While I'm sure their publisher would love a sequel, I think it really depends on the Irrational team. They might not do it if they don't think they have the material to do so. From what I've seen so far, these guys are pretty good about not selling out. There are some rumors that System Shock 3 is planned, and they appear to have a habit of making rounds through their main franchises with pretty good levels of success.
Of course if you don't believe analysts or Sony then you don't believe anyone who can legitimately make a case. Therefore, you be trolling since you'll never be convinced anyways.
I completely agree. But to some degree it could be argued that thanks to the internet all knowledge could be freely shared and therefore everyone has the same experience anyways since everyone can discover how to find a particular path of knowledge so long as someone else has found it first.
I think it's still worth a shot to see what happens, it might work out well. I was always a fan of "hidden" content that could logically be found.
Last I heard he passed the psych exam...somehow. Though he is still being investigated in Florida, apparently he called Bush as a witness. No idea if hes just doing something crazy or delaying for time. (Bush cannot testify while acting as President)
Yes they do take a hit on the hardware sale, as Khaed and Chris said.
As per Chris, I poked around and you are indeed correct about the cheaper 80GB, which means that the cost of an 80GB is lower then what I was calculating. However, I don't believe this changes that Sony is trying to make something that's actually horribly overpriced compared to the 60GB model not look like it's horribly overpriced, at least to the layman for the time being. Which could also explain the bundle aspect mentioned in the post below, offset's the price to the consumer a bit.
But again, it's probably all part of their effort to clear out the 60GB model. But with that extra bit of knowledge I would be amazed if they did not drop the price by another $100 or more once the 60GBs are gone, it would be a crime not too.
I will say the software BC I've seen so far is very good, including some PS1 games that the PS2 couldn't even play. The upscaling is also pretty dam good. Just saying with the hardware and software BC all your bases are covered.
As the above posters have mentioned, Sony removed the hardware emulation to cut costs on the unit and added another 20GB to make you feel like you got something in exchange. The problem (or not depending on how you look at it) is that they increased the price by $100 for 20GB...yea thats not what I would call an "acceptable" cost trade-off. Thus they made the 60GB look much more lucrative for those who care about the backwards compatibility, die-hards, or to those looking for a better deal. In turn the 80GB looks like you get something for the extra $100 to the ill-informed.
Which is precisely why the 60GB model is a better deal. It possesses both hardware and software emulation, thus insuring near 100% backwards compatibility and the ability to scale-up games that work with the software emulation. And it's $100 cheaper then the 80GB version. Of course this is all an attempt to clear the 60GB model out of the warehouses, so they can push their cheaper to manufacture 80GB. Which should receive a price drop by about $100 or so sometime shortly after the 60GB model is entirely sold out. At least it should, it would be very stupid of Sony not too.
And thats the best explanation I can give of Sony's current actions, hope it helps.
Not to mention quite often in my experiences when AMD's version of something is usually better. Which may be why they are a tad slow on releasing products.
While in principal I agree, that doesn't stop the bad parents from reproducing again...and oh look an endless cycle. Then again, I have no idea what the numbers for adoptions look like in the US.
While I didn't particularly pay much attention in my database class, or go to it that often, from my current work with databases and a quick skim of some definitions for RDBMS, it strikes me that a good portion of people in this thread and the articles are using the term RDBMS incorrectly. (Though some of the posts appear to be in agreement with me) As far as I can determine RDBMS is solely (and simplified) the concept of relating data between different tables to decrease the repetition of said data. It's a method, a widely applied method, but just a method, not an actual type of database storage.
Sooo, wtf does RDBMS have to do with storing data with either columns or rows in a file?
They fail to be a deterrent when you have them locked up under a mountain somewhere. Since you would need to get them out, load them up, disperse them to targets all in response to an attack. Yea, if we were dealing with a true nuclear war we'd be fucked by the time we opened the vault doors. If you're banking on the missile defense system to buy time, at it's current level it cannot defend against a full multiple missile and target attack. The fact that they are out there and could be immediately used if required is the deterrent, not the fact that they exist. What good does it do if I have a nuke but no way to use it? It would just be a particularly large and radioactive paper weight.
While it's rather amusing and I love Douglas Adams, the Babelfish proof may be semantically correct but not logically correct. It relies on an assumption you cannot prove being correct, which defeats the purpose of deductive logic. If you were having the conversation with God it would negate faith, even assuming that faith is a requirement for God, which once more cannot be proven thus the argument is invalid or unknown at best. It could even be stretched that if you knew faith is definitive to God's existence, you would negate God since faith is no longer an unknown. Phew.
I believe Adams points this irony out with the line immediately after it: " "Oh that was easy" says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing." Since this is a much easier blatant contradiction to understand.
And because someone is bound to try it anyways, yes you can prove almost anything with contradiction if you word it correctly, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.
You're ignoring the basic logic so you can bash religions. Yes, a large portion of clergy were the elites and thus also the scientists, however they were that way because they were part of the church which had the people and resources to pursue such knowledge, anyone could join, would you get rich and become a bishop? Probably not, but you'd become far more educated then the peasants. Anyways, since the church supported them, it supported science and actually pursued science in an attempt to find God. I mean it's not like they setup monasteries all over Europe that would become centers of learning or anything. And thats not including all the religious scientists who were not clergy and just members of various churches. Now, did these ideas vary from religious leader/group to religious leader/group, of course, just as their is variance in the scientific community over various ideas, it's the nature of the uncertain beast. Some are all for change, others seek the same old. You are oversimplifying the concept using absolutes, which brings you to an incorrect conclusion.
Which again is really besides the point. The argument here, which is that science and religion are incompatible, is, relatively speaking, a modern concept and incorrect. Some religions are incompatible with science and generally these are also the ones that are incompatible with the world in general (yes I'm referencing you fundamentalists out there), but some are not. You will notice, particularly in the Catholic church, that they actually slowly withdrew from the hard scientific world and more or less sit on the fence attempting to reconcile their doctrines with the modern world.
You wouldn't bash religion so hard if you were taught that Genesis is a nice story about morals and that evolution is really how life came into existence from a Franciscan Friar, all of course at a Catholic High School.
For lack of mod points, I'll just say thanks for saying what I was thinking, and much more eloquently then if I tried it.
To give you an answer to your question, morals are relatively absolute in my opinion. There are some gray areas or specific circumstances that you would most likely go against your normal moral choice. For example lets say you have no choice but to kill someone because your life is threatened when you would normally never do such a thing. It's one of those conditions in which we could probably all agree you were justified in your actions. With absolute morality, you could not kill in defense of your own life without negating your moral stance. With relatively absolute morals, even if you did kill someone in self-defense it does not negate your morality since you do not continue to go around killing people. I think the term relative is too flaky in the case we are discussing, though I understand the context you were going for is what I describe as relatively absolute morality.
Of course we should ignore that religion is directly responsible for supporting most scientific breakthroughs up until what, 200-300 years ago? Maybe less?
If anyone tries to bring up Galileo to argue the point, I'm gonna say ahead of time, you are a fucking moron.
While in principle I agree with you, you're missing the point. By those incredibly vague definitions anything is a "right" if someone believes it is, which is most definitely not true. And yes the Bill of Rights does tell you what you can do which in turn is exactly what the government cannot do. While there is an intellectual difference in concept, in practice it's the same thing, however, it is true that it's not a "complete" list, hence the 9th Amendment.
Which leads to the problem of enforcing "rights" that are not clearing outlined in the Constitution, hence the debate in this thread. Now the irony of this is that the government must enforce their own limitations, and I'm not saying it doesn't work (how well can be argued), just that inherently it is the government that supplies those rights in the first place. When it comes down to it, the Constitution (any law actually) is just a piece of paper, its validity entirely relies on the power backing it, which is once more my whole point.
While colonies may be a bit extreme without the ability to terraform or some other method of self-sustainment for a significantly sized population, a moon and/or mars base as an operations center for mining the asteroid belt is a distinct possibility. Due to the lower gravity it would be far more economical to operate off of one of these opposed to earth or space stations in earth's orbit. The initial startup would be a huge amount (since we still need to launch the initial materials into space) but once you can build and launch craft from the moon/stations the costs would probably be worth it in the long run.
1. I think a question people are skipping over or assuming something more sinister is: why are they using RFID? Is it possible that there may be a very legit reason? I'm sure their are some companies that would use it in a negative fashion, but what if any legit reasons are there?
2. As I frequently see here, there are many people referencing their "rights". The problem is that everyone assumes they have all or any rights they imagine just because they can think of them, this is (un)fortunately incorrect.
While the Declaration of Independence may contain the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights", there are some distinct problems with this statement. Mainly this phrase can and has been interpreted differently, because if I recall correctly slavery was not abolished at the time of it's signing. (Yes I know it's because at the time they did not consider slaves "people", hence my point.) Second, they are assuming that the rights have a higher backing that enforces them, that would be God in this case.
However, while this is a nice example it doesn't matter since the Declaration is not a guide for government. That would be the Constitution, which conveniently has a section called the "Bill of Rights". Which in turn clearly outlines exactly what rights you have according to the US government, and heres the important part, that they will enforce.
So wtf am I babbling about? The ultimate point is that you only have the rights that a higher power (god/government/etc..) says you have, because they have the power to enforce those that disagree with you. So the important question is not whether you believe that you have these rights, but does the government believe? If you do not see the significance of this concept you have either: a. missed the point or b. take your place in life for granted.
Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could run amok, but there are ways of addressing it, I believe the word you're looking for is either flamethrowers or guns.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows it's because us gamers are all violent killers who need our training to follow the orders of the internet hate machine.
Jack Thompson is gonna have a busy week spewing BS.
You are indeed correct, apparently it's being developed by EA Redwood Studios. Bummer.
While I'm sure their publisher would love a sequel, I think it really depends on the Irrational team. They might not do it if they don't think they have the material to do so. From what I've seen so far, these guys are pretty good about not selling out. There are some rumors that System Shock 3 is planned, and they appear to have a habit of making rounds through their main franchises with pretty good levels of success.
Well theres one explanation of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps3#Sales_and_pricing
Of course if you don't believe analysts or Sony then you don't believe anyone who can legitimately make a case. Therefore, you be trolling since you'll never be convinced anyways.
Apparently their is a now a "mole" inside Sony that claims the 80GB model will drop to $399. I see this as distinctly possible.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/09/rumor-40-gb-ps3.html
I completely agree. But to some degree it could be argued that thanks to the internet all knowledge could be freely shared and therefore everyone has the same experience anyways since everyone can discover how to find a particular path of knowledge so long as someone else has found it first.
I think it's still worth a shot to see what happens, it might work out well. I was always a fan of "hidden" content that could logically be found.
Last I heard he passed the psych exam...somehow. Though he is still being investigated in Florida, apparently he called Bush as a witness. No idea if hes just doing something crazy or delaying for time. (Bush cannot testify while acting as President)
Que Jack Thompson raving like a lunatic...again.
Yes they do take a hit on the hardware sale, as Khaed and Chris said.
As per Chris, I poked around and you are indeed correct about the cheaper 80GB, which means that the cost of an 80GB is lower then what I was calculating. However, I don't believe this changes that Sony is trying to make something that's actually horribly overpriced compared to the 60GB model not look like it's horribly overpriced, at least to the layman for the time being. Which could also explain the bundle aspect mentioned in the post below, offset's the price to the consumer a bit.
But again, it's probably all part of their effort to clear out the 60GB model. But with that extra bit of knowledge I would be amazed if they did not drop the price by another $100 or more once the 60GBs are gone, it would be a crime not too.
I will say the software BC I've seen so far is very good, including some PS1 games that the PS2 couldn't even play. The upscaling is also pretty dam good. Just saying with the hardware and software BC all your bases are covered.
As the above posters have mentioned, Sony removed the hardware emulation to cut costs on the unit and added another 20GB to make you feel like you got something in exchange. The problem (or not depending on how you look at it) is that they increased the price by $100 for 20GB...yea thats not what I would call an "acceptable" cost trade-off. Thus they made the 60GB look much more lucrative for those who care about the backwards compatibility, die-hards, or to those looking for a better deal. In turn the 80GB looks like you get something for the extra $100 to the ill-informed.
Which is precisely why the 60GB model is a better deal. It possesses both hardware and software emulation, thus insuring near 100% backwards compatibility and the ability to scale-up games that work with the software emulation. And it's $100 cheaper then the 80GB version. Of course this is all an attempt to clear the 60GB model out of the warehouses, so they can push their cheaper to manufacture 80GB. Which should receive a price drop by about $100 or so sometime shortly after the 60GB model is entirely sold out. At least it should, it would be very stupid of Sony not too.
And thats the best explanation I can give of Sony's current actions, hope it helps.
Not to mention quite often in my experiences when AMD's version of something is usually better. Which may be why they are a tad slow on releasing products.
Fuck free health care, I want free lawyers.
While in principal I agree, that doesn't stop the bad parents from reproducing again...and oh look an endless cycle. Then again, I have no idea what the numbers for adoptions look like in the US.
That brings me to question #2, can the relational model be applied to column-based DBs?
While I didn't particularly pay much attention in my database class, or go to it that often, from my current work with databases and a quick skim of some definitions for RDBMS, it strikes me that a good portion of people in this thread and the articles are using the term RDBMS incorrectly. (Though some of the posts appear to be in agreement with me) As far as I can determine RDBMS is solely (and simplified) the concept of relating data between different tables to decrease the repetition of said data. It's a method, a widely applied method, but just a method, not an actual type of database storage.
Sooo, wtf does RDBMS have to do with storing data with either columns or rows in a file?
They fail to be a deterrent when you have them locked up under a mountain somewhere. Since you would need to get them out, load them up, disperse them to targets all in response to an attack. Yea, if we were dealing with a true nuclear war we'd be fucked by the time we opened the vault doors. If you're banking on the missile defense system to buy time, at it's current level it cannot defend against a full multiple missile and target attack. The fact that they are out there and could be immediately used if required is the deterrent, not the fact that they exist. What good does it do if I have a nuke but no way to use it? It would just be a particularly large and radioactive paper weight.
While it's rather amusing and I love Douglas Adams, the Babelfish proof may be semantically correct but not logically correct. It relies on an assumption you cannot prove being correct, which defeats the purpose of deductive logic. If you were having the conversation with God it would negate faith, even assuming that faith is a requirement for God, which once more cannot be proven thus the argument is invalid or unknown at best. It could even be stretched that if you knew faith is definitive to God's existence, you would negate God since faith is no longer an unknown. Phew.
I believe Adams points this irony out with the line immediately after it: " "Oh that was easy" says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing." Since this is a much easier blatant contradiction to understand.
And because someone is bound to try it anyways, yes you can prove almost anything with contradiction if you word it correctly, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.
You're ignoring the basic logic so you can bash religions. Yes, a large portion of clergy were the elites and thus also the scientists, however they were that way because they were part of the church which had the people and resources to pursue such knowledge, anyone could join, would you get rich and become a bishop? Probably not, but you'd become far more educated then the peasants. Anyways, since the church supported them, it supported science and actually pursued science in an attempt to find God. I mean it's not like they setup monasteries all over Europe that would become centers of learning or anything. And thats not including all the religious scientists who were not clergy and just members of various churches. Now, did these ideas vary from religious leader/group to religious leader/group, of course, just as their is variance in the scientific community over various ideas, it's the nature of the uncertain beast. Some are all for change, others seek the same old. You are oversimplifying the concept using absolutes, which brings you to an incorrect conclusion.
Which again is really besides the point. The argument here, which is that science and religion are incompatible, is, relatively speaking, a modern concept and incorrect. Some religions are incompatible with science and generally these are also the ones that are incompatible with the world in general (yes I'm referencing you fundamentalists out there), but some are not. You will notice, particularly in the Catholic church, that they actually slowly withdrew from the hard scientific world and more or less sit on the fence attempting to reconcile their doctrines with the modern world.
You wouldn't bash religion so hard if you were taught that Genesis is a nice story about morals and that evolution is really how life came into existence from a Franciscan Friar, all of course at a Catholic High School.
For lack of mod points, I'll just say thanks for saying what I was thinking, and much more eloquently then if I tried it.
To give you an answer to your question, morals are relatively absolute in my opinion. There are some gray areas or specific circumstances that you would most likely go against your normal moral choice. For example lets say you have no choice but to kill someone because your life is threatened when you would normally never do such a thing. It's one of those conditions in which we could probably all agree you were justified in your actions. With absolute morality, you could not kill in defense of your own life without negating your moral stance. With relatively absolute morals, even if you did kill someone in self-defense it does not negate your morality since you do not continue to go around killing people. I think the term relative is too flaky in the case we are discussing, though I understand the context you were going for is what I describe as relatively absolute morality.
Of course we should ignore that religion is directly responsible for supporting most scientific breakthroughs up until what, 200-300 years ago? Maybe less?
If anyone tries to bring up Galileo to argue the point, I'm gonna say ahead of time, you are a fucking moron.
While in principle I agree with you, you're missing the point. By those incredibly vague definitions anything is a "right" if someone believes it is, which is most definitely not true. And yes the Bill of Rights does tell you what you can do which in turn is exactly what the government cannot do. While there is an intellectual difference in concept, in practice it's the same thing, however, it is true that it's not a "complete" list, hence the 9th Amendment.
Which leads to the problem of enforcing "rights" that are not clearing outlined in the Constitution, hence the debate in this thread. Now the irony of this is that the government must enforce their own limitations, and I'm not saying it doesn't work (how well can be argued), just that inherently it is the government that supplies those rights in the first place. When it comes down to it, the Constitution (any law actually) is just a piece of paper, its validity entirely relies on the power backing it, which is once more my whole point.
While colonies may be a bit extreme without the ability to terraform or some other method of self-sustainment for a significantly sized population, a moon and/or mars base as an operations center for mining the asteroid belt is a distinct possibility. Due to the lower gravity it would be far more economical to operate off of one of these opposed to earth or space stations in earth's orbit. The initial startup would be a huge amount (since we still need to launch the initial materials into space) but once you can build and launch craft from the moon/stations the costs would probably be worth it in the long run.
1. I think a question people are skipping over or assuming something more sinister is: why are they using RFID? Is it possible that there may be a very legit reason? I'm sure their are some companies that would use it in a negative fashion, but what if any legit reasons are there?
2. As I frequently see here, there are many people referencing their "rights". The problem is that everyone assumes they have all or any rights they imagine just because they can think of them, this is (un)fortunately incorrect.
While the Declaration of Independence may contain the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights", there are some distinct problems with this statement. Mainly this phrase can and has been interpreted differently, because if I recall correctly slavery was not abolished at the time of it's signing. (Yes I know it's because at the time they did not consider slaves "people", hence my point.) Second, they are assuming that the rights have a higher backing that enforces them, that would be God in this case.
However, while this is a nice example it doesn't matter since the Declaration is not a guide for government. That would be the Constitution, which conveniently has a section called the "Bill of Rights". Which in turn clearly outlines exactly what rights you have according to the US government, and heres the important part, that they will enforce.
So wtf am I babbling about? The ultimate point is that you only have the rights that a higher power (god/government/etc..) says you have, because they have the power to enforce those that disagree with you. So the important question is not whether you believe that you have these rights, but does the government believe? If you do not see the significance of this concept you have either: a. missed the point or b. take your place in life for granted.