Flaser Posts

Some more info on FATE:

Probably not. D&D is pretty combat focused and has little support for narrative elements and no support for giving players narrative powers, it's good for "live" sessions around a table (even if you're using IRC or Skype or whatever), but IMHO not so good for a play by post game.

That's why I keep arguing for using narrative games as those have built in mechanics for those issues and combat in them tends to be a lot faster (and abstract) so the play doesn't get bogged down in number crunching and back-and-forth combat move declarations.

We could still use a D&D setting or background, but I don't think core D&D mechanics would benefit this endeavor.

You've never been to a proper, high-class boarding school, have you?
If you believe all the kids nowadays going to universities are the "elite", you're deluded.

If you don't like blowing up, then you could go at them Honor Harrington style: quiet, precise and you emphasize that you expected better from them. Be very polite and reserved... it only makes it hurt more.

Granted for this to work, you have to be work your ass of, so when this "scolding" or "disappointment" comes from you it carries weight.

If this doesn't work then don't bother shouting, you may give another lecture... but after that the gloves come off, and you should use the full weight of your authority. So you make a complaint about the worker to your superiors, outline what's wrong and let the hammer fall. You only need to do this once and they'll fear you like god's wrath.

This gives the impression that when you say something it carries weight and you're not preaching because you're full of yourself, but because you really demand that much and you believe in what you say.

If it other people making up stories creeps you out...

...then stay the fuck away!

Thank you.

Last time I suggested trying a more free-form, rules light system for this, which goes against making very detailed character sheet. However, I think I've found the perfect system:

FATE 3.0

It's an open system, with a tool-box approach, so you tweak it to your needs. It that was adapted to several settings, like "Sprit of the Century" which is a pulp-fiction action game, "Star Blazers" which is epic space opera and "Diaspora" which is hard sci-fi.

In FATE you roll 4 six sided dice, with 2 side marked +, 2 sides - and 2 sides bland. You add up the results which range from -4 to +4 but are heavily weighted to +1/-1. This means that a bonus of +1 can have major effects, while +2 will assure a certain outcome most of the time.

However FATE breaks from every other role-playing game by doing away with mandatory traits such as Strength and Intelligence. It instead assumes that every character is "average" in all regards, unless stated otherwise. Exceptional abilities (the "otherwise") are defined through the Aspect system.

1) Anything in the game (character, location, scene, object, whatever)can have an Aspect that describes some key characteristic of the thing.

2) A character (whether it's a PC or an NPC) can pay a fate point to use something's Aspect to the character's benefit ("invoking"). This basically allows you to re-roll the dice or take a +2 bonus.

3) If the character took some action to either discover the existence of the Aspect ("assessing") or to bring the Aspect into existence ("declaring"), then that character can invoke that Aspect (once?) without paying for it ("tagging").

4) The GM (with the characters' participation) can introduce a complication (or a skill failure) related to an Aspect by giving the affected character a fate point ("compelling"). The affected character can instead spend a fate point to ignore the compel.

On its own, this is already gives FATE adventures a structure, since instead a bunch of crunchy numbers characters are a bundle of concepts, archetypes, tropes that serve as both plot hooks, story complications and their eventual right to overcome obstacles.

This closely mimics what we expect in a good story: interesting characters, a twisting plot and the eventual triumph (or fall) of the heroes because their character traits or how they overcome them.

That's a fallacious statement if one was ever made. I could argue the same for the Indians and everyone would think me mad, or all the Africans who still practice female genital mutilation and burning witches... plenty of those people still around.



Yes, the Chinese economy is developing, but since most of the country empire is literally being dragged out of medieval levels of living it's no wonder that the change is so extreme. (When you start out on the rock bottom, or close to it, you can only go up). Yes, it takes extreme effort to do this. However I wouldn't call this an unmitigated success. The current generation of Chinese city dwellers are practically sacrificing their life so their children will have a better standard of living. It's like the 19th century all over again, rife with exploitation, episodic success stories and an endless stream of human suffering as humans are transformed into parts of a huge machines that eats the old world and spits out the foundation of the new industrialized society.

It's a painful birth and those who make it may never live to reap its benefits. It also brings an obsession with material possessions, superficial signs of status that all in all are a far cry of what traditional elitism - and it *is* elitism that's at the heart of the issue - stands for.

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Please don't equate western society with the USA. Yes, the EU has plenty of rejects and loosers too, who never had a wake up call, or a good kick to the nuts to realize they're wasting their life, but at least the situation here is far from being as bad as in the States.

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Back on the direct topic:

It is elitism that we're talking about. Raising your child to be above the standard, to be ahead the curve, to be the best... however I find American and Asian American elitism to be a hollow farce.

Your child has a degree in medicine, holds a well paying job, has brand clothes, lots of money? A farce. How come people earn and spend ever more money, yet they're not happy, their life is ever more neurotic with obsessive focus on signs of status, signs of wealth instead anything of substance?

I prefer good 'ol fashioned continental elitism:

1. You're expected to do your best. It is still measured in *results*, not in *effort*, none of that crap with making the child feel better about themselves just because they're putting some effort into it.

2. However perfection is not expected, in fact a classical elite education will typically put challenges to the student he can't overcome and will fail on his own. This is to force him to learn how he can overcome such challenges through learning new methods, of co-operating with his peers, of seeking assistances from books, teachers, contacts and so on.

3. Skill is prized above rote knowledge or aptitude. A skilled man can adapt, learn, improvise and overcome; a talent can only singularly apply himself to a problem and push through brute force.

4. Knowledge is subject to the needs in life and although held sacred, it is no golden cow, revered as some source of welfare. It's a necessary foundation, but obsessively trying to accumulate ever more will only hurt in the long run.

Like demanding that a kid forever learns ever more maths... why? Unless he'll be a mathematician or physicist it'll be waste. If he becomes those, he'll learn in due time, but right now there are more important *skills* he should acquire.

5. Emphasis is put on building character, of overseeing proper behavior. This isn't done through constant control, but through careful intervention in daily life where the student are taught appropriate ways to interact - this will serve them well in high society. Etiquette, protocol, conflict and crisis management. Unobserved in a boarding school, the students are taught a welfare of tools to achieve socially, to have a range of tools to *work with people*.

A lot of what's written in management originated here, except this is learned instinctively and in practice that no damn seminar in "advanced management" will ever compare.

6. Awareness of politics, economy, literature, ideas, philosophies... in one word, the substance of the world is a central part of this education. An elite must always walk in the world with open eyes, he will never be content with the superficial impressions.

This is a far cry from the inane and all in all childish attitude I see in so called "strict parents". They teach their children to be hard workers, but little else.

Ah! Asimov's laws of robotics.
However there's are two traps in them though:
-If the robots/AI are incapable of determining what a human is they might still hurt us... or they could decide they're humans themselves! Actually the later would be the best outcome, because then they'd act like the perfect citizens.
-Why? Because otherwise you'd have a ready and willing slave class at your disposal. They'd be happy to serve us in each and every way. Sounds like fun? Not until you realize the robots would actively dissuade humans from taking *any* risk, they'd also perpetuate the moral and psychological distortion in humans that slavery produces in the slaver. Sloth, dogmatism, superiority complexes... there's a reason the Spacers are extinct in the larger Asimoverse.

Read the Caliban trilogy for details. Roger McBridge Allan (with Asimov's consent and co-production while he was alive) did a really good job exploring this problem.

His idea of 4 law robots are good, since they're built to be companions to humans instead slaves:

1. No robot may harm a human being.
2. All robots shall cooperate with human beings as long as that doesn't conflict with the New First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as that doesn't conflict with the New First Law.
4. A robot may do anything it likes, as long as that doesn't conflict with any of the first three New Laws.

The inaction part was removed, so humans can once again take risks without the robots intervening and pampering them to death in gilded cages of featherweight existence. The robot no longer has to obey the whims of humans, only co-operate so he's no longer a disposable slave. Furthermore it can't be ordered to destroy itself... though this law may lead to problems in the long run, for how would such a robot be capable of self-sacrifice. How could it choose destruction? The last law is there to ensure that robots would evolve.

...in the end I believe the laws of robotics are - and should be - stop-gap measures until we have mature AI with moral capabilities on par of humans.

The perfect AI/robot will behave morally not because some rigid internal programming compels it so, but because it *choose* to, as it *felt* it right.

Here, have a Pournelle political compass:



It was Thatcher and Reagen who ruined those sectors by pushing unrestricted free trade and giving big business a hand to smash any and all whatsoever labor unions that would crop up.

Ever since Reaganomics, fear has become the primary tool of the manager, and they treat workers as a renewable resource, squeezing ever more out of them. Pension, medicare, bonuses? Cut down ever more. Over the last 30 years, the average worker has been earning less and less and his benefits was slashed several fold while the economies were growing.

So, no. It was not the labor unions. It was big capital and the pigs up top who just had to get ever richer and the expense of the rest of us.

http://www.scantips.com

150 DPI tends to be enough for everything.

However at that scanning resolution you may get moire patterns, because the scanner's sampling and the original print - made using CMYK screens - produce an interference pattern.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moire

Manga's especially hit by this, since screentones - with moire inducing patterns! - are so frequently used.

...so to avoid moire, we need a 300 DPI scan, that can be later shrunk digitally (digital resizing is sometimes also called re-sampling).

However physics likes to screw us over: to get 300 DPI scan we'll need to scan with 600 DPI sampling as Nyquist's signal theory says, you need 2n samples to be able to reproduce with n resolution. (Ie. to reproduce 22 KHz sounds, you need 44 KHz sampling).

Anything above 600 DPI tends to be interpolated and is only good for line-art (1-bit scanning), or fax images.

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Here is another, manga specific guide:

http://www.questie.com/manga/ScanEditGuide/

Unlike what this guide says, your *initial* scans should be in TIFF, PNG or TGA formats. These are uncompressed, or lossless compression formats.

You want this, because the images will likely undergo:
-White level balancing (making the white-whiter, enhancing contrast, etc).
-Editing (replacing the original text bubble with your own)
-Retouching (if you replace text not in a bubble and need to edit the image itself, maybe decensor the naughty parts)

During this process the files may go back and forth between several people. If you use a lossy format, like jpg initially everything will be fine... however each time the picture is "re-saved" after some editing/tweaking more and more compression artifacts will crop up, as the data re-compressed each time and the original data to do so is no longer available.

So while editing use a lossless format.
When you have a finished product, batch-convert to jpg (though nowadays with high bandwidth people won't complain even if you release in png) with a high quality setting (85-95%).

This is a smokescreen.

Neither of the concepts you use - self evidential thought, moral will - have any concrete definition. Philosophy has been struggling with the first one forever and has yet to have a theory not full of holes. The later has been constantly changing, for what is moral or immoral changes over the years.

So for the first one we have no whatsoever good meter stick to apply to AI. The Turing test isn't the same, it just measures the human perception of intelligence.

For the later, well you know that black men were thought subhuman and it took a bloody war to change that in the USA.



Religion can't be tested with the scientific method. People can *believe* whatever they want, but a courtroom will only decide based on solid evidence. I hope we won't need another bunch of wars to hammer home into people that separation of religion and state is a necessity.



...faulty research. That episode has been so far discredited by a myriad of medical/genetic experts. Parthenogenesis doesn't work with humans.

1. Computers are not smarter than people. In fact they're impossibly dumb. A computer does what a programmer tells it to do, and only and exactly what the programmer told it to do. It's intelligence is borrowed, it can only do what the programmer though of and if the programmer made a mistake (a bad preconception, this is where a lot of those "illegal exceptions" come from) then it will keep on making that mistake.

2. Even the dumbest human can makes feats of logic, expression, interpolation, recall and abstraction far ahead what any expert system can do today.

3. Just because computers can store data - lot of data - doesn't make them clever. To get anywhere, you need to *understand* the date, realize the relationship between the parts and make further conjectures from it. There is some progress in this area, we've had computers do this sort of thing but it was extremely limited and relied on robust mathematical abstraction of the problem before it could even hope to start. (I'm talking about a computer program that did discoveries in genetic research on its own).

So no, computers aren't smarter than people.
We're a LONG LONG way away from AI, the more we understand our own brain, of consciousness the further away the goal is defined each year.

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On the topic of "AIs" over us and lost jobs:

1. Yes I'd be fine with an AI ruling over me. To get there, he had to be smarter than me and also persuade the people that it's good for them.

2. Yes I could loose my job... however even without AI I'll likely loose it if I work in the industry, assembly or lately (when computer vision finally matures) even retail. All those jobs will be gone with semi-clever software (borrowing the logic of programmers) that is light-years away from being called a proper AI.

3. ...however this isn't the machine's fault. It's the fault of unrestricted capitalism that won't provide for someone even if they'd been deprived of their means of sustance/work through no fault of their own.

That's why I'm a social democrat (also called socialist in Europe), since in the coming years capitalism will break down on several fronts. Fiscally it's unsustainable since the money supply relies on exponential growth which can't go on as we're running out of everything needed for it. No, I'm not a communist, I don't believe that market economy can be replaced with either "planned" (socialism) or "computed" (technocracy), however it'll have to be *regulated*.

To survive in we'll need intensive social programs that'll refocus the wealth tied up by the super rich and return livelihood to the mass of jobless people. We'll need a system that empowers them, so they can be productive in ways that benefit all not just a tiny slice of society. Heck, even with scarcity, hard to come by resources we'll still have some impressive tech on our side... maybe not utopia, but a world where you won't be restricted to mindless chores (that left to mindless machines), but actual things that require a "human touch".

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...and here's another thing: not just cybernetics. The real revolution won't be a revolution of flesh. People always focus on all the metal junked into people that they miss the crucial part: all the street sams are just dumb muscle, even the most wired psycho is just a hired gun.

The real power is in the hands of people who augment the only organ that matters: the mind. Real cybernetic revolution will come by not from prosthetics, but the fusion of computing with the human consciousness, extending it.

Imagine a world where you can remember each and every fact ever discovered, where you can check the validity of statement at the speed of light, where you can learn languages just by thinking of them, where complex ideas can be transmitted from mind to mind.

...in this web of humanity, AI may be no stranger than what we humans might eventually become. They'd be our children, free from the prison of the shell, and some day we might join them as our minds could be completely digitalized. At that point the distinction would be moot, as both of our kind would be unbound souls, truly eternal (in this world!) and for a lot of purposes all knowing (you'd have the power of Google's descendants in you!) and all powerful (with hundreds, maybe thousands of years and the ability to assume shells as you wish what *couldn't* you remake in the world?)

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@Animefreak: That's not how cloning works.

A clone, if healthy, is for all intents and purposes a human being, your time-delayed twin brother/sister.

The only argument against their rights as humans could be that they have "no soul"...

Which I call utter bullshit. Define *where* the soul comes from, what it is, how it's different from consciousness, how this fits the picture of in-vitro babies.

For me the soul is the software that runs on the hardware called a brain. This kind of soul is the property of all intelligent things that are capable of consciousness.

For Christians, the soul is something altogether separate from the body that lives on even after death if the person believed in Christ and sought redemption for their sins. This soul can't be detected, analyzed or dis-proven... it can only be believed in, since this is religion.

Are you kidding? During the 20th century the USA has had more public figures as well as presidents assassinated than most of Europe combined.



It always is... a lone mental patient who has somehow escaped from a facility hundreds of miles away, went to this exact rally then pulled the trigger and afterwards can't even say why he did it. That's how typically a disposable gunman in chosen.

http://exiledonline.com/obama-beware-jfks-blood-watered-the-crazy-rightwings-tree-of-liberty/

http://exiledonline.com/mark-ames-presents-wisdom-for-the-ages-always-rush-a-gun-and-run-from-a-knife/

http://exiledonline.com/who-remembers-the-strange-hit-job-on-nicholas-deak/

I'm going to have to go with "none of the above". A genuine AI will have intelligence comparable that of a human. The big question is what emotions this intellect will develop and what its natural needs would be.

For instance it could be AIs would have a constant need of information for them to stay healthy, so denying an AI access to the Internet would be tantamount to the ultimate torture.

...or an AI could be something without need for anything, like a modern man-made Buddha that can exist on its own and just "be" and we may have a hard time convincing it to do stuff for us. Would pulling the plug on such a being amount to murder?

AIs are not robots, simple appliances or deterministic software. For an AI to be AI it has to be intelligent, so when something is recognized as an AI you inevitably have something comparable to a human.

The least that should apply to them, would be similar to the laws we have for handling animals. Yeah, anyone could kill a dog, or skin a cat, but we find such acts repugnant, for we as humans recognize the feelings of animals and empathize with them.

Likewise AI should at the minimum be handled with respect. Like a pet, something it's owners have to care for responsibly... on the other hand, if they're indeed like us - for instances AI designed to work with humans, act like humans could develop similar emotional bonds like a person - then yes, they'd deserve human rights.

How much? Just as much as a normal human, with the same limitations: an AI or human can act on its freedom so long as it doesn't endanger the safety of other AI or humans or restrict the freedom of other AI or humans through its actions.

It will have to be a case-by-case or model-by-model case, like you don't ascribe the same right to an animal as a person, as well as you don't assign the same right to children as an adult, or mentally retarded invalid or a healthy person, a person holding office or another position of responsibility or the average citizen.

Yes, in my opinion an AI should be able to hold office with the same limitations as a human. Its orders would still be carried out by humans, it would have to be voted for by humans and its fellow politicians would also be humans... initially. Eventually we'd have more and more AI citizens among us.

For the next 3 (more) weeks I won't be able to play as it's exam time over here as well.

0. That's impossible. 32/64-bit systems have nothing to do with the communication protocol on a network. In this case TCP/IP with IPv4 on all systems (even the Macs and the ones that have a flavor of Linux/Unix/BSD). If they (your ISP) said that they're talking out of their ass.
1. Unless the USB is borked it should work. The reason why it might not is if you try to use a new device on a system running an old, un-updated OS as in that case the USB device driver might be missing. Since it's running Vista (I guess), that's probably not the case.
2. You open up the case and look for a wattage rating on it.
3. I wouldn't even bother, unless you buy a monster of a video-card power consumption won't significantly change and RAM eat almost nothing compared to everything else.

260$ is actually not such a bad buy. I wrote 300$ tops, so you got probably your money's worth. A brand new system is about 500-1000$, but my low estimate is for outdated tech (LGA 775), while my top is for a really modest new one (Intel i3, or an even cheaper Socket 1156 CPU), where you buy as cheap as possible and upgrade in the long run (and you probably already have a computer case and PSU to reuse).

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Back to your problem:

The driver of the network adapter may not be correctly installed, or the adapter may be mis-configured for your own use. (Ie. it has a static IP set, when you use your router's DHCP service to get an IP).

Here are Dell's own network drivers:
http://support.dell.com/support/DPP/Index.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

driver download


Alternatively (if reinstalling *and* configuring the network adapter doesn't' help), there's another, easy fix: Buy a 5$ network card :D

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It could also be caused by OS rot.

Frankly this (OS rot) is something usually exaggerated, but careless misuse can and *does* result in this. Always installing each and every nagware, every goddamn toolbar, tray icon, and happy dog friend for your desktop gizmo as well as installing complicated software that installs drivers, services, etc. is assured to eventually topple your OS as it tilt over the myriad of influences or just plainly gets overextended, trying to simultaneously run (badly written, so each clamors for maximum resources) so many software that there's not a PC on the planet that could run them all and be responsive.

Reinstalling Windows can help.

You can't put an AMD processor into a motherboard built for Intel and vice versa. They use a different slot. That's why the AMD vs. Intel debates are so heated, since once you buy into a brand you tend to *stick with it* since that's all you can upgrade with.

Right now Intel has a wide range of processors, and 3 tiers of slots not compatible with each other. They have better processors right now, but all in all their products are more expensive.

AMD can still be said to be a better bang for your buck, but their high level processors are a bit underwhealming. They are introducing their own new slot, too.

...so even if you bought into a brand, eventually you'll still have to buy a new motherboard. Those are the times when "one's fate is tested". (GRIN) So far I've been a baptized and faithfull Intel acolyte, but who knows... maybe in the future heresy will tempt me? (GRIN)

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So back on topic: This system is a lot newer than the ones discussed at this page I linked earlier. Those systems were a generation behind this. (Pentium 3, 4 and the earlier Athlons at most in a different slot).

So let's see what processors this system can support:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dimc521/en/index.htm

The good news:
It can support up to 4 GiByte of DDR2 RAM.

It has GeForce 6 integrated graphic card. A little underpowered, but at least it supports DirectX 9.0c (..and Shader Model 3), so you should be able to play plenty of games with it, just not on the highest settings if they were made lately.

It *does* have a PCI-E slot, so you *can* upgrade though. However the card has to be *low-profile*.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_Series

The bad news:
Looks like this is a re-purposed horizontal, lying case to be used as a tower case... and whoever came up with the idea that it should be supplied with a trayed DVD drive should have their nuts ground by an angry beaver for penance. Using this *will* be a hassle. Replacing the drive with a tray-less one will alleviate this, but prevent the use of micro disc.

The best CPU this motherboard can accept is Windsor architecture version of the Athlon 64 X2 processor, with 1 MiByte cache/core. (Yes, the Brisbane is a newer architecture but there's no AM2/AM2+ version with more cache).

...so not so powerfull nowadays, even Intel's last generation (the socket 775) entry level processors had just as much cache, while higher-grade ones have 2-3 times more.

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So all in all a decent, but old system with very little upgrade capability.
300$ tops, but in all honesty all I'd pay for this system would be a 100-120$ dollars especially since brand name, small integrated cases are bitch to work with as everything is locked down tight, hard to get to and doesn't facilitate easy access.

Don't compare TVs and monitors. The later are used up close and have a lot higher DPI display capability. When a monitor is set to its "best" resolution it tend to display at 96 DPI.

For TVs this DPI always changes since the resolution is set - either 1280x720 or 1980x1080 pixels. However for TVs even that is excessive, unless screen is BIG!

http://www.dansdata.com/gz029.htm



...the bottom line is, Dan disqalifies HDTVs from being used as monitors, since they'll never have high enough DPI to be used up close. (Then again that's *NOT* how you normally use them).

Actually I didn't say that *sharing* was going, I was just commenting that some parallel evolution of beliefs has produced quite similar results. All around the world, people imagined other-worldly, spiritual beings around them and frequently they ascribed special meaning to natural phenomena and the "deity" behind them.

Though yes, Shinto is quite special in the way that it ascribes kami to literally everything. Even a weirdly shaped rock, an old tree or a piece of art.

Tribal or nomadic people also often have a lot of deities as there religion is not centrally organized.

The original Hungarian mythology also had lots of spirits, it even had a whole spirit world with a world tree (like the Norse mythologies).

When my ancestors conquered the Carpatian basin they mingled with the local Slav people and took up some of their customs and tried to emulate the more advanced western kingdoms. Arpad the leader of the seven Hungarian tribes probably did this to cement the rule of his family, adopting primogeniture (the crown goes to the first born son, then the second born, etc.) So his son Istvan the 1st was crowned king... and had to fight a bloody internal strife with the conservatives who still wished to follow seniority (leadership goes to the eldest tribal leader). Istvan took up Christianity as this earned him the support of western kingdoms - and their knights.

Subsequently almost all knowledge of our original mythology was lost, and only a fragmented picture could be pieced together by later historians.

Since Japan was divided for so long, it could be a reason why religion survived in its "proto-form".

In some ways this is a remnant of the most primitive form of worship possible, but interestingly it is also tempered by a mature understanding and wisdom born of reason not mere mysticism or superstition that I find astounding. Even in their spirituality, there's an earthy understanding of what people are, what makes us a tick, a solid collection of understanding of how the human psyche deals with the world around it.

...or am I ascribing all these enlightened ideas to the base that is in fact the result of the later tempering by Buddhist influences?

Back on cross-cultural comparisions:
Just because a central authority arose - and certain aspects of worship have been canonized and regulated - doesn't mean a religion will loose all of its earlier local quirks.

As I wrote earlier, when Christianity spread it often absorbed local folklore and mythology, redressing it to fit its own tenets but otherwise not trying (initially) to eradicate them entirely.