I didn't mean to imply that things that were great then are crap today. My point about Dylan was that Dylan wasn't some kind of miraculous super-musician who could not exist today. My point was that, when something like rock and roll is young, it's a lot easier to stand far above the average than it is now, after fifty years of development.
Baseball is an easier example. Suppose we can take the average abilities and performance of all the players in baseball, and assign it a number. Early on in baseball's history, this number will be fairly low, owing to the lack of years and years of development. When someone with extraordinary talent comes along, there's apt to be a lot more space between his "ability score" and the average (e.g., Babe Ruth). Now fifty years pass, and the "average score" has gotten a lot closer to its theoretical maximum (namely, the physical and mental capacities of humans). Nowadays, someone who is as good as Babe Ruth was, isn't going to be nearly as far above the average. It's not that people have less talent or skill as time goes on (or that the earlier people have more talent), it's just that the average ability level has risen, and it's much harder to exceed by a large margin.
And thus I agree with your statement that, "several classic games are just as great as the ones made today". I agree; games like Joust and Galaga and whatnot ARE as great as Half-Life and Civilization and whatnot. However, the "average" level has gone up quite a lot since the days of Joust and Galaga; all of the technology is far more advanced, and a lot of ideas that didn't exist back then, do now and are used by many or all games. So a "great" game today isn't going to be as high above the average as a "great" game of 20 years ago was. The two games are equally great, but the average has risen.
This is all better explained in Stephen Jay Gould's book, "Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin", so if you've got a problem with my analogies, take it up with Dr. Gould:)
Now this is all separate from the issue that people tend to fondly remember the greats of the past and ignore the crap. The "Nostalgia Problem" itself is in two parts:
1. Back in the "good old days", there was a higher percentage of quality stuff, compared to today when there is a higher percentage of crap. (This is usually false, although true in some cases.
2. The high-quality items of the past are, individually, greater than the high-quality items of the present. This is the issue addressed above, regarding the averages.
The first issue is one of selective memory; the latter is one of simply not being aware of the gradual increase in average ability of participants in a field.
This is not to say that some people will not truly find certain old games "better" than certain new games; your case obviously proves that it is possible (unless you are lying:). My point is that people will often dismiss the new in favor of the old, simply because they have fond memories of it, and that is something to beware.
The "Nostalgia Problem" is what I call the tendency of people to remember fondly things of the past, and usually to the detriment of newer things. Ask any 50-something and they'll go on and on about how music back in their day (the 60s/early 70s) was the greatest, best ever. Groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. etc. and there's nothing like it any more, everything today is just noise, blah blah.
If you go back and actually look at it, though, you'll find that there was just as high a percentage of crap (re: Sturgeon's Law) then as there is now. People tend to forget the crap, and focus on the stuff that was great.
One other thing to consider is also the fact that greater strides are always made earlier in any field than later. Bob Dylan was so groundbreaking because no one had ever done anything like it before -- but that was because rock and roll hadn't been around that long. Dylan himself is not particularly special; if he came along today, he'd probably be considered a talented artist, but hardly groundbreaking. (Someone else would have filled his role in the 60s.) The same goes for video games. When there's been 20 years of game development, it's a lot harder to be groundbreakingly innovative than when no one has done anything yet.
The point is, a lot of us were kids back when videogames first became popular. We are inclined to remember them fondly, but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now. Sure, it's a nice feeling to play again, but how fun is it? I rarely am entertained with more than nostalgia by the old games I used to love. Don't fall into that trap; before you go on about how games used to be so much better, go back and play them again with the hindsight of years to help you figure out what you really think.
Wait, why would you hate that? That would be great! Imagine how you could terrorize people...
You: Yeah, it's been acting up a bit, I'm wondering if maybe you could take a look at it... Sewing Machine Repair Guy: Okay, well, let me see if I can--*CRUNCH* AAGH! MY HAND!! IT BIT MY HAND!! I'M BLEEDING! Demon Sewing Machine: *growl* I WILL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL *snarl* You: *gales of laughter at SMRG's expense*
Okay, maybe I've just been programming in JavaScript too much today, but there are endless possibilities for a demon-possessed sewing machine!
...but I'd sure like to see a laptop that could be safely and effectively used during sex. Just think of the extra stimulation that could be gained while pr0n-surfing while getting it on with your (we hope) flesh-and-blood mate!
Not to dismiss those of you who use substitutes, but, ah, I'll stick with the real thing.
Amen to that. My FIRST JOB out of college, I got with a web dev house right about a mile from campus (UCLA, in fact). $37,500 a year, and my interview consisted of my friend Dave telling the guy who ran the company that I knew what I was doing, and the guy talking to me for 5 minutes and hiring me. Then they gave me a raise to $40,000 a couple of months later. I left shortly thereafter for a job with a startup, making $42,000 and some stock options. Six months later I get a raise to $46,000. This is all with absolutely no effort on my part!
At my latest job, I get in at roughly 9:15 (my fiancee works a half mile from home, but has to be in at 9, so I drop her off there and then go in to work. Today I got in at 10:00 and no one blinked an eye. My uniform is a t-shirt and shorts. And I get to PROGRAM IN PHP ALL DAY!!
I'll take this over McJob any day of the week, thank you very much.
It's obvious that this delay will mean the IMMEDIATE AND GORY DEMISE OF LINUX! No closed-source software provider would ever let this happen!! This will allow the Microsoft Stormtroopers(tm) to kick down the door of all of the Commie pinko drug-using Linux sympathizers and finally cleanse us of this evil!
I mean, uh, I have an idea guys, how about we NOT worry about it, since this isn't really news?:)
Hmm, if I traveled into the past and wanted to leave a message for future generations, I would use a giant laser to carve the message into the moon. It would be, CHA- but then get cut off as my laser was destroyed by a 400 pound blue idiot.
Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where they get abducted by the aliens, who have a dusty book, which keeps getting little bits more space dust blown off of it:
"How to Cook Humans"
"How to Cook For Humans"
"How to Cook Forty Humans"
"How to Cook For Forty Humans"
No no, he's going to set off a nuclear bomb in the San Andreas fault so that the western half of California will fall into the ocean, thus making his thousands of square miles of worthless desert land into valuable beachfront property.
Maybe I'm the only one to realize this, but Sonique is NOT OPEN SOURCE. It is CLOSED SOURCE. The source is NOT AVAILABLE on their website, if anywhere. Sonique, in fact, is owned by Lycos.
Freeamp, on the other hand, is a completely open source, GPL'd MP3 player, and it's already available for Linux and Windows. Plus, the themes are entirely controlled by an XML-based description file and a few bitmaps. I stopped using WinAmp when AOL announced it was going to include anti-piracy measures of some kind.
Do the right thing. Use Freeamp instead. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's getting better daily, and it's OPEN SOURCE and FREE SOFTWARE, so you can do whatever the hell you want with it!
Hmm, I think someone should start a company that makes consumer electronics, but eliminates all the feature cruft, and sells them dirt cheap, and *SPECIFICALLY ADVERTISES*, "Hey, look, ours don't have all those useless features you never use, and they cost half of what those dorks charge."
Since I'm not sure that any of your post is relevant to what I've said, I'll simply say this.
Given that any system of beliefs has to be based on one or more core assumptions, I think that the core assumption that only the physical exists is the best one. Why? Because it has the most evidence for its validity.
You're right, fundamentally, that assumption is no more or less valid than an assumption that, say, "Pink is good and blue is bad" or "God exists" or "The universe rides on the back of a turtle". However, there is no evidence indicating that those assumptions have any inherent merit, whereas everything we can "know for sure" (don't get me started on epistemology) points toward "only the real world exists" as valid. Yes, I can never prove it, but that's not the point. The point is, the assumption that "only the real world exists" is the only one with any empirical evidence.
Maybe that's not important, I don't know. What do you think? I'm open to changing my view, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't take the tack of, "Well here's why I'm right and you're wrong." It's not about being right and wrong, it's about having a discussion.
I mean, your site is ranked based on how many OTHER sites link to it. The only way to exploit this would be to get other people to link to your page... which is the whole idea in the first place!
The biggest exploit I could think of for this, would be for a big company like Amazon to pay a lot of people to link to their site (oh wait, they already do). Thus they can use money to skew the results, without having to corrupt Google directly. Hmm.
Keep in mind that even though AOL *MAY HAVE* a monopoly, it does not mean that it is an *illegal monopoly*. It is not illegal in the U.S. to simple have a monopoly on a market; it's the using of certain practices to gain a monopoly, or to abuse a monopoly position, that are illegal.
Unless AOL has done this, then the DoJ has no power here.
I believe the idea was what Jared Diamond termed the "Anna Karenina principle." As Tolstoy put it in that novel, "Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
The upshot is, people like voyeurism. Always have, always will.
Find a job with a company that isn't run by people who are so shortsighted as to think that this is a good idea.
While this obviously isn't an easy solution, well, if there were an easy solution to the problem...
It's like when people want everything to go their way but don't want to have to do any hard work to get it. "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." THAT'S the motto that should be on U.S. coins.
Nowhere did I state that my views of what is "real" do not change, so please don't assume that they don't. My view is that only the physical exists. This means that, given sufficient evidence, the definition of what is "physical", can change.
However I must disagree with your assertion that a physical view of the world is as dogmatic as, say, a Christian one. My core assumption upon which I base *everything* is what I just said: Only the physical exists. I make this assumption because according to *all available evidence*, ONLY THE PHYSICAL EXISTS. I have never encountered any evidence that anything non-physical exists. Christians, on the other hand, start from the core assumption, "God exists." However there is no evidence for this assumption and therefore I find it to be less likely to be correct than my assumption. I am always open to evidence, of course; if you have any I'd love to hear it.
I was referring to "God" in the traditional "all-powerful (or extremely powerful) supernatural intelligent being who may have created the universe and may take an active role in its events." Duh. As for Taoist ideas, well, you can say, "I define God as the total sum of the universe," and I'll say, "Okay, so, you're just going to call it God instead of The Universe. I'm pretty sure the universe exists, so, okay."
Yes, I was referring to the supernatural (semi? are you kidding?) life-energy often referred to. I'm not aware how it is necessary for any martial art to function.
3 is an abstract concept that exists as electrical relationships in the brains of humans. So do truth and beauty. B flat is the name we give to a particular sonic frequency. Sound exists, and so does B flat. The color red is our name for a particular wavelength of electromagnetic radiation; the property of redness is another abstract concept like truth and beauty. My thoughts are simply electrochemical and neurochemical processes; entirely physical, and therefore they exist. So is my mind. Your mind, well, I don't know about that... (just kidding, you were asking for it:)
I don't know who John Smith, Esq. of Crofton, Maryland is, so I can't really say. Mr. Spock exists, again, as a portrayal by Leonard Nimoy on various pieces of film and in various peoples' minds. If indeed this J.S. Esq. of Crofton, MD exists, well, he is a physical being made of matter. They are equally "real" in that sense, even if Mr. Spock is just a personality that Leonard Nimoy takes on from time to time.
Yes, I have seen Penn & Teller in person. Just because they can fool my senses does not mean that I have reason to believe that anything I have not sensed (or SOMEONE has not sensed) does not exist. If this is an incorrect statement, please demonstrate how.
Slashdot Mirror
Baseball is an easier example. Suppose we can take the average abilities and performance of all the players in baseball, and assign it a number. Early on in baseball's history, this number will be fairly low, owing to the lack of years and years of development. When someone with extraordinary talent comes along, there's apt to be a lot more space between his "ability score" and the average (e.g., Babe Ruth). Now fifty years pass, and the "average score" has gotten a lot closer to its theoretical maximum (namely, the physical and mental capacities of humans). Nowadays, someone who is as good as Babe Ruth was, isn't going to be nearly as far above the average. It's not that people have less talent or skill as time goes on (or that the earlier people have more talent), it's just that the average ability level has risen, and it's much harder to exceed by a large margin.
And thus I agree with your statement that, "several classic games are just as great as the ones made today". I agree; games like Joust and Galaga and whatnot ARE as great as Half-Life and Civilization and whatnot. However, the "average" level has gone up quite a lot since the days of Joust and Galaga; all of the technology is far more advanced, and a lot of ideas that didn't exist back then, do now and are used by many or all games. So a "great" game today isn't going to be as high above the average as a "great" game of 20 years ago was. The two games are equally great, but the average has risen.
This is all better explained in Stephen Jay Gould's book, "Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin", so if you've got a problem with my analogies, take it up with Dr. Gould :)
Now this is all separate from the issue that people tend to fondly remember the greats of the past and ignore the crap. The "Nostalgia Problem" itself is in two parts:
1. Back in the "good old days", there was a higher percentage of quality stuff, compared to today when there is a higher percentage of crap. (This is usually false, although true in some cases.
2. The high-quality items of the past are, individually, greater than the high-quality items of the present. This is the issue addressed above, regarding the averages.
The first issue is one of selective memory; the latter is one of simply not being aware of the gradual increase in average ability of participants in a field.
This is not to say that some people will not truly find certain old games "better" than certain new games; your case obviously proves that it is possible (unless you are lying :). My point is that people will often dismiss the new in favor of the old, simply because they have fond memories of it, and that is something to beware.
If you go back and actually look at it, though, you'll find that there was just as high a percentage of crap (re: Sturgeon's Law) then as there is now. People tend to forget the crap, and focus on the stuff that was great.
One other thing to consider is also the fact that greater strides are always made earlier in any field than later. Bob Dylan was so groundbreaking because no one had ever done anything like it before -- but that was because rock and roll hadn't been around that long. Dylan himself is not particularly special; if he came along today, he'd probably be considered a talented artist, but hardly groundbreaking. (Someone else would have filled his role in the 60s.) The same goes for video games. When there's been 20 years of game development, it's a lot harder to be groundbreakingly innovative than when no one has done anything yet.
The point is, a lot of us were kids back when videogames first became popular. We are inclined to remember them fondly, but I dare you to go back and play Dig Dug or Frogger again now. Sure, it's a nice feeling to play again, but how fun is it? I rarely am entertained with more than nostalgia by the old games I used to love. Don't fall into that trap; before you go on about how games used to be so much better, go back and play them again with the hindsight of years to help you figure out what you really think.
You: Yeah, it's been acting up a bit, I'm wondering if maybe you could take a look at it...
Sewing Machine Repair Guy: Okay, well, let me see if I can--*CRUNCH* AAGH! MY HAND!! IT BIT MY HAND!! I'M BLEEDING!
Demon Sewing Machine: *growl* I WILL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL *snarl*
You: *gales of laughter at SMRG's expense*
Okay, maybe I've just been programming in JavaScript too much today, but there are endless possibilities for a demon-possessed sewing machine!
Not to dismiss those of you who use substitutes, but, ah, I'll stick with the real thing.
At my latest job, I get in at roughly 9:15 (my fiancee works a half mile from home, but has to be in at 9, so I drop her off there and then go in to work. Today I got in at 10:00 and no one blinked an eye. My uniform is a t-shirt and shorts. And I get to PROGRAM IN PHP ALL DAY!!
I'll take this over McJob any day of the week, thank you very much.
I'm down with that. Are you down with OPP?
could you make a Beowulf cluster out of these things?
I mean, uh, I have an idea guys, how about we NOT worry about it, since this isn't really news? :)
Doesn't the Earth go around *every* year? Can't you just wait six months for that, and THEN head off to Pluto? :)
Hmm, if I traveled into the past and wanted to leave a message for future generations, I would use a giant laser to carve the message into the moon. It would be, CHA- but then get cut off as my laser was destroyed by a 400 pound blue idiot.
"How to Cook Humans"
"How to Cook For Humans"
"How to Cook Forty Humans"
"How to Cook For Forty Humans"
No, wait, that's MY plan...
Freeamp, on the other hand, is a completely open source, GPL'd MP3 player, and it's already available for Linux and Windows. Plus, the themes are entirely controlled by an XML-based description file and a few bitmaps. I stopped using WinAmp when AOL announced it was going to include anti-piracy measures of some kind.
Do the right thing. Use Freeamp instead. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's getting better daily, and it's OPEN SOURCE and FREE SOFTWARE, so you can do whatever the hell you want with it!
It probably wouldn't work, but, hey.
Given that any system of beliefs has to be based on one or more core assumptions, I think that the core assumption that only the physical exists is the best one. Why? Because it has the most evidence for its validity.
You're right, fundamentally, that assumption is no more or less valid than an assumption that, say, "Pink is good and blue is bad" or "God exists" or "The universe rides on the back of a turtle". However, there is no evidence indicating that those assumptions have any inherent merit, whereas everything we can "know for sure" (don't get me started on epistemology) points toward "only the real world exists" as valid. Yes, I can never prove it, but that's not the point. The point is, the assumption that "only the real world exists" is the only one with any empirical evidence.
Maybe that's not important, I don't know. What do you think? I'm open to changing my view, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't take the tack of, "Well here's why I'm right and you're wrong." It's not about being right and wrong, it's about having a discussion.
The biggest exploit I could think of for this, would be for a big company like Amazon to pay a lot of people to link to their site (oh wait, they already do). Thus they can use money to skew the results, without having to corrupt Google directly. Hmm.
Unless AOL has done this, then the DoJ has no power here.
The upshot is, people like voyeurism. Always have, always will.
Maybe it's common where you come from, but not in Los Angeles. Not among college graduates, anyway... maybe in junior high...?
In that case, my advice is, (nicely) tell them to FOAD (Fuck Off And Die, pronounced "foh-add", not "fohd").
However in the case that you WERE currently working for them, I'd say, FOAD and quit.
While this obviously isn't an easy solution, well, if there were an easy solution to the problem...
It's like when people want everything to go their way but don't want to have to do any hard work to get it. "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." THAT'S the motto that should be on U.S. coins.
The varmints're gettin' away on their horses! We'll never catch 'em!
My apologies; what I should have said was, "I have no reason to think that there is a God, or that there are any gods."
However I must disagree with your assertion that a physical view of the world is as dogmatic as, say, a Christian one. My core assumption upon which I base *everything* is what I just said: Only the physical exists. I make this assumption because according to *all available evidence*, ONLY THE PHYSICAL EXISTS. I have never encountered any evidence that anything non-physical exists. Christians, on the other hand, start from the core assumption, "God exists." However there is no evidence for this assumption and therefore I find it to be less likely to be correct than my assumption. I am always open to evidence, of course; if you have any I'd love to hear it.
Yes, I was referring to the supernatural (semi? are you kidding?) life-energy often referred to. I'm not aware how it is necessary for any martial art to function.
3 is an abstract concept that exists as electrical relationships in the brains of humans. So do truth and beauty. B flat is the name we give to a particular sonic frequency. Sound exists, and so does B flat. The color red is our name for a particular wavelength of electromagnetic radiation; the property of redness is another abstract concept like truth and beauty. My thoughts are simply electrochemical and neurochemical processes; entirely physical, and therefore they exist. So is my mind. Your mind, well, I don't know about that... (just kidding, you were asking for it :)
I don't know who John Smith, Esq. of Crofton, Maryland is, so I can't really say. Mr. Spock exists, again, as a portrayal by Leonard Nimoy on various pieces of film and in various peoples' minds. If indeed this J.S. Esq. of Crofton, MD exists, well, he is a physical being made of matter. They are equally "real" in that sense, even if Mr. Spock is just a personality that Leonard Nimoy takes on from time to time.
Yes, I have seen Penn & Teller in person. Just because they can fool my senses does not mean that I have reason to believe that anything I have not sensed (or SOMEONE has not sensed) does not exist. If this is an incorrect statement, please demonstrate how.