Says you. Why? What are you seeing that makes you look at video games for an explanation?
ultra-realistic games
The point of a game is that it's not realistic. People play games to explore a different rule set. Knowing that it's a game will see people exhibit behaviour that they wouldn't outside the game. You imply but don't argue or support a contention that as realism increases so does the impact or influence of the game. I'm not aware of any research or study that supports this although it's been a while since I went looking. Do you have anything to base this on?
de-sensitize people to inhumane and immoral behavior?
The same argument has been levelled against music, comics, paperback novels etc. at different points in history.
I find it amusing that, for example, it's considered inappropriate to say "fuck" on tv or show someone genitals -- because presumably that might influence certain types of people in an anti-social way, but you can shoot someone in the head and spew a catchy one-liner and it's no big deal?
I find it disturbing that the US has such a repressed attitude towards sex and nudity but is so much more comfortable with violence. But you'll note, that's not isolated to video games. It's cultural and is expressed in a range of different ways within that culture.
But we as a society need to do a better job of self-policing and providing therapy for people who need it.
If the system corresponds with reality, it stands a much better chance of promoting a good life than does a system which does not correspond well with reality
There's some evidence that suggests that those with (mild to moderate) depression have a more accurate perspective, particularly around personal circumstances. Most non-depressed people have a slight but measurable degree of unrealistic 'optimism' about themselves. To the degree that personal happiness forms a component of your definition of 'a good life', then a slightly distorted view of reality is 'better' than a more accurate one. For an individual. At a group or societal level, the assessment might be calculated differently.
the assumption that hallucinations are universal
Not needed. I only need to assume that I am hallucinating when I see both the apple and the people saying that they see the apple. More, the GP loads the example by talking about a hallucination as though there exists a non-hallucinogenic state that has a more accurate perspective.
the assumption that hallucinations are universal, or even frequent, would not lead to a good life because it would discourage action
Not if the pattern of hallucinations is reasonably consistent. I presume you mean that inaction results from random or apparently unconnected input. If the hallucination is consistent, 'though, then you can make predictions about possible responses and choose to act based on those predictions. Religious beliefs, superstitions. So long as the cost of acting on a perspective that is inaccurate is lower than the benefit from same, then it's not even 'bad'.
I've seen unpopular opinions presented in reasonable and well argued fashion modded quite highly. When I have mod points I pay particular attention to comments I disagree with that are well presented to try to make sure I'm not contributing to an echo chamber. I'd say that there are more mods that do this than negatively mod due to disagreement. I'm not saying '-1 Disagree' doesn't happen, but that it happens more rarely than is claimed, and is often reversed as moderators find a decent post that's been modded down and 'correct' the moderation.
The GP post deserves negative moderation, regardless of content. Claims of persecution based on content are a fantasy of self importance.
I've come across articles/studies that point to income inequality more than outright poverty.
When everyone around you is doing about as well as you, for good or ill, there seems to be less crime, overall. When there's clearly some people drawing more from the pool than others, crime increases. Add guns and you see more gun crime.
WRT the 50s;
I'm not certain that there was less poverty, or less inequality (consider racial rights), but there was less mobility, less ubiquitous communication and more homogeneous communities - so perhaps it was just that there were less opportunities to have the inequality made obvious.
Meddled in foreign powers is a fairly broad accusation, and devoid of any analysis of positive vs negative
Meddling is meddling. You can try to justify it by claiming that it was for a noble purpose, but that's ignoring the fact that it's still meddling
Wasn't starvation happening under Sadam as well, how is it we get the blame for that?
When you got involved. Until then, the starvation was Saddam's fault. Once you stepped in, it became yours. Or do you only want to claim responsibility when you succeed?
Not everyone in Iraq was sorry to see Sadam go
That doesn't mean it wasn't meddling, nor that you stop being responsible for the deaths you caused directly, indirectly or as a result of removing the government and infrastructure that lead to yet more deaths. But hey, as you say 'mission accomplished'.
I might add that the poor execution was not for lack of trying. It was more a lack of deep appreciation for the task at hand by the generals chosen to do the job.
Incompetence doesn't absolve responsibility, and no one outside of primary school cares how hard you tried or what you really meant to do.
---
To be clear, I'm a citizen of a country that sent troops to Iraq. I protested in most of the fashions legally available to me, but as it was my government who directed troops into Iraq, I am, ultimately, responsible for the deaths of those people. I take the privilege of voting seriously and understand that when a soldier obeys a legal order, that the authority traces back to the government and hence to those who could vote. Not just those who did vote, nor just those who voted for that government (I didn't). I am disgusted at the orders my government gave. I consider it a violation of the trust of those who have sworn an oath to obey. I am ashamed at being party to the invasion of a sovereign nation and I consider the death and suffering to be unacceptable.
No matter what justification you use.
People died because our governments gave orders to our soldiers. That makes _us_ responsible, and no amount of hand wringing will change that.
As others point out, they _can_ know that information. You're advocating a once-size-fits-all compartmentalisation of information because it works for the military. It achieves certain goals (or tries to) that the military consider worth the cost. That's not an evaluation that suits all situations, or even many situations.
Some sysadmins abuse the trust they are given. Some are exemplars of professionalism and ethical behaviour. Most fall somewhere in between. Treating trustworthy and ethical people as though they are neither just to feel a little safer sounds to me like either overkill, a poor ability to identify the costs and needs of a business or an edge case. Justifying it by pointing to the military is missing _my_ point.
The military has pressures and responsibilities that, ideally, should not exist elsewhere. In fact, the reason to have a military is so that the rest of us aren't burdened with those concerns. The militarisation of other areas of society is worrying, dangerous and to an extent diminishes the sacrifice that those who serve have and continue to make.
The military understood this concept with compartmentalization of data decades ago. Perhaps it's about damn time we pay attention to the value of that.
Maybe you should consider the cost benefit ratio of that decision and ask whether that is the same for all cases.
And yeah, I DO realize that means questioning the trust of your own SysAdmins
This adversarial employer/employee relationship that this implies is part of the problem for the lack of trust. Trust is a relationship. It needs to be developed and it must be two way. When your employees are treated with dignity and trust, then some (most?) will respond in kind. It's easy enough in such an environment to identify the people who don't respond and remove them. But in an adversarial environment, you'll have a much harder time workout out who is and isn't capable of trust.
SysAdmins aren't magically immune
Neither are accountants, HR, sales reps, account managers etc. Some places those people are heavily monitored and/or restricted, in others they are trusted to act professionally and ethically.
How many times does industry need to repeat the words "Insider Threat" for people to pay attention
if I ran an ISP and my top speed was less than my competitor's, but my typical speed was faster, I would promote that fact rather than the "up to" speed
Most of copper is owned by Telstra, the privatised version of the original public utility. Only a few companies (three, I think) have their own kit in exchanges. This means that to a large extent, speed is constrained by equipment owned by only a few players. There's very little room to run faster or have better average speeds when you're reselling someone else's service and trying to differentiate on service, pricing, packages etc.
I long ago learned to pay attention to advertising qualifiers such as "up to" and "as much as", etc.
Congratulations. Your virtue has been noted. Meanwhile, Australia has consumer laws that are designed to try to stop people to the left of you on the bell curve from being exploited by clever wording, misleading omissions or incomplete information. The ISPs are obeying the existing consumer law. It has been recognised that this is causing confusion and frustration for a large number of customers, so a bill is being proposed to help reduce that.
Personally, this answer seems to me to mean that the law is unnecessary.
Yup, if only everyone were as wonderful as you.
There are a great many problems with broadband in Australia. The mess that the recent federal government made of the original NBN plan has not helped. We went from FTTP for everyone, to FFTP, FTTB, FTTC/DP/D, FTTN and HFC because it would be cheaper in the short term. Plans that are being offered include 100Mb down that's only possible on FTTP, but ISPs (well, Telstra, at least) aren't making that clear. Another ISP/provider with an aging cable infrastructure that isn't going to be incorporated has been telling existing customers that they are going to be terminated as soon as an NBN service is available and that if they don't switch within 30 days, they'll be cut-off. This is against the guidelines of letting people have 18 months to evaluate alternatives and come to understand the new services being offered (and to see how they play out in a given region). Optus, the provider in question, is claiming that their existing contracts allow termination within that time frame and as their cable infrastructure isn't going to get used, they're bailing on having to support it for any longer than necessary. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are finding this hard to follow.
So no, regulation is very much necessary, regardless of how virtuous you are in reading the fine print.
At this point in time people really need to purge the partisanship and then purge the partisan politicians. If America is to survive it needs its people focusing on the issues we CAN agree on and getting legislation on them enacted, then revisit the hot button issues once we have other parts of our house in order
Thank you AC. I don't normally post 'me too', but I'm out of mod-points, today, and this message is heard all too infrequently in the midst of a lot of partisan name calling.
Eventually that model runs out of other peoples' money - like in Venezuela.
Venezuala has had significant social and economic problems since the 80s. The introduction of social policies in an attempt to rectify some of these failed. That says nothing about social policies in general, or how they are applied in dozens of different societies and economies.
This Democrats=socialists and social policies=bad is the sort of simplistic 'us and them' mentality that allows political parties in the US to ignore the wants and needs of the majority of the population. It doesn't matter how bad the party gets, they know that most of their members will still vote the party line rather than voting for the hated 'other'.
This is a bad law for a lot of reasons. It was proposed by a Democrat. So long as you keep the argument about them being a Democrat, then blue voters are going to continue to vote for them. Maybe if you stopped trying to score cheap points and started pointing out the problems with the policy, people might feel more inclined to vote _on_policy_ and not party lines.
And like the Australian blacklist, 'somehow' content that has nothing to do with that listed on the bill will end up blocked. Like rival businesses. Or political opponents.
Or is the list of banned content going to be made available for public... scrutiny? Ahem.
I'll be fascinated to see how they expect this to be implemented.
There have been some absolutely elegant trolls. Trolls with style and wit. The majority that just try to score points as quickly as possible by being as obnoxious as possible are... disappointing. I hate wading through all the democrat v conservative name calling, but the only reason I see it is that I choose to browse at -1 (often to mod).
I love that Slashdot never used to delete anything. Even things I loathed. There are mechanisms to reduce the visibility of such comments and I think the process of letting them be made, then having them moderated is more important than simply deleting them. Deleting just tells the user that their comment is unacceptable, but the rest of the community doesn't get to see that, or to participate in the process. There's no discussion (if necessary) on why the comment is inappropriate.
Letting people post things we don't like or agree with is the test of free speech. Deletion is not the answer. Public repudiation is. Vigorous discussion is. I'd rather be challenged than comforted. I'd rather any amount of crass, foul, low-level trolling than having same censored out of some misguided attempt to 'improve' discussion.
I can find echo chambers and moderated forums just about anywhere else. I can find cesspits of unregulated comments and posting nearly as easily. Slashdot, IMHO, has (had?) an odd and precious mix of editorial-hands-off and community moderation. If this is true, it's sad to see that go.
When your government can confiscate all of your money they have no reason to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse
My government is made up of elected representatives and public servants. They have a wide range of motives. Some of those people wish to reduce fraud, waste and abuse. Some don't. Characterising 'the government' as a singular entity is simplistic. My government can do a number of things but doesn't. That says very little about 'it's' reason or motivation.
You want to be taken care of like a child. Grow up already.
Actually, I'd consider recognising that the benefit I enjoy as a member of a group obligates me to contribute to that group as having grown up, but we may have to differ on this.
I used the word "communist" in the context of taxation. You are adding the characterization.
You've replied to 'Civilization is paid for with taxes' to equating taxation with the goverment taking all your money, to suggesting that this is the same as communism. Exaggeration and false equivalence. Your 'context' warrants the characterisation.
This started with your statement that giving over half of your labor to the government was not only a good thing but was actually too low.
Er, what now? Are you misquoting or conflating me with someone else?
The government can tax my labor to some extent but beyond some threshold it is confiscatory, counterproductive, and counter to what it means to live in a free society.
"To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities"
Can you please stop. I'm not advocating communism. I think that extremes of either socialism or capitalism are doomed, but that societies made with mixes of both tend to produce the greatest good for the greatest number (and I recognise that my 'good' may differ from others). I object to any discussion around social policies being met with exaggerated comparison to communism. You equated taxation to the goverment taking all your money and then implied that this is communism. Neither is true, and while I believe that taxation is necessary (and probably at a greater rate than you) I do not believe that a predominantly communist society is useful or can be successful.
Again I suggest if your government hasn't confiscated all of your income and assets yet feel free to send them a check for the balance.
You seem pretty pleased with this as an argument - you've used it a couple of times now, but it's a straw man. I've nowhere advocated for taxation=100%. If that's not what you're trying to address with this statement, I'm at a loss.
And seeing as you're in the mood for re-iteration, please allow me the same;
Some taxation =/= 100% taxation. Taxation =/= communism. Simplistically conflating the two so you can attack a straw man is unconvincing.
I can understand your frustration, and if you're frustrated at something, you're less likely to spend time getting better at it. Working with poor tools is frustrating.
Buy a decent pan with a thick bottom, the thicker the better. It will take longer to heat, but it will also provide a more even and consistent heat as the mass helps 'smooth' fluctuations or uneveness and 'hot spots' in your heat source. It will take some of the need to micromanage cooking out of your process. You'd be surprised how much better you'll cook when your pan is an even, consistent temperature. You'll start to get a feel for how long things take and not have to constantly check. (You mention warping and uneven heating, so I assume you're talking about relatively thin pans)
I'd recommend all stainless with rivetted handle(s) and maybe go with a saute pan rather than a fry pan. All stainless means you can cook with it in the oven. Rivets tend to last longer than spot welding. Keep an eye on 2nd hand sales. Decent cookware is expensive, but tends to last long enough to be used and sold.
If you really can't prep while your pan is heating, then it's free time. Time to wind down and get ready to eat. Maybe catch up on some reading. You've mentioned a meal with some fairly serial processes. Are there meals that better suit your cooking conditions? Finding new foods is part of the joy (for me) of cooking. I also clean as I go. There's always a minute here or there where I can wipe or rinse. You mention needing to leave the pans to cool for 30 minutes, but they are cooling as you eat and by the time you're done and ready to wash the dishes you've eaten on, the cooking gear is cool enough to wash.
If an hour for a meal is more than you can afford (and given commute and other time costs, I understand it can be) then maybe looking at meals you can freeze and/or store. Cooking more than one serving at a time doesn't increase time linearly. You mention packaged dinners - DIY it with a stew or pasta sauce or something similar once a week. Cut them with fresh meals for variety. Make things that can act as the basis of other meals - like meat sauces for pasta.
Like many things, especially DIY, initially the difference between what you can make and something you can have made is disappointing. Knowing that it's healthier doesn't help, and cheaper isn't always the case once you also count time. It takes time to get to the point where you're producing food that's better than you can easily buy. Like anything else, you'll have to work out if the time to get better is worth it. For something as basic and so integrally linked to health as cooking, I think it is. YMMV
All systems have inefficiencies and in human systems, waste, fraud and abuse are just that. You cannot eliminate them, although they can be reduced. So long as the benefit of co-operation outweigh the costs of organising same, including inefficiencies, then societies will keep forming and some kind of pooling of resources will happen.
Using the existence of waste, fraud or abuse as the (only) reasons for abandoning a system is simplistic. Can the system be improved? Is the cost of trying to improve the system likely to return more than is spent?
Perfection is a direction, not a destination.
If you want to give the government all of your money and have "smarter" people than you decide how to waste it
It has nothing to do with 'smarter' people spending 'your money'. If you want to participate in and benefit from the advantages of society and civilisation, you need to contribute. If you want to be the one with your hand on the wheel and more control over the purse strings, stand for office. Personally, I don't. This argument is a straw man.
Or maybe move someplace with a communist system and not have any money of your own to begin with.
Believe it or not, there are political and economic systems that lie between the extremes you offer. Some of them have considerably higher standards of living for more people than either 'pure' communist or 'pure' libertarianism (or whatever tax-free system you seem enamoured of).
But you're probably not interested. You've used the word 'communist' as an epithet while using a service and system made possible only because of the taxes paid by generations before you. You live in a place and period of peace unknown in history due in no small part because of the sacrifices made by people who were paid by taxes. The life you lead and the wonderfully narcissistic position you are allowed to hold is all because better people than you have realised that co-operation works and who have been (relatively) happy to keep their end of the bargain.
FFS, this is even worse than the copyright=theft meme. Taxation is a levy. It's a portion of personal (household/business) wealth paid to a governing body to fund public works. It's no more 'theft' than membership fees that cover costs of an organisation.
an institutional framework of extracting wealth from people
That's better, even with your use of scare-word 'extracting'
through the threat of violence
... and then you're back to ranting
a perfect example of terrorism
Hot tip; in english, words have meanings and 'terrorism' doesn't mean 'bad thing I don't like'.
A society that admits the practice is, by definition, uncivilised.
Only if we use the... irregular definitions that you've used.
I presume you favour a low-to-zero tax system. You'll happily ignore the enormous benefits that come from living in a country and civilisation that's been built from the wealth that so many other citizens, past and present, have pooled and concentrate on the limitations that expecting you to make a similar contribution places on you, and/or the inefficiencies (and even corruption) of those we've arranged to spend this wealth.
While I'm sure that you're quite capable of re-inventing civilisation on your own with nothing more than a small set of nail clippers, most of the rest of humanity have consistently, across history and culture, seen the benefit of pooling resources and co-operating. So would you mind very much setting aside the keyboard that taxes have helped build and stop posting on the internet that exists only because of taxation and find some lonely place to beat your manly chest and declare loudly about how much of a rugged individualist you are? Or is Poe's Law biting me in the ass?
620,000 people didn't. More US soldiers than lost in any, single, foreign war and until Vietnam, more than had been lost in _all_ foreign wars.
That number is just the dead. Not those left scarred and wounded. Or the families destroyed.
That something that called itself 'the United States of America' continued to exist after the civil war ignores the terrible cost and incredible tragedy of that war, and the deep damage done to those involved and to the institution of the 'US' itself.
A serious question for you: if an equivalent study to this one came out of a right-wing think tank, saying that fake news is a left-wing thing, would you simply accept the results?
No more than I accepted these, and, to be frank given the massive amount of AC name calling from both sides I've seen since the election I wouldn't be terribly surprised _IF_and_only_if_ they had decent rigor, a well described methodology, provided enough data to at least understand how they arrived at their conclusions etc. You're doing it here by equating a study from Oxford University to be equivalent to a piece from a 'right-wing think tank', implying that Oxford is a left-wing think tank.
Even if their definition of "fake news" was based on subjective criteria applied by their own internal assessors?
One of the first things I was curious about was their definition/s.
News is subjective. There are enough debates on Slashdot about whether an article is really 'news for nerds' or not to prove that, if nothing else. Creating a categorisation that attempts to define whether something is 'junk' or not is subjective, but you can create conditions that attempt a degree of objectivity and then be transparent about what those are and how they were applied. Pointing out that this is 'subjective' scores no points. If you want to convince me that the study is flawed, I'd ask either that you show that the standards they chose are inappropriate, or that they were applied in a way that led to some kind of bias (you've kind of hinted at that, but offer nothing more than an assertion).
The 91 sources of political news and information, which we identified over the course of several years of research and monitoring, produce content that includes various forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, and conspiratorial political information.
beats
This is completely subjective.
If you'd like to actually quote or reference their methodology and provide specific criticism rather than a hand wave, your position would be more persuasive.
That's an assertion. It's not obvious, so it really requires an argument, maybe some facts or examples.
Classifying news as "right wing" is subjective
They don't seem to have classified the news by either 'left' or 'right', but by whether it was sensational, extremist, conspiratorial, fake or otherwise junk. They then looked at who was sharing that news the most and identified them a 'right' by such things as the fact that was how they self-identified. I think you've skimmed the summary (if that) and read what you wanted to find.
There is no scientific basis for the evaluation.
Hmm, you haven't read the paper, have you.
And you've been taken in by it.
Ah, the smugness of ignorance. The Dunning-Kruger effect in action with just a hint of delicious irony.
Did you use Vista from launch, or after SP1 came out?
Vista had well documented flaws in copying and deleting that were addressed by SP1. Driver support was lackluster and combined with the higher system requirements, games performed poorly. In parallel, the labeling of hardware as 'Vista Capable' when it could barely boot had largely been resolved by SP1.
Vista Basic had a min-spec of 512MB and Home and up 1GB. Conventional wisdom of the time was that 2GB was necessary for anything like decent performance. That you didn't notice a problem with 4GB isn't surprising, but a lot of early adopters who met or even exceeded the recommended specification found Vista to be slow and unresponsive.
Any differences with XP just added insult to injury. It's easier to accept change when there are tangible improvements. The improvements in Vista were not immediately apparent to most people, but the poor performance was. Why would you bother getting used to a new OS if it was slower? If you want to compete with another product, even your own, you had better offer a benefit for people to switch away.
Or, you could just not give awards out ever because nobody is perfect and we wouldn't want to encourage any salacious behaviour.
I have two problems with this sentence;
The first is that you are exaggerating the position to demonstrate the absurdity, without demonstrating that the exaggeration is fair and that the absurdity applies to the original position and not your exaggeration, alone. To give no awards because everyone has done something wrong, even if only minor, is clearly ludicrous. That there exists no line between 'not perfect, but has no major flaws that would preclude an award' and 'has flaws that make giving an award problematic' has not been shown.
I think that there exists a line, below which someone with the occasional speeding ticket can easily be honoured, and above which we have at the other end of the spectrum someone like Mengel. Where you draw the line, and how you go about dealing with those close to it are not easy answers. If you'd like to argue that Nolan is close to such a line, I'm happy to continue. But to argue that no such line exists or should exist because, in extremum it creates a ludicrous situation is not a flaw of the concept but of the exaggeration.
The second point I take issue with is;
salacious behaviour
Nolan did not engage in salacious behaviour. He engaged in behaviour, in a workplace, that constitutes harassment. By describing it as you have you are ignoring or trying to dismiss that point. It's not negotiable. It's documented in biographies and he is quoted in interviews with Playboy.
seem to be arguing for is that nothing positive can ever be recognized/rewarded if the recipient of said award had ever done anything bad at any point in time of their life.
You misunderstand or mischaracterise.
To the extent that an award is a simplisitc 'this person is worthy of admiration' and not a nuanced 'this person did some amazing things, but was also an asshole' then awards need to be careful about who they laud. GDC seems to agree in that they withdrew the award. Nolan seems to agree given his tweet/apology.
I think there is a threshold of behaviour, below which the sort of minor flaws of character can be overlooked. I do not believe Nolan's behaviour can be overlooked, especially in this industry, especially in 2018. The 'line' is not static. What is and is not acceptable changes. It needs to be challenged. We need to hold up our standards to scrutiny and demand that people we hold up as role-models, heroes and award winners reflect those standards. This means that people who once were considered heroes may come to be seen as flawed. And none of that should cause their accomplishments to be denied, just the awards given to the _person_.
I literally DESPISE the thought processes that YOU are engaging in
And I'm genuinely sorry to have offended. I see argument and debate as a process for exchanging information and testing ideas. On topics that cut close to concepts which are held dear, it's easy to see disagreement as a personal attack. This was not my intention; I apologise, again, for any distress I have caused and thank you for the time you took to explain your position.
caused a schism between the meaning of the award and accomplishment
I think you've neatly summarised the essence of the (less strident) sides of the debate.
Should an award offered in 2018 in honour of someone's achievements in the 70s be influenced by evidence of behaviour that is recognised as unacceptable? (There's some argument about whether the behaviour is unacceptable or not; that's a different debate).
Some argue that the accomplishments should be considered in isolation, and the nature of the person shouldn't influence the issuing of an award. Others argue that the award honours the person, not just the accomplishments, and so the nature of that person does need to be considered.
You mention von Brauhn, which is a wonderful example of a non-Godwin nazi reference. von Brauhn's accomplishments are profound, but his membership and work for the Nazis in WWII has meant that his legacy has attracted exactly the sort of debate we see here. In both von Braun and Nolan's case, the contrast between personal behaviour and accomplishments mean that they require a more complex or nuanced evaluation. I don't think you can say 'this person is a hero/god or a villain/bad'. It's too simplistic.
The problem is that awards are, essentially, reductive and simplistic. They aren't nuanced. There's no real capacity to say 'Yes, this person is, personally, an asshole, but gosh they were good at [X]'. It's all or nothing. It's for this reason that I think the withdrawal of the award is necessary. Nolan is not a 'clean' hero. His achievements, as important as they may be, were made by someone with reprehensible personal behaviour.
I appreciate and I hope, understand, the point you are making. I think that my disgreement comes down to what I see awards as meaning.
I am not totally up-to-speed regarding this historical topic
Appear to contradict each other. If you aren't "up to speed" how can you be sure of your judgement? The information you need to get "up to speed" is a click away. Right there. In the article. References to published biographies and interviews given by Nolan where he talks about his behaviour.
Once you are "up to speed", then I'll be interested in your opinion, but your post is not the only 'I don't really know what's going on, but I'm sure it's wrong'.
So, 'congrats' but your self professed ignorance does not make your opinion particularly compelling.
In case the original article and the sources it links to are too much trouble to read, I'll summarise;
No one is denying Nolan's achievements. They are criticising the GDC for choosing to award someone who has admitted to negative behaviour. The GDC has responded by withdrawing the award and Nolan has apologised.
Slashdot Mirror
The real deeper issue is
Says you. Why? What are you seeing that makes you look at video games for an explanation?
ultra-realistic games
The point of a game is that it's not realistic. People play games to explore a different rule set. Knowing that it's a game will see people exhibit behaviour that they wouldn't outside the game. You imply but don't argue or support a contention that as realism increases so does the impact or influence of the game. I'm not aware of any research or study that supports this although it's been a while since I went looking. Do you have anything to base this on?
de-sensitize people to inhumane and immoral behavior?
The same argument has been levelled against music, comics, paperback novels etc. at different points in history.
I find it amusing that, for example, it's considered inappropriate to say "fuck" on tv or show someone genitals -- because presumably that might influence certain types of people in an anti-social way, but you can shoot someone in the head and spew a catchy one-liner and it's no big deal?
I find it disturbing that the US has such a repressed attitude towards sex and nudity but is so much more comfortable with violence. But you'll note, that's not isolated to video games. It's cultural and is expressed in a range of different ways within that culture.
But we as a society need to do a better job of self-policing and providing therapy for people who need it.
With this I am in utter agreement.
the purpose
and
a good life
Are subjective.
If the system corresponds with reality, it stands a much better chance of promoting a good life than does a system which does not correspond well with reality
There's some evidence that suggests that those with (mild to moderate) depression have a more accurate perspective, particularly around personal circumstances. Most non-depressed people have a slight but measurable degree of unrealistic 'optimism' about themselves. To the degree that personal happiness forms a component of your definition of 'a good life', then a slightly distorted view of reality is 'better' than a more accurate one. For an individual. At a group or societal level, the assessment might be calculated differently.
the assumption that hallucinations are universal
Not needed. I only need to assume that I am hallucinating when I see both the apple and the people saying that they see the apple. More, the GP loads the example by talking about a hallucination as though there exists a non-hallucinogenic state that has a more accurate perspective.
the assumption that hallucinations are universal, or even frequent, would not lead to a good life because it would discourage action
Not if the pattern of hallucinations is reasonably consistent. I presume you mean that inaction results from random or apparently unconnected input. If the hallucination is consistent, 'though, then you can make predictions about possible responses and choose to act based on those predictions. Religious beliefs, superstitions. So long as the cost of acting on a perspective that is inaccurate is lower than the benefit from same, then it's not even 'bad'.
dangerously stupid and naive
and
You are a suicidal idiot
would get this modded down for being flamebait.
I've seen unpopular opinions presented in reasonable and well argued fashion modded quite highly. When I have mod points I pay particular attention to comments I disagree with that are well presented to try to make sure I'm not contributing to an echo chamber. I'd say that there are more mods that do this than negatively mod due to disagreement. I'm not saying '-1 Disagree' doesn't happen, but that it happens more rarely than is claimed, and is often reversed as moderators find a decent post that's been modded down and 'correct' the moderation.
The GP post deserves negative moderation, regardless of content. Claims of persecution based on content are a fantasy of self importance.
I've come across articles/studies that point to income inequality more than outright poverty.
When everyone around you is doing about as well as you, for good or ill, there seems to be less crime, overall. When there's clearly some people drawing more from the pool than others, crime increases. Add guns and you see more gun crime.
WRT the 50s;
I'm not certain that there was less poverty, or less inequality (consider racial rights), but there was less mobility, less ubiquitous communication and more homogeneous communities - so perhaps it was just that there were less opportunities to have the inequality made obvious.
Meddled in foreign powers is a fairly broad accusation, and devoid of any analysis of positive vs negative
Meddling is meddling. You can try to justify it by claiming that it was for a noble purpose, but that's ignoring the fact that it's still meddling
Wasn't starvation happening under Sadam as well, how is it we get the blame for that?
When you got involved. Until then, the starvation was Saddam's fault. Once you stepped in, it became yours. Or do you only want to claim responsibility when you succeed?
Not everyone in Iraq was sorry to see Sadam go
That doesn't mean it wasn't meddling, nor that you stop being responsible for the deaths you caused directly, indirectly or as a result of removing the government and infrastructure that lead to yet more deaths. But hey, as you say 'mission accomplished'.
I might add that the poor execution was not for lack of trying. It was more a lack of deep appreciation for the task at hand by the generals chosen to do the job.
Incompetence doesn't absolve responsibility, and no one outside of primary school cares how hard you tried or what you really meant to do.
---
To be clear, I'm a citizen of a country that sent troops to Iraq. I protested in most of the fashions legally available to me, but as it was my government who directed troops into Iraq, I am, ultimately, responsible for the deaths of those people. I take the privilege of voting seriously and understand that when a soldier obeys a legal order, that the authority traces back to the government and hence to those who could vote. Not just those who did vote, nor just those who voted for that government (I didn't). I am disgusted at the orders my government gave. I consider it a violation of the trust of those who have sworn an oath to obey. I am ashamed at being party to the invasion of a sovereign nation and I consider the death and suffering to be unacceptable.
No matter what justification you use.
People died because our governments gave orders to our soldiers. That makes _us_ responsible, and no amount of hand wringing will change that.
You're changing the goalposts.
As others point out, they _can_ know that information. You're advocating a once-size-fits-all compartmentalisation of information because it works for the military.
It achieves certain goals (or tries to) that the military consider worth the cost. That's not an evaluation that suits all situations, or even many situations.
Some sysadmins abuse the trust they are given. Some are exemplars of professionalism and ethical behaviour. Most fall somewhere in between. Treating trustworthy and ethical people as though they are neither just to feel a little safer sounds to me like either overkill, a poor ability to identify the costs and needs of a business or an edge case. Justifying it by pointing to the military is missing _my_ point.
The military has pressures and responsibilities that, ideally, should not exist elsewhere. In fact, the reason to have a military is so that the rest of us aren't burdened with those concerns. The militarisation of other areas of society is worrying, dangerous and to an extent diminishes the sacrifice that those who serve have and continue to make.
The military understood this concept with compartmentalization of data decades ago. Perhaps it's about damn time we pay attention to the value of that.
Maybe you should consider the cost benefit ratio of that decision and ask whether that is the same for all cases.
And yeah, I DO realize that means questioning the trust of your own SysAdmins
This adversarial employer/employee relationship that this implies is part of the problem for the lack of trust. Trust is a relationship. It needs to be developed and it must be two way. When your employees are treated with dignity and trust, then some (most?) will respond in kind. It's easy enough in such an environment to identify the people who don't respond and remove them. But in an adversarial environment, you'll have a much harder time workout out who is and isn't capable of trust.
SysAdmins aren't magically immune
Neither are accountants, HR, sales reps, account managers etc. Some places those people are heavily monitored and/or restricted, in others they are trusted to act professionally and ethically.
How many times does industry need to repeat the words "Insider Threat" for people to pay attention
Those who sacrifice liberty for security ...
if I ran an ISP and my top speed was less than my competitor's, but my typical speed was faster, I would promote that fact rather than the "up to" speed
Most of copper is owned by Telstra, the privatised version of the original public utility. Only a few companies (three, I think) have their own kit in exchanges. This means that to a large extent, speed is constrained by equipment owned by only a few players. There's very little room to run faster or have better average speeds when you're reselling someone else's service and trying to differentiate on service, pricing, packages etc.
I long ago learned to pay attention to advertising qualifiers such as "up to" and "as much as", etc.
Congratulations. Your virtue has been noted. Meanwhile, Australia has consumer laws that are designed to try to stop people to the left of you on the bell curve from being exploited by clever wording, misleading omissions or incomplete information. The ISPs are obeying the existing consumer law. It has been recognised that this is causing confusion and frustration for a large number of customers, so a bill is being proposed to help reduce that.
Personally, this answer seems to me to mean that the law is unnecessary.
Yup, if only everyone were as wonderful as you.
There are a great many problems with broadband in Australia. The mess that the recent federal government made of the original NBN plan has not helped. We went from FTTP for everyone, to FFTP, FTTB, FTTC/DP/D, FTTN and HFC because it would be cheaper in the short term. Plans that are being offered include 100Mb down that's only possible on FTTP, but ISPs (well, Telstra, at least) aren't making that clear. Another ISP/provider with an aging cable infrastructure that isn't going to be incorporated has been telling existing customers that they are going to be terminated as soon as an NBN service is available and that if they don't switch within 30 days, they'll be cut-off. This is against the guidelines of letting people have 18 months to evaluate alternatives and come to understand the new services being offered (and to see how they play out in a given region). Optus, the provider in question, is claiming that their existing contracts allow termination within that time frame and as their cable infrastructure isn't going to get used, they're bailing on having to support it for any longer than necessary. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are finding this hard to follow.
So no, regulation is very much necessary, regardless of how virtuous you are in reading the fine print.
At this point in time people really need to purge the partisanship and then purge the partisan politicians. If America is to survive it needs its people focusing on the issues we CAN agree on and getting legislation on them enacted, then revisit the hot button issues once we have other parts of our house in order
Thank you AC. I don't normally post 'me too', but I'm out of mod-points, today, and this message is heard all too infrequently in the midst of a lot of partisan name calling.
Eventually that model runs out of other peoples' money - like in Venezuela.
Venezuala has had significant social and economic problems since the 80s. The introduction of social policies in an attempt to rectify some of these failed. That says nothing about social policies in general, or how they are applied in dozens of different societies and economies.
This Democrats=socialists and social policies=bad is the sort of simplistic 'us and them' mentality that allows political parties in the US to ignore the wants and needs of the majority of the population. It doesn't matter how bad the party gets, they know that most of their members will still vote the party line rather than voting for the hated 'other'.
This is a bad law for a lot of reasons. It was proposed by a Democrat. So long as you keep the argument about them being a Democrat, then blue voters are going to continue to vote for them. Maybe if you stopped trying to score cheap points and started pointing out the problems with the policy, people might feel more inclined to vote _on_policy_ and not party lines.
TL:DR You are part of the problem.
And like the Australian blacklist, 'somehow' content that has nothing to do with that listed on the bill will end up blocked. Like rival businesses. Or political opponents.
Or is the list of banned content going to be made available for public ... scrutiny? Ahem.
I'll be fascinated to see how they expect this to be implemented.
There have been some absolutely elegant trolls. Trolls with style and wit. The majority that just try to score points as quickly as possible by being as obnoxious as possible are ... disappointing. I hate wading through all the democrat v conservative name calling, but the only reason I see it is that I choose to browse at -1 (often to mod).
I love that Slashdot never used to delete anything. Even things I loathed. There are mechanisms to reduce the visibility of such comments and I think the process of letting them be made, then having them moderated is more important than simply deleting them. Deleting just tells the user that their comment is unacceptable, but the rest of the community doesn't get to see that, or to participate in the process. There's no discussion (if necessary) on why the comment is inappropriate.
Letting people post things we don't like or agree with is the test of free speech. Deletion is not the answer. Public repudiation is. Vigorous discussion is. I'd rather be challenged than comforted. I'd rather any amount of crass, foul, low-level trolling than having same censored out of some misguided attempt to 'improve' discussion.
I can find echo chambers and moderated forums just about anywhere else. I can find cesspits of unregulated comments and posting nearly as easily. Slashdot, IMHO, has (had?) an odd and precious mix of editorial-hands-off and community moderation. If this is true, it's sad to see that go.
When your government can confiscate all of your money they have no reason to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse
My government is made up of elected representatives and public servants. They have a wide range of motives. Some of those people wish to reduce fraud, waste and abuse. Some don't. Characterising 'the government' as a singular entity is simplistic. My government can do a number of things but doesn't. That says very little about 'it's' reason or motivation.
You want to be taken care of like a child. Grow up already.
Actually, I'd consider recognising that the benefit I enjoy as a member of a group obligates me to contribute to that group as having grown up, but we may have to differ on this.
I used the word "communist" in the context of taxation. You are adding the characterization.
You've replied to 'Civilization is paid for with taxes' to equating taxation with the goverment taking all your money, to suggesting that this is the same as communism. Exaggeration and false equivalence. Your 'context' warrants the characterisation.
This started with your statement that giving over half of your labor to the government was not only a good thing but was actually too low.
Er, what now? Are you misquoting or conflating me with someone else?
The government can tax my labor to some extent but beyond some threshold it is confiscatory, counterproductive, and counter to what it means to live in a free society.
"To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities"
Can you please stop. I'm not advocating communism. I think that extremes of either socialism or capitalism are doomed, but that societies made with mixes of both tend to produce the greatest good for the greatest number (and I recognise that my 'good' may differ from others). I object to any discussion around social policies being met with exaggerated comparison to communism. You equated taxation to the goverment taking all your money and then implied that this is communism. Neither is true, and while I believe that taxation is necessary (and probably at a greater rate than you) I do not believe that a predominantly communist society is useful or can be successful.
Again I suggest if your government hasn't confiscated all of your income and assets yet feel free to send them a check for the balance.
You seem pretty pleased with this as an argument - you've used it a couple of times now, but it's a straw man. I've nowhere advocated for taxation=100%. If that's not what you're trying to address with this statement, I'm at a loss.
And seeing as you're in the mood for re-iteration, please allow me the same;
Some taxation =/= 100% taxation. Taxation =/= communism. Simplistically conflating the two so you can attack a straw man is unconvincing.
someone sounds a bit miffed about hearing the truth
Sounds like someone can't manage a rebuttal and is attempting a weak ad hominem.
I can understand your frustration, and if you're frustrated at something, you're less likely to spend time getting better at it. Working with poor tools is frustrating.
Buy a decent pan with a thick bottom, the thicker the better. It will take longer to heat, but it will also provide a more even and consistent heat as the mass helps 'smooth' fluctuations or uneveness and 'hot spots' in your heat source. It will take some of the need to micromanage cooking out of your process. You'd be surprised how much better you'll cook when your pan is an even, consistent temperature. You'll start to get a feel for how long things take and not have to constantly check. (You mention warping and uneven heating, so I assume you're talking about relatively thin pans)
I'd recommend all stainless with rivetted handle(s) and maybe go with a saute pan rather than a fry pan. All stainless means you can cook with it in the oven. Rivets tend to last longer than spot welding. Keep an eye on 2nd hand sales. Decent cookware is expensive, but tends to last long enough to be used and sold.
If you really can't prep while your pan is heating, then it's free time. Time to wind down and get ready to eat. Maybe catch up on some reading.
You've mentioned a meal with some fairly serial processes. Are there meals that better suit your cooking conditions? Finding new foods is part of the joy (for me) of cooking. I also clean as I go. There's always a minute here or there where I can wipe or rinse. You mention needing to leave the pans to cool for 30 minutes, but they are cooling as you eat and by the time you're done and ready to wash the dishes you've eaten on, the cooking gear is cool enough to wash.
If an hour for a meal is more than you can afford (and given commute and other time costs, I understand it can be) then maybe looking at meals you can freeze and/or store. Cooking more than one serving at a time doesn't increase time linearly. You mention packaged dinners - DIY it with a stew or pasta sauce or something similar once a week. Cut them with fresh meals for variety. Make things that can act as the basis of other meals - like meat sauces for pasta.
Like many things, especially DIY, initially the difference between what you can make and something you can have made is disappointing. Knowing that it's healthier doesn't help, and cheaper isn't always the case once you also count time. It takes time to get to the point where you're producing food that's better than you can easily buy. Like anything else, you'll have to work out if the time to get better is worth it. For something as basic and so integrally linked to health as cooking, I think it is. YMMV
So is waste, fraud, and abuse
All systems have inefficiencies and in human systems, waste, fraud and abuse are just that. You cannot eliminate them, although they can be reduced. So long as the benefit of co-operation outweigh the costs of organising same, including inefficiencies, then societies will keep forming and some kind of pooling of resources will happen.
Using the existence of waste, fraud or abuse as the (only) reasons for abandoning a system is simplistic. Can the system be improved? Is the cost of trying to improve the system likely to return more than is spent?
Perfection is a direction, not a destination.
If you want to give the government all of your money and have "smarter" people than you decide how to waste it
It has nothing to do with 'smarter' people spending 'your money'. If you want to participate in and benefit from the advantages of society and civilisation, you need to contribute. If you want to be the one with your hand on the wheel and more control over the purse strings, stand for office. Personally, I don't. This argument is a straw man.
Or maybe move someplace with a communist system and not have any money of your own to begin with.
Believe it or not, there are political and economic systems that lie between the extremes you offer. Some of them have considerably higher standards of living for more people than either 'pure' communist or 'pure' libertarianism (or whatever tax-free system you seem enamoured of).
But you're probably not interested. You've used the word 'communist' as an epithet while using a service and system made possible only because of the taxes paid by generations before you. You live in a place and period of peace unknown in history due in no small part because of the sacrifices made by people who were paid by taxes. The life you lead and the wonderfully narcissistic position you are allowed to hold is all because better people than you have realised that co-operation works and who have been (relatively) happy to keep their end of the bargain.
Taxation is systemic theft
FFS, this is even worse than the copyright=theft meme. Taxation is a levy. It's a portion of personal (household/business) wealth paid to a governing body to fund public works. It's no more 'theft' than membership fees that cover costs of an organisation.
an institutional framework of extracting wealth from people
That's better, even with your use of scare-word 'extracting'
through the threat of violence
... and then you're back to ranting
a perfect example of terrorism
Hot tip; in english, words have meanings and 'terrorism' doesn't mean 'bad thing I don't like'.
A society that admits the practice is, by definition, uncivilised.
Only if we use the ... irregular definitions that you've used.
I presume you favour a low-to-zero tax system. You'll happily ignore the enormous benefits that come from living in a country and civilisation that's been built from the wealth that so many other citizens, past and present, have pooled and concentrate on the limitations that expecting you to make a similar contribution places on you, and/or the inefficiencies (and even corruption) of those we've arranged to spend this wealth.
While I'm sure that you're quite capable of re-inventing civilisation on your own with nothing more than a small set of nail clippers, most of the rest of humanity have consistently, across history and culture, seen the benefit of pooling resources and co-operating. So would you mind very much setting aside the keyboard that taxes have helped build and stop posting on the internet that exists only because of taxation and find some lonely place to beat your manly chest and declare loudly about how much of a rugged individualist you are? Or is Poe's Law biting me in the ass?
The US survived the civil war
620,000 people didn't. More US soldiers than lost in any, single, foreign war and until Vietnam, more than had been lost in _all_ foreign wars.
That number is just the dead. Not those left scarred and wounded. Or the families destroyed.
That something that called itself 'the United States of America' continued to exist after the civil war ignores the terrible cost and incredible tragedy of that war, and the deep damage done to those involved and to the institution of the 'US' itself.
Maybe you should aim for more than 'survived'.
A serious question for you: if an equivalent study to this one came out of a right-wing think tank, saying that fake news is a left-wing thing, would you simply accept the results?
No more than I accepted these, and, to be frank given the massive amount of AC name calling from both sides I've seen since the election I wouldn't be terribly surprised _IF_and_only_if_ they had decent rigor, a well described methodology, provided enough data to at least understand how they arrived at their conclusions etc. You're doing it here by equating a study from Oxford University to be equivalent to a piece from a 'right-wing think tank', implying that Oxford is a left-wing think tank.
Even if their definition of "fake news" was based on subjective criteria applied by their own internal assessors?
One of the first things I was curious about was their definition/s.
News is subjective. There are enough debates on Slashdot about whether an article is really 'news for nerds' or not to prove that, if nothing else.
Creating a categorisation that attempts to define whether something is 'junk' or not is subjective, but you can create conditions that attempt a degree of objectivity and then be transparent about what those are and how they were applied. Pointing out that this is 'subjective' scores no points. If you want to convince me that the study is flawed, I'd ask either that you show that the standards they chose are inappropriate, or that they were applied in a way that led to some kind of bias (you've kind of hinted at that, but offer nothing more than an assertion).
This
The 91 sources of political news and information, which we identified over the course of several years of research and monitoring, produce content that includes various forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, and conspiratorial political information.
beats
This is completely subjective.
If you'd like to actually quote or reference their methodology and provide specific criticism rather than a hand wave, your position would be more persuasive.
Their bias is embedded in their method
Can you elaborate? Which part was biased?
They had a conclusion and made their study fit it
That's an assertion. It's not obvious, so it really requires an argument, maybe some facts or examples.
Classifying news as "right wing" is subjective
They don't seem to have classified the news by either 'left' or 'right', but by whether it was sensational, extremist, conspiratorial, fake or otherwise junk. They then looked at who was sharing that news the most and identified them a 'right' by such things as the fact that was how they self-identified. I think you've skimmed the summary (if that) and read what you wanted to find.
There is no scientific basis for the evaluation.
Hmm, you haven't read the paper, have you.
And you've been taken in by it.
Ah, the smugness of ignorance. The Dunning-Kruger effect in action with just a hint of delicious irony.
Did you use Vista from launch, or after SP1 came out?
Vista had well documented flaws in copying and deleting that were addressed by SP1. Driver support was lackluster and combined with the higher system requirements, games performed poorly. In parallel, the labeling of hardware as 'Vista Capable' when it could barely boot had largely been resolved by SP1.
Vista Basic had a min-spec of 512MB and Home and up 1GB. Conventional wisdom of the time was that 2GB was necessary for anything like decent performance. That you didn't notice a problem with 4GB isn't surprising, but a lot of early adopters who met or even exceeded the recommended specification found Vista to be slow and unresponsive.
Any differences with XP just added insult to injury. It's easier to accept change when there are tangible improvements. The improvements in Vista were not immediately apparent to most people, but the poor performance was. Why would you bother getting used to a new OS if it was slower? If you want to compete with another product, even your own, you had better offer a benefit for people to switch away.
Or, you could just not give awards out ever because nobody is perfect and we wouldn't want to encourage any salacious behaviour.
I have two problems with this sentence;
The first is that you are exaggerating the position to demonstrate the absurdity, without demonstrating that the exaggeration is fair and that the absurdity applies to the original position and not your exaggeration, alone. To give no awards because everyone has done something wrong, even if only minor, is clearly ludicrous. That there exists no line between 'not perfect, but has no major flaws that would preclude an award' and 'has flaws that make giving an award problematic' has not been shown.
I think that there exists a line, below which someone with the occasional speeding ticket can easily be honoured, and above which we have at the other end of the spectrum someone like Mengel. Where you draw the line, and how you go about dealing with those close to it are not easy answers. If you'd like to argue that Nolan is close to such a line, I'm happy to continue. But to argue that no such line exists or should exist because, in extremum it creates a ludicrous situation is not a flaw of the concept but of the exaggeration.
The second point I take issue with is;
salacious behaviour
Nolan did not engage in salacious behaviour. He engaged in behaviour, in a workplace, that constitutes harassment. By describing it as you have you are ignoring or trying to dismiss that point. It's not negotiable. It's documented in biographies and he is quoted in interviews with Playboy.
seem to be arguing for is that nothing positive can ever be recognized/rewarded if the recipient of said award had ever done anything bad at any point in time of their life.
You misunderstand or mischaracterise.
To the extent that an award is a simplisitc 'this person is worthy of admiration' and not a nuanced 'this person did some amazing things, but was also an asshole' then awards need to be careful about who they laud. GDC seems to agree in that they withdrew the award. Nolan seems to agree given his tweet/apology.
I think there is a threshold of behaviour, below which the sort of minor flaws of character can be overlooked. I do not believe Nolan's behaviour can be overlooked, especially in this industry, especially in 2018. The 'line' is not static. What is and is not acceptable changes. It needs to be challenged. We need to hold up our standards to scrutiny and demand that people we hold up as role-models, heroes and award winners reflect those standards. This means that people who once were considered heroes may come to be seen as flawed. And none of that should cause their accomplishments to be denied, just the awards given to the _person_.
I literally DESPISE the thought processes that YOU are engaging in
And I'm genuinely sorry to have offended. I see argument and debate as a process for exchanging information and testing ideas. On topics that cut close to concepts which are held dear, it's easy to see disagreement as a personal attack. This was not my intention; I apologise, again, for any distress I have caused and thank you for the time you took to explain your position.
caused a schism between the meaning of the award and accomplishment
I think you've neatly summarised the essence of the (less strident) sides of the debate.
Should an award offered in 2018 in honour of someone's achievements in the 70s be influenced by evidence of behaviour that is recognised as unacceptable?
(There's some argument about whether the behaviour is unacceptable or not; that's a different debate).
Some argue that the accomplishments should be considered in isolation, and the nature of the person shouldn't influence the issuing of an award. Others argue that the award honours the person, not just the accomplishments, and so the nature of that person does need to be considered.
You mention von Brauhn, which is a wonderful example of a non-Godwin nazi reference. von Brauhn's accomplishments are profound, but his membership and work for the Nazis in WWII has meant that his legacy has attracted exactly the sort of debate we see here. In both von Braun and Nolan's case, the contrast between personal behaviour and accomplishments mean that they require a more complex or nuanced evaluation. I don't think you can say 'this person is a hero/god or a villain/bad'. It's too simplistic.
The problem is that awards are, essentially, reductive and simplistic. They aren't nuanced. There's no real capacity to say 'Yes, this person is, personally, an asshole, but gosh they were good at [X]'. It's all or nothing. It's for this reason that I think the withdrawal of the award is necessary. Nolan is not a 'clean' hero. His achievements, as important as they may be, were made by someone with reprehensible personal behaviour.
I appreciate and I hope, understand, the point you are making. I think that my disgreement comes down to what I see awards as meaning.
[Nolan is not a bad person..
and
I am not totally up-to-speed regarding this historical topic
Appear to contradict each other. If you aren't "up to speed" how can you be sure of your judgement? The information you need to get "up to speed" is a click away. Right there. In the article. References to published biographies and interviews given by Nolan where he talks about his behaviour.
Once you are "up to speed", then I'll be interested in your opinion, but your post is not the only 'I don't really know what's going on, but I'm sure it's wrong'.
So, 'congrats' but your self professed ignorance does not make your opinion particularly compelling.
In case the original article and the sources it links to are too much trouble to read, I'll summarise;
No one is denying Nolan's achievements. They are criticising the GDC for choosing to award someone who has admitted to negative behaviour. The GDC has responded by withdrawing the award and Nolan has apologised.