Conjecture is inevitable - researching an event that occured as recently as last week will net you differing accounts of what happened even among eyewitnesses.
History is not a question of reducing a statistical margin of error to somewhere near nil based on the fact that we have a sufficiently large number of accounts. Statistics play no part in history because a certain number of accounts survive, and they don't survive randomly - they survive based on the popularity of the account. It is a truism that history is written by the victors, and this is the kind of cultural bias that always has and always will distort the picture of humanity in the rear view mirror.
It is impossible to prove weather or not any description of a historical event is accurate. The best we can do is conjecture based on the information available, and we are unable to prevent any conjecture from being influenced by personal and cultural bias.
These are my old standbys, listed in approximate frequency order:
1. Counter-Strike
2. Worms: World Party
3. Super Metroid
4. Master Of Magic (this is also perhaps my favorite game of all time)
5. Kirby's Dream Course
Any organization whose stated mission is to take over the world shouldn't arouse suspicion or surprise when they use leverage to win over those who are weaker than they.
Net Neutrality, while a wonderful principle, is a poor reason to invite the Feds to regulate the Internet. That always leads to preservation of the status quo, at any cost.
The federal government is owned by big business, and vice versa. Both of these parties have ulterior motives for regulating Internet communications. Perhaps saying that the party has ulterior motives would be more accurate.
Regulation in itself is not necessarily bad, but in this instance I have a feeling that we, the people, will be losing out regardless of the direction in which this legislation falls.
This song is from a quirky musical called "Avenue Q." If you can, check out the entire soundtrack (or, better yet, go to new york to see the show) - the music is good and some of the lyrics are hilarious.
All of these ad-hominem attacks on Robert Kennedy and Rolling Stone do nothing to address the questions that the article raises. They do allow many responders to sidestep the issues and smile smugly to themselves.
Nowhere in Kennedy's article or in the discussion of his article here on Slashdot has anyone claimed that Democrats are angels sent from Heaven to save us from the evil GOP. Many responders have pointed out that the Dems cheat as well, and no one is trying to refute this.
If you wish to convincingly discredit the arguments presented in the article (which, by the way, are backed with extensive reference material,) point out where its arguments are flawed. I have no doubt that Kennedy and the rest of the people that worked on research for this article put countless hours into assembling and analyzing the information it presents. Your quick and derisive response shows that you didn't even bother to think about the information that the article brings to the table. If you think that they are full of shit (and many of you seem to,) show the rest of us where they are pulling the wool over our eyes so that we might be enlightened as well. If they are fabricating the material in this article, I think we'd all appreciate reasoned evidence that they are doing so.
Obviously, there are people in here who are supporters of the Bush administration who do not want to hear that their pony is a cheater. Consider though, that a system which continues to allow anyone to cheat - your pony or mine - is headed to a bad place.
The Internet is the last bastion of ideas and real social discourse that the modern media has. TV and newspaper are all owned and operated by political agendas, and they don't allow the public to talk back. Once the free discussion we have on the Internet is gone, things are looking bleak.
No one can say for sure how far the telcos will run once they have won power over the Internet, but I, for one, don't want to find out.
Another sickening example of commercial industry attempting to brainwash the general public with their bullshit... Anyone who knows the least about the net neutrality issue will not be fooled.
Any idea what percent of the populace knows little enough to be swayed by this?
I think you are wrong.
The articles above were less about Bush's acts and how wonderful or terrible they were, and more about what the scientists and proscecutors directly affected by his acts thought about the changes they were facing. I doubt that the opinions of thousands of scientists would vary depending on who exactly it was that cut them off from their primary source of research.
These changes will make it much more difficult for these people to effectively perform their jobs, and they believe that it will end up costing them more money to outsource this research than will be saved by closing the libraries. Bush's stated rationale for the closings was to save money, and thousands of scientists disagree with the notion that this will save any money at all. As an additional 'F You' to the scientists and proscecutors affected by the closings, they will likely not see any additional funds to help them cope with this new outsourcing expense.
I hear you, denial93. I don't know anything about the specifics of this particular argument, but it infuriates me when I see people that spout rhetoric and hate getting modded to +5, especially when it's by a herd of closed minded people who want nothing more than to re-enforce for themselves their own borrowed ideas.
After decades of Mars images, JPL finally corrected their color balance errors in 2004. Astronomers and "tinfoil hat brigadeers" had been shouting that it was incorrect since the early 1980's. Personally, I find it hard to believe that NASA made a series of honest errors when for 30 years every photograph of the planet they released to the public was tinted red.
And we know that if it wasn't an erroneous problem with color balance it would be far from the first lie the governemnt ever told the public.
I don't consider it that far a stretch to say that NASA is full of shit in general and that any image they release to the public may have been altered to suit their liking. This attitude extends to and includes moonwalk videos.
Believe what you want to believe, I can't stop you. Just be aware that someone sitting on a mountain of money somewhere benefits directly from what you believe. Trusting that they wouldn't try to influence your beliefs is more than a little naieve.
The real troubling thing here is that major news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, ABC, and even our beloved Slashdot are playing right into the hands of Exxon, DPI, and whoever else is behind the video.
By reporting about this incident, these outlets are providing the video a vast amount of exposure that it otherwise would not receive.
I'd bet anything that WSJ didn't stumble upon this story randomly - someone at DCI surreptitiously helped them along because DCI knew that they could get media outlets to unwittingly distribute their propaganda.
And at the end of the day, it's still considered good PR for all parties involved - Exxon got their point out to millions of viewers, DCI got paid, and ABC/WSJ/Slashdot did a good job of uncovering the "truth" of the situation, which pleases their readers and viewers just as much as any other story.
All of this is just an elaborate game to get you to view an anti-Gore advertisement.
Indeed the terrorists do hate our freedom - but the real terrorists are not Arabs or Muslims or other imagined threats, they are the ruling class in this country. Less freedom for us equals more power for them. God bless the USA, and God bless the government.
This video is ludicrous! It is a very misleading propaganda piece that does not provide anything near the whole story. The logical holes in it are so large that I can't imagine anyone could take it seriously.
Either there is enough bandwidth to handle all Internet traffic, or there is not. If there isn't enough bandwidth, then something is going to give. Dividing up the traffic and dedicating "lanes" to specific services won't stop a bottleneck from occurring - it will only ensure that the most profitable services are given prefrence, relegating content that the telcos can't profit from to whatever bandwidth is left.
And all of that is ignoring the enormous potential for censorship that comes with the end of network neutrality. It is a grim future indeed.
All gold and item giving to players you could identify would have to be banned. Otherwise, either of those virtual assets could be sold for real world dollars and the in-game economy would suffer.
It truly astonishes me that many game developers continue to release games that perform so poorly - and that many game players simply roll over and accept it. Back in the early days of 3d gaming, framerate was king - if the average user's system couldn't run every single area of the game without a hitch, effects and poly counts were scaled back until it would run smoothly. I remember playing Doom on my somewhat outdated 386 machine with a high degree of satisfaction.
Nowadays I have a high end PC and graphics card and practically no new game runs smoothly at the default settings.
Where oh where did game playability go?
Why on earth did Micro$oft ever decide to remind anyone about anything every 15 minutes anyway? A standard "Would you like to restart now?" type message box should be more than adequate an opportunity for the user to decide weather or not something is important enough for immediate action. Anything more can be nothing BUT annoying!
Implement a trading system that allows players to set a price for or hold auctions on their items in-game. Keep players' identities hidden so that all deals between sellers and buyers are conducted on an anonymous basis. All interplayer item exchanges are to be conducted through this anonymous marketplace.
Downside: You won't be able to chuck old/unneeded items on the ground or at your friends, only delete them or liquidate them.
Upside: Harvesting gold loses its profitability in the real world, because virtual items can't be sold for real money. Thus harvesting is greatly reduced.
I don't know how other Blizzard players feel about this, but I'd gladly trade my ability to toss items at my friends for a virtual economy that might not fall apart immidiately.
P.S. Come to think of it, the game might be more enjoyable simply by merit of not ever recieving hand-me-down items. The sense of achievement and respect among kickass characters would be all the greater because it will be known that everyone arrived at virtual greatness through their own ingenuity and perseverance.
There are millions upon millions of people using Windows operating systems right now. It seems apparent to me that not all of them will want to see the same changes from XP to Vista. This guy falls perhaps farther from the mainstream than most, but you can't blame him for having his own opinions about what is good in an OS.
Personally, the only things I want out of Vista are security and ease of use. And I don't mean the kind of security that protects me from myself - that's called poor ease of use. Nifty graphics and additional confirmation boxes are exactly what I don't want out of Windows Vista.
On top of that the article discusses annoying default settings that hide crucial functionality from the user. I am predicting right now (and I admit I only have a couple decades of Windows operating systems to back this prediction) that Vista will become clogged and sluggish so that I will choose to reinstall it within about 8 months, and probably every 8 months thereafter. Having to tweak with defaults for several hours before I find it usable again is not a prospect I look foreward to.
Slashdot Mirror
Conjecture is inevitable - researching an event that occured as recently as last week will net you differing accounts of what happened even among eyewitnesses.
History is not a question of reducing a statistical margin of error to somewhere near nil based on the fact that we have a sufficiently large number of accounts. Statistics play no part in history because a certain number of accounts survive, and they don't survive randomly - they survive based on the popularity of the account. It is a truism that history is written by the victors, and this is the kind of cultural bias that always has and always will distort the picture of humanity in the rear view mirror.
It is impossible to prove weather or not any description of a historical event is accurate. The best we can do is conjecture based on the information available, and we are unable to prevent any conjecture from being influenced by personal and cultural bias.
These are my old standbys, listed in approximate frequency order: 1. Counter-Strike 2. Worms: World Party 3. Super Metroid 4. Master Of Magic (this is also perhaps my favorite game of all time) 5. Kirby's Dream Course
Any organization whose stated mission is to take over the world shouldn't arouse suspicion or surprise when they use leverage to win over those who are weaker than they.
The federal government is owned by big business, and vice versa. Both of these parties have ulterior motives for regulating Internet communications. Perhaps saying that the party has ulterior motives would be more accurate.
Regulation in itself is not necessarily bad, but in this instance I have a feeling that we, the people, will be losing out regardless of the direction in which this legislation falls.
This song is from a quirky musical called "Avenue Q." If you can, check out the entire soundtrack (or, better yet, go to new york to see the show) - the music is good and some of the lyrics are hilarious.
All of these ad-hominem attacks on Robert Kennedy and Rolling Stone do nothing to address the questions that the article raises. They do allow many responders to sidestep the issues and smile smugly to themselves.
Nowhere in Kennedy's article or in the discussion of his article here on Slashdot has anyone claimed that Democrats are angels sent from Heaven to save us from the evil GOP. Many responders have pointed out that the Dems cheat as well, and no one is trying to refute this.
If you wish to convincingly discredit the arguments presented in the article (which, by the way, are backed with extensive reference material,) point out where its arguments are flawed. I have no doubt that Kennedy and the rest of the people that worked on research for this article put countless hours into assembling and analyzing the information it presents. Your quick and derisive response shows that you didn't even bother to think about the information that the article brings to the table. If you think that they are full of shit (and many of you seem to,) show the rest of us where they are pulling the wool over our eyes so that we might be enlightened as well. If they are fabricating the material in this article, I think we'd all appreciate reasoned evidence that they are doing so.
Obviously, there are people in here who are supporters of the Bush administration who do not want to hear that their pony is a cheater. Consider though, that a system which continues to allow anyone to cheat - your pony or mine - is headed to a bad place.
The Internet is the last bastion of ideas and real social discourse that the modern media has. TV and newspaper are all owned and operated by political agendas, and they don't allow the public to talk back. Once the free discussion we have on the Internet is gone, things are looking bleak.
No one can say for sure how far the telcos will run once they have won power over the Internet, but I, for one, don't want to find out.
Another sickening example of commercial industry attempting to brainwash the general public with their bullshit... Anyone who knows the least about the net neutrality issue will not be fooled.
Any idea what percent of the populace knows little enough to be swayed by this?
In the biz, zapping refers to a consumer behavior of switching channels in order to effectively skip commercial breaks.
Perhaps the term is being extended to include the behavior of consumers who fast foreward or skip through commercial breaks using TiVo.
I think you are wrong. The articles above were less about Bush's acts and how wonderful or terrible they were, and more about what the scientists and proscecutors directly affected by his acts thought about the changes they were facing. I doubt that the opinions of thousands of scientists would vary depending on who exactly it was that cut them off from their primary source of research. These changes will make it much more difficult for these people to effectively perform their jobs, and they believe that it will end up costing them more money to outsource this research than will be saved by closing the libraries. Bush's stated rationale for the closings was to save money, and thousands of scientists disagree with the notion that this will save any money at all. As an additional 'F You' to the scientists and proscecutors affected by the closings, they will likely not see any additional funds to help them cope with this new outsourcing expense.
Pluto was discovered within Holst's lifetime and he refused to ammend his composition.
I hear you, denial93. I don't know anything about the specifics of this particular argument, but it infuriates me when I see people that spout rhetoric and hate getting modded to +5, especially when it's by a herd of closed minded people who want nothing more than to re-enforce for themselves their own borrowed ideas.
After decades of Mars images, JPL finally corrected their color balance errors in 2004. Astronomers and "tinfoil hat brigadeers" had been shouting that it was incorrect since the early 1980's. Personally, I find it hard to believe that NASA made a series of honest errors when for 30 years every photograph of the planet they released to the public was tinted red.
And we know that if it wasn't an erroneous problem with color balance it would be far from the first lie the governemnt ever told the public.
I don't consider it that far a stretch to say that NASA is full of shit in general and that any image they release to the public may have been altered to suit their liking. This attitude extends to and includes moonwalk videos.
Believe what you want to believe, I can't stop you. Just be aware that someone sitting on a mountain of money somewhere benefits directly from what you believe. Trusting that they wouldn't try to influence your beliefs is more than a little naieve.
The real troubling thing here is that major news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, ABC, and even our beloved Slashdot are playing right into the hands of Exxon, DPI, and whoever else is behind the video.
By reporting about this incident, these outlets are providing the video a vast amount of exposure that it otherwise would not receive.
I'd bet anything that WSJ didn't stumble upon this story randomly - someone at DCI surreptitiously helped them along because DCI knew that they could get media outlets to unwittingly distribute their propaganda.
And at the end of the day, it's still considered good PR for all parties involved - Exxon got their point out to millions of viewers, DCI got paid, and ABC/WSJ/Slashdot did a good job of uncovering the "truth" of the situation, which pleases their readers and viewers just as much as any other story.
All of this is just an elaborate game to get you to view an anti-Gore advertisement.
Sad that this is how the media works today.
"The terrorists hate our freedom."
Indeed the terrorists do hate our freedom - but the real terrorists are not Arabs or Muslims or other imagined threats, they are the ruling class in this country. Less freedom for us equals more power for them. God bless the USA, and God bless the government.
This video is ludicrous! It is a very misleading propaganda piece that does not provide anything near the whole story. The logical holes in it are so large that I can't imagine anyone could take it seriously.
Either there is enough bandwidth to handle all Internet traffic, or there is not. If there isn't enough bandwidth, then something is going to give. Dividing up the traffic and dedicating "lanes" to specific services won't stop a bottleneck from occurring - it will only ensure that the most profitable services are given prefrence, relegating content that the telcos can't profit from to whatever bandwidth is left.
And all of that is ignoring the enormous potential for censorship that comes with the end of network neutrality. It is a grim future indeed.
All gold and item giving to players you could identify would have to be banned. Otherwise, either of those virtual assets could be sold for real world dollars and the in-game economy would suffer.
It truly astonishes me that many game developers continue to release games that perform so poorly - and that many game players simply roll over and accept it. Back in the early days of 3d gaming, framerate was king - if the average user's system couldn't run every single area of the game without a hitch, effects and poly counts were scaled back until it would run smoothly. I remember playing Doom on my somewhat outdated 386 machine with a high degree of satisfaction.
Nowadays I have a high end PC and graphics card and practically no new game runs smoothly at the default settings. Where oh where did game playability go?
Why on earth did Micro$oft ever decide to remind anyone about anything every 15 minutes anyway? A standard "Would you like to restart now?" type message box should be more than adequate an opportunity for the user to decide weather or not something is important enough for immediate action. Anything more can be nothing BUT annoying!
Implement a trading system that allows players to set a price for or hold auctions on their items in-game. Keep players' identities hidden so that all deals between sellers and buyers are conducted on an anonymous basis. All interplayer item exchanges are to be conducted through this anonymous marketplace.
Downside: You won't be able to chuck old/unneeded items on the ground or at your friends, only delete them or liquidate them.
Upside: Harvesting gold loses its profitability in the real world, because virtual items can't be sold for real money. Thus harvesting is greatly reduced.
I don't know how other Blizzard players feel about this, but I'd gladly trade my ability to toss items at my friends for a virtual economy that might not fall apart immidiately.
P.S. Come to think of it, the game might be more enjoyable simply by merit of not ever recieving hand-me-down items. The sense of achievement and respect among kickass characters would be all the greater because it will be known that everyone arrived at virtual greatness through their own ingenuity and perseverance.
There are millions upon millions of people using Windows operating systems right now. It seems apparent to me that not all of them will want to see the same changes from XP to Vista. This guy falls perhaps farther from the mainstream than most, but you can't blame him for having his own opinions about what is good in an OS. Personally, the only things I want out of Vista are security and ease of use. And I don't mean the kind of security that protects me from myself - that's called poor ease of use. Nifty graphics and additional confirmation boxes are exactly what I don't want out of Windows Vista. On top of that the article discusses annoying default settings that hide crucial functionality from the user. I am predicting right now (and I admit I only have a couple decades of Windows operating systems to back this prediction) that Vista will become clogged and sluggish so that I will choose to reinstall it within about 8 months, and probably every 8 months thereafter. Having to tweak with defaults for several hours before I find it usable again is not a prospect I look foreward to.