When it comes down to it, we collectively agree on what "truth" is. Wikipedia is struggling with how to be an encyclopedia of our knowledge, when we don't collectively agree on what our knowledge is or what the facts are in the first place.
One way or other, the editors at Wikipedia are in the position of being arbiters. They can either be "benevolent arbiters of fact", essentially deciding for us what truth is, or they can be referees making sure the rules Wikipedia establishes are followed but taking a strictly neutral stance on content itself.
They are mostly taking the latter approach, which I think is the best path to stick to. I think they should more conscientiously pursue this path and communicate clearly that they are not an arbiter of fact.
WOW is open to anyone. GayMenChatSite.com is obviously a gay chat site. If WOW is allowed to have frequent anti-gay comments, they should allow gay groups to defend themselves.
>>/ignore users that say things you don't want >>to hear and please don't try to force your Christian >> agenda on the rest of us.
Not a very good analogy. You don't hear Christians casually insulted in the way gays are. (Have you ever heard anyone say "dude, you are so christian"?)
If I have to/ignore people, I am removing myself from participating. I'd rather attack them back than stick my head in the sand.
>>Maybe they would like to forget about all the >>political crap-ola with which we are inundated >>constantly in our activist-infested world for a >>change, and just go somewhere where they don't >>have to think about it.
You want freedom from responsibility -- a one-sided world where you can say whatever you want about anyone and not have them react. You can do that if you are in a group who shares your beliefs, but when you're in mixed public, the civic rules of society apply. The general world of MMORPG is an open forum with lots of diverse people, not just people who like hearing "fag" equated with "bad". If you want a more closed world, create a guild or find another outlet.
If you're straight you probably don't mind hearing "ha ha, dude you got nuked, you are so gay". If you're white, you may not mind hearing "ha ha, dude, you're as dumb as a nigger". (Although whites are MUCH more sensitive to racial prejudice than homophobia.) If you're gay or black or whatever, hearing these kind of casual insults stands out every time and is a slap in the face. You can either choose to suppress your emotions, or deal with them and speak up, or avoid them, e.g. creating a GLBT guild. Just because you may want to insult someone does not mean they have to take it.
I wonder if things like the following were controlled for:
attending church two hours a week vs meditating two hours a week
spending four hours a week building a church-related social network to spending four hours a week building a secular social network
spending two hours a week surrounding yourself with religious peers who conform to a "goody-two-shoes" lifestyle vs belonging to a non-religious peer group with similar "goody-two-shoes" values
Third, assuming this all goes according to Microsoft's plan, and if they do this, and if anti-spyware companies go out of business because their air supplies have been cut off, is Microsoft going to ratchet their price just a wee bit more
Worse: consumers are left having to trust Microsoft that spyware has not been installed. Microsoft could define as spyware any competitive software or technology it feels threatened by, and it could define as non-spyware its own or partners' software which most reasonable people would consider spyware. "That's not spyware. It's data we collect to help your future shopping experience." This is a case where competition (i.e. having a choice of vendors) is important and trusting a monopoly is a very bad idea.
Regarding 2.5: When considering scientists from earlier years, e.g. Galileo's time, it's important to remember the social context they lived in. People were killed for heresy. It was not safe to think or espouse views too contrary to the dogma of the day. Considering that there might be no god was an option they really did not have. Saying they supported the religious doctrine of that time should be evaluated in this light.
Sites like this can be useful for frank discussion of the merrits/failings of a person or company, but they are also frequently abused.
My partner is a professor. He has complained to me about ratemyprofessors.com, where students who are disgrunteled for getting bad grades can write very derogatory and misleading things about their teachers. The site makes no attempt to assess truth, and there's no opportunity for the professor to respond.
This pattern of website gives a sense of anonymity and can be more about freedom from responsible speech rather than freedom of speech.
Yes, my partner could probably find out who made which comment and sue for slander or libel, but that seems like such an extreme measure. Maybe people should sue though. Many people would not post the things they do if they thought they would actually be held responsible for their comments.
A few months ago I bought a new AMD 64-bit processor and mother board. I installed XP Professional 64-bit edition, but the wireless MS mouse and keyboard I had wouldn't work. I couldn't find 64-bit drivers anywhere on MS's site, so I gave them a call. The person on the phone told me the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work with XP 64 and suggested I try another operating system. I asked if she recommmended Red Hat or Gentoo, but she just said, "No comment. Is there anything I can help you with?"
Another factor might be this: Over the last 5 years or so, Hollywood's marketing machine has become increasingly effective at hyping every single movie, making the opening of a movie seem like an event you have to participate in or be forever mitigated to a lowly social rung. This has made movie openings much larger than they were 10 years ago, even for utterly crappy movies. It might take them a while, but eventually people become numb to the hype and these new marketing techniques, and movie attendance drops accordingly.
A friend of mine in the entertainment industry told me that in Episode 6, the ewoks were originally supposed to be wookies. The marketing and merchandising departments convinced Lucas to create ewoks instead, and to make them cute and cuddly and merchandisable. I could believe this because the tree house homes of the ewoks look identical to the tree house homes of the wookies in the SW games. Does anyone know if this was true or not?
Lighthouses are like the RIAA. The conditions that allowed them to flourish have changed, leaving them superfluous. At least in one way, lighthouses have an advantage over the RIAA; they are charming and endearing to many people, and they provide nostaligic pleasure. No one will miss the RIAA.
I disagree that this episode was a sub-text on gay rights, but if it was, I would have more respect for the show. Sci-fi is often at its best when it gives you a slightly distorted mirror to view your own life/society/culture in a new way.
Variability within groups is far greater than variability between groups. This point is lost in most of the discussion here on/. though and is even more likely to be lost in the general population. When it's stated that "men are better at math than women" it's frequently interpreted as "any individual man is better than any individual woman." In reality though, a random individual man has only a very slight chance of being better at math than a random individual woman.
1. Create GM version of common crop and patent. 2. Be sure plant is extremely hearty and aggressive. 3. Let new plant wipe out all natural competition. 4. Profit
Nearly all FPS/RPG/strategy games condition you to expect to be the champion of the world. The game revolves around you, and if you lose or die in a scene, you re-do until you win. In MMO games not everyone can be king, and the hard-core players who have the time to commit get more rewards. The casual players take a noticably lower role. It's a different paradigm. I don't know that everyone realizes this going into a MMO game. They might be expecting a single-player king-of-the-world experience, but instead they they have to be an inconsequential grunt. Some people drop out figuring they get enough of that role in real life.
It's hard to read through the high-minded thinking of the journalists and editors at cnn to guess what they'd identify as a top innovation, but here are my guesses...
Jerry-Springer-style news shows
embedded journalism
the patent-and-sue business model
electronic voting machines
facial recognition software
cnn.com
The George Foreman Grill
If there were any justice in the world it would be:
At work I have to use IE as my default browser. If I used Thunderbird for my mail, every URL embedded in an email would open in IE. I can't tell Thunderbird to override the system browser default for URLs. So rather than using FF/Thunderbird at work, I use Mozilla. Then links in Mozilla Mail open in Mozilla, even though my system default is still IE.
You might actually argue this is somewhat limiting as well since it forces you to use Mozilla, but for my personal needs it's what I wanted to do, so it works out for me.
That's not going to happen over the long run. Just look at the cable industry. When cable started, people payed for it because it didn't have commercials (and it had MTV). The early promise of no commericals eroded pretty quickly though. Games will be like that.
If you get used to seeing ads in games and the games are a little cheaper at first, it won't be long before you're paying just as much for the games as you originally were plus now you have all the sucky ads. Better to resist the ads being there in the first place.
What disincentives could the gaming community introduce to make game producers less likely to place ads in games? One approach would be to refuse to games with ads and encourage others not to. Can anyone think of anything else that might be effective?
Slashdot Mirror
When it comes down to it, we collectively agree on what "truth" is. Wikipedia is struggling with how to be an encyclopedia of our knowledge, when we don't collectively agree on what our knowledge is or what the facts are in the first place.
One way or other, the editors at Wikipedia are in the position of being arbiters. They can either be "benevolent arbiters of fact", essentially deciding for us what truth is, or they can be referees making sure the rules Wikipedia establishes are followed but taking a strictly neutral stance on content itself.
They are mostly taking the latter approach, which I think is the best path to stick to. I think they should more conscientiously pursue this path and communicate clearly that they are not an arbiter of fact.
WOW is open to anyone. GayMenChatSite.com is obviously a gay chat site. If WOW is allowed to have frequent anti-gay comments, they should allow gay groups to defend themselves.
>> /ignore users that say things you don't want
/ignore people, I am removing myself from participating. I'd rather attack them back than stick my head in the sand.
>>to hear and please don't try to force your Christian
>> agenda on the rest of us.
Not a very good analogy. You don't hear Christians casually insulted in the way gays are. (Have you ever heard anyone say "dude, you are so christian"?)
If I have to
>>Maybe they would like to forget about all the
>>political crap-ola with which we are inundated
>>constantly in our activist-infested world for a
>>change, and just go somewhere where they don't
>>have to think about it.
You want freedom from responsibility -- a one-sided world where you can say whatever you want about anyone and not have them react. You can do that if you are in a group who shares your beliefs, but when you're in mixed public, the civic rules of society apply. The general world of MMORPG is an open forum with lots of diverse people, not just people who like hearing "fag" equated with "bad". If you want a more closed world, create a guild or find another outlet.
If you're straight you probably don't mind hearing "ha ha, dude you got nuked, you are so gay". If you're white, you may not mind hearing "ha ha, dude, you're as dumb as a nigger". (Although whites are MUCH more sensitive to racial prejudice than homophobia.) If you're gay or black or whatever, hearing these kind of casual insults stands out every time and is a slap in the face. You can either choose to suppress your emotions, or deal with them and speak up, or avoid them, e.g. creating a GLBT guild. Just because you may want to insult someone does not mean they have to take it.
I consider /. more of a forum than a blog.
Third, assuming this all goes according to Microsoft's plan, and if they do this, and if anti-spyware companies go out of business because their air supplies have been cut off, is Microsoft going to ratchet their price just a wee bit more
Worse: consumers are left having to trust Microsoft that spyware has not been installed. Microsoft could define as spyware any competitive software or technology it feels threatened by, and it could define as non-spyware its own or partners' software which most reasonable people would consider spyware. "That's not spyware. It's data we collect to help your future shopping experience." This is a case where competition (i.e. having a choice of vendors) is important and trusting a monopoly is a very bad idea.
Regarding 2.5: When considering scientists from earlier years, e.g. Galileo's time, it's important to remember the social context they lived in. People were killed for heresy. It was not safe to think or espouse views too contrary to the dogma of the day. Considering that there might be no god was an option they really did not have. Saying they supported the religious doctrine of that time should be evaluated in this light.
Sites like this can be useful for frank discussion of the merrits/failings of a person or company, but they are also frequently abused.
My partner is a professor. He has complained to me about ratemyprofessors.com, where students who are disgrunteled for getting bad grades can write very derogatory and misleading things about their teachers. The site makes no attempt to assess truth, and there's no opportunity for the professor to respond.
This pattern of website gives a sense of anonymity and can be more about freedom from responsible speech rather than freedom of speech.
Yes, my partner could probably find out who made which comment and sue for slander or libel, but that seems like such an extreme measure. Maybe people should sue though. Many people would not post the things they do if they thought they would actually be held responsible for their comments.
A few months ago I bought a new AMD 64-bit processor and mother board. I installed XP Professional 64-bit edition, but the wireless MS mouse and keyboard I had wouldn't work. I couldn't find 64-bit drivers anywhere on MS's site, so I gave them a call. The person on the phone told me the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work with XP 64 and suggested I try another operating system. I asked if she recommmended Red Hat or Gentoo, but she just said, "No comment. Is there anything I can help you with?"
Another factor might be this: Over the last 5 years or so, Hollywood's marketing machine has become increasingly effective at hyping every single movie, making the opening of a movie seem like an event you have to participate in or be forever mitigated to a lowly social rung. This has made movie openings much larger than they were 10 years ago, even for utterly crappy movies. It might take them a while, but eventually people become numb to the hype and these new marketing techniques, and movie attendance drops accordingly.
Despite the criminal connection, it's a net gain for Google in the publicity department.
Can anyone who has experience with this comment on how well this works with various browser versions, older and newer?
A friend of mine in the entertainment industry told me that in Episode 6, the ewoks were originally supposed to be wookies. The marketing and merchandising departments convinced Lucas to create ewoks instead, and to make them cute and cuddly and merchandisable. I could believe this because the tree house homes of the ewoks look identical to the tree house homes of the wookies in the SW games. Does anyone know if this was true or not?
Lighthouses are like the RIAA. The conditions that allowed them to flourish have changed, leaving them superfluous. At least in one way, lighthouses have an advantage over the RIAA; they are charming and endearing to many people, and they provide nostaligic pleasure. No one will miss the RIAA.
I disagree that this episode was a sub-text on gay rights, but if it was, I would have more respect for the show. Sci-fi is often at its best when it gives you a slightly distorted mirror to view your own life/society/culture in a new way.
Variability within groups is far greater than variability between groups. This point is lost in most of the discussion here on /. though and is even more likely to be lost in the general population. When it's stated that "men are better at math than women" it's frequently interpreted as "any individual man is better than any individual woman." In reality though, a random individual man has only a very slight chance of being better at math than a random individual woman.
This list of games is more suited to battling the offerings of today's cell phones than current titles on PCs.
1. Create GM version of common crop and patent.
2. Be sure plant is extremely hearty and aggressive.
3. Let new plant wipe out all natural competition.
4. Profit
Nearly all FPS/RPG/strategy games condition you to expect to be the champion of the world. The game revolves around you, and if you lose or die in a scene, you re-do until you win. In MMO games not everyone can be king, and the hard-core players who have the time to commit get more rewards. The casual players take a noticably lower role. It's a different paradigm. I don't know that everyone realizes this going into a MMO game. They might be expecting a single-player king-of-the-world experience, but instead they they have to be an inconsequential grunt. Some people drop out figuring they get enough of that role in real life.
If there were any justice in the world it would be:
At work I have to use IE as my default browser. If I used Thunderbird for my mail, every URL embedded in an email would open in IE. I can't tell Thunderbird to override the system browser default for URLs. So rather than using FF/Thunderbird at work, I use Mozilla. Then links in Mozilla Mail open in Mozilla, even though my system default is still IE.
You might actually argue this is somewhat limiting as well since it forces you to use Mozilla, but for my personal needs it's what I wanted to do, so it works out for me.
Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
That's not going to happen over the long run. Just look at the cable industry. When cable started, people payed for it because it didn't have commercials (and it had MTV). The early promise of no commericals eroded pretty quickly though. Games will be like that.
If you get used to seeing ads in games and the games are a little cheaper at first, it won't be long before you're paying just as much for the games as you originally were plus now you have all the sucky ads. Better to resist the ads being there in the first place.
What disincentives could the gaming community introduce to make game producers less likely to place ads in games? One approach would be to refuse to games with ads and encourage others not to. Can anyone think of anything else that might be effective?