I would like to point out, as somebody who has and uses Firefox and does not use the toolbar, that it didn't install on my computer when I updated Windows.
I'm a former XP user - I've also used one or two Linux distros, but my primary OS had pretty much been XP since around 2002.
Well, earlier this year I replaced my laptop (the old one was literally falling apart), and the new one had Windows 7 on it. So, I configured it and played around with it. And, frankly, it impressed the hell out of me. I could finally make decent use of a 64-bit processor, it was fast, stable (at least with the stuff I was using), and I actually enjoyed using it. So, I picked up another copy from my local computer store, installed it, and it is now my primary OS.
Mainly, it wasn't that it had some new killer features - although there is some new stuff - but a lot of it is just streamlined. The interface is pleasant to look at and fairly intuitive once you spend a few minutes getting used to it, there's a nice button at the lower right side that minimizes all windows, and it has some nice little tweaks that just make using the computer easier.
So, it impressed me enough that I upgraded. Your mileage will vary. However, I can honestly say that I found it worthwhile, and I haven't touched WinXP since (and I multi-boot - Win7 went onto a free partition).
That is a really good question...and I honestly don't have an answer. I'd have to think about that.
There are certainly instances where a war starts for one reason, and religion is then used to rile the population up in the middle of it - World War I was seen in some quarters as a crusade by the 1916, even though religion had very little to do with its beginning. But, you also have wars where religion is discounted as a reason very deliberately, such as both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States was very clear that this was a war against political entities and terrorists, and NOT the religion of Islam.
Damn...that would actually make a good thesis topic, actually. Pity I'm already doing WW1 cavalry...
One of the big problems with this debate - and you can see it here in the responses - is that a lot of the people involved haven't undertaken any deep study of religion. As a casual student of religious anthropology and myth, this means that I see some very erroneous assumptions:
1. Religious concepts aren't based on a burden of proof. This debate brings this one up over and over again, but in fact most of western religious development WAS based on the burden of proof. In ancient Greece and Rome, there was no word for "religion" - the closest in Latin was the phrase "sacre facere," which means "to do the sacred things." Ancient polytheism was based on an assumption that not only did the gods exist, but they interacted with humans, and that therefore they had to be respected and dealt with in an intelligent manner. Actual ritual was more often based on observation rather than a rulebook - and if something didn't gain the desired result, the ritual was changed to something that would.
Once you get to the Christian era, the type of religion changes to what is called "revolutionary monotheism" - this means that God speaks first, so there is a rulebook. There is also, however, an entire new branch of intellectual thought called theology that concerns itself with reconciling and understanding how the divine interacts with the real world. Much of the early and Medieval scholarship is based on Classical scientific thought (Plato and Aristotle). For the burden of proof today, you need only look as far as the canonization process in Roman Catholicism. Before somebody can become a saint, they must perform a certain number of verified miracles. This process is in progress for Mother Teresa, and you can see some of the controversy as it is worked out.
2. That disproving one religious concept (eg. the Genesis creation myth) disproves all. This takes an extremely simplistic view of religion and mythology that completely fails to do justice to the matter. To take the Genesis creation myth as an example, scholars have long known that it was a late entry during the Babylonian internment, and is an adaptation of a Mesopotamian creation story - the very first Hebrews didn't actually have a creation myth, or at least they didn't have one that has been carried down to us today. The theory of evolution may disprove a literal interpretation of the creation story, but that doesn't mean that some recorded saintly miracles aren't true. For that matter, the minute you take a divine force as a sentient being, any experiment to prove their existence requires that being to first agree to show up.
3. That science explains all. Or, if we don't have a scientific understanding of something, it must not exist. Science is a systematic effort at understanding the world - and one of the best tools we have for that - but there are things that seem beyond scientific understanding. Take, for example, the multitude of spiritual or religious experiences recorded by hardened soldiers in World War I, some of which saved lives. Or, even better, take quantum physics, where once you get to a certain subatomic level, there don't seem to be any rules at all. Quite a number of people (myself included) have had spiritual experiences that satisfied their burden of proof - that this didn't happen in a laboratory under controlled conditions doesn't necessarily make it less real or valid. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
4. That science can replace religion in a world-view. While it is true that religion used to be used as part of an explanation of the physical world - and is still used for that to some degree (miracles, etc.) - religion also deals with spiritual issues that science is not capable of exploring. For example, what happens to us after death? What of the soul? What is our relationship with a higher power? To take the example of death, some (very creepy) experiments were conducted in which it was discovered that the human body sheds a very small amount of weight upon death that cannot be accou
"In any case, I'd like to see your "top #" list of what you consider to be the causes of warfare, say, in the last five hundred years - limiting it helps in this topic. I'm not a historian, but I do read, and from my reading I'd say that amongst those top five are resources(lack of), ethnic politics(Hitler good example), and religious-based ethnic persecution (Ireland, the Middle East), the last two somewhat interchangeable; religion has also been used as an 'excuse' for warfare that really has other reasons (there are many examples I'm sure you are aware of) - that is, the people in control (ab)use it to convince the mass population that war is necessary."
Oh, that sounds like fun (making the list, I mean). So, here's mine (more or less in order) - and causes can be combined:
1. Great power policy - a lot of the European wars of the 18th and 19th century in particular have this cause, such as the Franco-Austrian War, the Franco-Prussian War, etc. World War I would also fall under this cause, I think (and was the war that brought the great power system to its knees).
2. Imperial expansion and control - fairly self-explanatory; examples are the Spanish in South America against the Inca and Aztecs, and the Boer War, as well as the Seven Years War in North America.
3. Irresolvable regional differences - this could be cultural, in some rare cases religious, in some cases economic. Think the U.S. Civil War, the American Revolutionary War (although this one also can be counted under #2), etc. (in most cases, small limited wars).
4. Ideology - this one is an umbrella term that covers both social ideology and religion. There are some brutal religious wars in Europe (one whose name escapes me right now effectively depopulated a good chunk of Germany), but there is also the French Revolutionary War, as well as the numerous smaller satellite conflicts of the Cold War (eg. Vietnam, Korea).
5. An aggressive and/or megalomaniac leader - examples are Napoleon and Hitler, both of whom started what were effectively global conflicts (as a note, the War of 1812 was intended by Napoleon to be a North American front of the Napoleonic Wars).
And, your friend is right - no war really has any single cause. I guess my list could be the "tipping points." The start of World War II had numerous elements involved, including imperial expansion (Japan), great power politics (the treatment of Germany after WWI), and ideology (not just Nazi-ism with all of its unpleasant ethnic elements, but also the conflict between capitalism and communism - the cold war actually started in the 1920s between Britain and the Soviet Union). But the tipping point was still very much Adolf Hitler.
"Sure, but regardless of how contradicting they are, religions are still the source of most wars in the world."
Um, excuse me? Since when?
I'm working on a graduate degree in military history, and while religious wars do exist, religion tends to be the minority cause. Most wars don't start because of religion at all.
That said, religious wars are among the more brutal ones, right up there along with civil wars. But even when it comes to ethnic cleansing, ethnicity will frequently trump religion as an excuse for the atrocity.
If you want a single thing to blame warmongering on, then blame human ambition - that's about as close as you'll ever get to an explanation.
I spent a bit of time in a software development company, as well as worked in offices in general, and as a freelancer. And, I own a (very) small company now myself, so I know how I would want others to act if I hired them.
Basically, it comes down to this: be professional, and a good human being. That's it. How you do it is up to you. Anything else is commentary.
I'm sorry, but I wasn't very impressed with this article.
First of all, it starts by misrepresenting the "lost sales" argument. The piracy argument isn't that every pirated copy is a lost sale - it's that the piracy rate represents a significant number of lost sales. In essence, you can divide the market into hard-core (those who will buy the game no matter what) and a much larger casual market. The piracy takes a chunk out of the casual market, where if people can download a game instead of buying it, they will. And, it's not a 1:1 ratio of pirated copy to lost sale, but, besides there being an argument to be made that the game would not have been downloaded if there wasn't at least SOME interest, the sooner the protection is cracked, the more people who would have bought the game otherwise will have just downloaded it.
Second, the article completely ignores using authentication servers to track the percentage of games being played that are legitimate vs. percentage being pirated. This isn't necessarily a complicated calculation. If you've sold 200,000 copies, and you get 800,000 games trying to authenticate, well, it's basic math to figure out how many are pirated copies.
Third, although I haven't had a chance to take a look at these numbers yet, and so I can't really comment in detail on them, Assassin's Creed II held off the pirates for a very long time, as opposed to Assassin's Creed I (which was heavily pirated from the outset), and so it is possible to compare the PC sales figures between the two to get at least a rough sense of how many lost sales there might have actually been.
All of this is more accurate than the poll cited by the original article, which, I might add, basically takes the people polled at their word. It reminds me a bit of those employment tests where they ask you if you've ever stolen anything - if you HAD stolen something, you're not exactly likely to reply with "yes"...
I've been published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill and Simon & Schuster. I own and run a publishing company of my own that has now launched five history books, I've done research work for the Canadian government, and I'm working on an MA thesis. And I've got a few hundred non-fiction paid publication credits over a dozen years of professional writing.
I earned my expertise and my pride in my accomplishments. I may not be Stephen King, but I can be proud of what I've done. So what the fuck have YOU done to be worthy of your education?
Well, seeing as you don't seem to have a grasp of the issues at play, I'd shoot back by saying that I'm glad you don't work for me either.
But, also seeing as you don't seem to understand these issues, it would probably be a good idea to explain them. The poster I replied to did something that would require a fairly massive amount of damage control from their employer if their identity or the company they work for ever became known.
The original poster made a very negative comment about the quality of the authors published by his employer. Now, this can be taken as a statement of what his employer actually thinks (an official position), particularly since he has stated that he worked in the IT support section, and spoke for the opinions of the editorial department.
Does he probably represent the official position of his employer? Well, no - he's an IT guy talking off the top of his head. But he is speaking with an authoritative tone, and saying something that would piss off EVERY single author working with that publisher. That would put the company in a position where it would have to mend fences in a lot of different sectors, not just with their established authors, but with potential authors, the collected agents of both potential and current authors, and customers too.
So, is it a firing offense? Yes - and rightfully so.
Okay, that's a fair enough question. I've a published e-book author, and the owner of a small publishing company, so I can take you through this.
So, first, what's the difference between an e-book publisher and a printed book publisher? Very little. The end product is a different object, but all the steps leading up to it are essentially the same up to the point where the book is released. So, these steps are:
1. Slush pile/submissions editor - this is an initial quality control step. There are a lot of books out there that aren't up to snuff. So, first, the book has to get past this "gatekeeper."
2. Contract. This is a legal step to transfer the publication rights to the publisher.
3. Editing. The book has gotten past the initial quality control, but most authors are not the best editors of their own work - they're just too close to it to catch certain types of mistakes. So, now the editor works with the author to take the book and make it even better. This may involve two or three editing passes.
4. Typesetting. The book is now formatted for distribution. At this point, the content of the book is locked down, particularly for printed books, as the page count can't change (it buggers up the book cover measurements if it does).
5. Copyediting. This is the final step before the book goes to print/distribution. The typeset book is now checked for typographical errors.
6. Distribution. The book is either sent to the printer, or put out through online distribution channels (and if it's a printer like Lightning Source, the printer can take care of both).
7. Marketing. Self explanatory.
So, to summarize, a LOT of it is quality control and refinement. Can somebody do it themselves? Well, yes - I started a publishing company of my own, after all. But, going through the process with an actual publisher tends to get best results.
Disclosure: I am not only a published author (with a couple of major publishers), I own and operate a small publishing company. And I think you'd better hope that you're anonymous enough on this forum that your supervisor doesn't read this, because if you worked for me, I'd fire you for this comment.
Thou shalt not bash thy authors in public.
Now, frankly, you've demonstrated quite a lack of understanding of the process. As a publisher myself, do I need to deal with authors sending me sheer crap? Absolutely - that's what a rejection letter is for. There are plenty of authors who aren't yet up to snuff, and given time, they'll get good enough to be worth publishing. But, if they're not worth publishing, I don't work with them. The very fact that an author has been offered a contract, particularly at a large publishing house, means that they are good enough to be published - they would not have gotten past the slush pile otherwise.
Now, this does not mean that editing is unnecessary. In fact, most authors are not good editors of their own work. This isn't due to a lack of quality - it is due to the fact that the author of a book is too close to it. Authors know what point they're trying to get across, and so they'll read it in, even if they didn't quite get it right in the actual text. That's what the editor is for - to fine-tune the book and catch the things that the author misses. If the editor does his/her job right, the reader will never notice it - the book will flow smoothly and be right on track.
So, you can think of it this way - the manuscript form of the book is a diamond in the rough. The editor's job is to remove the rough. But, it still started out as a diamond.
Back in 2002 I wrote a book titled The EverQuest Companion, in which I did a chapter on online game addiction. Part of the research was looking at the psychology of game addiction, while also interviewing some of the psychologists who studied it. At the time work on this was still at its childhood, so there may be some new information out there that I haven't seen. Either way, this is going to be a bit of a technical post.
So, yes, it is possible to have a psychological addiction to the internet. It is in the same general category as a gambling addiction. While there isn't an actual substance being abused, in an online addict the brain becomes dependent on the dopamine "hit" caused by being online (or in the case of the article, plugged in), and the absence of that stimulus causes difficulties functioning (withdrawal symptoms).
How does this get started? Well, in a lot of cases it is a coping mechanism gone wrong. Somebody uses the 'net to procrastinate something they have to do, and they lose track of time. When they come offline, the task still needs to be done, but rather than do it, they retreat into the internet again. This becomes a vicious cycle.
As at least one person here has pointed out, there is a very large difference between a habit and an addiction. It is all about balance. If your life is balanced, and you're fulfilling all of your real world obligations, then you probably don't have a problem. If you are setting aside the real world in favour of the online one, then you do have a problem.
This can be a tricky thing to diagnose, though. To take myself as an example, back in April to May 2006 I spent around 16-18 hours per day in online chat rooms, stopping only for food and sleep. Was I an internet addict? Well, actually, no. In fact, I had been left homebound by a Crohn's flare, and chat rooms were the only way I could interact in any extensive way with the outside world. As I recovered, the time I spent in chat rooms got lower and lower, and finally all but disappeared.
When it comes down to what's mentioned in the article, though, the withdrawal isn't coming from wanting to talk to friends and being suddenly unable to. It's coming from an actual psychological dependency on using those devices. It's needing to text, use email, read blogs, etc., just to feel normal - the devices are no longer just tools, but appendages.
Let me put it this way - if you're using your smart phone, chat program, etc., because you want to, your work requires it, you're bored and you need to kill some time, etc., then odds are you don't have a problem. If you are doing it because you feel a deep need to - if you just HAVE to have that chat program on while you're in class, for example, and can't feel right without it being on - then you have a problem, and you should seek treatment.
Yes, I did read it. Here's what I mean, though: his claim says that in the National Post articles, he's falsely quoted as saying X, Y, and Z. If I was the National Post's lawyer (obviously, I'm not), I would have the authors of the articles pull out their original notes, and say to the judge, "but he actually DID say X, Y, and Z," and try to demonstrate that Weaver is changing his story, and trying to use the lawsuit to silence inconvenient facts.
And, I would point out, right now we have only Weaver's side of the story, and the National Post's article archives. We do not yet have the Post's response. So, Weaver's case isn't proven yet.
I'm in Canada, and that's how my lawyer explained it to me, as I recall, back around 2001/2002 (somebody had screwed me over, and then tried to shut me up with a threat of a libel suit - it didn't work).
Okay, I'm going to try to do a bit of an analysis of Weaver's claim. Now, I am not a lawyer - I'm a writer, a researcher, a publisher, and I work part-time doing writing and editing for a faculty of law. So, any errors are my own.
This is essentially a far-reaching libel claim. This means that two things have to be proven: first, that the National Post made a deliberate misrepresentation; second, that the Post did so with malice - they did it specifically to cause harm. If both can't be proven, the claim doesn't stand in court.
So, Weaver is launching a two pronged attack here - the first is against the Post itself for certain articles. The second is against some of the posters commenting on those articles.
First, the National Post itself: this will become a battle of sources. If the Post defends itself on that one, it will attempt to demonstrate that Weaver did say those things, and he's actively trying to rewrite history. So, the Post will have to bring out original rough notes for the articles to back-date Weaver's comments. So long as they can do that, even if the Post did say something wrong, then they can demonstrate that the errors were not deliberate, and the libel claim will fail.
Second, the NP forum posts: this one strikes me as a boneheaded move, frankly. There is simply no way to prove that the forum posters made any deliberate misrepresentations. Even if some of the comments were vicious, there isn't any way to demonstrate that an anonymous voice on a forum was knowingly lying.
Finally, malice: again, another very difficult thing to prove. This would require a paper trail or somebody able to testify that there was a targeted attack. Right now, the claim itself has innuendo, but not a trail to prove an attack.
"A 240hz TV doesn't actually display anything at 240hz. They just flicker the back light quickly to create the illusion of a higher frame rate. Subjective comparisons don't actually show it looking any better, and the TV reviews I've seen tell you to turn the feature off."
Well, THAT can't be good for the life of the backlight. I didn't realize that it did that, though. Huh.
"So the only valid reason for a 120Hz or 240Hz TV is future 3D capability."
Well, I can see 120 Hz being good for 24 frame mode for movies, and getting rid of judder.
"Also, Wipeout went from 60FPS at 1080p to 30FPS at 720p for the 3D upgrade. From the article, it sounds like they did it because they were lazy and didn't want to spend time optimizing their code any further to keep the FPS up."
It's not quite like that. I was doing research on 3D TVs recently out of interest (I had just upgraded to an HD TV), and 30 FPS is about the most you will likely get out of a 3D game to a standard modern non-3D capable television set.
Here's why - you have three refresh rates on TVs these days - 60 Hz, 120 Hz, and 240 Hz. Those refresh rates are effectively frame rates. If you have the money, and you care about it, you have every reason to go with 120 or 240 Hz if you can...but there's a reason for that. The reason is that video signals are transmitted at around 30 FPS, while movies are 24 FPS. The TV or DVD player brings the picture up to the refresh rate of the TV by adding frames. With a 60 Hz set, video is upgraded easier than film, since 30 FPS divides evenly into 60 Hz, while 24 doesn't. 24 FPS does, however, divide evenly into 120 and 240 Hz - this means that frame duplication is nice and even, and there is no chance of extra "judder."
So, what does this have to do with the PS3 and 3D games?
Well, this is the thing about modern non-3D televisions - if you buy a good non 3D-capable LCD television that can do 240 Hz, this means that it is displaying 240 Hz...but NOT receiving it. It's actually only receiving up to 60 Hz (remember, the entire thing about the higher refresh rates is all about adding frames in playback). Now, a 3D game works by having two slightly offset images per frame - one for each eye. The glasses ensure that each eye is only seeing the frames designated for it. So, for every 3D frame per second, there must be two images instead of one. That brings it down to basic math - the PS3 is transmitting at 60 Hz, and has to double up the images. Hence, no more than 30 FPS for a 3D game.
"I watch news. The recurring theme on Africa is one tribe fighting another."
Well, there are these things called BOOKS. They're written by these people called EXPERTS. You might want to look into them. You'll find them a bit more informative than the news.
And twisting my post into a pretzel as a rebuttal isn't going to impress anybody. I will point out, however, that your statement that they should either go back into the jungle or copy us was not only racist, it was a variation on a very old form of colonial racism known as "the white man's burden." In the United States just after the Civil War there was also a version that could be summarized as "go back to Africa."
That's from a field of study called HISTORY.
Now, if you want to move beyond a surface understanding of all of this, I would suggest starting by reading the following books, in order:
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond - this is a book about why some civilizations succeed while others fail.
Collapse, by Jared Diamond - this is a book about why some civilizations fail, and has a very good section on the forces that led to the genocide in Rwanda.
Shake Hands with the Devil, by Romeo Dallaire - this is a first hand account of genocide in Rwanda
Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, by Naomi Chazan, Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill, and Donald Rothchild - this has probably moved long past the second edition, but it's a good book about how Africa works, and why it is as it is.
Racism is not the statement of a unpleasant fact. To say that a black man is black is not racist, nor is it racist to say that there are tribal issues in parts of Africa. Again, that's just truth.
It becomes racist when a negative value judgement is attached. The GP didn't just say that there are a lot of tribal issues - it would have been fine if he had stopped there. He went on to say that the Africans were too primitive for civilization, and should either copy us or go back into the jungle. Now, he may have worded it in terms of cultures, but THAT was a value judgement based on racism on a number of levels. Levels of tribalism have little to do with whether an African country is stable or not, and he put down an entire continent while elevating us over it. Furthermore, it is a very old type of racism he expressed - one that I've seen in colonial writings. The more common term is "the white man's burden."
I'm not just going to call bullshit on your post, I'm going to call it racist bullshit too - there's a pretty nasty and uncalled-for value judgement there.
Africa has a very complicated situation that you have mischaracterized in a way that does no justice to the matter whatsoever. Tell me, have you actually read anything substantial on Africa? I'll even take Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil (which I have read). Have you read anything on anthropology, religious or otherwise?
First off, Africa is a massive continent, and level of development varies from place to place. In parts of Northern and Central Africa, you have locations which have or have had very old civilizations (ever heard of Nubia?) - you also have places where matters are mainly tribal.
Second, when it comes to that tribalism, the level of genocidal hatred that you see in cases like the Rwandan genocide of the early '90s was NOT a default tribal setting. In fact, it was heavily influenced by European colonialism, during which tribes were broken up in very arbitrary ways, and favourites were played. In some cases this created new tribal rivalries, or heavily intensified old ones. A perfect example of this was Rwanda, where most of the hatred had its origins in the fact that one tribe had been the favourites of the French, and the other wasn't. If you want to see how this was played out in practice, read first-hand accounts of the Belgian Congo - in Heart of Darkness, Conrad was pulling his punches...a LOT. You can start by reading George Washington Williams, who wrote a couple of very shocked reports on the matter around the turn of the 20th century.
Third, while modern Africa does have to deal with a level of often-fractured tribalism (and remember who it was who fractured it), the developed world is STILL holding it down in a lot of ways. The World Bank is well known for handing out development loans that leave a country worse-off than they were before taking the money. The latest excuse for holding back African development is Anthropogenic Global Warming, which is used to prevent African nations from building coal-fired power plants (which is all they can afford - and power is a necessary step to industrialization and development), and as a result there is a massive energy crisis in parts of Africa right now. So, in fact, the Western World declared colonialism over and then continued to screw around with Africa anyway.
And, finally, your statement that "Or, to put it even more bluntly, Africans are suffering because their culture is too primitive to support nation-states, and they should either go back to being hunter-gatherer tribes living in jungle or copy the necessary memes from Chinese or European culture to finish their transition to be part of the modern world," is, put more bluntly, racist drivel that has no place in a civilized discussion. African tribes have managed nation-building on their own (Shaka Zulu is the most famous example), and considering all the bumps that we have had - and are still having (I would point out that the last European genocide was in the 1990s) - on our path to development, there is no guarantee that we found the best way. There were plenty of civilizations before us, and there will be plenty after we are gone. Africa is a very complicated situation - just like any part of the developing world - that cannot just be summarized as "they're too primitive."
I've noticed that there seems to be an either/or mentality when it comes to technology. And this really is a false dichotomy.
When it comes down to it, what matters the most is utility, with personal preferences coming a distinct second. Pen and paper in an office is a tool, just as the computer is. The question ultimately becomes which is better for each task.
If you're dealing with lots of legal contracts, you're going to have paper files - same if you need to keep long term records, as the technological issues that might arise with a computer won't with a filing cabinet. On the other hand, if you're dealing with customer support, where you need to be able to call up files while on a phone, a database is a lot better for the task than a filing cabinet.
There's an old saying: just because you can do a thing, it does not follow that you SHOULD do that thing. The paperless office as an umbrella term falls under that phrase in a big way. Yes, it is possible to do everything by computer. That doesn't make it a good idea, though. It's a lot better to use the best tool for each job, be it a computer or paper.
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I would like to point out, as somebody who has and uses Firefox and does not use the toolbar, that it didn't install on my computer when I updated Windows.
I'm a former XP user - I've also used one or two Linux distros, but my primary OS had pretty much been XP since around 2002.
Well, earlier this year I replaced my laptop (the old one was literally falling apart), and the new one had Windows 7 on it. So, I configured it and played around with it. And, frankly, it impressed the hell out of me. I could finally make decent use of a 64-bit processor, it was fast, stable (at least with the stuff I was using), and I actually enjoyed using it. So, I picked up another copy from my local computer store, installed it, and it is now my primary OS.
Mainly, it wasn't that it had some new killer features - although there is some new stuff - but a lot of it is just streamlined. The interface is pleasant to look at and fairly intuitive once you spend a few minutes getting used to it, there's a nice button at the lower right side that minimizes all windows, and it has some nice little tweaks that just make using the computer easier.
So, it impressed me enough that I upgraded. Your mileage will vary. However, I can honestly say that I found it worthwhile, and I haven't touched WinXP since (and I multi-boot - Win7 went onto a free partition).
That is a really good question...and I honestly don't have an answer. I'd have to think about that.
There are certainly instances where a war starts for one reason, and religion is then used to rile the population up in the middle of it - World War I was seen in some quarters as a crusade by the 1916, even though religion had very little to do with its beginning. But, you also have wars where religion is discounted as a reason very deliberately, such as both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States was very clear that this was a war against political entities and terrorists, and NOT the religion of Islam.
Damn...that would actually make a good thesis topic, actually. Pity I'm already doing WW1 cavalry...
Not really. Language is, but with a few exceptions, religion tends to be very cross-cultural.
One of the big problems with this debate - and you can see it here in the responses - is that a lot of the people involved haven't undertaken any deep study of religion. As a casual student of religious anthropology and myth, this means that I see some very erroneous assumptions:
1. Religious concepts aren't based on a burden of proof. This debate brings this one up over and over again, but in fact most of western religious development WAS based on the burden of proof. In ancient Greece and Rome, there was no word for "religion" - the closest in Latin was the phrase "sacre facere," which means "to do the sacred things." Ancient polytheism was based on an assumption that not only did the gods exist, but they interacted with humans, and that therefore they had to be respected and dealt with in an intelligent manner. Actual ritual was more often based on observation rather than a rulebook - and if something didn't gain the desired result, the ritual was changed to something that would.
Once you get to the Christian era, the type of religion changes to what is called "revolutionary monotheism" - this means that God speaks first, so there is a rulebook. There is also, however, an entire new branch of intellectual thought called theology that concerns itself with reconciling and understanding how the divine interacts with the real world. Much of the early and Medieval scholarship is based on Classical scientific thought (Plato and Aristotle). For the burden of proof today, you need only look as far as the canonization process in Roman Catholicism. Before somebody can become a saint, they must perform a certain number of verified miracles. This process is in progress for Mother Teresa, and you can see some of the controversy as it is worked out.
2. That disproving one religious concept (eg. the Genesis creation myth) disproves all. This takes an extremely simplistic view of religion and mythology that completely fails to do justice to the matter. To take the Genesis creation myth as an example, scholars have long known that it was a late entry during the Babylonian internment, and is an adaptation of a Mesopotamian creation story - the very first Hebrews didn't actually have a creation myth, or at least they didn't have one that has been carried down to us today. The theory of evolution may disprove a literal interpretation of the creation story, but that doesn't mean that some recorded saintly miracles aren't true. For that matter, the minute you take a divine force as a sentient being, any experiment to prove their existence requires that being to first agree to show up.
3. That science explains all. Or, if we don't have a scientific understanding of something, it must not exist. Science is a systematic effort at understanding the world - and one of the best tools we have for that - but there are things that seem beyond scientific understanding. Take, for example, the multitude of spiritual or religious experiences recorded by hardened soldiers in World War I, some of which saved lives. Or, even better, take quantum physics, where once you get to a certain subatomic level, there don't seem to be any rules at all. Quite a number of people (myself included) have had spiritual experiences that satisfied their burden of proof - that this didn't happen in a laboratory under controlled conditions doesn't necessarily make it less real or valid. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
4. That science can replace religion in a world-view. While it is true that religion used to be used as part of an explanation of the physical world - and is still used for that to some degree (miracles, etc.) - religion also deals with spiritual issues that science is not capable of exploring. For example, what happens to us after death? What of the soul? What is our relationship with a higher power? To take the example of death, some (very creepy) experiments were conducted in which it was discovered that the human body sheds a very small amount of weight upon death that cannot be accou
"In any case, I'd like to see your "top #" list of what you consider to be the causes of warfare, say, in the last five hundred years - limiting it helps in this topic. I'm not a historian, but I do read, and from my reading I'd say that amongst those top five are resources(lack of), ethnic politics(Hitler good example), and religious-based ethnic persecution (Ireland, the Middle East), the last two somewhat interchangeable; religion has also been used as an 'excuse' for warfare that really has other reasons (there are many examples I'm sure you are aware of) - that is, the people in control (ab)use it to convince the mass population that war is necessary."
Oh, that sounds like fun (making the list, I mean). So, here's mine (more or less in order) - and causes can be combined:
1. Great power policy - a lot of the European wars of the 18th and 19th century in particular have this cause, such as the Franco-Austrian War, the Franco-Prussian War, etc. World War I would also fall under this cause, I think (and was the war that brought the great power system to its knees).
2. Imperial expansion and control - fairly self-explanatory; examples are the Spanish in South America against the Inca and Aztecs, and the Boer War, as well as the Seven Years War in North America.
3. Irresolvable regional differences - this could be cultural, in some rare cases religious, in some cases economic. Think the U.S. Civil War, the American Revolutionary War (although this one also can be counted under #2), etc. (in most cases, small limited wars).
4. Ideology - this one is an umbrella term that covers both social ideology and religion. There are some brutal religious wars in Europe (one whose name escapes me right now effectively depopulated a good chunk of Germany), but there is also the French Revolutionary War, as well as the numerous smaller satellite conflicts of the Cold War (eg. Vietnam, Korea).
5. An aggressive and/or megalomaniac leader - examples are Napoleon and Hitler, both of whom started what were effectively global conflicts (as a note, the War of 1812 was intended by Napoleon to be a North American front of the Napoleonic Wars).
And, your friend is right - no war really has any single cause. I guess my list could be the "tipping points." The start of World War II had numerous elements involved, including imperial expansion (Japan), great power politics (the treatment of Germany after WWI), and ideology (not just Nazi-ism with all of its unpleasant ethnic elements, but also the conflict between capitalism and communism - the cold war actually started in the 1920s between Britain and the Soviet Union). But the tipping point was still very much Adolf Hitler.
"Sure, but regardless of how contradicting they are, religions are still the source of most wars in the world."
Um, excuse me? Since when?
I'm working on a graduate degree in military history, and while religious wars do exist, religion tends to be the minority cause. Most wars don't start because of religion at all.
That said, religious wars are among the more brutal ones, right up there along with civil wars. But even when it comes to ethnic cleansing, ethnicity will frequently trump religion as an excuse for the atrocity.
If you want a single thing to blame warmongering on, then blame human ambition - that's about as close as you'll ever get to an explanation.
I spent a bit of time in a software development company, as well as worked in offices in general, and as a freelancer. And, I own a (very) small company now myself, so I know how I would want others to act if I hired them.
Basically, it comes down to this: be professional, and a good human being. That's it. How you do it is up to you. Anything else is commentary.
I'm sorry, but I wasn't very impressed with this article.
First of all, it starts by misrepresenting the "lost sales" argument. The piracy argument isn't that every pirated copy is a lost sale - it's that the piracy rate represents a significant number of lost sales. In essence, you can divide the market into hard-core (those who will buy the game no matter what) and a much larger casual market. The piracy takes a chunk out of the casual market, where if people can download a game instead of buying it, they will. And, it's not a 1:1 ratio of pirated copy to lost sale, but, besides there being an argument to be made that the game would not have been downloaded if there wasn't at least SOME interest, the sooner the protection is cracked, the more people who would have bought the game otherwise will have just downloaded it.
Second, the article completely ignores using authentication servers to track the percentage of games being played that are legitimate vs. percentage being pirated. This isn't necessarily a complicated calculation. If you've sold 200,000 copies, and you get 800,000 games trying to authenticate, well, it's basic math to figure out how many are pirated copies.
Third, although I haven't had a chance to take a look at these numbers yet, and so I can't really comment in detail on them, Assassin's Creed II held off the pirates for a very long time, as opposed to Assassin's Creed I (which was heavily pirated from the outset), and so it is possible to compare the PC sales figures between the two to get at least a rough sense of how many lost sales there might have actually been.
All of this is more accurate than the poll cited by the original article, which, I might add, basically takes the people polled at their word. It reminds me a bit of those employment tests where they ask you if you've ever stolen anything - if you HAD stolen something, you're not exactly likely to reply with "yes"...
There is a much better and more detailed article on the subject here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html
Well, right now the one sounding arrogant is you.
I've been published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill and Simon & Schuster. I own and run a publishing company of my own that has now launched five history books, I've done research work for the Canadian government, and I'm working on an MA thesis. And I've got a few hundred non-fiction paid publication credits over a dozen years of professional writing.
I earned my expertise and my pride in my accomplishments. I may not be Stephen King, but I can be proud of what I've done. So what the fuck have YOU done to be worthy of your education?
Well, seeing as you don't seem to have a grasp of the issues at play, I'd shoot back by saying that I'm glad you don't work for me either.
But, also seeing as you don't seem to understand these issues, it would probably be a good idea to explain them. The poster I replied to did something that would require a fairly massive amount of damage control from their employer if their identity or the company they work for ever became known.
The original poster made a very negative comment about the quality of the authors published by his employer. Now, this can be taken as a statement of what his employer actually thinks (an official position), particularly since he has stated that he worked in the IT support section, and spoke for the opinions of the editorial department.
Does he probably represent the official position of his employer? Well, no - he's an IT guy talking off the top of his head. But he is speaking with an authoritative tone, and saying something that would piss off EVERY single author working with that publisher. That would put the company in a position where it would have to mend fences in a lot of different sectors, not just with their established authors, but with potential authors, the collected agents of both potential and current authors, and customers too.
So, is it a firing offense? Yes - and rightfully so.
Okay, that's a fair enough question. I've a published e-book author, and the owner of a small publishing company, so I can take you through this.
So, first, what's the difference between an e-book publisher and a printed book publisher? Very little. The end product is a different object, but all the steps leading up to it are essentially the same up to the point where the book is released. So, these steps are:
1. Slush pile/submissions editor - this is an initial quality control step. There are a lot of books out there that aren't up to snuff. So, first, the book has to get past this "gatekeeper."
2. Contract. This is a legal step to transfer the publication rights to the publisher.
3. Editing. The book has gotten past the initial quality control, but most authors are not the best editors of their own work - they're just too close to it to catch certain types of mistakes. So, now the editor works with the author to take the book and make it even better. This may involve two or three editing passes.
4. Typesetting. The book is now formatted for distribution. At this point, the content of the book is locked down, particularly for printed books, as the page count can't change (it buggers up the book cover measurements if it does).
5. Copyediting. This is the final step before the book goes to print/distribution. The typeset book is now checked for typographical errors.
6. Distribution. The book is either sent to the printer, or put out through online distribution channels (and if it's a printer like Lightning Source, the printer can take care of both).
7. Marketing. Self explanatory.
So, to summarize, a LOT of it is quality control and refinement. Can somebody do it themselves? Well, yes - I started a publishing company of my own, after all. But, going through the process with an actual publisher tends to get best results.
Disclosure: I am not only a published author (with a couple of major publishers), I own and operate a small publishing company. And I think you'd better hope that you're anonymous enough on this forum that your supervisor doesn't read this, because if you worked for me, I'd fire you for this comment.
Thou shalt not bash thy authors in public.
Now, frankly, you've demonstrated quite a lack of understanding of the process. As a publisher myself, do I need to deal with authors sending me sheer crap? Absolutely - that's what a rejection letter is for. There are plenty of authors who aren't yet up to snuff, and given time, they'll get good enough to be worth publishing. But, if they're not worth publishing, I don't work with them. The very fact that an author has been offered a contract, particularly at a large publishing house, means that they are good enough to be published - they would not have gotten past the slush pile otherwise.
Now, this does not mean that editing is unnecessary. In fact, most authors are not good editors of their own work. This isn't due to a lack of quality - it is due to the fact that the author of a book is too close to it. Authors know what point they're trying to get across, and so they'll read it in, even if they didn't quite get it right in the actual text. That's what the editor is for - to fine-tune the book and catch the things that the author misses. If the editor does his/her job right, the reader will never notice it - the book will flow smoothly and be right on track.
So, you can think of it this way - the manuscript form of the book is a diamond in the rough. The editor's job is to remove the rough. But, it still started out as a diamond.
Okay, first, a bit of background.
Back in 2002 I wrote a book titled The EverQuest Companion, in which I did a chapter on online game addiction. Part of the research was looking at the psychology of game addiction, while also interviewing some of the psychologists who studied it. At the time work on this was still at its childhood, so there may be some new information out there that I haven't seen. Either way, this is going to be a bit of a technical post.
So, yes, it is possible to have a psychological addiction to the internet. It is in the same general category as a gambling addiction. While there isn't an actual substance being abused, in an online addict the brain becomes dependent on the dopamine "hit" caused by being online (or in the case of the article, plugged in), and the absence of that stimulus causes difficulties functioning (withdrawal symptoms).
How does this get started? Well, in a lot of cases it is a coping mechanism gone wrong. Somebody uses the 'net to procrastinate something they have to do, and they lose track of time. When they come offline, the task still needs to be done, but rather than do it, they retreat into the internet again. This becomes a vicious cycle.
As at least one person here has pointed out, there is a very large difference between a habit and an addiction. It is all about balance. If your life is balanced, and you're fulfilling all of your real world obligations, then you probably don't have a problem. If you are setting aside the real world in favour of the online one, then you do have a problem.
This can be a tricky thing to diagnose, though. To take myself as an example, back in April to May 2006 I spent around 16-18 hours per day in online chat rooms, stopping only for food and sleep. Was I an internet addict? Well, actually, no. In fact, I had been left homebound by a Crohn's flare, and chat rooms were the only way I could interact in any extensive way with the outside world. As I recovered, the time I spent in chat rooms got lower and lower, and finally all but disappeared.
When it comes down to what's mentioned in the article, though, the withdrawal isn't coming from wanting to talk to friends and being suddenly unable to. It's coming from an actual psychological dependency on using those devices. It's needing to text, use email, read blogs, etc., just to feel normal - the devices are no longer just tools, but appendages.
Let me put it this way - if you're using your smart phone, chat program, etc., because you want to, your work requires it, you're bored and you need to kill some time, etc., then odds are you don't have a problem. If you are doing it because you feel a deep need to - if you just HAVE to have that chat program on while you're in class, for example, and can't feel right without it being on - then you have a problem, and you should seek treatment.
Here's the point I'm making - the PDF is his CLAIM. That's what he is trying to prove in court. He still has to prove it.
Yes, I did read it. Here's what I mean, though: his claim says that in the National Post articles, he's falsely quoted as saying X, Y, and Z. If I was the National Post's lawyer (obviously, I'm not), I would have the authors of the articles pull out their original notes, and say to the judge, "but he actually DID say X, Y, and Z," and try to demonstrate that Weaver is changing his story, and trying to use the lawsuit to silence inconvenient facts.
And, I would point out, right now we have only Weaver's side of the story, and the National Post's article archives. We do not yet have the Post's response. So, Weaver's case isn't proven yet.
Huh. I wonder if that's a recent change.
I'm in Canada, and that's how my lawyer explained it to me, as I recall, back around 2001/2002 (somebody had screwed me over, and then tried to shut me up with a threat of a libel suit - it didn't work).
Well, that is Weaver's claim. The question is whether he can prove it.
I posted this on the CBC news website:
Okay, I'm going to try to do a bit of an analysis of Weaver's claim. Now, I am not a lawyer - I'm a writer, a researcher, a publisher, and I work part-time doing writing and editing for a faculty of law. So, any errors are my own.
This is essentially a far-reaching libel claim. This means that two things have to be proven: first, that the National Post made a deliberate misrepresentation; second, that the Post did so with malice - they did it specifically to cause harm. If both can't be proven, the claim doesn't stand in court.
So, Weaver is launching a two pronged attack here - the first is against the Post itself for certain articles. The second is against some of the posters commenting on those articles.
First, the National Post itself: this will become a battle of sources. If the Post defends itself on that one, it will attempt to demonstrate that Weaver did say those things, and he's actively trying to rewrite history. So, the Post will have to bring out original rough notes for the articles to back-date Weaver's comments. So long as they can do that, even if the Post did say something wrong, then they can demonstrate that the errors were not deliberate, and the libel claim will fail.
Second, the NP forum posts: this one strikes me as a boneheaded move, frankly. There is simply no way to prove that the forum posters made any deliberate misrepresentations. Even if some of the comments were vicious, there isn't any way to demonstrate that an anonymous voice on a forum was knowingly lying.
Finally, malice: again, another very difficult thing to prove. This would require a paper trail or somebody able to testify that there was a targeted attack. Right now, the claim itself has innuendo, but not a trail to prove an attack.
For those who want to take a close look of their own, the claim is at http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/andrew%20weaver%20statement%20of%20claim.pdf
"A 240hz TV doesn't actually display anything at 240hz. They just flicker the back light quickly to create the illusion of a higher frame rate. Subjective comparisons don't actually show it looking any better, and the TV reviews I've seen tell you to turn the feature off."
Well, THAT can't be good for the life of the backlight. I didn't realize that it did that, though. Huh.
"So the only valid reason for a 120Hz or 240Hz TV is future 3D capability."
Well, I can see 120 Hz being good for 24 frame mode for movies, and getting rid of judder.
For the record, my TV is a 60Hz 40" 1080p LCD TV.
"Also, Wipeout went from 60FPS at 1080p to 30FPS at 720p for the 3D upgrade. From the article, it sounds like they did it because they were lazy and didn't want to spend time optimizing their code any further to keep the FPS up."
It's not quite like that. I was doing research on 3D TVs recently out of interest (I had just upgraded to an HD TV), and 30 FPS is about the most you will likely get out of a 3D game to a standard modern non-3D capable television set.
Here's why - you have three refresh rates on TVs these days - 60 Hz, 120 Hz, and 240 Hz. Those refresh rates are effectively frame rates. If you have the money, and you care about it, you have every reason to go with 120 or 240 Hz if you can...but there's a reason for that. The reason is that video signals are transmitted at around 30 FPS, while movies are 24 FPS. The TV or DVD player brings the picture up to the refresh rate of the TV by adding frames. With a 60 Hz set, video is upgraded easier than film, since 30 FPS divides evenly into 60 Hz, while 24 doesn't. 24 FPS does, however, divide evenly into 120 and 240 Hz - this means that frame duplication is nice and even, and there is no chance of extra "judder."
So, what does this have to do with the PS3 and 3D games?
Well, this is the thing about modern non-3D televisions - if you buy a good non 3D-capable LCD television that can do 240 Hz, this means that it is displaying 240 Hz...but NOT receiving it. It's actually only receiving up to 60 Hz (remember, the entire thing about the higher refresh rates is all about adding frames in playback). Now, a 3D game works by having two slightly offset images per frame - one for each eye. The glasses ensure that each eye is only seeing the frames designated for it. So, for every 3D frame per second, there must be two images instead of one. That brings it down to basic math - the PS3 is transmitting at 60 Hz, and has to double up the images. Hence, no more than 30 FPS for a 3D game.
I THINK I've explained that properly...
"I watch news. The recurring theme on Africa is one tribe fighting another."
Well, there are these things called BOOKS. They're written by these people called EXPERTS. You might want to look into them. You'll find them a bit more informative than the news.
And twisting my post into a pretzel as a rebuttal isn't going to impress anybody. I will point out, however, that your statement that they should either go back into the jungle or copy us was not only racist, it was a variation on a very old form of colonial racism known as "the white man's burden." In the United States just after the Civil War there was also a version that could be summarized as "go back to Africa."
That's from a field of study called HISTORY.
Now, if you want to move beyond a surface understanding of all of this, I would suggest starting by reading the following books, in order:
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond - this is a book about why some civilizations succeed while others fail.
Collapse, by Jared Diamond - this is a book about why some civilizations fail, and has a very good section on the forces that led to the genocide in Rwanda.
Shake Hands with the Devil, by Romeo Dallaire - this is a first hand account of genocide in Rwanda
Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, by Naomi Chazan, Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill, and Donald Rothchild - this has probably moved long past the second edition, but it's a good book about how Africa works, and why it is as it is.
Go do some reading and get informed.
That's a valid challenge, and I'll answer it.
Racism is not the statement of a unpleasant fact. To say that a black man is black is not racist, nor is it racist to say that there are tribal issues in parts of Africa. Again, that's just truth.
It becomes racist when a negative value judgement is attached. The GP didn't just say that there are a lot of tribal issues - it would have been fine if he had stopped there. He went on to say that the Africans were too primitive for civilization, and should either copy us or go back into the jungle. Now, he may have worded it in terms of cultures, but THAT was a value judgement based on racism on a number of levels. Levels of tribalism have little to do with whether an African country is stable or not, and he put down an entire continent while elevating us over it. Furthermore, it is a very old type of racism he expressed - one that I've seen in colonial writings. The more common term is "the white man's burden."
So, yes, it was racist.
I'm not just going to call bullshit on your post, I'm going to call it racist bullshit too - there's a pretty nasty and uncalled-for value judgement there.
Africa has a very complicated situation that you have mischaracterized in a way that does no justice to the matter whatsoever. Tell me, have you actually read anything substantial on Africa? I'll even take Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil (which I have read). Have you read anything on anthropology, religious or otherwise?
First off, Africa is a massive continent, and level of development varies from place to place. In parts of Northern and Central Africa, you have locations which have or have had very old civilizations (ever heard of Nubia?) - you also have places where matters are mainly tribal.
Second, when it comes to that tribalism, the level of genocidal hatred that you see in cases like the Rwandan genocide of the early '90s was NOT a default tribal setting. In fact, it was heavily influenced by European colonialism, during which tribes were broken up in very arbitrary ways, and favourites were played. In some cases this created new tribal rivalries, or heavily intensified old ones. A perfect example of this was Rwanda, where most of the hatred had its origins in the fact that one tribe had been the favourites of the French, and the other wasn't. If you want to see how this was played out in practice, read first-hand accounts of the Belgian Congo - in Heart of Darkness, Conrad was pulling his punches...a LOT. You can start by reading George Washington Williams, who wrote a couple of very shocked reports on the matter around the turn of the 20th century.
Third, while modern Africa does have to deal with a level of often-fractured tribalism (and remember who it was who fractured it), the developed world is STILL holding it down in a lot of ways. The World Bank is well known for handing out development loans that leave a country worse-off than they were before taking the money. The latest excuse for holding back African development is Anthropogenic Global Warming, which is used to prevent African nations from building coal-fired power plants (which is all they can afford - and power is a necessary step to industrialization and development), and as a result there is a massive energy crisis in parts of Africa right now. So, in fact, the Western World declared colonialism over and then continued to screw around with Africa anyway.
And, finally, your statement that "Or, to put it even more bluntly, Africans are suffering because their culture is too primitive to support nation-states, and they should either go back to being hunter-gatherer tribes living in jungle or copy the necessary memes from Chinese or European culture to finish their transition to be part of the modern world," is, put more bluntly, racist drivel that has no place in a civilized discussion. African tribes have managed nation-building on their own (Shaka Zulu is the most famous example), and considering all the bumps that we have had - and are still having (I would point out that the last European genocide was in the 1990s) - on our path to development, there is no guarantee that we found the best way. There were plenty of civilizations before us, and there will be plenty after we are gone. Africa is a very complicated situation - just like any part of the developing world - that cannot just be summarized as "they're too primitive."
I've noticed that there seems to be an either/or mentality when it comes to technology. And this really is a false dichotomy.
When it comes down to it, what matters the most is utility, with personal preferences coming a distinct second. Pen and paper in an office is a tool, just as the computer is. The question ultimately becomes which is better for each task.
If you're dealing with lots of legal contracts, you're going to have paper files - same if you need to keep long term records, as the technological issues that might arise with a computer won't with a filing cabinet. On the other hand, if you're dealing with customer support, where you need to be able to call up files while on a phone, a database is a lot better for the task than a filing cabinet.
There's an old saying: just because you can do a thing, it does not follow that you SHOULD do that thing. The paperless office as an umbrella term falls under that phrase in a big way. Yes, it is possible to do everything by computer. That doesn't make it a good idea, though. It's a lot better to use the best tool for each job, be it a computer or paper.