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Pricing on CDs of the latest, greatest music tend to be lower than those of ancient, moldy recordings. So, it looks like past practice based on consumer shopping patterns should dictate that new music from the most popular artists should cost LESS than 99 cents a song on iTunes.
PS: Other related Dummies titles include areas such as Managing, Communicating Effectively, and Coaching & Mentoring. The Peter Principle is alive and well and living at Amazon.com
Completely swapping out the old combat and profession systems for new ones will make a number of long-standing bugs disappear, but there are still dozens of bugs related to quests, interactions with NPCs and the like. Will these finally be addressed post-NGE?
Doesn't the name "Star Wars Galaxies" imply that there is more to the game than the movies themselves, and so the game should support a broader range of experiences than the movies?
Are you considering renaming the game to "Star Wars Galaxies: Attack of the Movie-Character-Clones"?
There is nothing wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught. There is also nothing wrong with allowing materials critical to Newtonian mechanics, plate tectonics or any other scientific proposition/theory/law. In fact, there is a lot wrong with teaching that such ideas are sacrosanct and above criticism.
Doing science does not involve verifying the truth of any proposition. Science works within a paradigm of falsification -- we try to demonstrate that a hypothesis cannot be the best explanation of a phenomenon. The inability to demonstrate this, along with the elimination of competing explanations, is what gives any proposition the weight it needs to be accepted as the best current explanation we have of a phenomenon.
Science is not a search for truths, nor is it a search for the Truth. This is the one biggest aspects of the nature of science that most people simply cannot comprehend, particularly like those on the Kansas State BoE who voted this in. While scientists may feel their work moves us closer to truths or the Truth, science itself is incapable of achieving that. So, by misinterpreting knowledge propositions like evolution as "that which is True", proponents of belief systems like Intelligent Design are guilty of a boundary violation -- they are bringing in rules from a non-scientific means of understanding the world into the realm of science. You want us to teach that evolution has holes in it? Sure thing! Any good bio teacher is already doing so.
The same problem would be true if things were going in the other direction. There is nothing in science that can prove or disprove the existence of God, no matter what the hyper-rationalistic-atheistic-lunatic-fringe might argue. The existence of a "Being" outside of that which can be experienced is outside of the realm of that which is scientific, and so trying to prove it one way or another is a boundary violation that makes such pursuits non-scientific, no matter how much the pursuer might claim he or she is doing science.
It all comes down to this, put as childishly as possible: If you want to play our game, you gotta play by our rules. Otherwise, go home. And leave the ball, it's ours. And we don't want to play your game either.
Hmmm... IMO, if there was an intelligence test for the Intelligent Designer, they'd probably score somewhere below 60 or so. Either that or that designer is a consumer products genius -- only manufacturers of consumable goods "design" items with inherent flaws, built-in obsolesence and finite lifetimes.
If someone tried to tag me as the Intelligent Designer of life-as-we-know-it, I'd slap them with a defamation lawsuit or send them straight to Hell, whichever was in my power to do.
I don't mean to insult here, but your reasoning here indicates that you have a rather stilted, idealized view on the "scientific method" rather than a grasp of how science really takes place. Unfortunately, that view of science is supported by much of the teaching about science in American K-12 education, even by HS science teachers.
Suppose an Event A occurs, and a scientist predicts on that basis that an Event B is soon to follow. Event B does follow, so his prediction receives support. His explanation makes no other unambiguous predictions.
Now suppose a different scientist, knowing nothing about the first, arrives at the same explanation. The only difference is, he thinks of his explanation only after observing both events.
You are implying that the first scientist made his prediciton based unpon some a priori understanding of the phenomenon -- that there was some logical truth within the cause that determines the only possible outcomes of the event in question and so predetermines the effect. No prior observation was required with which to base a prediction upon. Science is based upon empirical data. Scientific knowledge is a posteriori, it requires experience to determine what is true and what is false.
All scientific prediction is based upon observing nature, looking for relationships and correlations, then trying to provide a more generalized explanation of how these things come to be. If and only if that explanation is consistent with what has been previously observed, then it can be reasonably used to predict future outcomes of related phenomenon.
In a sense, you are putting the cart before the horse. Your "first" scientist, if he is trying to make a scientific prediction, would require knowledge based upon your "second" scientist's work before he could do what you suggest. When Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," he didn't just mean that great men have come before him, but that he could not have done his work without being based upon the work of previous scientists.
Even the work of the most theoretical physicists is consistent with this process. On the surface, it might appear that their work is based purely on the mathematical equations of their field and thus they have access to some a priori understanding of the world. Those equations, however, come from observations of the known world -- they have empirical foundations which allow for scientific predictions. Furthermore, such predictions do not become accepted as explanations until experimentation can demonstrate that they are the most likely explanations of a phenomenon.
Intelligent Design is not scientific because it relies ultimately upon an appeal to authority as its justification. The universe exists because God said so, figuratively and literally. Such appeals to authority completely undermine any claim of any empirical basis to a theory, and by definition that theory cannot be scientific. The fact that some way of knowing the world is not scientific does not make that way of knowing bad (or good), it makes it non-scientific. Trying to pass off such a "theory" as "scientific truth" is what makes it bad -- bad science, bad reasoning, bad information. In fact, if ID was able to be substantiated as "scientific", then it would be required to cast off any connections to God as the ultimate source of truth. You would have to abandon your faith to verify your faith. Is that truly what supporters of ID want?
If supporters of ID are pushing their view as scientific "truth", they further demonstrate their misunderstanding of the nature of science. Scientific work does not prove the truth of anything. Science is based upon the falsification of claims, not their indisputable acceptance as Truth. As has been argued by many people on this thread and elsewhere, an appeal to an ultimate authority is inherently non-falsifiable. Evolution isn't science "because Da
It will be a long time before humans fully understand neuro- and bio-chemistry and how they relate to the psyche, and until that day I am more than happy to keep my patients in the dark about it.
So, you'd rather have uninformed patients who smile and take their medicine? It's exactly this sort of "the patient doesn't need to know this" attitude that makes me want to scream at doctors.
It took me over 2.5 years to find a cocktail of psych meds that began to mitigate my condition without worsening it. The only reason it took THAT SHORT a period of time is because I was knowledgeable about what different psych meds did. The major shifts in my treatment plan came about because I pushed for them based on two things: (1) what the medications did and what side effects they could cause, and (2) what was different about my state of mind on any given med. I will grant you that (1) a psychiatrist would know more than 99.9% of his patients about psych meds (and damn well SHOULD), but he can never know enough about (2) to make a sure determination of the effects of a medication.
There are a number of peer-support groups on the web (such as psycho-babble) where patients can discuss with people in the same boat what they can expect from medications and what combinations have worked for others. I've learned more from groups like these than I have from doctors since most doctors I've interacted with around these issues seem to know little more than what drug monographs distributed by their manufacturers have to say about a medication.
Keeping patients uninformed is just a recipe for needless suffering.
the earth will be fine, now and long after humans are wiped from the planet
Yeah, the earth will probably go on its merry way oblivious to the "damage" humans inflict upon it. I think the point of understanding this phenomenon is to prevent the "humans are wiped from the planet" bit from happening sooner than later, particularly due to our own actions.
But if the earth somehow can and does care, I think it'd rather be rid of us sooner....
I heard that SOE was going to do the same with Star Wars Galaxies. Problem was, as soon as they released the card game, they'd change it to SWG:Episode II -- The Dice Game and you'd have to respec your cards into six-sided dice. Of course, once you FINALLY got used to the new rules they'd bring out SWG:Episode III -- The Pick-up Stix Game, and you'd have to unfold your card/dice and roll them into little sticks....
I think I'll just wait for SWG:EpIV -- The Monkeys-in-the-Barrel Game.
And they all came back, shook the Engineer's hand, and they had a great time talkin' about crime, aggravated assaultin', armed robberin', . . . all kinds of groovy things that they was talkin' about, and everything was fine.
Everytime someone uses the marxist, "{thing} is the opiate of the masses," I have to wonder for whom opium, morphine, codiene, heroin, demerol, vicodin, oxycodone, etc. are the opiates.
Come on - what is computer science without an "Uploading Virus" dialog box? What is aerospace engineering without do-it-all, land-anywhere-in-the-solar-system rocketplanes? What is biology without absurd mutations? What is astronomy without the approaching FTL alien invasion fleet to observe? Etc.
The reasoning is at question, not the goods or services.
The responsibility that scientists might have for what can be made from their research is not a new issue, nor is the question of what liability gun manufacturers and sellers have for how their goods are used. ISPs are being called to court to answer for crimes committed by means of the services they provide.
But now that you mention it -- yes, control of information is probably as important an issue (if not more important) than control of the atom was in 1945 (or 2005). Because of its importance, the view that Google simply indexes information is absurdly naive. If Google or some other information indexing service were to claim this were all that they did, it would be interesting to see how well that claim holds up in court.
[an aside to NDPTAL85: I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb a long, long time ago.]
And the Manhattan Project scientists simply made the A-bomb.
I have no problem with Google on this CNet issue either, but if Google ever uses this "we simply index information" argument in their own defense, one day it's gonna blow up in their face.
...However, if I jilted someone in Diablo, do I want them to so easily find me and take it out on my car (as some people would)?
You mean, I'd be able to track down the snotty little uber 1337 haxxor d00d who thinks KS'ing in the Geo Caves is the essence of being an Imp rather than being a punk? Who equates poor spelling with role-playing? Who thinks he know something about computers just because he's had one for all of his 13 years of life?
All studies looking for "missing matter" should cease immediately!
It is my theory that this missing matter -- things like that sock that disappears from the dryer, people's cigarette lighters, and the shoe that matches the other shoe lying on the side of the road -- all exists in a common extra-dimensional space. Given that something like 99% of the universe is Hydrogen, the same should hold true of missing matter.
Now imagine, if you will, what would happen if someone FOUND their sock or their lighter. Static cling? Flicking your Bic? Can you imagine what would happen if someone did that around all that Hydrogen?
Can you say "Big Bang"? Sure you can! It's the end of the universe as we know it!!
Just say NO! to dangerous scientific research!
...while I'm at it, death to Tully-Fisher! Up with Wilson-Bappu!! WooHooo!!!
Slashdot Mirror
OMGOMGOMG!!!11!!1!1!!! pwnt!
Pricing on CDs of the latest, greatest music tend to be lower than those of ancient, moldy recordings. So, it looks like past practice based on consumer shopping patterns should dictate that new music from the most popular artists should cost LESS than 99 cents a song on iTunes.
Leadership for Dummies. Do we really want dummies for leaders?
DOH!
PS: Other related Dummies titles include areas such as Managing, Communicating Effectively, and Coaching & Mentoring. The Peter Principle is alive and well and living at Amazon.com
Completely swapping out the old combat and profession systems for new ones will make a number of long-standing bugs disappear, but there are still dozens of bugs related to quests, interactions with NPCs and the like. Will these finally be addressed post-NGE?
Doesn't the name "Star Wars Galaxies" imply that there is more to the game than the movies themselves, and so the game should support a broader range of experiences than the movies?
Are you considering renaming the game to "Star Wars Galaxies: Attack of the Movie-Character-Clones"?
There is nothing wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught. There is also nothing wrong with allowing materials critical to Newtonian mechanics, plate tectonics or any other scientific proposition/theory/law. In fact, there is a lot wrong with teaching that such ideas are sacrosanct and above criticism.
Doing science does not involve verifying the truth of any proposition. Science works within a paradigm of falsification -- we try to demonstrate that a hypothesis cannot be the best explanation of a phenomenon. The inability to demonstrate this, along with the elimination of competing explanations, is what gives any proposition the weight it needs to be accepted as the best current explanation we have of a phenomenon.
Science is not a search for truths, nor is it a search for the Truth. This is the one biggest aspects of the nature of science that most people simply cannot comprehend, particularly like those on the Kansas State BoE who voted this in. While scientists may feel their work moves us closer to truths or the Truth, science itself is incapable of achieving that. So, by misinterpreting knowledge propositions like evolution as "that which is True", proponents of belief systems like Intelligent Design are guilty of a boundary violation -- they are bringing in rules from a non-scientific means of understanding the world into the realm of science. You want us to teach that evolution has holes in it? Sure thing! Any good bio teacher is already doing so.
The same problem would be true if things were going in the other direction. There is nothing in science that can prove or disprove the existence of God, no matter what the hyper-rationalistic-atheistic-lunatic-fringe might argue. The existence of a "Being" outside of that which can be experienced is outside of the realm of that which is scientific, and so trying to prove it one way or another is a boundary violation that makes such pursuits non-scientific, no matter how much the pursuer might claim he or she is doing science.
It all comes down to this, put as childishly as possible: If you want to play our game, you gotta play by our rules. Otherwise, go home. And leave the ball, it's ours. And we don't want to play your game either.
Hmmm ... IMO, if there was an intelligence test for the Intelligent Designer, they'd probably score somewhere below 60 or so. Either that or that designer is a consumer products genius -- only manufacturers of consumable goods "design" items with inherent flaws, built-in obsolesence and finite lifetimes.
If someone tried to tag me as the Intelligent Designer of life-as-we-know-it, I'd slap them with a defamation lawsuit or send them straight to Hell, whichever was in my power to do.
I don't mean to insult here, but your reasoning here indicates that you have a rather stilted, idealized view on the "scientific method" rather than a grasp of how science really takes place. Unfortunately, that view of science is supported by much of the teaching about science in American K-12 education, even by HS science teachers.
You are implying that the first scientist made his prediciton based unpon some a priori understanding of the phenomenon -- that there was some logical truth within the cause that determines the only possible outcomes of the event in question and so predetermines the effect. No prior observation was required with which to base a prediction upon. Science is based upon empirical data. Scientific knowledge is a posteriori, it requires experience to determine what is true and what is false.
All scientific prediction is based upon observing nature, looking for relationships and correlations, then trying to provide a more generalized explanation of how these things come to be. If and only if that explanation is consistent with what has been previously observed, then it can be reasonably used to predict future outcomes of related phenomenon.
In a sense, you are putting the cart before the horse. Your "first" scientist, if he is trying to make a scientific prediction, would require knowledge based upon your "second" scientist's work before he could do what you suggest. When Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," he didn't just mean that great men have come before him, but that he could not have done his work without being based upon the work of previous scientists.
Even the work of the most theoretical physicists is consistent with this process. On the surface, it might appear that their work is based purely on the mathematical equations of their field and thus they have access to some a priori understanding of the world. Those equations, however, come from observations of the known world -- they have empirical foundations which allow for scientific predictions. Furthermore, such predictions do not become accepted as explanations until experimentation can demonstrate that they are the most likely explanations of a phenomenon.
Intelligent Design is not scientific because it relies ultimately upon an appeal to authority as its justification. The universe exists because God said so, figuratively and literally. Such appeals to authority completely undermine any claim of any empirical basis to a theory, and by definition that theory cannot be scientific. The fact that some way of knowing the world is not scientific does not make that way of knowing bad (or good), it makes it non-scientific. Trying to pass off such a "theory" as "scientific truth" is what makes it bad -- bad science, bad reasoning, bad information. In fact, if ID was able to be substantiated as "scientific", then it would be required to cast off any connections to God as the ultimate source of truth. You would have to abandon your faith to verify your faith. Is that truly what supporters of ID want?
If supporters of ID are pushing their view as scientific "truth", they further demonstrate their misunderstanding of the nature of science. Scientific work does not prove the truth of anything. Science is based upon the falsification of claims, not their indisputable acceptance as Truth. As has been argued by many people on this thread and elsewhere, an appeal to an ultimate authority is inherently non-falsifiable. Evolution isn't science "because Da
So, you'd rather have uninformed patients who smile and take their medicine? It's exactly this sort of "the patient doesn't need to know this" attitude that makes me want to scream at doctors.
It took me over 2.5 years to find a cocktail of psych meds that began to mitigate my condition without worsening it. The only reason it took THAT SHORT a period of time is because I was knowledgeable about what different psych meds did. The major shifts in my treatment plan came about because I pushed for them based on two things: (1) what the medications did and what side effects they could cause, and (2) what was different about my state of mind on any given med. I will grant you that (1) a psychiatrist would know more than 99.9% of his patients about psych meds (and damn well SHOULD), but he can never know enough about (2) to make a sure determination of the effects of a medication.
There are a number of peer-support groups on the web (such as psycho-babble) where patients can discuss with people in the same boat what they can expect from medications and what combinations have worked for others. I've learned more from groups like these than I have from doctors since most doctors I've interacted with around these issues seem to know little more than what drug monographs distributed by their manufacturers have to say about a medication.
Keeping patients uninformed is just a recipe for needless suffering.
E = ma^2 ... nah
... feh!
E = mb^2
E = mc^2 !!!!!
For 1 million accounts, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seems more likely.
Yeah, the earth will probably go on its merry way oblivious to the "damage" humans inflict upon it. I think the point of understanding this phenomenon is to prevent the "humans are wiped from the planet" bit from happening sooner than later, particularly due to our own actions.
But if the earth somehow can and does care, I think it'd rather be rid of us sooner....
Besides, in about an hour is Lensecrafters, isn't it?
... then again, I'm nearsighted and myopic.
(Oh who didn't see that one coming...)
Not me
I heard that SOE was going to do the same with Star Wars Galaxies. Problem was, as soon as they released the card game, they'd change it to SWG:Episode II -- The Dice Game and you'd have to respec your cards into six-sided dice. Of course, once you FINALLY got used to the new rules they'd bring out SWG:Episode III -- The Pick-up Stix Game, and you'd have to unfold your card/dice and roll them into little sticks....
I think I'll just wait for SWG:EpIV -- The Monkeys-in-the-Barrel Game.
AOL engineer: And creatin' a nuisance . . .
And they all came back, shook the Engineer's hand, and they had a great time talkin' about crime, aggravated assaultin', armed robberin', . . . all kinds of groovy things that they was talkin' about, and everything was fine.
Meanwhile in the War Room...
Gen. Turgidson: Methane in Siberia?! Mr. President, I'm beginning to smell a big fat commie rat....
Darl: I am your father, Linus!
Everytime someone uses the marxist, "{thing} is the opiate of the masses," I have to wonder for whom opium, morphine, codiene, heroin, demerol, vicodin, oxycodone, etc. are the opiates.
Depends on your health plan.
Counter-Strike is the opiate of the masses.
Come on - what is computer science without an "Uploading Virus" dialog box? What is aerospace engineering without do-it-all, land-anywhere-in-the-solar-system rocketplanes? What is biology without absurd mutations? What is astronomy without the approaching FTL alien invasion fleet to observe? Etc.
Tell that to Jules Verne...
The reasoning is at question, not the goods or services.
The responsibility that scientists might have for what can be made from their research is not a new issue, nor is the question of what liability gun manufacturers and sellers have for how their goods are used. ISPs are being called to court to answer for crimes committed by means of the services they provide.
But now that you mention it -- yes, control of information is probably as important an issue (if not more important) than control of the atom was in 1945 (or 2005). Because of its importance, the view that Google simply indexes information is absurdly naive. If Google or some other information indexing service were to claim this were all that they did, it would be interesting to see how well that claim holds up in court.
[an aside to NDPTAL85: I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb a long, long time ago.]
You mean, I'd be able to track down the snotty little uber 1337 haxxor d00d who thinks KS'ing in the Geo Caves is the essence of being an Imp rather than being a punk? Who equates poor spelling with role-playing? Who thinks he know something about computers just because he's had one for all of his 13 years of life?
I'm all for it! WOOT!!
"John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill."
All studies looking for "missing matter" should cease immediately!
It is my theory that this missing matter -- things like that sock that disappears from the dryer, people's cigarette lighters, and the shoe that matches the other shoe lying on the side of the road -- all exists in a common extra-dimensional space. Given that something like 99% of the universe is Hydrogen, the same should hold true of missing matter.
Now imagine, if you will, what would happen if someone FOUND their sock or their lighter. Static cling? Flicking your Bic? Can you imagine what would happen if someone did that around all that Hydrogen?
Can you say "Big Bang"? Sure you can! It's the end of the universe as we know it!!
Just say NO! to dangerous scientific research!
...while I'm at it, death to Tully-Fisher! Up with Wilson-Bappu!! WooHooo!!!