Now it has come back to bite them. They tried to cheat the piper, and now it is costing them extra.
My god, you're right! Their billions and billions and billions of cash reserve, 85-90% share in the desktop OS market, and absurd revenue streams that came from their initial decision can only protect them for... uh... er... Well, ever, really. Or at least, as we've seen, long enough for their current products to be as reliable as desired by 99% of the users.
How many users regard their frequent crashes as normal operation for a PC?
"Not many" would be my guess. Or, at least "not many who've bought a new computer in the last 5-6 years." The only time my XP box has crashed on me was when my video-card died due to a stuck fan. I shut it down when I won't be home to use it for 2-3 days, but other than that, I haven't had to do any maintenance on it.
Not a fangirl, just someone who's able to accept that reality has changed: MS products used to have an uptime that even a mayfly would scoff at, and now they're robust enough for (I am sure) the majority of people who use them.
Nah, you're probably just squinching up your face when you're concentrating on the vocabulary. Short of some kind of brain swelling or stimulation of pain centers, you're not going to experience pain from normal functions. (Even ones that are frustrating, like learning a foriegn language:))
The argument of "then you're paying other people to play the game" rings hollow with me. I like owning a home, and I like having guests over to my home when it looks nice. Yet, I paid someone money to come in and paint my home and make it look nice - was that like paying someone else to act like a homeowner? Hell no - that was me paying money to bypass one of the annoying aspects of home ownership so that I can get to the good stuff.
It's the same way with games. Some aspects of a game are mindnumbingly boring but other components are GREAT fun. If the point is to have fun, why NOT skip the boring parts if you can? It's not like games are supposed to be character building excercises (pun intended) or there's some kind of value in slogging through boredom in the search for entertainment. It's a game. The goal is to maximize enjoyment, whatever that means to each individual.
xcept that with professional athletes, we call that "cheating". How many doping scandals do we get in any given year?
I'm not sure why you're relating doping to spending money to boost performance. The person I was responding to made a very specific statement - that anyone who spends money to improve their standing in a game needs a psychiatrist.
You address equipment purchases, which indeed are exactly the same. I know LOTS of people who spend hundreds (in some cases thousands) of dollars on golf equipment to get some marginal edge. These are NOT professional athletes - they're people with a hobby who spend money to improve their performance. Now, granted, it's fun to make fun of golfers, but I really don't see how their purchase of expensive clubs is in any way different than someone who plays an MMO spending more money to get the best available equipment.
Further, it does nothing to address the question of the value of that equipment.
What makes a game different is that it's supposed to be enjoyable. Most people play games to get away from life. The ones who assign a real life monetary value to their characters/items/moeny in a MMO are elevating their entertainment to the level of employment, and I agree with the GP that that isn't healthy, or the intention of the game.
Why isn't it healthy? Why does the act of assigning a monetary value to something suddenlly make it unhealthy?
One of my hobbies is collecting original comic/cartoon cells. Is it unhealthy that I can attach a monetary value to these things? Is it unhealthy that I have a pretty good idea of the current value of my collection, and that I know how much I spent to acquire each piece? I'd say that it isn't. It *WOULD* be unhealthy if that was ALL I cared about, to the point where the financial worth of my collection dominated my thoughts and interfered with my functioning. However, nobody was talking about people being unable to function, or functioning at a reduced level due to the monetization of their hobby.
Addressing the question of "elevating gaming to the level of employment" - don't many people think that the absolute dream would be to make money doing what they love? Personally, I would find it much LESS healthy if a person were to have some arbitrarily line seperating work from enjoyment - that someone was so rigid in their thinking that they believed finding ways to make money with what they do for fun that they thought it was unhealthy.
Then again, that's me. Perhaps I'm crazy, what with my hobbies that make money and my job that makes me happy.:)
Yeah, but that's 400 hours that you chose to spend on playing a game to obtain an item with no physical reality.
Why should the physical reality of a thing be even remotely relevant here? Lots of things that have no physical reality beyond being a magnetic charge on a HDD platter somewhere are considered EXTREMELY valuable. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the world's money does not physically exist.
Let's instead look at how value is created: People agree a thing has value. If lots and lots of people agree that a thing has value, the value of a thing will tend to increase. If only a few see any value to a thing, the value is likely to decrease. In the case of money in online games, aparrently enough people see value in it that selling these online currencies for "real world" currencies takes place.
Honestly, given that many/.ers spend much of their time creating non-physical thingsof value, I'd have expected better. Instead it's as if people are channeling all the twits from the early 80's who liked to mock people for wasting their time with those stupid computer thingies.
If someone is so wrapped up in some damn game that they're willing to spend real money just to increase their standing, that sounds to me like a problem for a psychiatrist, not the courts.
Really? People spending money to improve their performance in a game seems like insanity to you?
How very odd, considering that people do exactly that in virtually every field of human endeavor, be it sport or work or simple entertainment. You must not get out much!
The rest of your points weren't bad, but you really lost me with your diatribe at the end.
Pluto is and always should be a planet. If they try to claim it isn't, i think it will start a bigger controversy then creation verses evolution when taught in schools.
Probably not. Evolution vs. Creationism = science vs. organized religion. Planet vs. pluton (or whatever) = nerds vs. nerds. I don't know a single person who *REALLY* gives much of a fuck what they call Pluto, but pretty much everyone I know has a VERY strong opinion one way or the other in re: Evolution vs. Creationism.
Then again, perhaps there's an alternate reality out there, one where people are quite reasonable about god and religion, but completely lose their shit over astronomy.
Aside from the "lore" explanations given by the other poster, putting paladin-like (they're "Blood Knights" dontcha know!) characters on the Horde side and shaman characters on the Alliance side is supposedly allowing the designers to make MUCH more interesting instance encounters. Since they no longer have to worry about factional differences, they can implement ideas they had that would require certain classes etc.
If they were right - if this does turn out to be a viable way to work around what many consider to be a moral or ethical dilemma and still reap the benefits - then isn't that a net good? Are you seriously suggesting that it would be *better* if people *hadn't* come up with a way to have an ethical clean slate AND do the research?
What's funny is that you call the people who had objections - objections that may have turned out to be right - "freaks," but your stance seems to be much more dogmatic and close minded.
I'm not religious in the least, but I'm still able to appreciate that sometimes people I disagree with on many things can be right sometimes.
Downloading the songs/infringing copyright is what was wrong, not simply having them. Deleting them undoes having them, but it does not undo downloading them and infringing copyright.
The defendant was being sued for downloading the songs, not having them in her possession. The hard drive was simply more (but not the only) evidence that she had downloaded them. The downloading was the violation - the possession was just evidence.
I don't disagree that the system in this area is insane, but that doesn't prevent me from being able to see that the problem wasn't the possession (her having them was really just evidence) but the act of downloading them. Deleting them just wiped some evidence and violated other laws - it didn't go back in time and nullify her previous acts.
Objecting to unfettered experimentation on human subjects by researchers without any concern for the well-being of the subjects? Perfectly valid, and I'd be one of those shouting against such research.
Superstitious objections based on "My holy book says you can't use the color red" and similarly flimsy/absurd arguments? Should be ignored.
There's a middle ground between these two extremes, however, where the line is not so clear. At that point, discussion and debate and inquiry need to take place. And yes, while that discussion and debate and inquiry happens, some people will die, and that's very unfortunate. However, I think it would be much more unfortunate for humanity to completely abandon any sense of ethics in the pursuit of progress.
How many lives can be saved by having a treatment come a little sooner? I don't know. How many lives would be spent if we had a society hell-bent on progress with no regard for human life? I don't know, but the 20th century gives us some pretty damn good estimates...
I disagree with the notion that embryo == full-fledged human being, but as I said in my previous post, disagreeing with someone does not mean that I cannot understand and respect their views if their views are sensible, self-consistent and based at least somewhat on reality. I will not dismiss someone as an idiot if they say they have a moral objection to destroying embryos during research. I would dismiss someone as an idiot if they say "Well, you're not killing babies anymore, but now you're playing god, so stop it!" I would also dismiss someone as an idiot and a monster if they were to say that *ANY* restrictions on research should be removed.
Right. Cause screaming "ABSTAIN! ABSTAIN!" has worked OH so well so far.
How about a realistic approach? How about telling kids "Abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and STDs, and it'd be great if you practiced it. However, that's probably unrealistic, and so here are some ways to protect yourself if you do choose to have sex."
Because, you know, many of them WILL choose to. And which would you rather have? Pregnant teenagers with untreated STDs because they don't know fuck-all about protection and are too ashamed to go and get treatment when they get sick, or teenagers who're at least armed with the information to make an informed choice, and who might avoid some heartace (or worse)?
Abstinence is great, but teaching abstinence only does NOT work.
It is also amazing that we make them work through the requirements at all. It would also be amazing what they could have done if their work had not been bureaucraticly retarded for how many years now? At least they did manage to do it. Give thanks.
This was NOT a matter of bureaucrats thwarting research with red-tape and bullshit forms to fill out. This WAS a case of a significant number of people voicing moral objections to what many of them considered wholesale murder.
Whether or not one agrees with those objections (I, personally do not, but I can understand them), surely examining the morality and ethics of aresearch technique before proceeding blithely ahead is a good thing?
While I certainly don't think stem cell researchers are murderers or monsters, there ARE a significant number of people who do believe that certain kinds of stem-cell research are as bad, or worse, than what Josef Mengele did back in WW2.
In this case, the objections aren't to the research itself, it was to a way that the research was being performed, and a workable solution that addresses the needs and desires of all sides was found. If people opposed to this research previously on the ground that it "kills babies" *STILL* bitch and moan, NOW we can dismiss them as zealots and idiots who're retarding progress for nothing more than some stupid and inconsistent belief system.
Wow, so you mean, within just 5 minutes of picking up a real guitar, my friends and I can have a blast performing in front of live audiences in bars? With no practice at all, ever?
Cool! And here I'd been some kind of idiot, thinking that it took years of dedicated practice to be a capable guitar player - thanks for setting me straight!
The only person who seems to be arguing for perfection here is you.
I certainly haven't seen anyone who's sane and educated insist that we have perfect knowledge of anything. Have you considered that perhaps you're just an idiot who can't make a coherent argument, so builds up a strawman to knock down instead?
The only people who claim "science" is god/perfect/infallible are zealous idiots who are trying to make the claim that *others* worship it. Just like you!
Actualy, there's a second unique property of moon ore - absolutely no need what-so-ever to worry about the enviromental impact of mining it. That would likely have a pretty decent impact on the economics of moon-mining.
Let's inject you directly with some blood from an HIV+ person.
I'm sure we can find someone of your blood-type, with no other known pathogens - just HIV. Heck, if you're scared of contracting something else that we can't test for, I'm sure we could get some purified samples of HIV to inject you with.
After all - if it's lifestyle choices and not the virus, you'd have nothing to fear, right?
I would say discussion of the game was the least frequent topic amongst people I play with. The guilds and player associations I form with people tend to be oriented around being social while playing the game, rather than teaming up to play the game better. Oh, sure, we'd occasionally discuss something game related - it was, obviously, a mutually interesting hobby - but for the most part we would have discussions about real-world issues.
It's kind of funny in that, in the real world, many of the people I knew would restrict themselves to conversation solely about the environment in which we'd met - work, LUG/MUG, book group - and would shy away from any discussion of outside interests out of fear of conflict.
So, in my experience, yes - I tend to have more interesting interactions with a more diverse group of people in non-meatspace. Of course, I go out of my way to guild up with people who are chatty/outgoing like I am, and tend to just ignore people who're entirely focused on the game.
My games include SWG, City of Heroes/Villains, World of Warcraft, and more MUDs than you can shake a stick at.
Science doesn't celebrate anything - people do. And people have had their lives ruined for having "heretical" scientific theories that have later turned out to be much more accurate than the ones they argued against.
PLENTY of educated people - people who claim to be scientists - have incredibly closed minds, and will go to insane lengths to avoid facing disagreement. For those people "Science" is a religion, and bears as much relation to actual science as "Christianity" bears to Christ.
Mind you, I agree for the most part with your points. To bastardize Chris Rock from Dogma, science should be about ideas - changing an idea is easy. Changing a belief, now THAT is hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Now it has come back to bite them. They tried to cheat the piper, and now it is costing them extra.
My god, you're right! Their billions and billions and billions of cash reserve, 85-90% share in the desktop OS market, and absurd revenue streams that came from their initial decision can only protect them for... uh... er... Well, ever, really. Or at least, as we've seen, long enough for their current products to be as reliable as desired by 99% of the users.
How many users regard their frequent crashes as normal operation for a PC?
"Not many" would be my guess. Or, at least "not many who've bought a new computer in the last 5-6 years." The only time my XP box has crashed on me was when my video-card died due to a stuck fan. I shut it down when I won't be home to use it for 2-3 days, but other than that, I haven't had to do any maintenance on it.
Not a fangirl, just someone who's able to accept that reality has changed: MS products used to have an uptime that even a mayfly would scoff at, and now they're robust enough for (I am sure) the majority of people who use them.
He doesn't want to be responsible for everyone under him? Then he shouldn't have run for office. The buck stops here. Period. End of story.
Nah, you're probably just squinching up your face when you're concentrating on the vocabulary. Short of some kind of brain swelling or stimulation of pain centers, you're not going to experience pain from normal functions. (Even ones that are frustrating, like learning a foriegn language :))
The argument of "then you're paying other people to play the game" rings hollow with me. I like owning a home, and I like having guests over to my home when it looks nice. Yet, I paid someone money to come in and paint my home and make it look nice - was that like paying someone else to act like a homeowner? Hell no - that was me paying money to bypass one of the annoying aspects of home ownership so that I can get to the good stuff.
It's the same way with games. Some aspects of a game are mindnumbingly boring but other components are GREAT fun. If the point is to have fun, why NOT skip the boring parts if you can? It's not like games are supposed to be character building excercises (pun intended) or there's some kind of value in slogging through boredom in the search for entertainment. It's a game. The goal is to maximize enjoyment, whatever that means to each individual.
xcept that with professional athletes, we call that "cheating". How many doping scandals do we get in any given year?
:)
I'm not sure why you're relating doping to spending money to boost performance. The person I was responding to made a very specific statement - that anyone who spends money to improve their standing in a game needs a psychiatrist.
You address equipment purchases, which indeed are exactly the same. I know LOTS of people who spend hundreds (in some cases thousands) of dollars on golf equipment to get some marginal edge. These are NOT professional athletes - they're people with a hobby who spend money to improve their performance. Now, granted, it's fun to make fun of golfers, but I really don't see how their purchase of expensive clubs is in any way different than someone who plays an MMO spending more money to get the best available equipment.
Further, it does nothing to address the question of the value of that equipment.
What makes a game different is that it's supposed to be enjoyable. Most people play games to get away from life. The ones who assign a real life monetary value to their characters/items/moeny in a MMO are elevating their entertainment to the level of employment, and I agree with the GP that that isn't healthy, or the intention of the game.
Why isn't it healthy? Why does the act of assigning a monetary value to something suddenlly make it unhealthy?
One of my hobbies is collecting original comic/cartoon cells. Is it unhealthy that I can attach a monetary value to these things? Is it unhealthy that I have a pretty good idea of the current value of my collection, and that I know how much I spent to acquire each piece? I'd say that it isn't. It *WOULD* be unhealthy if that was ALL I cared about, to the point where the financial worth of my collection dominated my thoughts and interfered with my functioning. However, nobody was talking about people being unable to function, or functioning at a reduced level due to the monetization of their hobby.
Addressing the question of "elevating gaming to the level of employment" - don't many people think that the absolute dream would be to make money doing what they love? Personally, I would find it much LESS healthy if a person were to have some arbitrarily line seperating work from enjoyment - that someone was so rigid in their thinking that they believed finding ways to make money with what they do for fun that they thought it was unhealthy.
Then again, that's me. Perhaps I'm crazy, what with my hobbies that make money and my job that makes me happy.
Yeah, but that's 400 hours that you chose to spend on playing a game to obtain an item with no physical reality.
/.ers spend much of their time creating non-physical thingsof value, I'd have expected better. Instead it's as if people are channeling all the twits from the early 80's who liked to mock people for wasting their time with those stupid computer thingies.
Why should the physical reality of a thing be even remotely relevant here? Lots of things that have no physical reality beyond being a magnetic charge on a HDD platter somewhere are considered EXTREMELY valuable. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the world's money does not physically exist.
Let's instead look at how value is created: People agree a thing has value. If lots and lots of people agree that a thing has value, the value of a thing will tend to increase. If only a few see any value to a thing, the value is likely to decrease. In the case of money in online games, aparrently enough people see value in it that selling these online currencies for "real world" currencies takes place.
Honestly, given that many
If someone is so wrapped up in some damn game that they're willing to spend real money just to increase their standing, that sounds to me like a problem for a psychiatrist, not the courts.
Really? People spending money to improve their performance in a game seems like insanity to you?
How very odd, considering that people do exactly that in virtually every field of human endeavor, be it sport or work or simple entertainment. You must not get out much!
The rest of your points weren't bad, but you really lost me with your diatribe at the end.
Pluto is and always should be a planet. If they try to claim it isn't, i think it will start a bigger controversy then creation verses evolution when taught in schools.
Probably not. Evolution vs. Creationism = science vs. organized religion. Planet vs. pluton (or whatever) = nerds vs. nerds. I don't know a single person who *REALLY* gives much of a fuck what they call Pluto, but pretty much everyone I know has a VERY strong opinion one way or the other in re: Evolution vs. Creationism.
Then again, perhaps there's an alternate reality out there, one where people are quite reasonable about god and religion, but completely lose their shit over astronomy.
Aside from the "lore" explanations given by the other poster, putting paladin-like (they're "Blood Knights" dontcha know!) characters on the Horde side and shaman characters on the Alliance side is supposedly allowing the designers to make MUCH more interesting instance encounters. Since they no longer have to worry about factional differences, they can implement ideas they had that would require certain classes etc.
666 degree angles?
Don't be obtuse.
If they were right - if this does turn out to be a viable way to work around what many consider to be a moral or ethical dilemma and still reap the benefits - then isn't that a net good? Are you seriously suggesting that it would be *better* if people *hadn't* come up with a way to have an ethical clean slate AND do the research?
What's funny is that you call the people who had objections - objections that may have turned out to be right - "freaks," but your stance seems to be much more dogmatic and close minded.
I'm not religious in the least, but I'm still able to appreciate that sometimes people I disagree with on many things can be right sometimes.
You're missing the point:
Downloading the songs/infringing copyright is what was wrong, not simply having them. Deleting them undoes having them, but it does not undo downloading them and infringing copyright.
The defendant was being sued for downloading the songs, not having them in her possession. The hard drive was simply more (but not the only) evidence that she had downloaded them. The downloading was the violation - the possession was just evidence.
I don't disagree that the system in this area is insane, but that doesn't prevent me from being able to see that the problem wasn't the possession (her having them was really just evidence) but the act of downloading them. Deleting them just wiped some evidence and violated other laws - it didn't go back in time and nullify her previous acts.
I addressed this in my post at the end of it.
Objecting to unfettered experimentation on human subjects by researchers without any concern for the well-being of the subjects? Perfectly valid, and I'd be one of those shouting against such research.
Superstitious objections based on "My holy book says you can't use the color red" and similarly flimsy/absurd arguments? Should be ignored.
There's a middle ground between these two extremes, however, where the line is not so clear. At that point, discussion and debate and inquiry need to take place. And yes, while that discussion and debate and inquiry happens, some people will die, and that's very unfortunate. However, I think it would be much more unfortunate for humanity to completely abandon any sense of ethics in the pursuit of progress.
How many lives can be saved by having a treatment come a little sooner? I don't know. How many lives would be spent if we had a society hell-bent on progress with no regard for human life? I don't know, but the 20th century gives us some pretty damn good estimates...
I disagree with the notion that embryo == full-fledged human being, but as I said in my previous post, disagreeing with someone does not mean that I cannot understand and respect their views if their views are sensible, self-consistent and based at least somewhat on reality. I will not dismiss someone as an idiot if they say they have a moral objection to destroying embryos during research. I would dismiss someone as an idiot if they say "Well, you're not killing babies anymore, but now you're playing god, so stop it!" I would also dismiss someone as an idiot and a monster if they were to say that *ANY* restrictions on research should be removed.
Right. Cause screaming "ABSTAIN! ABSTAIN!" has worked OH so well so far.
How about a realistic approach? How about telling kids "Abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and STDs, and it'd be great if you practiced it. However, that's probably unrealistic, and so here are some ways to protect yourself if you do choose to have sex."
Because, you know, many of them WILL choose to. And which would you rather have? Pregnant teenagers with untreated STDs because they don't know fuck-all about protection and are too ashamed to go and get treatment when they get sick, or teenagers who're at least armed with the information to make an informed choice, and who might avoid some heartace (or worse)?
Abstinence is great, but teaching abstinence only does NOT work.
It is also amazing that we make them work through the requirements at all. It would also be amazing what they could have done if their work had not been bureaucraticly retarded for how many years now? At least they did manage to do it. Give thanks.
This was NOT a matter of bureaucrats thwarting research with red-tape and bullshit forms to fill out. This WAS a case of a significant number of people voicing moral objections to what many of them considered wholesale murder.
Whether or not one agrees with those objections (I, personally do not, but I can understand them), surely examining the morality and ethics of aresearch technique before proceeding blithely ahead is a good thing?
While I certainly don't think stem cell researchers are murderers or monsters, there ARE a significant number of people who do believe that certain kinds of stem-cell research are as bad, or worse, than what Josef Mengele did back in WW2.
In this case, the objections aren't to the research itself, it was to a way that the research was being performed, and a workable solution that addresses the needs and desires of all sides was found. If people opposed to this research previously on the ground that it "kills babies" *STILL* bitch and moan, NOW we can dismiss them as zealots and idiots who're retarding progress for nothing more than some stupid and inconsistent belief system.
Wow, so you mean, within just 5 minutes of picking up a real guitar, my friends and I can have a blast performing in front of live audiences in bars? With no practice at all, ever?
Cool! And here I'd been some kind of idiot, thinking that it took years of dedicated practice to be a capable guitar player - thanks for setting me straight!
The only person who seems to be arguing for perfection here is you.
I certainly haven't seen anyone who's sane and educated insist that we have perfect knowledge of anything. Have you considered that perhaps you're just an idiot who can't make a coherent argument, so builds up a strawman to knock down instead?
The only people who claim "science" is god/perfect/infallible are zealous idiots who are trying to make the claim that *others* worship it. Just like you!
Which is about as relevant to this conversation as a recital of the Mon-Chi-Chi themesong.
Possibly even less, because Mon-Chi-Chi's were oh so soft and cuddly.
Actualy, there's a second unique property of moon ore - absolutely no need what-so-ever to worry about the enviromental impact of mining it. That would likely have a pretty decent impact on the economics of moon-mining.
What about baseless clams? Won't someone think of the poor clams living out in the wild with no base to call home?
Inject yourself with HIV infected blood. If you're right, then there should be nothing to fear, right?
Will you volunteer to be infected with HIV to carry this experiment out?
Okay, then let's put your bullshit to the test:
Let's inject you directly with some blood from an HIV+ person.
I'm sure we can find someone of your blood-type, with no other known pathogens - just HIV. Heck, if you're scared of contracting something else that we can't test for, I'm sure we could get some purified samples of HIV to inject you with.
After all - if it's lifestyle choices and not the virus, you'd have nothing to fear, right?
I would say discussion of the game was the least frequent topic amongst people I play with. The guilds and player associations I form with people tend to be oriented around being social while playing the game, rather than teaming up to play the game better. Oh, sure, we'd occasionally discuss something game related - it was, obviously, a mutually interesting hobby - but for the most part we would have discussions about real-world issues.
It's kind of funny in that, in the real world, many of the people I knew would restrict themselves to conversation solely about the environment in which we'd met - work, LUG/MUG, book group - and would shy away from any discussion of outside interests out of fear of conflict.
So, in my experience, yes - I tend to have more interesting interactions with a more diverse group of people in non-meatspace. Of course, I go out of my way to guild up with people who are chatty/outgoing like I am, and tend to just ignore people who're entirely focused on the game.
My games include SWG, City of Heroes/Villains, World of Warcraft, and more MUDs than you can shake a stick at.
Your science sounds pretty anthropomorphic to me.
Science doesn't celebrate anything - people do. And people have had their lives ruined for having "heretical" scientific theories that have later turned out to be much more accurate than the ones they argued against.
PLENTY of educated people - people who claim to be scientists - have incredibly closed minds, and will go to insane lengths to avoid facing disagreement. For those people "Science" is a religion, and bears as much relation to actual science as "Christianity" bears to Christ.
Mind you, I agree for the most part with your points. To bastardize Chris Rock from Dogma, science should be about ideas - changing an idea is easy. Changing a belief, now THAT is hard.