That's part of it. Also the "sleeper effect" (one of the articles I linked to) describes how, under some circumstances, even information from a discredited source -- a source that you've consciously and rationally evaluated as unreliable -- quantifiably gains in credibility after a gap of a few weeks. Very, very nasty stuff.
(OK, other Latinists out there, it doesn't literally mean "advertising, -- but basically. Supposedly coined from the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide founded by Gregory XV, according to Wikipedia.)
I admit, it's a sight... but to me, it's not advertising: no message is getting through.
I just see the boobs.
This kind of marketing can only get people to see the ad; nothing more.
Unfortunately, that's demonstrably untrue. The whole point of most advertising since the mid-20th century isn't to appeal to people's conscious judgment, but to achieve an effect at a non-conscious level. Just because you don't think it's having an effect doesn't mean that it isn't.
Take a look at this, this, snd this -- the last link is to an article on Edward Bernays, who pioneered the deliberate use of psychoanalytic techniques in advertising, with the specific aim of bypassing people's conscious judgment.
(Intriguing statistic, considering that the word "shampoo" comes from Hindi.)
Some years ago I heard, but cannot now find online evidence, that if you don't wash your hair for several months it naturally self-cleans, and that after that point you just need to brush dust out of it occasionally. Can anyone confirm/deny?
If true, this would certainly confirm that no one needs shampoo, whether they live in India or elsewhere.
Again IANAL, but I'd venture a guess that it depends on which game you're playing, what the specific EULA for that game happens to say, and whether EULAs are legally binding in your country. Given an industry worth anywhere up to $3B worldwide, I'm sure someone somewhere wants to take the possibilities you're talking about seriously! -- it'd be interesting to know if there are any laws anywhere governing the economy of MMOGs! (Now there's an idea for a/. article.)
A different Internet for each country? A governing body consisting of members from various nations (yea right)?
You're right, the ineffectiveness of ICANN (to name one example), due to top-down political pressure from specific countries, is quite obvious. I suspect the most likely scenario is your first suggestion: a compartmentalised internet for each country, with some overlap. Efforts in the US to make the internet tiered seem to point this way; even if the US go ahead and make its own internet tiered, it's hardly likely that other countries will follow suit. Instead, like China, they'd adopt their own policies -- similar to the US in some ways, similar to China in others, different in yet others. That would, I think, essentially be a different internet for each country.
Naturally that doesn't take into account the fact that in that kind of situation geeks with know-how would make maximised use of those bits of the internet that do overlap. That would presumably have a balancing effect. But it does look like this is the way things are heading.
You seem to miss the point that by the time you see those batteries attached to your own nuts, it's just a tad too late to start worrying.
I shouldn't be even slightly surprised if the more-than-a-billion people in China who've never had car batteries attached to their nuts feel much the same way about your country as you do about theirs.
But suppose you testified in a capital case, and your testimony helped send the defendant to the gurney. Next time you fly into Heathrow, do you think you should you be pulled aside, shackled, and tried in the Queen's court of law?
Sorry to butt in, but that's a really interesting question, and I'm not sure that the answer is "no". The principle of charging people for crimes committed in another country is fairly well established, and not just in the US (as with the likely extradition of Gary McKinnon), but also e.g. in the case of Australia's laws on child sex tourism.
Well, duh, what do you think "censorship" means? It is in the nature of censorship to conceal that it has happened. But, as a relatively poorly censored case of censorship, go to http://www.google.com/search?q=xenu and scroll to the bottom.
Isn't that like saying you are renting an apartment from someone, then turning it into a condo and selling it to someone else for "real-world value"?
IANAL, but I'd guess it's more like subletting. The MMOG owner licenses you to access and have control over virtual property, then you go and sell that licence on eBay to someone else, who then has access and control. But that kind of thing, too, is covered by various laws in most places, isn't it?
Merely to point out that there's literal, and then there's literal. If Abraham actually did what God told him and tried counting all the stars in the sky, he'd still be there (I didn't know the bit about "if indeed you can count them"). But pretty much all texts -- secular and otherwise -- lend themselves to multiple "literal" interpretations; an identical interpretation might look like a literal reading to one person, an allegory to another, or to yet another, a misunderstanding because it's taken out of context. Basically I don't accept the notion that any reading is ever "literal", fully and without any qualification whatsoever -- meaning is all about qualification. I doubt that even hardcore fundamentalist literalists take the Song of Songs "literally" -- well, actually, especially hardcore fundamentalist literalists.
Depending on which industry expert you talk to valuations of the secondary market, i.e. the real money trade of virtual commodities, range from circa $1 Billion USD to $3 Billion USD in 2006.
That's equivalent to roughly 2% of my country's GDP. Now, this is about griefing, not commerce and theft, but it still sounds pretty serious to me. It's not clear to me why MMOGs haven't already been regulated to death: it surprises me that governments wouldn't want in on the action. (I don't play MMOGs by the way.)
Could you imagine the chaos if your video game character's items were considered real property? Could you get sued for theft if you play a thief and steal the items?
I should imagine that's quite likely, given that in many MMOGs, items that your avatar owns have real-world commercial value.
It's not clear to me why you draw a distinction between people who believe in a Christian afterlife and people who believe in a non-Christian afterlife. The idea of an afterlife is still nuts.
Death comes after life. The other way round is a continuity error.
Duh, I just realised what you meant by a mass term -- I thought you meant plural. Yes, we mean the same thing. But I don't think there's nothing to stop people from using the plural now that the meaning has changed.
But even so, it would be "viri", and not "virii". Come on, people, what's with the extra "i"?
My understanding has always been that this is tongue-in-cheek, like "boxen", "unices", etc., though it does seem to be more widely-used than either of those other plurals. I've only seen it in IT circles though.
I've read that "virus" was a mass term in Latin, and so it didn't have a plural.
That is incorrect. Latin virus (roughly "gunge") is singular; the plural would be viri (though obviously, with the original Latin meaning, you wouldn't usually talk about multiple "gunges").
I.e. Islam is only about 200 to 300 years behind christianity (Who were killing protestants in large numbers).
Just to correct two errors here: (1) more than 500 years, actually; (2) protestants didn't exist until about 1000 years later, and most protestants regard themselves as Christians, so it's difficult to work out what you're trying to say in your parenthesis.
It's probably not fair to call it "persecution" unless there's some reason to believe that it was unjust. Nero's government essentially claimed that it was cracking down on terrorists. Goose, meet gander. It's especially biasing the issue to call it "persecution" since there is a modicum of contemporary evidence to suggest that Christians were involved in, if not starting the fire, at least trying to keep it going. The main reason that this doesn't get written up as fact in the history books is more to do with doubt about the number of Christians in Rome at the time, rather than doubt about whether Nero's government was telling the truth.
The Bible has strong archaeological and textual evidence that supports its accuracy. You may question its interpretation of events, but there is just as much evidence for its claims as there is that a man named Socrates taught in the streets of Athens, or that a man named Julius Caesar founded Rome.
I am an ancient historian. I was going to reply to you to correct your misconceptions, but after hitting "reply" I realised it would be a waste of time, as you'd ignore me anyway. I'll settle for saying that in spite of the gpp's YELLING, s/he is entirely correct about valuing independent evidence ahead of any single source compiled selectively and for a very specific socio-politico-theological agenda. I also draw your attention to the fact that your own claims about the accuracy of certain parts of the Christian Bible are themselves based entirely on independent evidence (re-read the first sentence quoted above).
Slashdot Mirror
That's part of it. Also the "sleeper effect" (one of the articles I linked to) describes how, under some circumstances, even information from a discredited source -- a source that you've consciously and rationally evaluated as unreliable -- quantifiably gains in credibility after a gap of a few weeks. Very, very nasty stuff.
"Propaganda" is basically just the Latin for "advertising". It's a neutral term. -- at least until you start introducing cognitive or psychoanalytic techniques with the express aim of bypassing the target audience's conscious judgment.
(OK, other Latinists out there, it doesn't literally mean "advertising, -- but basically. Supposedly coined from the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide founded by Gregory XV, according to Wikipedia.)
Unfortunately, that's demonstrably untrue. The whole point of most advertising since the mid-20th century isn't to appeal to people's conscious judgment, but to achieve an effect at a non-conscious level. Just because you don't think it's having an effect doesn't mean that it isn't.
Take a look at this, this, snd this -- the last link is to an article on Edward Bernays, who pioneered the deliberate use of psychoanalytic techniques in advertising, with the specific aim of bypassing people's conscious judgment.
(Intriguing statistic, considering that the word "shampoo" comes from Hindi.)
Some years ago I heard, but cannot now find online evidence, that if you don't wash your hair for several months it naturally self-cleans, and that after that point you just need to brush dust out of it occasionally. Can anyone confirm/deny?
If true, this would certainly confirm that no one needs shampoo, whether they live in India or elsewhere.
Try <
Well .... strictly strictly, eureka means "I have found", so I guess the "it" isn't completely redundant. Not completely. Just mostly.
Again IANAL, but I'd venture a guess that it depends on which game you're playing, what the specific EULA for that game happens to say, and whether EULAs are legally binding in your country. Given an industry worth anywhere up to $3B worldwide, I'm sure someone somewhere wants to take the possibilities you're talking about seriously! -- it'd be interesting to know if there are any laws anywhere governing the economy of MMOGs! (Now there's an idea for a /. article.)
Ahhh, sorry for the misunderstanding and thanks for the clarification.
You're right, the ineffectiveness of ICANN (to name one example), due to top-down political pressure from specific countries, is quite obvious. I suspect the most likely scenario is your first suggestion: a compartmentalised internet for each country, with some overlap. Efforts in the US to make the internet tiered seem to point this way; even if the US go ahead and make its own internet tiered, it's hardly likely that other countries will follow suit. Instead, like China, they'd adopt their own policies -- similar to the US in some ways, similar to China in others, different in yet others. That would, I think, essentially be a different internet for each country.
Naturally that doesn't take into account the fact that in that kind of situation geeks with know-how would make maximised use of those bits of the internet that do overlap. That would presumably have a balancing effect. But it does look like this is the way things are heading.
You seem to miss the point that by the time you see those batteries attached to your own nuts, it's just a tad too late to start worrying.
I shouldn't be even slightly surprised if the more-than-a-billion people in China who've never had car batteries attached to their nuts feel much the same way about your country as you do about theirs.
Sorry to butt in, but that's a really interesting question, and I'm not sure that the answer is "no". The principle of charging people for crimes committed in another country is fairly well established, and not just in the US (as with the likely extradition of Gary McKinnon), but also e.g. in the case of Australia's laws on child sex tourism.
Well, duh, what do you think "censorship" means? It is in the nature of censorship to conceal that it has happened. But, as a relatively poorly censored case of censorship, go to http://www.google.com/search?q=xenu and scroll to the bottom.
For an even more striking effect, do the same search on Google.cn and scroll to the bottom. Interesting, no?
IANAL, but I'd guess it's more like subletting. The MMOG owner licenses you to access and have control over virtual property, then you go and sell that licence on eBay to someone else, who then has access and control. But that kind of thing, too, is covered by various laws in most places, isn't it?
Merely to point out that there's literal, and then there's literal. If Abraham actually did what God told him and tried counting all the stars in the sky, he'd still be there (I didn't know the bit about "if indeed you can count them"). But pretty much all texts -- secular and otherwise -- lend themselves to multiple "literal" interpretations; an identical interpretation might look like a literal reading to one person, an allegory to another, or to yet another, a misunderstanding because it's taken out of context. Basically I don't accept the notion that any reading is ever "literal", fully and without any qualification whatsoever -- meaning is all about qualification. I doubt that even hardcore fundamentalist literalists take the Song of Songs "literally" -- well, actually, especially hardcore fundamentalist literalists.
Found on Wikipedia:
That's equivalent to roughly 2% of my country's GDP. Now, this is about griefing, not commerce and theft, but it still sounds pretty serious to me. It's not clear to me why MMOGs haven't already been regulated to death: it surprises me that governments wouldn't want in on the action. (I don't play MMOGs by the way.)
I should imagine that's quite likely, given that in many MMOGs, items that your avatar owns have real-world commercial value.
Ditto. I live in a proportional-representation system and had no idea what the word meant either.
Whaaaaa??!! Don't you take it literally?!
It's not clear to me why you draw a distinction between people who believe in a Christian afterlife and people who believe in a non-Christian afterlife. The idea of an afterlife is still nuts.
Death comes after life. The other way round is a continuity error.
Duh, I just realised what you meant by a mass term -- I thought you meant plural. Yes, we mean the same thing. But I don't think there's nothing to stop people from using the plural now that the meaning has changed.
My understanding has always been that this is tongue-in-cheek, like "boxen", "unices", etc., though it does seem to be more widely-used than either of those other plurals. I've only seen it in IT circles though.
That is incorrect. Latin virus (roughly "gunge") is singular; the plural would be viri (though obviously, with the original Latin meaning, you wouldn't usually talk about multiple "gunges").
s/proving/disproving/
s/proof/disproof/
Just to correct two errors here: (1) more than 500 years, actually; (2) protestants didn't exist until about 1000 years later, and most protestants regard themselves as Christians, so it's difficult to work out what you're trying to say in your parenthesis.
It's probably not fair to call it "persecution" unless there's some reason to believe that it was unjust. Nero's government essentially claimed that it was cracking down on terrorists. Goose, meet gander. It's especially biasing the issue to call it "persecution" since there is a modicum of contemporary evidence to suggest that Christians were involved in, if not starting the fire, at least trying to keep it going. The main reason that this doesn't get written up as fact in the history books is more to do with doubt about the number of Christians in Rome at the time, rather than doubt about whether Nero's government was telling the truth.
I am an ancient historian. I was going to reply to you to correct your misconceptions, but after hitting "reply" I realised it would be a waste of time, as you'd ignore me anyway. I'll settle for saying that in spite of the gpp's YELLING, s/he is entirely correct about valuing independent evidence ahead of any single source compiled selectively and for a very specific socio-politico-theological agenda. I also draw your attention to the fact that your own claims about the accuracy of certain parts of the Christian Bible are themselves based entirely on independent evidence (re-read the first sentence quoted above).