The difference, of course, is that grants are given based on your planned experiments / studies, and not on the results of those experiments -- there may be some early/partial results known, but the whole point of the grant is to do a more in-depth study that will, ideally, give more accurate and useful results -- and a full analysis may even (in fact, hopefully will) give a different and much more complete picture than what was known at the beginning. If grants were awarded primarily on the conclusion of a study rather than the methodology, that would also be an enormous and unethical conflict of interest -- just like the "funding" described in this article.
"Net Neutrality is not about the type of traffic, its about the source of the traffic."
Says who? I think treating different protocols equally is necessary to allow innovation in new protocols and applications. Likewise, clients and servers should be treated equally IMO.
You are welcome to that opinion, though a lot of people would disagree (I would suggest that it's something of a non sequitur to say different protocols should be "treated equally," since it's frequently unclear what that would even mean, since the protocols are, after all, different) -- however, we weren't discussing the merits of general bandwidth allocation strategy, we were discussing the specific issue of Net Neutrality (capital Ns), which came up in congress last year, and again now. So the GP's statement wasn't an opinion about the relative importance of type versus source of traffic, it was a factual statement about the definition of the term.
If you want to get pedantic about "Says who?", I suppose the answer would be the congresspeople and their staff who drafted the bill that we are now indirectly discussing...
Somebody mod this up! Why on earth more people aren't pointing this out is beyond me. Stupid articles like this are, judging from the comments, convincing more people that net neutrality is a bad idea, when in fact net neutrality and BitTorrent are utterly orthogonal issues.
Come on, it's hard enough explaining to my family why net neutrality is important without tech sites getting the issue completely wrong...
This is my recollection as well. I also recall that after the bill was proposed, the big cable/telcos started running counter-factual advertisements in TV and newspapers, essentially saying "Google wants to raise your Internet bill! Stop them!" -- which even those who oppose net neutrality ought to agree is not really correct. But this widespread dishonest behavior does suggest that, even if the major bandwidth providers had not yet started the tiered bandwidth charges the bill was meant to prevent, they still had (have) an interest in doing so in the future. So this is something that will need to be dealt with sooner or later...
I live in a major city, and have only one option for bandwidth (besides dialup): Comcast. Or somebody else, Earthlink or something, that also goes through Comcast (when I used them, I still had to call Comcast for my tech support). I can't use DSL, my building doesn't support it. Actually, despite living in a number of large urban/suburban areas, I have never yet lived in a single place where I had the option of DSL, or more than one cable network.
I see some variant of your post almost every time net neutrality comes up, but let me assure you: if Comcast decides I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google, I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google.
How is this different from the current situation? Providers already treat different content differently, and some providers block certain ports / content types entirely. Is there something in current law that would prevent them from (e.g.) degrading VoIP, that will lose effect after this law passes? (For example, if telcos could be prosecuted under anti-trust laws for this behavior, they probably could after the law is passed as well, even if the law doesn't specifically restrict VoIP degradation -- it's not the action itself that's illegal, but the conflict of interests / abuse of monopoly power it entails.)
GTHD (US and Japan) and Toro Station (Japan only). Those two are free, and Tekken 5 DR just came out as a download exclusive, which is not a bad deal for 2000Yen.
It's a considerably bad deal when you factor in the price of the console. Is there some reason it's plausible that a sizable fraction of the market would buy a $600 (or marginally less in Japan) next-gen machine just for the free downloadable content? It seems like you're claiming that these games explain why lots of people would buy a PS3 and not actually buy any games for it...
For a long time there was nothing on the Live Arcade worth downloading other than Geometry Wars.
Alright, fair enough. I haven't played the 360 content myself, I just remember hearing people talk about it early on -- though Geometry Wars is the only one I know by name. In contrast, though, I wasn't even aware of the (current) downloadable content on the PS3, just that it's supposed to be cool eventually. Anyway, your listing a couple downloadable titles doesn't make it clear to me that the PS3's downloadable content is so far superior to the 360's that people would spend substantially more money and then not even get any games.
You account for the higher 360 ratio by retail bundles, whereas you say you didn't buy any games for the first year. So evidently bundling wasn't so pervasive as to keep you from doing it, but you're saying that it was a big enough obstacle that many people who would otherwise have bought the 360 by itself, and bought only 0 or 1 games over the first [substantial stretch of time], were still willing to spend substantially more on bundles just to get the system itself? Is there evidence for this? It sounds like a huge stretch. Is there any evidence at all for a substantial market of consumers who want to buy the 360 or PS3 just for downloadable and/or rented content, and would not choose to buy even a single game? In the absence of hard evidence, I'll settle for suggestive statistics of almost any kind (other than the less-than-1 PS3 tie ratio, which is what we're debating in the first place) -- it just sounds like such an implausible claim that I can't see how it would be backed up. The fact that many retailers offered the 360 as a bundle may raise the tie ratio slightly, but it hardly proves that people otherwise wouldn't have bought any games...
Don't forget that many people buy the PS3 as a Blu-Ray disc player.
Is there any evidence for this? There certainly hasn't been any hype or media coverage of this phenomenon -- I don't think people were camping out in order to obtain a Blu-Ray player. This may account for some of the market, but unless there is evidence I really doubt it's a sizable percentage, certainly not enough to explain the poor game sales all by itself...
During the first year of my 360 ownership, the tie ratio was *zero*. All I played were the demo of Geometry Wars, other downloadable demos, and some rentals. I finally bought RR6 recently when it dropped down to $15 at Fry's.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is highly atypical behavior, and not a major driving force in the console market. Especially on the PS3, which as far as I know doesn't (yet) have much killer downloadable content like the 360 seemed to out of the gate. The tie ratio of the 360, which was substantially above zero in the first year, seems to back this up. The point isn't that everyone is expected to buy a certain number of games -- the point is that on average, people are buying far fewer games per PS3 (an average of less than 1 is pretty unheard-of, it may be a first in console history, I'm not sure) than they are for any other system. So, sure, you didn't buy any 360 games, but most people did, and that isn't happening on the PS3 yet.
I guess we'll get a better picture when Final Fantasy and MGS and the rest start arriving...
It's nothing new, but the changing technology has made the same behavior more ridiculous.
In the old model, stores wouldn't stock every possible album, so it made sense to tailor albums to particular regions, so stores could buy the one most likely to be bought by their customers.
Now there is, roughly speaking, one store. They can afford to stock everything, they have nothing to lose by doing so (in contrast to the limited physical space and economic investment an in-person store could use). Now, perhaps it still makes sense to market certain things to certain regions -- if I search for something, maybe it will tell me about certain results first, or maybe I'll need to do an extra click to find the more "obscure" music, but there's no fundamental reason (as opposed to legal/licensing conflicts that benefit nobody, leading only to fewer sales) not to let me buy things that aren't being marketed here.
It is still the same old behavior, but the physical constraints that legitimized that behavior are now gone, and the behavior should change accordingly.
I'm not sure I agree with the GP -- however, as partial support for his claim, I believe that at least in Japan, the tie ratio (number of games sold / number of consoles sold) for the PS3 is less than one, which is pretty damning. I don't think that's true in the US, but I believe the ratio is still much worse than the Wii...
I share your skepticism that this means most are being bought to resell, but I think it does at least suggest a statistically significant chunk of them.
Assuming everything else is realistic (which is questionable), growth would be roughly quadratic, not exponential (at least after an early saturation point) -- things would likely spread out in a growing sphere around the origin. Exponential growth is not sustainable in a finite-dimensional geometry...
As a fallback position, they'll try to discredit one particular media outlet ("Time" isn't "Science"!)...
But discrediting one particular outlet isn't the point -- popular media is not the same as scientific journals. The media talked about global cooling, sure, but there was no scientific consensus about this being a real danger. There were no credible journal articles about this being a serious danger, this was exclusively a phenomenon of the mass media (and, as you say, some classrooms...)
With global warming, however, there is substantial scientific consensus, and many many credible journal articles.
The average citizen is perfectly capable of understanding this distinction. It isn't a hard one. The difficulty arises when the average citizen is lied to, and told that the degree of consensus now is the same as the degree of consensus then -- and then, who is average citizen going to believe? There is a clear difference, but when people in power devote themselves to lying about it, it makes things a lot more difficult...
Not exactly -- the incompleteness theorem doesn't apply directly to this sort of computational situation. The theorem says that any (strong enough) system will have statements that are true but unprovable. But it is still perfectly possible, for example, to enumerate all provable theorems (you'll get to all of them... eventually...) -- on the other hand, there isn't an obvious correlation between logical statements/proofs and "universes"... in considering "possible universes" there is nothing to prove, only possibilities to enumerate.
The incompleteness theorem is related to computation, but it doesn't quite apply in this (extremely theoretical) sort of context...
This actually computes all universes -- not just ours.
Mild correction: It "computes" all universes that can be represented as a finite Turing Machine. There could be, for instance, universes in which the fundamental laws of physics give rise to computational behavior that is, in our universe, "uncomputable." (Maybe there's a subatomic particle whose behavior corresponds to the halting problem? Not in our universe, probably, but there's no fundamental reason to rule it out from the set of "all universes"...)
Of course, we could also debate whether running a computer program is the same as creating a universe, but that's a fundamental philosophical question for another day. But I would at least argue, by a halting-problem-type argument, that no computer could generate a universe as complicated as the one in which the computer originates. So, any "universes" we may be able to create that way would have to be noticeably simpler than our own.
For instance, given the fact that none of the disciples wrote the gospels, how valid do you accept words with the red letters to be?
This depends on who you ask, of course. Fundamentalists would tend towards saying that every single word is exactly literally as it happened, which seems kind of silly since I doubt the writers of the gospels were all claiming to have both 1. been present for every individual incident described, and 2. have photographic memories.
The more historical perspective (meaning the one held through the majority of church history) would be that the books aren't intended to be word-for-word transcriptions of Jesus' life, but were selected very early in church history, from among several accounts, as being the ones that faithfully represented Christian teachings and the essentials of Jesus' life. The question of exactly who wrote and/or edited the accounts, while still significant, becomes less worrisome in that sense: the gospels were widely considered, around that time, to be representative of Christ's work, whereas the claim of complete authorship by certain individuals is more of a loose tradition than a Fundamental Doctrine. The people who selected these gospels were very closely linked to Jesus' original followers (assuming, of course, you believe the admittedly sketchy historical data we have from that time), so if we are trying to take Jesus' teachings seriously, these books and other teachings from that time are probably our best bet.
Do you simply accept the most reasonable sounding interpretation and run with that?
Actually, I hope it won't scare you off of the discussion when I confess that I am Catholic;) (Actually, I'm still in the process of being confirmed -- I was raised Evangelical Protestant, which is far too fundamentalist for my taste.) Now, the simplistic answer is that I would be generally inclined to go with the interpretation of the Catholic Church, but that really is too simplistic, so let me explain a little.
First, this doesn't mean you stop thinking about things, or questioning -- despite well-publicized counterexamples such as Galileo, the church generally encourages the use of reason. On some points there is also a lot of disagreement, as you might expect in any group of a billion people. But to talk specifically about the area the thread started with: the church has doctrines on "just war" that aren't found explicitly in the Bible, but were developed over centuries, as theologians tried to apply Christian principles to different concrete situations. Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot about just war in particular. Among other things, church doctrine pretty much entirely rules out preemption or imperialism. A lot of American media seemed perplexed by the Pope's public opposition to the Iraq war (which was on essentially these grounds), because they were used to the more militaristic perspective of American religion I already mentioned. Similarly, the Catholic church completely condemns torture for any reason.
Now, individuals can debate the extent to which these extra-Biblical doctrines are "binding" on Christians -- obviously and unfortunately, not all Christians, or even all Catholics, actually follow the church's teachings on war or torture. But like I was describing, these doctrines were developed over the last two thousand years, by theologians and philosophers who studied the issues extensively, so if nothing else, if you're trying to apply Biblical/Christian principles to issues like this, it's a good idea to at least consider what people like that have said about it, and to give that established doctrine some amount of weight when making your own decisions.
I suspect you are wary of the Catholic church for the reasons you mention -- the church does claim the authority to correctly interpret the Bible and determine doctrine. There's a couple things mitigating this: first, while the church does claim that authority, it is generally very slow to exercise that au
I'm not saying all of their scientists are bad apples (they do some good research there), but the agency as a whole untainted as unbiased scientific researchers (as they know who butters their bread) and all the stuff that comes out of the door there should be taken with a grain of salt.
I don't think the comments were objecting because they believed that everything coming out of USGS was completely unbiased. As you say, they've started external peer reviews, and that's great. But filtering everything through the white house is a step in the wrong direction. People aren't objecting because the prior situation was perfect, but because the new situation is even worse.
On one level I understand your objection here, and sympathize. But at the same time, it seems like you're so set on believing that Christianity and/or the Bible supports violence and intolerance that you ignore thousands of years worth of philosophy concerning exactly your objection (i.e. the use of violence, the justification for war, what have you), and insist, contrary to the explicit statements of countless theologians, and most major Christian groups (American fundamentalists notwithstanding), that Christianity supports this kind of behavior.
Now, obviously there are instances where Christianity has been used for these purposes, but since this religion dominated Western society for nearly two millenia it's inappropriate to take every instance of abuse as proof that Christianity really teaches something other than what most of its leaders and adherents claim. In such a large society, over such a long timespan, homogeneity is impossible, nor is it reasonable to expect everyone across that span to live up to Christian teachings all the time.
So, I understand your concerns, but you should understand that in a religion that has been developing for as long as Christianity has, you are not the first person to have them. Your claim is oversimplifying based on a very narrow perspective of the Bible and Christian doctrine in general, and is just as inaccurate as saying that, say, Islam supports terrorism.
And as for my "annotated version"... I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that an ancient book, compiled piecewise over thousands of years, encompassing drastically different societies, different languages, and containing history, philosophy, allegory, legislation, prophecy, biography and who knows what else all mixed together, has a little bit more to it than can be gleaned by looking at specific incidents, out of context, from a modern post-enlightenment perspective, without any annotation or additional study. That additional context, in the form of writings and philosophy from throughout church history, is readily available in most bookstores.
Anyway. My point is just, your concerns are reasonable, but it's drastically oversimplifying things to assume that's the only legitimate perspective on the issue.
And, for whatever it's worth, even if you think yours is the proper interpretation of the Bible, perhaps you can take comfort in knowing that most of the Christian world disagrees with you, and is therefore less likely to go around killing unbelievers. Even in the US, which is a rather skewed and violent cross-section of worldwide Christianity at the moment...
You cannot really condemn one game without condemning them all.
I'm curious how you back up this statement. I'm quite certain there are people who condemn GTA without condemning Mario. (Does Wal-Mart even sell GTA? I didn't think they sold games like that...)
Anyway, the reason I think this game is disturbing in a way many other violent games are not, is that other violent games make no pretense of presenting the way moral human beings should actually behave. Shooting a counter-terrorist in Counterstrike, I never once entertained the possibility that this game and its creators believed I ought to take hostages and hide in some building with automatic weapons to attack anyone who tried to stop me. It's just a fun game to play. But Left Behind really presents that when the hammer falls, Christians had better get to converting, and if they can't convert someone, well they'd better kill them. (Though after they kill the unbelievers, they need to pray and go to church, to compensate and make sure they're still Christians.) Then there's the race issues on top of the violence, which just makes it even more twisted.
As others have pointed out, this isn't much different from the philosophy of the original novels, which I also find disturbing. Because of all these reasons, I think it's entirely possible for me to condemn this game without condemning every game ever made. I'm not saying the creators don't have the right to make the game, and the government certainly shouldn't be able to stop them, but I am saying that as a society we should discourage this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech
No, this is the fortunate part.
and selling it is completely up to Wal-Mart and other retailers.
True. But Wal-Mart has a record of not selling items that might lead to... how to phrase it... moral outrage?(*) Especially since this game is presenting itself as "Christian," and thus if it was at Wal-Mart some oblivious parents might buy it for their children, assuming it to be a very different game than it actually is.
A lot of people get mixed up about "free speech" and "free market" on this score: Free speech means you are allowed to say whatever you want. Free market means that society can make a deliberate choice to ignore what you say. Moral outrage and disgust are market forces (just ask Tom Cruise how MI3 did:P), whether you like it or not, and market forces restricting where something can be sold do not limit free speech.
For example: Wal-Mart does not sell pornography. If they chose to, it would be their right, but a lot of people who shop there would probably be offended by it and would shop there less -- moral outrage as a market force. Since there is still a sizable part of the population that is interested in buying pornography, other retailers handle the demand for such things, and free speech is not impinged upon.
All of which is just to say, there's nothing wrong with asking Wal-Mart not to sell this game. (Heck, even in GTA the game isn't pretending that killing hookers is the Good Christian Thing To Do. The whole appeal of something like GTA is that this isn't how you behave, or ever should behave, in real life.)
(*) (Meaning the items themselves don't cause moral outrage. It's fine if their production methods cause moral outrage.)
I look at it this way, if those Christian readers who take offense at the game were not offended by the books then they are just hypocritical.
Good point -- I'm a Christian reader and I'm offended also by the books. For pretty much the same reason people are offended by the game -- they present a twisted, militaristic, legalistic view of Christianity that completely leaves out one of the two "greatest commandments," that is, to love your neighbor.
Well, "offended" is maybe the wrong word -- I'm more worried than offended, because the books are so popular. I could laugh them off more easily if they didn't seem to accurately represent the views of a sizable minority of Christians in the US.
Christians are set as the opposing force, after all its a book from Christians about a story in Bible.
Allow me to nitpick here: I've read the Bible, and I never saw that story. The closest it came is a lot of apocalyptic, highly symbolic imagery, especially around Revelation. The writers of these books, and some other Christians, have chosen to interpret that imagery as an explicit, highly literal timeline of events during the apocalypse. They are free to argue for this interpretation (though I strongly disagree), but it is drastically oversimplifying to say this view is "in the Bible," since no one noticed it was in the Bible until at least the 1800s or so. That is, this peculiar literal spin on unclear prophetic imagery is something that no one even thought of until very recently in history.
So, you can try to argue that this interpretation is the correct one, but the blanket assertion that these people are just "telling a story that's in the Bible" is inaccurate.
If any of your units kills another unit, they lose spirit points. Only through prayer and inspirational music (who defines inspirational anyway, but I digress...) and good sermons can you increase the spirit points
Uhm. So, yeah, killing someone loses you "spirit points," but darn it, if they were evil then it was probably necessary, and it'll be fine as long as you pray hard afterwards, and go to good sermons (which, evidently, don't delve too deeply into the "You shall not murder" commandment? Well, anyway.)
It sounds truly horrifying. You can maybe say that it isn't horrifying to quite the degree the summaries are saying, but it's a grotesquely twisted view of morality, of Christianity, of the goodness (or lack thereof) of the human soul, and so on. I'd much prefer more conventional games of this type, where we deliberately invoke the "this is just fiction" card and openly acknowledge that this isn't how one should behave in reality. In any case, I strongly disagree with your claim that the article is "misleading," since the ways in which the game "discourages killing" seem like splitting hairs to me -- it "discourages" it in a way that still requires you to kill unbelievers. But you should feel bad and pray about it afterwards. I don't see a substantial moral difference here...
As far as the Crusades, Inquisition, etc., if you actually look at what transpired there, it had very little to do with true Christianity.
It is depressing, but yes they are serious. However, though I don't believe Colbert has covered it, the game did make an appearance on "This Week In God" with Rob Corddry on the Daily Show...
It would be a lot easier for me to laugh about the whole thing, though, if the book series wasn't so very popular...
Just as interesting is the development of automatic weapons, nuclear weapons, mass production... all of which lend themselves to easy, bloody wars.
Alright. You can at least argue that these types of wars would have happened earlier if the technology existed, though in my opinion something like e.g. the Holocaust was only in small part enabled by technology, and was much more of a social issue. Despite widespread anti-Jewish sentiment throughout much of Western history, the 20th century was the first real systematic attempt at wholesale extermination, even though there was no real technological barrier to attempting this earlier.
But my point wasn't just that a rationalistic outlook causes bloody wars. I was just trying to refute the earlier claim that religion causes such wars in a way that a "rational" outlook is not susceptible to. I don't think this is true -- wars both reasonable and unreasonable continue unabated.
So are you telling me that skyscrapers were raised, national grids plotted and the internet itself put together... through emotional power?
Of course not. I'm distinguishing between reason as a tool for accomplishments, versus a motivation for those accomplishments. In saying that people's behavior (in general, but especially in serious conflicts of the type the earlier poster suggested reason could resolve) is very frequently more based on emotion than on reason.
This doesn't mean they don't use reason to achieve their ends, e.g. to plan/build power grids and skyscrapers, as you point out, but it does mean that resolving questions like "Should we build a skyscraper here?" or "Who has the better claim to the West Bank?" are not just a matter of rigorously applied reason. Such practical questions always come with some prior set of assumptions and priorities, and these almost never match between opposing parties -- and reason can only be rigorously applied (even in principle) from some common set of mutually agreed premises.
Also the OP wasn't talking about eliminating emotion through logic, although it may be very trendy in slashdot groupthink to mouth that meme of an exceptionally hackneyed 1970's sci-fi show.
Err. This wasn't a sci-fi meme, and I didn't get my opinion on this subject from slashdot. But you misinterpreted my opinion anyway, so let me clarify:
The OP suggested that violent conflict, caused by religion, can be prevented by the use of reason. I disagree, for a number of reasons, but my point in the section you reference is that very, very few human beings (if any -- but I'm willing to grant their existence, for the sake of argument) are even capable of applying reasoning in such a consistent and objective way that their opinions on, say, the ownership of the West Bank, will be entirely decided by pure logic applied to uncontested fact. Even if such an approach were possible, it doesn't work for most people, and a recipe for "world peace" that requires only that we ignore 99.9% of humanity is in the end untenable. (I'd argue that the approach isn't possible in the first place: there are far too few "uncontested facts" from which to reason, and any conclusion about it in either direction comes with a huge amount of baggage in terms of implicit assumptions.)
I wasn't saying that reason and emotion can't coexist -- obviously they can, and very productively. I'm just providing a pile of counterexamples to the original claim that violence wouldn't be a problem if only people behaved rationally.
I didn't go on at length about this point, but other posters also mentioned that it's entirely reasonable to argue that under the right circumstances, I could decide that the *rational* thing to do would be to kill other people and take their resources for myself. You can argue against that on a practical basis in current society (someone who used that strategy probably wouldn't end up the better for it), but if we don't assume a
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They're called "grants"
The difference, of course, is that grants are given based on your planned experiments / studies, and not on the results of those experiments -- there may be some early/partial results known, but the whole point of the grant is to do a more in-depth study that will, ideally, give more accurate and useful results -- and a full analysis may even (in fact, hopefully will) give a different and much more complete picture than what was known at the beginning. If grants were awarded primarily on the conclusion of a study rather than the methodology, that would also be an enormous and unethical conflict of interest -- just like the "funding" described in this article.
"Net Neutrality is not about the type of traffic, its about the source of the traffic."
Says who? I think treating different protocols equally is necessary to allow innovation in new protocols and applications. Likewise, clients and servers should be treated equally IMO.
You are welcome to that opinion, though a lot of people would disagree (I would suggest that it's something of a non sequitur to say different protocols should be "treated equally," since it's frequently unclear what that would even mean, since the protocols are, after all, different) -- however, we weren't discussing the merits of general bandwidth allocation strategy, we were discussing the specific issue of Net Neutrality (capital Ns), which came up in congress last year, and again now. So the GP's statement wasn't an opinion about the relative importance of type versus source of traffic, it was a factual statement about the definition of the term.
If you want to get pedantic about "Says who?", I suppose the answer would be the congresspeople and their staff who drafted the bill that we are now indirectly discussing...
Somebody mod this up! Why on earth more people aren't pointing this out is beyond me. Stupid articles like this are, judging from the comments, convincing more people that net neutrality is a bad idea, when in fact net neutrality and BitTorrent are utterly orthogonal issues.
Come on, it's hard enough explaining to my family why net neutrality is important without tech sites getting the issue completely wrong...
This is my recollection as well. I also recall that after the bill was proposed, the big cable/telcos started running counter-factual advertisements in TV and newspapers, essentially saying "Google wants to raise your Internet bill! Stop them!" -- which even those who oppose net neutrality ought to agree is not really correct. But this widespread dishonest behavior does suggest that, even if the major bandwidth providers had not yet started the tiered bandwidth charges the bill was meant to prevent, they still had (have) an interest in doing so in the future. So this is something that will need to be dealt with sooner or later...
I live in a major city, and have only one option for bandwidth (besides dialup): Comcast. Or somebody else, Earthlink or something, that also goes through Comcast (when I used them, I still had to call Comcast for my tech support). I can't use DSL, my building doesn't support it. Actually, despite living in a number of large urban/suburban areas, I have never yet lived in a single place where I had the option of DSL, or more than one cable network.
I see some variant of your post almost every time net neutrality comes up, but let me assure you: if Comcast decides I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google, I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google.
How is this different from the current situation? Providers already treat different content differently, and some providers block certain ports / content types entirely. Is there something in current law that would prevent them from (e.g.) degrading VoIP, that will lose effect after this law passes? (For example, if telcos could be prosecuted under anti-trust laws for this behavior, they probably could after the law is passed as well, even if the law doesn't specifically restrict VoIP degradation -- it's not the action itself that's illegal, but the conflict of interests / abuse of monopoly power it entails.)
GTHD (US and Japan) and Toro Station (Japan only). Those two are free, and Tekken 5 DR just came out as a download exclusive, which is not a bad deal for 2000Yen.
It's a considerably bad deal when you factor in the price of the console. Is there some reason it's plausible that a sizable fraction of the market would buy a $600 (or marginally less in Japan) next-gen machine just for the free downloadable content? It seems like you're claiming that these games explain why lots of people would buy a PS3 and not actually buy any games for it...
For a long time there was nothing on the Live Arcade worth downloading other than Geometry Wars.
Alright, fair enough. I haven't played the 360 content myself, I just remember hearing people talk about it early on -- though Geometry Wars is the only one I know by name. In contrast, though, I wasn't even aware of the (current) downloadable content on the PS3, just that it's supposed to be cool eventually. Anyway, your listing a couple downloadable titles doesn't make it clear to me that the PS3's downloadable content is so far superior to the 360's that people would spend substantially more money and then not even get any games.
You account for the higher 360 ratio by retail bundles, whereas you say you didn't buy any games for the first year. So evidently bundling wasn't so pervasive as to keep you from doing it, but you're saying that it was a big enough obstacle that many people who would otherwise have bought the 360 by itself, and bought only 0 or 1 games over the first [substantial stretch of time], were still willing to spend substantially more on bundles just to get the system itself? Is there evidence for this? It sounds like a huge stretch. Is there any evidence at all for a substantial market of consumers who want to buy the 360 or PS3 just for downloadable and/or rented content, and would not choose to buy even a single game? In the absence of hard evidence, I'll settle for suggestive statistics of almost any kind (other than the less-than-1 PS3 tie ratio, which is what we're debating in the first place) -- it just sounds like such an implausible claim that I can't see how it would be backed up. The fact that many retailers offered the 360 as a bundle may raise the tie ratio slightly, but it hardly proves that people otherwise wouldn't have bought any games...
Don't forget that many people buy the PS3 as a Blu-Ray disc player.
Is there any evidence for this? There certainly hasn't been any hype or media coverage of this phenomenon -- I don't think people were camping out in order to obtain a Blu-Ray player. This may account for some of the market, but unless there is evidence I really doubt it's a sizable percentage, certainly not enough to explain the poor game sales all by itself...
During the first year of my 360 ownership, the tie ratio was *zero*. All I played were the demo of Geometry Wars, other downloadable demos, and some rentals. I finally bought RR6 recently when it dropped down to $15 at Fry's.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is highly atypical behavior, and not a major driving force in the console market. Especially on the PS3, which as far as I know doesn't (yet) have much killer downloadable content like the 360 seemed to out of the gate. The tie ratio of the 360, which was substantially above zero in the first year, seems to back this up. The point isn't that everyone is expected to buy a certain number of games -- the point is that on average, people are buying far fewer games per PS3 (an average of less than 1 is pretty unheard-of, it may be a first in console history, I'm not sure) than they are for any other system. So, sure, you didn't buy any 360 games, but most people did, and that isn't happening on the PS3 yet.
I guess we'll get a better picture when Final Fantasy and MGS and the rest start arriving...
It's nothing new, but the changing technology has made the same behavior more ridiculous.
In the old model, stores wouldn't stock every possible album, so it made sense to tailor albums to particular regions, so stores could buy the one most likely to be bought by their customers.
Now there is, roughly speaking, one store. They can afford to stock everything, they have nothing to lose by doing so (in contrast to the limited physical space and economic investment an in-person store could use). Now, perhaps it still makes sense to market certain things to certain regions -- if I search for something, maybe it will tell me about certain results first, or maybe I'll need to do an extra click to find the more "obscure" music, but there's no fundamental reason (as opposed to legal/licensing conflicts that benefit nobody, leading only to fewer sales) not to let me buy things that aren't being marketed here.
It is still the same old behavior, but the physical constraints that legitimized that behavior are now gone, and the behavior should change accordingly.
I'm not sure I agree with the GP -- however, as partial support for his claim, I believe that at least in Japan, the tie ratio (number of games sold / number of consoles sold) for the PS3 is less than one, which is pretty damning. I don't think that's true in the US, but I believe the ratio is still much worse than the Wii...
I share your skepticism that this means most are being bought to resell, but I think it does at least suggest a statistically significant chunk of them.
So, by "following the money", they'd potentially catch honest traders as well as those running the scam.
Well, the scheme you describe may be legal, but I don't know if I'd call it "honest"...
Assuming everything else is realistic (which is questionable), growth would be roughly quadratic, not exponential (at least after an early saturation point) -- things would likely spread out in a growing sphere around the origin. Exponential growth is not sustainable in a finite-dimensional geometry...
As a fallback position, they'll try to discredit one particular media outlet ("Time" isn't "Science"!)...
But discrediting one particular outlet isn't the point -- popular media is not the same as scientific journals. The media talked about global cooling, sure, but there was no scientific consensus about this being a real danger. There were no credible journal articles about this being a serious danger, this was exclusively a phenomenon of the mass media (and, as you say, some classrooms...)
With global warming, however, there is substantial scientific consensus, and many many credible journal articles.
The average citizen is perfectly capable of understanding this distinction. It isn't a hard one. The difficulty arises when the average citizen is lied to, and told that the degree of consensus now is the same as the degree of consensus then -- and then, who is average citizen going to believe? There is a clear difference, but when people in power devote themselves to lying about it, it makes things a lot more difficult...
Not exactly -- the incompleteness theorem doesn't apply directly to this sort of computational situation. The theorem says that any (strong enough) system will have statements that are true but unprovable. But it is still perfectly possible, for example, to enumerate all provable theorems (you'll get to all of them... eventually...) -- on the other hand, there isn't an obvious correlation between logical statements/proofs and "universes"... in considering "possible universes" there is nothing to prove, only possibilities to enumerate.
The incompleteness theorem is related to computation, but it doesn't quite apply in this (extremely theoretical) sort of context...
This actually computes all universes -- not just ours.
Mild correction: It "computes" all universes that can be represented as a finite Turing Machine. There could be, for instance, universes in which the fundamental laws of physics give rise to computational behavior that is, in our universe, "uncomputable." (Maybe there's a subatomic particle whose behavior corresponds to the halting problem? Not in our universe, probably, but there's no fundamental reason to rule it out from the set of "all universes"...)
Of course, we could also debate whether running a computer program is the same as creating a universe, but that's a fundamental philosophical question for another day. But I would at least argue, by a halting-problem-type argument, that no computer could generate a universe as complicated as the one in which the computer originates. So, any "universes" we may be able to create that way would have to be noticeably simpler than our own.
Neal Stephenson wasn't a celebrity when he wrote Snow Crash.....
For instance, given the fact that none of the disciples wrote the gospels, how valid do you accept words with the red letters to be?
This depends on who you ask, of course. Fundamentalists would tend towards saying that every single word is exactly literally as it happened, which seems kind of silly since I doubt the writers of the gospels were all claiming to have both 1. been present for every individual incident described, and 2. have photographic memories.
The more historical perspective (meaning the one held through the majority of church history) would be that the books aren't intended to be word-for-word transcriptions of Jesus' life, but were selected very early in church history, from among several accounts, as being the ones that faithfully represented Christian teachings and the essentials of Jesus' life. The question of exactly who wrote and/or edited the accounts, while still significant, becomes less worrisome in that sense: the gospels were widely considered, around that time, to be representative of Christ's work, whereas the claim of complete authorship by certain individuals is more of a loose tradition than a Fundamental Doctrine. The people who selected these gospels were very closely linked to Jesus' original followers (assuming, of course, you believe the admittedly sketchy historical data we have from that time), so if we are trying to take Jesus' teachings seriously, these books and other teachings from that time are probably our best bet.
Do you simply accept the most reasonable sounding interpretation and run with that?
Actually, I hope it won't scare you off of the discussion when I confess that I am Catholic ;) (Actually, I'm still in the process of being confirmed -- I was raised Evangelical Protestant, which is far too fundamentalist for my taste.) Now, the simplistic answer is that I would be generally inclined to go with the interpretation of the Catholic Church, but that really is too simplistic, so let me explain a little.
First, this doesn't mean you stop thinking about things, or questioning -- despite well-publicized counterexamples such as Galileo, the church generally encourages the use of reason. On some points there is also a lot of disagreement, as you might expect in any group of a billion people. But to talk specifically about the area the thread started with: the church has doctrines on "just war" that aren't found explicitly in the Bible, but were developed over centuries, as theologians tried to apply Christian principles to different concrete situations. Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot about just war in particular. Among other things, church doctrine pretty much entirely rules out preemption or imperialism. A lot of American media seemed perplexed by the Pope's public opposition to the Iraq war (which was on essentially these grounds), because they were used to the more militaristic perspective of American religion I already mentioned. Similarly, the Catholic church completely condemns torture for any reason.
Now, individuals can debate the extent to which these extra-Biblical doctrines are "binding" on Christians -- obviously and unfortunately, not all Christians, or even all Catholics, actually follow the church's teachings on war or torture. But like I was describing, these doctrines were developed over the last two thousand years, by theologians and philosophers who studied the issues extensively, so if nothing else, if you're trying to apply Biblical/Christian principles to issues like this, it's a good idea to at least consider what people like that have said about it, and to give that established doctrine some amount of weight when making your own decisions.
I suspect you are wary of the Catholic church for the reasons you mention -- the church does claim the authority to correctly interpret the Bible and determine doctrine. There's a couple things mitigating this: first, while the church does claim that authority, it is generally very slow to exercise that au
I'm not saying all of their scientists are bad apples (they do some good research there), but the agency as a whole untainted as unbiased scientific researchers (as they know who butters their bread) and all the stuff that comes out of the door there should be taken with a grain of salt.
I don't think the comments were objecting because they believed that everything coming out of USGS was completely unbiased. As you say, they've started external peer reviews, and that's great. But filtering everything through the white house is a step in the wrong direction. People aren't objecting because the prior situation was perfect, but because the new situation is even worse.
On one level I understand your objection here, and sympathize. But at the same time, it seems like you're so set on believing that Christianity and/or the Bible supports violence and intolerance that you ignore thousands of years worth of philosophy concerning exactly your objection (i.e. the use of violence, the justification for war, what have you), and insist, contrary to the explicit statements of countless theologians, and most major Christian groups (American fundamentalists notwithstanding), that Christianity supports this kind of behavior.
Now, obviously there are instances where Christianity has been used for these purposes, but since this religion dominated Western society for nearly two millenia it's inappropriate to take every instance of abuse as proof that Christianity really teaches something other than what most of its leaders and adherents claim. In such a large society, over such a long timespan, homogeneity is impossible, nor is it reasonable to expect everyone across that span to live up to Christian teachings all the time.
So, I understand your concerns, but you should understand that in a religion that has been developing for as long as Christianity has, you are not the first person to have them. Your claim is oversimplifying based on a very narrow perspective of the Bible and Christian doctrine in general, and is just as inaccurate as saying that, say, Islam supports terrorism.
And as for my "annotated version"... I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that an ancient book, compiled piecewise over thousands of years, encompassing drastically different societies, different languages, and containing history, philosophy, allegory, legislation, prophecy, biography and who knows what else all mixed together, has a little bit more to it than can be gleaned by looking at specific incidents, out of context, from a modern post-enlightenment perspective, without any annotation or additional study. That additional context, in the form of writings and philosophy from throughout church history, is readily available in most bookstores.
Anyway. My point is just, your concerns are reasonable, but it's drastically oversimplifying things to assume that's the only legitimate perspective on the issue.
And, for whatever it's worth, even if you think yours is the proper interpretation of the Bible, perhaps you can take comfort in knowing that most of the Christian world disagrees with you, and is therefore less likely to go around killing unbelievers. Even in the US, which is a rather skewed and violent cross-section of worldwide Christianity at the moment...
You cannot really condemn one game without condemning them all.
I'm curious how you back up this statement. I'm quite certain there are people who condemn GTA without condemning Mario. (Does Wal-Mart even sell GTA? I didn't think they sold games like that...)
Anyway, the reason I think this game is disturbing in a way many other violent games are not, is that other violent games make no pretense of presenting the way moral human beings should actually behave. Shooting a counter-terrorist in Counterstrike, I never once entertained the possibility that this game and its creators believed I ought to take hostages and hide in some building with automatic weapons to attack anyone who tried to stop me. It's just a fun game to play. But Left Behind really presents that when the hammer falls, Christians had better get to converting, and if they can't convert someone, well they'd better kill them. (Though after they kill the unbelievers, they need to pray and go to church, to compensate and make sure they're still Christians.) Then there's the race issues on top of the violence, which just makes it even more twisted.
As others have pointed out, this isn't much different from the philosophy of the original novels, which I also find disturbing. Because of all these reasons, I think it's entirely possible for me to condemn this game without condemning every game ever made. I'm not saying the creators don't have the right to make the game, and the government certainly shouldn't be able to stop them, but I am saying that as a society we should discourage this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech
No, this is the fortunate part.
and selling it is completely up to Wal-Mart and other retailers.
True. But Wal-Mart has a record of not selling items that might lead to... how to phrase it... moral outrage?(*) Especially since this game is presenting itself as "Christian," and thus if it was at Wal-Mart some oblivious parents might buy it for their children, assuming it to be a very different game than it actually is.
A lot of people get mixed up about "free speech" and "free market" on this score: Free speech means you are allowed to say whatever you want. Free market means that society can make a deliberate choice to ignore what you say. Moral outrage and disgust are market forces (just ask Tom Cruise how MI3 did :P), whether you like it or not, and market forces restricting where something can be sold do not limit free speech.
For example: Wal-Mart does not sell pornography. If they chose to, it would be their right, but a lot of people who shop there would probably be offended by it and would shop there less -- moral outrage as a market force. Since there is still a sizable part of the population that is interested in buying pornography, other retailers handle the demand for such things, and free speech is not impinged upon.
All of which is just to say, there's nothing wrong with asking Wal-Mart not to sell this game. (Heck, even in GTA the game isn't pretending that killing hookers is the Good Christian Thing To Do. The whole appeal of something like GTA is that this isn't how you behave, or ever should behave, in real life.)
(*) (Meaning the items themselves don't cause moral outrage. It's fine if their production methods cause moral outrage.)
I look at it this way, if those Christian readers who take offense at the game were not offended by the books then they are just hypocritical.
Good point -- I'm a Christian reader and I'm offended also by the books. For pretty much the same reason people are offended by the game -- they present a twisted, militaristic, legalistic view of Christianity that completely leaves out one of the two "greatest commandments," that is, to love your neighbor.
Well, "offended" is maybe the wrong word -- I'm more worried than offended, because the books are so popular. I could laugh them off more easily if they didn't seem to accurately represent the views of a sizable minority of Christians in the US.
Christians are set as the opposing force, after all its a book from Christians about a story in Bible.
Allow me to nitpick here: I've read the Bible, and I never saw that story. The closest it came is a lot of apocalyptic, highly symbolic imagery, especially around Revelation. The writers of these books, and some other Christians, have chosen to interpret that imagery as an explicit, highly literal timeline of events during the apocalypse. They are free to argue for this interpretation (though I strongly disagree), but it is drastically oversimplifying to say this view is "in the Bible," since no one noticed it was in the Bible until at least the 1800s or so. That is, this peculiar literal spin on unclear prophetic imagery is something that no one even thought of until very recently in history.
So, you can try to argue that this interpretation is the correct one, but the blanket assertion that these people are just "telling a story that's in the Bible" is inaccurate.
If any of your units kills another unit, they lose spirit points. Only through prayer and inspirational music (who defines inspirational anyway, but I digress...) and good sermons can you increase the spirit points
Uhm. So, yeah, killing someone loses you "spirit points," but darn it, if they were evil then it was probably necessary, and it'll be fine as long as you pray hard afterwards, and go to good sermons (which, evidently, don't delve too deeply into the "You shall not murder" commandment? Well, anyway.)
It sounds truly horrifying. You can maybe say that it isn't horrifying to quite the degree the summaries are saying, but it's a grotesquely twisted view of morality, of Christianity, of the goodness (or lack thereof) of the human soul, and so on. I'd much prefer more conventional games of this type, where we deliberately invoke the "this is just fiction" card and openly acknowledge that this isn't how one should behave in reality. In any case, I strongly disagree with your claim that the article is "misleading," since the ways in which the game "discourages killing" seem like splitting hairs to me -- it "discourages" it in a way that still requires you to kill unbelievers. But you should feel bad and pray about it afterwards. I don't see a substantial moral difference here...
As far as the Crusades, Inquisition, etc., if you actually look at what transpired there, it had very little to do with true Christianity.
Sounds a lot like this video game...
It is depressing, but yes they are serious. However, though I don't believe Colbert has covered it, the game did make an appearance on "This Week In God" with Rob Corddry on the Daily Show...
It would be a lot easier for me to laugh about the whole thing, though, if the book series wasn't so very popular...
I think you misunderstood my point...
Just as interesting is the development of automatic weapons, nuclear weapons, mass production... all of which lend themselves to easy, bloody wars.
Alright. You can at least argue that these types of wars would have happened earlier if the technology existed, though in my opinion something like e.g. the Holocaust was only in small part enabled by technology, and was much more of a social issue. Despite widespread anti-Jewish sentiment throughout much of Western history, the 20th century was the first real systematic attempt at wholesale extermination, even though there was no real technological barrier to attempting this earlier.
But my point wasn't just that a rationalistic outlook causes bloody wars. I was just trying to refute the earlier claim that religion causes such wars in a way that a "rational" outlook is not susceptible to. I don't think this is true -- wars both reasonable and unreasonable continue unabated.
So are you telling me that skyscrapers were raised, national grids plotted and the internet itself put together... through emotional power?
Of course not. I'm distinguishing between reason as a tool for accomplishments, versus a motivation for those accomplishments. In saying that people's behavior (in general, but especially in serious conflicts of the type the earlier poster suggested reason could resolve) is very frequently more based on emotion than on reason.
This doesn't mean they don't use reason to achieve their ends, e.g. to plan/build power grids and skyscrapers, as you point out, but it does mean that resolving questions like "Should we build a skyscraper here?" or "Who has the better claim to the West Bank?" are not just a matter of rigorously applied reason. Such practical questions always come with some prior set of assumptions and priorities, and these almost never match between opposing parties -- and reason can only be rigorously applied (even in principle) from some common set of mutually agreed premises.
Also the OP wasn't talking about eliminating emotion through logic, although it may be very trendy in slashdot groupthink to mouth that meme of an exceptionally hackneyed 1970's sci-fi show.
Err. This wasn't a sci-fi meme, and I didn't get my opinion on this subject from slashdot. But you misinterpreted my opinion anyway, so let me clarify:
The OP suggested that violent conflict, caused by religion, can be prevented by the use of reason. I disagree, for a number of reasons, but my point in the section you reference is that very, very few human beings (if any -- but I'm willing to grant their existence, for the sake of argument) are even capable of applying reasoning in such a consistent and objective way that their opinions on, say, the ownership of the West Bank, will be entirely decided by pure logic applied to uncontested fact. Even if such an approach were possible, it doesn't work for most people, and a recipe for "world peace" that requires only that we ignore 99.9% of humanity is in the end untenable. (I'd argue that the approach isn't possible in the first place: there are far too few "uncontested facts" from which to reason, and any conclusion about it in either direction comes with a huge amount of baggage in terms of implicit assumptions.)
I wasn't saying that reason and emotion can't coexist -- obviously they can, and very productively. I'm just providing a pile of counterexamples to the original claim that violence wouldn't be a problem if only people behaved rationally.
I didn't go on at length about this point, but other posters also mentioned that it's entirely reasonable to argue that under the right circumstances, I could decide that the *rational* thing to do would be to kill other people and take their resources for myself. You can argue against that on a practical basis in current society (someone who used that strategy probably wouldn't end up the better for it), but if we don't assume a