being done?
Do you spend all of your time, energy and resources opposing oppression and tyranny, even though it may be half a world away?
I don't, and I suspect that you don't either. So why would you expect "most Muslims" to do such a thing?
You truly don't know anything about "Unix", do you?
He might. I am wondering just how much you know about it though...
From what I have read, many (but not all) trojans , viruses and spyware can operate just find in the user space, without needing to be root. It all depends on what the vx'er wanted to achieve. Sure, if they want to 0wn j00, they want root access. But you would not need root access to:
install a TCP-based application in $HOME/bin and phone home
participate in a DDOS attack against a specific host
send spam via sendmail (user-mode)
There are lots of malevolent things that could be done without being root. Fortunately, the vx'ers want the most bang for the buck and target windows users.
The pp's point was entirely valid. It has just as much to do with user education as it does with securing your boxen.
I suppose the reason I tend to distrust studies of this nature lies in the fact that they are a convenient source of political capital and have been used as such ever since Fredric Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent.
Unfortunately, people with an agenda will latch on to whatever they find that supports their position. Wertham was totally wrong of course, but he was also a product of his era (McCarthy!). He was also well outside of his realm of expertise, and that is a very dangerous place to be. He was a practicing psychiatrist, who (like Freud) relied upon anecdotal evidence to form his theories. He did not bother to conduct any formal research for any of his claims before going public with them.
Wertham's actions would be considered highly suspect and potentially unethical by the academic community today. I would like to think that such things could not happen in these more enlightened times, but look at Doctor Phil. He has no academic standing either, but he is quite influential in the court of public opinion. I doubt he spends much time reading the latest research, but that does not stop him from being an expert on relationships, personality disorders, diets, and no doubt a few other things as well:(
Most of these concerns seem either laughable or at least overstated after ten years or so have passed.
I believe that Carl Sagan suggested in his 'baloney detector' that you should always consider the source of the information. I had a research prof who often said the same thing. In this case, the source is the APA. The APA has gone out of it's way not to make pronouncements on issues where there was uncertainty, or the research was inconclusive. The APA has been officially concerned about the effects of observed media violence on children for 20 years now. It stands to reason that observed violence in video games would also be of concern, as games have been getting progressively more graphically violent over the years.
The APA is reputable because it does not make snap pronouncements on controversial issues. When it does wade into the debate, it means that there is a sizable body of peer-reviewed research to support the claim. We do not need to blindly heed the call of the APA, as there are no authorities in science. But we should pay attention when the APA speaks, even if one disagrees with the position the APA has staked out.
From this I conclude that we should be careful not to take this theory too seriously until such time as the researchers satisfactorily account for this seeming discrepancy.
Thanks for the clarification. I am not so sure there is any discrepancy here. As I mentioned before, violent behaviour is not necessarily a criminal act, particularly amongst the young. As such, I am not sure that introducing the crime rate is entirely relevant. It is possible, for example, that the over-all crime rate has decreased, yet the level of aggression and non-criminal violence in our society has increased. I have no statistical evidence to prove this, it is merely one possible solution to your objection.
Bandura's experiment had adults attacking the inflatable bozo. I'm not entirely sure that video games carry comparible authority to adults in a child's eyes.
Observational learning and imitation go hand-in-hand, in primates and humans at any rate. Children learn far more from what adults do, than what adults tell them to do.
bigbigbison argues the point better than I could
I have several issues with bbb's comments. The pedigree of the study is rather irrelevant because of the nature of the paper. In science (cognitive psychology follows the scientific method rigorously, subject to ethical limitations) and the results from any single experiment are largely insignificant. If the hypothesis of an experiment is interesting and the results statistically significant, other researchers will attempt to duplicate the experiment and the methodology to determine if the hypothesis is valid, or if the experiment was compromised in some manner. Ethical considerations limit the nature and scope of experiments that can be conducted, particularly on children who are unable to give informed consent to participate. As such, we have to make do with correlational and longitudinal studies. Papers that compare and contrast the results of multiple experiments that test the same (or related hypotheses) are quite useful and valid.
bbb also objects that the findings of the studies are qualified. Given the limitations on the type of experimentation that can be done, it is only reasonable that the results are qualified, since it is not possible to conduct an ethical experiment that could prove a causal relationship between observed violence and violent behaviour.
Despite bbb's objections, I stand by my statement that the APA is a trusted and respected organization. They would not issue a policy statement on this issue unless there was sufficient science to back it up.
It is an interesting topic to research and it will continue to be studied. I am sure that people will be able to debate this issue for a very long time...
Not unclear, but it is entirely irrelevant. The crime rate is a strawman. The APA study does not (nor claim to) identify a correlation between observed violence and the juvenille crime rate.
It is entirely possible for behaviour to be considered violent without being a criminal offense.
Which "body of evidence" were you referring to?
Well, Bandura's 1961 experiment involving an inflatable Bozo-the-clown for one. Then there is Berkowitz et. al. (1966), Belson (1978), Feshbach and Singer, Melville-Thomas and Sims (1985), Heath, Bresolin and Rinaldi (1989), Molitor and Hirsch (1994). The APA released an official statement on the effects of media violence on children in 1985, and the US Surgeon General wrote a report on the subject in 1972 and again in 1982.
Parents should take the advice of Huesman (1983), who found that the effects of observed media violence could be diminished on children when their parents explain that media violence is:
not typical
not real
not the best way
The APA is a respected organization. They would not issue a statement on this issue unless the research was compelling...
Thus, if there was a causal link between kids playing these violent video games and being more violent, we'd expect to see an increase in youth violent crime.
Based on the literature I have read on the subject, no I wouldn't.
The correlation that has been identified is that people who observe violence tend to exhibit more violent behavior. Not all violent behaviour is a criminal offense.
If the study claimed that exposure to violence causes criminal behaviour, your argument would have some merit. Instead I think you have committed the strawman fallacy.
Actually this is a perfectly normal practice within business. Do you see Coke and Pepsi together in any chain fast food store?? No. McDonalds and Burger King (Hungry Jacks here in Australia) both sell Coke, KFC sells Pepsi.
Did know that KFC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pepsico? It's not the same thing at all.
Shrug, mm games are here to stay, single player is going to go the way of the dodo for the most part imo.
I disagree. If you could participate in epic stories on MMOs the same way you do in SP games, you might have a point. As it is though, in an SP game your character can have a critical impact on the world. Your choices and actions really matter. In a MMO, you are just one of millions of other players, and your individual actions don't count for much. Whatever you do, there are millions of other people doing the same thing, day in and out.
Give me a MMO where my actions uniquely decide the fate of the world, and I might try it out.
Otherwise, I think there will always be a market for good SP games.
Just because you dispute one part of his +5 Insightful opinion, you feel compelled to write the whole thing off as clueless ranting?
The PP was incredibly insightful and provided a much needed, common sense evaluation of the current impasse. Your attempted flame was very weak by/. standards, although it did prove goldspider's point.
get it right so your argument might actually have some weight.
Far better IMHO that someone makes a useful (albeit flawed) contribution to the discussion as opposed to your childish sophistry.
The mission of liberating Iraq has been accomplished.
At what cost? More people in Iraq have died as a result of your "liberation" than the previous regime could have killed off.
So go ahead - take a bow, pat yourself on the back. Just don't expect anyone in Iraq to thank you for giving them "freedom". They used to have a secular, functioning albeit oppressive state, and now they have anarchy and chaos.
I am sure that is exactly the sort of "freedom" they always envisioned for their sons and daugthers.
Honestly, the only people who are better off as a result of this illegal and immoral war are the defense contractors. War has always been good for their business.
Now we need to make sure Iraq stays free and becomes stable.
And you plan on doing this how? I have yet to see any indication that your government has the slightest idea how to accomplish those goals. The Downing Street memos seem to confirm that observation. The policy has been sadly ad-hoc, and a terrible failure.
The truth is that your nation's policies are breeding terrorists faster than the most powerful military in the world can kill. A rational person might pause to reconsider the next step in light of that knowledge. Then again, this is a nation where the violence and criminal behaviour in GTA: San Adreas is unquestioned, but a mod that shows fully clothed, badly rendered sex between two consenting adults is a major scandal...
Never forget September 11, 2001.
Never forget that the previous government of Iraq, or the Iraqi people had *nothing* to do with the 9/11 attacks.
Terror attacks against civilians are as old as history. The 9/11 attacks were not the first against your nation, but they were the most recent. There have also been terrorist attacks in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan to name a few. Strangely enough, none of those nations chose to invade and occupy sovereign states in the name of fighting terror.
Instead of fighting pointless wars, I think it would be far better to address the concerns of the average oppressed citizen. You will never be able to negotiate with the bin Laden's of the world. You can reduce the size of their constituency and power base. I understand that you have wasted >$200 billion dollars on this war. That kind of money builds many schools and hospitals. It feeds a lot of hungry people. It would bring a lot of hope to people who currently have none. The terrorists do not and cannot offer hope - they offer a chance to bloody the nose of an oppressor to people who have little else to look forward to.
Bullets will never change that perception, no matter how many you shoot.
Of course, if what you really want is a subservient client state that just happens to sit on top of the largest un-tapped oil reserves in the world, bullets will be sufficient.
You vote for a minority Conservative government. It'll be non-Liberal, thus sending a clear message to everyone that corruption will *not* be tolerated by the Canadian people, and the opposition parties will keep them in line.
How does a Conservative government equates to not being corrupt? Have you forgotten the Mulroney era already?
Face it, patronage is an integral part of the system and it will never go away. The Sponsorship scandal is an extreme example, but it is hardly an isolated example of government misbehaviour.
Politicians of all stripes look after their own and feather their own nests.
I would have thought the best defense would be to not re-elect any incumbant government, but event that would be no solution. The Mulroney conservatives created the Quebec sponsorship program in the first place, and for all I know, they might have used it the same way the Liberal party did...
For myself, I tend to more or less agree with Stephenson. For example, what he was getting at with his remarks about the opening battle - I don't entirely agree with him about not knowing who the owner of the ship is (as has been pointed out, you can get that from the opening crawl), but the whole opening battle scene just felt empty.
I look at it this way: in the original trilogy, you knew who were the heroes, who were the villains, what the conflict was, and what was at stake.
Compare that if you will with the first two films of the second trilogy - who is the hero? Who is the villain? What is going on here that is so significant? What is happening that all these people are willing to fight and die for? I meant, the director goes out of his way to introduce offensive racial stereotypes and pointless special effects sequences, but can't spare any screen time for plot exposition?
So, when RoTS fires up, even though we know how this story has to end, and how the original trilogy goes, it is unclear why these events are so critically important. If one must be familiar with the clone wars books/cartoons in order to understand, is it a tacit acknowledgement that Ep 1&2 failed to sufficiently advance the plot?
I have seen many posts that claim that after viewing the new trilogy, it all makes sense now, and the new films are as good as (or better) than the originals. When I hear these comments, I can't help but think the whole thing is a grand exercise in cognitive dissonance. Star Wars meant so much to us in our youth that we will jump through many mental hoops to avoid accepting that Lucas is just a hack, and we gave him a lot of money for so very little in return.
George Lucas makes movies (not films) which have been incredibly successful from a commercial perspective, but despite his rhetoric, I don't think he has added much to the art of film-making.
TFA does not make any reference to competing with Bittorrent, nor does it indicate that m$ will be releasing their own P2P client. TFA does link to a
white paper in which the researchers discuss how they solved the following problem:
towards the end of a download, any one downloader could have a while to wait for the particular pieces he needs. As the number of receivers increases, scheduling traffic also becomes more complex, and the whole process slows down.
Nothing particularly evil about that. No mention of wanting to embrace, extend, and extinguish P2P. In fact, their solution is rather clever. Certainly there was no need for the editors to go trolling...
Grim Fandango (1998) was the last *GREAT* Adventure game.
I really liked the art deco style of Grim Fandango, but it was not the last great RPG. That title belongs to Planescape: Torment (1999). It has storytelling like nothing else before or since. What a shame it never sold well...
If one has taken a class in logic or classical argument, you may recall that if you start with false premises you can indeed logically reach false 'true' conclusions.
One of my favourite quotations is paraphrased from Doctor Who:
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
I'm way OT here, but we can thank the neo-conservative governments who transferred money from public infrastructure into tax cuts before the budget was balanced for that mess.
I am not sure where you live, but here in Toronto , the streets and sidewalks are in rough shape from 10 years of not being properly maintained...
Build a skyscraper out of this concrete, then what happens to the beams and walls on the first floor? Will they simply bend under the weight of the building?
Skyscrapers are built out of steel. Concrete in and of itself has poor load-bearing characteristics. It is the steel inside the concrete that supports all the weight.
Slashdot Mirror
Feh!
Kaylee and River are cute, but Inara is the hot one!
As a typical /.er, I doubt that any of those actresses would give me the time of day, much less go on a date with me...
IANARS (I Am Not A Religious Scholar), but do not believe that Islamic extremists are the only people to take religious texts out of context.
IIRC, the Bible is quite okay with slavery. Plus, your rights and privileges largely depend on whether you are one of the chosen people or not. I believe that the Bible actually instructs how a man should sell his daughter into slavery.
Are the two religious texts so different, I wonder...
Women do not achieve equal status in a society unless they have access to education and wealth. Deny either (or both) and women are oppressed - regardless of the prevailing political, economic or religious practices.
As with any issue, the problem is with the extremists. The majority of people are quite reasonable, provided that they are sufficiently well-informed.
Just before the start of the invasion of Iraq, I remember reading about a number of pro-war rallies in various US cities. People were actually praying for war!
If we could find a way to peacefully coexist in freedom, we would.I think that opinion is not consistent with the reality of US foreign policy...
I would venture to say that before 9/11, most muslims shared a significant level of responsibility for terrorism.Following this spurious logic, should we also hold most Catholics responsible for the terrorist attacks committed by the IRA? Are most Asian people responsible for the genocide of the Khmer Rouge? Islam is not a monolithic whole you know...
They were not terrorists, but neither were they fighting against it.Are you suggesting that a person is automatically in favour of ideas/actions that he or she does not actively oppose?
We in the West have committed more than our fair share of crimes against humanity in turn. Do you accept responsibility for what was done in your name, regardless of whether you were aware of what was being done?
Do you spend all of your time, energy and resources opposing oppression and tyranny, even though it may be half a world away?
I don't, and I suspect that you don't either. So why would you expect "most Muslims" to do such a thing?
He might. I am wondering just how much you know about it though...
From what I have read, many (but not all) trojans , viruses and spyware can operate just find in the user space, without needing to be root. It all depends on what the vx'er wanted to achieve. Sure, if they want to 0wn j00, they want root access. But you would not need root access to:
There are lots of malevolent things that could be done without being root. Fortunately, the vx'ers want the most bang for the buck and target windows users.
The pp's point was entirely valid. It has just as much to do with user education as it does with securing your boxen.
Unfortunately, people with an agenda will latch on to whatever they find that supports their position. Wertham was totally wrong of course, but he was also a product of his era (McCarthy!). He was also well outside of his realm of expertise, and that is a very dangerous place to be. He was a practicing psychiatrist, who (like Freud) relied upon anecdotal evidence to form his theories. He did not bother to conduct any formal research for any of his claims before going public with them.
Wertham's actions would be considered highly suspect and potentially unethical by the academic community today. I would like to think that such things could not happen in these more enlightened times, but look at Doctor Phil. He has no academic standing either, but he is quite influential in the court of public opinion. I doubt he spends much time reading the latest research, but that does not stop him from being an expert on relationships, personality disorders, diets, and no doubt a few other things as well :(
Most of these concerns seem either laughable or at least overstated after ten years or so have passed.I believe that Carl Sagan suggested in his 'baloney detector' that you should always consider the source of the information. I had a research prof who often said the same thing. In this case, the source is the APA. The APA has gone out of it's way not to make pronouncements on issues where there was uncertainty, or the research was inconclusive. The APA has been officially concerned about the effects of observed media violence on children for 20 years now. It stands to reason that observed violence in video games would also be of concern, as games have been getting progressively more graphically violent over the years.
The APA is reputable because it does not make snap pronouncements on controversial issues. When it does wade into the debate, it means that there is a sizable body of peer-reviewed research to support the claim. We do not need to blindly heed the call of the APA, as there are no authorities in science. But we should pay attention when the APA speaks, even if one disagrees with the position the APA has staked out.
Thanks for an interesting conversation.
Thanks for the clarification. I am not so sure there is any discrepancy here. As I mentioned before, violent behaviour is not necessarily a criminal act, particularly amongst the young. As such, I am not sure that introducing the crime rate is entirely relevant. It is possible, for example, that the over-all crime rate has decreased, yet the level of aggression and non-criminal violence in our society has increased. I have no statistical evidence to prove this, it is merely one possible solution to your objection.
Bandura's experiment had adults attacking the inflatable bozo. I'm not entirely sure that video games carry comparible authority to adults in a child's eyes.Observational learning and imitation go hand-in-hand, in primates and humans at any rate. Children learn far more from what adults do, than what adults tell them to do.
bigbigbison argues the point better than I couldI have several issues with bbb's comments. The pedigree of the study is rather irrelevant because of the nature of the paper. In science (cognitive psychology follows the scientific method rigorously, subject to ethical limitations) and the results from any single experiment are largely insignificant. If the hypothesis of an experiment is interesting and the results statistically significant, other researchers will attempt to duplicate the experiment and the methodology to determine if the hypothesis is valid, or if the experiment was compromised in some manner. Ethical considerations limit the nature and scope of experiments that can be conducted, particularly on children who are unable to give informed consent to participate. As such, we have to make do with correlational and longitudinal studies. Papers that compare and contrast the results of multiple experiments that test the same (or related hypotheses) are quite useful and valid.
bbb also objects that the findings of the studies are qualified. Given the limitations on the type of experimentation that can be done, it is only reasonable that the results are qualified, since it is not possible to conduct an ethical experiment that could prove a causal relationship between observed violence and violent behaviour.
Despite bbb's objections, I stand by my statement that the APA is a trusted and respected organization. They would not issue a policy statement on this issue unless there was sufficient science to back it up.
It is an interesting topic to research and it will continue to be studied. I am sure that people will be able to debate this issue for a very long time...
Not unclear, but it is entirely irrelevant. The crime rate is a strawman. The APA study does not (nor claim to) identify a correlation between observed violence and the juvenille crime rate.
It is entirely possible for behaviour to be considered violent without being a criminal offense.
Which "body of evidence" were you referring to?Well, Bandura's 1961 experiment involving an inflatable Bozo-the-clown for one. Then there is Berkowitz et. al. (1966), Belson (1978), Feshbach and Singer, Melville-Thomas and Sims (1985), Heath, Bresolin and Rinaldi (1989), Molitor and Hirsch (1994). The APA released an official statement on the effects of media violence on children in 1985, and the US Surgeon General wrote a report on the subject in 1972 and again in 1982.
Parents should take the advice of Huesman (1983), who found that the effects of observed media violence could be diminished on children when their parents explain that media violence is:
The APA is a respected organization. They would not issue a statement on this issue unless the research was compelling...
Based on the literature I have read on the subject, no I wouldn't.
The correlation that has been identified is that people who observe violence tend to exhibit more violent behavior. Not all violent behaviour is a criminal offense.
If the study claimed that exposure to violence causes criminal behaviour, your argument would have some merit. Instead I think you have committed the strawman fallacy.
This isn't mathematics in which one counter-example invalidates a theory.
The body of evidence dating back multiple decades overwhelming suggests that exposure to violence strongly correlates to increased violent behaviour.
Which "facts" were you referring to?
Did know that KFC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pepsico? It's not the same thing at all.
I disagree. If you could participate in epic stories on MMOs the same way you do in SP games, you might have a point. As it is though, in an SP game your character can have a critical impact on the world. Your choices and actions really matter. In a MMO, you are just one of millions of other players, and your individual actions don't count for much. Whatever you do, there are millions of other people doing the same thing, day in and out.
Give me a MMO where my actions uniquely decide the fate of the world, and I might try it out.
Otherwise, I think there will always be a market for good SP games.
Just because you dispute one part of his +5 Insightful opinion, you feel compelled to write the whole thing off as clueless ranting?
The PP was incredibly insightful and provided a much needed, common sense evaluation of the current impasse. Your attempted flame was very weak by /. standards, although it did prove goldspider's point.
get it right so your argument might actually have some weight.Far better IMHO that someone makes a useful (albeit flawed) contribution to the discussion as opposed to your childish sophistry.
At what cost? More people in Iraq have died as a result of your "liberation" than the previous regime could have killed off.
So go ahead - take a bow, pat yourself on the back. Just don't expect anyone in Iraq to thank you for giving them "freedom". They used to have a secular, functioning albeit oppressive state, and now they have anarchy and chaos.
I am sure that is exactly the sort of "freedom" they always envisioned for their sons and daugthers.
Honestly, the only people who are better off as a result of this illegal and immoral war are the defense contractors. War has always been good for their business.
Now we need to make sure Iraq stays free and becomes stable.And you plan on doing this how? I have yet to see any indication that your government has the slightest idea how to accomplish those goals. The Downing Street memos seem to confirm that observation. The policy has been sadly ad-hoc, and a terrible failure.
The truth is that your nation's policies are breeding terrorists faster than the most powerful military in the world can kill. A rational person might pause to reconsider the next step in light of that knowledge. Then again, this is a nation where the violence and criminal behaviour in GTA: San Adreas is unquestioned, but a mod that shows fully clothed, badly rendered sex between two consenting adults is a major scandal...
Never forget September 11, 2001.Never forget that the previous government of Iraq, or the Iraqi people had *nothing* to do with the 9/11 attacks.
Terror attacks against civilians are as old as history. The 9/11 attacks were not the first against your nation, but they were the most recent. There have also been terrorist attacks in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan to name a few. Strangely enough, none of those nations chose to invade and occupy sovereign states in the name of fighting terror.
Instead of fighting pointless wars, I think it would be far better to address the concerns of the average oppressed citizen. You will never be able to negotiate with the bin Laden's of the world. You can reduce the size of their constituency and power base. I understand that you have wasted >$200 billion dollars on this war. That kind of money builds many schools and hospitals. It feeds a lot of hungry people. It would bring a lot of hope to people who currently have none. The terrorists do not and cannot offer hope - they offer a chance to bloody the nose of an oppressor to people who have little else to look forward to.
Bullets will never change that perception, no matter how many you shoot.
Of course, if what you really want is a subservient client state that just happens to sit on top of the largest un-tapped oil reserves in the world, bullets will be sufficient.
Do not be so proud of this technological terror you have constructed.
How does a Conservative government equates to not being corrupt? Have you forgotten the Mulroney era already?
Face it, patronage is an integral part of the system and it will never go away. The Sponsorship scandal is an extreme example, but it is hardly an isolated example of government misbehaviour.
Politicians of all stripes look after their own and feather their own nests.
I would have thought the best defense would be to not re-elect any incumbant government, but event that would be no solution. The Mulroney conservatives created the Quebec sponsorship program in the first place, and for all I know, they might have used it the same way the Liberal party did...
I don't understand - you don't like local cops, and you don't like federal cops, so who do you want to enforce the laws?
I agree about the homeland security bit though. 'm not sure what value they provide that other existing agencies could not do.
Possible solutions include:
Cynical? Moi?
I look at it this way: in the original trilogy, you knew who were the heroes, who were the villains, what the conflict was, and what was at stake.
Compare that if you will with the first two films of the second trilogy - who is the hero? Who is the villain? What is going on here that is so significant? What is happening that all these people are willing to fight and die for? I meant, the director goes out of his way to introduce offensive racial stereotypes and pointless special effects sequences, but can't spare any screen time for plot exposition?
So, when RoTS fires up, even though we know how this story has to end, and how the original trilogy goes, it is unclear why these events are so critically important. If one must be familiar with the clone wars books/cartoons in order to understand, is it a tacit acknowledgement that Ep 1&2 failed to sufficiently advance the plot?
I have seen many posts that claim that after viewing the new trilogy, it all makes sense now, and the new films are as good as (or better) than the originals. When I hear these comments, I can't help but think the whole thing is a grand exercise in cognitive dissonance. Star Wars meant so much to us in our youth that we will jump through many mental hoops to avoid accepting that Lucas is just a hack, and we gave him a lot of money for so very little in return.
George Lucas makes movies (not films) which have been incredibly successful from a commercial perspective, but despite his rhetoric, I don't think he has added much to the art of film-making.
TFA does not make any reference to competing with Bittorrent, nor does it indicate that m$ will be releasing their own P2P client. TFA does link to a white paper in which the researchers discuss how they solved the following problem:
Nothing particularly evil about that. No mention of wanting to embrace, extend, and extinguish P2P. In fact, their solution is rather clever. Certainly there was no need for the editors to go trolling...
(Queue "you must be new here" comments)
I really liked the art deco style of Grim Fandango, but it was not the last great RPG. That title belongs to Planescape: Torment (1999). It has storytelling like nothing else before or since. What a shame it never sold well...
That is a common mistake, made by someone who has little understanding of the scientific method.
Please allow me to enlighten you.
You make my case, thank youRemember, falsifiable != false. The only thing I have done is demonstrated why belief in creationism or ID is a belief, not a valid scientific theory.
One of my favourite quotations is paraphrased from Doctor Who:
Of course the theory of evolution could be falsified.
All you need to do is find irrefutable evidence about the existence of a complex lifeform (a Babel fish would do nicely!) that has no ancestors.
It is ID that cannot be falsified, hence it cannot be considered a valid theory according to the Scientific Method.
I'm way OT here, but we can thank the neo-conservative governments who transferred money from public infrastructure into tax cuts before the budget was balanced for that mess.
I am not sure where you live, but here in Toronto , the streets and sidewalks are in rough shape from 10 years of not being properly maintained...
Skyscrapers are built out of steel. Concrete in and of itself has poor load-bearing characteristics. It is the steel inside the concrete that supports all the weight.