Let's Play Deus Ex: A Series of Lectures

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Deus Ex: A Series of Lectures

egg tats: Apr 3, 2010

Zudrag posted:

Well to be fair, I think a problem highlighted in the exchange between the teacher and that big dumb blob is that paying teachers (and investing in education) is balancing act. Pay teachers too much, there is less budget to hire teachers to cover an appropriate amount of students. You might also draw in too many people that might "game the system" and be poor teachers that do it for the money and not for satisfying the natural urge of teaching. The more passion a person has in their work, such as teaching students, the more likely they are to work hard to do well in their work. I think everyone has encountered or been someone who works at a job just because it pays the bills that doesn't actually care about their work, and does the bare minimum to stay on the payroll. If running a public school or being a teacher at one suddenly became very profitable, I have a feeling the quality of teaching would suffer potentially as badly as if they had a lack of funding for appropriate resources.

On the other hand, if you pay teachers too little, there's a labor shortage because no one wants to be a teacher if you can't pay the bills. If you can't pay the bills with the money you're making from your career/job, you're going to look for work elsewhere real fast. Passion only propels you so far.

So I think that the reason teachers are paid fairly low is in this effort to keep the quality of teaching as high as possible by having the labor supply of teachers be people that are passionate about teaching, but keep people away that are simply out to make some easy dosh. Education is one of those things you don't want for your kid as "just barely acceptable", you generally want as good of an education as you can for yourself or your child.

If an institution like a school system, or even a government is given enough restrictions to keep out those who would use it for just making money away by making it a poor investment choice given alternatives, I bet the quality of the product or service that institution provides is likely to be high despite providing a meager living to those who work in that institution. Those that have a passion to help people, through teaching or implementing laws, would enjoy the job enough to not care about making too little money. This is of course incredibly hard to balance, especially with a large organization like a government. This is all of course, my opinion, and I can't help but feel there's holes in this logic I'm not quite seeing.

Unfortunately, no amount of money policies would help stop the "conspiracy" that teachers are teaching our children to "poo poo out satanic gay-liberal-abortions".

Or the US could buy like 3 fewer jets/year and fund all of its schools. Toss in a few tanks and you'll get health care too.

The only reason the United States, of all countries, has anything resembling a funding issue is that education is unimportant to the leadership.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 10:49

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 6, 2024 23:04

MuLepton: Apr 1, 2011; It's kind of a long story.

On the matter of how life as we know actually developed on Earth, I can only recommend Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane.
The author is a professor for biochemistry, and he clearly knows his stuff, but I also found the book a very enjoyable read, i.e. not dry at all. Note that he uses the term "invention" very loosely - he makes it quite clear that he doesn't believe that there is any kind of "intelligent design" at work.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 11:53

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I've never understood people who claim that there are such things as Satan-worshiping atheists.

I think it comes down to people actually not believing that atheists really exist. To some people the concept of simply not believing in God is utterly absurd, so anyone who says they don't must be a liar. And why would they be lying? Because they can't just come out and say they worship Satan, obviously.

Imagine you met someone who said they didn't believe in space. That's how some people see not believing in God.

Mordaedil posted:

For a similar experience, suppose you went to 2ch and started lurking, trying to interpret what they write there. Unless you know Japanese, in which case, yeah...

Are you saying that beings able to solve the problem of FTL travel wouldn't be able to figure out a way to translate human languages?

Zudrag posted:

So I think that the reason teachers are paid fairly low is in this effort to keep the quality of teaching as high as possible by having the labor supply of teachers be people that are passionate about teaching, but keep people away that are simply out to make some easy dosh.

This argument only seems to make sense if you don't really think about it. If you make a job more desirable then more people will want it, yes, and some of them won't be particularly interested in doing it well. But if enough people want the job then you have the freedom to hire only the cream of the crop, and people who actually have the ability to do the job well have extra incentive to want to do it.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 12:58

Mordaedil: Oct 25, 2007; Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?; Grimey Drawer

Tiggum posted:

Are you saying that beings able to solve the problem of FTL travel wouldn't be able to figure out a way to translate human languages?

I imagine it would be on level with Google translate.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 13:01

Jaramin: Oct 20, 2010

Tiggum posted:

Are you saying that beings able to solve the problem of FTL travel wouldn't be able to figure out a way to translate human languages?

It took a step by step analysis of the multilingual Rosetta Stone to figure out Egyptian Heiroglyphics. You need some common material or a living translator to be able to make sense of linguistics.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 13:22

Toes: Dec 6, 2011; Clods to the left of me,
Bookahs to the right.

Jaramin posted:

It took a step by step analysis of the multilingual Rosetta Stone to figure out Egyptian Heiroglyphics. You need some common material or a living translator to be able to make sense of linguistics.

That's where the probes come in.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 14:20

Attestant: Oct 23, 2012; Don't judge me.

Toes posted:

That's where the probes come in.

No, they certainly go in somewhere else.

:downsrim:

# ? Apr 23, 2014 14:24

Zudrag: Oct 7, 2009

EDIT: Getting off topic! Sorry!

Zudrag fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Apr 23, 2014

# ? Apr 23, 2014 14:55

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Zudrag posted:

Maybe I'm getting off topic here. If I am, let me know Bobbin and I'll just drop it. I don't want to stifle the discussion on things like warp technology and other cool science things with boring discussions about business!

It is getting a tad off-topic, yeah.

And as for picking up human languages, aliens would have the advantage of access to reading materials meant for children who are learning to read for the very first time. A living language, particularly in an era with near-universal literacy, is a hell of a lot simpler to figure out than something dead for thousands of years with only random bits and pieces to serve as examples.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 15:34

pun pundit: Nov 11, 2008; I feel the same way about the company bearing the same name.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

It is getting a tad off-topic, yeah.

And as for picking up human languages, aliens would have the advantage of access to reading materials meant for children who are learning to read for the very first time. A living language, particularly in an era with near-universal literacy, is a hell of a lot simpler to figure out than something dead for thousands of years with only random bits and pieces to serve as examples.

And once they've picked up a television set they have access to closed-captioning television which literally tells them how the sounds are transcribed and how the text is pronounced. They have thousands of examples of any common word in use that if cross-referenced should be pretty easy to figure out.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 15:44

Gildiss: Aug 24, 2010; Grimey Drawer

pun pundit posted:

And once they've picked up a television set they have access to closed-captioning television which literally tells them how the sounds are transcribed and how the text is pronounced. They have thousands of examples of any common word in use that if cross-referenced should be pretty easy to figure out.

Obamacare honey boo boo down dog. Burpee bubblebutt get nastayyy.
*Alien nods head knowingly*

# ? Apr 23, 2014 15:48

Junior G-man: Sep 15, 2004; Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

That sneaky top-line entrance to the army :staredog:

I have never seen that before, and I've played this game so many times.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 15:54

Or is it Sputnik: Aug 22, 2009; Oh, Ho-oh oh oh, oh whoa oh oh oh
I'll get 'em caught, show Oak what I've got

pun pundit posted:

And once they've picked up a television set they have access to closed-captioning television which literally tells them how the sounds are transcribed and how the text is pronounced. They have thousands of examples of any common word in use that if cross-referenced should be pretty easy to figure out.

Works for humans too. I learned how to understand English (as a second language) from "The Secret of Monkey Island", and how to speak it from "The A-Team".

# ? Apr 23, 2014 17:51

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Or is it Sputnik posted:

Works for humans too. I learned how to understand English (as a second language) from "The Secret of Monkey Island", and how to speak it from "The A-Team".

Yeah, I learned it from cartoons and video games, without any tutors or previous knowledge of the language.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 18:03

FinalGamer: Aug 30, 2012; So the mystic script says.

my dad posted:

Yeah, I learned it from cartoons and video games, without any tutors or previous knowledge of the language.

I had an ex-boyfriend from Sweden who entirely learnt English from both South Park and Beavis & Butthead. He's one of the most eloquent people I've ever known. It's weird how many people seem to pick it up purely by media, but if human beings can do it then aliens easily can do the same!

# ? Apr 23, 2014 18:24

Cooked Auto: Aug 4, 2007

A lot of my initial English education came from games such as Fallout 1 and 2 and movies. Never really learned English entirely from that but it gave me a nice boost.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 18:57

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

Gildiss posted:

Obamacare honey boo boo down dog. Burpee bubblebutt get nastayyy.
*Alien nods head knowingly*

some days it's depressing to know that songs written almost 25 years ago about this very thing were right

# ? Apr 23, 2014 19:42

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Aces High posted:

some days it's depressing to know that songs written almost 25 years ago about this very thing were right

I think that song's more about the eternal criticism of "We spend too much time on entertainment rather than politics" ("shadows grouped around the TV sets" = died too distracted to notice the hydrogen bombs drop) than it is about the nonsensical ramblings of Youtube's automatic captions feature.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 20:01

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

I was commenting on earlier mentions of "the aliens have always been watching" since that's the eclipse of the song "they checked out all the data on their list/but then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed" but yes the main point of the song is about our connection to our material goods and worth will be the death of us as a species

# ? Apr 23, 2014 20:50

Dragonwagon: Mar 28, 2010; And that, as much as anything else, led to my drinking problem.

my dad posted:

Yeah, I learned it from cartoons and video games, without any tutors or previous knowledge of the language.

Same here. It's crazy easy to learn languages as a kid.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 23:00

rabiddeity: Jun 2, 2011

Or is it Sputnik posted:

Works for humans too. I learned how to understand English (as a second language) from "The Secret of Monkey Island", and how to speak it from "The A-Team".

I imagined your first English interaction going something like this:

:downs:

: Nice weather we're having, isn't it?
:hist101:

: How appropriate. You fight like a cow!

# ? Apr 25, 2014 03:18

Glazius: Jul 22, 2007; Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.; Clapping Larry

So that's MJ-12. Fits pretty well in an "all conspiracies are real" game.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 19:40

steinrokkan: Apr 2, 2011; Soiled Meat

Glazius posted:

So that's MJ-12. Fits pretty well in an "all conspiracies are real" game.

They even have a Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12

A supposed group tasked with cover up of extraterrestrial life and / or top secret military objects. They also played a huge part in the X-Files narrative.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 19:51

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

It's a pretty catchy name for a secret government conspiracy, if nothing else. I also like that it is abbreviated as "MJ-12".

# ? Apr 25, 2014 20:21

kalonZombie: May 24, 2010; D&D 3.5 Book of Erotic Fantasy

I'm surprised that nobody in here has caught the little tidbit where a one Dr. Moreau had a note talking about genetic enhancements.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 20:22

Kangra: May 7, 2012

kalonZombie posted:

I'm surprised that nobody in here has caught the little tidbit where a one Dr. Moreau had a note talking about genetic enhancements.

There was also a Dr. Verne in this section.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 22:19

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Dr. Moreau actually has a conversation with JC, although I think I screwed something up with it.

And I almost forgot, but I managed to get a full copy of the MJ-12 manual while doing research for this corner, so if any of you need to perform an official government recovery and cover-up operation, here you go.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:02

FinalGamer: Aug 30, 2012; So the mystic script says.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Dr. Moreau actually has a conversation with JC, although I think I screwed something up with it.

And I almost forgot, but I managed to get a full copy of the MJ-12 manual while doing research for this corner, so if any of you need to perform an official government recovery and cover-up operation, here you go.

Thanks, but I still have my "official" Men in Black PC game manual which was absurdly large and read like a job interview for what skills you had, in dealing with "non-human civilians", "assailants of all proportions" and "elite physical fitness or unnatural endurance against other forces". :c00lbert:

Just a pretty rad manual for a rather weird third-player action game.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 04:21

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Handouts:

Series P Agents
Paul Denton's Pre-Eval
Reyes Email: Killswitch Evaluation
Jacobson Email: RE: Inquiry
Carter Email: Thank You
JC Email: Get Out
Manderley Email: Disappointed
Lloyd Email: Full Alert
Handbook: The World
UNATCO Bulletin: Hong Kong in Turmoil
Sherman's Password
UNATCO's Passwords

Known misses: Several, but I managed to cover my rear end in the same video this time.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 16:59

J.theYellow: May 7, 2003; Slippery Tilde

Youtube video's still private.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 17:01

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

J.theYellow posted:

Youtube video's still private.

I clicked the drat buttons, I guess it just didn't take. Should be working now.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 17:06

J.theYellow: May 7, 2003; Slippery Tilde

I ended up watching the Dailymotion version for the first time. Nicely done.

Fun bit: If the Karkians or Greasels have a body to munch on, they'll leave JC alone. But the bodies will eventually explode into dog food, so don't expect it to last long.

Also, if you stun the MiB in the control center of the nanotech lab, he's got an upgrade canister on him. Hard to pull that one off without anyone noticing, though, and that's actually something from the previous video.

Also, if Paul dies in the apartment raid, his body is on the slab where you find him alive. Somehow just looking at him is enough for Daedalus to declare that his "datavault" is accessed.

I would never have known that about Miguel.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 18:13

Edward_Tohr: Aug 11, 2012; In lieu of meaningful text, I'm just going to mention I've been exploding all day and now it hurts to breathe, so I'm sure you all understand.

Huh. Knowing her killphrase locks you out of a proper fight with Anna. Never knew that.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 18:41

AstroWhale: Mar 28, 2009

Are some of the parts of the E-Mails references to something?

UNATCO's Passwords
I don't speak Latin. What does the last sentence say?

Carter Email: Thank You
Minister of true lies? While they sleep, we win?

Jacobson Email: RE: Inquiry
The oracle would like to know what you think of the color blue?

# ? Apr 28, 2014 18:43

Bobbin Threadbare: Jan 2, 2009; I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

AstroWhale posted:

Are some of the parts of the E-Mails references to something?

UNATCO's Passwords
I don't speak Latin. What does the last sentence say?

Carter Email: Thank You
Minister of true lies? While they sleep, we win?

Jacobson Email: RE: Inquiry
The oracle would like to know what you think of the color blue?

Oh, right. I looked up the phrases but I forgot to mention them. MJ-12's slogan means "Knowledge is power," the Ministry of True Lies is just what you said, and blue is my favorite color! :v:

(I Do Not Like Peas already mentioned that The Oracle is an old Usenet distributed questions/answers service that's been co-opted by the Rosicrucians).

# ? Apr 28, 2014 18:47

berryjon: May 30, 2011; I have an invasion to go to.

Another I think you missed is talking to Carter after talking to Janice. IIRC, he has somethings to say about her thefts.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 19:16

Prenton: Feb 17, 2011; Ner nerr-nerrr ner

I think you can use that terminal in the comm bunker, but you have to be at just the right angle to activate it rather than the bot.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 19:39

double nine: Aug 8, 2013

berryjon posted:

Another I think you missed is talking to Carter after talking to Janice. IIRC, he has somethings to say about her thefts.

Yes. Basically, JC will tattletail on Janice, and Carter will state that WSimons already knows she's been stealing, and that this gives Carter/JC a good cover for raiding the armory. He says something along the lines that she'll have a nasty surprise when she checks in for work tomorrow.

edit: I never noticed before but Jacobson has keyboards on his pants. The hell?

edit2: over/under: It's going to take Bobbin 6/7 videos to get through Hong Kong. Probably 6 videos.

double nine fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Apr 28, 2014

# ? Apr 28, 2014 19:41

OAquinas: Jan 27, 2008; Biden has sat immobile on the Iron Throne of America. He is the Master of Malarkey by the will of the gods, and master of a million votes by the might of his inexhaustible calamari.

double nine posted:

edit: I never noticed before but Jacobson has keyboards on his pants. The hell?

Yeah, wearable computers/ergonomics. It also has to do with all the wires all over his clothes--it's totally what techie guys will be wearing in the future--anywhere is a terminal, just sit down!

# ? Apr 28, 2014 20:47

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 6, 2024 23:04

Tony SpaZ: Dec 17, 2009

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in the thread so far, but I love this little bit of foreshadowing. At the bottom of every computer, you'll find the text "Daedalus:GlobalNode:" followed by the address for the terminal you're accessing.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 20:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Deus Ex: A Series of Lectures

«‹›107 »