Similar to the way Muhammad's later writings supersede his earlier writings, the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament.
Matt 5:17-18 seem to suggest otherwise.
There are a lot of good lessons in it, so it is still used,
And how do you know which lessons are good, and which ones are bad?
It basically took the core of the old laws and made them significantly stricter. For example, in the Old Testament it was a sin to murder. Under the New Testament it's a sin to even think about murder.
How do you know which parts are "the core" of those laws? The Old Testament rape laws seem to be nowhere in the New Testament, or at least, many Christians would like to think so.
Under the Old Testament, the law was tit for tat - you slap me I slap you back.
Mistranslation. IIRC, the correct translation is "No more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
The stonings were all punishments for violating the law. You may not like the laws, and that's fine...
Well, there is the particular law in which a woman may be stoned to death for being a rape victim. In other words, being a victim is illegal?
it was far from telling all Christians to kill all non-believers,
Well, not all Christians, but all Jews. Deuteronomy 13:13-17. And before you say "But that was the Old Testament", again, Matt 5:17-18.
yet that is exactly what Muhammad told Muslims to do.
Hey, if you can rationalize away what your holy book says, they can, too.
while there has been plenty of violence hidden under the guise of Christianity, there has been constant and consistent violence from Islam.
Seems like there's been pretty constant and consistent violence from Christians, also. Look up the Spanish Inquisition, for one -- it was going on until 1834. Since then, Christians have hardly been peaceful -- I suppose the best argument you could make is that brutality since then generally isn't justified by religion, even when performed by religious people, though you then have to account for the millions who have died because the Pope doesn't like condoms.
You remember the Crusades that everyone likes to beat Christians up for? Do you remember what those were about? The Crusades happened because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
I mean, they're harassing travelers, sure, a response makes sense -- though, to be fair, this was their territory, and I don't see any particular reason they should allow Christian pilgrims into one of the most sacred places to Islam.
And I certainly don't see the response being merited after they stopped, regardless of why they stopped.
Violence due to the teachings of Islam has been a serious problem for over a thousand years, the stuff we see today is nothing new.
You may want to be more clear what you mean by "the stuff we see today" -- individual, isolated violent acts have been happening all over the place for thousands of years. Jesus himself got violent with a fig tree.
to say Islam is a non-violent religion you have to completely ignore the last thousand years and the teachings of Islam that spurred them on.
I don't. I'm just not seeing much of a difference between Islam and Christianity. Both have moderates, extremists, and everything in between, and both have religiously sanctioned excuses for violence. Both have a history of all kinds of violence and injusti
Coming from a Catholic tradition, we don't believe that all of the Bible is literal truth, but rather all of it is spiritual truth.
And what, exactly, is "spiritual truth"? Please explain the sense in which it's "spiritually true" that a woman should be stoned to death as a punishment for being a rape victim, under any circumstances, in any context.
The goal in reading it is not to merely read the words - it's to seek a deeper spiritual truth through meditation and prayer.
I wonder how much of that could be reached through meditation and prayer alone, without the book. In fact, if I were looking for something to meditate on or pray to, anything in the Bible would be low on that list.
I won't speak for other spiritual texts, but you can't read the Bible in the same way as you do a textbook.
Well, different sects behave differently. There are literalist Muslims and moderate Muslims. There are literalist Christians and moderate Christians.
the method itself is that of slowly trying to teach them into this, not explicitly stating the 'why' -- sure they can understand the 'why', but if we don't spread it around like monsters
Sorry, how is it "monstrous" to draw an offensive picture? How does that even compare to the real monsters, those who would kill people over an offensive picture?
The real question is: What tells us that what we do is actually better? Why can't they be right?
Because we can actually have this conversation. Conversations like this, where there are no restriction on what ideas may be raised for consideration, tend to lead us closer to truth and fairness.
Freedom of speech is also a prerequisite for any kind of democracy. Censorship is also capricious -- where does it stop? Who decides what may be published, and how do they decide it? Even if you agree censorship is a good thing, I think death threats are a terrible way to decide what should be censored.
besides that, I'm an anti-religious idiot, who would care about anything that I have to say?
Other non-religious people. Also some religious people who might look to convert you, and also some religious people who are just curious.
If you truly have nothing to say, that's another matter, but censoring yourself out of fear is by definition a cowardly act.
The new testament super cedes the old with a new law.
Where and how does it do that?
Because Matt 5:17-18 seem to suggest just the opposite.
Oh, and you're wrong:
The contradictions in the bible come from the confusion that the old testament laws and the new testament laws are to be enacted at the same time.
No, the contradictions come from the fact that many authors were involved, often within a single "book", and they couldn't keep their story straight -- which is what you'd expect, whether or not it actually happened, but it certainly casts doubt on anyone trying to claim the gospels are "eyewitness accounts". There are contradictions between gospels, so even if you pretend the Old Testament doesn't exist, there's plenty of contradiction, stupidity, brutality, and outright immorality in the Bible.
Mainly because they're busy humping their neighbor's wife, but still, most people in the world don't have to worry about christians shooting up a school bus full of children in the name of hay-zoos.
That's a difference in living conditions, not ideology. The vast majority of Christians believe in infinite punishment for finite crimes (Hell), which doesn't strike me as especially better than the Muslims I've talked to -- educated, middle-class college students -- who admit that their ultimate goal is Sharia law worldwide, including death for apostasy, an infidel tax, and other fun things.
Now, keep in mind, the Christian isn't planning to torture me herself, she just thinks God (or Satan) will do it, and that I deserve it. Same with the Muslim, at least the few I talked to -- he doesn't want to kill me or tax me now, and would prefer to follow the laws of the land as long as they're in effect.
Yet there's good reason to believe the guy driving my cab is trying to get his hands on some explosives to kill people with.
Well, again, note the class difference. He's driving a cab for a living.
That said, your bias is showing -- both the association between cab drivers and Muslims, and the association between Muslims (at least, American ones) and violence.
Finally:
hardly anyone, including devout christians, really believes that crap.
Just how important is your holy book to you? If you get to pick and choose what's important and what's "crap", why believe any of it at all?
What I object to is equating "violations of the terms of service" to "breaking a law"....The term used was "illegal method" (I'm assuming using the firefox extension runs afoul of You-tube's TOS). That is an incorrect statement.
Thanks to the DMCA, it is actually an entirely correct statement. Their delivery mechanism can be seen as "effectively" preventing copyright infringement (a civil matter), thus defeating it is violating the DMCA, a criminal matter.
myself I would like to live in a world where developers are all humble, clear minded and hard working guys
There's a difference between humility and humiliation.
What's more, the fact that some developers are ambitious is why projects like Linux exist. I'm glad I don't live in a world where all the developers are humble, because that would just mean all the marketers would be bold, and we have marketing driving development too much already.
Both of them do, actually. The Bible advocates stoning many people under various circumstances, and the Qur'an has a few specific instructions for dealing with infidels, including killing apostates.
Kind of like the current idea of pushing the wear-leveling back to the drives. This is something the OS can do, and it's a case where flexibility matters -- it's not something I want in a black box inside a drive controller.
There are automation scripts so sophisticated they can kill 10 mobs and/shout "STFU n00b!!!!111elebenty-one" every 30 seconds.
That's not particularly sophisticated, though probably enough to buy them a bit more time once they're caught.
virtual environments get solved first, and most easily.
Well, in a sense, yes. They also make things similarly easy for the defense -- for instance, while it's easy for an aimbot to headshot people across the map and through obstacles, it's also easy for the server to log the entire event, and then perform some datamining, looking for how accurate the bot is.
However, as I understand it, you can supply a license to the effect of, "If you don't like this license, you can't use this site." At least, that's the current theory.
Define "real world". And I've been there, held down a job, and been perceived as friendly and helpful by non-techies, so I do understand how it works.
But again, you come to my pet project, demand support for something you got for free -- in other words, demand that I take more of my time to help you -- and you don't bother to do your homework? If you want to talk about "what works", what works is for me to ignore you, because I don't owe you anything, and any time I spend dealing with you would be better spent improving the project.
In light of that, some amount of generosity and genuine desire to help will prompt some sort of response -- but that there was even a response is useless.
I'm not arguing that I should actually do that, but your argument fails both from a utilitarian point of view ("useless in the real world") and a common decency point of view (do your homework, so I don't have to).
you still remain with the RUDE stamp for ever after;
I can deal with that.
Let me put it this way: It's considered mildly irritating, but generally socially acceptable, for people to approach me out of nowhere -- on the street, in my house, wherever -- and ask if I've been saved. No one really seems to have a problem with people telling me that I'm going to hell because I don't believe whatever they believe. Hell, "In God We Trust" is on all our currency -- added relatively recently, but it's there -- and no one seems to mind. "Under God" was snuck into the Pledge of Allegiance to set us Christians apart from the Atheist Communists, never mind being unconstitutional and uncomfortable for a large portion of the population.
Yet as soon as I say anything about being an atheist, or about finding their beliefs to be foolish, I'm seen as rude. When Michael Newdow tries to get "Under God" removed from the Pledge, he's the rabble-rouser, the one who couldn't leave well enough alone, the "rude" one.
In short, people are quick to take offense at anyone, for any reason, especially someone who is different than them in some way. Rudeness is based on weird societal norms, the sort which, on close examination, most of us would not agree with.
If you want a clear example of this, look at Richard Dawkins. Religious people tend to see him as arrogant, obnoxious, and offensive. Nonreligious people tend to see him as intelligent, polite, well-spoken, and a genuinely nice guy. James Randi is about as polarizing -- either you love him as almost a grandfatherly figure, or you hate him because he called something you believe in and are passionate about "Woo-Woo", but probably for good reason.
What would your suggestion be, here? Should Dawkins have to become an absolute sycophant in order to be seen as "normal"? Would that even work for him? After all, many people are still going to view him as rude simply for existing.
Or, bring it back to me -- no matter how polite I am, and it would take a significant amount of work, there are some people who will be offended, even by a legitimate attempt to help -- and note that there are many people, including Taylor himself, who still think that situation was handled poorly. The first email, maybe, but look at the second one.
accept that you will pay the consequences:-).
If the consequence is that someone thinks I'm rude, that's OK. But this standard needs to change. It needs to not be rude to call people on things like this -- people need to be a lot more self-sufficient, and a lot more humble, when entering a new field. Otherwise, you end up with stuff like this.
Which is yet another argument for Android -- you can install apps any way you want, including from any app store you want. There's nothing stopping Apple from opening their own android app store.
But it does show how moronic these measures are. I mean, you don't see Apple so much as installing a content filter on their mobile Safari, do you?
I dunno, that seems like stretching. I can't imagine the designers thought up GlaDOS and said to themselves "You know, she makes an excellent metaphor for the human psyche".
I wonder what, exactly, they were thinking when they thought of those specific pieces of her that they were using -- or the change in her personality after a piece was blown up.
I think I should be clear: My little list, there, shouldn't be taken as the *necessary* qualities of art. But I do believe that a piece of art aspires to convey *something* aside from the superficial, whether it be a moral lesson or a simple emotion.
I think I did show that.
Ah, but maybe that's the difference. I *don't* think *any* movie deserves to be art. Some movies, definitely. But, say, Scary Movie? Fuck no.
Well, now we're talking semantics. There are a lot of paintings, including some famous and well-regarded ones, that I wouldn't call "art", by that standard -- but is that a fair standard? There's a lot of terrible music out there, but we don't hesitate to call musicians "artists", and it's generally a given that music is art of a kind. Whether or not it's good art, or fine art, is up for debate.
It's *fun*. Why does it have to be "art"?
Portal? Maybe not, though I like to think it is. Not just because it's fun, but because it was much more fun than I've had with a game in a long time, it was endearing, masterfully executed...
Portal isn't the best example, though, and I think it is important that games be recognized as an art form. It's possible that I think that mostly because it irritates me to no end to hear people involved in movies tell me that games can't have art, or "can't make you cry", or some other bullshit, especially from people who publicly admit to not having played a game.
Yeah, and I guess that's the same article I linked to.
I'm actually ambivalent about this. I don't agree with everything Joel says, and in fact, I think it's probably vitally important to start CS students on something easy, like Python or Ruby, so that they're still interested in programming by the time they have to learn the harder, bare-metal stuff.
In that sense, it could be kind of like using trigonometric facts we know without proving them, or understanding their relationship to calculus -- just hitting the "log" function on our calculators without having any idea how infinite series work.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for doing it the hard way first, then sharing the epiphany of abstracting all of that away -- showing the limit of the difference quotient, then introducing rules of differentiation.
Either way has the potential to introduce bad habits. Both should be required for a well-rounded degree.
Taking apart GlaDOS at the end, piece by piece, suggests a deconstruction of an artificial psyche.
evokes no emotion,
The companion cube evoked no emotion? How about the cake? You yourself admitted to loving Portal -- is that love not an emotion?
teaches no lesson.
Aside from the lessons of the portal physics themselves, it teaches that games are meant to be fun, and that you can have a fun, innovative game with solid production values.
But of course, is art required to teach a moral lesson? I sure don't think so.
It certainly isn't abstractly beautiful or otherwise uniquely aesthetically pleasing (well, any more so than an average, technically competent game).
"More so than the average" isn't required. And the gameplay itself is abstractly beautiful.
But is it art? I sure don't think so.
I think it's unequivocally art. You seem to ask whether it's better than the average art, and it's certainly possible to say it's bad art, but I don't see how you can say it's not art.
Look at Dada for an example. If "found art" is legit, then someone can certainly take a urinal, declare it "found art", and erect it as a statue in a public park -- which I think I remember someone doing as an exercise in Dada. If Dada is legit, it doesn't seem like there's much you can say is not art.
More relevantly, though, it's aesthetically pleasing, humorous, entertaining... It contains all the elements required to call it "art" in the same way that any movie deserves to be called art. You clearly enjoy it, so you think it's good art, you just might not think it's particularly highbrow art, which is fine.
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The Bible doesn't advocate anything, it's a book.
Erm, what? Since when are books not permitted to advocate things? Would it make you happy if I used the word "prescribes"?
Similar to the way Muhammad's later writings supersede his earlier writings, the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament.
Matt 5:17-18 seem to suggest otherwise.
There are a lot of good lessons in it, so it is still used,
And how do you know which lessons are good, and which ones are bad?
It basically took the core of the old laws and made them significantly stricter. For example, in the Old Testament it was a sin to murder. Under the New Testament it's a sin to even think about murder.
How do you know which parts are "the core" of those laws? The Old Testament rape laws seem to be nowhere in the New Testament, or at least, many Christians would like to think so.
Under the Old Testament, the law was tit for tat - you slap me I slap you back.
Mistranslation. IIRC, the correct translation is "No more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
The stonings were all punishments for violating the law. You may not like the laws, and that's fine...
Well, there is the particular law in which a woman may be stoned to death for being a rape victim. In other words, being a victim is illegal?
it was far from telling all Christians to kill all non-believers,
Well, not all Christians, but all Jews. Deuteronomy 13:13-17. And before you say "But that was the Old Testament", again, Matt 5:17-18.
yet that is exactly what Muhammad told Muslims to do.
Hey, if you can rationalize away what your holy book says, they can, too.
while there has been plenty of violence hidden under the guise of Christianity, there has been constant and consistent violence from Islam.
Seems like there's been pretty constant and consistent violence from Christians, also. Look up the Spanish Inquisition, for one -- it was going on until 1834. Since then, Christians have hardly been peaceful -- I suppose the best argument you could make is that brutality since then generally isn't justified by religion, even when performed by religious people, though you then have to account for the millions who have died because the Pope doesn't like condoms.
You remember the Crusades that everyone likes to beat Christians up for? Do you remember what those were about? The Crusades happened because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
As Wikipedia says, citation needed.
It was too little, too late, you might say.
Too late to, what, stop a wholesale invasion?
I mean, they're harassing travelers, sure, a response makes sense -- though, to be fair, this was their territory, and I don't see any particular reason they should allow Christian pilgrims into one of the most sacred places to Islam.
And I certainly don't see the response being merited after they stopped, regardless of why they stopped.
Violence due to the teachings of Islam has been a serious problem for over a thousand years, the stuff we see today is nothing new.
You may want to be more clear what you mean by "the stuff we see today" -- individual, isolated violent acts have been happening all over the place for thousands of years. Jesus himself got violent with a fig tree.
to say Islam is a non-violent religion you have to completely ignore the last thousand years and the teachings of Islam that spurred them on.
I don't. I'm just not seeing much of a difference between Islam and Christianity. Both have moderates, extremists, and everything in between, and both have religiously sanctioned excuses for violence. Both have a history of all kinds of violence and injusti
Coming from a Catholic tradition, we don't believe that all of the Bible is literal truth, but rather all of it is spiritual truth.
And what, exactly, is "spiritual truth"? Please explain the sense in which it's "spiritually true" that a woman should be stoned to death as a punishment for being a rape victim, under any circumstances, in any context.
The goal in reading it is not to merely read the words - it's to seek a deeper spiritual truth through meditation and prayer.
I wonder how much of that could be reached through meditation and prayer alone, without the book. In fact, if I were looking for something to meditate on or pray to, anything in the Bible would be low on that list.
I won't speak for other spiritual texts, but you can't read the Bible in the same way as you do a textbook.
Well, different sects behave differently. There are literalist Muslims and moderate Muslims. There are literalist Christians and moderate Christians.
the method itself is that of slowly trying to teach them into this, not explicitly stating the 'why' -- sure they can understand the 'why', but if we don't spread it around like monsters
Sorry, how is it "monstrous" to draw an offensive picture? How does that even compare to the real monsters, those who would kill people over an offensive picture?
The real question is: What tells us that what we do is actually better? Why can't they be right?
Because we can actually have this conversation. Conversations like this, where there are no restriction on what ideas may be raised for consideration, tend to lead us closer to truth and fairness.
Freedom of speech is also a prerequisite for any kind of democracy. Censorship is also capricious -- where does it stop? Who decides what may be published, and how do they decide it? Even if you agree censorship is a good thing, I think death threats are a terrible way to decide what should be censored.
besides that, I'm an anti-religious idiot, who would care about anything that I have to say?
Other non-religious people. Also some religious people who might look to convert you, and also some religious people who are just curious.
If you truly have nothing to say, that's another matter, but censoring yourself out of fear is by definition a cowardly act.
have the looks to be elected
Have you seen Dick Cheney?
these are instruction for the government of Israel
Israel alone? Where does it say that?
in dealing with criminal acts such as murder, rape, incest, etc.
You left out "Telling you to worship other gods." (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)
Also, "Being rebellious and not listening to your parents." (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
You want to keep going? I can do this all day.
Not that far from whats done in many states in the US right now.
Even if you restrict the discussion to murder, rape, and incest...
Incest is not illegal in the US, to my knowledge.
Rape is certainly illegal, but we tend to punish the rapist, not the victim. (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)
These laws did not apply to non Jews.
Mostly because, if the laws are followed, there are no non-Jews in the known world. (Deuteronomy 13:13-17)
Go read John 8:1-11.
Right after you read Matt 5:17-18.
There's also the line "Not a jot or tittle shall pass from the law until all has come to pass."
So, anti-stoning? Maybe, but the law says to stone, and he said the law was in full effect. So if it's anti-stoning, that's a contradiction.
The new testament super cedes the old with a new law.
Where and how does it do that?
Because Matt 5:17-18 seem to suggest just the opposite.
Oh, and you're wrong:
The contradictions in the bible come from the confusion that the old testament laws and the new testament laws are to be enacted at the same time.
No, the contradictions come from the fact that many authors were involved, often within a single "book", and they couldn't keep their story straight -- which is what you'd expect, whether or not it actually happened, but it certainly casts doubt on anyone trying to claim the gospels are "eyewitness accounts". There are contradictions between gospels, so even if you pretend the Old Testament doesn't exist, there's plenty of contradiction, stupidity, brutality, and outright immorality in the Bible.
Mainly because they're busy humping their neighbor's wife, but still, most people in the world don't have to worry about christians shooting up a school bus full of children in the name of hay-zoos.
That's a difference in living conditions, not ideology. The vast majority of Christians believe in infinite punishment for finite crimes (Hell), which doesn't strike me as especially better than the Muslims I've talked to -- educated, middle-class college students -- who admit that their ultimate goal is Sharia law worldwide, including death for apostasy, an infidel tax, and other fun things.
Now, keep in mind, the Christian isn't planning to torture me herself, she just thinks God (or Satan) will do it, and that I deserve it. Same with the Muslim, at least the few I talked to -- he doesn't want to kill me or tax me now, and would prefer to follow the laws of the land as long as they're in effect.
Yet there's good reason to believe the guy driving my cab is trying to get his hands on some explosives to kill people with.
Well, again, note the class difference. He's driving a cab for a living.
That said, your bias is showing -- both the association between cab drivers and Muslims, and the association between Muslims (at least, American ones) and violence.
Finally:
hardly anyone, including devout christians, really believes that crap.
Just how important is your holy book to you? If you get to pick and choose what's important and what's "crap", why believe any of it at all?
What I object to is equating "violations of the terms of service" to "breaking a law"....The term used was "illegal method" (I'm assuming using the firefox extension runs afoul of You-tube's TOS). That is an incorrect statement.
Thanks to the DMCA, it is actually an entirely correct statement. Their delivery mechanism can be seen as "effectively" preventing copyright infringement (a civil matter), thus defeating it is violating the DMCA, a criminal matter.
I object to it, too, but that's how it is.
myself I would like to live in a world where developers are all humble, clear minded and hard working guys
There's a difference between humility and humiliation.
What's more, the fact that some developers are ambitious is why projects like Linux exist. I'm glad I don't live in a world where all the developers are humble, because that would just mean all the marketers would be bold, and we have marketing driving development too much already.
But your method teaches them that they deserve respect, that they deserve to be feared, simply because of their beliefs.
That is not a message I want to send.
Both of them do, actually. The Bible advocates stoning many people under various circumstances, and the Qur'an has a few specific instructions for dealing with infidels, including killing apostates.
Kind of like the current idea of pushing the wear-leveling back to the drives. This is something the OS can do, and it's a case where flexibility matters -- it's not something I want in a black box inside a drive controller.
Has it?
There are automation scripts so sophisticated they can kill 10 mobs and /shout "STFU n00b!!!!111elebenty-one" every 30 seconds.
That's not particularly sophisticated, though probably enough to buy them a bit more time once they're caught.
virtual environments get solved first, and most easily.
Well, in a sense, yes. They also make things similarly easy for the defense -- for instance, while it's easy for an aimbot to headshot people across the map and through obstacles, it's also easy for the server to log the entire event, and then perform some datamining, looking for how accurate the bot is.
However, as I understand it, you can supply a license to the effect of, "If you don't like this license, you can't use this site." At least, that's the current theory.
This one.
As far as I know, those are legally binding in the US.
this is just useless in the real world
Define "real world". And I've been there, held down a job, and been perceived as friendly and helpful by non-techies, so I do understand how it works.
But again, you come to my pet project, demand support for something you got for free -- in other words, demand that I take more of my time to help you -- and you don't bother to do your homework? If you want to talk about "what works", what works is for me to ignore you, because I don't owe you anything, and any time I spend dealing with you would be better spent improving the project.
In light of that, some amount of generosity and genuine desire to help will prompt some sort of response -- but that there was even a response is useless.
I'm not arguing that I should actually do that, but your argument fails both from a utilitarian point of view ("useless in the real world") and a common decency point of view (do your homework, so I don't have to).
you still remain with the RUDE stamp for ever after;
I can deal with that.
Let me put it this way: It's considered mildly irritating, but generally socially acceptable, for people to approach me out of nowhere -- on the street, in my house, wherever -- and ask if I've been saved. No one really seems to have a problem with people telling me that I'm going to hell because I don't believe whatever they believe. Hell, "In God We Trust" is on all our currency -- added relatively recently, but it's there -- and no one seems to mind. "Under God" was snuck into the Pledge of Allegiance to set us Christians apart from the Atheist Communists, never mind being unconstitutional and uncomfortable for a large portion of the population.
Yet as soon as I say anything about being an atheist, or about finding their beliefs to be foolish, I'm seen as rude. When Michael Newdow tries to get "Under God" removed from the Pledge, he's the rabble-rouser, the one who couldn't leave well enough alone, the "rude" one.
In short, people are quick to take offense at anyone, for any reason, especially someone who is different than them in some way. Rudeness is based on weird societal norms, the sort which, on close examination, most of us would not agree with.
If you want a clear example of this, look at Richard Dawkins. Religious people tend to see him as arrogant, obnoxious, and offensive. Nonreligious people tend to see him as intelligent, polite, well-spoken, and a genuinely nice guy. James Randi is about as polarizing -- either you love him as almost a grandfatherly figure, or you hate him because he called something you believe in and are passionate about "Woo-Woo", but probably for good reason.
What would your suggestion be, here? Should Dawkins have to become an absolute sycophant in order to be seen as "normal"? Would that even work for him? After all, many people are still going to view him as rude simply for existing.
Or, bring it back to me -- no matter how polite I am, and it would take a significant amount of work, there are some people who will be offended, even by a legitimate attempt to help -- and note that there are many people, including Taylor himself, who still think that situation was handled poorly. The first email, maybe, but look at the second one.
accept that you will pay the consequences :-).
If the consequence is that someone thinks I'm rude, that's OK. But this standard needs to change. It needs to not be rude to call people on things like this -- people need to be a lot more self-sufficient, and a lot more humble, when entering a new field. Otherwise, you end up with stuff like this.
Inverters aren't terribly expensive. Plug one end into the cigarette lighter, plug the laptop into the other end.
iPads can be infected with spyware, also. Doesn't happen often, but it happens. They can also (I hope) be locked with a password...
And laptops can be had with SSDs.
Which is yet another argument for Android -- you can install apps any way you want, including from any app store you want. There's nothing stopping Apple from opening their own android app store.
But it does show how moronic these measures are. I mean, you don't see Apple so much as installing a content filter on their mobile Safari, do you?
In other words, as GP says, you are using an illegal method to transfer licensed content to a playback medium not covered by the original license.
I dunno, that seems like stretching. I can't imagine the designers thought up GlaDOS and said to themselves "You know, she makes an excellent metaphor for the human psyche".
I wonder what, exactly, they were thinking when they thought of those specific pieces of her that they were using -- or the change in her personality after a piece was blown up.
I think I should be clear: My little list, there, shouldn't be taken as the *necessary* qualities of art. But I do believe that a piece of art aspires to convey *something* aside from the superficial, whether it be a moral lesson or a simple emotion.
I think I did show that.
Ah, but maybe that's the difference. I *don't* think *any* movie deserves to be art. Some movies, definitely. But, say, Scary Movie? Fuck no.
Well, now we're talking semantics. There are a lot of paintings, including some famous and well-regarded ones, that I wouldn't call "art", by that standard -- but is that a fair standard? There's a lot of terrible music out there, but we don't hesitate to call musicians "artists", and it's generally a given that music is art of a kind. Whether or not it's good art, or fine art, is up for debate.
It's *fun*. Why does it have to be "art"?
Portal? Maybe not, though I like to think it is. Not just because it's fun, but because it was much more fun than I've had with a game in a long time, it was endearing, masterfully executed...
Portal isn't the best example, though, and I think it is important that games be recognized as an art form. It's possible that I think that mostly because it irritates me to no end to hear people involved in movies tell me that games can't have art, or "can't make you cry", or some other bullshit, especially from people who publicly admit to not having played a game.
Yeah, and I guess that's the same article I linked to.
I'm actually ambivalent about this. I don't agree with everything Joel says, and in fact, I think it's probably vitally important to start CS students on something easy, like Python or Ruby, so that they're still interested in programming by the time they have to learn the harder, bare-metal stuff.
In that sense, it could be kind of like using trigonometric facts we know without proving them, or understanding their relationship to calculus -- just hitting the "log" function on our calculators without having any idea how infinite series work.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for doing it the hard way first, then sharing the epiphany of abstracting all of that away -- showing the limit of the difference quotient, then introducing rules of differentiation.
Either way has the potential to introduce bad habits. Both should be required for a well-rounded degree.
has no deeper meaning,
Taking apart GlaDOS at the end, piece by piece, suggests a deconstruction of an artificial psyche.
evokes no emotion,
The companion cube evoked no emotion? How about the cake? You yourself admitted to loving Portal -- is that love not an emotion?
teaches no lesson.
Aside from the lessons of the portal physics themselves, it teaches that games are meant to be fun, and that you can have a fun, innovative game with solid production values.
But of course, is art required to teach a moral lesson? I sure don't think so.
It certainly isn't abstractly beautiful or otherwise uniquely aesthetically pleasing (well, any more so than an average, technically competent game).
"More so than the average" isn't required. And the gameplay itself is abstractly beautiful.
But is it art? I sure don't think so.
I think it's unequivocally art. You seem to ask whether it's better than the average art, and it's certainly possible to say it's bad art, but I don't see how you can say it's not art.
Look at Dada for an example. If "found art" is legit, then someone can certainly take a urinal, declare it "found art", and erect it as a statue in a public park -- which I think I remember someone doing as an exercise in Dada. If Dada is legit, it doesn't seem like there's much you can say is not art.
More relevantly, though, it's aesthetically pleasing, humorous, entertaining... It contains all the elements required to call it "art" in the same way that any movie deserves to be called art. You clearly enjoy it, so you think it's good art, you just might not think it's particularly highbrow art, which is fine.