"We email to people who wouldn't know PGP from ABC"
The real issue is the designers of email (and the net) didn't take into account that the internet would become so pervasive and the need for encryption and security was not built into the system from the get go and handled automatically behind the scenes. Encryption should need you to install or use third party software or turn on hidden options, it should just be on by default and built in.
... the problem with these organizations is that it depends on the quality of human beings of said institutions and said society. If human beings are stupid and corrupt then they will corrupt the institutions (media, school, business, government) and especially the lawmakers. If that wasn't bad enough the law makers are too old/ignorant/stupid to even process the social complexity of modern societies. His platitudes mean little.
If anything these guys are simply blindly following dogma and not being able to think critically about how money allows you to game the system and transform what was once a free society into a society in which the people have rights in name only. The whole idea that the loss of rights would be 'obvious' to these organizations is nonsense. People are stupid, especially people in power. Most of humanity is too unsophisticated to understand the complexity inherent in how money transforms institutions and their effects on society and culture.
"Maybe dining on lobsters and imported cognac while up to 3.5 million [wikipedia.org] of his citizens died of starvation. If that doesn't count, then I'm not sure what does."
The same happens in western nations to the poor it just happens through economic suffocation, offshoring and low wages not to speak of those sent off to war over human history by western powers. The whole idea that just because you're not starving doesn't mean you're not suffering severely is bs. Since health is directly related to social status.
"We should reward mediocrity and just hope that it gets better because...?"
If you buy any modern games you are already rewarding rehashes and mediocrity, so gamers clearly don't have a problem with it (see call of duty, etc). So please spare me your BS. Most games today are cinematics/w little gameplay. Most PC games have been sloppy ports over the past 10 years.
Next many of the games come with source code (so if you're a tinkerer you can modify/learn from it/update it/ make it your own, etc). Try getting that in the game industry at all these days. The whole idea that you start out producing amazing stuff with the budgets of these smalld developers is nonsensical. The game industry had decades to get to where it is at today. Your expectations have been colored by decades of advancements.
You really need to load up some old NES games on emulators and look at all the shit games then, many indie games today out-shine most 8-bit NES and some 16-bit games from the SNES/GEN era. You don't start at the top when you're a small business, you start small and work your way up. The games are a reflection of the finances of the developers themselves, they'd rather not go out of business.
How many AAA dev houses are in debt? What's the stock of THQ lately? Oh yeah look at that stock price!
"I think that humble bundle inc should slow down a bit.."
Compared to what the game industry right now is, everyone should want to keep these guys in business. Sure the games aren't that great but you need money to increase the quality of your games. The first games they release aren't going to be the greatest, games take huge amounts of money and resources to develop. Modern AAA games take teams of hundreds and years of development.
These guys can't simply spend AAA budgets on games they have to find a viable business model before they can expand and grow to higher quality games. Gamers expectations are so high because of 50 million dollar games these guys have to start somewhere. We're seeing an industry reset in a way whether they will make enough money to make more AAA like games or they will just milk it for all it's worth remains to be seen how much money they can get and whether or not they want to grow or not.
Harper has only one goal in mind - to fuck up the states finances as much as possible to cut social programs and healthcare. They do not care about ruling, they care about turning back the clock.
You should all see these, lots of great information about harper and company:
" You and me may not be dumb enough to fall for it, but on the whole, it works and thus the thought that the system consists of rational individuals making the best decisions for themselves is mathematically laughable. "
You should learn how the mind works before you say stuff like this. The enlightenment was wrong about human reason, this has huge implications for our understanding of what it is that makes math 'hard' for people.
Note that this is from the 'mathematical society' unfortunately most academics have no idea what has been discovered in the mind sciences over the last 30 years. Just because your mind finds math easy does not make it that someone elses mind will. This study is not done by neuroscientists so it's suspect right away.
Most people aren't intelligent enough to know when they are getting ripped off there is huge assymetry of information in the costs of goods people buy and the price they see. We don't work on rationality, the mind does not work according to enlightenment principles which the free market is a descendant of.
Open source is really about complexity and not patenting 'nuts and bolts' kinds of things that everyone uses, not to mention it's there for learning and as a kind of backup plan against orwellian IP laws. Coders grow old and die and having code from them for new coders to learn from without having to reinvent everything is a godsend.
For instance everyone benefits over long periods of time when source is open. Questions can be asked, tools can be modified/updated as needed. Analysis on source-code can be done and better tools developed and in depth analysis of how to build better less buggy software. One of the reasons windows has been so bug infested over the years no doubt comes from the lack of open-code. It took decades for Microsoft windows to become as stable as it was under 2000 and XP and even then there were hiccups here and there.
Also lots of projects that are currently impossible under closed source become possible under open source. I wish more game companies would open source their games. Since games really are about the end product, locking down your engine/source-code will naturally hinder analysis of what can be better done to make games on smaller budgets with better tools.
"Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work?"
Look at american politics, the right has successfully pushed back almost all progressive elements of american society. Advertising = propaganda. Don't think it works? See religion, one of the most successful advertising campaigns in human history.
... fixed schedules and they show only the content that will get them the most (average) viewers. So programs cater to the lowest common denominator. You can't simply just watch what you want to when you want to relatively (obnoxious) ad free.
The great thing about the internet is you can find old shows like cartoons and whatnot from earlier in your life that no network will broadcast anymore. As bad as content industries make 'piracy' out to be, they can no longer forcibly send old shows offline permanently (which is a good thing). If anything piracy will be a great boon to future historians of entertainment, the arts and humanity generally speaking.
... still have pretty crappy interfaces. Take delicious.com for example, no browser ever thought of tagging, saving, and organizing bookmarks in a database format (which was ingenious IMHO) and allowing other people to search look at/share their bookmarks. When you look at the browser market all you really see is incompetence. There's tonnes of cool firefox plugins and I keep firefox around for them. But it would be amazing if the more useful plugins were incorporated directly into the program. Like taking screenshots of webpages and saving them to a database with tagging (ala delicious). Many of us have tonnes of little clips/bits of information we need from the web but no way to organize it and basic bookmarks is a far cry from what is needed but things like delicious are headed in the right direction.
I find most of my problems with browsers in how to organize and manage the pages/websites/info I want to save. Browsers have really need more intelligent information management features for end users.
"Vote, please, but recognize that American democracy has been corrupted by unlimited money for campaign advertising."
Human beings don't work according to reason unfortunately, voting is not going to solve the crisis in human reasoning as a result of media propaganda and also underlying genetic factors, see here:
"Bullshit, all the cries of socialism and handouts for the lazy, criminal, and brown people are a charade to keep the crooks in power so they can continue to rob you while you blame socialism."
And this is why their propaganda (of the crooks) works:
That's because you're an uneducated moron that has no clue about what has been discovered over the last 30 years about how flawed your brain and reasoning really is. I can sit here and tell you the facts _and you won't believe them_ that was the point. You're scientifically illiterate.
Slashdot Mirror
I associate corruption with stupidity because it fucks up society.
"We email to people who wouldn't know PGP from ABC"
The real issue is the designers of email (and the net) didn't take into account that the internet would become so pervasive and the need for encryption and security was not built into the system from the get go and handled automatically behind the scenes. Encryption should need you to install or use third party software or turn on hidden options, it should just be on by default and built in.
... the problem with these organizations is that it depends on the quality of human beings of said institutions and said society. If human beings are stupid and corrupt then they will corrupt the institutions (media, school, business, government) and especially the lawmakers. If that wasn't bad enough the law makers are too old/ignorant/stupid to even process the social complexity of modern societies. His platitudes mean little.
If anything these guys are simply blindly following dogma and not being able to think critically about how money allows you to game the system and transform what was once a free society into a society in which the people have rights in name only. The whole idea that the loss of rights would be 'obvious' to these organizations is nonsense. People are stupid, especially people in power. Most of humanity is too unsophisticated to understand the complexity inherent in how money transforms institutions and their effects on society and culture.
"Maybe dining on lobsters and imported cognac while up to 3.5 million [wikipedia.org] of his citizens died of starvation. If that doesn't count, then I'm not sure what does."
The same happens in western nations to the poor it just happens through economic suffocation, offshoring and low wages not to speak of those sent off to war over human history by western powers. The whole idea that just because you're not starving doesn't mean you're not suffering severely is bs. Since health is directly related to social status.
"We should reward mediocrity and just hope that it gets better because...?"
If you buy any modern games you are already rewarding rehashes and mediocrity, so gamers clearly don't have a problem with it (see call of duty, etc). So please spare me your BS. Most games today are cinematics /w little gameplay. Most PC games have been sloppy ports over the past 10 years.
Next many of the games come with source code (so if you're a tinkerer you can modify/learn from it/update it/ make it your own, etc). Try getting that in the game industry at all these days. The whole idea that you start out producing amazing stuff with the budgets of these smalld developers is nonsensical. The game industry had decades to get to where it is at today. Your expectations have been colored by decades of advancements.
You really need to load up some old NES games on emulators and look at all the shit games then, many indie games today out-shine most 8-bit NES and some 16-bit games from the SNES/GEN era. You don't start at the top when you're a small business, you start small and work your way up. The games are a reflection of the finances of the developers themselves, they'd rather not go out of business.
How many AAA dev houses are in debt? What's the stock of THQ lately? Oh yeah look at that stock price!
http://bit.ly/s9ZUIX
Making high quality games don't mean much when you don't have a viable business model to survive to make more games.
"I think that humble bundle inc should slow down a bit.."
Compared to what the game industry right now is, everyone should want to keep these guys in business. Sure the games aren't that great but you need money to increase the quality of your games. The first games they release aren't going to be the greatest, games take huge amounts of money and resources to develop. Modern AAA games take teams of hundreds and years of development.
These guys can't simply spend AAA budgets on games they have to find a viable business model before they can expand and grow to higher quality games. Gamers expectations are so high because of 50 million dollar games these guys have to start somewhere. We're seeing an industry reset in a way whether they will make enough money to make more AAA like games or they will just milk it for all it's worth remains to be seen how much money they can get and whether or not they want to grow or not.
You should all see these, lots of great information about harper and company:
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/2010/04/preface.html
"So the triumph of emotion over logic is essentially complete. I was a fool to think it would be any other way."
Just a heads up for you, the enlightenment was wrong about human reasoning:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
Harper has only one goal in mind - to fuck up the states finances as much as possible to cut social programs and healthcare. They do not care about ruling, they care about turning back the clock.
You should all see these, lots of great information about harper and company:
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/2010/04/preface.html
You should all see these, lots of great information about harper and company:
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/2010/04/preface.html
" You and me may not be dumb enough to fall for it, but on the whole, it works and thus the thought that the system consists of rational individuals making the best decisions for themselves is mathematically laughable. "
And this is why:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
"Math isn't hard. It's easy."
You should learn how the mind works before you say stuff like this. The enlightenment was wrong about human reason, this has huge implications for our understanding of what it is that makes math 'hard' for people.
Note that this is from the 'mathematical society' unfortunately most academics have no idea what has been discovered in the mind sciences over the last 30 years. Just because your mind finds math easy does not make it that someone elses mind will. This study is not done by neuroscientists so it's suspect right away.
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
"The Dunning-Kruger effect is perhaps the most useful effect to use when trying to make sense of modern politics."
That's one part of the equation, here is the other - human reasoning doesn't work like the enlightenment thought it did:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
"If the price is agreed to by all involved parties then it's fair."
Incorrect. Human minds can be manipulated.
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
Most people aren't intelligent enough to know when they are getting ripped off there is huge assymetry of information in the costs of goods people buy and the price they see. We don't work on rationality, the mind does not work according to enlightenment principles which the free market is a descendant of.
Open source is really about complexity and not patenting 'nuts and bolts' kinds of things that everyone uses, not to mention it's there for learning and as a kind of backup plan against orwellian IP laws. Coders grow old and die and having code from them for new coders to learn from without having to reinvent everything is a godsend.
For instance everyone benefits over long periods of time when source is open. Questions can be asked, tools can be modified/updated as needed. Analysis on source-code can be done and better tools developed and in depth analysis of how to build better less buggy software. One of the reasons windows has been so bug infested over the years no doubt comes from the lack of open-code. It took decades for Microsoft windows to become as stable as it was under 2000 and XP and even then there were hiccups here and there.
Also lots of projects that are currently impossible under closed source become possible under open source. I wish more game companies would open source their games. Since games really are about the end product, locking down your engine/source-code will naturally hinder analysis of what can be better done to make games on smaller budgets with better tools.
Doom source
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_source_code
Freespace 2
http://scp.indiegames.us/
"But I found those questions trivial without a calculator, how you'd manage to fail with a calculator is beyond me."
Learn a bit about human reasoning:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
"Organizations with really great products/service are kept semi-secret and don't need advertising."
This is BS.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/03/30/the-secret-history-of-volition.aspx
When you get the time, look for when he's talking about how much money freespace 2 made. See 2nd video.
"Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work?"
Look at american politics, the right has successfully pushed back almost all progressive elements of american society. Advertising = propaganda. Don't think it works? See religion, one of the most successful advertising campaigns in human history.
"All they seem to understand is the lazy approach. Be loud! Be garish! Be anything but smart and honest!"
Human beings don't work on rationality, see what's been discovered about the brain here:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
... fixed schedules and they show only the content that will get them the most (average) viewers. So programs cater to the lowest common denominator. You can't simply just watch what you want to when you want to relatively (obnoxious) ad free.
The great thing about the internet is you can find old shows like cartoons and whatnot from earlier in your life that no network will broadcast anymore. As bad as content industries make 'piracy' out to be, they can no longer forcibly send old shows offline permanently (which is a good thing). If anything piracy will be a great boon to future historians of entertainment, the arts and humanity generally speaking.
... still have pretty crappy interfaces. Take delicious.com for example, no browser ever thought of tagging, saving, and organizing bookmarks in a database format (which was ingenious IMHO) and allowing other people to search look at/share their bookmarks. When you look at the browser market all you really see is incompetence. There's tonnes of cool firefox plugins and I keep firefox around for them. But it would be amazing if the more useful plugins were incorporated directly into the program. Like taking screenshots of webpages and saving them to a database with tagging (ala delicious). Many of us have tonnes of little clips/bits of information we need from the web but no way to organize it and basic bookmarks is a far cry from what is needed but things like delicious are headed in the right direction.
I find most of my problems with browsers in how to organize and manage the pages/websites/info I want to save. Browsers have really need more intelligent information management features for end users.
"We've had the ability to encrypt email for years"
That was never the issue, the problem is it was OPT IN, encryption should have been built in and on by default from the start. That's the real issue.
"Vote, please, but recognize that American democracy has been corrupted by unlimited money for campaign advertising."
Human beings don't work according to reason unfortunately, voting is not going to solve the crisis in human reasoning as a result of media propaganda and also underlying genetic factors, see here:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
"Bullshit, all the cries of socialism and handouts for the lazy, criminal, and brown people are a charade to keep the crooks in power so they can continue to rob you while you blame socialism."
And this is why their propaganda (of the crooks) works:
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
That's because you're an uneducated moron that has no clue about what has been discovered over the last 30 years about how flawed your brain and reasoning really is. I can sit here and tell you the facts _and you won't believe them_ that was the point. You're scientifically illiterate.