Well, what seems to happen is that the religious ideology is replaced by political ideology.
For instance where an American would reference Christian Morals a Swede would reference Workers Morals because of the great influence the workers movement has had the past 100 years.
What I much prefer about secular ideologies is that they don't do the same extent expect you to take a leap of faith, but rather they try to present rational arguments for why their position is better then the others.
His argument is that it has been evolutionary beneficial for humans to be nice to eachother so thus the argument that we need religion to behave is false.
Let's say that we accept the theory that something needed to jumpstart the universe, and that thing does not necessarily have to follow the same rules the universe does (and thus doesn't need a creator of it's own).
What reason exactly do we have to believe that thing is the biblical god?
Couldn't it just aswell have been Zeus? Odin?
Are the Muslims right? Jews? Christians? Buddhists? Tao?
The only sane position to take is that they're all wrong, and while there might exist an omnipotent entity, it's insane to think he gives a fuck about you following a religion.
That article is freaky, mostly because every pro-apple comment regardless of how inane it is gets 30+ and every anti-apple comment gets 30- regardless of it's content. Quite a different atmosphere then Slashdot.
"The sad thing is you were attacking my posts for using problematic statistics, of which I admitted I got wrong, and yet here you are in your last couple of posts picking and choosing- you cut the Wii out of your previous post, and then tried to split the consoles up, now you're cherry picking the publisher that only relatively recently picked up the largest PC house remaining. Don't you see why that's a bit hypocritical?"
Electronic Arts the other major publisher also has a fair number of PC properties, I've just read a lot less of their press releases then Activision. Anyhow the reason for splitting the consoles up is obvious. When you make a game you don't decide "Do I want to release this game on consoles or do I want to release this game on PC?, the decision is platform by platform. The PC is an individual platform just like the Xbox, Playstation, DS and PSP is individual platforms.
"I'm not sure why you're suggesting Mass Effect is a PC port, do you have any evidence for that? I'm also pretty sure you're not correct about Dragon Age being a mere port too. By port I'm referring to the likes of Gears of War, The Saboteur, and GTA which were ported to the PC after the console versions were done and were clearly of much lower quality- if they're released for console and PC at the same time then that's rarely a port, because they've been developed specifically for both platforms at release. Mass Effect at least has always been been one of the 360's flagship titles hence why it was originally a 360 exclusive."
Well, if you're ever tried playing those games on the Xbox, then tried to play those games on the PC you'll see why they're considered PC centric though it applies more to Mass Effect 2 then the first.
"I'm not sure what you mean by classing the 360 as an underpowered PC, this is a little short sighted. Whilst spec-wise it might be lower than some people's PCs this ignores the fact that it's a unified architecture dedicated to gaming and doesn't suffer some of the inherent slow downs that the generic PC architecture causes. This is why despite being lower spec towards the end of their life, consoles still often manage to outperform PCs in terms of visuals and performance. Having to optimise on the PC is a nightmare too because there are so many different hardware combinations you have to optimise for, this often leads to PC games being generally much less optimised for the platform compared to the PS3/360 where optimisations are easy and effective as they're done for a specific fixed hardware set."
What I mean is what I said. The Xbox is basically a PC, it runs direct X and.Net. This means that if you can get a game to run on the Xbox it's pretty trivial to get the game to run on most peoples PC's aswell, the only thing you have to do is remap the controls (which for some games is trivial, for some games a bit harder). This is why almost all Xbox 360 games are released on PC aswell, it's just so easy. (And why a lot of PC developers try to make their games more console friendly, I mean why not?).
I've noticed the Aim assist in console shooters and I must say I really like the feature, it's the most obvious when you aim at a slow moving enemy as your aim will seem to follow the enemy automatically almost without input (You need to move the stick a bit, but the aim will follow the enemy perfectly).
This allows people like me that are not terribly hardcore to still have a great shooter experience and get lots of head-shots that would otherwise be impossible for me.
Wouldn't that be what a jury of your peers is for? If a prosecutor can convince a jury consisting of engineers that you deliberately cut corners and followed bad engineering practices causing loss of life then I think it's reasonable you should be punished for causing death (I can't remember the proper term for accidental manslaughter right now)
I'm pretty sure you pulled that number out of your ass as my sister runs a clothing store and her margins are apparently 20%ish on most pieces of clothing.
Well, the problem that the gamers are silly, if someone makes a good game with 5 year old graphics everyone boycotts it. It's sorta irrational because we used to play games 20 years ago and still have a ton of fun, but if you tried to sell any of those games now everyone would be "naah, that game looks crap".
Well, when you make games purely for the money you end up where EA and Activision are. The most profitable way to make money is to first make a good game in a popular genre (FPS, Rythm games, Sports etc) then you keep releasing that game each year with a slight upgrade and a new title so instead of making $50 you can get a single consumer to pay upwards to $250 for what's basically the same game. (Technically they're not shafting their customers since they do generate a fair bit of new content for each upgrade)
However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off.
Well, less scans should translate into less power usage, less doctor time and less machine time which should mean a lower cost per patient. How significant that is is hard to tell though.
What's going on is that instead of taking a clear picture they take a crappy picture and have the ludicrously fast GPU clean it up for them. While you could have done that by just putting 50 CPU's in parallel the GPU makes it quite simple.
The speed is important because their imaging is iterative, with the GPU they're apparently waiting 1-2 minutes, without the GPU it takes them 2-3 hours which is a rather long time to wait between scans.
Because you're looking at a list on wikipedia that noone bothers to update?
I mean if you look at Activision, the third biggest publisher in the world, out of the 7 franchies they plan to make hundreds of millions from each, 3 are PC exclusive (WoW, Diablo and Starcraft).
While there are many PC games that are ports from Console, there are also many Console games that are ports from PC, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Supreme Commander 2 etc. The fact that the Xbox 360 is just a glorified underpowered PC makes the conversions pretty trivial in both directions.
Using your numbers we're looking at 45 million for the PC, 46.6 million for the PS3 and 75.5 million for the XBox 360. That does not look like a dead or dying PC market to me.
If we ignore the Wii for a moment since it seems to sell a completely different breed of games then the other platforms, then the PC has 25% of the market, PS3 25% and XBox 360 50% of the market which makes the PC competitive. I think you should wait with exclaiming it's dying until people stop making AAA titles for it and it's market share drops below 5%.
Nice, you managed to find the totals. NPD isn't very friendly to people that want to get data for free since they're in the business of selling it so I just managed to find the top 5 games.
It's interesting that the PS3 sells so abysmally, that explains why Activision said they're about ready to stop developing for the PS3 all together.
I'm not sure where you're getting that number from since NPD says the total US sales up to march 2010 is 10 million, the first month it sold 6 millionish.
If you take the top games of 2009, you have:
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision 8.82mil Wii Sports Resort Nintendo 4.54mil New Super Mario Bros. Wii Nintendo 4.23mil Wii Fit Plus Nintendo 3.53mil Wii Fit Nintendo 3.60mil Add them all up: 24.72 million.
While that shows that the console market is bigger then the PC market it shows that it's not nearly as dwarfed as you seem to think it is. You seem to keep stumbling over wildly inaccurate numbers which causes your conclusions to be off. You also have to take into account from the publishers perspective it's rather expensive to develop separate versions for the PS3 and XBOX360 and that the higher price on Consoles doesn't go to the publisher, it goes to the console maker as their publishing fee.
Your problem is that you either failed 3rd grade reading comprehension or basic logic.
This is what I said "Not everything that leaves your house should automatically be public"
This is what you read "Everything that leaves your house should be private"
Obviously that position is moronic, and I feel bad for you that you thought it was a position that someone would actually take, what you should have done was read once again, slowly, and realize that wasn't what I said at all. So now what does that make you?
"It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this."
They've said they won't, but it's going to be relatively trivial to make a Starcraft 1 mod for Starcraft 2 so I suspect someone will do that for you shortly after release.
Seriously, you can't compare games sold during 2009 in the US to games sold from 2008 to 2010 worldwide, that's silly. Mario Kart Wii sold a million copies in the US in 2009, in the entire 2008 to 2010 period it sold 5 million copies in the US. The other 16 million were worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, what seems to happen is that the religious ideology is replaced by political ideology.
For instance where an American would reference Christian Morals a Swede would reference Workers Morals because of the great influence the workers movement has had the past 100 years.
What I much prefer about secular ideologies is that they don't do the same extent expect you to take a leap of faith, but rather they try to present rational arguments for why their position is better then the others.
None of those except the Cosmological argument makes the slightest bit of sense o.O
Most of those are basically "God exists because he exists"
His argument is that it has been evolutionary beneficial for humans to be nice to eachother so thus the argument that we need religion to behave is false.
Personally I think I prefer the English law. I hate newspapers that publish all sorts of trash about people without being able to back it up.
Yes, but that wasn't the point. Suppose we accept that this entity exists, what makes Christianity in particular correct?
The problem with religion is this.
Let's say that we accept the theory that something needed to jumpstart the universe, and that thing does not necessarily have to follow the same rules the universe does (and thus doesn't need a creator of it's own).
What reason exactly do we have to believe that thing is the biblical god?
Couldn't it just aswell have been Zeus? Odin?
Are the Muslims right? Jews? Christians? Buddhists? Tao?
The only sane position to take is that they're all wrong, and while there might exist an omnipotent entity, it's insane to think he gives a fuck about you following a religion.
That article is freaky, mostly because every pro-apple comment regardless of how inane it is gets 30+ and every anti-apple comment gets 30- regardless of it's content. Quite a different atmosphere then Slashdot.
"The sad thing is you were attacking my posts for using problematic statistics, of which I admitted I got wrong, and yet here you are in your last couple of posts picking and choosing- you cut the Wii out of your previous post, and then tried to split the consoles up, now you're cherry picking the publisher that only relatively recently picked up the largest PC house remaining. Don't you see why that's a bit hypocritical?"
Electronic Arts the other major publisher also has a fair number of PC properties, I've just read a lot less of their press releases then Activision. Anyhow the reason for splitting the consoles up is obvious. When you make a game you don't decide "Do I want to release this game on consoles or do I want to release this game on PC?, the decision is platform by platform. The PC is an individual platform just like the Xbox, Playstation, DS and PSP is individual platforms.
"I'm not sure why you're suggesting Mass Effect is a PC port, do you have any evidence for that? I'm also pretty sure you're not correct about Dragon Age being a mere port too. By port I'm referring to the likes of Gears of War, The Saboteur, and GTA which were ported to the PC after the console versions were done and were clearly of much lower quality- if they're released for console and PC at the same time then that's rarely a port, because they've been developed specifically for both platforms at release. Mass Effect at least has always been been one of the 360's flagship titles hence why it was originally a 360 exclusive."
Well, if you're ever tried playing those games on the Xbox, then tried to play those games on the PC you'll see why they're considered PC centric though it applies more to Mass Effect 2 then the first.
"I'm not sure what you mean by classing the 360 as an underpowered PC, this is a little short sighted. Whilst spec-wise it might be lower than some people's PCs this ignores the fact that it's a unified architecture dedicated to gaming and doesn't suffer some of the inherent slow downs that the generic PC architecture causes. This is why despite being lower spec towards the end of their life, consoles still often manage to outperform PCs in terms of visuals and performance. Having to optimise on the PC is a nightmare too because there are so many different hardware combinations you have to optimise for, this often leads to PC games being generally much less optimised for the platform compared to the PS3/360 where optimisations are easy and effective as they're done for a specific fixed hardware set."
What I mean is what I said. The Xbox is basically a PC, it runs direct X and .Net. This means that if you can get a game to run on the Xbox it's pretty trivial to get the game to run on most peoples PC's aswell, the only thing you have to do is remap the controls (which for some games is trivial, for some games a bit harder). This is why almost all Xbox 360 games are released on PC aswell, it's just so easy. (And why a lot of PC developers try to make their games more console friendly, I mean why not?).
I've noticed the Aim assist in console shooters and I must say I really like the feature, it's the most obvious when you aim at a slow moving enemy as your aim will seem to follow the enemy automatically almost without input (You need to move the stick a bit, but the aim will follow the enemy perfectly).
This allows people like me that are not terribly hardcore to still have a great shooter experience and get lots of head-shots that would otherwise be impossible for me.
Wouldn't that be what a jury of your peers is for? If a prosecutor can convince a jury consisting of engineers that you deliberately cut corners and followed bad engineering practices causing loss of life then I think it's reasonable you should be punished for causing death (I can't remember the proper term for accidental manslaughter right now)
I'm pretty sure you pulled that number out of your ass as my sister runs a clothing store and her margins are apparently 20%ish on most pieces of clothing.
Well, the problem that the gamers are silly, if someone makes a good game with 5 year old graphics everyone boycotts it. It's sorta irrational because we used to play games 20 years ago and still have a ton of fun, but if you tried to sell any of those games now everyone would be "naah, that game looks crap".
Well, when you make games purely for the money you end up where EA and Activision are. The most profitable way to make money is to first make a good game in a popular genre (FPS, Rythm games, Sports etc) then you keep releasing that game each year with a slight upgrade and a new title so instead of making $50 you can get a single consumer to pay upwards to $250 for what's basically the same game. (Technically they're not shafting their customers since they do generate a fair bit of new content for each upgrade)
However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off.
To be fair, that's the same methodology that NPD uses, it's just that NPD is generally considered better at it.
Well, less scans should translate into less power usage, less doctor time and less machine time which should mean a lower cost per patient. How significant that is is hard to tell though.
What's going on is that instead of taking a clear picture they take a crappy picture and have the ludicrously fast GPU clean it up for them. While you could have done that by just putting 50 CPU's in parallel the GPU makes it quite simple.
The speed is important because their imaging is iterative, with the GPU they're apparently waiting 1-2 minutes, without the GPU it takes them 2-3 hours which is a rather long time to wait between scans.
Because you're looking at a list on wikipedia that noone bothers to update?
I mean if you look at Activision, the third biggest publisher in the world, out of the 7 franchies they plan to make hundreds of millions from each, 3 are PC exclusive (WoW, Diablo and Starcraft).
While there are many PC games that are ports from Console, there are also many Console games that are ports from PC, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Supreme Commander 2 etc. The fact that the Xbox 360 is just a glorified underpowered PC makes the conversions pretty trivial in both directions.
Using your numbers we're looking at 45 million for the PC, 46.6 million for the PS3 and 75.5 million for the XBox 360. That does not look like a dead or dying PC market to me.
If we ignore the Wii for a moment since it seems to sell a completely different breed of games then the other platforms, then the PC has 25% of the market, PS3 25% and XBox 360 50% of the market which makes the PC competitive. I think you should wait with exclaiming it's dying until people stop making AAA titles for it and it's market share drops below 5%.
I suspect the parents would jump on the school like ravenous sharks the second they accepted advertising inside the school.
Or just a really big product?
Nice, you managed to find the totals. NPD isn't very friendly to people that want to get data for free since they're in the business of selling it so I just managed to find the top 5 games.
It's interesting that the PS3 sells so abysmally, that explains why Activision said they're about ready to stop developing for the PS3 all together.
I'm not sure where you're getting that number from since NPD says the total US sales up to march 2010 is 10 million, the first month it sold 6 millionish.
If you take the top games of 2009, you have:
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision 8.82mil
Wii Sports Resort Nintendo 4.54mil
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Nintendo 4.23mil
Wii Fit Plus Nintendo 3.53mil
Wii Fit Nintendo 3.60mil
Add them all up: 24.72 million.
While that shows that the console market is bigger then the PC market it shows that it's not nearly as dwarfed as you seem to think it is. You seem to keep stumbling over wildly inaccurate numbers which causes your conclusions to be off. You also have to take into account from the publishers perspective it's rather expensive to develop separate versions for the PS3 and XBOX360 and that the higher price on Consoles doesn't go to the publisher, it goes to the console maker as their publishing fee.
Your problem is that you either failed 3rd grade reading comprehension or basic logic.
This is what I said
"Not everything that leaves your house should automatically be public"
This is what you read
"Everything that leaves your house should be private"
Obviously that position is moronic, and I feel bad for you that you thought it was a position that someone would actually take, what you should have done was read once again, slowly, and realize that wasn't what I said at all. So now what does that make you?
"It does vary from title to title. Starcraft is obviously well written but it does beg the question as to whether or not it would be worth Blizzard updating the engine a little so it can support higher screen resolutions - although I already own the game and the expansion, I would certainly pay, say. £5-£10 for an updated version that did this."
They've said they won't, but it's going to be relatively trivial to make a Starcraft 1 mod for Starcraft 2 so I suspect someone will do that for you shortly after release.
Seriously, you can't compare games sold during 2009 in the US to games sold from 2008 to 2010 worldwide, that's silly. Mario Kart Wii sold a million copies in the US in 2009, in the entire 2008 to 2010 period it sold 5 million copies in the US. The other 16 million were worldwide.