" that means they are using less resources than you to have basically the same life. Is it ethical to go out of your way to maintain your wasteful life?"
So does that mean we should out-source the rich? Oh that's right you can't because they are legally protected from the market because they own all the wealth. (See: Bail out).
"It's the people on the left who are the ones who routinely look to shut down others' speech."
Only on slashdot could this shit ever get rated insightful, the right has done plenty. Like glenn beck talking about killing michael moore, too many stupid people on the right is just insane in america. These demagogues merely fan the flames of stupid people. The problem is freedom of speech was coined before the era oft television and mass media where most people are living in worlds of illusion manufacutred by our corporatocracy. I'm not a fan of stupid people on the right or left, nor of shutting down speech... but lets not pretend hateful speech does not have consequences in an age of mass media and mass propaganda. The founding fathers of the US could never predict what science now knows about media and mass communications. I'm sure they would be horrified at what mass media was able to do to the public mind.
... one can just put molded plastic over ones fingers, or wear "fake hands". With the plastic tech now available people can leave less trace of themselves behind.
... if you want to to shine up geeks image you want to help those who are mocked, who don't care about their appearance or social skills and rather focus on making them better people all around.
The real issue is the nerds/geeks people hate give those nerds/geeks who are not like the ones people hate a bad name.
You're never going to get rid o the stigma of geek/nerd = socially inept loser obsessed with difficult stuff, people always want a punching bag and someone to look down on, the only way to counter that is to show how people can become better people all around rather then trying to make something appealing through contest, make them *actually likable human beings* would be a start.
Most people are incredibly stupid, emotional and superficial and only value geek/nerd for his or her own knowledge, we tend to be sought to be used rather then to be associated with.
... just because you have a lot of smart people does not mean they will be put to use.
A lot of ideas from the mythical man month also apply to clever people and large intellectual projects from various sectors. That being one largely of scalability.
I understand what you are saying but quality tools do matter.
I've been annoyed at the crap level of tools for XP and onward for a long time. While Fat was crap disk defragmenting tools for NTFS are still horrid and tedious.
To say that quality tools don't matter is moronic. You as always do the nerd thing and focus on just what I said not rather what was implied in the general sense.
"I laugh whenever I see comments like this. Lest we forget that nobody ever accepted The Great Zero Challenge [hostjury.com], let alone beat it."
While the statement itself is incorrect if taken as if it was accurate, traditionally when you delete a file on a partition table it does not delete the file only deletes the first bit of the filename from the file allocation table.
This is what allowed old DOS utilities like undelete or norton undelete to function. Some days I do miss the old days since it seems no one develops quality tools anymore for win XP +.
The world constantly has new people born into it that do not know these things and/or never had the wherewithal or interest to find these things out on their own.
Most people just know they are rumors that are most likely true, they don't actually have evidence.
"BUT if you play them to the point where you can't pry yourself away from them, then you have problems."
No the real issue is the home and school environment that drives children to self-medicate on video games. We have built a shitty world and we are collectively in denial.
No one wants to admit that the environments in which kids are raised and our unrealistic demands and expectations on kids drive their "mental illness" not all kids fit into adults unrealistic demands that capitalist society makes on them.
Not every kid is going to go to college and as long as there is no well paying jobs for people who only have some college or community college "mental health" is just a sign that the job market for people who are not scholastically inclined is the main contributer to these problems.
That's because in reality we forget _we are the universe detecting itself_.
The problem comes from our idea that our mind is separate from reality and not unified with it, current scientific worldview operates on the "Separateness theory" of the universe, in reality the universe is holistic. This is how we can find roots of ideas and trace their history since ideas are _made from_ woven out of the structure of the universe itself.
... I've been frustrated with the whole book publishing model in the era of the internet for many kinds of books, esp technical books and self-teaching kind.
No few people can write a whole book and make sure it is error free. It's time to put "teach yourself X book" and technical books in editable wikibook like format, then everyone who has knowledge can contribute to the work making the book more valuable over the long term.
So many books are just pump-and-dumps for cash grab... many people buy books to teach themselves stuff but so many of these books are beyond the scope of a few authors because they cannot see the frustrations and unmet needs of their readers.
Have you all ever considered it COSTS serious MONEY to run wikileaks given the amount of material they are given?
They have no easy means of making money at their disposal it costs money to get on in this world, you all act like such self-righteous pricks. Assange has and others who work for wikileaks has done more then all the worlds presses combined for the last 30 years and you guys want to hang the guy or making some $$$? The man needs as much $ as he can to fund the operation to keep it going.
... should not be developing games, period. Most game developers _suck_ at making games and can't take criticism. To have forums means you need thick skin. Bioware has publically stated they used public feedback from websites and forums to help design mass effect 2, and Mass effect 2 ended up being better for it. They know that developing a game is a process of feedback and discourse.
Supreme commander 1 was released unfinished state and the AI was horribly broken, without the support and MOD forums AI developers from the community would have never fixed the horribly broken and unfinished AI into a fun state, in fact Sorian was hired by Gas powered games to do AI in supreme commander 2 since his AI for Supcom 1 was so darn good.
... most people want to work to live, not live to work. And unless you are really good/passionate about science and have the work ethic you're not going to get anyone into science.
The real issue is cost/benefit and status, if you want more scientists you have to pay them like you do doctors or bankers. That's the truth, you have to make science a high status job.
No but a large degree of one's potential is, there are low energy / "lazy" people with high IQ, there are also very hardworking and dedicated average people.
But lets not think that outcomes have nothing to do with genetics. Who is energetic and/or determined and who isn't is largely determined by genetic potential.
"If private individuals were allowed to connect to whomever and however they wanted for a network connection, most of these problems would go away"
Incorrect...
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty"--Plato
The whole emphasis on "freedom is always good" in every way is a lie, the world does not work according to moral principles it works according to physical processes and human beings are just another one of those processes.
"My personal experience indicates that like so many things, social life is a matter of training, experience and desire"
While this may seem trivially true, most peoples behavior is driven by unconscious processes, and these processes vary in their flexibility to solve different kinds of problems.
"This model works much better when you're dealing with people face to face."
The truth is many games in the indie bundle are crap, thats why the bundle actually works. i.e. individually they are worth so little that most people would not regularly pay money for them.
I participated in the last one and paid more then then my fair share and ended playing none of them due to not really being that interested.
... doesn't understand that technological advancement has limits, you cannot infinitely drive the cost of something down towards zero and you can't count on the universe to have some unknown undiscovered technology just waiting in the wings.
In the physical universe processes take scientifically measurable amounts of time, resources and computation to complete.
This cult of the market always forgets that natural law trumps ideology.
... indies are competing with discounted AAA games from years prior. It's hard to charge ~$20+ dollars for an indie game when you can get yesteryears hit games for the same or less.
"So no , you didn't FTFM. You just showed how ignorant you are."
No the opposite is true, because you don't grasp the whole idea of social status and it's effects on social relationships and health. Things are not determinants of wealth since standards and societies expectations are not fixed. Because you have certain things does not mean you are not poor. A poor person can't participate in society on the same level with cultural expectations of western society that perceives and treats those people as poor. Poverty is context bound to the expectations and standards of that society.
This naive 19th century notion that if you're not living in a 3rd world country you are not poor is just bullshit.
"In fact philosophy really should be tought in schools, it's the basis of how we view the world today"
What's really ironic is how ignorant some slashdotters are - science used to be called - natural philosophy.
Science and philosophy are intimately tied together in history of science and progress. Only those who know little about the history of philosophy or science would ever say philosophy was not a critical development for human beings.
The problem is that the bad philosophers give philosophy a bad name, there is a lot of nonsense or noise but just because their are crappy philosophers does not mean philosophy as a whole is not important.
On Socrates:
Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as mentioned above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.
The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates' teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that "virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know."
--
If more people thought like that the world would be a better place, one only has to take a look at the world as it is today and know that philosophy is important.
Slashdot Mirror
" that means they are using less resources than you to have basically the same life. Is it ethical to go out of your way to maintain your wasteful life?"
So does that mean we should out-source the rich? Oh that's right you can't because they are legally protected from the market because they own all the wealth. (See: Bail out).
"It's the people on the left who are the ones who routinely look to shut down others' speech."
Only on slashdot could this shit ever get rated insightful, the right has done plenty. Like glenn beck talking about killing michael moore, too many stupid people on the right is just insane in america. These demagogues merely fan the flames of stupid people. The problem is freedom of speech was coined before the era oft television and mass media where most people are living in worlds of illusion manufacutred by our corporatocracy. I'm not a fan of stupid people on the right or left, nor of shutting down speech... but lets not pretend hateful speech does not have consequences in an age of mass media and mass propaganda. The founding fathers of the US could never predict what science now knows about media and mass communications. I'm sure they would be horrified at what mass media was able to do to the public mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwqnkWdCJg#t=0m48s
... one can just put molded plastic over ones fingers, or wear "fake hands". With the plastic tech now available people can leave less trace of themselves behind.
... if you want to to shine up geeks image you want to help those who are mocked, who don't care about their appearance or social skills and rather focus on making them better people all around.
The real issue is the nerds/geeks people hate give those nerds/geeks who are not like the ones people hate a bad name.
You're never going to get rid o the stigma of geek/nerd = socially inept loser obsessed with difficult stuff, people always want a punching bag and someone to look down on, the only way to counter that is to show how people can become better people all around rather then trying to make something appealing through contest, make them *actually likable human beings* would be a start.
Most people are incredibly stupid, emotional and superficial and only value geek/nerd for his or her own knowledge, we tend to be sought to be used rather then to be associated with.
... just because you have a lot of smart people does not mean they will be put to use.
A lot of ideas from the mythical man month also apply to clever people and large intellectual projects from various sectors. That being one largely of scalability.
http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/
I understand what you are saying but quality tools do matter.
I've been annoyed at the crap level of tools for XP and onward for a long time. While Fat was crap disk defragmenting tools for NTFS are still horrid and tedious.
To say that quality tools don't matter is moronic. You as always do the nerd thing and focus on just what I said not rather what was implied in the general sense.
"I laugh whenever I see comments like this. Lest we forget that nobody ever accepted The Great Zero Challenge [hostjury.com], let alone beat it."
While the statement itself is incorrect if taken as if it was accurate, traditionally when you delete a file on a partition table it does not delete the file only deletes the first bit of the filename from the file allocation table.
This is what allowed old DOS utilities like undelete or norton undelete to function. Some days I do miss the old days since it seems no one develops quality tools anymore for win XP +.
"I mean really this is no shock to the world"
The world constantly has new people born into it that do not know these things and/or never had the wherewithal or interest to find these things out on their own.
Most people just know they are rumors that are most likely true, they don't actually have evidence.
"BUT if you play them to the point where you can't pry yourself away from them, then you have problems."
No the real issue is the home and school environment that drives children to self-medicate on video games. We have built a shitty world and we are collectively in denial.
No one wants to admit that the environments in which kids are raised and our unrealistic demands and expectations on kids drive their "mental illness" not all kids fit into adults unrealistic demands that capitalist society makes on them.
Not every kid is going to go to college and as long as there is no well paying jobs for people who only have some college or community college "mental health" is just a sign that the job market for people who are not scholastically inclined is the main contributer to these problems.
"Newton, the father of classical physics, became a believer in alchemy"
Newton lived in a completely different time where the state of knowledge was vastly different. Apples and oranges.
... it's taken a while for other people to catch up to this fact.
Universe is a closed loop, so there really isn't a "problem of induction" more like a misunderstanding of the nature of the universe itself.
Rand is really talking about the self-referencing _object oriented_ nature of the universe when she refers to "hierchies of concepts".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_oriented (see: inheritance)
That's because in reality we forget _we are the universe detecting itself_.
The problem comes from our idea that our mind is separate from reality and not unified with it, current scientific worldview operates on the "Separateness theory" of the universe, in reality the universe is holistic. This is how we can find roots of ideas and trace their history since ideas are _made from_ woven out of the structure of the universe itself.
... I've been frustrated with the whole book publishing model in the era of the internet for many kinds of books, esp technical books and self-teaching kind.
No few people can write a whole book and make sure it is error free. It's time to put "teach yourself X book" and technical books in editable wikibook like format, then everyone who has knowledge can contribute to the work making the book more valuable over the long term.
So many books are just pump-and-dumps for cash grab... many people buy books to teach themselves stuff but so many of these books are beyond the scope of a few authors because they cannot see the frustrations and unmet needs of their readers.
Have you all ever considered it COSTS serious MONEY to run wikileaks given the amount of material they are given?
They have no easy means of making money at their disposal it costs money to get on in this world, you all act like such self-righteous pricks. Assange has and others who work for wikileaks has done more then all the worlds presses combined for the last 30 years and you guys want to hang the guy or making some $$$? The man needs as much $ as he can to fund the operation to keep it going.
... should not be developing games, period. Most game developers _suck_ at making games and can't take criticism. To have forums means you need thick skin. Bioware has publically stated they used public feedback from websites and forums to help design mass effect 2, and Mass effect 2 ended up being better for it. They know that developing a game is a process of feedback and discourse.
Supreme commander 1 was released unfinished state and the AI was horribly broken, without the support and MOD forums AI developers from the community would have never fixed the horribly broken and unfinished AI into a fun state, in fact Sorian was hired by Gas powered games to do AI in supreme commander 2 since his AI for Supcom 1 was so darn good.
http://soriandev.blogspot.com/
Anyone knocking forums is clearly an idiot, sure you get a lot of waste but you also get real gems. That is just the nature of the internet itself.
"now I am shallow in many ways and I accept it, because this shallowness is a part of human nature."
For those who are interested... see demonstrations tests for unconscious bias.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html
... most people want to work to live, not live to work. And unless you are really good/passionate about science and have the work ethic you're not going to get anyone into science.
The real issue is cost/benefit and status, if you want more scientists you have to pay them like you do doctors or bankers. That's the truth, you have to make science a high status job.
"Intelligence is not fixed at birth."
No but a large degree of one's potential is, there are low energy / "lazy" people with high IQ, there are also very hardworking and dedicated average people.
But lets not think that outcomes have nothing to do with genetics. Who is energetic and/or determined and who isn't is largely determined by genetic potential.
"If private individuals were allowed to connect to whomever and however they wanted for a network connection, most of these problems would go away"
Incorrect...
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty"--Plato
The whole emphasis on "freedom is always good" in every way is a lie, the world does not work according to moral principles it works according to physical processes and human beings are just another one of those processes.
"My personal experience indicates that like so many things, social life is a matter of training, experience and desire"
While this may seem trivially true, most peoples behavior is driven by unconscious processes, and these processes vary in their flexibility to solve different kinds of problems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
"This model works much better when you're dealing with people face to face."
The truth is many games in the indie bundle are crap, thats why the bundle actually works. i.e. individually they are worth so little that most people would not regularly pay money for them.
I participated in the last one and paid more then then my fair share and ended playing none of them due to not really being that interested.
... doesn't understand that technological advancement has limits, you cannot infinitely drive the cost of something down towards zero and you can't count on the universe to have some unknown undiscovered technology just waiting in the wings.
In the physical universe processes take scientifically measurable amounts of time, resources and computation to complete.
This cult of the market always forgets that natural law trumps ideology.
"I'm a video game developer myself, and I don't see anything wrong with this. I think it is a good thing."
You're one of the few, it seems more and more developers and publishers are becoming insane.
... indies are competing with discounted AAA games from years prior. It's hard to charge ~$20+ dollars for an indie game when you can get yesteryears hit games for the same or less.
"So no , you didn't FTFM. You just showed how ignorant you are."
No the opposite is true, because you don't grasp the whole idea of social status and it's effects on social relationships and health. Things are not determinants of wealth since standards and societies expectations are not fixed. Because you have certain things does not mean you are not poor. A poor person can't participate in society on the same level with cultural expectations of western society that perceives and treats those people as poor. Poverty is context bound to the expectations and standards of that society.
This naive 19th century notion that if you're not living in a 3rd world country you are not poor is just bullshit.
"In fact philosophy really should be tought in schools, it's the basis of how we view the world today"
What's really ironic is how ignorant some slashdotters are - science used to be called - natural philosophy.
Science and philosophy are intimately tied together in history of science and progress. Only those who know little about the history of philosophy or science would ever say philosophy was not a critical development for human beings.
The problem is that the bad philosophers give philosophy a bad name, there is a lot of nonsense or noise but just because their are crappy philosophers does not mean philosophy as a whole is not important.
On Socrates:
Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as mentioned above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.
The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates' teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that "virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know."
--
If more people thought like that the world would be a better place, one only has to take a look at the world as it is today and know that philosophy is important.