The fact that you think that *anything* that "happens" in an online game would *ever* make any amount of news other than those which deal with online games as a matter of course illustrates how out of touch you are with real life.
I've never played one of these games in my life. They are "after my time" as the saying goes. However, not only do I defend my statement, but I would take my point further to say that *any* game (online or not) that featured a game character treating the player in a racist, sexist, or otherwise bigotted way would make the press. Especially if published by a big game maker. Look at the amount of flak Grand Theft Auto: Vice City received for its depiction of Haitians and Cubans, and its violence, especially against women. When social mores are broken in a game, you don't have to be an out-of-touch role playing zombie to see that it will have political impact in the real world.
The thing is...ATITD is small beans. But imagine if a major online gaming world...like, say, Everquest, backed by a major corporation like Sony....had a situation where one of the game *developers* (rather than a player) had an NPC calling players, say, racial or religious slurs (which, surprisingly, seem to evoke more outcry than sexism)...Just because the NP *character* was a bigot. I don't think that would be tolerated. And it would probably make the national news. There is the sort of lack of wisdom in antagonizing your players at such a base level, in tension with the creative freedom of the developer to create discomfort. I don't think any laws are being broken here, but the prudence of ATITD's choice can certainly be questoin.
The Salon article has a tangential mention and link to an article about Orthodox Jews filtering NYC water because, while being "some of the purest municipal water in the world," it is contaminated with copepods, which are tiny crustaceans, and thus not kosher. What shocked me about this is that copepods are very large when it comes to filtration...for.2mm up to 10mm, with most around a milimeter according to this and some species are human parasites! (though almost certainly not the species found in NYC tap water, I'm presuming). And yet the article on NYC claims the NYC Department of Environmental Protection claims they are "impossible to do away."
Now, what surprises me is that a contaminant this large is a problem to do away with. What does that say about the ability of NYC water treatment to filter out far tinier contaminants like bacteria and protists? Are the copepods infiltritating the system post-treatment? Clearly, if NYC has some of the purest municipal water in the world, there's something missing from the story here. I'm sure there's some hydrologist or inverterbrate zoologist reading Slashdot that could shed more light on what's going on,
Rofl..."minimizes heirarchy?" People on the left are traditionally in favor of BIGGER GOVERNMENT. That runs directly contrary to your flamebait. And people on the right traditionally favor SMALLER GOVERNMENT.
Well, apparently our president is not a very "traditional" conservative then. Which is one of many reasons I left the Republican party in 2000 and many other "archecons" (as opposed to neocons) have too. (Eisenhower's son being a notable recent example). I believe in a set of principles, not a party.
Using SOA we can engineer wireless web services to deliver frictionless communities. It will allow us to optimize out-of-the-box portals and extend our enterprise models. If we monetize viral convergence we can synergize customized relationships and utilize matrix efficient infrastructures. SOA will enable us to reintermediate compelling e-business thus increasing our ROI. Our TCO will be minimied due to the increasing ability to drive magnetic markets.
Holy crap!! That's my company's mission statement! I think I just shifted a paradigm in my pants.
At least there are actual contexts in which the words "paradigm," "leverage," and "diversify" can be used with a straight face (although, rarely the SAME context!). However, there is no excuse for such nauseating idioms as "best of breed," "state of the art," or "paradigm-shifting."
Best of breed especially makes my stomach turn. The images it conjures are a mix of evily grinning eugeneticists and the stinky poop smell of a dog show.
I have a question regarding this. It sounds like quantum encryption requires a direct optical connection between the sender and receiver. Is it theoretically possible make it "routable?" That is to say, would it be usable in the post office type model the internet uses, where packets have to be inspected (and, thus presumably destroying the message in a quantum transmission) to determine where they're going, or would a completely new model need to be developed?
That was my reaction as well. And if "junkmail" is officially unsolicited post, then this unsolicited telegram is perhaps better characterized as the first use of telemarketing, rather than spam.
Even more specifically, it was "targeted telemarketing."
They really missed the boat on the commercials. They employed that same overused, overwrought, narrator that menacingly voices every action movie commercial in his baritone growl (you know the one). It just really takes away from the mythic period-piece nature of the movie. It's kind of confusing for the average viewer...you hae the standard sci-fi or action voice, but an entirely different look and feel. There's an expectation violation. They should have either had no voice-over (like the downloadable trailer), or made the narration more period appropriate--like a "Newsreel" type voice over.
You're right. But, consider our modern "service" society. What if everyone "self-actualized" their free-thinking, intellectually-curious, self-motivated selves? Who'd work the cubicles? Who'd work the phone support? Who'd flip the burgers? Drones are what we get because, in the end, drones are what we need.
I recommend "The Technological Society" by philosopher Jacques Ellul. Basically, he argues post-industrial revolution, the whole Socratic notion of "know thyself" as the raison d'etre for the human endeavor was replaced with "make it faster, cheaper, easier, more convenient." The cult of "technique" as he calls it.
No. Those distributing songs probably just downloaded them or the majority of them.
You might be right. It's an empirical question.
I just point out one thing. There's a finite regress here. Somebody is providing the tracks ripped from CDs. And I suggest that anyone who's providing MP3s from one CD is probably providing MP3s from most of their CDs.
And those people are the customers that are getting sued.
1) I don't think the RIAA is suing its (members') customers
No? Those distributing songs came by their collections by some means. The most likely means is that they bought their CD collections themselves. In fact, I would surmise that the larger the collection for share, the larger the investment the file sharer has made in the RIAA's labels.
2) I'm really wondering who's morally in the wrong here. The RIAA? Music owned by the members of the RIAA (and their suppliers) is, very obviously, being illegally distributed on P2P networks.
The first thing to do is to dissassociate law and morality. A law can be moral or immoral. And, you can be of a stripe that feels it's immoral to break a law, whether or not the law itself is moral.
I think confusing these points is where so much sound and fury comes from in the file sharing debates. You have people yelling that sharing music is wrong. But that can mean one of two things: a) They think it's wrong to acquire music without compensating the entity that produced it. Or b) Regardless of their opinion on whether music ought to be freely shared, they think it's wrong to violate a law which guarantees exclusive distribution rights to the labels.
Most of the the discourse is about what we should do about b), copyright infringers. What constitutes infringement, who is liable, and what sort of punishments are just.
But I, and a lot of the people maybe you call "idealists," want to first challenge a), that these laws are just at all. We think it's a fundamental fallacy to apply the rules that govern physical property to intellectual property. The concepts of ownership, scarcity, reproduction, and distribution are completely different for information than for matter. A lot of the points us "idealists" make are subtle, and non-intuitive, because, frankly, people are not wired, are not evolved, to deal with non-scarce goods. RIAA and the like play on these naive intuitions by calling file sharing "stealing" because that's what it feels like, when in fact nothing is being stolen, because nothing is being lost. Only distribution "rights" are being violated. And these are a wholly artificial construct.
Unfortunately, you're overlooking the fact that tinfoil is made from alumin[i]um.
Oh yeah? Well only real tin effectively blocks the barquathian mind-control rays from the planet Booftar, that they're co-developed with the CIA and Nabisco to control the populace.
This is largely because it is frequently used in food storage and preparation, and tin is poisonous, so isn't a good choice.
And you believe that?! Looks like they've already gotten to you, bub.
There's a lot flaws with this study, and a lot more, naturally, with the press coverage. I won't get into the technical details of the study (I've heard the authors present this work not too long ago), but make some general points.
1) The conservative vs. liberal distinction is not a universal phenomenon. There are, in fact, mostly coalition governments throughought the world (not the two-party system we have here) with plenty of shades of policy difference between them. Thus, politics do not spontaneously organize around some neural divide among people.
2) The fact that amygdalar activation showed the most significant neural distinction betwen conservative and liberals in the scanner does not necessarily indicate that the neural difference is causal, compelling, or anywhere near the most determinating in dividing liberals from conservatives. It only means that were more amygdalar activation, on average, than might be predicted by chance, for democrats. One then wants to ask what items were responsible for this activation, and were the items not images that are most provocative for democrats a priori? That is to say, it would not be surprising to find greater amygdalar ("emotional") response in democrats to say, images of homeless people NOT because they are more "compassionate" people, but because they have been sensitized to these images by their defined party affiliation. Learned salience.
3) Compassion vs. pragmaticism does not neatly carve up even the American political space. Conservatives, traditionally, are pro-death penalty (arguably pragmatic), but are also pro-life (arguably compassionate). Liberals traditionally hold the complementary positions. Of course, even this analysis is simplisitic as conservatives can make arguments for the compassion of the death penalty (justice for the victims), and liberals can make arguments for the compassion of abortion choice (self-determination of the mother).
4) While the article wants to point to some neural division among as the explanation for there being strong cross-class bridging in both parties (i.e. limousine liberals and rural democrats; corporate conservatives and small-town conservatives), the truth is one can offer far more parsimonious accounts. Each class draws its affiliation with a party based on certain aspects that appeal to it uniquely. Corporate conservatives enjoy the fiscal laissez faire of conservative politics, while small-town conservatives value conservative social morals. Academics and aristocrats who feel less tied to tradition identify with progressive democratic social policy, while rural Democrats value the more hands-on fiscal marshalling of liberal politics.
What is far more interesting to me, as a psychologist, is not the neural underpinnings that differentiate the parties (I doubt there are strong ones), but rather the blind polarization that comes with party identity. The capacity for the human brain the rationalize is astounding. It boggles my mind that party ideologues will rationalize all actions of their politicians, but demonize all actions of the opposition, when clearly they would have very different opinions of the actions per se if they were outside a party context. What is fascinating is that this polarization is more than just sophistry: people actually believe that their polarized worldview is correct, and are convinced of their candidates' rectitude. Now THAT plastic capacity of the mind is fascinating and scary.
Re:I wonder how Newton would do on slashdot...
on
The Unknown Newton
·
· Score: 1
Considering he wrote most of his theological ideas around the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and we, on the other hand, have the vantage of an additional 300 years of science, I think I'll cut him some slack.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you think that *anything* that "happens" in an online game would *ever* make any amount of news other than those which deal with online games as a matter of course illustrates how out of touch you are with real life.
I've never played one of these games in my life. They are "after my time" as the saying goes. However, not only do I defend my statement, but I would take my point further to say that *any* game (online or not) that featured a game character treating the player in a racist, sexist, or otherwise bigotted way would make the press. Especially if published by a big game maker. Look at the amount of flak Grand Theft Auto: Vice City received for its depiction of Haitians and Cubans, and its violence, especially against women. When social mores are broken in a game, you don't have to be an out-of-touch role playing zombie to see that it will have political impact in the real world.
The thing is...ATITD is small beans. But imagine if a major online gaming world...like, say, Everquest, backed by a major corporation like Sony....had a situation where one of the game *developers* (rather than a player) had an NPC calling players, say, racial or religious slurs (which, surprisingly, seem to evoke more outcry than sexism)...Just because the NP *character* was a bigot. I don't think that would be tolerated. And it would probably make the national news. There is the sort of lack of wisdom in antagonizing your players at such a base level, in tension with the creative freedom of the developer to create discomfort. I don't think any laws are being broken here, but the prudence of ATITD's choice can certainly be questoin.
The Salon article has a tangential mention and link to an article about Orthodox Jews filtering NYC water because, while being "some of the purest municipal water in the world," it is contaminated with copepods, which are tiny crustaceans, and thus not kosher. What shocked me about this is that copepods are very large when it comes to filtration...for .2mm up to 10mm, with most around a milimeter according to this and some species are human parasites! (though almost certainly not the species found in NYC tap water, I'm presuming). And yet the article on NYC claims the NYC Department of Environmental Protection claims they are "impossible to do away."
Now, what surprises me is that a contaminant this large is a problem to do away with. What does that say about the ability of NYC water treatment to filter out far tinier contaminants like bacteria and protists? Are the copepods infiltritating the system post-treatment? Clearly, if NYC has some of the purest municipal water in the world, there's something missing from the story here. I'm sure there's some hydrologist or inverterbrate zoologist reading Slashdot that could shed more light on what's going on,
Rofl..."minimizes heirarchy?" People on the left are traditionally in favor of BIGGER GOVERNMENT. That runs directly contrary to your flamebait. And people on the right traditionally favor SMALLER GOVERNMENT.
Well, apparently our president is not a very "traditional" conservative then. Which is one of many reasons I left the Republican party in 2000 and many other "archecons" (as opposed to neocons) have too.
(Eisenhower's son being a notable recent example). I believe in a set of principles, not a party.
Using SOA we can engineer wireless web services to deliver frictionless communities. It will allow us to optimize out-of-the-box portals and extend our enterprise models. If we monetize viral convergence we can synergize customized relationships and utilize matrix efficient infrastructures. SOA will enable us to reintermediate compelling e-business thus increasing our ROI. Our TCO will be minimied due to the increasing ability to drive magnetic markets.
Holy crap!! That's my company's mission statement! I think I just shifted a paradigm in my pants.
At least there are actual contexts in which the words "paradigm," "leverage," and "diversify" can be used with a straight face (although, rarely the SAME context!). However, there is no excuse for such nauseating idioms as "best of breed," "state of the art," or "paradigm-shifting."
Best of breed especially makes my stomach turn. The images it conjures are a mix of evily grinning eugeneticists and the stinky poop smell of a dog show.
It's called a paddle controller. And you can make one out of your mouse.
I have a question regarding this. It sounds like quantum encryption requires a direct optical connection between the sender and receiver. Is it theoretically possible make it "routable?" That is to say, would it be usable in the post office type model the internet uses, where packets have to be inspected (and, thus presumably destroying the message in a quantum transmission) to determine where they're going, or would a completely new model need to be developed?
That was my reaction as well. And if "junkmail" is officially unsolicited post, then this unsolicited telegram is perhaps better characterized as the first use of telemarketing, rather than spam.
Even more specifically, it was "targeted telemarketing."
this place is slowly shifting from "news for nerds" to "news for dorks" ;)
there is a distinction!
You're such a geek for pointing that out.
They really missed the boat on the commercials. They employed that same overused, overwrought, narrator that menacingly voices every action movie commercial in his baritone growl (you know the one). It just really takes away from the mythic period-piece nature of the movie. It's kind of confusing for the average viewer...you hae the standard sci-fi or action voice, but an entirely different look and feel. There's an expectation violation. They should have either had no voice-over (like the downloadable trailer), or made the narration more period appropriate--like a "Newsreel" type voice over.
You're right. But, consider our modern "service" society. What if everyone "self-actualized" their free-thinking, intellectually-curious, self-motivated selves? Who'd work the cubicles? Who'd work the phone support? Who'd flip the burgers? Drones are what we get because, in the end, drones are what we need.
I recommend "The Technological Society" by philosopher Jacques Ellul. Basically, he argues post-industrial revolution, the whole Socratic notion of "know thyself" as the raison d'etre for the human endeavor was replaced with "make it faster, cheaper, easier, more convenient." The cult of "technique" as he calls it.
No. Those distributing songs probably just downloaded them or the majority of them.
You might be right. It's an empirical question.
I just point out one thing. There's a finite regress here. Somebody is providing the tracks ripped from CDs. And I suggest that anyone who's providing MP3s from one CD is probably providing MP3s from most of their CDs.
And those people are the customers that are getting sued.
1) I don't think the RIAA is suing its (members') customers
No? Those distributing songs came by their collections by some means. The most likely means is that they bought their CD collections themselves. In fact, I would surmise that the larger the collection for share, the larger the investment the file sharer has made in the RIAA's labels.
2) I'm really wondering who's morally in the wrong here. The RIAA? Music owned by the members of the RIAA (and their suppliers) is, very obviously, being illegally distributed on P2P networks.
The first thing to do is to dissassociate law and morality. A law can be moral or immoral. And, you can be of a stripe that feels it's immoral to break a law, whether or not the law itself is moral.
I think confusing these points is where so much sound and fury comes from in the file sharing debates. You have people yelling that sharing music is wrong. But that can mean one of two things: a) They think it's wrong to acquire music without compensating the entity that produced it. Or b) Regardless of their opinion on whether music ought to be freely shared, they think it's wrong to violate a law which guarantees exclusive distribution rights to the labels.
Most of the the discourse is about what we should do about b), copyright infringers. What constitutes infringement, who is liable, and what sort of punishments are just.
But I, and a lot of the people maybe you call "idealists," want to first challenge a), that these laws are just at all. We think it's a fundamental fallacy to apply the rules that govern physical property to intellectual property. The concepts of ownership, scarcity, reproduction, and distribution are completely different for information than for matter. A lot of the points us "idealists" make are subtle, and non-intuitive, because, frankly, people are not wired, are not evolved, to deal with non-scarce goods. RIAA and the like play on these naive intuitions by calling file sharing "stealing" because that's what it feels like, when in fact nothing is being stolen, because nothing is being lost. Only distribution "rights" are being violated. And these are a wholly artificial construct.
Unfortunately, you're overlooking the fact that tinfoil is made from alumin[i]um.
Oh yeah? Well only real tin effectively blocks the barquathian mind-control rays from the planet Booftar, that they're co-developed with the CIA and Nabisco to control the populace.
This is largely because it is frequently used in food storage and preparation, and tin is poisonous, so isn't a good choice.
And you believe that?! Looks like they've already gotten to you, bub.
There's a lot flaws with this study, and a lot more, naturally, with the press coverage. I won't get into the technical details of the study (I've heard the authors present this work not too long ago), but make some general points.
1) The conservative vs. liberal distinction is not a universal phenomenon. There are, in fact, mostly coalition governments throughought the world (not the two-party system we have here) with plenty of shades of policy difference between them. Thus, politics do not spontaneously organize around some neural divide among people.
2) The fact that amygdalar activation showed the most significant neural distinction betwen conservative and liberals in the scanner does not necessarily indicate that the neural difference is causal, compelling, or anywhere near the most determinating in dividing liberals from conservatives. It only means that were more amygdalar activation, on average, than might be predicted by chance, for democrats. One then wants to ask what items were responsible for this activation, and were the items not images that are most provocative for democrats a priori? That is to say, it would not be surprising to find greater amygdalar ("emotional") response in democrats to say, images of homeless people NOT because they are more "compassionate" people, but because they have been sensitized to these images by their defined party affiliation. Learned salience.
3) Compassion vs. pragmaticism does not neatly carve up even the American political space. Conservatives, traditionally, are pro-death penalty (arguably pragmatic), but are also pro-life (arguably compassionate). Liberals traditionally hold the complementary positions. Of course, even this analysis is simplisitic as conservatives can make arguments for the compassion of the death penalty (justice for the victims), and liberals can make arguments for the compassion of abortion choice (self-determination of the mother).
4) While the article wants to point to some neural division among as the explanation for there being strong cross-class bridging in both parties (i.e. limousine liberals and rural democrats; corporate conservatives and small-town conservatives), the truth is one can offer far more parsimonious accounts. Each class draws its affiliation with a party based on certain aspects that appeal to it uniquely. Corporate conservatives enjoy the fiscal laissez faire of conservative politics, while small-town conservatives value conservative social morals. Academics and aristocrats who feel less tied to tradition identify with progressive democratic social policy, while rural Democrats value the more hands-on fiscal marshalling of liberal politics.
What is far more interesting to me, as a psychologist, is not the neural underpinnings that differentiate the parties (I doubt there are strong ones), but rather the blind polarization that comes with party identity. The capacity for the human brain the rationalize is astounding. It boggles my mind that party ideologues will rationalize all actions of their politicians, but demonize all actions of the opposition, when clearly they would have very different opinions of the actions per se if they were outside a party context. What is fascinating is that this polarization is more than just sophistry: people actually believe that their polarized worldview is correct, and are convinced of their candidates' rectitude. Now THAT plastic capacity of the mind is fascinating and scary.
Tinfoill hat are made of tin.
:)
Like, duh!
Paranoid kook n00b
I know that those who seek my python are indeed, seeking better tools..not merely financial benefits. And they are not disappointed.
Oh yeah. Feelin' 15 today.
No.
Considering he wrote most of his theological ideas around the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and we, on the other hand, have the vantage of an additional 300 years of science, I think I'll cut him some slack.
But the funniest part? The guy who smashed the shit out of the scanner? He still works for us. :)
:)
No shit! Who's gonna fire him? Somebody with a death wish? Does the word "postal" mean anything to you? Job security through insanity.
Yup, nothing like a good Hand-of-Jobs to ensure to a successful release.
Oh, I'm bad...
I know people who have been training in masturbation for years. They do it every day. They progress and get better at it....
Man, you know your friends a lot better than I know mine. You cats are tight.
But, two wrongs do make a funny!
Thanks. Do you know if the iRiver players support playlists?