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Christmas is a time of family and, for our children, we instill a sense of "magic" to put the children in a wonderous awe.
Such a revolting cliche, I'm sure you didn't invent it yourself. You yourself are mindlessly repeating the same bullshit that was crammed down your throat at some point. Surely the truth is closer to: Christmas is my vacation time and, for our own purposes, we lie to instill a sense of "fear" to get the little bastards to sit still once in a fucking minute.
Or would you rather tell your 6 year old that we live in a cold, godless, harsh world where evil and greed runs wild.
More like, at this point, you're trapped in your own lie and will procrastinate telling the kids you've been lying to them. You can't escape that eventuality. The stress must really be killing you. But then again, you get to use your advantage in years and intelligence to play mind games with them, isn't that fun?
Or would you rather tell your 6 year old that we live in a cold, godless, harsh world where evil and greed runs wild...I'll stick w/ Santa for now. When they find out, they'll get over it.
You are over-simplifying things. The concept of "free will" or choice will always be important because there is a (legal) difference between those who are apparently making a choice and those who are acting without this awareness.
In all cases, advances in neurobiology will only come to prove the obvious: everything happens for a reason. If there is no God, then the "reasons" at any physical level will end up being the output of the physical state of the universe, and no more. All your instincts, your desires, your reasoning..your choices, are simply the product of electrical activity in your brain, which itself is a combination of current physical environment and triggered chemical secretions, which are governed by your DNA...etc.
You appear to "make a choice", but your choice is made for subconscious reasons outside your control. I agree with you here that this is uninteresting since my awareness of the choice is what I consider to be freedom of action, but it is nonetheless essential to understand that my "choice" is only an illusion. Yes, punishment and reward should exist, but only as a deterrent/motivation. Morality, like "choice", is an emotional illusion. We can choose to go with our instincts, but we must recognize them for what they are.
The Godless world is a very very grim place. You cannot escape these facts, and I say this as an athiest.
I'm also (on a similar topic) quite OK with MS's decision to keep HD-DVD out of the 360. I know that I DEFINITELY would not have purchased one at launch if it was $200 more, but I am now considering purchasing the add-on. It's a nice value-add if you want the HD movie experience , but is strictly optional and should Blu-Ray suddenly surge ahead and win this "format war" (a term I LOATHE), they can easily turn around and add that capability instead.
Emphasis on the word TRYING . . .
Regardless, we're definitely down to 6 SPEs at this point, which puts it in a similar class to the 360 with 6 hardware threads. I know the two chips are architecturally dissimilar, but in all honesty I have no idea how this would affect the complexity of programming or the yields of the machine.
I do think the shared 512MB of RAM is a better model than the 2x256MB on the PS3. The eDRAM on the GPU provides quick memory access to prevent bottlenecking and the rest can be dynamically shared.
Umm, I'm pretty sure the PS1 was around for more than a year . . .
I know it's complex, but you'll work it out.
> Investigate.
Unknown command.
> Look.
The room is dark. > Sniff.
You detect an acrid scent in the air.
You find . . . a Shield of Lightning +3!
No, I have no idea why that sentence reminded me of text-based RPGs. My mind is a frightening place.
That . . . "image" is burned into my brain. It will ruin far more than Zune for you and if you don't know what we're talking about, consider yourself lucky.
I think one of the main barriers for people understanding your arguements, fyngyrz, is that you (from my understanding) are discussing machine intelligence. Most of the comments I've seen here are relating to what could be termed "human emulation". The first "true AI" which we develop will not be able to pass the Turing test. It will, however, function in a similar manner to a single-celled organism. This "being" may not be sentient, but it will be intelligent. I truely don't believe that this is too far in the distance. My concern is that research money is going into "human emulation", which is the final result, skipping all the early steps. The evolution of AI will likely take a similar form to the evolution of any of the higher life-forms on Earth.
"I, for one, welcome our new head-in-a-jar overlords!"
"In Soviet New New York, robot programs you!"
Repeat ad infinitum.
But seriously, how cool would it be if a Futurama episode opened with a /.-ism?
I'm sorry in advance for feeding the troll.
There was a great deal of flux in doctrine and dogma in early Christianity and the Church. Have a read about the Council of Constantinople for an easy to find example. The scripture "which is recognized by the Church" was largely determined by a pagan Emperor and to the purpose of converting and unifying a people. Or have a look into the times in which there were two Popes at once, each calling the other a Godless pretender. I sure hope it was the real one who got back into power each time.
You're definitely not alone. I was in boarding school in Kenya and my buddy used to go home on the weekends (he only lived about an hour away). On occasion I would be lucky enough to be allowed to go home with him. We finished Zelda II on a broken cartridge that wouldn't allow you to save by using the "never-turn-this-damned-thing-off" trick over 6 weekends. It took this long simply because after the first two there was a power cut and we had to start again. Ahh, those were the good old days. That and my buddy shooting his brother in the leg with a BB gun.
What? No Hitler analogy yet? What happened to Godwin's Law?
I for one welcome our new XNA developing overlords.
The gun advocates may be wrong, but they are not necessarily inconsistent in their reading of the Constitution just because they disagree with the ACLU on school prayer (or other issues).
*I support allowing rifles for hunting & target practice and perhaps very limited private ownership of handguns (if someone can prove that they require protection)
But they're still nuts, because they can marshall these cogent, well-reasoned, well-documented arguments against gun control, and tell you why the 2nd Amendment is necessary for freedom, but they consider anyone who supports any of the other nine amendments to be godless liberal hippies who hate America.
You have just demonstrated the logical fallacy of argument by association. I do not believe you have psychic powers sufficient that you know what everyone who you label a "gun nut" believes. I don't believe that "most people" all hold the same beliefs about various rights. What you are doing is the same as people have done throughout history. You are arguing against a hypothetical person and the beliefs you assume this person holds as a representative of a huge group of individuals. By demonizing that person, you then try to justify your support or lack of support when you admit that is unethical.