Depends on the instrument used. If it's a norm-referenced test, and most IQ tests are, that depends on the size of population sampled to create the 'norm'. As a former educator, and somebody who analyzed IQ tests as part of my graduate work, I can tell you a 2 to 3 point difference is nothing. A difference that small can be caused by not eating breakfast or not getting enough sleep or taking the test in the afternoon after a big meal. I've taken several IQ tests in my work and I've gotten a consistent RANGE but not a consistent SCORE.
While interesting sites, I fail to see how a photo ID would help things out - forged documents are forged documents. Merely adding a picture to it doesn't make it secure.
Short of a police presence, photo IDs are useless, unless your goal is to distinguish those who have an automobile from those who don't. Most people (in the US) who DON'T have a car have an income that puts them below the poverty line. And if your goal is to weed out the poor (who tend to vote either independant or democratic in the US), then a photo ID requirement does an excellent job.
G.U.R.P.S. is used as a baseline system for GURPS Prime Directive - this is the GURPS edition of the RPG Prime Directive. Prime Directive is one of those little weird things - it's an RPG set in the Star Fleet Battles Universe. Lots of SFB stuff comes from Star Trek (orignal series) which failed to copyright all elements of their series.
Yeah - it's weird. But officially there's no GURPS Star Wars, as West End Games had the license for a long time. What's funny is when WOTC aquired Last Unicorn Games, LUG had put out Aria, Dune, and Star Trek. Paramount pulled their license pretty much immediately, as they've always viewed Star Wars and Star Trek as primary competitors.
And how should battles run? In fact, NO MATTER how "high level" you are, a well placed shot can and will at the very least make your life very, very miserable. Despite regeneration and whatnot, an assault rifle at full auto reduces any Werewolf to a little pile of mush in very little time.
Hmmm - I guess I remember things differently, or had a very different GM. Your average Joe on the street would tend to run screaming into the night at the sight of a Werewolf in Crinos form due to the Delerium - so your shooter must be somebody special or your GM was 'lucky'. Your average Werewolf in Crinos (the big upright biped wolf man) would've taken a lot of damage, and might even be killed by the 'lone gunman', with some bad luck on the player's part. Then again, Werewolves travel in packs, usually with at least one of each aspect - so that's at least four other Werewolves that will stand with your target wolf.
Pretty much my experience was if it was a vampire vs. werewolf fight, the vampire was either destroyed or really really old and powerful. The key was that the political field was reversed - vampires pwn werewolves in politics. That's due to Vampire society and due to Vampires being much more capable of taking the long view.
The question I'd like to see is if they're doing old WOD IP, with the five books being Vampire The Masquerade, Werewolf The apocalypse, Mage The Ascension, Wraith, or Changeling; or if they're doing the NEW WOD IP, with three core books being Vampire The Requiem, Werewolf The Forsaken, and Mage The Awakening.
"...officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data..." Why would they do that? Don't they know the great unwashed can't be trusted to draw trhe "proper" inferences?!?!!?!!
Hmmm - I dunno. I'd rather see a doctor than a homeless guy if my stomach hurts. I take my car to a mechanic rather than 'the unwashed masses' - although in the case of my mechanic he really is unwashed. If I had the time or inclination to study the climate in vast absorbant detail, I'd draw my own conclusions. As I didn't, I'd rather find people who did all that work and listen to them.
Oh you did read the EULA, right? Blizzard owns the characters, money, likenesses of items, etc etc. We'll never have to pay taxes on things we don't own. We pay sales tax for the game, and the time cards if you use them. If you make a living selling gold/characters on ebay, aside from being against the EULA, that's a different story. Do enough of them and you probably qualify for a business. In which case, your might list your WoW accounts as assets.
Simply put, the average John Q Public WoW player has nothing to worry about. When you play for a while and sell your account, you have nothing to worry about Tax-wise (aside from being against EULA).
The Second Life players, that might be a different story.
My reasoning is based on two things - (1)actor and receipient; and (2)minors and adults.
The school district is blocking Wikipedia for a number of reasons they find relevant, however much we may disagree with them. As Wikipedia is the receipient of a block order, and the school district created the block order. So, the school district is suppressing the rights of wikipedia authors to have their viewpoints heard. My example isn't supported by someone not choosing HBO, as it's a purchase. A better example would be if a local cable company decided not to broadcast PBS. PBS is free, strives to offer differing opinions, and in that respect, it is similar Wikipedia.
Minors are not adults. Remember, students have a right to freedom of expression only as long as their expression is not hindering the instructional environment. That's why when you call your teacher names, the teacher can send you to the office for some discipline.
Their learning objectives are also different than an adults. Remember, taking a college class has a large number of prebuilt in conceptions - that you can read at higher than an 8th grade level, that you can write a report, that you can do research. All of those things you learn when you're in a school district (grades k-12 in the US). Wikipedia is maintained by adults, for adults. Personally, if I were still teaching, I'd let high school students use it, but I'd have to be on the watch for cheating more. The difference here is that some students are ready to handle diverging viewpoints on things like Climate Change because the paper writing skill has already been learned. Prior to that, children's sources tend to take things slower and be less tolerant of divergent viewpoints because there's more than the goal of 'read and regurgitate' - there's the objective of learning paper writing, studying techniques, and metacognition.
There's one thing that wikipedia has that I'd be concerned with the content of - Episode guides and the like, simply because what happened in episode 47 of Naruto has no bearing on Julius Ceasar, or the molecular structure of benzine. The problem with wikipedia is it's a victim of its own success. We use it for everything, so there's problems with limiting it to educational material.
Sorry, allow me to elaborate. Schools have a responsiblity and a right to block anything the interferes with the learning environment. Remember, it's already established that students do NOT have all the rights adults have - they can't vote, can't drink, have to go to school, etc. I don't like censorship, but there's somethings that should be in schools and something shouldn't be. As to the natural question, how does Wikipedia damage the learning environment, that all depends on what you're trying to teach. Lots of kids do reports in school - and sometimes the goal isn't to learn about the country of Austria, it's about learning how to do research. If your goal is to teach kids how to do research, a library is better because it doesn't tend to have synopsis of anime shows or articles on breakdancing. Given that a openly known member of the Democratic Party can edit the Wikipedia entry on the Republican party and vice versa, it's not exactly what you want as a researchable source. You can't quote from it, and it changes from day to day.
Except that students have mixed rights. They can't vote - they get that right on turning 18. Same thing with drinking in most states. If a student skips school in some states, it's the parents that get hauled before a judge
Schools are for learning, first and foremost. A student's freedom of speech is limited by the other students right to learn.
Censorship is bad, but you're not violating the student's freedom of speech, the school is violated wikipedia author's freedom of expression. They also violate the same rights of hate groups and adult entertainment. They do so because the single goal of a school is to provide the best education possible. Sometimes, that means limiting choices.
Anybody can create a webpage. Anybody can edit a wikipedia entry.
This means members of the "Flat Earth Society" can edit the entry on planetary circumference.
If a student is trying to get some basic data, there's a good chance it's in wikipedia. If it's controversial, i.e. Global Warming, a student might get conflicting viewpoints. Would you like to explain BOTH sides of the abortion issue to a first grader?
That's good for a high school or college level paper, where basic research skills have been grasped. It's not good for Middle School/Junior High and younger. There's a reason why 2nd graders don't read Tolstoy, and there's a reason why High Schoolers shouldn't get credit for a report on "Clifford, the Big Red Dog".
Actually it's pretty easy to catch kids cheating now on papers. Select a paragraph that you think might be copied. Put the first sentence verbatim in Google's seach engine with quotes around it and hit search. Phrases will also work but will get you a larger data set to sort through. Find the site with the closest quote and then read the site comparing it with the suspect paper.
The thing is kids think adults are stupid. While that might be the case some of the time, a writing style that flows from paragraph to paragraph with different sentence structure, different syllable count is very difficult to read. If it's outside of a student's normal performance zone, then it needs to go in the suspect stack.
The teachers in my family Google suspect papers. Good for research - better for us to find you cheating!
Before people start saying - "I can't even sell a sandwich to John W. Lind", just remember, lots of financial transactions for property occur under the radar. If your parents "give" you a car, chances are they officially sold it to you for $10. The same holds true for other property transactions - if your parents estate includes a land "transfer", the lawyers involved may have the executor sell the land to you for $10. Some states stipulate what the minimum purchase price is, others don't. YMMV.
As a former teacher and current IT guy, let me clue you in on somethings.
First, 50% of new teachers will quit in the first five years.
Second, all beliefs to the contrary, all classes are not created equal. Each 'batch' of students will vary from year to year. What some are clamoring for is 'merit pay' - the real problem is no one wants to define merit. Merit is NOT test scores, but according to the government, it seems to be. What happens when somebody brilliant opts to limit special education kids to one class (as to maximize the amount of time kids are included under the supervision of a special ed person and a regular teacher) - the average test performance drops, but it's obviously the teacher's fault, right? Cause he's the teacher.
And a final word on unions: before you start thinking about whether unions are bad, you need to understand, the administration of a school is not interested in the wellbeing or the benefits of being a teacher. The administration is there to side with parents, to prevent public outcry and lawsuits, but a principal is not on the side of a teacher. So when a teacher is accused of inappropriate activity with a student (didn't happen to me, but happened to a fellow teacher who was six feet away from the girl at the time), the administration shows you the door, and has no choice but to take the word of a juvenile delinquent over somebody with a Masters Degree. The teacher involved was eventually cleared, but he left teaching and I lost contact with him. Nobody in school will look out for a teacher except a union.
The better question is if you value education so much, why aren't you teaching?
True, however the vast majority of MMOs seem to be some sort of RPGs. While Blizzard had done Diablo previously, the first Warcraft rpg was WoW. So I'm leaning towards RPG at this point.
All they've done is announce it as an MMO - the better question is are they planning an RPG or an RTS? Or even an FPS?
What I can tell you definatively is that Black Library is currently planning to publish the Warhammer 40K RPG for table top gamers. It should be noted that after I wept openly at this announcement, I read closer and really want to know what they're planning, RPG, RTS, FPS?
My ex-wife's mother (what the heck do you call her, an ex-mother-in-law?) - worked at a highly prestigious university studying the optics of cat eyes. Back in the mid-nineties, we knew more about cat eyes through direct experimentation than human eyes, for obvious reasons. (Before you ask, yes, the cats were destroyed humanely during the process.)
Please keep in mind that there are many levels of clinical trials to go. If you wish to further this type of work, please consider donating your eyes upon your demise. Whether they're donated to science or to help someone else's vision more directly, you're still giving yourself so that others might not suffer. After all, it's not like you'll be using 'em any more.
Unless the IP address is static, it's given out from a pool of said addresses by the ISP. Given that people are given out these addresses like library books (in that it's revolving from a pool of stuff), anybody who had that address could've been the one who downloaded files via kazaa. How easy is it to set your IP address manually?
(of course the answer is "it's easy to set it manually.")
Let's say that little Johnny decides to find out what his IP address is, can he do that? (IPCONFIG at command prompt)
Can Johnny see what IP addresses are available by hitting them with some kind of a command? (a nice series of PING commands will do just fine)
So if Johnny can manually set his IP address, and can find out what addresses are available, why couldn't he decide to change it, download some files, and then change his IP address to something else?
The really good question is "What are you using to identify a specific computer ASIDE from the IP address?"
Some have commented that "This is a theory, but we can't blow lots of money on a theory." Hmmmm. So, I guess we shouldn't blow any money on that whole "Theory of relativity" thing? We need to remember that a "theory" to the average user is a hypothesis. A "theory" to a scientist is the final step of the scientific method
1. Observe
2. Generate hypothesis
3. Make preditictions
4. Test preditctions and modify hypothesis
5. Repeat 3 and 4 until predictions match test results
6. Publish THEORY
Politics is different - this is politics: okay, so what's the worst case scenario if the environmentals are wrong? We spend a bunch of money and give our grandchildren a cleaner place to live than they otherwise would've had. If the environmentalists are right and we don't spend the money, that's a much worse case scenario. But that's me. YMMV.
Electronic gaming and rpg gaming have one thing in common - sticker shock. As a former game store employee, I'd see mom and dad take their kid on a shopping trip, the kid would get cranky, so mom and dad would say "If you behave, we'll stop by that store you like." And the kid would shut up - because unlike rpgs and computer programs, that retail for 25 to 50 bucks a pop, booster packs are well within most parent's buying threshold. You gotta figure the logic is something like: "I can read a paperback book in a week, this little pack of cards is cheaper than that and I only have to buy one or two."
Never underestimate the power of a low buying price.
As to table top vs computer, here's the big difference - in guild wars, I can't run down a thirty degree incline cause it's too "dangerous" or some such reason. The rules are hard coded in the program. On the other hand, I can look at my GM and say, "Sy, there is no way I can't run down a thirty degree incline." And he'd say, "Right, that is stupid - let's toss that rule and I'll come up with something different."
And he'll do it on the fly. I can improvise when I run a tabletop rpg. Harder to do that with software.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi. Worshipper has sent you a greeting card.
See your card as often as you wish during the next 15 days.
SEEING YOUR CARD
If your email software creates links to Web pages, click on your card's direct www address below while you are connected to the Internet:
http://682.81.0.23/?9907cd64e28cae3d7703a3b01bda de (Poster's note: This URL has been altered to protect the rampant mad clickers amongst us)
Or copy and paste it into your browser's "Location" box (where Internet addresses go).
We hope you enjoy your awesome card.
Wishing you the best, Administrator, americangreetings.comDepends on the instrument used. If it's a norm-referenced test, and most IQ tests are, that depends on the size of population sampled to create the 'norm'. As a former educator, and somebody who analyzed IQ tests as part of my graduate work, I can tell you a 2 to 3 point difference is nothing. A difference that small can be caused by not eating breakfast or not getting enough sleep or taking the test in the afternoon after a big meal. I've taken several IQ tests in my work and I've gotten a consistent RANGE but not a consistent SCORE.
While interesting sites, I fail to see how a photo ID would help things out - forged documents are forged documents. Merely adding a picture to it doesn't make it secure.
Short of a police presence, photo IDs are useless, unless your goal is to distinguish those who have an automobile from those who don't. Most people (in the US) who DON'T have a car have an income that puts them below the poverty line. And if your goal is to weed out the poor (who tend to vote either independant or democratic in the US), then a photo ID requirement does an excellent job.
G.U.R.P.S. is used as a baseline system for GURPS Prime Directive - this is the GURPS edition of the RPG Prime Directive. Prime Directive is one of those little weird things - it's an RPG set in the Star Fleet Battles Universe. Lots of SFB stuff comes from Star Trek (orignal series) which failed to copyright all elements of their series. Yeah - it's weird. But officially there's no GURPS Star Wars, as West End Games had the license for a long time. What's funny is when WOTC aquired Last Unicorn Games, LUG had put out Aria, Dune, and Star Trek. Paramount pulled their license pretty much immediately, as they've always viewed Star Wars and Star Trek as primary competitors.
Hmmm - I guess I remember things differently, or had a very different GM. Your average Joe on the street would tend to run screaming into the night at the sight of a Werewolf in Crinos form due to the Delerium - so your shooter must be somebody special or your GM was 'lucky'. Your average Werewolf in Crinos (the big upright biped wolf man) would've taken a lot of damage, and might even be killed by the 'lone gunman', with some bad luck on the player's part. Then again, Werewolves travel in packs, usually with at least one of each aspect - so that's at least four other Werewolves that will stand with your target wolf.
Pretty much my experience was if it was a vampire vs. werewolf fight, the vampire was either destroyed or really really old and powerful. The key was that the political field was reversed - vampires pwn werewolves in politics. That's due to Vampire society and due to Vampires being much more capable of taking the long view.
The question I'd like to see is if they're doing old WOD IP, with the five books being Vampire The Masquerade, Werewolf The apocalypse, Mage The Ascension, Wraith, or Changeling; or if they're doing the NEW WOD IP, with three core books being Vampire The Requiem, Werewolf The Forsaken, and Mage The Awakening.
"War...War never changes." Thank God neither does Ron Perlman's voice.
Hmmm - I dunno. I'd rather see a doctor than a homeless guy if my stomach hurts. I take my car to a mechanic rather than 'the unwashed masses' - although in the case of my mechanic he really is unwashed. If I had the time or inclination to study the climate in vast absorbant detail, I'd draw my own conclusions. As I didn't, I'd rather find people who did all that work and listen to them.
Oh you did read the EULA, right? Blizzard owns the characters, money, likenesses of items, etc etc. We'll never have to pay taxes on things we don't own. We pay sales tax for the game, and the time cards if you use them. If you make a living selling gold/characters on ebay, aside from being against the EULA, that's a different story. Do enough of them and you probably qualify for a business. In which case, your might list your WoW accounts as assets.
Simply put, the average John Q Public WoW player has nothing to worry about. When you play for a while and sell your account, you have nothing to worry about Tax-wise (aside from being against EULA).The Second Life players, that might be a different story.
Thanks D for being so polite.
My reasoning is based on two things - (1)actor and receipient; and (2)minors and adults.
The school district is blocking Wikipedia for a number of reasons they find relevant, however much we may disagree with them. As Wikipedia is the receipient of a block order, and the school district created the block order. So, the school district is suppressing the rights of wikipedia authors to have their viewpoints heard. My example isn't supported by someone not choosing HBO, as it's a purchase. A better example would be if a local cable company decided not to broadcast PBS. PBS is free, strives to offer differing opinions, and in that respect, it is similar Wikipedia.
Minors are not adults. Remember, students have a right to freedom of expression only as long as their expression is not hindering the instructional environment. That's why when you call your teacher names, the teacher can send you to the office for some discipline.
Their learning objectives are also different than an adults. Remember, taking a college class has a large number of prebuilt in conceptions - that you can read at higher than an 8th grade level, that you can write a report, that you can do research. All of those things you learn when you're in a school district (grades k-12 in the US). Wikipedia is maintained by adults, for adults. Personally, if I were still teaching, I'd let high school students use it, but I'd have to be on the watch for cheating more. The difference here is that some students are ready to handle diverging viewpoints on things like Climate Change because the paper writing skill has already been learned. Prior to that, children's sources tend to take things slower and be less tolerant of divergent viewpoints because there's more than the goal of 'read and regurgitate' - there's the objective of learning paper writing, studying techniques, and metacognition.
There's one thing that wikipedia has that I'd be concerned with the content of - Episode guides and the like, simply because what happened in episode 47 of Naruto has no bearing on Julius Ceasar, or the molecular structure of benzine. The problem with wikipedia is it's a victim of its own success. We use it for everything, so there's problems with limiting it to educational material.
Sorry, allow me to elaborate. Schools have a responsiblity and a right to block anything the interferes with the learning environment. Remember, it's already established that students do NOT have all the rights adults have - they can't vote, can't drink, have to go to school, etc. I don't like censorship, but there's somethings that should be in schools and something shouldn't be. As to the natural question, how does Wikipedia damage the learning environment, that all depends on what you're trying to teach. Lots of kids do reports in school - and sometimes the goal isn't to learn about the country of Austria, it's about learning how to do research. If your goal is to teach kids how to do research, a library is better because it doesn't tend to have synopsis of anime shows or articles on breakdancing. Given that a openly known member of the Democratic Party can edit the Wikipedia entry on the Republican party and vice versa, it's not exactly what you want as a researchable source. You can't quote from it, and it changes from day to day.
Except that students have mixed rights. They can't vote - they get that right on turning 18. Same thing with drinking in most states. If a student skips school in some states, it's the parents that get hauled before a judge
Schools are for learning, first and foremost. A student's freedom of speech is limited by the other students right to learn.
Censorship is bad, but you're not violating the student's freedom of speech, the school is violated wikipedia author's freedom of expression. They also violate the same rights of hate groups and adult entertainment. They do so because the single goal of a school is to provide the best education possible. Sometimes, that means limiting choices.
Anybody can create a webpage. Anybody can edit a wikipedia entry. This means members of the "Flat Earth Society" can edit the entry on planetary circumference. If a student is trying to get some basic data, there's a good chance it's in wikipedia. If it's controversial, i.e. Global Warming, a student might get conflicting viewpoints. Would you like to explain BOTH sides of the abortion issue to a first grader? That's good for a high school or college level paper, where basic research skills have been grasped. It's not good for Middle School/Junior High and younger. There's a reason why 2nd graders don't read Tolstoy, and there's a reason why High Schoolers shouldn't get credit for a report on "Clifford, the Big Red Dog".
Actually it's pretty easy to catch kids cheating now on papers. Select a paragraph that you think might be copied. Put the first sentence verbatim in Google's seach engine with quotes around it and hit search. Phrases will also work but will get you a larger data set to sort through. Find the site with the closest quote and then read the site comparing it with the suspect paper.
The thing is kids think adults are stupid. While that might be the case some of the time, a writing style that flows from paragraph to paragraph with different sentence structure, different syllable count is very difficult to read. If it's outside of a student's normal performance zone, then it needs to go in the suspect stack.
The teachers in my family Google suspect papers. Good for research - better for us to find you cheating!
Before people start saying - "I can't even sell a sandwich to John W. Lind", just remember, lots of financial transactions for property occur under the radar. If your parents "give" you a car, chances are they officially sold it to you for $10. The same holds true for other property transactions - if your parents estate includes a land "transfer", the lawyers involved may have the executor sell the land to you for $10. Some states stipulate what the minimum purchase price is, others don't. YMMV.
OMG, I'm like the most religious person ever with my raiding guild! Quick! To Blackwing Lair! For Justice! For Freedom! For Jesus!
Man, I couldn't even TYPE that with a straight face!
First, 50% of new teachers will quit in the first five years.
Second, all beliefs to the contrary, all classes are not created equal. Each 'batch' of students will vary from year to year. What some are clamoring for is 'merit pay' - the real problem is no one wants to define merit. Merit is NOT test scores, but according to the government, it seems to be. What happens when somebody brilliant opts to limit special education kids to one class (as to maximize the amount of time kids are included under the supervision of a special ed person and a regular teacher) - the average test performance drops, but it's obviously the teacher's fault, right? Cause he's the teacher.
And a final word on unions: before you start thinking about whether unions are bad, you need to understand, the administration of a school is not interested in the wellbeing or the benefits of being a teacher. The administration is there to side with parents, to prevent public outcry and lawsuits, but a principal is not on the side of a teacher. So when a teacher is accused of inappropriate activity with a student (didn't happen to me, but happened to a fellow teacher who was six feet away from the girl at the time), the administration shows you the door, and has no choice but to take the word of a juvenile delinquent over somebody with a Masters Degree. The teacher involved was eventually cleared, but he left teaching and I lost contact with him. Nobody in school will look out for a teacher except a union.
The better question is if you value education so much, why aren't you teaching?
Wait - the article says Sakaguchi is working on Blue Dragon, the xbox 360 game. Blue Planet the game is http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/index.asp?Page Action=VIEWPROD&ProdID=45
True, however the vast majority of MMOs seem to be some sort of RPGs. While Blizzard had done Diablo previously, the first Warcraft rpg was WoW. So I'm leaning towards RPG at this point.
All they've done is announce it as an MMO - the better question is are they planning an RPG or an RTS? Or even an FPS? What I can tell you definatively is that Black Library is currently planning to publish the Warhammer 40K RPG for table top gamers. It should be noted that after I wept openly at this announcement, I read closer and really want to know what they're planning, RPG, RTS, FPS?
My ex-wife's mother (what the heck do you call her, an ex-mother-in-law?) - worked at a highly prestigious university studying the optics of cat eyes. Back in the mid-nineties, we knew more about cat eyes through direct experimentation than human eyes, for obvious reasons. (Before you ask, yes, the cats were destroyed humanely during the process.)
Please keep in mind that there are many levels of clinical trials to go. If you wish to further this type of work, please consider donating your eyes upon your demise. Whether they're donated to science or to help someone else's vision more directly, you're still giving yourself so that others might not suffer. After all, it's not like you'll be using 'em any more.
The irony here is that my ex-wife loves cats.The better question is where can we get copies of the orchestral music? You can't ask for a better expression of geek love.
Unless the IP address is static, it's given out from a pool of said addresses by the ISP. Given that people are given out these addresses like library books (in that it's revolving from a pool of stuff), anybody who had that address could've been the one who downloaded files via kazaa. How easy is it to set your IP address manually? (of course the answer is "it's easy to set it manually.") Let's say that little Johnny decides to find out what his IP address is, can he do that? (IPCONFIG at command prompt) Can Johnny see what IP addresses are available by hitting them with some kind of a command? (a nice series of PING commands will do just fine) So if Johnny can manually set his IP address, and can find out what addresses are available, why couldn't he decide to change it, download some files, and then change his IP address to something else? The really good question is "What are you using to identify a specific computer ASIDE from the IP address?"
Some have commented that "This is a theory, but we can't blow lots of money on a theory." Hmmmm. So, I guess we shouldn't blow any money on that whole "Theory of relativity" thing? We need to remember that a "theory" to the average user is a hypothesis. A "theory" to a scientist is the final step of the scientific method
1. Observe
2. Generate hypothesis
3. Make preditictions
4. Test preditctions and modify hypothesis
5. Repeat 3 and 4 until predictions match test results
6. Publish THEORY
Politics is different - this is politics: okay, so what's the worst case scenario if the environmentals are wrong? We spend a bunch of money and give our grandchildren a cleaner place to live than they otherwise would've had. If the environmentalists are right and we don't spend the money, that's a much worse case scenario. But that's me. YMMV.
Electronic gaming and rpg gaming have one thing in common - sticker shock. As a former game store employee, I'd see mom and dad take their kid on a shopping trip, the kid would get cranky, so mom and dad would say "If you behave, we'll stop by that store you like." And the kid would shut up - because unlike rpgs and computer programs, that retail for 25 to 50 bucks a pop, booster packs are well within most parent's buying threshold. You gotta figure the logic is something like: "I can read a paperback book in a week, this little pack of cards is cheaper than that and I only have to buy one or two."
Never underestimate the power of a low buying price.
As to table top vs computer, here's the big difference - in guild wars, I can't run down a thirty degree incline cause it's too "dangerous" or some such reason. The rules are hard coded in the program. On the other hand, I can look at my GM and say, "Sy, there is no way I can't run down a thirty degree incline." And he'd say, "Right, that is stupid - let's toss that rule and I'll come up with something different."
And he'll do it on the fly. I can improvise when I run a tabletop rpg. Harder to do that with software.