Well, I'm not really for skipping learning about WWII, but learning how to use Wikipedia and how to blog sound like excellent things to teach kids. Should we really teach kids that knowledge comes from a single authoritarian figure like a teacher, or should we tell them that they need to investigate numerous versions of the view of history?
Two words come to mind: citation needed. It's interesting to note that the foundation of open, aggregated knowledge-building relies a relative handful of trusted sources which are closely and jealously maintained by trusted authorities. That is, topic experts which have an understanding of not only the basic facts, but the contours, concepts, and unique questions that arise in a given subject.
A student doesn't know what they don't know. A teacher is not simply a dispenser of knowledge, but ideally, is a guide, helping a student to understand those contours, concepts, and unique questions, along with the basic facts (allowing that student to form their own opinions and interpretations).
Without the guidance of a good teacher, a student may absorb information uncritically and in a fragmentary fashion, creating an incomplete and erroneous understanding of the subject. So, the role of a teacher is dynamic and relational. Moreover, there are unspoken aspects of knowledge that are difficult to transmit through the written word.
Now, of course, there are plenty of people who are self-taught, but even the best autodidacts rely upon sources written by experts to attain their knowledge, as well as learning from others. That mixture of the hierarchical and egalitarian, the open and the authoritative, is an essential balance, each maintaining the integrity of the other.
It wasn't that long ago that $18.8 billion would have been a figure for the industry's total revenue. With all the mergers lately (this one coming just a short while after the Bioware/EA merger), I'm wondering when or if we're going to see some antitrust rumblings out of the Feds.
People like a good story. And if it's true, all the better (whether it is or not). And I love how my comment on "all people are equally capable of stupidity and we should to our own flaws first" gets modded as flamebait. Nice...
...that certain articles tend to attract "Americans are dumb" comments like flies to dog poop? For the life of me, I can't think of anything that we do that is particularly more stupid than anything are friends across the pond (or other parts of the world) are capable of. I could certainly make a long enough list of idiotic things I've seen in other parts of the world.
Perhaps one of the dumbest things we humans do is to turn a blind eye to our own stupidity, while pointing it out in others. So, to great extent, that is where common sense starts.
Data. He was supposed to have an indefinite lifespan, which gives it instant plausibility. And if this series is about a troubled Federation trying to find its way back, what better character to give his blessing (and sidestep the cliched time travel plots)? To top it all off, it also solves the big issue about Brent Spiner's portrayal of the character, which was his aging. Too bad they %$$#@& it up and killed Data off.
Didn't the MSM take something of a similar attitude toward blogs once they first emerged as a real force? And Wikipedia has been gaining "critical mass" in the same way blogs did a two or three years past. Setting all that aside, the tone of the article is somewhat unprofessional if your evaluating a new idea.
To be blunt, that is a perfectly stupid statement. As has been pointed out below in other comments and in the stub--"Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors."--Google is simply being faithful to prior contractual agreements. Heck, they were gentle enough to simply request a cease and desist instead of sicking the lawyers on them.
And is a company protects its interests really "doing evil"? The fact that a company might want to have a say in a product or IP they OWN and they took the time and money to create seems reasonable. Granted, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA go overboard and abuse the law, but that doesn't alter the right of companies to reasonably enforce their ownership. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Three things prevent ebooks from taking off: Resolution, ease of use, and DRM. Get displays up to 300 dpi, make it as intuitive (both the UI and form factor) as an iPod, and make the DRM manageable (something along the lines of iTunes) and ebooks might actually become competitive. Then again, audio books as downloads are probably more profitable.
This has the potential to become a big regional expo, but the global exposure seems limited. After E3, the other big gaming-related get-togethers are the GDC and SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH wouldn't work, as that is almost purely about the nuts and bolts of emerging graphics and that involves the movie industry as well. GDC is totally game-centric and a bit less propellerhead, which is good for the mainstream press. It seems to me that it would make sense to tack on a few extra days to GDC where it could opened to the press and the publishers and developers could do their big announcments in less expensive surroundings without the general public stomping around. With out the glitz, you would have to court the mainstream press more actively, but GDC is also the perfect venue to play the "games as art" card and have hoity toity types like Slate or the stuffed shirts over at the Grey Lady pay attention.
Misspells do happen, as that data is entered by a human being at some point in the chain. I usually catch one or two every few dozen pages of what ever site I'm on. There's probably more, but I'm not explicitly looking for them.
Bioware's Mass Effect is running on Unreal 3 and I certainly haven't heard anything out of them on this. In fact, I cam across one post on the ME forum where one of he developers was just talking about how one of their guys had squeezed out more preformance on the E3 demo by doing an optimization pass.
It seems like everyone and their grandmother is using UE 3 at this point and yet not a peep out of any other dev team. And it isn't like Unreal is a new engine with neophyte coders behind it. This is a third generation engine that is built on a code base that has been used in titles from here to Timbuktu. Something seems fishy here.
The Game Developers' Conference seems like a logical successor to E3. Plus, the more professional/industry oriented atmosphere of GDC dovetails nicely into the industry's emergence as a "serious" and "artistic" medium (or at least all the talk about it).
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Well, I'm not really for skipping learning about WWII, but learning how to use Wikipedia and how to blog sound like excellent things to teach kids. Should we really teach kids that knowledge comes from a single authoritarian figure like a teacher, or should we tell them that they need to investigate numerous versions of the view of history?
Two words come to mind: citation needed. It's interesting to note that the foundation of open, aggregated knowledge-building relies a relative handful of trusted sources which are closely and jealously maintained by trusted authorities. That is, topic experts which have an understanding of not only the basic facts, but the contours, concepts, and unique questions that arise in a given subject.
A student doesn't know what they don't know. A teacher is not simply a dispenser of knowledge, but ideally, is a guide, helping a student to understand those contours, concepts, and unique questions, along with the basic facts (allowing that student to form their own opinions and interpretations).
Without the guidance of a good teacher, a student may absorb information uncritically and in a fragmentary fashion, creating an incomplete and erroneous understanding of the subject. So, the role of a teacher is dynamic and relational. Moreover, there are unspoken aspects of knowledge that are difficult to transmit through the written word.
Now, of course, there are plenty of people who are self-taught, but even the best autodidacts rely upon sources written by experts to attain their knowledge, as well as learning from others. That mixture of the hierarchical and egalitarian, the open and the authoritative, is an essential balance, each maintaining the integrity of the other.
It wasn't that long ago that $18.8 billion would have been a figure for the industry's total revenue. With all the mergers lately (this one coming just a short while after the Bioware/EA merger), I'm wondering when or if we're going to see some antitrust rumblings out of the Feds.
People like a good story. And if it's true, all the better (whether it is or not). And I love how my comment on "all people are equally capable of stupidity and we should to our own flaws first" gets modded as flamebait. Nice...
...that certain articles tend to attract "Americans are dumb" comments like flies to dog poop? For the life of me, I can't think of anything that we do that is particularly more stupid than anything are friends across the pond (or other parts of the world) are capable of. I could certainly make a long enough list of idiotic things I've seen in other parts of the world.
Perhaps one of the dumbest things we humans do is to turn a blind eye to our own stupidity, while pointing it out in others. So, to great extent, that is where common sense starts.
Data. He was supposed to have an indefinite lifespan, which gives it instant plausibility. And if this series is about a troubled Federation trying to find its way back, what better character to give his blessing (and sidestep the cliched time travel plots)? To top it all off, it also solves the big issue about Brent Spiner's portrayal of the character, which was his aging. Too bad they %$$#@& it up and killed Data off.
Didn't the MSM take something of a similar attitude toward blogs once they first emerged as a real force? And Wikipedia has been gaining "critical mass" in the same way blogs did a two or three years past. Setting all that aside, the tone of the article is somewhat unprofessional if your evaluating a new idea.
To be blunt, that is a perfectly stupid statement. As has been pointed out below in other comments and in the stub--"Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors."--Google is simply being faithful to prior contractual agreements. Heck, they were gentle enough to simply request a cease and desist instead of sicking the lawyers on them. And is a company protects its interests really "doing evil"? The fact that a company might want to have a say in a product or IP they OWN and they took the time and money to create seems reasonable. Granted, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA go overboard and abuse the law, but that doesn't alter the right of companies to reasonably enforce their ownership. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Three things prevent ebooks from taking off: Resolution, ease of use, and DRM. Get displays up to 300 dpi, make it as intuitive (both the UI and form factor) as an iPod, and make the DRM manageable (something along the lines of iTunes) and ebooks might actually become competitive. Then again, audio books as downloads are probably more profitable.
This has the potential to become a big regional expo, but the global exposure seems limited. After E3, the other big gaming-related get-togethers are the GDC and SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH wouldn't work, as that is almost purely about the nuts and bolts of emerging graphics and that involves the movie industry as well. GDC is totally game-centric and a bit less propellerhead, which is good for the mainstream press. It seems to me that it would make sense to tack on a few extra days to GDC where it could opened to the press and the publishers and developers could do their big announcments in less expensive surroundings without the general public stomping around. With out the glitz, you would have to court the mainstream press more actively, but GDC is also the perfect venue to play the "games as art" card and have hoity toity types like Slate or the stuffed shirts over at the Grey Lady pay attention.
Misspells do happen, as that data is entered by a human being at some point in the chain. I usually catch one or two every few dozen pages of what ever site I'm on. There's probably more, but I'm not explicitly looking for them.
Bioware's Mass Effect is running on Unreal 3 and I certainly haven't heard anything out of them on this. In fact, I cam across one post on the ME forum where one of he developers was just talking about how one of their guys had squeezed out more preformance on the E3 demo by doing an optimization pass. It seems like everyone and their grandmother is using UE 3 at this point and yet not a peep out of any other dev team. And it isn't like Unreal is a new engine with neophyte coders behind it. This is a third generation engine that is built on a code base that has been used in titles from here to Timbuktu. Something seems fishy here.
The Game Developers' Conference seems like a logical successor to E3. Plus, the more professional/industry oriented atmosphere of GDC dovetails nicely into the industry's emergence as a "serious" and "artistic" medium (or at least all the talk about it).
It would be great if game review sites had this...