"We must" is implicitly prefaced by "We can and," therefore they are saying the opposite, and cannot both be true. Only if you believe that Hawking would bother to argue in favor of the impossible could they both be true.
There is a distinct difference between someone who is participating in escapist behavior and a particular substance or activity being addictive.
The difference between physical and psychological addiction are indeed distinct, which is why they have different names.
Take a completely average, well adjusted, completely within the bounds or normalcy guy or gal from the street. Now force them to injest considerable quantities of Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine or Heroin over an extended period of time.
That is an excellent illustration of the difference between physical and psychological addiction. Nonetheless, it does not disprove the existance of psychological addiction. That one is more valid than the other is debatable at best and, given the evidence to the contrary, disingenuous at worst.
I've known first hand a good amount of people with this so called "game addiction" and in every single case they were running from life not toward games. Conversely, I've interacted with people with real addictions and though many were running from life there was a not insignificant number who were just hard partiers
Just hard partiers?!? Hard partying is the very definition of escapism. You seem to be confusing isolation with escapism. While there may be an overlap, not all isolation is escapism, and not all escapism involves isolation. Moreover, there is nothing inherently wrong with escapism; the problem is taking things to excess, to the detriment of life obligations or personal development. Some people compulsively engage in escapist behavior, and have difficulty controlling their urges for various reasons.
If only these nut jobs who want to term anything and everything under the sun as "addictive" could be brought to realize the truth of this they'd see that not every negative human behavior can be blamed on an external cause.
Aside from a few misguided extremists, nobody is laying the blame, or calling for a ban, on potentially addictive activities. Clearly the problem is with the individual. Nonetheless, it is useful to identify activities which the addictive personality will find seductive, if for no other reason than so they can be avoided *by those people*. You are correct that -- much the way anything can be called toxic -- in enough quantity, anything can be called addictive. However, there is clearly a scale of potential for addiction in activities, just the way there is a scale of potential for toxcicity in substances, and some people are clearly more susceptible to addiction, or toxins, than others.
On a side note, much like innate homosexuality, there is little to be gained from denying the existance of gaming addiction, a fact which calls into question the motivation of those who try to deny its existance. Many believe they are trying to deny a part of themselves. If there is no such thing as innate homosexuality, then they cannot be gay. Likewise, if there is no such thing as gaming addiction, then they cannot be addicted. Personally, I think the root cause is less insidious -- I tend to believe some people simply have a hard time understanding that other people experience life differently than they do, and they insist that their experience is the "correct" one. Both explanations are plausible.
Next thing you know someone'll look at a bookworm and claim books are addicting because they were unhappy at being able to read their favorite book, or a moviegoer unhappy at being barred from seeing a movie
While I don't think game addiction necessarily needs a distinct category in the DSM, there is a difference between the hobbies you mention and potentially addictive activities. Namely, the latter involve persistant and compelling reasons to engage in the activity. Aside from delayed gratification (which can be more satisfying than instant gratification anyway), there typically isn't a downside to waiting to see a movie or read a book. In a MMORPG, on the other hand, there are countless disincentives to allow the real world clock to tick without accumulating/play time. Granted, these aren't immediately obvious to the novice who may have no problem stopping play, but I've never met a smoker who was addicted after his first cigarette either. From the low levels, the disincentive is to prevent peers from out-leveling you (or perhaps the satisfaction of outleveling them yourself). As you progress in the game, the disincentives turn to missed "rare" opportunities and potential ostracism for failing to help the group. In short, MMOGs are dynamic environments which people can and do miss out on by failing to play. In contrast, books, movies, model-building, and so on are static and exhibit little to no disincentive to ignore them.
Note also both the similarity between, and integration of, gambling and MMOGs. Each exhibit similar characteristics: They are ostensibly social activities. They never end; there is always another potential goal*. They offer steady but random rewards and punishments. There also appears to be a large overlap of gamblers and gamers: From "guess the number," to full-blown casinos in Second Life, gambling is ever popular among the gaming population.
I'm not making a value judgement on any of these activities -- I enjoy gambling, and I've enjoyed years of MMOG playing -- but to say that they are no different from avid reading or moviegoing is disingenuous. If they were not fundamentally different, they wouldn't be so seductive, and it's not difficult to see how people can be drawn in to MMOGs to the detriment of all else.
* The fatal flaw in many MMOGs is that they do, in fact, run out of goals if a player is dedicated enough, which is why high-level guilds tend to have a high turnover of players who become disillusioned once they actually "have it all."
Initially, yes -- if it contributes more to society in other ways, such as cleaner air, lower noise, etc. If and when alternative energy sources start to become popular, then we can worry about where to get the money for the roads. Until then, there's no reason to hamper ingenuity.
At any rate (no pun intended) the tax model clearly needs to be revisited.
I never said it wasn't an investment, I said it had a negative return, and more prestigious vehicles (or higher levels) require a larger investment (barrier to entry). Nonetheless, they all decline in value. The GP is just unhappy that his "investment" declined in value.
Additionally, "advanced game content" is just new content, which is what the GP got. He just happened to like the old (or old potential) better than the new.
And finally, a sample size of one does not a trend make. Being bitter (about SWG, for example) is like drinking poison and hoping someone else dies. Get over it.
This may be a new concept for you, but time == money.
Moreover -- and this is the tricky part, so try to keep up -- an investment is something undertaken with the expectation of a return. There is no "return" at the end of an MMORPG, there is only the immediate pleasure of playing it. And no, making friends does not count, because the GP was complaining about the game mechanics, none of which prevented him from continuing a relationship with anyone.
Fun trivia: $60BN is enough to give *every* child and adult in the US $200; about half a week's wages for people working minimum wage (before the roughly 1/3rd that goes to taxes, of course.)
Fun trivia: People working minimum wage typically have a negative tax burden. Besides, name one recurring cost below $200/yr. $4/wk. It's pocket change, even for people working minimum wage.
It's enough to employ (are you sitting down?) one point two MILLION people in $50k/year jobs.
Actually, it's enough to employ about half that when you factor in overhead. Employees cost more than the sum of their salary to employ. Roughly twice as much, as it turns out. So 600k people. But raw numbers are sort of meaningless.. that's.002% of the population. And then you've got to factor in all the expensive spy equipment, secure facilities, background investigations (yeah, it turns out you need a clearance to work in intelligence), training, R&D, etc, and the budget really isn't that unexpected.
Here's a more telling figure. (Are you sitting down?) $60bn was 0.004% (or 1 / 22,033th for you fraction lovers) of the GDP in 2006. Staggering, I know.
the resulting offspring of a couple generations would make it.
Aside from the lifetimes of "Are we there yet?", you know the offspring would just take the fact that they're on an interstellar voyage for granted, and they wouldn't even appreciate the arrival. "This is the planet my great grandfather wanted to visit," they'd say. "Let's check out Earth."
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
including completely invalidating your character achievements even deleting whole aspects of the game!
You mean games end? Nonsense. I still have my character from Legends of Kesmai and my pilot stats from Air Warrior III! Oh wait. I don't. So Sony decided to overhaul the game. They took a risk and lost. Maybe you enjoy the same generic, repetitive RPG with a different wrapper, but I applaud any effort to contribute new ideas to the genre. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't, but it's far, far better than stagnation. Maybe they should have tried SWG-II rather than revamping the original, but hindsight is 20/20.
SOE is not trustworthy enough to invest the time that a MMO requires into.
Characters are investments the way cars are investments -- they're not. They have barriers to entry which scale geometrically to meet arbitrary standards, but as a rule, their values always decrease. At least there's a chance that a car could increase in value through scarcity, but usually only if you deprive yourself the pleasure of driving it. I have yet to hear of anyone storing a level 1 character and selling it decades later for a small fortune.
I love "Enlarge Photo" buttons that open up the photo in the exact same dimensions and resolution as the one in the article. Anyone find a higher quality image?
Also I was under the impression that water is blue on Earth because it reflects our blue atmosphere. Why would water on Mars be blue? Or is that a false-color image?
A real professional would use whatever tool is available to get the job done.
No, a real professional would use the right tool for the job. If I saw my contractor hammering nails with a screwdriver, I'd be looking for a new contractor.
I love "Enlarge Photo" buttons that open up the photo in the exact same dimensions and resolution as the one in the article. Anyone find a higher quality image?
Also I was under the impression that water is blue on Earth because it reflects our blue atmosphere. Why would water on Mars be blue? Or is that a false-color image?
I suspect Manchester Cathedrel is actually owned by the church, and therefore private.
Manchester Cathedral is part of the Church of England, which is (according to Wikipedia) actually subject to and part of the state. I believe that means it's public property.
At this point they start to filter and/or interact with the traffic, they are no longer a bipartisan
And it's about fscking time! I'm so sick of these two-party ISPs with more loyalty to the party than the public interface. There's absolutely no room for modulation when a potential ISP has to conform to one of two platforms. That's why I use an independant ISP whenever possible. I'd love to see more joint efforts between DSL and Cable to provide voters with salutations that actually work.
To my fellow broadsword users, I say God luck, and good speed!
While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to 'achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,'
They've obviously never heard of LexisNexis or Accurint. Unless they consider information on what web page you visited to be more infringing than, say, your full financial history, residence, court records, marriage licenses, property deeds, loans, phone numbers (including unlisted), etc., etc. Of course, that's all "public information."
Slashdot Mirror
"We must" is implicitly prefaced by "We can and," therefore they are saying the opposite, and cannot both be true. Only if you believe that Hawking would bother to argue in favor of the impossible could they both be true.
On a side note, much like innate homosexuality, there is little to be gained from denying the existance of gaming addiction, a fact which calls into question the motivation of those who try to deny its existance. Many believe they are trying to deny a part of themselves. If there is no such thing as innate homosexuality, then they cannot be gay. Likewise, if there is no such thing as gaming addiction, then they cannot be addicted. Personally, I think the root cause is less insidious -- I tend to believe some people simply have a hard time understanding that other people experience life differently than they do, and they insist that their experience is the "correct" one. Both explanations are plausible.
Next thing you know someone'll look at a bookworm and claim books are addicting because they were unhappy at being able to read their favorite book, or a moviegoer unhappy at being barred from seeing a movie
/play time. Granted, these aren't immediately obvious to the novice who may have no problem stopping play, but I've never met a smoker who was addicted after his first cigarette either. From the low levels, the disincentive is to prevent peers from out-leveling you (or perhaps the satisfaction of outleveling them yourself). As you progress in the game, the disincentives turn to missed "rare" opportunities and potential ostracism for failing to help the group. In short, MMOGs are dynamic environments which people can and do miss out on by failing to play. In contrast, books, movies, model-building, and so on are static and exhibit little to no disincentive to ignore them.
While I don't think game addiction necessarily needs a distinct category in the DSM, there is a difference between the hobbies you mention and potentially addictive activities. Namely, the latter involve persistant and compelling reasons to engage in the activity. Aside from delayed gratification (which can be more satisfying than instant gratification anyway), there typically isn't a downside to waiting to see a movie or read a book. In a MMORPG, on the other hand, there are countless disincentives to allow the real world clock to tick without accumulating
Note also both the similarity between, and integration of, gambling and MMOGs. Each exhibit similar characteristics: They are ostensibly social activities. They never end; there is always another potential goal*. They offer steady but random rewards and punishments. There also appears to be a large overlap of gamblers and gamers: From "guess the number," to full-blown casinos in Second Life, gambling is ever popular among the gaming population.
I'm not making a value judgement on any of these activities -- I enjoy gambling, and I've enjoyed years of MMOG playing -- but to say that they are no different from avid reading or moviegoing is disingenuous. If they were not fundamentally different, they wouldn't be so seductive, and it's not difficult to see how people can be drawn in to MMOGs to the detriment of all else.
* The fatal flaw in many MMOGs is that they do, in fact, run out of goals if a player is dedicated enough, which is why high-level guilds tend to have a high turnover of players who become disillusioned once they actually "have it all."
Initially, yes -- if it contributes more to society in other ways, such as cleaner air, lower noise, etc. If and when alternative energy sources start to become popular, then we can worry about where to get the money for the roads. Until then, there's no reason to hamper ingenuity.
At any rate (no pun intended) the tax model clearly needs to be revisited.
I never said it wasn't an investment, I said it had a negative return, and more prestigious vehicles (or higher levels) require a larger investment (barrier to entry). Nonetheless, they all decline in value. The GP is just unhappy that his "investment" declined in value.
Additionally, "advanced game content" is just new content, which is what the GP got. He just happened to like the old (or old potential) better than the new.
And finally, a sample size of one does not a trend make. Being bitter (about SWG, for example) is like drinking poison and hoping someone else dies. Get over it.
This may be a new concept for you, but time == money.
Moreover -- and this is the tricky part, so try to keep up -- an investment is something undertaken with the expectation of a return. There is no "return" at the end of an MMORPG, there is only the immediate pleasure of playing it. And no, making friends does not count, because the GP was complaining about the game mechanics, none of which prevented him from continuing a relationship with anyone.
Fun trivia: $60BN is enough to give *every* child and adult in the US $200; about half a week's wages for people working minimum wage (before the roughly 1/3rd that goes to taxes, of course.)
.002% of the population. And then you've got to factor in all the expensive spy equipment, secure facilities, background investigations (yeah, it turns out you need a clearance to work in intelligence), training, R&D, etc, and the budget really isn't that unexpected.
Fun trivia: People working minimum wage typically have a negative tax burden. Besides, name one recurring cost below $200/yr. $4/wk. It's pocket change, even for people working minimum wage.
It's enough to employ (are you sitting down?) one point two MILLION people in $50k/year jobs.
Actually, it's enough to employ about half that when you factor in overhead. Employees cost more than the sum of their salary to employ. Roughly twice as much, as it turns out. So 600k people. But raw numbers are sort of meaningless.. that's
Here's a more telling figure. (Are you sitting down?) $60bn was 0.004% (or 1 / 22,033th for you fraction lovers) of the GDP in 2006. Staggering, I know.
the resulting offspring of a couple generations would make it.
Aside from the lifetimes of "Are we there yet?", you know the offspring would just take the fact that they're on an interstellar voyage for granted, and they wouldn't even appreciate the arrival. "This is the planet my great grandfather wanted to visit," they'd say. "Let's check out Earth."
I just hope there is no one already living on our soon to be discovered new colony planet so we can move in quicker.
Barring that, hopefully we can develop some kickass motherships and tripod walkers.
SOE has and WILL make drastic gameplay changes
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
including completely invalidating your character achievements even deleting whole aspects of the game!
You mean games end? Nonsense. I still have my character from Legends of Kesmai and my pilot stats from Air Warrior III! Oh wait. I don't. So Sony decided to overhaul the game. They took a risk and lost. Maybe you enjoy the same generic, repetitive RPG with a different wrapper, but I applaud any effort to contribute new ideas to the genre. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't, but it's far, far better than stagnation. Maybe they should have tried SWG-II rather than revamping the original, but hindsight is 20/20.
SOE is not trustworthy enough to invest the time that a MMO requires into.
Characters are investments the way cars are investments -- they're not. They have barriers to entry which scale geometrically to meet arbitrary standards, but as a rule, their values always decrease. At least there's a chance that a car could increase in value through scarcity, but usually only if you deprive yourself the pleasure of driving it. I have yet to hear of anyone storing a level 1 character and selling it decades later for a small fortune.
Nonsense. It's well known that there are no losers in a casino, and that casinos operate on a negative profit margin.
I love "Enlarge Photo" buttons that open up the photo in the exact same dimensions and resolution as the one in the article. Anyone find a higher quality image?
Also I was under the impression that water is blue on Earth because it reflects our blue atmosphere. Why would water on Mars be blue? Or is that a false-color image?
I believe I inadvertantly posted to the wrong discussion.
There's a reason funny doesn't get the karma bonus, it's to encourage GOOD DIALOG, not one-liners.
Ba-dum-dum.
Rabies is virtually nonexistant in Australia/Oceania.
Not that they need it. Koalas are not at all cuddly and have very sharp claws.
Better yet, send them a coin purse and tell them to suck it.
The first rule of web security research is that you do not discuss web security research.
A real professional would use whatever tool is available to get the job done.
No, a real professional would use the right tool for the job. If I saw my contractor hammering nails with a screwdriver, I'd be looking for a new contractor.
That was just a marketing ploy.
Fine. SCUB apparatus.
I love "Enlarge Photo" buttons that open up the photo in the exact same dimensions and resolution as the one in the article. Anyone find a higher quality image?
Also I was under the impression that water is blue on Earth because it reflects our blue atmosphere. Why would water on Mars be blue? Or is that a false-color image?
He's right, of course. We'll have the civility to kill you before we eat you.
I suspect Manchester Cathedrel is actually owned by the church, and therefore private.
Manchester Cathedral is part of the Church of England, which is (according to Wikipedia) actually subject to and part of the state. I believe that means it's public property.
At this point they start to filter and/or interact with the traffic, they are no longer a bipartisan
And it's about fscking time! I'm so sick of these two-party ISPs with more loyalty to the party than the public interface. There's absolutely no room for modulation when a potential ISP has to conform to one of two platforms. That's why I use an independant ISP whenever possible. I'd love to see more joint efforts between DSL and Cable to provide voters with salutations that actually work.
To my fellow broadsword users, I say God luck, and good speed!
While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to 'achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,'
They've obviously never heard of LexisNexis or Accurint. Unless they consider information on what web page you visited to be more infringing than, say, your full financial history, residence, court records, marriage licenses, property deeds, loans, phone numbers (including unlisted), etc., etc. Of course, that's all "public information."