You knew this was coming once they started adding hard drives into the console. What do you need for a save game? A whole bunch of state variables? That's not really data intensive. The moment I heard that the first XBox was coming out with a hard drive, my first reaction was "Oh boy, here comes the patches." Yes, I do think it's better to get save games from a hard drive than some plug-in storage device, but the size of the hard drives made it obvious that they were looking to use it for more than just save games.
I really hate it when governments try to sneak propaganda into computer games. This indoctrination of youth is really creepy. You're never going to see me advocating or playing a game like this. Those Chinese are just so... so... sinister.
You might notice that a lot of reviews rate the games out of 100. I think people already have a slant about that sort of system based upon school. At school, when your efforts are rated out of 100, it feels like there's very little difference between somebody who's gotten 20 and somebody who's gotten 45. I think it's similar with how people look at games. Look at some of the reviews that fanboys put out for their games. They'll say it's worth a 78, for instance. Try to get them to explain exactly what it is that merits that exact score. What kept it from getting a 79, for instance, or what made it four points better than a 74. Chances are they probably can't, but fanboys, being what they are, like the supposed sophistication about rating something out of 100 and have to choose a number that feels right, rather than one that reflects accurately what the game deserves.
As for reviews being overwhelmingly positive, many trade publications operate on this principle, too. Even if you want to say something sucks, you want to put a slightly positive spin on it to keep people spending money on your industry. Besides, you can't always be honest about how you feel when part of the funding for your journal or website comes from advertising, and those advertisers also happen to produce products that you're reviewing.
I wish more places would just adopt a star rating. Rate something between 0 and 5 stars, with 2 stars being an average game. That way, we're talking about the equivalent of an average game getting close to 50%, but the stigma of failing isn't always there.
Most people who study writing are conscious of the concept of voice, be it something they try to make sure their writing has (fiction, humour columns), or try to make sure their writing lacks (front page journalism). It's hard to quantify what makes voice: You're reading, but it feels like you're hearing what's being said.
If you want to develop your own voice, it's pretty easy: Just say what you write out loud. That's it. It's pretty easy to write huge sentences that look great on paper but don't sound great when spoken (**cough cough EVERY KEVIN SMITH MOVIE SCRIPT cough**), but if you can write something, and then read it, and it's phrased exactly the same way you'd say it out loud (minus the "ums" and "likes" etc.) you're developing your written voice.
Anyways, if you can write with voice, you can put a tone of voice into what you're writing as well, and chances are pretty good people won't misunderstand you as much. They'll be able to infer subtext, get any sarcasm, etc.
The implications for this are a lot more complicated than just whether or not some pacifists who also like Linux are going to be offended by it being used for wartime. Consider the following...
The foundations of Linux are international. Is it really in the best interest of a military to use a technology that is contributed to by someone who might be from a country whose interests are contrary to your own? Or, to put it simply, if you're the American Armed Forces, do you want to rely on an OS that might have had components developed by an Iranian? Perhaps code review could deal with that sort of problem. But what about the flipside? If you're a developer for Linux, are you going to want to contribute to a project that might lead to your own doom just because your country's ideals differ from another country who's using that technology for their military? Imagine knowing that you developed a driver that was at work on some computerized war machinery that bombed your own family's home.
What they say vs. How it sounds
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What they say: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other."
How it sounds: "Listen baby, it's going to be different this time, I swear. I know I was a little rough with you before, and I'm sorry about that, I really am. I've changed, baby. You've gotta believe me, I'm a different man."
Go look up "Hasty Induction" on Google, and you'll be able to answer that question yourself, and avoid doing it next time. Teach a man to fish...
Isn't extrapolationg behaviors what courts do all the time? If a person lies during investigation, then is it un-reasonable to believe that they have something to hide.
The problem is that you've taken this one situation of a dishonest individual and tried to draw conclusions about the culture that person is from. Logically, based solely upon what you know about that individual, that line of thinking is bankrupt.
You are right that SK deserves a better analysis but I am not publishing an article in NY Times, I just made a subjective comment on Slashdot. So if I had another month, I would have looked at the known statistics of plagiarism and corruption and compared US and SK, but I just posted a comment with an idea I had.
Then it might have been more appropriate, in lieu of making an observation, to instead ask a question to those who might know more about the situation in South Korea. That's just an idea I have.
Or say you hear that in Russia you can bribe your way out of jails and traffic tickets and you personally know of 100 such cases but you only know of one such case in U.S. isn't it reasonable to say that Russia is more corrupt than U.S. ?
Look, you may be an expert on comparing Russia to the United States, but that in itself doesn't give you enough experiential background to draw conclusions on a third country.
On the final note, have you ever lived under an oppressive government? I doubt it.. So your oppinion on comparing countries is more subjective than that of someone who has.
Well, according to your original post I'm currently living under an authoritarian government, but that's a whole other misconception to deal with. My rebuttal has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, and everything to do with what you've suggested is a South Korean culture lacking in honesty and responsibility, as it compares to the United States. I'm quite familiar with the contrasts between these two cultures, and I can guarantee you that my analysis of South Korea vis-a-vis The United States is far more objective than yours.
This story brings up an interesting point. I wonder if there is such a thing as collective integrity or morality when dealing with a whole country not just individuals. Typically such words as morality, integrity, honesty are attributed to individuals, but I wonder if they also can be attributed to whole countries.
Oh boy, here we go.
As much as people complain about the government and society here, I think it is still the best one that exists as far as a collective sense of honesty and accountability goes.
Oh come on. Accountability in the U.S. is a joke. Take a good long look at all the high-profile misdeeds that happen in the U.S. that go unpunished. Now, take a look at the fact that it was the Korean media that, after Nature's first story about the staff-donated eggs, aggressively pursued this story all the way and really started to break it open to the world. Also note how it was the professors at SNU who pressed for a hearing.
This is the very core of what accountability is. As a culture, you do what you have to in order to police yourself.
You extrapolating Dr. Hwang's actions and saying this dishonesty is a trait of Korean culture is at best a logical fallacy, at worst offensive. The country isn't perfect, but it deserves better analysis than you've given it.
"Bloodrayne sucks goat tits. It sucks shit and smelly ass. It sucks the husks off corn, the foreskin off dicks, the shit off the submissive in a Dirty Sanchez. It sucks harder and more sloppily than a Bennigan's waitress on her lunch break, but costs slightly less. It is, however, better than Alone in the Dark. That's not to say it's good, it's just that it's like getting a staph infection below the knee instead of the entire leg."
"For the actors, appearing in a Uwe Boll is a declaration that they act for money and have costly addictions that must be fed. It also declares that they have less self-respect than a Tri-Delt. It's like falling on a spiral of shame and bumping your head on every step all the way down to the bottom."
"Bloodrayne is pure shit. So pure that if people shot up shit instead of heroin this would be a million bucks a kilo. But they don't, and turds should have a warning labels before anyone tries."
It's not that "Planet of the Apes" in itself is inherently offensive. It's that putting that title on the same page as a bunch of prominent black icons really is. Some people have no interest in seeing the movie, and will take away from that page view exactly what they read at that moment. Most people have no interest in using Hollywood as a conduit to social enlightenment, so at some point we have to look at something like this and say... "Jesus, we really screwed up."
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys...
No, I don't see a relationship between black people and monkeys, any more than I see that relationship between any human and monkeys. But it's not uncommon in racist commentary to look at blacks as being less evolved than the rest of the human race, which is where the racist slight comes from.
Now, if there are any more words you want to put in my mouth, please go nuts. If not, shut the fuck up.
The computer some how thought the grouping was appropriate. I seriously doubt there's someone in a smoky back room that thought it would be a good thing to group MLK with Planet of the Apes. Take the tin-foil hat off, go outside where you can see the daystar, and have a drink.
Read past the first paragraph please, sir.
I'm not saying it was maliciously done. Without seeing the algorithm, nobody can know for sure, but I know enough about data mining to know that random stuff crops up. But for the Love of CHRIST show a little empathy.
My worry isn't the computer or the algorithm. Computers fuck up, algorithms can't predict everything. My worry is the bunch of geeks sitting around here trying to rationalize satisfactory explanations for the fuck up, and patting themselves on the back when they think they've done it.
So far I've seen 5 posts modded up pretty high for saying that this isn't as offensive as it sounds, and is even in some ways appropriate. Give me a break. Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?
I'm not saying it was maliciously done. Without seeing the algorithm, nobody can know for sure, but I know enough about data mining to know that random stuff crops up. But for the Love of CHRIST show a little empathy.
I bet people would be singing a different tune if it were four documentaries about 9/11 mixed with Mahmoud Darwish's The Shahid?
Yeah, they are. You can even go to some malls in Seoul and watch them play live. That's how some of the shows get their live audience... they get people who are in the middle of shopping and give them some Starcraft to watch for a while.
You wouldn't believe the number of girls who watch it live, too.
Yeah, I know, this is client side and the page does it server-side, but do you really think anybody idiotic enough to be scared by this will know the difference? It's not like I'm able to do anything illegal through grokster.com at this point ANYWAY.
Small Gods is a fantastic book, but it's so good that it can't be relegated to a strictly defined audience like geeks. It's one of the greatest satirical takes on religion that there is. Every time I hear people say that Dogma was a good satire about religion I shudder, just because I think about Small Gods and how satire is supposed to be.
I tried to follow the link of the fat woman on the couch, and got taken to this Net Authority website.
From the site:
The Net Authority is an organization dedicated to the removal of offensive material from the Internet. The online world is teeming with pornography, depravity, blasphemy, and all kinds of hate propaganda. It is our mission to define a set of guidelines to which all information posted on the Internet must adhere, and to hold responsible those who would knowingly break those guidelines.
It is extremely important that children are shielded from sites in violation of the Internet Acceptable Use Policy. The children of today determine the society of tomorrow, so the kinds of things that their growing, susceptible minds are exposed to are of the utmost importance. The Net Authority willingly works in conjunction with national and international enforcement agencies to put a stop to the dissemination of offensive materials on the Internet.
Our primary initiative towards that end is the maintenance of a continually growing database of Internet offenders--websites that knowingly violate the Internet Acceptable Use Policy. We freely provide access to this database for concerned parents, interested software developers, and law-abiding Internet citizens in general. We fully understand the scope of the Internet, and that it is unlikely for us to ever hold a majority of offending sites in our database--but it is our hope that by holding these sites up as an example, we can help deter other Internet users from following similar paths and thus reduce the accumulation of offensive material on the Internet in general.
The Net Authority is an organization consisting of individuals and community leaders from all over the civilized world. We are all constantly on the look-out for new offenders to add to our database--but we can't do it alone! You too can be a part of the Net Authority and help us eliminate offensive material from the Internet. By reading and understanding the Internet Acceptable Use Policy, and our guide on how to spot offending material, you can arm yourself with all you need to do God's work on the Internet. Every offending site that is added to our database by visitors just like yourself takes us one step closer to a cleaner, better Internet for our children.
Is this happening for just me? Or is this happening to others, too? Looks kind of draconian.
I suppose this is a moot point, but there's always the human factor. Different countries' changing stances on daylight savings time, scientists deciding to eliminate a second here or there to gain a minute here or there, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. Hadn't thought of that.
Mods, please mod down grandparent appropriately.
You knew this was coming once they started adding hard drives into the console. What do you need for a save game? A whole bunch of state variables? That's not really data intensive. The moment I heard that the first XBox was coming out with a hard drive, my first reaction was "Oh boy, here comes the patches." Yes, I do think it's better to get save games from a hard drive than some plug-in storage device, but the size of the hard drives made it obvious that they were looking to use it for more than just save games.
I really hate it when governments try to sneak propaganda into computer games. This indoctrination of youth is really creepy. You're never going to see me advocating or playing a game like this. Those Chinese are just so... so... sinister.
[/goes back to playing America's Army]
You might notice that a lot of reviews rate the games out of 100. I think people already have a slant about that sort of system based upon school. At school, when your efforts are rated out of 100, it feels like there's very little difference between somebody who's gotten 20 and somebody who's gotten 45. I think it's similar with how people look at games. Look at some of the reviews that fanboys put out for their games. They'll say it's worth a 78, for instance. Try to get them to explain exactly what it is that merits that exact score. What kept it from getting a 79, for instance, or what made it four points better than a 74. Chances are they probably can't, but fanboys, being what they are, like the supposed sophistication about rating something out of 100 and have to choose a number that feels right, rather than one that reflects accurately what the game deserves.
As for reviews being overwhelmingly positive, many trade publications operate on this principle, too. Even if you want to say something sucks, you want to put a slightly positive spin on it to keep people spending money on your industry. Besides, you can't always be honest about how you feel when part of the funding for your journal or website comes from advertising, and those advertisers also happen to produce products that you're reviewing.
I wish more places would just adopt a star rating. Rate something between 0 and 5 stars, with 2 stars being an average game. That way, we're talking about the equivalent of an average game getting close to 50%, but the stigma of failing isn't always there.
Indeed. I'm beginning to think that if Al Quaida didn't exist, the Bush administration would need to invent it.
Most people who study writing are conscious of the concept of voice, be it something they try to make sure their writing has (fiction, humour columns), or try to make sure their writing lacks (front page journalism). It's hard to quantify what makes voice: You're reading, but it feels like you're hearing what's being said.
If you want to develop your own voice, it's pretty easy: Just say what you write out loud. That's it. It's pretty easy to write huge sentences that look great on paper but don't sound great when spoken (**cough cough EVERY KEVIN SMITH MOVIE SCRIPT cough**), but if you can write something, and then read it, and it's phrased exactly the same way you'd say it out loud (minus the "ums" and "likes" etc.) you're developing your written voice.
Anyways, if you can write with voice, you can put a tone of voice into what you're writing as well, and chances are pretty good people won't misunderstand you as much. They'll be able to infer subtext, get any sarcasm, etc.
"I need to create an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++. Sadly, the programming language cannot be changed...
From zero to flame war in under 20 words. Well done!
The implications for this are a lot more complicated than just whether or not some pacifists who also like Linux are going to be offended by it being used for wartime. Consider the following...
The foundations of Linux are international. Is it really in the best interest of a military to use a technology that is contributed to by someone who might be from a country whose interests are contrary to your own? Or, to put it simply, if you're the American Armed Forces, do you want to rely on an OS that might have had components developed by an Iranian? Perhaps code review could deal with that sort of problem. But what about the flipside? If you're a developer for Linux, are you going to want to contribute to a project that might lead to your own doom just because your country's ideals differ from another country who's using that technology for their military? Imagine knowing that you developed a driver that was at work on some computerized war machinery that bombed your own family's home.
What they say: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other."
How it sounds: "Listen baby, it's going to be different this time, I swear. I know I was a little rough with you before, and I'm sorry about that, I really am. I've changed, baby. You've gotta believe me, I'm a different man."
How is that a logical fallacy?
Go look up "Hasty Induction" on Google, and you'll be able to answer that question yourself, and avoid doing it next time. Teach a man to fish...
Isn't extrapolationg behaviors what courts do all the time? If a person lies during investigation, then is it un-reasonable to believe that they have something to hide.
The problem is that you've taken this one situation of a dishonest individual and tried to draw conclusions about the culture that person is from. Logically, based solely upon what you know about that individual, that line of thinking is bankrupt.
You are right that SK deserves a better analysis but I am not publishing an article in NY Times, I just made a subjective comment on Slashdot. So if I had another month, I would have looked at the known statistics of plagiarism and corruption and compared US and SK, but I just posted a comment with an idea I had.
Then it might have been more appropriate, in lieu of making an observation, to instead ask a question to those who might know more about the situation in South Korea. That's just an idea I have.
Or say you hear that in Russia you can bribe your way out of jails and traffic tickets and you personally know of 100 such cases but you only know of one such case in U.S. isn't it reasonable to say that Russia is more corrupt than U.S. ?
Look, you may be an expert on comparing Russia to the United States, but that in itself doesn't give you enough experiential background to draw conclusions on a third country.
On the final note, have you ever lived under an oppressive government? I doubt it.. So your oppinion on comparing countries is more subjective than that of someone who has.
Well, according to your original post I'm currently living under an authoritarian government, but that's a whole other misconception to deal with. My rebuttal has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, and everything to do with what you've suggested is a South Korean culture lacking in honesty and responsibility, as it compares to the United States. I'm quite familiar with the contrasts between these two cultures, and I can guarantee you that my analysis of South Korea vis-a-vis The United States is far more objective than yours.
This story brings up an interesting point. I wonder if there is such a thing as collective integrity or morality when dealing with a whole country not just individuals. Typically such words as morality, integrity, honesty are attributed to individuals, but I wonder if they also can be attributed to whole countries.
Oh boy, here we go.
As much as people complain about the government and society here, I think it is still the best one that exists as far as a collective sense of honesty and accountability goes.
Oh come on. Accountability in the U.S. is a joke. Take a good long look at all the high-profile misdeeds that happen in the U.S. that go unpunished. Now, take a look at the fact that it was the Korean media that, after Nature's first story about the staff-donated eggs, aggressively pursued this story all the way and really started to break it open to the world. Also note how it was the professors at SNU who pressed for a hearing.
This is the very core of what accountability is. As a culture, you do what you have to in order to police yourself.
You extrapolating Dr. Hwang's actions and saying this dishonesty is a trait of Korean culture is at best a logical fallacy, at worst offensive. The country isn't perfect, but it deserves better analysis than you've given it.
A movie review worth reading because it's more entertaining than the movie itself...
http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/bloodrayne.html
"Bloodrayne sucks goat tits. It sucks shit and smelly ass. It sucks the husks off corn, the foreskin off dicks, the shit off the submissive in a Dirty Sanchez. It sucks harder and more sloppily than a Bennigan's waitress on her lunch break, but costs slightly less. It is, however, better than Alone in the Dark. That's not to say it's good, it's just that it's like getting a staph infection below the knee instead of the entire leg."
"For the actors, appearing in a Uwe Boll is a declaration that they act for money and have costly addictions that must be fed. It also declares that they have less self-respect than a Tri-Delt. It's like falling on a spiral of shame and bumping your head on every step all the way down to the bottom."
"Bloodrayne is pure shit. So pure that if people shot up shit instead of heroin this would be a million bucks a kilo. But they don't, and turds should have a warning labels before anyone tries."
You know, one day he's not going to hold back.
Because there's no added layer between the two.
It's not that "Planet of the Apes" in itself is inherently offensive. It's that putting that title on the same page as a bunch of prominent black icons really is. Some people have no interest in seeing the movie, and will take away from that page view exactly what they read at that moment. Most people have no interest in using Hollywood as a conduit to social enlightenment, so at some point we have to look at something like this and say... "Jesus, we really screwed up."
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys...
No, I don't see a relationship between black people and monkeys, any more than I see that relationship between any human and monkeys. But it's not uncommon in racist commentary to look at blacks as being less evolved than the rest of the human race, which is where the racist slight comes from.
Now, if there are any more words you want to put in my mouth, please go nuts. If not, shut the fuck up.
It was a typo: Should have "racial sensitivity". Sorry.
The computer some how thought the grouping was appropriate. I seriously doubt there's someone in a smoky back room that thought it would be a good thing to group MLK with Planet of the Apes. Take the tin-foil hat off, go outside where you can see the daystar, and have a drink.
Read past the first paragraph please, sir.
I'm not saying it was maliciously done. Without seeing the algorithm, nobody can know for sure, but I know enough about data mining to know that random stuff crops up. But for the Love of CHRIST show a little empathy.
My worry isn't the computer or the algorithm. Computers fuck up, algorithms can't predict everything. My worry is the bunch of geeks sitting around here trying to rationalize satisfactory explanations for the fuck up, and patting themselves on the back when they think they've done it.
So far I've seen 5 posts modded up pretty high for saying that this isn't as offensive as it sounds, and is even in some ways appropriate. Give me a break. Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?
I'm not saying it was maliciously done. Without seeing the algorithm, nobody can know for sure, but I know enough about data mining to know that random stuff crops up. But for the Love of CHRIST show a little empathy.
I bet people would be singing a different tune if it were four documentaries about 9/11 mixed with Mahmoud Darwish's The Shahid?
Yeah, they are. You can even go to some malls in Seoul and watch them play live. That's how some of the shows get their live audience... they get people who are in the middle of shopping and give them some Starcraft to watch for a while.
You wouldn't believe the number of girls who watch it live, too.
Here's another weird one. Check out the pdf that shows all these violaters' identities on the www.respectcopyright.com ad.
They ask at the top, "Is this you?" and I'm buggered if I can answer that, because I've never had an IP that ended in ".xx.xx".
Just say no to Microsoft!
But read this promotional story about the XBox 360.
But pay attention to these anecdotes about XBox 360 failures!
But read this other promotional story about the XBox 360 afterwards.
Man... this is actually making me miss the obscure Linux kernel updates.
Small Gods is a fantastic book, but it's so good that it can't be relegated to a strictly defined audience like geeks. It's one of the greatest satirical takes on religion that there is. Every time I hear people say that Dogma was a good satire about religion I shudder, just because I think about Small Gods and how satire is supposed to be.
I tried to follow the link of the fat woman on the couch, and got taken to this Net Authority website.
From the site:
The Net Authority is an organization dedicated to the removal of offensive material from the Internet. The online world is teeming with pornography, depravity, blasphemy, and all kinds of hate propaganda. It is our mission to define a set of guidelines to which all information posted on the Internet must adhere, and to hold responsible those who would knowingly break those guidelines.
It is extremely important that children are shielded from sites in violation of the Internet Acceptable Use Policy. The children of today determine the society of tomorrow, so the kinds of things that their growing, susceptible minds are exposed to are of the utmost importance. The Net Authority willingly works in conjunction with national and international enforcement agencies to put a stop to the dissemination of offensive materials on the Internet.
Our primary initiative towards that end is the maintenance of a continually growing database of Internet offenders--websites that knowingly violate the Internet Acceptable Use Policy. We freely provide access to this database for concerned parents, interested software developers, and law-abiding Internet citizens in general. We fully understand the scope of the Internet, and that it is unlikely for us to ever hold a majority of offending sites in our database--but it is our hope that by holding these sites up as an example, we can help deter other Internet users from following similar paths and thus reduce the accumulation of offensive material on the Internet in general.
The Net Authority is an organization consisting of individuals and community leaders from all over the civilized world. We are all constantly on the look-out for new offenders to add to our database--but we can't do it alone! You too can be a part of the Net Authority and help us eliminate offensive material from the Internet. By reading and understanding the Internet Acceptable Use Policy, and our guide on how to spot offending material, you can arm yourself with all you need to do God's work on the Internet. Every offending site that is added to our database by visitors just like yourself takes us one step closer to a cleaner, better Internet for our children.
Is this happening for just me? Or is this happening to others, too? Looks kind of draconian.
Canadians Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope
You misspelled "bong".
I suppose this is a moot point, but there's always the human factor. Different countries' changing stances on daylight savings time, scientists deciding to eliminate a second here or there to gain a minute here or there, etc.