Oh dear, I use Ubuntu, so I'm not nearly nerdy enough! Whatever should I do?
For the record I've used many many distros over the course of many many years and Ubuntu was the first one that didn't require directing 50% of my free time to hand-editing config files and glaring angry at man pages. Actually I think its the first distro that recognized any wifi card I've ever used, and 90% of the sound chips/cards (though still not on an old iBook). To me that is more important than being "nerdy enough".
I don't equate doing more work that I have to with being a nerd, I associate it with being stupid.
what incentive do i as a music consumer have to actually spend my money if all the music can be pirated for free? pro-piracy supporters seem to all conveniently miss this point.
An interesting question that can be approached in several ways. From a pure pragmatic or cynical point of view you can say there is no incentive whatsoever. This ignores the fact that many people who like music there are elements of loyalty, and are willing to spend money on concerts, shirts, and even albums form their favorite band. I have absolutely nothing against piracy, and I still fork over a somewhat obscene amount of money on music, I see every band I like when they hit town (though no more "big" shows, the last couple I saw have been terrible), I buy their albums, I own shirts (in some cases multiple shirts), etc... Why? Because I feel like I should support things I love, even if there is a free alternative. This, I suppose, is why we haven't seen music die, even if most music is freely available online. Your big groups are still chugging along being ridiculously rich, your small independent groups are showing an unprecidented rise in availability and popularity. Piracy is here, and it hasn't really shown any real effect on the music industry.
You also conflate all forms of piracy as something equal. I have a problem with not paying for artists you like. But I have no issue with "pirating" music I already own, albeit in a different format. I have no problem with pirating music from dead musicians, or musicians who get no royalties for my purchase. Music over a certain age i have no issue with (i.e. pirating the Beatles or Lois Armstrong is fine, pirating your local, performing, indie artist isn't). If the artist, themselves, only get a pittance from my purchase, there is no point in buying it, so pirating is fine, as long as you make up for it by seeing them live, or buying something from them. I have no real problem with pirating any artist on an RIAA label, not that I do, since not a single artist I like works under the RIAA anymore.
Another thing you miss, is that the market is a moving target. While album sales was the primary driving force behind music, there is no natural law saying that this must always be true. Some of my favorite bands make their money on "value added" merchandise, like vinyl, artful packaging, extra features, etc...
I have no problem supporting artists, I have a BIG problem being forced to support giant faceless corporations. You don't have the right to profit, and I don't have the obligation to support them.
Well that's very brave of you because paleontologists aren't sure at all. Steel MELTS. At relatively low temperatures compared to what the earth has gone through at times. Steel RUSTS and forms iron oxide which flakes away and spread over vast areas because it's easily wind-carried.
So whatever killed your fictional civilization would have raised the temperature of the earth enough to melt all the steel? That would leave a rather impressive geologic record, AND sterilize most of the planet, which is something we'd notice. As for rust/wind, that only works if something is exposed, if there was some form of upheaval, it is doubtless that a lot of things would be buried, and thus mostly persevered. You still ignore things that have a higher probability of surviving.
The KT event alone would have had enough impact to turn every skyscraper we have no into nothing swirling bit's of the dustcloud that covers the earth for a few million years... when it all came down...
No. The KT event didn't suddenly destroy everything on earth, it destroyed things in a localized area, and its climate effects (probably) killed the rest, most of which were already weakened by causes pre-existing the KT event. We have fossils a plenty from immediately before, and immediately after the event, so it obviously didn't erase soft bones, so why would it erase all advanced construction materials?
To add to my previous comment to you about fossilization: the odds of a species leaving fossils can be seen as a combination of their population, and geographic spread. If this previous species was anything like humans, they maximized both, and thus have a higher probability of leaving individual fossilized remains than species with a limited population and spread. Over the same time period, obviously. The longer they exist the greater the odds of one of them sticking around it, as well. So your species was either existent for a limited time, had no population, or never spread outside of a localized area, or any combination of those three.
Another thing, while I'm in a ranty mood, you realize that there are vast swaths of land that haven't seen any volcanism for billions of years, right? The Canadian shield, for example.
Well, average life-expectancy of a species is 5-million years. Homo Sapience has already doubled that putting us at the extreme end of the scale that gives this average.
Huh? Homo Sapiens, as a species, are only around 500,000 years old, quite young as far as species go. Our particular lineage as primates (hominidae) is quite old (15 million years, or so), but family is not species.
The absence of evidence in this case can be just as easily explained by deep time as that there wasn't anything to leave it. But we do have absolute proof that technological societies CAN evolve on earth - because we're here. Thus Occam's razor suggests it's more likely that it has happened before - probably several times than that it hasn't.
Your probably very, very, wrong. While the Earth is somewhere around 5 Billion years old, complex life only existed for around 3 billion of those, things didn't really start getting complex enough to be intelligent (in the human sense) for around 1 billion or so. Meaning there has to be one hell of a gap in both geology and paleontology, that is universal across the whole geography of the planet. Even if they didn't lithify, there still would be some lasting effects, artifacts, atmospheric changes trapping in ice cores, large amounts of geographic change from mining and cities. Civilization is a rather large impact development. Sure a lot of it gets erased by time, but bits of it would still be around (plastic, glass, giant earth works), and things properly buried by natural events.
Odds are we are it. There might be something following us, if there is time (the sun will go in 5 billion years, or so, but things will get a bit tough here much earlier), but it is doubtful something preceded us. Obviously it is possible, but not probable.
City kids CAN get a chance to do most of this, they (their parents) just choose not to. When I was growing up my dad was (still is) a gold prospector, and mom was studying geology. I managed to cover just about every single point in the southwest, spent days in tents, participated in archeological digs, scampered up and down numerous old tailing piles risking tetanus or worse. By the time I was 10 I knew well over 100 different types of rock, a smattering of fluid dynamics, most of the migration history of the tribes of the desert southwest, etc... During my time at home my parents scrounged me up old computers (we weren't rich), and my dad (who was also a truck diver) would grab me old computer, and flight instruments from the local tech firms (mostly Honeywell and Sperry).
I'm dating a girl from just outside Silicon Valley who grew up about as life-sheltered as one can get. The end result is I have a hard time relating since I didn't really have much a chance to watch PBS children's shows. I also got targeted for medication several times during my childhood, because that sort of activity must mean you have ADD. Preferring books to sports was clearly aberrant, as was the ability to read a book for 12 hours straight.
The really amusing thing is; my girlfriend is getting her masters in education, and the people she deals with are actual, in the trenches, teachers, and they are among the dumbest people I have ever encountered. They really and truly beleive that a childs "emotional development" should take precedence over academics, and that "trying" is as important as "doing", they also all pretty much failed a basic stats class (where you don't actually need the math, just Excel), and complained that using science to develop teaching methods somehow is bad for children (it has no soul, Hitler liked science, or somesuch).
A common meme is that ignoring gifted students for the benefit of the poorest performers is fine and dandy because the gifted students will sort themselves out, and if they have trouble with this the root cause is a psychological problem.
As the other replier stated; define "need". Did I need a new hard-drive, probably not. But then again do I need a computer, or coffee, or a books, or a television, or a car, or cats, or any food above the absolute basics? Probably not. If we removed advertising completely from our lives we probably would still demand things in excess to mere survival requirements. For example computing in general, I started using computers only because my neighbor had a smoking hot, brand new 8086 that I was sometimes allowed to play games on, baring the existence of any advertising for computer companies, I probably still would own a computer, and enjoy tweaking them. Barring ads, I would still drink coffee, have cats, enjoy long walks on the beach, etc...
Your question is dead on though, even if I disagree with the sentiment. Advertising is about creating artificial needs, and conflating wants with needs. The "consumer culture" aspect is largely accidental, and isn't a planned aspect of advertising, it is a natural growth from unfettered capitalism, made worse by our largely sedentary, passive culture.
When you define things broad enough, everything can fall into that definition, meaning the definition has become meaningless.
What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.
Does spending a couple of hours on Newegg or Tom's Hardware count as advertising? Being aware of a brand itself doesn't mean much, I'm aware of a lot of brands and I don't have a compulsion to purchase them. When I recently bought a new harddrive, I was aware of Seagate, but didn't buy their product, instead buying a Hitachi (I wasn't even really aware they made HDDs, really), after spending a couple of minutes on Tom's looking at benchmarks. Is this an epic win for Hitachi's advertising department, being that I have never seen an advert for their HDDs? As for what type of computer, in general, I am using, it is a piecemeal bunch of parts, most of them I only bought thanks to good old fashioned word of mouth, reading online user reviews, looking at the raw numbers, etc... Advertisements didn't have a damn thing to do with my purchase. The metric for me was purely a ratio between performance (measured by 3rd parties) and price.
I do own an iPod, but I only got it because it was cheaper than everything else out there (with a $150 discount). I wouldn't have based on the iPod brand, or the Apple brand, or any amount of "Apple is cool" advertisement. I was actually going to get the cheapest HDD player there was at the time, but Apple beat them on price.
Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.
All my friends eat cornflakes, I like my friend's tastes, therefore I will eat corn flakes. I grew up eating corn flakes, therefore I eat them. My culture likes them, therefore I do. There are tons of reasons to choose anything that are not based on corporate wishes.
I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.
Or by just living in a world surrounded by them. I know a lot about Apple because I researched them awhile ago when looking to buy a computer. I know about them because some of my friends swear by their products. I know about them because of their reputation, etc... I don't know all the products they make, much less Adobe, though, since it isn't relevant to my life. Same with makes of cars. I have no clue. Don't care one bit.
There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.
Yes, marketing often has a role, but it doesn't ALWAYS have a role. There are many products that I have bought where there was NO marketing whatsoever for. There has been even more products that I've bought that were not directly influenced by an ad agency, because I did due diligence and researched the product on my own. There have been tons of products I've discovered the old fashioned way, word of mouth. There have been tons of items where I've gone and incrementally bought all of the different brands until I found one high on the holy cost/quality curve.
Advertising works, sometimes, on some people, and in some circumstances. Not always, universally, and on everyone.
There have been studies showing that if your aware of the gimmicks, advertising has a much lower effect on you, for example.
Already modded on this topic, but I feel an odd compulsion to reply;...I'd suggest a majority wanted a household network and had a clear expectation of privacy, even if they did not possess the technical skills to recognise or implement the solution.
They lacked the technical skill to RTFM? Actually most routers install disks prompt you to set up security these days, so they lack the technical skill to type in a password? You confuse "lack of technical skill" with "willful ignorance". People in the latter camp might deserve some modicum of protection, but those in the former don't. Computers aren't some giant archaic megalith hiding in a basement with an army of strange nerds catering to their mysterious needs anymore. Computers are ubiquitous, and mostly designed with simplicity for end users in mind. They are "user friendly". There really isn't an insurmountable technical barrier to competent and safe use anymore, so not being some form of "skilled professional" isn't really an excuse for doing stupid things.
Its like causing an accident, and thinking you should be immune from all consiquences because your not a skilled and trained NASCAR professional driver.
We really shouldn't be in the business of protecting, and insulating the consequences for people who should know better. We really shouldn't be making laws only to protect the lowest common denominator from themselves.
Unless you think all these people consciously designed their networks so that random passerbys could access it, in which case you vastly overestimate how much most people think at all or even know about their networks.
Not literally, but this is correct. By not wearing a seat belt you might not consciously want to get grievously injured in an accident, but being that you know the alternative you should be considered as believing such.
Personal responsibility and consequences are very important things, and sadly these are things we no longer believe in.
The thing that gets me here is that there has been NO HARM caused by Google. They sniffed some packets, sure, but they didn't actually READ them, they are completely agnostic to the contents outside of "open" or "closed". I can do this right now with my phone, my ereader, my laptop, my desktop, my Wii, my... pretty much everything in my house can sniff for open or closed networks, excluding (for now) my kitchen sink. Sure, they don't grab actual (mostly nonsensical) packets, but the end result is the same.
Considers the sales that SCII will have, I would consider that a handful. Outside of that, what percentage of those 252,781 people will actually not buy the game, that would have in the first place? Probably a slim one, since these are people who care so much about a game franchise to devote some amount of mental turmoil to it (and talk about the lack of LAN support like it is "serious business"). Its the same as the small, devout, camp of people who talk about boycotting D3 because it is "too colorful".
That said, I think removing LAN functionality is a bit dumb, even though, if included, I would get zero use of it in real life. It is a marginal need though, not many people really care. I can't even remember the last LAN party I've been too, though I still game with friends over the internet. Most of my old LAN friends have moved on, and live in different cities and states, so internet play is much more convenient. I can still see a minority of people who have the right to be a bit pissed (not too much, since it is just a silly game).
I'm a little miffed about the probable lack of spawn copies though. I'll still buy it, I wouldn't let a small thing like that get in the way of a couple months of enjoyment, though.
What are you talking about? I can see an argument about technology pacing with science but not philosophy. What are your examples?
I'm not talking about specific discoveries, but the ideas ("paradigms", whatnot) that move behind, and drive, science, philosophy, and culture. Also, much of science IS philosophy, and a lot of what used to be philosophy is now science. There is no fine line dividing scientists from philosophers, most of the best scientists dabbled in philosophy, and most of the greatest philosophers were scientists. For an example read up on the Bohr/Einstein debate, Bohr was late vindicated scientifically, but at the time the debate was firmly philosophical.
On the topic of AI, philosophy often moves a couple steps ahead of actual research, the same was (might still be, I'm a bit out of date) true with cognitive research in general. Historically you'll find hard determinism was floating around in philosophy before it became commonly accepted in scientific circles. Another example is Bertrand Russel and Whitehead, and the various other anglophone philosophers of that era who where working with math and logic (as well as Godel, who is famous for a largely philosophical statement).
Do you realize that Platonists are alive and well today? It is still a valid school of thought - not that I agree with it. Science abandons disproven concepts like the geocentric model (Earth centered). Philosophy does not tend to move but rather will rehash ideas.
Yes, there is a small amount of neo-Platonists (or would it be neo-neo-Platonists?), but you can find enclaves of people who believe very stupid things hanging about in the halls of science too.
I didn't mean to make it sound like philosophy is some unified discipline, but there are large branches which contain very dynamic (in philosophical terms) segments who incorporate the latest learning from other disciplines. Often these people are actively engaged in the discipline (see Daniel Dennet for example).
Lastly, you stated, "You clearly failed philosophy (I mean that in the bad way)." I doubt that very much - not even knowing the poster.
That was a joke based on the poster's own phrase. Har har.
. This is not to say every course is fluff but people outside the major track should breeze through
I disagree. Most undergrad philosophy is nothing but the history of ideas, which is rather important. Also the fact that it contains so many overt failures is also important, since many sciences choose to completely ignore their dead ends. Failures can be as important as successes. Also there is a nice mix of liberal studies, critical thinking, and history, which serves as a nice balance for the annoying trade schools out institutions of higher learning are turning into.
I am really curious as to what your credentials are. Myself, 2nd major Philosophy, 1st major Chemical Engineering.
If by credentials you mean what I went to school for, then my primary major was philosophy (with an emphasis on the philosophy of science/epistemology), my secondary was psychology (emphasis on research).
Well, all scientists do philosophy. You might not agree with them, and they might insist that it is not philosophy, but that is a philosophy.
Back in my undergrad days, when I was majoring in philosophy, one of my friends was a physics/math dual major. We used to have rousing discussions about the philosophy of math and science, and she would always yell at me that philosophy had no role in these disciplines. I always told her, that the second she started actually discussing math and science as disciplines she was, in fact, being a philosopher.
The methodology of science is a philosophical device, and much of the processes of scientific discovery are within the realm of philosophy. Theory building especially. But the nuts and bolts of science are not. Finding that particle x decays into particle y isn't a philosophical exercise. Asking "how can we be sure", though, then the topic turns into one of epistemology.
Most of the recent books criticizing string theory are soundly philosophic, for example.
Then why does anyone teach logics where Leibniz's Law is true, given that it is false, has known to be false for over half a century, and this falsity has profound everyday consequences?
Because most (if not all) undergrad philosophy is more about history than actual philosophy. Undergrad philosophy could be renamed to "the history of ideas" with a degree of accuracy. You could pretty much take any collegiate text on ancient philosophy and mark every single thing as "wrong". The same is true for pretty much any historical philosopher. To philosophies credit, they are one of the few disciplines that celebrate their dead ends as much as fruitful theories.
I've never read any philosopher who seems able to grasp that ontology can constrain concepts without determining them, whereas anyone with a modicum of scientific literacy has no difficulty at all with it.
This is true for many philosophers, but then again probably a majority of philosophers don't aspire towards philosophy of science. A lot of philosophers stick with the softer aspects of the discipline, or, worse, stick with meta-philosophy (mostly decrying the discipline dead).
I have had several professors with no problem with this, but then again I studied philosophy of science, and epistemology mainly. Our reading were mostly reading physicists, and not people labeled "philosopher". My favorite professor was working on the last chapter of his PhD thesis on physics, when he promptly quit and moved on to philosophy. There is a rather broad crossover between science and philosophy.
I recommend reading actual, in the trenches, scientists, when they are writing things outside of the specifics of their research.
Go ask your favourite ontologist, "Can a wave be properly conceptualized as an action or a thing or both?" The answer will almost certainly stun you with its lack of understanding of the topic, unless you don't understand the topic yourself.
This is true. Though your favorite ontologist is probably trying to clear the semantics first, which will probably take 5-6 generations, only then can they (via future generations) actually address your concerns (generally over another couple hundred years of spirited debate and name calling).
In the areas I'm interested in--identity theory, empiricist epistemology, ontology, and ethical choice under uncertainty--I am not aware of anyone working in the fields who has anything resembling a grasp of the relevant science done in the past half-century.
A lot of these areas have been gobbled up by "proper" science. And, sadly, some of these areas have lost favor in philosophy.
You clearly failed philosophy (I mean that in the bad way).
Philosophy has moved on quite a bit since Plato. Contemporary philosophy does understand that things exist outside of a human scale, and discusses it quite a bit. Philosophy is a moving target, it generally is always one small step ahead or behind science, but there is always a decent amount of interlap.
A lot of scientists do philosophy, and a lot of modern philosophers are giant science junkies.
Merging the address and search fields is a big drawback. It further confuses people about what a URL is, and it encourages them and others (esp. advertisers) to give directions to web sites as if the keywords == addresses. (Hey, like AOL!)
Personally I find it very convenient, so convenient it hampers my use of browsers that don't combine address and search bars. There is nothing quote as annoying as searching for something and ending up at "http://howtocookwalrus.com" instead of a search page. So yes, if there is a mixed standard (some browsers having it, some not), domain squatting will be a problem, but if everyone switches, it won't. Though it is annoying when I type "blizzard" into the address bar and just a Google page, and not nifty auto-parsing action. So I suppose it makes life a bit simpler, and a bit more complicated. Though in this mixed market, I suppose it is safer to default to search, than auto-parsing.
That said, I don't know if browser devs should be making their products for ONLY the lowest common denominator, its a good way to drive off your core market (if your Mozilla or the Chrome faction of Google). While Firefox has grown in popularity, this growth was because of geeks (who probably have no problem with confusing URLs with search terms), and I'm guessing a very large percentage of their base is still geeks, and if they start removing "confusing" features, and dumbing things down they will start hemorrhaging this segment. Microsoft and Apple (who develop for the masses, and not mostly just nerds) can afford to dumb things down, all of the other browser companies really can't.
At worst, keeping the merge of address and search would keep things as they are in much of the computer illiterate population. Both of my parents use Google as a place to type in URLs. After 7 years neither of them have ever quite grasped the address bar, no matter how many times I tell them.
Don't forget Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, and many other non-specific thematic elements from his films.
I have no problem with borrowing from other people's work (or histories, or mythologies), I just have a problem when you become a hypocrite and decide that people can't borrow from you, no matter how heavily you borrowed from others (Disney, I'm looking at you!).
Lucas' borrowing was still better than Quentin Tarantino's, though. At least it wasn't immediately transparent, where with Tarantino's films I generally just play "where did he copy this from" during the whole movie, then go rent the actual original films instead of paying a bit of attention to his. The originals generally actually have realistic dialogue, and don't drop the f-bomb like a 13 year old who just decided it is cool, and gets a nice rise from his parents.
Lucas really needs to relax. The first trilogy was a decent space opera, like a modern version of Flash Gordon. The second trilogy was a mass marketing campaign for toys and Happy Meals. Actually episode VI was also a mass marketing campaign for toys and Happy Meals as well. Leaving us with episodes IV-V, and III, the first two are pure fun, the last is actually a decent (albeit a bit trite) film.
Indiana Jones was just pure awesome, up until the last move (which-does-not-actually-exist).
Lucas can be either VERY good, or VERY bad, with absolutely nothing in between.
I personally love it every time some bit of popular software changes their UI, even if I hate the change the internet gets slightly more amusing for a time. This is especially true for Firefox, there are still people winging on about how terrible the Awesome Bar(tm) is, and now we'll all get to live with people complaining about Chromifying their UI.
Change for change's sake is just annoying. Personally, I don't find Chrome's interface an improvement in any way.
But a useful change, and a superfluous change are largely in the eye of the beholder. You may find the new Firefox look to be a useless bit of bling, but I may not. I personally think Chrome was a decent (if a bit flawed) step forward, you may disagree. The problem is when people conflate their personal opinion into "this is factually not a step forward!". It isn't for you, but a ton of others might disagree (as shown by Chrome rapidly growing numbers).
As long as their remains, for at least a bit of time, the means to revert things back, then I have no problems. This is the mistake they made with the Awesome Bar(tm), but this doesn't hold for the new UI changes, you can easily revert them.
Personally I like it, though it still is a bit wasteful of space. The menu button should be moved down, to completely remove all of the space that used to be the title, and menu bars. It should be either inline with the tab bar, or switched to right of the address/search area as in Chrome. Personally I love the idea of a minimal UI, as long as it remains expandable and doesn't come at the cost of being feature rich (my main complain about Chrome). I like my browser to first be a browser, hopefully as devoid of flash and bling as humanly possible. I'm using it for the internet, not to look at the beautifully rendered button which you paid someone a heap of money to make. Nor do I need my browser to tell me what it is (via the title bar) constantly, I'm sure I know what bit of software I'm using at any given time. I doubt there has ever been a time where I pondered "Is this Firefox, or is this Word, is it VLC, or is this World of Warcraft?! Oh crap, it was actually Photoshop all along!".
Menu bars too should die (as should MS's ribbon idea as an alternative) when they aren't useful.
This is all my opinion, obviously. Your might differ, which is fine. The point is, there isn't a universally accepted scheme for good interfaces. Hell people are still arguing if GUIs in general were really a good idea.
The negative aspect of the internet makes this much worse, it amplifies dissent and problems while completely ignore satisfied users. If I LIKE the new stuff, there isn't really much reason for me to dust off my browser and write up a critique. If I hate it, its the first thing I'm going to do. Thus the internet makes it hard to judge how the reaction to change actually is. It makes it very easy, though, for those who dislike it to conflate themselves into a unified body, and to decide they are a majority. I never take internet winging seriously, waiting for the usage numbers is much more useful. Take the Awesome Bar(tm), people complained about it like it was personally going to cause the end of the world, but Firefox's numbers didn't dip very much.
That said, and while I'm on my offtopic soap box, I think there is a minority of people out there who HATE change. The second the status-quo gets a bit rocky they get inexplicably infuriated. As such, they generally complain much much more than anyone else, crowding out even those people who have actual gripes about the change in question. This is also true in the converse, there is also a group of people who leap on any and every change, no matter how boneheaded or idiotic it is. These people are generally contained in Apple specific forums though, so never bother the rest of us.
This is a failure of marketing and PC hardware companies. Needless to say he wasn't happy when I told him that his 6 year old AGP mobo wouldn't handle a current gen card.
I suppose it actually is a short-term success for the hardware people. They got the money by throwing around a big (somewhat pointless) number. Though in the long term it makes things a bit worse.
I went around 4-5 years without paying attention to the hardware market (I got an iBook for college, and later replaced it with a standard HP laptop), and when I decided to build a new PC I was completely lost. The standards (PCI-AGP-PCIe), industry leaders changed (goodbye AMD), RAM made another almost arbitrary and costly change, half of the companies I was familiar with merged or died, IDE was completely replaced with SATA, etc... Its very hard to expect someone who doesn't want to spend a week reading tech blogs and browsing Tom's Hardware to understand what the hell is going on, much less what to buy to hit the value/performance curve (without spending $6000 for bleeding edge).
The video card makes are the worst of the lot, since they often change their naming conventions just for fun. Whats better a 4800 or a gx200, or a 9800? Is an i7 or i5 worth it, even if you need to spend around $100 extra for the mobo and around $200 extra for the DDR3 RAM? (I decided to stick with AMD, I like my Phenom x4 965 which only cost $200).
Funny thing is, after I built my computer I found a pretty comparable prebuilt one sale at Fry's for almost the same price.
I hate this line of reasoning. People seem to ignore that you have to buy a console, where most people have a PC sitting around already. So the real argument should be the cost of buying versus upgrading, not buying versus buying.
What is the price of upgrading your standard middle-of-the-road Dell, versus buying a whole new gaming console?
I think this equalizes the price a bit, especially since game requirements have gone somewhat stagnant. If you have a modern processor already all you really need is a video card. And you NEVER need the cutting edge $600 model. I've haven't found a game I couldn't play with my old, tragically outdated, Radeon 4700, that I picked up at Fry's for $70. (The rest of my system is a bit excessive, but that is more due to my hobby than strict necessity)
Another thing is that a computer is a multi-purpose tool, a console isn't. So even if you spend around 10% more on a gaming capable computer, you're going to be using it for more, and using it more often.
This last point isn't addressed at you, but at a poster previous to you who's point was that computers aren't as good at gaming, because someone else in the household may want to use it. An argument easily reversed against consoles, most households only have one decent television (HD, large, etc...), so your gaming must stop when someone wants to watch American Idol. Also, I know of more households with multiple computers, than I know with multiple HD-capable, large screen, televisions.
Not saying one is superior to the other, just pointing out that this argument is fraught with fallacies.
Yes, lets support dumbing down our population even more!
Personally I love financial aid, it allowed me to go to college, period. Even if somehow chopping out aid lowered tuition 100 fold, I wouldn't have been able to afford it. But I suppose my background implies that I should be stuck in manual labor for the rest of my life. C'est la vie. That seems to fly in the face of; "Education used to be a means of upward social mobility.".
I will gladly accept my small amount of debt in exchange for higher education. That is my personal choice, it was not forced on me, and it doesn't really cause me much loss of sleep at night. If you manage you college load well*, the amount of debt is almost negligible, most people don't, and that is their choice as well. College is not, yet, mandatory, so all this debt is chosen, not enforced. I have no problem with it as such as a result. Its like saying home ownership exists as a means to keep greater portions of the population in debt, which ignores that fact that no one NEEDS to own a home, and they accept mortgages by choice, even ones with terrible terms.
Personally we should accept a more civilized precedent, and lower the financial bar to college further by subsidizing most admissions like some of Europe. The fact that a larger body of the public would be educated far outweigh any of the consequences, IMO. We should be throwing college tuition at anyone who wants it, and who carries a decent GPA, SAT/ACT, or entrance exam score...
* Utilize your local community college to grab as many early credits as you can, at around 1/4 the cost. CC stigma be damned, it saved me around $20k in the long run.
I understand this. But my point was pointing the finger and saying "they are more corrupt than them", or whatnot, is pointless. You can accept grants from big oil, or from some "green" equivalent and NOT be corrupt, so there is some percentage of people working on climate change (in both quarters) who are not corrupt. There is no way of ever finding out who is corrupt or not. Thus the whole argument is rather silly. Especially considering we're talking about science, where your data stands on its own irregardless of the personal attributes of the scientists. I personally don't care whether a researcher is funded through Al Gore's personal pocket book, or through BP, all that matters is the data, and the ability of their peers to verify the claims.
Time, and tons of re-digging through data, will tell who is correct here (my feeling is neither side will be 100% vindicated). In 25-50 years thing will be more clear.
So a bunch of professors got together and cleared... one of their own. No surprise there. You can read the first 2 paragraphs under the "Background of the alleged misconduct" and you can tell right away what the conclusion is going to be by the way it's written.
You must have a different experience with professors and academics than me. Generally it is easier to herd cats, than get two professors to agree with each other. I didn't realize that they all formed an organized cabal.
Who else would you have judge them? Laymen with no experience with the issue, or the vagaries of academe involved?
I have a feeling that even if this happened, the opposition crowd would scream about some other bias that supposedly invalidates the finding. The only way to satisfy the criteria of non-biased and correct is to find in the way you believe, since your opinion is obviously the objective truth.
You said following the money proves that climate scientists are (probably) corrupt. The parent said following the money leads one straight to the doors of the oil industry. Add these statements together and you get a big fat nothing. Meaning these arguments of corruption (or greed) are pretty much completely baseless, or at least completely meaningless.
WTF does that line of reasoning have to do with science, either? Who really cares who funds who? If thats the best someone can get at refuting a theory, I would say they are in a very, very weak position.
SciAm became increasingly dumbed-down, caustically skeptic, and fatally political, which is when I dropped my decades-old subscription. The month they inserted a gratuitous reference to Bush #1 into a summary explanation of something to do with crystal formation (as I recall) was the last month.
Agreed, it is a very depressing thing, since it used to be the best popular science magazines out there. I'm not completely ignorant of science, and still got enjoyment and a bit of education from them, even if they were prone to the "world of tomorrow" problem. (i.e. "something, something, string theory, something, something, branes: all this will lead to some awesome practical thing in the world of tomorrow!").
I, personally, have affirmative suspicions about anthropogenic global warming, but I also think that all of the information should be presented, both agreeing with my opinion, and (more importantly) against it. SciAm started to fail at this, becoming yet another political rag. If I wanted skewed politics I would read The Nation or the Weekly Standard, not a science magazine.
I really am getting sick of being preached at.
The politically incorrect answer is that those people are in the class because of affirmative action, and a college that fails too many affirmative action students winds up with low affirmative action scores and has to "fix" things to keep the federal money.
I probably was one of these students. I'm from a poor background, and thanks to some previous bad life choices, I didn't have the greatest academic history (though I managed to enter with a 3.6 GPA thanks to community college, which is above the depressing 2.0 minimum).
. Now, when I went to school and had to take part in debates, there were always TWO sides presented. Calling a lecture a "debate" makes scientists look silly or stupid at best, dishonest at worst.
I agree this is often a problem, but not all debates need to have views polar to each other. If I'm having an academic debate on evolutionary biology (the process, and theory of), it would be silly to invite a creationist. I'm not saying this is what was in EOS (not reading it), but I can see it being justified.
Not all things should be Fox's definition of "fair and balanced", personally I think that application of the term has helped dumb us down a bit.
I'd also put Morrowind into that category. The worst that could happen for killing random people is a dialog saying "this game is unwinnable", and it dumping you back into your unwinnable game.
Oddly, both Fallouts and Morrowind have taken up more of my life than any other game out there, with the exception of Diablo 2.
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Oh dear, I use Ubuntu, so I'm not nearly nerdy enough! Whatever should I do?
For the record I've used many many distros over the course of many many years and Ubuntu was the first one that didn't require directing 50% of my free time to hand-editing config files and glaring angry at man pages. Actually I think its the first distro that recognized any wifi card I've ever used, and 90% of the sound chips/cards (though still not on an old iBook). To me that is more important than being "nerdy enough".
I don't equate doing more work that I have to with being a nerd, I associate it with being stupid.
what incentive do i as a music consumer have to actually spend my money if all the music can be pirated for free? pro-piracy supporters seem to all conveniently miss this point.
An interesting question that can be approached in several ways. From a pure pragmatic or cynical point of view you can say there is no incentive whatsoever. This ignores the fact that many people who like music there are elements of loyalty, and are willing to spend money on concerts, shirts, and even albums form their favorite band. I have absolutely nothing against piracy, and I still fork over a somewhat obscene amount of money on music, I see every band I like when they hit town (though no more "big" shows, the last couple I saw have been terrible), I buy their albums, I own shirts (in some cases multiple shirts), etc... Why? Because I feel like I should support things I love, even if there is a free alternative. This, I suppose, is why we haven't seen music die, even if most music is freely available online. Your big groups are still chugging along being ridiculously rich, your small independent groups are showing an unprecidented rise in availability and popularity. Piracy is here, and it hasn't really shown any real effect on the music industry.
You also conflate all forms of piracy as something equal. I have a problem with not paying for artists you like. But I have no issue with "pirating" music I already own, albeit in a different format. I have no problem with pirating music from dead musicians, or musicians who get no royalties for my purchase. Music over a certain age i have no issue with (i.e. pirating the Beatles or Lois Armstrong is fine, pirating your local, performing, indie artist isn't). If the artist, themselves, only get a pittance from my purchase, there is no point in buying it, so pirating is fine, as long as you make up for it by seeing them live, or buying something from them. I have no real problem with pirating any artist on an RIAA label, not that I do, since not a single artist I like works under the RIAA anymore.
Another thing you miss, is that the market is a moving target. While album sales was the primary driving force behind music, there is no natural law saying that this must always be true. Some of my favorite bands make their money on "value added" merchandise, like vinyl, artful packaging, extra features, etc...
I have no problem supporting artists, I have a BIG problem being forced to support giant faceless corporations. You don't have the right to profit, and I don't have the obligation to support them.
Well that's very brave of you because paleontologists aren't sure at all. Steel MELTS. At relatively low temperatures compared to what the earth has gone through at times. Steel RUSTS and forms iron oxide which flakes away and spread over vast areas because it's easily wind-carried.
So whatever killed your fictional civilization would have raised the temperature of the earth enough to melt all the steel? That would leave a rather impressive geologic record, AND sterilize most of the planet, which is something we'd notice. As for rust/wind, that only works if something is exposed, if there was some form of upheaval, it is doubtless that a lot of things would be buried, and thus mostly persevered. You still ignore things that have a higher probability of surviving.
The KT event alone would have had enough impact to turn every skyscraper we have no into nothing swirling bit's of the dustcloud that covers the earth for a few million years... when it all came down...
No. The KT event didn't suddenly destroy everything on earth, it destroyed things in a localized area, and its climate effects (probably) killed the rest, most of which were already weakened by causes pre-existing the KT event. We have fossils a plenty from immediately before, and immediately after the event, so it obviously didn't erase soft bones, so why would it erase all advanced construction materials?
To add to my previous comment to you about fossilization: the odds of a species leaving fossils can be seen as a combination of their population, and geographic spread. If this previous species was anything like humans, they maximized both, and thus have a higher probability of leaving individual fossilized remains than species with a limited population and spread. Over the same time period, obviously. The longer they exist the greater the odds of one of them sticking around it, as well. So your species was either existent for a limited time, had no population, or never spread outside of a localized area, or any combination of those three.
Another thing, while I'm in a ranty mood, you realize that there are vast swaths of land that haven't seen any volcanism for billions of years, right? The Canadian shield, for example.
Well, average life-expectancy of a species is 5-million years. Homo Sapience has already doubled that putting us at the extreme end of the scale that gives this average.
Huh? Homo Sapiens, as a species, are only around 500,000 years old, quite young as far as species go. Our particular lineage as primates (hominidae) is quite old (15 million years, or so), but family is not species.
The absence of evidence in this case can be just as easily explained by deep time as that there wasn't anything to leave it. But we do have absolute proof that technological societies CAN evolve on earth - because we're here. Thus Occam's razor suggests it's more likely that it has happened before - probably several times than that it hasn't.
Your probably very, very, wrong. While the Earth is somewhere around 5 Billion years old, complex life only existed for around 3 billion of those, things didn't really start getting complex enough to be intelligent (in the human sense) for around 1 billion or so. Meaning there has to be one hell of a gap in both geology and paleontology, that is universal across the whole geography of the planet. Even if they didn't lithify, there still would be some lasting effects, artifacts, atmospheric changes trapping in ice cores, large amounts of geographic change from mining and cities. Civilization is a rather large impact development. Sure a lot of it gets erased by time, but bits of it would still be around (plastic, glass, giant earth works), and things properly buried by natural events.
Odds are we are it. There might be something following us, if there is time (the sun will go in 5 billion years, or so, but things will get a bit tough here much earlier), but it is doubtful something preceded us. Obviously it is possible, but not probable.
City kids CAN get a chance to do most of this, they (their parents) just choose not to. When I was growing up my dad was (still is) a gold prospector, and mom was studying geology. I managed to cover just about every single point in the southwest, spent days in tents, participated in archeological digs, scampered up and down numerous old tailing piles risking tetanus or worse. By the time I was 10 I knew well over 100 different types of rock, a smattering of fluid dynamics, most of the migration history of the tribes of the desert southwest, etc... During my time at home my parents scrounged me up old computers (we weren't rich), and my dad (who was also a truck diver) would grab me old computer, and flight instruments from the local tech firms (mostly Honeywell and Sperry).
I'm dating a girl from just outside Silicon Valley who grew up about as life-sheltered as one can get. The end result is I have a hard time relating since I didn't really have much a chance to watch PBS children's shows. I also got targeted for medication several times during my childhood, because that sort of activity must mean you have ADD. Preferring books to sports was clearly aberrant, as was the ability to read a book for 12 hours straight.
The really amusing thing is; my girlfriend is getting her masters in education, and the people she deals with are actual, in the trenches, teachers, and they are among the dumbest people I have ever encountered. They really and truly beleive that a childs "emotional development" should take precedence over academics, and that "trying" is as important as "doing", they also all pretty much failed a basic stats class (where you don't actually need the math, just Excel), and complained that using science to develop teaching methods somehow is bad for children (it has no soul, Hitler liked science, or somesuch).
A common meme is that ignoring gifted students for the benefit of the poorest performers is fine and dandy because the gifted students will sort themselves out, and if they have trouble with this the root cause is a psychological problem.
I fear for our children.
As the other replier stated; define "need". Did I need a new hard-drive, probably not. But then again do I need a computer, or coffee, or a books, or a television, or a car, or cats, or any food above the absolute basics? Probably not. If we removed advertising completely from our lives we probably would still demand things in excess to mere survival requirements. For example computing in general, I started using computers only because my neighbor had a smoking hot, brand new 8086 that I was sometimes allowed to play games on, baring the existence of any advertising for computer companies, I probably still would own a computer, and enjoy tweaking them. Barring ads, I would still drink coffee, have cats, enjoy long walks on the beach, etc...
Your question is dead on though, even if I disagree with the sentiment. Advertising is about creating artificial needs, and conflating wants with needs. The "consumer culture" aspect is largely accidental, and isn't a planned aspect of advertising, it is a natural growth from unfettered capitalism, made worse by our largely sedentary, passive culture.
When you define things broad enough, everything can fall into that definition, meaning the definition has become meaningless.
What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.
Does spending a couple of hours on Newegg or Tom's Hardware count as advertising? Being aware of a brand itself doesn't mean much, I'm aware of a lot of brands and I don't have a compulsion to purchase them. When I recently bought a new harddrive, I was aware of Seagate, but didn't buy their product, instead buying a Hitachi (I wasn't even really aware they made HDDs, really), after spending a couple of minutes on Tom's looking at benchmarks. Is this an epic win for Hitachi's advertising department, being that I have never seen an advert for their HDDs? As for what type of computer, in general, I am using, it is a piecemeal bunch of parts, most of them I only bought thanks to good old fashioned word of mouth, reading online user reviews, looking at the raw numbers, etc... Advertisements didn't have a damn thing to do with my purchase. The metric for me was purely a ratio between performance (measured by 3rd parties) and price.
I do own an iPod, but I only got it because it was cheaper than everything else out there (with a $150 discount). I wouldn't have based on the iPod brand, or the Apple brand, or any amount of "Apple is cool" advertisement. I was actually going to get the cheapest HDD player there was at the time, but Apple beat them on price.
Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.
All my friends eat cornflakes, I like my friend's tastes, therefore I will eat corn flakes. I grew up eating corn flakes, therefore I eat them. My culture likes them, therefore I do. There are tons of reasons to choose anything that are not based on corporate wishes.
I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.
Or by just living in a world surrounded by them. I know a lot about Apple because I researched them awhile ago when looking to buy a computer. I know about them because some of my friends swear by their products. I know about them because of their reputation, etc... I don't know all the products they make, much less Adobe, though, since it isn't relevant to my life. Same with makes of cars. I have no clue. Don't care one bit.
There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.
Yes, marketing often has a role, but it doesn't ALWAYS have a role. There are many products that I have bought where there was NO marketing whatsoever for. There has been even more products that I've bought that were not directly influenced by an ad agency, because I did due diligence and researched the product on my own. There have been tons of products I've discovered the old fashioned way, word of mouth. There have been tons of items where I've gone and incrementally bought all of the different brands until I found one high on the holy cost/quality curve.
Advertising works, sometimes, on some people, and in some circumstances. Not always, universally, and on everyone.
There have been studies showing that if your aware of the gimmicks, advertising has a much lower effect on you, for example.
Already modded on this topic, but I feel an odd compulsion to reply; ...I'd suggest a majority wanted a household network and had a clear expectation of privacy, even if they did not possess the technical skills to recognise or implement the solution.
They lacked the technical skill to RTFM? Actually most routers install disks prompt you to set up security these days, so they lack the technical skill to type in a password? You confuse "lack of technical skill" with "willful ignorance". People in the latter camp might deserve some modicum of protection, but those in the former don't. Computers aren't some giant archaic megalith hiding in a basement with an army of strange nerds catering to their mysterious needs anymore. Computers are ubiquitous, and mostly designed with simplicity for end users in mind. They are "user friendly". There really isn't an insurmountable technical barrier to competent and safe use anymore, so not being some form of "skilled professional" isn't really an excuse for doing stupid things.
Its like causing an accident, and thinking you should be immune from all consiquences because your not a skilled and trained NASCAR professional driver.
We really shouldn't be in the business of protecting, and insulating the consequences for people who should know better. We really shouldn't be making laws only to protect the lowest common denominator from themselves.
Unless you think all these people consciously designed their networks so that random passerbys could access it, in which case you vastly overestimate how much most people think at all or even know about their networks.
Not literally, but this is correct. By not wearing a seat belt you might not consciously want to get grievously injured in an accident, but being that you know the alternative you should be considered as believing such.
Personal responsibility and consequences are very important things, and sadly these are things we no longer believe in.
The thing that gets me here is that there has been NO HARM caused by Google. They sniffed some packets, sure, but they didn't actually READ them, they are completely agnostic to the contents outside of "open" or "closed". I can do this right now with my phone, my ereader, my laptop, my desktop, my Wii, my... pretty much everything in my house can sniff for open or closed networks, excluding (for now) my kitchen sink. Sure, they don't grab actual (mostly nonsensical) packets, but the end result is the same.
Considers the sales that SCII will have, I would consider that a handful. Outside of that, what percentage of those 252,781 people will actually not buy the game, that would have in the first place? Probably a slim one, since these are people who care so much about a game franchise to devote some amount of mental turmoil to it (and talk about the lack of LAN support like it is "serious business"). Its the same as the small, devout, camp of people who talk about boycotting D3 because it is "too colorful".
That said, I think removing LAN functionality is a bit dumb, even though, if included, I would get zero use of it in real life. It is a marginal need though, not many people really care. I can't even remember the last LAN party I've been too, though I still game with friends over the internet. Most of my old LAN friends have moved on, and live in different cities and states, so internet play is much more convenient. I can still see a minority of people who have the right to be a bit pissed (not too much, since it is just a silly game).
I'm a little miffed about the probable lack of spawn copies though. I'll still buy it, I wouldn't let a small thing like that get in the way of a couple months of enjoyment, though.
What are you talking about? I can see an argument about technology pacing with science but not philosophy. What are your examples?
I'm not talking about specific discoveries, but the ideas ("paradigms", whatnot) that move behind, and drive, science, philosophy, and culture. Also, much of science IS philosophy, and a lot of what used to be philosophy is now science. There is no fine line dividing scientists from philosophers, most of the best scientists dabbled in philosophy, and most of the greatest philosophers were scientists. For an example read up on the Bohr/Einstein debate, Bohr was late vindicated scientifically, but at the time the debate was firmly philosophical.
On the topic of AI, philosophy often moves a couple steps ahead of actual research, the same was (might still be, I'm a bit out of date) true with cognitive research in general. Historically you'll find hard determinism was floating around in philosophy before it became commonly accepted in scientific circles. Another example is Bertrand Russel and Whitehead, and the various other anglophone philosophers of that era who where working with math and logic (as well as Godel, who is famous for a largely philosophical statement).
Do you realize that Platonists are alive and well today? It is still a valid school of thought - not that I agree with it. Science abandons disproven concepts like the geocentric model (Earth centered). Philosophy does not tend to move but rather will rehash ideas.
Yes, there is a small amount of neo-Platonists (or would it be neo-neo-Platonists?), but you can find enclaves of people who believe very stupid things hanging about in the halls of science too.
I didn't mean to make it sound like philosophy is some unified discipline, but there are large branches which contain very dynamic (in philosophical terms) segments who incorporate the latest learning from other disciplines. Often these people are actively engaged in the discipline (see Daniel Dennet for example).
Lastly, you stated, "You clearly failed philosophy (I mean that in the bad way)." I doubt that very much - not even knowing the poster.
That was a joke based on the poster's own phrase. Har har.
. This is not to say every course is fluff but people outside the major track should breeze through
I disagree. Most undergrad philosophy is nothing but the history of ideas, which is rather important. Also the fact that it contains so many overt failures is also important, since many sciences choose to completely ignore their dead ends. Failures can be as important as successes. Also there is a nice mix of liberal studies, critical thinking, and history, which serves as a nice balance for the annoying trade schools out institutions of higher learning are turning into.
I am really curious as to what your credentials are. Myself, 2nd major Philosophy, 1st major Chemical Engineering.
If by credentials you mean what I went to school for, then my primary major was philosophy (with an emphasis on the philosophy of science/epistemology), my secondary was psychology (emphasis on research).
Well, all scientists do philosophy. You might not agree with them, and they might insist that it is not philosophy, but that is a philosophy.
Back in my undergrad days, when I was majoring in philosophy, one of my friends was a physics/math dual major. We used to have rousing discussions about the philosophy of math and science, and she would always yell at me that philosophy had no role in these disciplines. I always told her, that the second she started actually discussing math and science as disciplines she was, in fact, being a philosopher.
The methodology of science is a philosophical device, and much of the processes of scientific discovery are within the realm of philosophy. Theory building especially. But the nuts and bolts of science are not. Finding that particle x decays into particle y isn't a philosophical exercise. Asking "how can we be sure", though, then the topic turns into one of epistemology.
Most of the recent books criticizing string theory are soundly philosophic, for example.
Then why does anyone teach logics where Leibniz's Law is true, given that it is false, has known to be false for over half a century, and this falsity has profound everyday consequences?
Because most (if not all) undergrad philosophy is more about history than actual philosophy. Undergrad philosophy could be renamed to "the history of ideas" with a degree of accuracy. You could pretty much take any collegiate text on ancient philosophy and mark every single thing as "wrong". The same is true for pretty much any historical philosopher. To philosophies credit, they are one of the few disciplines that celebrate their dead ends as much as fruitful theories.
I've never read any philosopher who seems able to grasp that ontology can constrain concepts without determining them, whereas anyone with a modicum of scientific literacy has no difficulty at all with it.
This is true for many philosophers, but then again probably a majority of philosophers don't aspire towards philosophy of science. A lot of philosophers stick with the softer aspects of the discipline, or, worse, stick with meta-philosophy (mostly decrying the discipline dead).
I have had several professors with no problem with this, but then again I studied philosophy of science, and epistemology mainly. Our reading were mostly reading physicists, and not people labeled "philosopher". My favorite professor was working on the last chapter of his PhD thesis on physics, when he promptly quit and moved on to philosophy. There is a rather broad crossover between science and philosophy.
I recommend reading actual, in the trenches, scientists, when they are writing things outside of the specifics of their research.
Go ask your favourite ontologist, "Can a wave be properly conceptualized as an action or a thing or both?" The answer will almost certainly stun you with its lack of understanding of the topic, unless you don't understand the topic yourself.
This is true. Though your favorite ontologist is probably trying to clear the semantics first, which will probably take 5-6 generations, only then can they (via future generations) actually address your concerns (generally over another couple hundred years of spirited debate and name calling).
In the areas I'm interested in--identity theory, empiricist epistemology, ontology, and ethical choice under uncertainty--I am not aware of anyone working in the fields who has anything resembling a grasp of the relevant science done in the past half-century.
A lot of these areas have been gobbled up by "proper" science. And, sadly, some of these areas have lost favor in philosophy.
You clearly failed philosophy (I mean that in the bad way).
Philosophy has moved on quite a bit since Plato. Contemporary philosophy does understand that things exist outside of a human scale, and discusses it quite a bit. Philosophy is a moving target, it generally is always one small step ahead or behind science, but there is always a decent amount of interlap.
A lot of scientists do philosophy, and a lot of modern philosophers are giant science junkies.
Merging the address and search fields is a big drawback. It further confuses people about what a URL is, and it encourages them and others (esp. advertisers) to give directions to web sites as if the keywords == addresses. (Hey, like AOL!)
Personally I find it very convenient, so convenient it hampers my use of browsers that don't combine address and search bars. There is nothing quote as annoying as searching for something and ending up at "http://howtocookwalrus.com" instead of a search page. So yes, if there is a mixed standard (some browsers having it, some not), domain squatting will be a problem, but if everyone switches, it won't. Though it is annoying when I type "blizzard" into the address bar and just a Google page, and not nifty auto-parsing action. So I suppose it makes life a bit simpler, and a bit more complicated. Though in this mixed market, I suppose it is safer to default to search, than auto-parsing.
That said, I don't know if browser devs should be making their products for ONLY the lowest common denominator, its a good way to drive off your core market (if your Mozilla or the Chrome faction of Google). While Firefox has grown in popularity, this growth was because of geeks (who probably have no problem with confusing URLs with search terms), and I'm guessing a very large percentage of their base is still geeks, and if they start removing "confusing" features, and dumbing things down they will start hemorrhaging this segment. Microsoft and Apple (who develop for the masses, and not mostly just nerds) can afford to dumb things down, all of the other browser companies really can't.
At worst, keeping the merge of address and search would keep things as they are in much of the computer illiterate population. Both of my parents use Google as a place to type in URLs. After 7 years neither of them have ever quite grasped the address bar, no matter how many times I tell them.
Don't forget Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, and many other non-specific thematic elements from his films.
I have no problem with borrowing from other people's work (or histories, or mythologies), I just have a problem when you become a hypocrite and decide that people can't borrow from you, no matter how heavily you borrowed from others (Disney, I'm looking at you!).
Lucas' borrowing was still better than Quentin Tarantino's, though. At least it wasn't immediately transparent, where with Tarantino's films I generally just play "where did he copy this from" during the whole movie, then go rent the actual original films instead of paying a bit of attention to his. The originals generally actually have realistic dialogue, and don't drop the f-bomb like a 13 year old who just decided it is cool, and gets a nice rise from his parents.
Lucas really needs to relax. The first trilogy was a decent space opera, like a modern version of Flash Gordon. The second trilogy was a mass marketing campaign for toys and Happy Meals. Actually episode VI was also a mass marketing campaign for toys and Happy Meals as well. Leaving us with episodes IV-V, and III, the first two are pure fun, the last is actually a decent (albeit a bit trite) film.
Indiana Jones was just pure awesome, up until the last move (which-does-not-actually-exist).
Lucas can be either VERY good, or VERY bad, with absolutely nothing in between.
I personally love it every time some bit of popular software changes their UI, even if I hate the change the internet gets slightly more amusing for a time. This is especially true for Firefox, there are still people winging on about how terrible the Awesome Bar(tm) is, and now we'll all get to live with people complaining about Chromifying their UI.
Change for change's sake is just annoying. Personally, I don't find Chrome's interface an improvement in any way.
But a useful change, and a superfluous change are largely in the eye of the beholder. You may find the new Firefox look to be a useless bit of bling, but I may not. I personally think Chrome was a decent (if a bit flawed) step forward, you may disagree. The problem is when people conflate their personal opinion into "this is factually not a step forward!". It isn't for you, but a ton of others might disagree (as shown by Chrome rapidly growing numbers).
As long as their remains, for at least a bit of time, the means to revert things back, then I have no problems. This is the mistake they made with the Awesome Bar(tm), but this doesn't hold for the new UI changes, you can easily revert them.
Personally I like it, though it still is a bit wasteful of space. The menu button should be moved down, to completely remove all of the space that used to be the title, and menu bars. It should be either inline with the tab bar, or switched to right of the address/search area as in Chrome. Personally I love the idea of a minimal UI, as long as it remains expandable and doesn't come at the cost of being feature rich (my main complain about Chrome). I like my browser to first be a browser, hopefully as devoid of flash and bling as humanly possible. I'm using it for the internet, not to look at the beautifully rendered button which you paid someone a heap of money to make. Nor do I need my browser to tell me what it is (via the title bar) constantly, I'm sure I know what bit of software I'm using at any given time. I doubt there has ever been a time where I pondered "Is this Firefox, or is this Word, is it VLC, or is this World of Warcraft?! Oh crap, it was actually Photoshop all along!".
Menu bars too should die (as should MS's ribbon idea as an alternative) when they aren't useful.
This is all my opinion, obviously. Your might differ, which is fine. The point is, there isn't a universally accepted scheme for good interfaces. Hell people are still arguing if GUIs in general were really a good idea.
The negative aspect of the internet makes this much worse, it amplifies dissent and problems while completely ignore satisfied users. If I LIKE the new stuff, there isn't really much reason for me to dust off my browser and write up a critique. If I hate it, its the first thing I'm going to do. Thus the internet makes it hard to judge how the reaction to change actually is. It makes it very easy, though, for those who dislike it to conflate themselves into a unified body, and to decide they are a majority. I never take internet winging seriously, waiting for the usage numbers is much more useful. Take the Awesome Bar(tm), people complained about it like it was personally going to cause the end of the world, but Firefox's numbers didn't dip very much.
That said, and while I'm on my offtopic soap box, I think there is a minority of people out there who HATE change. The second the status-quo gets a bit rocky they get inexplicably infuriated. As such, they generally complain much much more than anyone else, crowding out even those people who have actual gripes about the change in question. This is also true in the converse, there is also a group of people who leap on any and every change, no matter how boneheaded or idiotic it is. These people are generally contained in Apple specific forums though, so never bother the rest of us.
This is a failure of marketing and PC hardware companies. Needless to say he wasn't happy when I told him that his 6 year old AGP mobo wouldn't handle a current gen card.
I suppose it actually is a short-term success for the hardware people. They got the money by throwing around a big (somewhat pointless) number. Though in the long term it makes things a bit worse.
I went around 4-5 years without paying attention to the hardware market (I got an iBook for college, and later replaced it with a standard HP laptop), and when I decided to build a new PC I was completely lost. The standards (PCI-AGP-PCIe), industry leaders changed (goodbye AMD), RAM made another almost arbitrary and costly change, half of the companies I was familiar with merged or died, IDE was completely replaced with SATA, etc... Its very hard to expect someone who doesn't want to spend a week reading tech blogs and browsing Tom's Hardware to understand what the hell is going on, much less what to buy to hit the value/performance curve (without spending $6000 for bleeding edge).
The video card makes are the worst of the lot, since they often change their naming conventions just for fun. Whats better a 4800 or a gx200, or a 9800? Is an i7 or i5 worth it, even if you need to spend around $100 extra for the mobo and around $200 extra for the DDR3 RAM? (I decided to stick with AMD, I like my Phenom x4 965 which only cost $200).
Funny thing is, after I built my computer I found a pretty comparable prebuilt one sale at Fry's for almost the same price.
I hate this line of reasoning. People seem to ignore that you have to buy a console, where most people have a PC sitting around already. So the real argument should be the cost of buying versus upgrading, not buying versus buying.
What is the price of upgrading your standard middle-of-the-road Dell, versus buying a whole new gaming console?
I think this equalizes the price a bit, especially since game requirements have gone somewhat stagnant. If you have a modern processor already all you really need is a video card. And you NEVER need the cutting edge $600 model. I've haven't found a game I couldn't play with my old, tragically outdated, Radeon 4700, that I picked up at Fry's for $70. (The rest of my system is a bit excessive, but that is more due to my hobby than strict necessity)
Another thing is that a computer is a multi-purpose tool, a console isn't. So even if you spend around 10% more on a gaming capable computer, you're going to be using it for more, and using it more often.
This last point isn't addressed at you, but at a poster previous to you who's point was that computers aren't as good at gaming, because someone else in the household may want to use it. An argument easily reversed against consoles, most households only have one decent television (HD, large, etc...), so your gaming must stop when someone wants to watch American Idol. Also, I know of more households with multiple computers, than I know with multiple HD-capable, large screen, televisions.
Not saying one is superior to the other, just pointing out that this argument is fraught with fallacies.
FYI, famous supporters of the left are hurt a lot more by entertainment piracy than the right.
FYI, rich entertainment executives of the right are hurt a lot more by entertainment piracy than the left.
Translation: "we're screwed either way."
Yes, lets support dumbing down our population even more!
Personally I love financial aid, it allowed me to go to college, period. Even if somehow chopping out aid lowered tuition 100 fold, I wouldn't have been able to afford it. But I suppose my background implies that I should be stuck in manual labor for the rest of my life. C'est la vie. That seems to fly in the face of; "Education used to be a means of upward social mobility.".
I will gladly accept my small amount of debt in exchange for higher education. That is my personal choice, it was not forced on me, and it doesn't really cause me much loss of sleep at night. If you manage you college load well*, the amount of debt is almost negligible, most people don't, and that is their choice as well. College is not, yet, mandatory, so all this debt is chosen, not enforced. I have no problem with it as such as a result. Its like saying home ownership exists as a means to keep greater portions of the population in debt, which ignores that fact that no one NEEDS to own a home, and they accept mortgages by choice, even ones with terrible terms.
Personally we should accept a more civilized precedent, and lower the financial bar to college further by subsidizing most admissions like some of Europe. The fact that a larger body of the public would be educated far outweigh any of the consequences, IMO. We should be throwing college tuition at anyone who wants it, and who carries a decent GPA, SAT/ACT, or entrance exam score...
* Utilize your local community college to grab as many early credits as you can, at around 1/4 the cost. CC stigma be damned, it saved me around $20k in the long run.
I understand this. But my point was pointing the finger and saying "they are more corrupt than them", or whatnot, is pointless. You can accept grants from big oil, or from some "green" equivalent and NOT be corrupt, so there is some percentage of people working on climate change (in both quarters) who are not corrupt. There is no way of ever finding out who is corrupt or not. Thus the whole argument is rather silly. Especially considering we're talking about science, where your data stands on its own irregardless of the personal attributes of the scientists. I personally don't care whether a researcher is funded through Al Gore's personal pocket book, or through BP, all that matters is the data, and the ability of their peers to verify the claims.
Time, and tons of re-digging through data, will tell who is correct here (my feeling is neither side will be 100% vindicated). In 25-50 years thing will be more clear.
To restate: it doesn't matter much.
So a bunch of professors got together and cleared ... one of their own. No surprise there. You can read the first 2 paragraphs under the "Background of the alleged misconduct" and you can tell right away what the conclusion is going to be by the way it's written.
You must have a different experience with professors and academics than me. Generally it is easier to herd cats, than get two professors to agree with each other. I didn't realize that they all formed an organized cabal.
Who else would you have judge them? Laymen with no experience with the issue, or the vagaries of academe involved?
I have a feeling that even if this happened, the opposition crowd would scream about some other bias that supposedly invalidates the finding. The only way to satisfy the criteria of non-biased and correct is to find in the way you believe, since your opinion is obviously the objective truth.
I think you missed the parent's point.
You said following the money proves that climate scientists are (probably) corrupt. The parent said following the money leads one straight to the doors of the oil industry. Add these statements together and you get a big fat nothing. Meaning these arguments of corruption (or greed) are pretty much completely baseless, or at least completely meaningless.
WTF does that line of reasoning have to do with science, either? Who really cares who funds who? If thats the best someone can get at refuting a theory, I would say they are in a very, very weak position.
SciAm became increasingly dumbed-down, caustically skeptic, and fatally political, which is when I dropped my decades-old subscription. The month they inserted a gratuitous reference to Bush #1 into a summary explanation of something to do with crystal formation (as I recall) was the last month.
Agreed, it is a very depressing thing, since it used to be the best popular science magazines out there. I'm not completely ignorant of science, and still got enjoyment and a bit of education from them, even if they were prone to the "world of tomorrow" problem. (i.e. "something, something, string theory, something, something, branes: all this will lead to some awesome practical thing in the world of tomorrow!").
I, personally, have affirmative suspicions about anthropogenic global warming, but I also think that all of the information should be presented, both agreeing with my opinion, and (more importantly) against it. SciAm started to fail at this, becoming yet another political rag. If I wanted skewed politics I would read The Nation or the Weekly Standard, not a science magazine.
I really am getting sick of being preached at.
The politically incorrect answer is that those people are in the class because of affirmative action, and a college that fails too many affirmative action students winds up with low affirmative action scores and has to "fix" things to keep the federal money.
I probably was one of these students. I'm from a poor background, and thanks to some previous bad life choices, I didn't have the greatest academic history (though I managed to enter with a 3.6 GPA thanks to community college, which is above the depressing 2.0 minimum).
. Now, when I went to school and had to take part in debates, there were always TWO sides presented. Calling a lecture a "debate" makes scientists look silly or stupid at best, dishonest at worst.
I agree this is often a problem, but not all debates need to have views polar to each other. If I'm having an academic debate on evolutionary biology (the process, and theory of), it would be silly to invite a creationist. I'm not saying this is what was in EOS (not reading it), but I can see it being justified.
Not all things should be Fox's definition of "fair and balanced", personally I think that application of the term has helped dumb us down a bit.
I'd also put Morrowind into that category. The worst that could happen for killing random people is a dialog saying "this game is unwinnable", and it dumping you back into your unwinnable game.
Oddly, both Fallouts and Morrowind have taken up more of my life than any other game out there, with the exception of Diablo 2.