Our Tax Dollars at Work

TheRoadDog

The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft. Wouldn’t we all love to have a “research job” like that?

ninerbuff

Even better is that they'll get some info that's meaningless and keep giving grants to continue the research.

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wolverine66

when video games get blamed for psychologically effecting people and leading to things like street violence and mass killings, it's probably something that should be researched. I don't know what, specifically, they are trying to research with "World of Warcraft."

side note: i used to work for a company that did video game testing. We hired people to play video games all day and try to find glitches and bugs. It was a dream job until they were assigned some kid's educational game that they had to play over and over 100 times.

SwannySez

All of them "research" things are bunk in my mind. We already know all there is that needs knowing. Stuff like this UC Irvine study looking at what might happen in the future? That's like pretending Allah did not make this world in 7 days.

If you want to read their lies and filth trying to justify this waste, you can do so here:

http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477835-virtual-world.html

Don't come crying to me if your eyes bleed though. These computers will wreak havoc on your precious bodily fluids.

_John_

Academia...I got spoiled early. My first exposure was in HS working for a local university's Ag experiment station. Mainly I weed eated corn fields so we could read plot stakes, but I did get to inject mold spores into corn so we could see what moisture %'s that the corn would be most contaminated with aspergillus (and thus aflatoxin).

Then in undergrad I got paid one summer to collect adult largemouth bass for an experiment. We were going to use bass for biomonitoring of environmental estrogen exposures as male bass will produce a female yolk protein when exposed. The academic stuff is cool, but I essentially got paid to go fishing every day for about 2 weeks.

Slacker16

Reality check:
Research = Study whatever you find interesting and make up bs practical applications to get grant money


That being said, you wouldn't believe how much pure science that seemed like abstract bs when it was developed was necessary for modern (and even not that modern) technology to become possible.

Can't have one without the other.

Timshel_

The NSF money is supporting studies of existing computer games and virtual worlds, and technology development for new products and uses. Twenty three UCI researchers are using the funds. Nardi and a graduate student are using some of the funds to study “World of Warcraft” as an exemplar of a virtual world. Eight corporate and government partners are working with the UCI research team on the NSF grant, including Northrop-Grumman, The Aerospace Corp, and Discovery Science Center. Blizzard Entertainment, developer of “World of Warcraft,” is not one of the partners. In some cases the partners are adding funds of their own. All will use the UCI research to develop, test and refine a products and processes, including cyber warfare exercises, medical rehabilitation programs, and science curriculum.

This is not just a bunch of people watching kids play video games to re-estabilsh already known trends for gaming. This is about extended, useful real-life applications with very heavy partners.

To me, people like to complain anytime the government spends money, just to gripe about their situation in life. It was true back when scientists and education started using the Internet. People complained about the uselessness of Internet communication because it could be easily done through phone calls, mail, etc. Billions were spent on research and infrastructure. Yet, here we all are posting on forums, on computers or even handheld phones, and from all over the country or the world.

Thinking we know everything there is to know about anything is short sighted, just like back before the Internet. Gamification of real-life teaching and learning, especially in the virtual world, is a fast growing area of human development. Research done today will be what shapes tomorrow.

My .02

Slacker16

Chaelaz wrote: »

To me, people like to complain anytime the government spends money, just to gripe about their situation in life. It was true back when scientists and education started using the Internet. People complained about the uselessness of Internet communication because it could be easily done through phone calls, mail, etc. Billions were spent on research and infrastructure. Yet, here we all are posting on forums, on computers or even handheld phones, and from all over the country or the world.

What's even more hilarious is comparing how much people gripe about "useless research" with how much money the US actually spends on it.

For 2011, the most recent numbers a quick google search yielded, NASA accounted for 0.6% of the US's spending and NSF for 0.2%.

To put this in perspective, if you paid 20K in income tax in 2011, you contributed a grand total of 120$ to NASA and 40$ to NSF. LMFAO.