Part of the reason for the increase in degenerative diseases is that we're living a lot longer than we used too.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf (detailed tables #10)
22,960 75-year-olds were alive in 1900, compared with 65,717 in 2003.
Since we live longer than we used to, any diseases that are more common in the elderly are more common. Some of these are heart disease and cancer, dementia, alzheimers, etc. So it's really not all that surprising that as we get more 75-year-olds, we see a lot more degenerative conditions. Some of this may be food related, but I think there's also the cruel twist of evolution. Evolution cares whether you have and successfully raise children. Once you've reproduced and your children are grown, evolution doesn't care about what happens, so your body isn't designed to last much past that. Sure we can slow down the aging using tricks and modern medicine, but eventually you reach the upper limit of how long a human being can live.
I think this is one of the dead ends. What I want to be able to do is make moral choices that affect the entire world. I want to be able to decide that the cost of saving the world is just too high and leave. I want to have choices between different courses of action and have a consequence to whatever I choose to do.
If the cost of saving Spira is allowing Yuna to die, why the hell isn't it my choice to make? Why does the game present such a moral dilemma just to have the game decide for me? Why is it that after discovering that Kohint will disappear after I destroy the Wind Fish, the game presents me with no alternative? That isn't realistic, at least not to me. It's never me playing the role or connecting with the characters. I might like them, but considering that I have zero power to decide what happens in the world, I may as well be watching a movie.
I think games will become more emotional once you get the power that video games promise. That you and only you can decide how and why you want to save the world. Or even *if* you think that saving the world is a good idea. It's supposed to be me playing the role -- let me play in the sandbox and decide that some actions are right and some are wrong. Put up a consequence, make me suffer for a bad choice. Just let me choose.
I love offline games. The reason that I don't like paying a monthly fee for games is that in order to get the money back, you have to set aside time to play it. Not paying for a month means that lvl 60 Bard you've been working on gets deleted.
That's the trouble. MMOs have the same time-sink mentality. If you travel with a group, you'd better keep up with them, because if you get to be more than 2-3 levels behind them, you can't do the same quests as they do. So they either redo the easy quests with you, or leave you behind. So you'd have to play several hours a week -- in order to play the game.
Now compare the above to an offline RPG. I own the disk. No one's going to charge me to use my copy of FF12. No one will delete my lvl 60 party for nonpayment of fees. I don't have to set up a time to play it so that I don't fall behind the rest of the party. I could set the game aside for 6 months, never touch it (say if I get busy, or if I simply *don't want to play it*) and everything will still be exactly as I left it. I'm not going to lose out just because I didn't have enough time to play this month.
That's what I love about offline gaming. I don't feel pressured to put tons of hours into a game just to get a little pleasure from questing with my buddies. I don't want to feel like I'm losing money because I'm not playing as much as I did last month. Offline does that.
One thing I really don't get about steganography is why hiding a message *in* a picture is preferable to sending the picture as a message.
For example, if "teh terrist" wanted to send a message like "attack now", why couldn't the message be given via a pre-arranged signal -- say the image shows Osama wearing a silver watch for "It's go time", and a gold watch for "wait out the Americans". No one can detect a "hidden message" because there is none.
You could do the same for other things even if you don't use USB (which would probably be easiest in a workplace). How about plain old pencil and paper? Just write down the information, put it in a device called an "envelope", write down the physical address of the guy you're sending it to, and drop it off in the post office. It's virtually untraceable, and would work even if the IT guys turn off the USB ports.
I get a console over a PC for a couple of reasons. Cost isn't one of them.
1.) Developers mess with my DLLs. Sometimes this breaks other programs I'm already using. I've had a few programs die this way. I use my PC for other things besides gaming, and I need them to work.
2.) With consoles up to this point (and I think it could change now that they have HD choice) it's been simple to figure out what works on my machine. If it says ps2 on the box, it works in my launch day ps2. Even if it were released tommarow for ps2, it will work on any ps2. PC gamers have to worry about graphics cards being up to date, drivers, RAM, disk space, OS type, etc.
3.) A lot of buggy PC software gets released -- they'll freeze of crash or they just plain won't work. The solution seems to be to wait for the developers to fix the problem and release a patch. A console game works right out of the box. I've never yet had a game refuse to work in my ps2.
For me, it boils down to convienience -- I don't have to worry about whether my system will play a random game. If it has the name of the console on the box, it works in that console. Put it in and play.
I think one of the biggest problems that ESRB has in making good ratings is that they don't get the full version of the game, they get a script, a video, and a short demo. I don't think you can really judge interactive content fairly if you can't interact with the entire thing.
Besides that, it's the game company that decides what gets sent. Most are probably fairly honest about it, but you can't really check to make sure that you got all the worst content. They might leave a minigame out, or a bit of dialog that is worse than the ones they submitted to ESRB. And even if you did get all of the bad content, chances are it's at least somewhat out of context. Maybe that gruesome disembowlment is one of several options and the player will be punished for choosing it. Maybe some innocent sounding snippets of dialog are actually racist in context (say they constantly mock the only black guy in the game). You just can't know without the full version.
I don't know that a focus group is the way to go either. I'd imagine that people on both sides (say Parent's Television Council and anti-censorship types) are keen to get their people in on the ESRB ratings game so that they can push it in the direction they want it to go. If they went to a more objective system -- counting the curse words and violent scenes for example, you couldn't push an agenda as easily. There are only so many swear words in a game, and they won't change just because John Hagee is doing the counting.
So a Mac is literally blocked from going to Yahoo.com? Firefox can't be either reconfigured to use a Yahoo! toolbar or surf over to Ask.com's homepage? It might be inconvienient, but it can be done. The difference between a monopoly and a competitive advantage is the simple question of "Is it even possible to make a different choice". In the case of search engines, it's possible.
They don't have anything like a full monopoly. They have a good share of the traffic, but not a monopoly. We can use other Search Engines if we want to. Ask.com, Yahoo.com, Ask Jeeves, About.com, etc. are still available for use. So Anti-Move-On.Org can probably get its ad on one of these other sites.
And while I believe in free speech, there is no right to a microphone. You have the right to SAY whatever you want. But you don't have a right to force someone else to display your content. I can't claim my "free speech" was violated just because NBC didn't air my ad rant about the high cost of cheese. It's their platform, and other than following nondiscrimination laws, they can do what they want to with it.
I think refusing to air one side of a political debate is "EVIL", but they are within their rights here. So I'm going to exercise my right to never touch Google again.
I wouldn't expect the RIAA to report a decision that hurts them, but I think that could be an illegal act. I think not telling the whole truth about the precident in a case is illegal. Does anyone know for sure? I'd be amazed if they got away with this, but I'm not shocked that they'd try it.
My concern isn't that some emo editor is deliberately re-editing the pages on controversial issues, though it is a concern. My main concern is that people are allowed to edit things that they have no expertise in.
I've read things like Steven Hawking's books. That does not make me qualified to interpret String Theory. I've taken courses in psychology, but I'm not really a trained psychologist. Wikipedia doesn't even take this into account. My edits on String Theory are treated exactly the same as Hawking's. I don't think that's a good way to insure accuracy. I'm much more likely to misunderstand a theory in cosmology than an actual cosmologist. He's trained. He's spent thousands of hours reading and studying, and for that matter researching cosmology. I've read a book, and for that matter, it wasn't aimed at physicists, it was aimed at "the average man".
Until WPdia recognizes that, I don't think it's really reliable. It may be "stable", meaning that what it explains about math and physics doesn't change much, but that could be because the article matches what people believe is true. If the majority of editors believe that Warp Drive is real, that's what the stable version will say. And if actual physicists edit the page to say otherwise, it will be reverted by some high school dropout.
Reality isn't what the lowest common denominator believes.
I'll have to add my Amen, Hallelujah, and all of that too.
I'm sick of Baby Boomers thinking that they and they alone are responsible for modern technology, culture, and political thought. I'd give far greater credit to the WW2 generation for creating most of the things that baby boomer steal credit for.
The WW2 generation created the basis for modern computing. The first computer was built in 1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC(Eniac), long before the Baby Boomers even existed. While I might concede that a few Baby Boomers may have been in utero at this point, they weren't responsible for computer design. Even the Eniac project was based on much earlier work by Charles Babbage.
Boomers may share part of the credit (or blame, depending) for the Hippy Counterculture, but even then, so much of the pop music was based on older styles like Jazz and R&B that Boomers can really only claim credit for a remix and a slight extension of older styles. The original stuff -- maybe the drugs and free love, but that's about it.
And as far as Vietnam, I suspect the withdrawl had more to do with a broken and demoralized millitary than any protests going on. Maybe I'm cynical, but I really don't think the government was impressed by Woodstock or teach-ins.
I know I'm exagerating a little bit, but for God's sake, can we have one milestone pass without hearing how the whiney little baby boomers are responsible for modern society? Can we have a discussion about Iraq that doesn't go back to Vietnam? I won't call you infantile, but you aren't the lynchpin of Western Society. You turned America into a Consumerist State, but that's about the only lasting impact the Boomers have.
My suggestion would be to have a series of allowed sites stored on the router. So the PC can go to say USAToday, CNN, Encyclopedia Britanica, Dictionary.com, and other sites that the parents suggest are appropriate. If the child needs to access something not on the list, then he has to ask first and get the parent to allow that site. Then the change is made at the router to allow him to view the site. So provided that you have good passwords on both the PC and the Router, it should be hard for anyone to break through to the internet.
It's not 100%, but it's doable, and it would make finding accidental porn harder. As added bonuses, it's going to be hard for him to download that cool game that's loaded with virii and spyware (something you definately DO NOT want on your business PC). It's done more commonly in business where you might need internet, but you don't want them to waste time at IGN rather than doing business on the business computer.
I think this will turn out to be a great thing for kickstarting civillian exploration of space. Nasa is too big and bloated to do it, even when congress doesn't strip funding to spend on the Ospray project. Civillians will be the ones to conquer space because they will reap the rewards -- mineral wealth, land rights, and civillian colonist user fees. Anything like that would be "public domain" if NASA goes first -- which doesn't make them eager. They get the same reward whether they succeed or not.
What's taking them so long to learn it though -- it's been true for all of human history. Free people have a habit of offending people by saying what they actually think rather than what they're "supposed" to say. It's been true since Guttenberg -- If you give people the ability to speak without censorship, they'll speak.
So the "solution" is to get rid of the freedom part. Make sure every post and every site is preapproved by the suits, and you'll have a safe site for advertisers. Nothing offensive will appear underneath the ad.
Of course, the problem with that environment is that if you can't say anything offensive, you probably haven't said anything worth saying. The least popular person in the room is the guy who says exactly what he's thinking, but that guy has a much better chance of being right than the guy saying everything is fine. I think the FU** Islam people are wrong, but I don't want them banned.
I'll agree with you. Absolutely not a good move. I don't want to see little movies playing all over my computer screen when I search for something. And judging by other adverts online, not only will they be large, but obnoxious. They'll loop every 30 seconds.
All I want is to get the links I'm looking for without being hounded by obnoxious ads.
First off, I agree that *some* ADD exists. However, I think at least 75% of the time the problem isn't that the kid has an actual mental disorder, it's that the parents never bothered to teach them responsibilty in the first place. Brain disorders do exist, but when half of the average public school seems to have ADD, I don't think it's the kids.
I work at a cafeteria, and I was in charge of teenagers for a long time. It seems to me, just from observing their behavior that they'd never been *expected* to do a task to completion -- ever. They would pretty much look at you and laugh when you told them that they had to fill up all the cereals for the next morning, or that I was *shock* *horror* serious when I said that the tables were sticky and they'd have to wash them again. These kids were normal, of average intelligence, and they expected to get away with not doing what they were supposed to be doing. I gave up because the boss wasn't interested in getting rid of the lazy ones.
I actually sorta feel sorry for these kids, because once they get into the real, adult world, they're in for a world of hurt. The boss isn't going to accept a half finished report, and isn't going to stand over them to make sure they're working when they're supposed to be. And the bill collectors aren't going to be swayed by their sob stories. They'll have to learn to be responsible on their own as an adult, rather than having been properly taught when they were kids.
And we absolutely are an instant gratification society. We don't save for months to buy a new toy, we put it on credit. We get impatient at red lights and standing in line at the store. Our most popular programs are game shows where a contestant has a chance to be simply handed a prize worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think its a healthy way to run a society.
Back in 1955, if a kid didn't do as he was supposed to, the kid got in trouble. Today, if a kid doesn't do as he is told, he doesn't get in trouble. In fact many times it gets him a bribe. "Do your homework, and we'll go out for icecream!". So the kid doesn't ever learn to do things that simply *have* to get done. He stays a child for his entire life (at least as far as maturity goes.
Secondly, our entire culture is set up around people catering to you. A kid in 1955 or even 1965 wasn't trained to think that he had to have all kinds of toys and video games. He wasn't used to the idea that school was supposed to be entertaining. We're essentially an instant gratification society -- one that expects -- DEMANDS -- that we get everything we want quickly and easily without effort.
I don't think TV is as much to blame as the culture in general. We're trained to seek instant gratification. Doing a page of math problems is not instant gratification, and unless a child learns to delay gratification he can't focus on boring math problems. That's not biological problems. It's culture.
Money = the microphone. You can still print out or write anything you want and other than buying paper, it's free. You have the right to free speech. No one ever said anything about the microphone.
As far as KOS is concerned -- no we haven't seen the last of it. I expect the blogs to be regulated like PAC before too long. There are too many people with a lot of power who don't want some upstart blogger to have enough power to sway voters. They want to be able to control what's said, and the mainstream press is already pretty tame on the whole deal. They need to get interviews with the candidates, so they don't investigate them, and they don't publish anything negative about them. Blogs are the last truely independent press, and I think that scares the Elitist Superstructure who don't want to answer tough questions.
But they don't *want* casual players!
What sets a casual player apart from the hardcore? Hardcore players spend a lot of time (and more importantly MONEY) on their gaming rigs and games. They buy the game guides, they'll pay for the extra content. They'll buy the Expansion Packs the second they arrive -- because they've reached the end of the last expansion 6 months ago. In short, they're the ones you get the money from.
Casuals on the other hand, play a few hours a week if that. They probably don't buy the game guide, they aren't interested in "extra content", and they won't reach the end of the basic game until the second Expansion Pack hits the bargin bin. All of this of course assumes that the player can sustain interest long enough to *finish* the original content -- and continues to pay his monthly fee.
For MMOs, the audience to please will never be the casual fan. The casual fan doesn't put enough money into the MMO to be worth the effort.
I think the idea of having a group think up scenarios is a good idea. The thing is, we've chosen the wrong group. Sci-Fi writers, by and large are athiest, and have fairly strong technophilia. Add to that the fact that the scifi guys in question are Western and most likely American in culture, and you can see the problem.
The ideal "Sigma-style" thinktank should be composed of muslims, perferably Middle Eastern muslims. They share more traits with the group whose minds we're trying to emulate. In fact they probably share most traits with Al-qaida (hopefully other than the terrorism-is-good meme). So they'll be more likely to be thinking along the same lines as Al-Qaida.
Westerners, for the most part aren't thinking of suicide attacks as a way to heaven (even less so for an athiest). We aren't thinking in terms of such a thing bringing glory to God (even the IRA wasn't attacking in the name of Catholicism), but more likely thinking in terms of political or economic ideas. We can't predict what they'll do because we don't think like them.
I can't figure out why the WTC was a target in the first place. It wasn't millitary, and it wasn't government. It wasn't symbolic of anything (like say the statue of liberty or a monument). Wall Street might even have made more sense (to my Western Educated mind), as it's the heart of the American economy. We can't predict the next attack based on what Westerners come up with, even if they are physicists with an imagination. They'll pick targets that appeal to the Western culture, not the Islamic culture. And culture makes a huge difference in how people see the world.
I just don't get this. The guy was an ACTOR. It isn't like he was really into space, at least I don't think so. So what would be the point of sending his ashes into space (momentarily forgetting about the "losing them" thing). Can't former Trek actors ever get away from the role? Even in death, he's Scotty the space loving Scott drunk on scotch. So they launch the guy into space because launching a Trek actor into space gives space publicity.
Maybe he hated space, maybe he took a stupid acting job to like you know pay bills or something. I know you liked the show, I like it too, but stop trying to turn the corpse of an actor into space promotion.
Seriously. As others have mentioned, the "formula" is bullshit, so I won't bore you with that one.
However, the idea that they've "proven" that procrastination is caused by low self-esteem sounds like even more bullshit. For years, everything wrong with the world has been caused by the West's most insidious disease, low self-esteem. It causes people to become wife beaters, kids to not do well in school, drug use, short attention span, poor performance, etc. etc. Not that being suicidally depressed might make you procrastinate, but I think the real problem is lack of discipline.
People do things all the time that they don't consider important. We pay our bills, we cut our grass, we go to work every day, we go to the gas station and the grocery. None of these tasks are "inspiring", or "fun". We do them because we have to. We do them even if we feel worthless or unimportant. If the article is right, the "low self-esteemed" types should be sitting home and watching Regis rather than doing any of those things. Yet we do them all the time. It isn't low self esteem or lack of inspiration that makes a person skip math homework to watch TV or play Halo, it's the lack of willpower to buckle down and do the work.
I'm tired of "self-esteem" and its cult mucking up worthwhile activities. We can't compete in sports, lest the losers feel bad. We can't grade papers in red ink, because it will hurt the fragile self-esteem of kids who think 2+2=22. We shouldn't correct a kid's spelling, better that he graduate illiterate than have his self-esteem damaged by having to learn the proper spelling of words in the English language.
If we're really so fragile that low self esteem can make you nonfunctional, how the hell did humanity survive to this point?
There are some areas that I wouldn't expect the average nonIT guy to know. And the problem is the exact same thing that you see in Parent.
It isn't the user's job to know how every minor function of every program to work. They were hired to do a specific job. They're the financial accountant, why are you expecting them to know how how to manage the user accounts on their part of the network without training? Some might, but it isn't an essential part of the job they do.
It's a lot closer to being able to change the oil or spark plugs in my car. I can still get my car from home to work to the store without having to know how to change the oil. When I do need the oil change, I go to the Jiffy Lube. There's really no need for the average driver to know how to fix his own car.
Yet, for the same types of ignorance, IT guys feel the need to act as though the users are retarded if they can't do the IT equivelent of oil changes and spark plugs. It isn't the user's job to tweak their machine. It isn't their job to know the IT network forwards and backwards. You can teach anyone the big things, but don't expect them to learn everything.
It's the job of IT to secure the network. If doing something would harm you, then it's your job to make sure that they can't do it. If you think the "lusers" are too stupid to understand "opening attachments is bad", then block them at the firewall. If you don't think the users will understand that macros can carry a virus, disable macros when you install Word. There's no reason to force users to do IT work that they don't want to learn.
Fine, but consider the fact that this is with LESS than a million consoles sold, and within a month and a half of launch. It isn't just having consoles on the self that has people thinking that Sony is going to lose massively. It's the people who can't tell the difference between 360 and ps3 (85% of us without hidef), and scores of others who've been impressed with the Wii and can barely manage a "meh" for the ps3. Maybe because most manufacturers aren't planing ps3 exclusives anymore. Maybe it was the fact that Square Enix is so disappointed in ps3 sales that they'd rather release Dragon Quest on the NDS than the ps3.
I challenge the ps3 fanbois to show me one place where ps3 is leading the competition (assuming that, as is true for most people, the consumer doesn't have a hidef tv). Games? Xbox has a whole library of next gen games. Control? Wii has sixaxis kicked to the curb. Price? ps3 $600. Xbox360 $300, Wii $250. Then there's the complete waste of airtime ads -- maybe it would help if people saw the actual graphics instead of the self-solving rubix cube and crying babydoll? Honestly, the fact that they're still selling out baffles me -- there can't be that many rich retarded people out there.
Honestly, do you READ? There are numerous stories out there of ps3 being available for 6-7 hours in a store -- nobody wants them. Compare that to Wiis, where people are calling multiple stores to find them. Compare on just about any demand curve, and ps3 LOSES HORRIBLY. The price is too high, there are no games worth buying, and the controller is an obvious Wii knockoff.
Now addressing each of your points:
1.) Selling out of product when you're DELIBERATELY RESTRICTING SUPPLY is not demand either. Wii is already well on its way to 1 million units. ps3 still hasn't sold 400,000 units (and most "sales" were eBay scalpers, not people who wanted to PLAY with the ps3).
2. The numbers say otherwise. Most ps3s are either returned, unopened, or traded for Wiis. The facts say that ps3s are easier to get. Sorry, but watching the Sony store doesn't count as research.
3. Actually, you (and Sony) better pray they don't try the Demo Boxes in the stores -- they freeze up. I've yet to see an unfrozen ps3 demo display.
4. Once again, it comes down to Sony restricting supply, not actual demand. Sony made 400,000 units, and they sell out immediately. Wii has about a million units, and you can find a few here and there. You do the math.
But when ps3 goes Dreamcast on ya, you can talk about its obvious superiority.
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Part of the reason for the increase in degenerative diseases is that we're living a lot longer than we used too. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf (detailed tables #10) 22,960 75-year-olds were alive in 1900, compared with 65,717 in 2003. Since we live longer than we used to, any diseases that are more common in the elderly are more common. Some of these are heart disease and cancer, dementia, alzheimers, etc. So it's really not all that surprising that as we get more 75-year-olds, we see a lot more degenerative conditions. Some of this may be food related, but I think there's also the cruel twist of evolution. Evolution cares whether you have and successfully raise children. Once you've reproduced and your children are grown, evolution doesn't care about what happens, so your body isn't designed to last much past that. Sure we can slow down the aging using tricks and modern medicine, but eventually you reach the upper limit of how long a human being can live.
I think this is one of the dead ends. What I want to be able to do is make moral choices that affect the entire world. I want to be able to decide that the cost of saving the world is just too high and leave. I want to have choices between different courses of action and have a consequence to whatever I choose to do.
If the cost of saving Spira is allowing Yuna to die, why the hell isn't it my choice to make? Why does the game present such a moral dilemma just to have the game decide for me? Why is it that after discovering that Kohint will disappear after I destroy the Wind Fish, the game presents me with no alternative? That isn't realistic, at least not to me. It's never me playing the role or connecting with the characters. I might like them, but considering that I have zero power to decide what happens in the world, I may as well be watching a movie.
I think games will become more emotional once you get the power that video games promise. That you and only you can decide how and why you want to save the world. Or even *if* you think that saving the world is a good idea. It's supposed to be me playing the role -- let me play in the sandbox and decide that some actions are right and some are wrong. Put up a consequence, make me suffer for a bad choice. Just let me choose.
I love offline games. The reason that I don't like paying a monthly fee for games is that in order to get the money back, you have to set aside time to play it. Not paying for a month means that lvl 60 Bard you've been working on gets deleted.
That's the trouble. MMOs have the same time-sink mentality. If you travel with a group, you'd better keep up with them, because if you get to be more than 2-3 levels behind them, you can't do the same quests as they do. So they either redo the easy quests with you, or leave you behind. So you'd have to play several hours a week -- in order to play the game.
Now compare the above to an offline RPG. I own the disk. No one's going to charge me to use my copy of FF12. No one will delete my lvl 60 party for nonpayment of fees. I don't have to set up a time to play it so that I don't fall behind the rest of the party. I could set the game aside for 6 months, never touch it (say if I get busy, or if I simply *don't want to play it*) and everything will still be exactly as I left it. I'm not going to lose out just because I didn't have enough time to play this month.
That's what I love about offline gaming. I don't feel pressured to put tons of hours into a game just to get a little pleasure from questing with my buddies. I don't want to feel like I'm losing money because I'm not playing as much as I did last month. Offline does that.
One thing I really don't get about steganography is why hiding a message *in* a picture is preferable to sending the picture as a message.
For example, if "teh terrist" wanted to send a message like "attack now", why couldn't the message be given via a pre-arranged signal -- say the image shows Osama wearing a silver watch for "It's go time", and a gold watch for "wait out the Americans". No one can detect a "hidden message" because there is none.
You could do the same for other things even if you don't use USB (which would probably be easiest in a workplace). How about plain old pencil and paper? Just write down the information, put it in a device called an "envelope", write down the physical address of the guy you're sending it to, and drop it off in the post office. It's virtually untraceable, and would work even if the IT guys turn off the USB ports.
I don't think so.
I get a console over a PC for a couple of reasons. Cost isn't one of them.
1.) Developers mess with my DLLs. Sometimes this breaks other programs I'm already using. I've had a few programs die this way. I use my PC for other things besides gaming, and I need them to work.
2.) With consoles up to this point (and I think it could change now that they have HD choice) it's been simple to figure out what works on my machine. If it says ps2 on the box, it works in my launch day ps2. Even if it were released tommarow for ps2, it will work on any ps2. PC gamers have to worry about graphics cards being up to date, drivers, RAM, disk space, OS type, etc.
3.) A lot of buggy PC software gets released -- they'll freeze of crash or they just plain won't work. The solution seems to be to wait for the developers to fix the problem and release a patch. A console game works right out of the box. I've never yet had a game refuse to work in my ps2.
For me, it boils down to convienience -- I don't have to worry about whether my system will play a random game. If it has the name of the console on the box, it works in that console. Put it in and play.
Besides that, it's the game company that decides what gets sent. Most are probably fairly honest about it, but you can't really check to make sure that you got all the worst content. They might leave a minigame out, or a bit of dialog that is worse than the ones they submitted to ESRB. And even if you did get all of the bad content, chances are it's at least somewhat out of context. Maybe that gruesome disembowlment is one of several options and the player will be punished for choosing it. Maybe some innocent sounding snippets of dialog are actually racist in context (say they constantly mock the only black guy in the game). You just can't know without the full version.
I don't know that a focus group is the way to go either. I'd imagine that people on both sides (say Parent's Television Council and anti-censorship types) are keen to get their people in on the ESRB ratings game so that they can push it in the direction they want it to go. If they went to a more objective system -- counting the curse words and violent scenes for example, you couldn't push an agenda as easily. There are only so many swear words in a game, and they won't change just because John Hagee is doing the counting.
So a Mac is literally blocked from going to Yahoo.com? Firefox can't be either reconfigured to use a Yahoo! toolbar or surf over to Ask.com's homepage? It might be inconvienient, but it can be done. The difference between a monopoly and a competitive advantage is the simple question of "Is it even possible to make a different choice". In the case of search engines, it's possible.
And while I believe in free speech, there is no right to a microphone. You have the right to SAY whatever you want. But you don't have a right to force someone else to display your content. I can't claim my "free speech" was violated just because NBC didn't air my ad rant about the high cost of cheese. It's their platform, and other than following nondiscrimination laws, they can do what they want to with it.
I think refusing to air one side of a political debate is "EVIL", but they are within their rights here. So I'm going to exercise my right to never touch Google again.
I wouldn't expect the RIAA to report a decision that hurts them, but I think that could be an illegal act. I think not telling the whole truth about the precident in a case is illegal. Does anyone know for sure? I'd be amazed if they got away with this, but I'm not shocked that they'd try it.
I've read things like Steven Hawking's books. That does not make me qualified to interpret String Theory. I've taken courses in psychology, but I'm not really a trained psychologist. Wikipedia doesn't even take this into account. My edits on String Theory are treated exactly the same as Hawking's. I don't think that's a good way to insure accuracy. I'm much more likely to misunderstand a theory in cosmology than an actual cosmologist. He's trained. He's spent thousands of hours reading and studying, and for that matter researching cosmology. I've read a book, and for that matter, it wasn't aimed at physicists, it was aimed at "the average man".
Until WPdia recognizes that, I don't think it's really reliable. It may be "stable", meaning that what it explains about math and physics doesn't change much, but that could be because the article matches what people believe is true. If the majority of editors believe that Warp Drive is real, that's what the stable version will say. And if actual physicists edit the page to say otherwise, it will be reverted by some high school dropout.
Reality isn't what the lowest common denominator believes.
The WW2 generation created the basis for modern computing. The first computer was built in 1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC(Eniac), long before the Baby Boomers even existed. While I might concede that a few Baby Boomers may have been in utero at this point, they weren't responsible for computer design. Even the Eniac project was based on much earlier work by Charles Babbage.
Boomers may share part of the credit (or blame, depending) for the Hippy Counterculture, but even then, so much of the pop music was based on older styles like Jazz and R&B that Boomers can really only claim credit for a remix and a slight extension of older styles. The original stuff -- maybe the drugs and free love, but that's about it.
And as far as Vietnam, I suspect the withdrawl had more to do with a broken and demoralized millitary than any protests going on. Maybe I'm cynical, but I really don't think the government was impressed by Woodstock or teach-ins.
I know I'm exagerating a little bit, but for God's sake, can we have one milestone pass without hearing how the whiney little baby boomers are responsible for modern society? Can we have a discussion about Iraq that doesn't go back to Vietnam? I won't call you infantile, but you aren't the lynchpin of Western Society. You turned America into a Consumerist State, but that's about the only lasting impact the Boomers have.
My suggestion would be to have a series of allowed sites stored on the router. So the PC can go to say USAToday, CNN, Encyclopedia Britanica, Dictionary.com, and other sites that the parents suggest are appropriate. If the child needs to access something not on the list, then he has to ask first and get the parent to allow that site. Then the change is made at the router to allow him to view the site. So provided that you have good passwords on both the PC and the Router, it should be hard for anyone to break through to the internet.
It's not 100%, but it's doable, and it would make finding accidental porn harder. As added bonuses, it's going to be hard for him to download that cool game that's loaded with virii and spyware (something you definately DO NOT want on your business PC). It's done more commonly in business where you might need internet, but you don't want them to waste time at IGN rather than doing business on the business computer.
I think this will turn out to be a great thing for kickstarting civillian exploration of space. Nasa is too big and bloated to do it, even when congress doesn't strip funding to spend on the Ospray project. Civillians will be the ones to conquer space because they will reap the rewards -- mineral wealth, land rights, and civillian colonist user fees. Anything like that would be "public domain" if NASA goes first -- which doesn't make them eager. They get the same reward whether they succeed or not.
What's taking them so long to learn it though -- it's been true for all of human history. Free people have a habit of offending people by saying what they actually think rather than what they're "supposed" to say. It's been true since Guttenberg -- If you give people the ability to speak without censorship, they'll speak. So the "solution" is to get rid of the freedom part. Make sure every post and every site is preapproved by the suits, and you'll have a safe site for advertisers. Nothing offensive will appear underneath the ad. Of course, the problem with that environment is that if you can't say anything offensive, you probably haven't said anything worth saying. The least popular person in the room is the guy who says exactly what he's thinking, but that guy has a much better chance of being right than the guy saying everything is fine. I think the FU** Islam people are wrong, but I don't want them banned.
I'll agree with you. Absolutely not a good move. I don't want to see little movies playing all over my computer screen when I search for something. And judging by other adverts online, not only will they be large, but obnoxious. They'll loop every 30 seconds. All I want is to get the links I'm looking for without being hounded by obnoxious ads.
First off, I agree that *some* ADD exists. However, I think at least 75% of the time the problem isn't that the kid has an actual mental disorder, it's that the parents never bothered to teach them responsibilty in the first place. Brain disorders do exist, but when half of the average public school seems to have ADD, I don't think it's the kids.
I work at a cafeteria, and I was in charge of teenagers for a long time. It seems to me, just from observing their behavior that they'd never been *expected* to do a task to completion -- ever. They would pretty much look at you and laugh when you told them that they had to fill up all the cereals for the next morning, or that I was *shock* *horror* serious when I said that the tables were sticky and they'd have to wash them again. These kids were normal, of average intelligence, and they expected to get away with not doing what they were supposed to be doing. I gave up because the boss wasn't interested in getting rid of the lazy ones.
I actually sorta feel sorry for these kids, because once they get into the real, adult world, they're in for a world of hurt. The boss isn't going to accept a half finished report, and isn't going to stand over them to make sure they're working when they're supposed to be. And the bill collectors aren't going to be swayed by their sob stories. They'll have to learn to be responsible on their own as an adult, rather than having been properly taught when they were kids.
And we absolutely are an instant gratification society. We don't save for months to buy a new toy, we put it on credit. We get impatient at red lights and standing in line at the store. Our most popular programs are game shows where a contestant has a chance to be simply handed a prize worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think its a healthy way to run a society.
Well, I have my own theory.
Back in 1955, if a kid didn't do as he was supposed to, the kid got in trouble. Today, if a kid doesn't do as he is told, he doesn't get in trouble. In fact many times it gets him a bribe. "Do your homework, and we'll go out for icecream!". So the kid doesn't ever learn to do things that simply *have* to get done. He stays a child for his entire life (at least as far as maturity goes.
Secondly, our entire culture is set up around people catering to you. A kid in 1955 or even 1965 wasn't trained to think that he had to have all kinds of toys and video games. He wasn't used to the idea that school was supposed to be entertaining. We're essentially an instant gratification society -- one that expects -- DEMANDS -- that we get everything we want quickly and easily without effort.
I don't think TV is as much to blame as the culture in general. We're trained to seek instant gratification. Doing a page of math problems is not instant gratification, and unless a child learns to delay gratification he can't focus on boring math problems. That's not biological problems. It's culture.
Money = the microphone. You can still print out or write anything you want and other than buying paper, it's free. You have the right to free speech. No one ever said anything about the microphone.
As far as KOS is concerned -- no we haven't seen the last of it. I expect the blogs to be regulated like PAC before too long. There are too many people with a lot of power who don't want some upstart blogger to have enough power to sway voters. They want to be able to control what's said, and the mainstream press is already pretty tame on the whole deal. They need to get interviews with the candidates, so they don't investigate them, and they don't publish anything negative about them. Blogs are the last truely independent press, and I think that scares the Elitist Superstructure who don't want to answer tough questions.
But they don't *want* casual players! What sets a casual player apart from the hardcore? Hardcore players spend a lot of time (and more importantly MONEY) on their gaming rigs and games. They buy the game guides, they'll pay for the extra content. They'll buy the Expansion Packs the second they arrive -- because they've reached the end of the last expansion 6 months ago. In short, they're the ones you get the money from. Casuals on the other hand, play a few hours a week if that. They probably don't buy the game guide, they aren't interested in "extra content", and they won't reach the end of the basic game until the second Expansion Pack hits the bargin bin. All of this of course assumes that the player can sustain interest long enough to *finish* the original content -- and continues to pay his monthly fee. For MMOs, the audience to please will never be the casual fan. The casual fan doesn't put enough money into the MMO to be worth the effort.
I think the idea of having a group think up scenarios is a good idea. The thing is, we've chosen the wrong group. Sci-Fi writers, by and large are athiest, and have fairly strong technophilia. Add to that the fact that the scifi guys in question are Western and most likely American in culture, and you can see the problem. The ideal "Sigma-style" thinktank should be composed of muslims, perferably Middle Eastern muslims. They share more traits with the group whose minds we're trying to emulate. In fact they probably share most traits with Al-qaida (hopefully other than the terrorism-is-good meme). So they'll be more likely to be thinking along the same lines as Al-Qaida. Westerners, for the most part aren't thinking of suicide attacks as a way to heaven (even less so for an athiest). We aren't thinking in terms of such a thing bringing glory to God (even the IRA wasn't attacking in the name of Catholicism), but more likely thinking in terms of political or economic ideas. We can't predict what they'll do because we don't think like them. I can't figure out why the WTC was a target in the first place. It wasn't millitary, and it wasn't government. It wasn't symbolic of anything (like say the statue of liberty or a monument). Wall Street might even have made more sense (to my Western Educated mind), as it's the heart of the American economy. We can't predict the next attack based on what Westerners come up with, even if they are physicists with an imagination. They'll pick targets that appeal to the Western culture, not the Islamic culture. And culture makes a huge difference in how people see the world.
I just don't get this. The guy was an ACTOR. It isn't like he was really into space, at least I don't think so. So what would be the point of sending his ashes into space (momentarily forgetting about the "losing them" thing). Can't former Trek actors ever get away from the role? Even in death, he's Scotty the space loving Scott drunk on scotch. So they launch the guy into space because launching a Trek actor into space gives space publicity.
Maybe he hated space, maybe he took a stupid acting job to like you know pay bills or something. I know you liked the show, I like it too, but stop trying to turn the corpse of an actor into space promotion.
Besides, the real deal is Helium-3 for fusion.
However, the idea that they've "proven" that procrastination is caused by low self-esteem sounds like even more bullshit. For years, everything wrong with the world has been caused by the West's most insidious disease, low self-esteem. It causes people to become wife beaters, kids to not do well in school, drug use, short attention span, poor performance, etc. etc. Not that being suicidally depressed might make you procrastinate, but I think the real problem is lack of discipline.
People do things all the time that they don't consider important. We pay our bills, we cut our grass, we go to work every day, we go to the gas station and the grocery. None of these tasks are "inspiring", or "fun". We do them because we have to. We do them even if we feel worthless or unimportant. If the article is right, the "low self-esteemed" types should be sitting home and watching Regis rather than doing any of those things. Yet we do them all the time. It isn't low self esteem or lack of inspiration that makes a person skip math homework to watch TV or play Halo, it's the lack of willpower to buckle down and do the work.
I'm tired of "self-esteem" and its cult mucking up worthwhile activities. We can't compete in sports, lest the losers feel bad. We can't grade papers in red ink, because it will hurt the fragile self-esteem of kids who think 2+2=22. We shouldn't correct a kid's spelling, better that he graduate illiterate than have his self-esteem damaged by having to learn the proper spelling of words in the English language.
If we're really so fragile that low self esteem can make you nonfunctional, how the hell did humanity survive to this point?
It isn't the user's job to know how every minor function of every program to work. They were hired to do a specific job. They're the financial accountant, why are you expecting them to know how how to manage the user accounts on their part of the network without training? Some might, but it isn't an essential part of the job they do.
It's a lot closer to being able to change the oil or spark plugs in my car. I can still get my car from home to work to the store without having to know how to change the oil. When I do need the oil change, I go to the Jiffy Lube. There's really no need for the average driver to know how to fix his own car.
Yet, for the same types of ignorance, IT guys feel the need to act as though the users are retarded if they can't do the IT equivelent of oil changes and spark plugs. It isn't the user's job to tweak their machine. It isn't their job to know the IT network forwards and backwards. You can teach anyone the big things, but don't expect them to learn everything.
It's the job of IT to secure the network. If doing something would harm you, then it's your job to make sure that they can't do it. If you think the "lusers" are too stupid to understand "opening attachments is bad", then block them at the firewall. If you don't think the users will understand that macros can carry a virus, disable macros when you install Word. There's no reason to force users to do IT work that they don't want to learn.
Fine, but consider the fact that this is with LESS than a million consoles sold, and within a month and a half of launch. It isn't just having consoles on the self that has people thinking that Sony is going to lose massively. It's the people who can't tell the difference between 360 and ps3 (85% of us without hidef), and scores of others who've been impressed with the Wii and can barely manage a "meh" for the ps3. Maybe because most manufacturers aren't planing ps3 exclusives anymore. Maybe it was the fact that Square Enix is so disappointed in ps3 sales that they'd rather release Dragon Quest on the NDS than the ps3.
I challenge the ps3 fanbois to show me one place where ps3 is leading the competition (assuming that, as is true for most people, the consumer doesn't have a hidef tv). Games? Xbox has a whole library of next gen games. Control? Wii has sixaxis kicked to the curb. Price? ps3 $600. Xbox360 $300, Wii $250. Then there's the complete waste of airtime ads -- maybe it would help if people saw the actual graphics instead of the self-solving rubix cube and crying babydoll? Honestly, the fact that they're still selling out baffles me -- there can't be that many rich retarded people out there.
Now addressing each of your points:
1.) Selling out of product when you're DELIBERATELY RESTRICTING SUPPLY is not demand either. Wii is already well on its way to 1 million units. ps3 still hasn't sold 400,000 units (and most "sales" were eBay scalpers, not people who wanted to PLAY with the ps3).
2. The numbers say otherwise. Most ps3s are either returned, unopened, or traded for Wiis. The facts say that ps3s are easier to get. Sorry, but watching the Sony store doesn't count as research.
3. Actually, you (and Sony) better pray they don't try the Demo Boxes in the stores -- they freeze up. I've yet to see an unfrozen ps3 demo display.
4. Once again, it comes down to Sony restricting supply, not actual demand. Sony made 400,000 units, and they sell out immediately. Wii has about a million units, and you can find a few here and there. You do the math.
But when ps3 goes Dreamcast on ya, you can talk about its obvious superiority.