Actually, that isn't the real question, as I quote from the first paragraph of TFA:
"Dragon Quest IX, the next sequel in the officially numbered series and not a spin-off, will be arriving on the Nintendo DS."
I know, I know, Ring TFA isn't what we do around here, but if you're going to say this is the real question, you could at least take the 15 seconds required to check the answer...
Blind patriotism and trade without conscience *are* "evil", in the "they cause human misery" sense of the word.
GP said patriotism and trade. You sneakily inserted "blind" and "without conscience" to prove your point. This would be reasonable, if in the original discussion we were talking about blindly following religion, religion without conscience, etc. -- but we weren't.
The point GP was trying to refute was the claim that all (completely unqualified) religion is bad and inherently extremist and the source of all kinds of conflict and so on. This was refuted by pointing out that the same reasoning would imply that all trade, patriotism, etc., are evil: there are many instances throughout history where they have been correlated with evil, just as with religion.
The conclusion we should get out of this is that practically anything can be an evil when it is taken to enough of an extreme, or is followed without conscience or perspective. Religion isn't somehow special, or the single source of the world's ills -- the source of the world's ills is, briefly, humanity, and we find ways to mess things up with or without religion.
In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other.
Interesting, then, that in this last century, where the culture was substantially influenced by this Enlightenment-based "world of reason" you describe, we have seen the bloodiest wars, and the most shocking instances of genocide, in all of history. Even accounting for the increased population.
And while yes, some of those conflicts exploited religion, none of the big ones had religion as their real motivation, as did e.g. the crusades, or the Catholic-Protestant conflicts of earlier centuries.
I'm not arguing that religion doesn't lead to violence, obviously it can and does. I am arguing that your supposed remedy to this violence simply doesn't work: human beings are, and will remain, violent. Religion is just one of the many excuses we use for it.
Without reason, it's just your feelings/assertion/faith/whim/tradition versus mine, and there is no mechanism for synchronizing the two databases... so, may the biggest club win.
I'm curious where you've ever seen this example you describe of perfect, mutually agreed upon rationality used to such a degree that rationality is actually the dominant means of decision-making, rather than a useful means of discussing issues. From what I can see of the world, even fairly "rational" people often form opinions and make decisions based substantially (if not entirely) on emotion, and then, in the ideal case, apply reasoning to evaluate those decisions. But emotions are still a very large part of human society, and I'm not sure how you propose to eliminate that through logic -- while some people may (claim to) be able to work that way, the vast majority of people do not and cannot.
And: even people who arrived at their conclusions "rationally" still frequently use power, rather than persuasion, to attain their ends.
Err... so, you somehow think that "fair use" means that the phone companies can sell song ringtones for $2 a pop, and not have to pay the people who made the song? So, can I include popular songs in, say, my television commercials, as long as it's just a few seconds?
I mean, I suppose that would screw over the RIAA, but it would also screw over any legitimate musicians involved...
I think you're a little confused about fair use... and copyright, for that matter. There isn't a certain number of "notes" that a song must hit to qualify for copyright, and even if there was, fair use wouldn't mean you can just go past that barrier for commercial purposes. These ring tones aren't being played for a music history class or anything, it's still commercially produced entertainment.
Geez, you know you're on slashdot when the only way multiple commenters have of fixing a broken sentence is by inserting parentheses to indicate precedence (and even then, the parentheses were misplaced).
Here you go:
The RIAA maintains that in the modern period, when piracy began devastating the record industry, profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other 'innovative services' grew dramatically.
I'm waiting for the day someone will come along and say: wait a minute, maybe this SHOULDN'T be provided by central government.
Of course you can argue this, but it should be from a general ethical perspective (i.e. this isn't the state's job), rather than on the basis that state-funded education and research has failed.
Where was funding coming from in the days when the U.S. was the undisputed scientific leader (and expected to remain so)? While some private entities were involved, most of it was government.
What countries are displacing us in quality of scientific education these days? Countries that have state-run education and state-funded science.
The problem isn't fundamentally that the government is involved in science -- government has been funding science since before the scientific revolution (e.g. the patron system), and an awful lot of important progress would have been substantially delayed without it. Plenty of modern states are doing well scientifically while still allowing government involvement. The problem right now is that the U.S. government is being stupid about how it involves itself with education and research (displaying bizarre priorities, and putting funding wherever the President, rather than the actual educators, thinks it should go). That, and a culture that is much more hostile to science than it has been in the relatively recent past.
Now, if you think that support shouldn't be provided by a central government on philosophical/ethical rather than pragmatic grounds, well I disagree, but that's a reasonable point of view, at least to a degree. But it's far too simplistic to say that such a system can't work out practically.
How did we not think of that! Throw more money at the problem, that always works
Actually, since a lot of research areas have had NSF funding cut lately, increasing NSF funding would be a reasonable way to help US science. You may argue it isn't the root problem, and I'd mostly agree, but a lot of scientists are worried about losing funding, and this is affecting the career paths of grad students and others who might have gone on to do scientific research in the US.
Now, obviously the problem isn't simple enough that "more NSF funding" will solve everything. But the suggestion isn't the same as blindly throwing money at the problem. (Sometimes throwing money at a problem helps, if you do it cleverly.)
I do partially disagree with the suggestion, actually: increasing the amount of the fellowships is silly. They don't give a huge amount of money compared to a Real Job in the same area (around $30K/year IIRC), but for a grad student (yes, I am one) that's a huge amount. I should be so lucky as to get a stipend that large. I have never heard anyone complain about the amount of these fellowships, quite the opposite, and anyone who did so would be injured by their fellow students.
Increasing the number of fellowships might be good, though. As professors get fewer grants, they have less funding to pass along to students, and I know my school has seen ominous signs of possible funding troubles in the near future. You can't pursue a long-term career of scientific research if you're kicked out of school because the university can't afford to keep you.
Anyway. My point is, just as saying that funding alone will fix things is an oversimplification, so too is your claim that the entire problem is cultural and won't be helped by taking practical steps to assist future scientists. We need to address both sides of the issue.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The GameCube was a failure compared to both previous nintendo consoles and the PS2
Fair enough. But many people who call the Gamecube a failure also call the Xbox a success, despite practically identical totals (and the fact that the Gamecube actually, you know, made money).
Of course, I'm also a little skeptical about calling Gamecube a "failure" based on market share -- do we consider MacOS X a failure now? Nintendo hasn't been the dominant player for some time, but it's continued to be a strong and profitable player. Or, to draw on the wisdom of Taladega Nights: "If you're not first, you're last? Well that's just stupid! There's lots of things you can be other than first! There's second... there's third..."
The only sense in which I think it makes sense to call the Gamecube a failure is the one you loosely point out by mentioning previous consoles -- it was a "failure" in that it didn't do as well as one might have expected, given the company's history. But, again, that's not how most people seem to intend it when they refer to the console's failure...
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 1
Haha -- exactly. Even if I'm willing to stretch a point and call this a "success" because it established MS as a strong player in the industry in a single generation (which is reasonable -- they think of this as a [evidently very] long-term investment), I still can't see that as a decisive win over Nintendo. I'm not sure why it's so often presented that way...
I think you're missing the point. That quote wasn't focusing on the Xbox 360 itself, especially as compared with the Wii. It's saying that technology innovations from MSR were used in the 360. These might be minor things, from the standpoint of an entire console. Maybe it's just aspects of the development environment, or clever things about the internal protocols, who knows? Not every "innovation" has to yield a product that is strikingly different.
FWIW, I've known people who interned at MSR (and read the research papers of people who work there full-time) -- it is one of the coolest places at Microsoft. It's a shame the work done there isn't applied more frequently to other areas of the company...
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Everyone I know that has a PS2 or Xbox ALSO has a gamecube.
Well, that can't be too common of a phenomenon just on pure numbers -- PS2 sales were obscene.
I agree about your basic point, though: I've never understood why the PS2 and XBox "won" the last generation and the Gamecube "lost" when, compared to the PS2's incredible sales record (well over 100 million) the XBox and Gamecube were practically tied (21 and 24 million, IIRC). Especially since Nintendo made lots of money from those 21 million consoles, while Microsoft lost many millions of dollars from their 24, even factoring in profit from games.
If you have to say someone lost the last generation, it should be Nintendo and MS jointly (or maybe just MS, if you're concerned about actual profits). But there's no realistic way that XBox "won" and Gamecube "lost."
Unless it is absolutely necessary, we probably shouldn't use this weapon yet.
I'd actually disagree with this as being too permissive, on the grounds that the predicate can't be satisfied: there is no situation where this weapon would be absolutely necessary in a way that would rule out any other approach to the situation. Therefore, since there can't be any effective way to determine "absolute necessity," its approval means it will inevitably be used in situations where it is absolutely unnecessary.
And, aside from ill-defined ideas of "necessity," I can't see this weapon as being anything but negative as Iraq stands right now: we're already in major trouble as far as having the support of the Iraqis. Even if this weapon helps maintain control, it will do so only via the constant threat of unbearable pain. This is not a long-term solution to the cultural rift, since as soon as the immediate threat of torture is withdrawn, they will only be more eager to strike back. This issue is exacerbated by the probability that the weapon will be used on people who were not immediate threats, since it is theoretically non-lethal and has no (known, yet) long-term effects, so military will be much less hesitant to use it.
So, in my opinion your statement should be shortened to: "We shouldn't use this weapon." I will grudgingly concede your "yet", though heavily qualified by my previous statements.
I never suggested that they have already made such changes to their default file formats, only that it's the one possible way in which this story could have any importance
Yes -- and my response (a deliberately ridiculous one, as you say) was intended to point out that it is not useful to consider every possible way an event could have importance in the future, while ignoring the relatively likelihood of those possibilities actually happening.
Specifically, I claim that the likelihood of Novell making MS's formats the default is so close to zero that we can pretty much ignore it. Hence my linux comparison. Since I'm claiming, essentially, that this will not happen, and since there's no evidence for it happening (unless you're holding something back), and you don't have any argument other than "well, this 'fork' might be important if that did happen," it becomes FUD -- you're ominously suggesting ridiculously implausible events that would cast a negative light on what is otherwise a positive event (support for a new file format).
The whole story was presented in a negative light that is unjustified, and the term "fork" was misused to refer to simple patches (actually, it looks more like loadable modules) that support a new file format, something that would suggest that most major open source projects have dozens of forks in wide use, since there are often distribution-specific patches. To say nothing of the BSD ports tree. You can't defend these things merely on the basis of "Well, if an implausible but negative event happened in the future, then this news would have been the precursor to something negative, therefore justifying this negative reporting" -- at least, unless you can reasonably argue the negative event might really happen.
Well, if they quietly decided that ODF is unnecessary and made MS "Open" XML the default file format for their builds, that could be cause for concern.
Sure. And since Debian has its own "fork" of the Linux kernel (i.e. patches that are not yet in the main source tree), we could say that if they quietly decided Linux is unnecessary and made MS Windows binaries the default kernel for their builds, that would be cause for concern. What is lacking is any evidence that this could ever happen in reality, which is why the story is FUD.
External patches, adding support for a new file format, do not constitute a fork, any more than patching the Linux kernel to support a new device or filesystem does. I'm not sure where you get the idea they're going to make MS's formats the default.
Bush's lie about "saddam having weapons of mass destruction" Cost...
o ~3000 American Soldiers Dead
Okay, I just have to say something here: while 3000 american soldiers dead is tragic, a much larger number of Iraqi civilians have been killed. And regardless of nationality, that's a bad thing. We're talking about probably 100,000+ people, and probably the majority of them were not terrorists, or even combatants of any kind. So, yes, American death counts matter, but as long as you're listing the cost, you might want to throw the civilian death count in there too.
In particular, note that the number of Iraqi civilians dead because of Bush's lies is rather larger than the number of Iraqi civilian deaths needed to give Hussein the death sentence...
Ah! If I'm innocent, I have nothing to hide! Thank you for clarifying.
Now what about the fact that they keep suing people who don't know how to use computers?
Or the fact that, even when they do sue someone who is guilty, 1. the damages they request are grossly disproportionate to the offense, and 2. the people being targetted can't afford the legal firepower needed to deal with point 1?
anyone who doesn't feel HD is a worthwhile upgrade SERIOUSLY needs to get their eyes checked.
My eyes are fine. The point isn't that I can't see any difference. The point is that I don't think that difference warrants paying several times more for everything, especially on my meager salary. If it was an issue of visual comparison, I wouldn't have a 24" TV either.
Similarly, I play most of my music through a pair of $40 speakers that sound quite nice. If I was a hi-fi geek I might be willing to pay thousands for a better setup -- there certainly is a difference there, at least compared to my setup -- but that difference is not worth the money to me. I can enjoy music, or video, even if it isn't the absolute highest fidelity. Heck, I still enjoy black and white movies, so don't talk to me about how the only reason I won't pay thousands of dollars is because I can't tell there's a difference.
Perhaps that's because you should have spent more time researching
But isn't that part of the problem? That people need to do actual honest-to-God research just to buy a freaking cable, at least without getting completely ripped off? The only research I had to do to get a good deal the last time I bought a DVD player was about 90 seconds of browsing the options in the store.
Most people do not understand digital transmission, and will not know who to believe about this. Most people are not willing to do research on something this small. HDTV is Not There Yet for most consumers.
Soul Caliber beating Zelda TP, is probably mainly due to gamespot not wanting "another" Zelda
No, Soul Calibur beating Zelda is mainly due to the artificial use of a single absolute numerical scale to rank two games that have nothing in common except that they are, in fact, games. A multi-player fast-twitch non-story-based fighting game taking place in small, functionally identical arenas, versus a single-player story-based RPG taking place in a huge interactive world. Both are a lot of fun, and great launch titles, but... 96.4? What?
This whole approach to the subject is silly. These things are subjective. It's natural to want to quantify things, but this is just too much, and the article is basically a worthless way to measure "success."
They don't get paid after death unless they invested their money. Neither should artists.
The difference is that the creation of an artistic work is a more long-term investment: you pick up garbage, you get paid for it, but if you create an artistic work there is no money to be seen until you have invested a huge amount in producing a complete work, banking on the hope that people will like it enough when you're done to support you while you work on the next one(s). There is no reason this investment should be arbitrarily denied to an heir any more than any other asset.
Of course, copyright terms are far too long, and I don't understand why they should be for the life of an artist plus whatever. My argument above is to support fixed-term copyrights that do not end with death, but death plus 50, 90, whatever ridiculous number of years is stupid.
On the other hand, I disagree with your 3 year suggestion since it threatens to defeat the purpose of copyright, which should be motivating/rewarding the production of creative works: if everyone knew that all music, say, would be free in three years, people wouldn't buy it (well, I wouldn't anyway, I don't know about you guys). 12 years maybe they would, though I think that's still on the low side, I'd tend more towards the 20-30 year range, but at this point any reduction or even prevention of another increase is good news. The current situation benefits artists and consumers (i.e. the intended beneficiaries of copyright law) not in the slightest, while hugely benefiting enormous corporations. That's just messed up.
Completely irrelevant. If you fail to learn something because you can't find an immediate real world use for it, then you are a poor student.
Err... on the flip side, if you fail to provide an immediate real world use for a concept that has many such, then you are a poor teacher. Are you really arguing that a "good student" is one who immediately understands all information, regardless of how it's presented? Then why don't we just have all of highschool taught by videotape lectures, identical across the entire country? I'm sure no one would have trouble learning that way, except for the poor students.
I can bang my head against a concept all day, and still not understand it if I'm not given any actual examples or illustrations of how I might use the concept. It's not because I'm lazy, or a bad student. I don't decide, "Aha! No real-world examples were given. I won't try very hard on this section." Most people just learn things -- even very abstract concepts -- much better when they are related to something familiar. IAAGraduate Student In Abstract Mathematics.
Man, a lot of people sure are whining... These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
Err... you're suggesting that a large proportion of people on a slashdot forum are highschool dropouts? Not that I think slashdot readers are All That, but I would suspect there are fewer highschool dropouts in these forums than, say, the national average...
In any case, I'm well into a PhD program now, I never thought about dropping out of highschool, and I still agree with a lot of the criticisms. I'm not sure why you think that distinguishing "your" and "you're" is a good way to test overall education and intelligence (though it is aggravating of course), or why you completely dismiss the obvious fact that not everyone learns the same way, or is good at the same things. Or that teaching people with a particular multiple-choice test in mind, while it may increase standardized test scores, might not be the ideal way to prepare people for the real world.
So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school!
Most of the people discussing this issue here aren't in highschool. We aren't discussing whether we ourselves should drop out. We're discussing how to handle public education so that students 1. are better prepared for real life and 2. are less likely to drop out. If people should just take it upon themselves to learn these things, what is public highschool for in the first place? I mean, I agree, people should take it upon themselves to learn things, but that's not a reasonable response to someone pointing out the failings of our current public education system. It is good advice, but a lousy excuse.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone.
Again, this advice only applies to people who are in highschool, not trying to improve the system. In public school, if teachers or administrators are jerks, there often is no one for the student to notify, at least not in any way that will make much of a difference -- more likely you'll just piss off the teachers or administrators in question. And just because there might be a way, in specific cases, for individual action to affect things, doesn't mean we shouldn't also think about how to improve the system as a whole.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I kind of agree with this. I don't think schools are designed to make people into homogeneous and passive sheep. I don't believe in The Conspiracy. I think a lot of policies look that way, but the real motives are bureaucracy, laziness, poor priorities, poor funding, poor policies, and so on, and that people who are not homogeneous and passive cause hiccups in the system, and are therefore discouraged. It's not malicious, or a conspiracy, but it is still a problem.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school.
Uh... have you ever been a teenager?
It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
Agreed. So, as adults, let's do everything we can -- including improving the highschool experience wherever possible -- to make sure that people get one. I believe in personal responsibility -- people should finish highschool -- but society as a whole also has a responsibility to minimize the obstacles. Fingers can be pointed everywhere here, the students, the parents, the teachers, the politicians, the culture, and all of those are partly true. But instead of trying to artificially assign all the blame to one category, let's just do as much as we can to fix the parts where we do have some kind of say...
You jumped on the part of my comment questioning your source, but missed a lot of the more important parts.
To repeat my question, have you heard of any store that had fewer than twice as many Wiis as PS3s? "Twice as many" is a very conservative estimate, deliberately so, like other posters have said the more common numbers are 3x and up -- I'm just asking if you know of, or have even heard anyone mention, a single store like that.
I haven't, anyway. And given that, your claim of 400k versus 500k is pretty unlikely.
400k isn't really what Sony reported, as you say, it's what they said they would be shipping beforehand. No one knows how many have shipped, except that a lot of people are saying it was fewer than expected.
Then show me. Don't make up numbers, but show me some good sources (no, tiny fanboy sites do not count)
A lot of my previous post hinged on the fact that there are no numbers yet. It's too early, we have no reliable counts, there are no "good sources," only rumor and relative comparison -- by which, as above, the PS3 isn't looking so great in volume shipped at launch. But, let's see if we can reason a little more.
Accepting for the moment Nintendo's claim that 1 million will be sold in the U.S. by December, which would be less than 2 weeks after launch: it seems very unlikely to me that, say, they shipped 500k (your suggestion, taken from an earlier poster who also didn't know real numbers), and either held back another 500k or can manufacture and ship them within a week and a half. The initial launch was probably the majority of their existing stock, and they're churning them out as fast as they can. Even at the generous estimate of 150k units launched and shipped per week, that suggests about 750-800k at launch, possibly more, for them to make the 1 million target. As for the PS3, starting from 400k, subtract a (lenient) 50k for the many rumored shortages in their final shipments, a 10% Canada penalty since those are North American numbers, not U.S. as with the Wii, and we're down to 315k versus 750k for the U.S. launch.
Now, as I said, those aren't real numbers because there are none yet, but I think it's a lot closer than your estimates, and it's at least closer to the store reports of relative quantities (though if we believe store margins were more like 3-1, which isn't outside the realm of possibility, things get even worse -- but I'm trying to do a conservative count).
This sucks. Why cant they do some kind of 'pay now and we'll send it to you when it's here' ordering process.
Look, this seems to be really bothering you, so I'm willing to help you out: just pay me now, and don't worry about it. I'll send it to you when it's here.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that isn't the real question, as I quote from the first paragraph of TFA:
"Dragon Quest IX, the next sequel in the officially numbered series and not a spin-off, will be arriving on the Nintendo DS."
I know, I know, Ring TFA isn't what we do around here, but if you're going to say this is the real question, you could at least take the 15 seconds required to check the answer...
Blind patriotism and trade without conscience *are* "evil", in the "they cause human misery" sense of the word.
GP said patriotism and trade. You sneakily inserted "blind" and "without conscience" to prove your point. This would be reasonable, if in the original discussion we were talking about blindly following religion, religion without conscience, etc. -- but we weren't.
The point GP was trying to refute was the claim that all (completely unqualified) religion is bad and inherently extremist and the source of all kinds of conflict and so on. This was refuted by pointing out that the same reasoning would imply that all trade, patriotism, etc., are evil: there are many instances throughout history where they have been correlated with evil, just as with religion.
The conclusion we should get out of this is that practically anything can be an evil when it is taken to enough of an extreme, or is followed without conscience or perspective. Religion isn't somehow special, or the single source of the world's ills -- the source of the world's ills is, briefly, humanity, and we find ways to mess things up with or without religion.
In a world of reason, there are facts, evidence, and proof, with which we can (in principle) persuade each other to converge on a single, objective knowledge... and hence, there is no need to kill each other.
Interesting, then, that in this last century, where the culture was substantially influenced by this Enlightenment-based "world of reason" you describe, we have seen the bloodiest wars, and the most shocking instances of genocide, in all of history. Even accounting for the increased population.
And while yes, some of those conflicts exploited religion, none of the big ones had religion as their real motivation, as did e.g. the crusades, or the Catholic-Protestant conflicts of earlier centuries.
I'm not arguing that religion doesn't lead to violence, obviously it can and does. I am arguing that your supposed remedy to this violence simply doesn't work: human beings are, and will remain, violent. Religion is just one of the many excuses we use for it.
Without reason, it's just your feelings/assertion/faith/whim/tradition versus mine, and there is no mechanism for synchronizing the two databases... so, may the biggest club win.
I'm curious where you've ever seen this example you describe of perfect, mutually agreed upon rationality used to such a degree that rationality is actually the dominant means of decision-making, rather than a useful means of discussing issues. From what I can see of the world, even fairly "rational" people often form opinions and make decisions based substantially (if not entirely) on emotion, and then, in the ideal case, apply reasoning to evaluate those decisions. But emotions are still a very large part of human society, and I'm not sure how you propose to eliminate that through logic -- while some people may (claim to) be able to work that way, the vast majority of people do not and cannot.
And: even people who arrived at their conclusions "rationally" still frequently use power, rather than persuasion, to attain their ends.
Err... so, you somehow think that "fair use" means that the phone companies can sell song ringtones for $2 a pop, and not have to pay the people who made the song? So, can I include popular songs in, say, my television commercials, as long as it's just a few seconds?
I mean, I suppose that would screw over the RIAA, but it would also screw over any legitimate musicians involved...
I think you're a little confused about fair use... and copyright, for that matter. There isn't a certain number of "notes" that a song must hit to qualify for copyright, and even if there was, fair use wouldn't mean you can just go past that barrier for commercial purposes. These ring tones aren't being played for a music history class or anything, it's still commercially produced entertainment.
Geez, you know you're on slashdot when the only way multiple commenters have of fixing a broken sentence is by inserting parentheses to indicate precedence (and even then, the parentheses were misplaced).
Here you go:
The RIAA maintains that in the modern period, when piracy began devastating the record industry, profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other 'innovative services' grew dramatically.
No wonder the universe sucks, it's implemented in Perl!
Well, sure. "The Lord works in mysterious ways" -- that just means no one can understand God's code, right?
Wait... does that mean Larry Wall is.....?
I'm waiting for the day someone will come along and say: wait a minute, maybe this SHOULDN'T be provided by central government.
Of course you can argue this, but it should be from a general ethical perspective (i.e. this isn't the state's job), rather than on the basis that state-funded education and research has failed.
Where was funding coming from in the days when the U.S. was the undisputed scientific leader (and expected to remain so)? While some private entities were involved, most of it was government.
What countries are displacing us in quality of scientific education these days? Countries that have state-run education and state-funded science.
The problem isn't fundamentally that the government is involved in science -- government has been funding science since before the scientific revolution (e.g. the patron system), and an awful lot of important progress would have been substantially delayed without it. Plenty of modern states are doing well scientifically while still allowing government involvement. The problem right now is that the U.S. government is being stupid about how it involves itself with education and research (displaying bizarre priorities, and putting funding wherever the President, rather than the actual educators, thinks it should go). That, and a culture that is much more hostile to science than it has been in the relatively recent past.
Now, if you think that support shouldn't be provided by a central government on philosophical/ethical rather than pragmatic grounds, well I disagree, but that's a reasonable point of view, at least to a degree. But it's far too simplistic to say that such a system can't work out practically.
How did we not think of that! Throw more money at the problem, that always works
Actually, since a lot of research areas have had NSF funding cut lately, increasing NSF funding would be a reasonable way to help US science. You may argue it isn't the root problem, and I'd mostly agree, but a lot of scientists are worried about losing funding, and this is affecting the career paths of grad students and others who might have gone on to do scientific research in the US.
Now, obviously the problem isn't simple enough that "more NSF funding" will solve everything. But the suggestion isn't the same as blindly throwing money at the problem. (Sometimes throwing money at a problem helps, if you do it cleverly.)
I do partially disagree with the suggestion, actually: increasing the amount of the fellowships is silly. They don't give a huge amount of money compared to a Real Job in the same area (around $30K/year IIRC), but for a grad student (yes, I am one) that's a huge amount. I should be so lucky as to get a stipend that large. I have never heard anyone complain about the amount of these fellowships, quite the opposite, and anyone who did so would be injured by their fellow students.
Increasing the number of fellowships might be good, though. As professors get fewer grants, they have less funding to pass along to students, and I know my school has seen ominous signs of possible funding troubles in the near future. You can't pursue a long-term career of scientific research if you're kicked out of school because the university can't afford to keep you.
Anyway. My point is, just as saying that funding alone will fix things is an oversimplification, so too is your claim that the entire problem is cultural and won't be helped by taking practical steps to assist future scientists. We need to address both sides of the issue.
The GameCube was a failure compared to both previous nintendo consoles and the PS2
Fair enough. But many people who call the Gamecube a failure also call the Xbox a success, despite practically identical totals (and the fact that the Gamecube actually, you know, made money).
Of course, I'm also a little skeptical about calling Gamecube a "failure" based on market share -- do we consider MacOS X a failure now? Nintendo hasn't been the dominant player for some time, but it's continued to be a strong and profitable player. Or, to draw on the wisdom of Taladega Nights: "If you're not first, you're last? Well that's just stupid! There's lots of things you can be other than first! There's second... there's third..."
The only sense in which I think it makes sense to call the Gamecube a failure is the one you loosely point out by mentioning previous consoles -- it was a "failure" in that it didn't do as well as one might have expected, given the company's history. But, again, that's not how most people seem to intend it when they refer to the console's failure...
Haha -- exactly. Even if I'm willing to stretch a point and call this a "success" because it established MS as a strong player in the industry in a single generation (which is reasonable -- they think of this as a [evidently very] long-term investment), I still can't see that as a decisive win over Nintendo. I'm not sure why it's so often presented that way...
I think you're missing the point. That quote wasn't focusing on the Xbox 360 itself, especially as compared with the Wii. It's saying that technology innovations from MSR were used in the 360. These might be minor things, from the standpoint of an entire console. Maybe it's just aspects of the development environment, or clever things about the internal protocols, who knows? Not every "innovation" has to yield a product that is strikingly different.
FWIW, I've known people who interned at MSR (and read the research papers of people who work there full-time) -- it is one of the coolest places at Microsoft. It's a shame the work done there isn't applied more frequently to other areas of the company...
Everyone I know that has a PS2 or Xbox ALSO has a gamecube.
Well, that can't be too common of a phenomenon just on pure numbers -- PS2 sales were obscene.
I agree about your basic point, though: I've never understood why the PS2 and XBox "won" the last generation and the Gamecube "lost" when, compared to the PS2's incredible sales record (well over 100 million) the XBox and Gamecube were practically tied (21 and 24 million, IIRC). Especially since Nintendo made lots of money from those 21 million consoles, while Microsoft lost many millions of dollars from their 24, even factoring in profit from games.
If you have to say someone lost the last generation, it should be Nintendo and MS jointly (or maybe just MS, if you're concerned about actual profits). But there's no realistic way that XBox "won" and Gamecube "lost."
Unless it is absolutely necessary, we probably shouldn't use this weapon yet.
I'd actually disagree with this as being too permissive, on the grounds that the predicate can't be satisfied: there is no situation where this weapon would be absolutely necessary in a way that would rule out any other approach to the situation. Therefore, since there can't be any effective way to determine "absolute necessity," its approval means it will inevitably be used in situations where it is absolutely unnecessary.
And, aside from ill-defined ideas of "necessity," I can't see this weapon as being anything but negative as Iraq stands right now: we're already in major trouble as far as having the support of the Iraqis. Even if this weapon helps maintain control, it will do so only via the constant threat of unbearable pain. This is not a long-term solution to the cultural rift, since as soon as the immediate threat of torture is withdrawn, they will only be more eager to strike back. This issue is exacerbated by the probability that the weapon will be used on people who were not immediate threats, since it is theoretically non-lethal and has no (known, yet) long-term effects, so military will be much less hesitant to use it.
So, in my opinion your statement should be shortened to: "We shouldn't use this weapon." I will grudgingly concede your "yet", though heavily qualified by my previous statements.
I never suggested that they have already made such changes to their default file formats, only that it's the one possible way in which this story could have any importance
Yes -- and my response (a deliberately ridiculous one, as you say) was intended to point out that it is not useful to consider every possible way an event could have importance in the future, while ignoring the relatively likelihood of those possibilities actually happening.
Specifically, I claim that the likelihood of Novell making MS's formats the default is so close to zero that we can pretty much ignore it. Hence my linux comparison. Since I'm claiming, essentially, that this will not happen, and since there's no evidence for it happening (unless you're holding something back), and you don't have any argument other than "well, this 'fork' might be important if that did happen," it becomes FUD -- you're ominously suggesting ridiculously implausible events that would cast a negative light on what is otherwise a positive event (support for a new file format).
The whole story was presented in a negative light that is unjustified, and the term "fork" was misused to refer to simple patches (actually, it looks more like loadable modules) that support a new file format, something that would suggest that most major open source projects have dozens of forks in wide use, since there are often distribution-specific patches. To say nothing of the BSD ports tree. You can't defend these things merely on the basis of "Well, if an implausible but negative event happened in the future, then this news would have been the precursor to something negative, therefore justifying this negative reporting" -- at least, unless you can reasonably argue the negative event might really happen.
Well, if they quietly decided that ODF is unnecessary and made MS "Open" XML the default file format for their builds, that could be cause for concern.
Sure. And since Debian has its own "fork" of the Linux kernel (i.e. patches that are not yet in the main source tree), we could say that if they quietly decided Linux is unnecessary and made MS Windows binaries the default kernel for their builds, that would be cause for concern. What is lacking is any evidence that this could ever happen in reality, which is why the story is FUD.
External patches, adding support for a new file format, do not constitute a fork, any more than patching the Linux kernel to support a new device or filesystem does. I'm not sure where you get the idea they're going to make MS's formats the default.
Bush's lie about "saddam having weapons of mass destruction" Cost...
o ~3000 American Soldiers Dead
Okay, I just have to say something here: while 3000 american soldiers dead is tragic, a much larger number of Iraqi civilians have been killed. And regardless of nationality, that's a bad thing. We're talking about probably 100,000+ people, and probably the majority of them were not terrorists, or even combatants of any kind. So, yes, American death counts matter, but as long as you're listing the cost, you might want to throw the civilian death count in there too.
In particular, note that the number of Iraqi civilians dead because of Bush's lies is rather larger than the number of Iraqi civilian deaths needed to give Hussein the death sentence...
Ah! If I'm innocent, I have nothing to hide! Thank you for clarifying.
Now what about the fact that they keep suing people who don't know how to use computers?
Or the fact that, even when they do sue someone who is guilty, 1. the damages they request are grossly disproportionate to the offense, and 2. the people being targetted can't afford the legal firepower needed to deal with point 1?
anyone who doesn't feel HD is a worthwhile upgrade SERIOUSLY needs to get their eyes checked.
My eyes are fine. The point isn't that I can't see any difference. The point is that I don't think that difference warrants paying several times more for everything, especially on my meager salary. If it was an issue of visual comparison, I wouldn't have a 24" TV either.
Similarly, I play most of my music through a pair of $40 speakers that sound quite nice. If I was a hi-fi geek I might be willing to pay thousands for a better setup -- there certainly is a difference there, at least compared to my setup -- but that difference is not worth the money to me. I can enjoy music, or video, even if it isn't the absolute highest fidelity. Heck, I still enjoy black and white movies, so don't talk to me about how the only reason I won't pay thousands of dollars is because I can't tell there's a difference.
Perhaps that's because you should have spent more time researching
But isn't that part of the problem? That people need to do actual honest-to-God research just to buy a freaking cable, at least without getting completely ripped off? The only research I had to do to get a good deal the last time I bought a DVD player was about 90 seconds of browsing the options in the store.
Most people do not understand digital transmission, and will not know who to believe about this. Most people are not willing to do research on something this small. HDTV is Not There Yet for most consumers.
Soul Caliber beating Zelda TP, is probably mainly due to gamespot not wanting "another" Zelda
No, Soul Calibur beating Zelda is mainly due to the artificial use of a single absolute numerical scale to rank two games that have nothing in common except that they are, in fact, games. A multi-player fast-twitch non-story-based fighting game taking place in small, functionally identical arenas, versus a single-player story-based RPG taking place in a huge interactive world. Both are a lot of fun, and great launch titles, but... 96.4? What?
This whole approach to the subject is silly. These things are subjective. It's natural to want to quantify things, but this is just too much, and the article is basically a worthless way to measure "success."
They don't get paid after death unless they invested their money. Neither should artists.
The difference is that the creation of an artistic work is a more long-term investment: you pick up garbage, you get paid for it, but if you create an artistic work there is no money to be seen until you have invested a huge amount in producing a complete work, banking on the hope that people will like it enough when you're done to support you while you work on the next one(s). There is no reason this investment should be arbitrarily denied to an heir any more than any other asset.
Of course, copyright terms are far too long, and I don't understand why they should be for the life of an artist plus whatever. My argument above is to support fixed-term copyrights that do not end with death, but death plus 50, 90, whatever ridiculous number of years is stupid.
On the other hand, I disagree with your 3 year suggestion since it threatens to defeat the purpose of copyright, which should be motivating/rewarding the production of creative works: if everyone knew that all music, say, would be free in three years, people wouldn't buy it (well, I wouldn't anyway, I don't know about you guys). 12 years maybe they would, though I think that's still on the low side, I'd tend more towards the 20-30 year range, but at this point any reduction or even prevention of another increase is good news. The current situation benefits artists and consumers (i.e. the intended beneficiaries of copyright law) not in the slightest, while hugely benefiting enormous corporations. That's just messed up.
Completely irrelevant. If you fail to learn something because you can't find an immediate real world use for it, then you are a poor student.
Err... on the flip side, if you fail to provide an immediate real world use for a concept that has many such, then you are a poor teacher. Are you really arguing that a "good student" is one who immediately understands all information, regardless of how it's presented? Then why don't we just have all of highschool taught by videotape lectures, identical across the entire country? I'm sure no one would have trouble learning that way, except for the poor students.
I can bang my head against a concept all day, and still not understand it if I'm not given any actual examples or illustrations of how I might use the concept. It's not because I'm lazy, or a bad student. I don't decide, "Aha! No real-world examples were given. I won't try very hard on this section." Most people just learn things -- even very abstract concepts -- much better when they are related to something familiar. IAAGraduate Student In Abstract Mathematics.
Man, a lot of people sure are whining... These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
Err... you're suggesting that a large proportion of people on a slashdot forum are highschool dropouts? Not that I think slashdot readers are All That, but I would suspect there are fewer highschool dropouts in these forums than, say, the national average...
In any case, I'm well into a PhD program now, I never thought about dropping out of highschool, and I still agree with a lot of the criticisms. I'm not sure why you think that distinguishing "your" and "you're" is a good way to test overall education and intelligence (though it is aggravating of course), or why you completely dismiss the obvious fact that not everyone learns the same way, or is good at the same things. Or that teaching people with a particular multiple-choice test in mind, while it may increase standardized test scores, might not be the ideal way to prepare people for the real world.
So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school!
Most of the people discussing this issue here aren't in highschool. We aren't discussing whether we ourselves should drop out. We're discussing how to handle public education so that students 1. are better prepared for real life and 2. are less likely to drop out. If people should just take it upon themselves to learn these things, what is public highschool for in the first place? I mean, I agree, people should take it upon themselves to learn things, but that's not a reasonable response to someone pointing out the failings of our current public education system. It is good advice, but a lousy excuse.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone.
Again, this advice only applies to people who are in highschool, not trying to improve the system. In public school, if teachers or administrators are jerks, there often is no one for the student to notify, at least not in any way that will make much of a difference -- more likely you'll just piss off the teachers or administrators in question. And just because there might be a way, in specific cases, for individual action to affect things, doesn't mean we shouldn't also think about how to improve the system as a whole.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I kind of agree with this. I don't think schools are designed to make people into homogeneous and passive sheep. I don't believe in The Conspiracy. I think a lot of policies look that way, but the real motives are bureaucracy, laziness, poor priorities, poor funding, poor policies, and so on, and that people who are not homogeneous and passive cause hiccups in the system, and are therefore discouraged. It's not malicious, or a conspiracy, but it is still a problem.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school.
Uh... have you ever been a teenager?
It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
Agreed. So, as adults, let's do everything we can -- including improving the highschool experience wherever possible -- to make sure that people get one. I believe in personal responsibility -- people should finish highschool -- but society as a whole also has a responsibility to minimize the obstacles. Fingers can be pointed everywhere here, the students, the parents, the teachers, the politicians, the culture, and all of those are partly true. But instead of trying to artificially assign all the blame to one category, let's just do as much as we can to fix the parts where we do have some kind of say...
You jumped on the part of my comment questioning your source, but missed a lot of the more important parts.
To repeat my question, have you heard of any store that had fewer than twice as many Wiis as PS3s? "Twice as many" is a very conservative estimate, deliberately so, like other posters have said the more common numbers are 3x and up -- I'm just asking if you know of, or have even heard anyone mention, a single store like that.
I haven't, anyway. And given that, your claim of 400k versus 500k is pretty unlikely.
400k isn't really what Sony reported, as you say, it's what they said they would be shipping beforehand. No one knows how many have shipped, except that a lot of people are saying it was fewer than expected.
Then show me. Don't make up numbers, but show me some good sources (no, tiny fanboy sites do not count)
A lot of my previous post hinged on the fact that there are no numbers yet. It's too early, we have no reliable counts, there are no "good sources," only rumor and relative comparison -- by which, as above, the PS3 isn't looking so great in volume shipped at launch. But, let's see if we can reason a little more.
Accepting for the moment Nintendo's claim that 1 million will be sold in the U.S. by December, which would be less than 2 weeks after launch: it seems very unlikely to me that, say, they shipped 500k (your suggestion, taken from an earlier poster who also didn't know real numbers), and either held back another 500k or can manufacture and ship them within a week and a half. The initial launch was probably the majority of their existing stock, and they're churning them out as fast as they can. Even at the generous estimate of 150k units launched and shipped per week, that suggests about 750-800k at launch, possibly more, for them to make the 1 million target. As for the PS3, starting from 400k, subtract a (lenient) 50k for the many rumored shortages in their final shipments, a 10% Canada penalty since those are North American numbers, not U.S. as with the Wii, and we're down to 315k versus 750k for the U.S. launch.
Now, as I said, those aren't real numbers because there are none yet, but I think it's a lot closer than your estimates, and it's at least closer to the store reports of relative quantities (though if we believe store margins were more like 3-1, which isn't outside the realm of possibility, things get even worse -- but I'm trying to do a conservative count).
This sucks. Why cant they do some kind of 'pay now and we'll send it to you when it's here' ordering process.
Look, this seems to be really bothering you, so I'm willing to help you out: just pay me now, and don't worry about it. I'll send it to you when it's here.