I've frequented several Christian channels and I was amused to see one channel that had an autoboot for anybody who tried to spam the channel with that particular verse. You'd get booted and it'd say, "Please go ride the donkey elsewhere."
I don't think that this is as obvious as you think. Conventional wisdom holds that in online environments, people behave much more selfishly and with less regard for the wellbeing of others than they would in real life. It wouldn't have surprised me, for example, if this study had revealed that online gaming encourages only the bare-minimum of cooperation with players constantly wary of the motives of the other players. In fact, I am always pleasantly surprised when I run into other players who treat cooperation and team building as real goals of the experience, rather than as necessary evils.
Companies also have a duty to behave ethically. Under the circumstances, however, I believe that ethics diverged from morality. It is ethnical to obey the law. In this case, Yahoo was obeying Chinese law since that was the jurisdiction in which this event took place. Unfortunately, many will agree that the Chinese law in question is immoral. The ethical course of action led to immoral behaviour. Companies are, as you have suggested, amoral entities. Although codes of business ethics sometimes prompt moral behaviour, one of the primary rules of every business ethic that I've ever seen is to obey the law. One can only hope that lawmakers behave morally when writing the laws.
I am with you, Bel. I consider myself a proponent of intelligent design, simply because I subscribe neither to pure creationism nor to a pure theory of random development. As far as physical mechanisms go, I subscribe fully to scientific theory. In my opinion, evolution, the big bang, condensation of matter, etc. are not gross and unpalatable ideas, as some creationists I know have stated. I find it fascinating and beautiful to suppose that God created the cosmos complete with laws of nature, physical constants, and initial conditions that allowed for the universe to develop under its own mechanisms with minimal intervention from God. (If you find it odd that I mention beauty, it is because I often find that when religious individuals are involved, the argument for or against a proposed mechanism often comes down to whether the individual finds the mechanism aesthetically worthy of God.) For myself, I find no necessary conflict between the mechanisms described by science and the actions of God described by the Bible.
I don't think your assessment is entirely true. I think that the difficulty getting women into gaming is similar or identical to the difficulty getting women into the sciences. They're both on the rise, fortunately, but there is a social stigma present that is hindering progress. Very simply, gaming is perceived as a male pursuit. Although gaming companies often cater to this perception, women themselves often decide not to explore gaming simply because they've been taught to direct their energy elsewhere.
I have noticed this especially with regards to games that require analysis and strategy (although my examples come from the field of board games, the same trends apply to video games.) Plenty of women I know play games like Apples to Apples, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash. They're called "party games" for a reason. Their style of play lends itself to parties -- social events. Thus, they emphasize traits that women are encouraged to posess. Women are not encouraged to play analytical games, such as Risk or chess. Those are war games and "properly" belong to the domain of men. In short, women are encouraged to play games that emphasize cooperation while men are encouraged to play games that emphasize competition. Since most one-player video game modes are adversarial in nature, they will fall into a regime that women have not been encouraged to explore.
In reality, the problem is twofold. Although game manufacturers don't often emphasize traits of gameplay that hold traditional appeal to women, I think that society also establishes a standard for women that teaches them not to enjoy the sorts of games that are widely popular. This is not a new problem. Boys have always been discouraged from playing with dolls. Girls have always been discouraged from playing with toy guns. The real solution lies somewhere in the middle. Don't just make games that cater to traditional female tastes and don't just try to tell women that games really aren't for them. Instead, try to raise girls (and boys!) that are capable of appreciating a broader selection of themes and gameplay styles.
Personal experience suggests that posture also has something to do with it. I type with my keyboard positioned almost at lap-level and tilted forward. (The risers on keyboards tend to tilt them backward.) This keeps me from "bulking up" the muscles in my wrists in an upward-bent position. Although I am somewhat predisposed for carpal tunnel syndrom because of the geometry of my wrists, typing in a way that does not train the muscles in my wrists to press against the nerve has done a world of good in preventing my hands and fingers from getting stiff, numb, and cold.
Which is it? Do children have no taste or do they only like crap (poor taste?) I'd argue you were correct in stating that children have no taste. They'll latch on to anything billed as entertainment. I agree, looking back at my own childhood, I watched a lot of terrible programs. On the other hand, having watched episodes of Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles as an adult, I still find them enjoyable and worthwhile.
Unrelated to CSI's tackling of the subject, I had an experience with this sort of nonsense not too long ago. I was taking a hunting safety education course in Ohio and the wildlife officer who was lecturing on the state went on a rant about video games. He was trying to say that hunters, gun owners, etc. aren't to blame for school shootings, but that video games are. It was all I could do to sit there with my mouth shut and not stand up and rake him across the coals. (If you're wondering why I didn't, I'd already spent about ten hours sitting through the course. I didn't want to get kicked out and have to retake it for going off on one of the instructors.)
Per Wikipedia, "It is important to note that trademark rights generally arise out of the use and/or registration (see below) of a mark in connection only with a specific type or range of products or services."
So no, if he had been selling a product designed to defend glass-in-wall windows, then Microsoft wouldn't have had a very strong case. Their trademark pertains to software. Windows Defender, however, is a piece of software and is clearly referencing Microsoft's trademarked product for its own profit. That seems to me to be adequate grounds for a charge of trademark infringement.
Furthermore, regarding your other comment, because "Coke" is a trademark and not part of the standard lexicon of the language, then other beverages trying to get away with using "Coke" in their name may be infringing upon Coca Cola's trademark. Coca Cola doesn't need to hold "Coke One" specifically to get it because they already hold the nonstandard "Coke." Contrast this to "Frosted Flakes," both words of which belong in the standard lexicon. They can prevent somebody else from using those specific words to describe a different product, but even "Sugar Frosted Flakes" gets around this objection, since the trademark is, by and large, descriptive of the product.
Nope. I sympathized with the rodents as well. I used to sleep during my lunch break all the time. In addition to any possible repetitive strain injuries I may have had, it didn't help that I suffered from chronic insomnia because I drank too much coffee. I've been using ergonomic posture at work for ages, so I think the caffeine was the problem in my case. Nonetheless, this is interesting food for thought. I hadn't ever really thought about why I used to feel it was necessary to nap at work. Not that I don't still do it from time to time, but at least now, I can identify specific causes for being tired.
Crazy. My girlfriend said she read it and actually liked it. I've seen it floating around, but I've never read it, myself. Of course, I think she enjoyed it because it has mice in it.
I happen to be a rational, scientific Christian. I also find it disagreeable that more conservative Christians try to force their perspectives to the exclusion of thinking about other possibilities. Although theology and philosophy aren't strictly scientific, they can benefit from scrutiny, discussion, and debate. I can't speak for others like me, but the reason why I am not more vocal than I am is because I largely consider the matters under debate to be ultimately immaterial. From a scientific point of view, I am a staunch supporter of the mechanism of the theory of evolution (I lean a bit toward the ID camp when it comes to explaining the causality of evolution.) From a theological point of view, I don't care. In that regard, I differ distinctly from more conservative Christians, who think it's important that one deny evolution. Theologically speaking, I simply think there are more important messages in the Bible.
Unfortunately, although good managers need to understand the work the engineers are doing, businesses often don't employ anything better than mediocre managers. I was discussing this matter recently with some people I know who have more work experience than I have and when I mentioned that management "needs to understand the work being done in order to manage effectively," they just laughed at me and told me that it's seldom actually done that way. It isn't just that students of business management are taking that philosophy, but it appears that businesses tend to encourage it.
The carrot has been trimmed down and the stick is gone. I couldn't agree more. And in my opinion, this idea ties in to something that Kern wrote. For me, the carrot was the possibility of employment in chemical engineering, a field that I love. Even when I burned out and took a year off after four years of suffering, I refused to give in and finish off my degree at a "lesser" school. I came back for that fifth year and got my degree. Unfortunately, my grades are less than stellar -- something that Kern noted. I keep trying to remind myself that a 2.58 from Case Western isn't bad, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Now, I won't blame my low GPA entirely on the system. 1/3 of the fault lies entirely with my laziness and poor study habits. Nonetheless, the demands of the curriculum can't be understated. I'm not just saying that it was hard. I'm saying that for two years, my immune system was compromised because I wasn't sleeping enough. If the curriculum can't be moderated (and it shouldn't be!) then engineering programs have to stop pretending that they're designed to be completed in four years. As it is, the suffering I underwent partially caused my poor performance in the program. Furthermore, from where I stand right now (looking for an engineering job), that carrot I was pursuing was an illusion. All of the employers out there are loathe to take a risk on a mere 2.58 GPA. For me, that means one of three things: Either I'm really not qualified to be an engineer; or I could have gotten that 2.8 at a lesser engineering school and been somewhat happier right now; or my university failed to recognize how their grading procedure would hurt a graduate's job search (that is to say, even if my 2.58 means more than somebody else's 3.0, one can hardly expect a prospective employer to recognize that.)
I purchased the reissue and I am very satisfied with my purchase. It's a smaller set of boards and it doesn't include many of the more complicated board elements (radioactive goo, etc.) but I think that serves to streamline the game. The rules are better defined than I remember them being in the original (although, being an Avalon Hill game, you still have to interpret sometimes.) I think that there's a good distribution of cards and a very nice selection of boards. The option cards a a trifle dry, but some of the more "exciting" options were terribly hard to understand. I give the game high marks -- probably 8.5/10 overall.
I wanted to note one counterargument that I have frequently seen to your argument in favour of science not being a religion. It may seem ridiculous, but one must always also question one's postulates. One postulate of science, in general, is that observation is a reliable mechanism for extracting information from reality. It must be a postulate, of course, because if it is false, then one could not observe its falsehood. Although, being grounded in the tangible, this postulate seems more trustworthy than one of the postulates of faith -- that revelation is a reliable mechanism for extracting information from reality -- it is not necessarily so. At this point, I must confess that I am both a Christian and a scientist (but not a Christian Scientist!) so I cautiously acknowledge that I have faith in the means of science (not to be confused with having faith in the laws or theories themselves.) If that faith is well-placed, then I acknowledge the conclusions drawn by scientific means to be facts or reliable theories.
If the commune is operated by direct democracy, the community can act to eject persons taking advantage of the labor of others. Furthermore, although the assumptions of capitalism economics and game theory -- that people are greedy and lazy -- are reasonably accurate, they are not universal. There are people who aren't greedy and lazy; some people are industrious and generous. A group of such people would not require an emotional bond with one another to function as a small, communistic society. If the group is sufficiently productive that the sharing of resources provides for every member in excess, then the commune will prosper and its members will be happier for the close association with other hard-working people. (I can speak from experience in saying that it's very frustrating to be an industrious employee among many lazy employees.)
This is simply untrue. Communistic government can work, for a time, under a system of direct democracy. If every member of a locale agrees that the community should function under communistic principles, then communism will work just fine. No authoritarianism involved. The "specific time" involved, by the way, is the period during which the members of the community willingly participate. New persons entering the community (children, for example) must be given the choice of whether or not to participate. Likewise, established members must be free to depart. None of these ideas is inconsistent with communism.
I don't have a strong chemistry background, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night...
In truth, I'm actually a chemical engineer, but without access to relevant data, I certainly can't draw any meaningful conclusions. Since I'm a fairly inexperienced chemical engineer and those I consider my superiors are reaching conflicting conclusions on these matters, I certainly don't feel qualified to make any statments, even with my strong background in chemistry. But hey, this is the internet. Everybody's opinion is right, except when it disagrees with more than 50% of those present.
Worse than a movie that consists of nothing but dialogue ripped from the novel is a movie that takes a dialogue exchange that was funny, replicates the scene in which it appeared, then repeats the substance of the exchange without preserving the essence. In my opinion, it would be better not to focus at all on Arthur's difficulty in finding the plans than to focus on them and remove the dialogue exchange that made the scene so funny.
In my experience, this phenomenon is not just limited to the world of video gaming. I like real-life games far more than I like Counterstrike or Starcraft (which, I assure you, is a lot.) My favourites tend to be games that make both players think a lot and set them up as adversaries. This includes complex games like Risk or Shogun, but also abstract games, such as Quarto or Chess. I have very rarely encountered girls who enjoyed these games, however. I have, however, encountered many girls who find great enjoyment in more social games, particularly party games -- Pictionary, Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, Apples to Apples. In my opinion, these games require less intense thought, which translates to a more casual experience, and take less time, which yields a wider variety of experiences. These observations are analogous to the findings with video games, in which women are typically found to prefer games that emphasize socialization, relationships, and cooperation.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if your guess isn't too far from the mark. I dated a fundamentalist girl once and when she took me home to meet her parents, a similar issue generated a bit of conflict between her parents and me. They were grilling me on my tolerance of public schools (they had homeschooled their three children) and insisted that my willingness to expose my [future] children to attitudes or beliefs which with I didn't necessarily agree was like throwing my children to a pack of wolves. It wasn't sufficient to be a strong influence on my children's development -- it was, in their eyes, necessary that I be the absolute arbiter of every channel of information they receive.
This is a double-edged sword, though. Although I have heard complaints about Lexmark, I have never had trouble with one of their machines and I think the quality of the printing is much higher than the quality of printing one gets from a HP printer. Although they engage in questionable business practices, they make a fine printer.
It's a little bit cumbersome, but you can also do what I do -- I print my colour pages (maybe a tenth of my printing) on my home inkjet printer and I take all of my black and white printing to the school computer lab where I get free black and white, laser printouts. Likewise, it wouldn't be hard to get a black and white laser printer for one's home and to only drag out the colour inkjet printer when you have a colour page that needs to be printed.
Slashdot Mirror
This, sir, is Slashdot. Geekery shall never be described as unnecessary!
I've frequented several Christian channels and I was amused to see one channel that had an autoboot for anybody who tried to spam the channel with that particular verse. You'd get booted and it'd say, "Please go ride the donkey elsewhere."
I don't think that this is as obvious as you think. Conventional wisdom holds that in online environments, people behave much more selfishly and with less regard for the wellbeing of others than they would in real life. It wouldn't have surprised me, for example, if this study had revealed that online gaming encourages only the bare-minimum of cooperation with players constantly wary of the motives of the other players. In fact, I am always pleasantly surprised when I run into other players who treat cooperation and team building as real goals of the experience, rather than as necessary evils.
Companies also have a duty to behave ethically. Under the circumstances, however, I believe that ethics diverged from morality. It is ethnical to obey the law. In this case, Yahoo was obeying Chinese law since that was the jurisdiction in which this event took place. Unfortunately, many will agree that the Chinese law in question is immoral. The ethical course of action led to immoral behaviour. Companies are, as you have suggested, amoral entities. Although codes of business ethics sometimes prompt moral behaviour, one of the primary rules of every business ethic that I've ever seen is to obey the law. One can only hope that lawmakers behave morally when writing the laws.
I am with you, Bel. I consider myself a proponent of intelligent design, simply because I subscribe neither to pure creationism nor to a pure theory of random development. As far as physical mechanisms go, I subscribe fully to scientific theory. In my opinion, evolution, the big bang, condensation of matter, etc. are not gross and unpalatable ideas, as some creationists I know have stated. I find it fascinating and beautiful to suppose that God created the cosmos complete with laws of nature, physical constants, and initial conditions that allowed for the universe to develop under its own mechanisms with minimal intervention from God. (If you find it odd that I mention beauty, it is because I often find that when religious individuals are involved, the argument for or against a proposed mechanism often comes down to whether the individual finds the mechanism aesthetically worthy of God.) For myself, I find no necessary conflict between the mechanisms described by science and the actions of God described by the Bible.
I don't think your assessment is entirely true. I think that the difficulty getting women into gaming is similar or identical to the difficulty getting women into the sciences. They're both on the rise, fortunately, but there is a social stigma present that is hindering progress. Very simply, gaming is perceived as a male pursuit. Although gaming companies often cater to this perception, women themselves often decide not to explore gaming simply because they've been taught to direct their energy elsewhere.
I have noticed this especially with regards to games that require analysis and strategy (although my examples come from the field of board games, the same trends apply to video games.) Plenty of women I know play games like Apples to Apples, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash. They're called "party games" for a reason. Their style of play lends itself to parties -- social events. Thus, they emphasize traits that women are encouraged to posess. Women are not encouraged to play analytical games, such as Risk or chess. Those are war games and "properly" belong to the domain of men. In short, women are encouraged to play games that emphasize cooperation while men are encouraged to play games that emphasize competition. Since most one-player video game modes are adversarial in nature, they will fall into a regime that women have not been encouraged to explore.
In reality, the problem is twofold. Although game manufacturers don't often emphasize traits of gameplay that hold traditional appeal to women, I think that society also establishes a standard for women that teaches them not to enjoy the sorts of games that are widely popular. This is not a new problem. Boys have always been discouraged from playing with dolls. Girls have always been discouraged from playing with toy guns. The real solution lies somewhere in the middle. Don't just make games that cater to traditional female tastes and don't just try to tell women that games really aren't for them. Instead, try to raise girls (and boys!) that are capable of appreciating a broader selection of themes and gameplay styles.
Personal experience suggests that posture also has something to do with it. I type with my keyboard positioned almost at lap-level and tilted forward. (The risers on keyboards tend to tilt them backward.) This keeps me from "bulking up" the muscles in my wrists in an upward-bent position. Although I am somewhat predisposed for carpal tunnel syndrom because of the geometry of my wrists, typing in a way that does not train the muscles in my wrists to press against the nerve has done a world of good in preventing my hands and fingers from getting stiff, numb, and cold.
Which is it? Do children have no taste or do they only like crap (poor taste?) I'd argue you were correct in stating that children have no taste. They'll latch on to anything billed as entertainment. I agree, looking back at my own childhood, I watched a lot of terrible programs. On the other hand, having watched episodes of Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles as an adult, I still find them enjoyable and worthwhile.
Unrelated to CSI's tackling of the subject, I had an experience with this sort of nonsense not too long ago. I was taking a hunting safety education course in Ohio and the wildlife officer who was lecturing on the state went on a rant about video games. He was trying to say that hunters, gun owners, etc. aren't to blame for school shootings, but that video games are. It was all I could do to sit there with my mouth shut and not stand up and rake him across the coals. (If you're wondering why I didn't, I'd already spent about ten hours sitting through the course. I didn't want to get kicked out and have to retake it for going off on one of the instructors.)
Per Wikipedia, "It is important to note that trademark rights generally arise out of the use and/or registration (see below) of a mark in connection only with a specific type or range of products or services."
So no, if he had been selling a product designed to defend glass-in-wall windows, then Microsoft wouldn't have had a very strong case. Their trademark pertains to software. Windows Defender, however, is a piece of software and is clearly referencing Microsoft's trademarked product for its own profit. That seems to me to be adequate grounds for a charge of trademark infringement.
Furthermore, regarding your other comment, because "Coke" is a trademark and not part of the standard lexicon of the language, then other beverages trying to get away with using "Coke" in their name may be infringing upon Coca Cola's trademark. Coca Cola doesn't need to hold "Coke One" specifically to get it because they already hold the nonstandard "Coke." Contrast this to "Frosted Flakes," both words of which belong in the standard lexicon. They can prevent somebody else from using those specific words to describe a different product, but even "Sugar Frosted Flakes" gets around this objection, since the trademark is, by and large, descriptive of the product.
Nope. I sympathized with the rodents as well. I used to sleep during my lunch break all the time. In addition to any possible repetitive strain injuries I may have had, it didn't help that I suffered from chronic insomnia because I drank too much coffee. I've been using ergonomic posture at work for ages, so I think the caffeine was the problem in my case. Nonetheless, this is interesting food for thought. I hadn't ever really thought about why I used to feel it was necessary to nap at work. Not that I don't still do it from time to time, but at least now, I can identify specific causes for being tired.
Crazy. My girlfriend said she read it and actually liked it. I've seen it floating around, but I've never read it, myself. Of course, I think she enjoyed it because it has mice in it.
I happen to be a rational, scientific Christian. I also find it disagreeable that more conservative Christians try to force their perspectives to the exclusion of thinking about other possibilities. Although theology and philosophy aren't strictly scientific, they can benefit from scrutiny, discussion, and debate. I can't speak for others like me, but the reason why I am not more vocal than I am is because I largely consider the matters under debate to be ultimately immaterial. From a scientific point of view, I am a staunch supporter of the mechanism of the theory of evolution (I lean a bit toward the ID camp when it comes to explaining the causality of evolution.) From a theological point of view, I don't care. In that regard, I differ distinctly from more conservative Christians, who think it's important that one deny evolution. Theologically speaking, I simply think there are more important messages in the Bible.
Unfortunately, although good managers need to understand the work the engineers are doing, businesses often don't employ anything better than mediocre managers. I was discussing this matter recently with some people I know who have more work experience than I have and when I mentioned that management "needs to understand the work being done in order to manage effectively," they just laughed at me and told me that it's seldom actually done that way. It isn't just that students of business management are taking that philosophy, but it appears that businesses tend to encourage it.
The carrot has been trimmed down and the stick is gone. I couldn't agree more. And in my opinion, this idea ties in to something that Kern wrote. For me, the carrot was the possibility of employment in chemical engineering, a field that I love. Even when I burned out and took a year off after four years of suffering, I refused to give in and finish off my degree at a "lesser" school. I came back for that fifth year and got my degree. Unfortunately, my grades are less than stellar -- something that Kern noted. I keep trying to remind myself that a 2.58 from Case Western isn't bad, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Now, I won't blame my low GPA entirely on the system. 1/3 of the fault lies entirely with my laziness and poor study habits. Nonetheless, the demands of the curriculum can't be understated. I'm not just saying that it was hard. I'm saying that for two years, my immune system was compromised because I wasn't sleeping enough. If the curriculum can't be moderated (and it shouldn't be!) then engineering programs have to stop pretending that they're designed to be completed in four years. As it is, the suffering I underwent partially caused my poor performance in the program. Furthermore, from where I stand right now (looking for an engineering job), that carrot I was pursuing was an illusion. All of the employers out there are loathe to take a risk on a mere 2.58 GPA. For me, that means one of three things: Either I'm really not qualified to be an engineer; or I could have gotten that 2.8 at a lesser engineering school and been somewhat happier right now; or my university failed to recognize how their grading procedure would hurt a graduate's job search (that is to say, even if my 2.58 means more than somebody else's 3.0, one can hardly expect a prospective employer to recognize that.)
I purchased the reissue and I am very satisfied with my purchase. It's a smaller set of boards and it doesn't include many of the more complicated board elements (radioactive goo, etc.) but I think that serves to streamline the game. The rules are better defined than I remember them being in the original (although, being an Avalon Hill game, you still have to interpret sometimes.) I think that there's a good distribution of cards and a very nice selection of boards. The option cards a a trifle dry, but some of the more "exciting" options were terribly hard to understand. I give the game high marks -- probably 8.5/10 overall.
I wanted to note one counterargument that I have frequently seen to your argument in favour of science not being a religion. It may seem ridiculous, but one must always also question one's postulates. One postulate of science, in general, is that observation is a reliable mechanism for extracting information from reality. It must be a postulate, of course, because if it is false, then one could not observe its falsehood. Although, being grounded in the tangible, this postulate seems more trustworthy than one of the postulates of faith -- that revelation is a reliable mechanism for extracting information from reality -- it is not necessarily so. At this point, I must confess that I am both a Christian and a scientist (but not a Christian Scientist!) so I cautiously acknowledge that I have faith in the means of science (not to be confused with having faith in the laws or theories themselves.) If that faith is well-placed, then I acknowledge the conclusions drawn by scientific means to be facts or reliable theories.
If the commune is operated by direct democracy, the community can act to eject persons taking advantage of the labor of others. Furthermore, although the assumptions of capitalism economics and game theory -- that people are greedy and lazy -- are reasonably accurate, they are not universal. There are people who aren't greedy and lazy; some people are industrious and generous. A group of such people would not require an emotional bond with one another to function as a small, communistic society. If the group is sufficiently productive that the sharing of resources provides for every member in excess, then the commune will prosper and its members will be happier for the close association with other hard-working people. (I can speak from experience in saying that it's very frustrating to be an industrious employee among many lazy employees.)
This is simply untrue. Communistic government can work, for a time, under a system of direct democracy. If every member of a locale agrees that the community should function under communistic principles, then communism will work just fine. No authoritarianism involved. The "specific time" involved, by the way, is the period during which the members of the community willingly participate. New persons entering the community (children, for example) must be given the choice of whether or not to participate. Likewise, established members must be free to depart. None of these ideas is inconsistent with communism.
I don't have a strong chemistry background, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night...
In truth, I'm actually a chemical engineer, but without access to relevant data, I certainly can't draw any meaningful conclusions. Since I'm a fairly inexperienced chemical engineer and those I consider my superiors are reaching conflicting conclusions on these matters, I certainly don't feel qualified to make any statments, even with my strong background in chemistry. But hey, this is the internet. Everybody's opinion is right, except when it disagrees with more than 50% of those present.
Worse than a movie that consists of nothing but dialogue ripped from the novel is a movie that takes a dialogue exchange that was funny, replicates the scene in which it appeared, then repeats the substance of the exchange without preserving the essence. In my opinion, it would be better not to focus at all on Arthur's difficulty in finding the plans than to focus on them and remove the dialogue exchange that made the scene so funny.
In my experience, this phenomenon is not just limited to the world of video gaming. I like real-life games far more than I like Counterstrike or Starcraft (which, I assure you, is a lot.) My favourites tend to be games that make both players think a lot and set them up as adversaries. This includes complex games like Risk or Shogun, but also abstract games, such as Quarto or Chess. I have very rarely encountered girls who enjoyed these games, however. I have, however, encountered many girls who find great enjoyment in more social games, particularly party games -- Pictionary, Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, Apples to Apples. In my opinion, these games require less intense thought, which translates to a more casual experience, and take less time, which yields a wider variety of experiences. These observations are analogous to the findings with video games, in which women are typically found to prefer games that emphasize socialization, relationships, and cooperation.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if your guess isn't too far from the mark. I dated a fundamentalist girl once and when she took me home to meet her parents, a similar issue generated a bit of conflict between her parents and me. They were grilling me on my tolerance of public schools (they had homeschooled their three children) and insisted that my willingness to expose my [future] children to attitudes or beliefs which with I didn't necessarily agree was like throwing my children to a pack of wolves. It wasn't sufficient to be a strong influence on my children's development -- it was, in their eyes, necessary that I be the absolute arbiter of every channel of information they receive.
This is a double-edged sword, though. Although I have heard complaints about Lexmark, I have never had trouble with one of their machines and I think the quality of the printing is much higher than the quality of printing one gets from a HP printer. Although they engage in questionable business practices, they make a fine printer.
It's a little bit cumbersome, but you can also do what I do -- I print my colour pages (maybe a tenth of my printing) on my home inkjet printer and I take all of my black and white printing to the school computer lab where I get free black and white, laser printouts. Likewise, it wouldn't be hard to get a black and white laser printer for one's home and to only drag out the colour inkjet printer when you have a colour page that needs to be printed.