Science is published by a nonprofit association called AAAS. In order to receive Science, you must become a member of AAAS; the magazine is a member benefit.
AAAS has all kinds of activities for promoting science, education, and freedom around the world. So in addition to getting the journal, you also provide support for these activities. The revenue and the high-profile provided by the journal are crucial to the association's well-being and effectiveness.
I just wanted to point that out. I'd also like to say that while I'm no expert, I think that peer review ain't cheap. Journals are not "high profit" enterprises. Cut back on the editing and the journal's quality and creditable will certainly suffer.
One last thing: Science at least makes a lot of material freely available online six months after its initial publication.
Trivialization of CGI artistry
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The thing that bothers me about the Post article was the author's flippant suggestions that it is easy to create the huge, brilliantly realized battle sequences he mentions. I'm no expert, but I suspect it takes a lot more than just "two technicians in a computer bunker."
Of the movies he mentions, I have only seen Return of the King. In that movie alone I would imagine that it took a large and talented team of artists, designers, actors, engineers, writers, etc.--not to mention a director with vision--to pull it off. It's sad that the author, one of the Post's movie critics, doesn't express much appreciation or gratitude for the human creativity that makes these scenes possible.
Is this a common attitude? Perhaps I'm mistaken; maybe its easy to seamlessly incorporate large-scale computer generated action into films, but I'd be shocked if it were as simple as Mr. Hunter suggests.
Here's an interesting if vague quote from the StarROMs website:
"StarROMs believes that emulators play an important role in the preservation of classic video games. A portion of StarROMs annual profits will be donated to projects that help support the legal emulation of classic video games." Here's the link.
So Atari won't be compensating MAME anytime soon, but ROM redistributors just might.
The idea of deafness being acceptable is laughable? What would you do if you had a deaf child? Cochlear implants and hearing aids aren't cures, and won't help many forms of deafness at all. Would you regard your child as irreparably broken?
Look, I'm not saying that it's common for a 12-year-old to look 80. It's not common for children to be born profoundly deaf. But it is common for human beings to be born with or develop variations from arbitrary ideas of normalcy. I just don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with deaf people, or even wrinkly pre-teens. Like I said, it's normal to be fucked up.
I'm beginning to think that we'd be better off learning how to get along with our fucked-up selves before we start worrying about transforming our species with technology. Eliminating a limitation is not the same as surpassing it.
A defect is what you make of it. While I agree that it's sad to hear of deaf people ostracizing those with cochlear implants, there's nothing wrong with suggesting that deafness is an acceptable variation from the human "norm." Do you have any idea how many people in the world experience some form of hearing impairment during their lives? Neither do I, but I bet the number is huge. Deafness certainly seems pretty normal to me.
After all, the human "norm" is to be fucked up. Everybody's got something wrong with them, it's just that some defects are more visible than others or require more accommodation.
I'm partially deaf (no hearing in one ear), so maybe I'm a little sensitive on this topic. Despite the fact that I've never had difficulty getting by with just the one ear, even I encountered people (relatives, particularly) who wanted to 'fix' my non-problem.
FYI, this is not exactly news. The Darth Vader gargoyle has been in place for many years. I first heard about when I moved to DC about seven years ago. The Cathedral was completed in 1990, so Darth has been glowering on tourists for over a decade.
Right on. Access to strong cryptography and anonymity tools is very important for human rights workers. In addition to CryptoRights, the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has done some PGP training and awareness-raising on this topic. Here' a link.
Phil Zimmermann's website has some nice testimonials. This crypto stuff really does save lives, and I hope the geeks of the world are up to the challenge of keeping PGP alive.
I think the folks behind the Public Library of Science movement are attempting to draw a line in the sand on this issue, so their perspective is intentionally extreme. I know that information wants to be free, but in the interests of balance I feel compelled to point out that the current nonprofit journal publishing system is not necessarily greedy and exploitative. Science magazine, for instance, is published at substantial cost by a nonprofit organization called the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). When you subscribe to Science you join the association. The membership dues and the advertising revenue from the magazine pay for a wide range of activities that are of tremendous benefit to science and society.
As paper publishing becomes less and less relevant, I think that it's going to get harder and harder for journals and their sponsoring organizations to come by revenue. Making it even harder by clamoring for completely free and unrestricted access to high-quality peer-reviewed material is at least partially a bad thing, isn't it? Somebody's got to foot the bill, and journals and their sponsoring societies add a lot of value to the science community.
Final note: Science has adopted a compromise position on this issue; issues older than one year will be freely available on the journal's website.
Slashdot Mirror
Science is published by a nonprofit association called AAAS. In order to receive Science, you must become a member of AAAS; the magazine is a member benefit.
AAAS has all kinds of activities for promoting science, education, and freedom around the world. So in addition to getting the journal, you also provide support for these activities. The revenue and the high-profile provided by the journal are crucial to the association's well-being and effectiveness.
I just wanted to point that out. I'd also like to say that while I'm no expert, I think that peer review ain't cheap. Journals are not "high profit" enterprises. Cut back on the editing and the journal's quality and creditable will certainly suffer.
One last thing: Science at least makes a lot of material freely available online six months after its initial publication.
The thing that bothers me about the Post article was the author's flippant suggestions that it is easy to create the huge, brilliantly realized battle sequences he mentions. I'm no expert, but I suspect it takes a lot more than just "two technicians in a computer bunker."
Of the movies he mentions, I have only seen Return of the King. In that movie alone I would imagine that it took a large and talented team of artists, designers, actors, engineers, writers, etc.--not to mention a director with vision--to pull it off. It's sad that the author, one of the Post's movie critics, doesn't express much appreciation or gratitude for the human creativity that makes these scenes possible.
Is this a common attitude? Perhaps I'm mistaken; maybe its easy to seamlessly incorporate large-scale computer generated action into films, but I'd be shocked if it were as simple as Mr. Hunter suggests.
Here's an interesting if vague quote from the StarROMs website:
"StarROMs believes that emulators play an important role in the preservation of classic video games. A portion of StarROMs annual profits will be donated to projects that help support the legal emulation of classic video games." Here's the link.
So Atari won't be compensating MAME anytime soon, but ROM redistributors just might.
The idea of deafness being acceptable is laughable? What would you do if you had a deaf child? Cochlear implants and hearing aids aren't cures, and won't help many forms of deafness at all. Would you regard your child as irreparably broken?
Look, I'm not saying that it's common for a 12-year-old to look 80. It's not common for children to be born profoundly deaf. But it is common for human beings to be born with or develop variations from arbitrary ideas of normalcy. I just don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with deaf people, or even wrinkly pre-teens. Like I said, it's normal to be fucked up.
I'm beginning to think that we'd be better off learning how to get along with our fucked-up selves before we start worrying about transforming our species with technology. Eliminating a limitation is not the same as surpassing it.
A defect is what you make of it. While I agree that it's sad to hear of deaf people ostracizing those with cochlear implants, there's nothing wrong with suggesting that deafness is an acceptable variation from the human "norm." Do you have any idea how many people in the world experience some form of hearing impairment during their lives? Neither do I, but I bet the number is huge. Deafness certainly seems pretty normal to me.
After all, the human "norm" is to be fucked up. Everybody's got something wrong with them, it's just that some defects are more visible than others or require more accommodation.
I'm partially deaf (no hearing in one ear), so maybe I'm a little sensitive on this topic. Despite the fact that I've never had difficulty getting by with just the one ear, even I encountered people (relatives, particularly) who wanted to 'fix' my non-problem.
Personally, I'd rather be deaf than fat.
FYI, this is not exactly news. The Darth Vader gargoyle has been in place for many years. I first heard about when I moved to DC about seven years ago. The Cathedral was completed in 1990, so Darth has been glowering on tourists for over a decade.
Right on. Access to strong cryptography and anonymity tools is very important for human rights workers. In addition to CryptoRights, the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has done some PGP training and awareness-raising on this topic. Here' a link.
Phil Zimmermann's website has some nice testimonials. This crypto stuff really does save lives, and I hope the geeks of the world are up to the challenge of keeping PGP alive.
I think the folks behind the Public Library of Science movement are attempting to draw a line in the sand on this issue, so their perspective is intentionally extreme. I know that information wants to be free, but in the interests of balance I feel compelled to point out that the current nonprofit journal publishing system is not necessarily greedy and exploitative. Science magazine, for instance, is published at substantial cost by a nonprofit organization called the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). When you subscribe to Science you join the association. The membership dues and the advertising revenue from the magazine pay for a wide range of activities that are of tremendous benefit to science and society.
As paper publishing becomes less and less relevant, I think that it's going to get harder and harder for journals and their sponsoring organizations to come by revenue. Making it even harder by clamoring for completely free and unrestricted access to high-quality peer-reviewed material is at least partially a bad thing, isn't it? Somebody's got to foot the bill, and journals and their sponsoring societies add a lot of value to the science community.
Final note: Science has adopted a compromise position on this issue; issues older than one year will be freely available on the journal's website.