That'd be nice and dandy if they weren't trying to double-dip. Are they selling us a game we can play for the rest of our lives, or a subscription to it?
Agreed. I think it's a question of expectations, and as long as I know what kind of DRM is being used and their end of life plans, I can make an informed decision. That's part of why this story is an issue: the PS3 already had a mechanism to prevent copying (that obviously didn't work), and a company put another layer of DRM on top.
I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years from now about this topic.
Well, my two sources are XBox Live and Steam. Steam doesn't appear to be going anywhere, though they claim to be prepared to remove their DRM should they ever go kaputt (as if someone else wouldn't buy them?). Since most of my purchases from them have been through sharp discounts as well, I'd still be out less money and hardship than had I purchased non-DRM games on DVD. In the case of XBL, my content is licensed to my console until it dies. So, unless my 360 dies after XBL dies for the 360 I'm safe. At that point, the fact that the online service is shut off is a bigger problem than just not being able to play my downloaded games.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
Were you intentionally not trying to get my point? I mean, seriously, the very next sentence. Yeesh.
Again, if you notice it when you can't sell it, it's bad DRM. That said, it's also bad because it's unnecessary: it should have, as you said, copy protection instead of DRM.
When we're talking purely digital good, a DRM can make much more sense, and there's no physical item to imply strict ownership.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
Right. Wait and see what happens a few years from now when that game is no longer supported. You paid for the game, but you can no longer play it.
That's why I attempt to hedge my bets and only purchase content with DRM from locations I expect will be around for a while. I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
The intent of DRM is to get you to pay them money.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
That's a short-sighted view. The big problem with DRM is 'what happens 10 years from now when the servers no longer exist'? With DRM, any DRM, you're not purchasing software, you're renting it.
The whole reason they blow piracy out of proportion is so that people will actually use the phrase 'good DRM scheme'.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
I don't think piracy needs to be taken out of proportion to see the business desire for DRM. I would say that by doing so, however, it does make it easier to justify kludgy and draconiam DRM measures.
Anyway, to get back to what you said, your point is both right and useless. There really is no such thing as DRM that doesn't get in your way for the simple reason that customers have different ideas from the publisher. If it didn't get in the way, there'd be no point to it!
Semantics. Of course, the intent is for DRM to prevent you from copying the content, and for that it must get in the way. However, a DRM whose presence is rarely if ever noticed is a good DRM scheme.
The machines which had not crashed were the machines that had not scanned svchost.exe yet. The problem still wouldn't have happened if they tested against svchost.
It should also be noted the usage rights you obtain with DLC does vary from item to item. For instance, I believe there are a few games on Live that will register to the console and be playable across all profiles on said console.
My understanding is that ALL 360 DLC works that way. It is registered to the console ID it was purchased on, and may be played by any gamertag on that console, whether the original GT is logged in or not.
So yes, Google could very easily narrow things down to my house even though the street is sparsely populated.
So back to the second part: what nefarious purposes would a geotagged map of WAPs have, and is that potential alone enough to force them to stop?
I mean, your ISP (or hacker into their system) could trace your IP address to your physical address, but I can't think of a reason why that would matter.
Right, has the Google Street View car been down your road? If it's that sparsely populated, they probably haven't.
Still, what's the attack vector you're worried about? Google doesn't just hand this information out to anybody. So you're concerned someone will hack Google's servers in order to find the nearest open AP to themselves and use their bandwidth?
Restrictive, but generally convenient. Even a mildly restrictive DRM is a problem when it noticably causes inconveniences for those using the product legaly. Likewise, the DRM schemes on the consoles are generally less of a hassle than those on the PC, even though they are more restrictive.
On the 360, your content is licensed to both your gamer tag and the console you download it on. So, anyone can play it on your console, and you can play it on any console you are logged into. The only hassle was when you got the Red Ring and your content was still licensed to the dead console. Now they allow you to transfer your licenses to the new console when it dies. Since it's pretty transparent, it doesn't bother most people who aren't pirates.
This scheme, on the other hand, is a hassle for many people who did purchase the game legally. Surely you can see the issue. Of course, the blame could partially rest on Sony for letting this loophole be abused for long enough that publishers have to use kludgy DRM to stop it.
Microsoft has been locking the hard disk so no further game saves can be done; and also disabling the "play from hard disk" feature.
I know they lock out the 'play from HDD' option, because it requires access to XBL. I haven't heard anything about preventing game saves, do you have a link?
Regardless, at least the XBox hackers were violating the ToS, these PS3 users weren't doing anything wrong.
The concept of walking on water, for example, has references far older than the bible. It's a pretty common magic trick, if you're willing to swallow the claim it may be just a parlour trick (and this is all assuming, again, that the original observations are, in fact, true).
There are also a number of references to this trick having been performed on various types of shoals and reefs, where a boat may float at anchor, but a wise seaman could position it in such a way that he could virtually step off the side into only inches of water. You might assume that would be obviously visible to others, but if I recall, many who reported it were not seafaring people and may have rarely been out on open water.
This ignores several of the important points of the story. Jesus walked from shore to the boat, so he could not have positioned the boat himself. It was also during stormy weather, so he would not have been able to see if the disciples were in a position where a parlor trick might work. Beyond this, Peter also walks out onto the water, yet sinks until Jesus pulls him back up, which doesn't fit the platform theory.
As for being rarely upon water and easily tricked, many of the disciples were fishermen.
There is an interesting anthropologic reference to the red sea. Anthropologists have traced the historical path of the jews out of Egypt. It's pretty well accepted that this would have happened, and it would have taken them very close to a large bog type swamp. Locals used to map gaps in the swamp, where a person could walk clean across the entire area, but those who were not familiar with the area would wade into a bog and often drown (especially if wearing armour).
Again, assuming that this story is close to literal and isn't the great imagination of the storyteller, it's entirely plausible that they passed a swampy offshooot of the Red Sea, walked across a known land-bridge and watched the armies behind them perish in the bogs, figuratively "splitting" the red sea.
Of course, our vision of Charleton Heston holding his staff in front of a massive wall of water is spiffy and all, but there isn't much more than that to go on.:-)
Assuming the bog theory, since none of the jews were really local to the Red Sea (they even got angry at Moses for leading them to the sea only to die there), that would be equally miraculous (if less flashy) for a stranger to the area to navigate a safe course for thousands of people, across a land bridge they didn't know existed. I'd be more willing to grant that it was a tidal plane (thus the waters truly did subside and return), but again the timings and circumstances that they would leave Egypt (why else would the Jews be allowed to leave, then pursued shortly afterward?) and escape by walking across the ocean. Coincidence? I highly doubt that seems plausible even to you.
As for resurrection, I have no idea, except it's not impossible to fake someone's death, especially given sufficient collaboration with outsiders and sufficient time to plan. It's also quite possible to make up such statements. As it has been said, nobody of any historical significance SAW any resurrected people. If I recall, the eye-witnesses were always "the faithful" and/or "random joe who couldn't possibly dispute the claim" which makes them a dubious claim as far as historical accuracy is concerned.
We have 4 instances of resurrection. None seem easy to fake.
First is the Daughter of Jairus. He seeks Jesus to heal his ailing daughter, yet she dies while they are in transit. Perhaps she wasn't dead, only nearly so, yet how does Jesus get her out of bed nearly instantaneously? Also, if it were a trick, why do all three accounts show Jesus downplaying the incident? Wouldn't a parlor trickster be more likely to bring attention?
I didn't say it was possible. I said the benefit of less forestry is less fossil fuels, not fewer trees cut.
By replacing manuals with.pdfs, those trees can be used for more important things that can't be replaced by digital information, and we expend less energy overall.
The fact that there is an impasse on this topic is a bit irrelevant, because I don't require these documents to have been written on a certain date by a certain person who witnessed a certain event that was inspired in a certain way and was worded in a certain fashion in a certain language which lead to a perfect translation for my own belief system to be self-supporting.
Perfectly understandable, and I don't think my post applies to your point of view. It was only to the AC who erroneously claimed that the Gospels could not have been written by first-hand witnesses. And, more importantly, that AC appeared more bullheaded and short-sighted than he claimed I am. But mostly, he was just plain wrong in his supporting 'evidence'.
I wouldn't presume you to be as irrational and unwise as above AC.
Were dinosaur bones put there to fool me and the other unbelievers? Or is the entire old-book just an allegory?
Do you find it at all ironic that after hundreds of years of putting together a pretty good estimate about evolutionary heritage, that modern DNA sequencing and the concept of genetic drift would almost exactly corroborate these theories?
I'm split, actually. It certainly seems that our universe is billions of years old. However, I'm not one to presume that if God could create the Universe, He also couldn't create it in 6 days 6,000 years ago and make it appear billions of years old (along with all the evolutionary clues that go along with it).
My gut feeling is that since time really has no meaning to an omnipotent and omnipresent diety, 6 days of creation need not have a direct corelation to 144 hours as we experience them. I'm probably also wrong. Of more importance to me is the 'why' and 'what' of creation, not the 'how' becasue it's much less significant.
As to the rest of the things, it goes back to a question of omnipotence. If God is omnipotent (which I believe he is), then he certainly could do all of those things. Surely you see the fallacy in claiming that a diety who can do all things can't exist because things have been attributed to him which are 'impossible'.
I'm more interested that your list of things he couldn't do didn't include 'ressurect the dead, on two occassions', or 'allow two people to walk on open water', or 'split the Red Sea allowing the Jews to walk across on dry land but the Egyptians following them to be drowned'. Any particular reason? Simply because of the body of scientific literature, or that they are harder to believe?
Actually, it'd probably be a pretty novel experience playing a game which realistically simulates space combat...
Novel, but boring. Who has the more accurate targeting system for their laser weaponry? As soon as they reach that range, their laser destroys the other craft. End of battle. Remember that any projectile can likely be destroyed by lasers or other projectiles before it reaches you.
You don't actually expect that 'realistic' and 'energy shield' go in the same sentence, do you?
As I stated above, at some point increased realism decreses the fun of a game.
Yes, Diabetes was their primary motivation, but they signed on for more than that. The problem seems to be that they didn't like what happened later and regretted that decision.
Hence, the purpose of 'informed consent'. It matters less that you consent, and more that you know what you are consenting to. Put another way, your consent isn't legal if you aren't aware of the implications of your consent. For examples of studies going bad when they didn't use informed consent, see the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, and The Monster Study.
instead you can simply mix realism with accessibility add-ons. Driving games are slowly getting there, they are starting to provide both a reasonable amount of realism while at the same time providing optional breaking assistants, dynamic drive lines or even time-rewind, thus giving you accessibility without turning into a flat arcade game.
But that ignores that not everyone wants realism, even superficially. Some people want to play an arcade game. For those people, intentionally violating the laws of physics for the sake of fun is a good thing. See Mario Kart, Street Fighter, Team Fortress 2, Geometry Wars, etc. for examples.
That's why we have developers making simulations, pseudo-sims, and arcade titles: they each have a merket, and there is not one-size-fits-all solution.
Since you're most likely licensing your cable box from the cable company itself, the limitations are more upon your use of the network than on the hardware, per-se. Even if you owned the box instead of licensing it, the cable company probably has a usage requirement that you use only locked-down hardware to receive their signals.
That's basically the same thing Sony wants to enforce on PSN (and what MS does differently for XBL), except a PS3 (or XBox) has many more uses than simply accessing a service provider.
With cable boxes in particular, I'm not surprised the hardware is locked down. Since it has exactly one legitimate use (watching cable from your provider), there's little need to hack it. But really, any limits on that hardware is really a limit on the service provided.
That said, it's interesting that Sony has chosen this method to counteract (I assume) hacking and piracy. Microsoft just kicks people off their network when they mod their 360, I'm surprised Sony cripples all use.
That's the trojan that Sony is able to use. They can't force you to accept a new hardware EULA, but they can require in their PSN EULA that all devices connected have the latest firmware. If you don't accept the new Hardware EULA they take away PSN access, then pester you to update (or do it surrepticiously through a game disc). Since a PS3 is mostly worthless without network access, this is a pretty effective strategy to get their way.
So the question is: will they automatically push this update along with the new EULA terms (which probably would be illegal), or do they just make it inconvenient until you opt in?
In other words: buyer beware. Personally, I hope MS continues on their path to fix their poor practices on the 360 (the extended RRoD and E74 warranties, license transfers, and USB mass storage of game data have been huge steps), rather than taking a turn for the worse, like Sony.
Of course, the issue is that different people have different expectations for gameplay. You obviously prefer the more realistic physics as part of the game. Others prefer for the game portions to be interesting, rather than realistic.
For example, racing simulators versus racing games. The sims (the hardcore stuff, like SimBin) often have very little game attached to them beyond 'here are cars and tracks, and all the physics and race rules to use them'. This appeals to your hardcore drivers who care more about lift-throttle oversteer and their tire temperature and pressure, but not to your typical 'gamer'. They want a career mode, the ability to purchase and install vehicle upgrades, and a compelling reason to race the tracks (beyond dropping a lap time by 0.005s). Both are gameplay, but very different types.
I guess what I'm saying is that unlike what you seem to be implying, realism != gameplay. Sure, we're seeing a lot of games which merge the two (you could say the first one was Asteroids), but just because an FPS is more realistic than TF2 or Quake doesn't mean it has better gameplay.
I usually don't bother arguing with irrational, delusional psychopaths, but this caught my eye.
The gospels date to between 65 CE and 110 CE. The earliest of them references events that happen in 60 CE - 62 CE. Your line about "assumptions of usual first writing compared to date of first manuscript" is pure bullshit.
Right, and the gospels are dated to 65-110AD because the earliest papyrus found dates from 100-250AD. It's always assumed that your oldest copy of the document isn't the original, unless you have some way of knowing that to be the case. That's my only point: we're within the margin of error on the calculations, the gospels could have been written by the original disciples.
I also think that your dating at earliest referenced events being 60AD is a little... late. Pilate's reign ended in 36AD.
You're also forgetting the small matter of life expectancy. Until very recently, 25-28 years was all you could expect to get. 35 if you were very very lucky. That would be like living to 95 today. The numbers just don't add up. The authors of the gospels were not around to witness anything.
Herod the Great lived 70 years, reigning for about 40, and Herod Antipas lived beyond 60. It's not unreasonable that a group of religious ascetics in good physical fitness (nearly all were day laborers) and abstaining from unhealthy vices couldn't live to 50 and beyond.
It's not like they had to conspire, either. Christianity has been exploited for political gain by individuals CONSTANTLY since before it even got started.
I assume you would be referring to Christianity before it was written down? Otherwise, how do you use something that doesn't exist for political gain?
That's all I felt like saying. Not going to bother with more, people like you don't WANT to think.
I'm not trying to convince you that these are proofs of what I believe. However, I don't see any of these pieces of evidence so unlikely as to refute my view that the Gospels were written by first-hand witnesses. Unlikely, yes, but not disproven.
Of course, we're at an impasse, I'm starting with the assertion that Jesus was the son of God, you're starting with the assertion that the Gospels are a fabrication. All the numbers above make both answers plausible, but you're making just as many assumptions as I am, so don't presume yourself to be more 'logical'. You have just as much of a philosophical/spiritual/whatever axe to grind as I do.
I find it highly ironic that there are at least a dozen different sects (or uhm, denominations) where there are pretty vast differences in interpretation, all with "scripture" reference.
For the most part, these are cases of issues not covered directly. But nobody said people were perfect followers or interpreters.
Half of the world's Christian population buys the Lev 18:22 view of homosexuality but 99% of them reject the 11:22 view of unholy shellfish.
Srsly?
That's because they have read Romans 1:26 which corroborates the judgment that homosexuality is wrong, and 1 Corinthians 7:18 which corroborates that the Levitical practicises that come with circumcision are unnecessary for salvation through Jesus. This is repeated elsewhere. Again, only a problem if you ignore the rest of the Bible.
I won't even go into technicalities of translations, except that there are clearly a variety of issues that have been pointed out over the years, not the least of which is the fact that the "gospels" were written between 50 and 150 years after the events took place, after the authors had been traveling together preaching the story for their entire life as a means of livelihood. The fact that they are textually identical in a number of accounts (75-100 years after the fact?) simply reinforces the probability that it was all a carefully chosen fabrication from the authors, unless, of course, you choose to believe it was all divinely inspired, which really makes one question the areas of the four gospels that textually DISAGREE about certain events.
The original texts are assumed to have been written after 50AD, based on assumptions of usual first writing compared to date of first manuscript (itself an inexact science). How confident are you that there is absolutely no way they were written by first-parties?
And I'll pull an Occam's Razor here: if 4 accounts of a person's life have identical text, is it not a simpler explanation that all 4 witnessed the same thing, rather than that they formed a conspiracy to manufacture a religion and intentionally littered it with inconsistencies?
Slashdot Mirror
Facts and theories are, in fact, a-political. How they are arrived upon and used are quite often political.
The guns in your example are equally a-political. It is the cause behind the war that is dependent upon politics.
That'd be nice and dandy if they weren't trying to double-dip. Are they selling us a game we can play for the rest of our lives, or a subscription to it?
Agreed. I think it's a question of expectations, and as long as I know what kind of DRM is being used and their end of life plans, I can make an informed decision. That's part of why this story is an issue: the PS3 already had a mechanism to prevent copying (that obviously didn't work), and a company put another layer of DRM on top.
I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years from now about this topic.
Well, my two sources are XBox Live and Steam. Steam doesn't appear to be going anywhere, though they claim to be prepared to remove their DRM should they ever go kaputt (as if someone else wouldn't buy them?). Since most of my purchases from them have been through sharp discounts as well, I'd still be out less money and hardship than had I purchased non-DRM games on DVD. In the case of XBL, my content is licensed to my console until it dies. So, unless my 360 dies after XBL dies for the 360 I'm safe. At that point, the fact that the online service is shut off is a bigger problem than just not being able to play my downloaded games.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
Were you intentionally not trying to get my point? I mean, seriously, the very next sentence. Yeesh.
Again, if you notice it when you can't sell it, it's bad DRM. That said, it's also bad because it's unnecessary: it should have, as you said, copy protection instead of DRM.
When we're talking purely digital good, a DRM can make much more sense, and there's no physical item to imply strict ownership.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
Right. Wait and see what happens a few years from now when that game is no longer supported. You paid for the game, but you can no longer play it.
That's why I attempt to hedge my bets and only purchase content with DRM from locations I expect will be around for a while. I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
The intent of DRM is to get you to pay them money.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
That's a short-sighted view. The big problem with DRM is 'what happens 10 years from now when the servers no longer exist'? With DRM, any DRM, you're not purchasing software, you're renting it.
The whole reason they blow piracy out of proportion is so that people will actually use the phrase 'good DRM scheme'.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
I don't think piracy needs to be taken out of proportion to see the business desire for DRM. I would say that by doing so, however, it does make it easier to justify kludgy and draconiam DRM measures.
Anyway, to get back to what you said, your point is both right and useless. There really is no such thing as DRM that doesn't get in your way for the simple reason that customers have different ideas from the publisher. If it didn't get in the way, there'd be no point to it!
Semantics. Of course, the intent is for DRM to prevent you from copying the content, and for that it must get in the way. However, a DRM whose presence is rarely if ever noticed is a good DRM scheme.
The machines which had not crashed were the machines that had not scanned svchost.exe yet. The problem still wouldn't have happened if they tested against svchost.
It should also be noted the usage rights you obtain with DLC does vary from item to item. For instance, I believe there are a few games on Live that will register to the console and be playable across all profiles on said console.
My understanding is that ALL 360 DLC works that way. It is registered to the console ID it was purchased on, and may be played by any gamertag on that console, whether the original GT is logged in or not.
So yes, Google could very easily narrow things down to my house even though the street is sparsely populated.
So back to the second part: what nefarious purposes would a geotagged map of WAPs have, and is that potential alone enough to force them to stop?
I mean, your ISP (or hacker into their system) could trace your IP address to your physical address, but I can't think of a reason why that would matter.
Right, has the Google Street View car been down your road? If it's that sparsely populated, they probably haven't.
Still, what's the attack vector you're worried about? Google doesn't just hand this information out to anybody. So you're concerned someone will hack Google's servers in order to find the nearest open AP to themselves and use their bandwidth?
Restrictive, but generally convenient. Even a mildly restrictive DRM is a problem when it noticably causes inconveniences for those using the product legaly. Likewise, the DRM schemes on the consoles are generally less of a hassle than those on the PC, even though they are more restrictive.
On the 360, your content is licensed to both your gamer tag and the console you download it on. So, anyone can play it on your console, and you can play it on any console you are logged into. The only hassle was when you got the Red Ring and your content was still licensed to the dead console. Now they allow you to transfer your licenses to the new console when it dies. Since it's pretty transparent, it doesn't bother most people who aren't pirates.
This scheme, on the other hand, is a hassle for many people who did purchase the game legally. Surely you can see the issue. Of course, the blame could partially rest on Sony for letting this loophole be abused for long enough that publishers have to use kludgy DRM to stop it.
Microsoft has been locking the hard disk so no further game saves can be done; and also disabling the "play from hard disk" feature.
I know they lock out the 'play from HDD' option, because it requires access to XBL. I haven't heard anything about preventing game saves, do you have a link?
Regardless, at least the XBox hackers were violating the ToS, these PS3 users weren't doing anything wrong.
The concept of walking on water, for example, has references far older than the bible. It's a pretty common magic trick, if you're willing to swallow the claim it may be just a parlour trick (and this is all assuming, again, that the original observations are, in fact, true).
There are also a number of references to this trick having been performed on various types of shoals and reefs, where a boat may float at anchor, but a wise seaman could position it in such a way that he could virtually step off the side into only inches of water. You might assume that would be obviously visible to others, but if I recall, many who reported it were not seafaring people and may have rarely been out on open water.
This ignores several of the important points of the story. Jesus walked from shore to the boat, so he could not have positioned the boat himself. It was also during stormy weather, so he would not have been able to see if the disciples were in a position where a parlor trick might work. Beyond this, Peter also walks out onto the water, yet sinks until Jesus pulls him back up, which doesn't fit the platform theory.
As for being rarely upon water and easily tricked, many of the disciples were fishermen.
There is an interesting anthropologic reference to the red sea. Anthropologists have traced the historical path of the jews out of Egypt. It's pretty well accepted that this would have happened, and it would have taken them very close to a large bog type swamp. Locals used to map gaps in the swamp, where a person could walk clean across the entire area, but those who were not familiar with the area would wade into a bog and often drown (especially if wearing armour).
Again, assuming that this story is close to literal and isn't the great imagination of the storyteller, it's entirely plausible that they passed a swampy offshooot of the Red Sea, walked across a known land-bridge and watched the armies behind them perish in the bogs, figuratively "splitting" the red sea.
Of course, our vision of Charleton Heston holding his staff in front of a massive wall of water is spiffy and all, but there isn't much more than that to go on. :-)
Assuming the bog theory, since none of the jews were really local to the Red Sea (they even got angry at Moses for leading them to the sea only to die there), that would be equally miraculous (if less flashy) for a stranger to the area to navigate a safe course for thousands of people, across a land bridge they didn't know existed. I'd be more willing to grant that it was a tidal plane (thus the waters truly did subside and return), but again the timings and circumstances that they would leave Egypt (why else would the Jews be allowed to leave, then pursued shortly afterward?) and escape by walking across the ocean. Coincidence? I highly doubt that seems plausible even to you.
As for resurrection, I have no idea, except it's not impossible to fake someone's death, especially given sufficient collaboration with outsiders and sufficient time to plan. It's also quite possible to make up such statements. As it has been said, nobody of any historical significance SAW any resurrected people. If I recall, the eye-witnesses were always "the faithful" and/or "random joe who couldn't possibly dispute the claim" which makes them a dubious claim as far as historical accuracy is concerned.
We have 4 instances of resurrection. None seem easy to fake.
First is the Daughter of Jairus. He seeks Jesus to heal his ailing daughter, yet she dies while they are in transit. Perhaps she wasn't dead, only nearly so, yet how does Jesus get her out of bed nearly instantaneously? Also, if it were a trick, why do all three accounts show Jesus downplaying the incident? Wouldn't a parlor trickster be more likely to bring attention?
Next was a boy
I didn't say it was possible. I said the benefit of less forestry is less fossil fuels, not fewer trees cut.
By replacing manuals with .pdfs, those trees can be used for more important things that can't be replaced by digital information, and we expend less energy overall.
The fact that there is an impasse on this topic is a bit irrelevant, because I don't require these documents to have been written on a certain date by a certain person who witnessed a certain event that was inspired in a certain way and was worded in a certain fashion in a certain language which lead to a perfect translation for my own belief system to be self-supporting.
Perfectly understandable, and I don't think my post applies to your point of view. It was only to the AC who erroneously claimed that the Gospels could not have been written by first-hand witnesses. And, more importantly, that AC appeared more bullheaded and short-sighted than he claimed I am. But mostly, he was just plain wrong in his supporting 'evidence'.
I wouldn't presume you to be as irrational and unwise as above AC.
Were dinosaur bones put there to fool me and the other unbelievers? Or is the entire old-book just an allegory?
Do you find it at all ironic that after hundreds of years of putting together a pretty good estimate about evolutionary heritage, that modern DNA sequencing and the concept of genetic drift would almost exactly corroborate these theories?
I'm split, actually. It certainly seems that our universe is billions of years old. However, I'm not one to presume that if God could create the Universe, He also couldn't create it in 6 days 6,000 years ago and make it appear billions of years old (along with all the evolutionary clues that go along with it).
My gut feeling is that since time really has no meaning to an omnipotent and omnipresent diety, 6 days of creation need not have a direct corelation to 144 hours as we experience them. I'm probably also wrong. Of more importance to me is the 'why' and 'what' of creation, not the 'how' becasue it's much less significant.
As to the rest of the things, it goes back to a question of omnipotence. If God is omnipotent (which I believe he is), then he certainly could do all of those things. Surely you see the fallacy in claiming that a diety who can do all things can't exist because things have been attributed to him which are 'impossible'.
I'm more interested that your list of things he couldn't do didn't include 'ressurect the dead, on two occassions', or 'allow two people to walk on open water', or 'split the Red Sea allowing the Jews to walk across on dry land but the Egyptians following them to be drowned'. Any particular reason? Simply because of the body of scientific literature, or that they are harder to believe?
Actually, it'd probably be a pretty novel experience playing a game which realistically simulates space combat...
Novel, but boring. Who has the more accurate targeting system for their laser weaponry? As soon as they reach that range, their laser destroys the other craft. End of battle. Remember that any projectile can likely be destroyed by lasers or other projectiles before it reaches you.
You don't actually expect that 'realistic' and 'energy shield' go in the same sentence, do you?
As I stated above, at some point increased realism decreses the fun of a game.
Yes, Diabetes was their primary motivation, but they signed on for more than that. The problem seems to be that they didn't like what happened later and regretted that decision.
Hence, the purpose of 'informed consent'. It matters less that you consent, and more that you know what you are consenting to. Put another way, your consent isn't legal if you aren't aware of the implications of your consent. For examples of studies going bad when they didn't use informed consent, see the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, and The Monster Study.
instead you can simply mix realism with accessibility add-ons. Driving games are slowly getting there, they are starting to provide both a reasonable amount of realism while at the same time providing optional breaking assistants, dynamic drive lines or even time-rewind, thus giving you accessibility without turning into a flat arcade game.
But that ignores that not everyone wants realism, even superficially. Some people want to play an arcade game. For those people, intentionally violating the laws of physics for the sake of fun is a good thing. See Mario Kart, Street Fighter, Team Fortress 2, Geometry Wars, etc. for examples.
That's why we have developers making simulations, pseudo-sims, and arcade titles: they each have a merket, and there is not one-size-fits-all solution.
Since you're most likely licensing your cable box from the cable company itself, the limitations are more upon your use of the network than on the hardware, per-se. Even if you owned the box instead of licensing it, the cable company probably has a usage requirement that you use only locked-down hardware to receive their signals.
That's basically the same thing Sony wants to enforce on PSN (and what MS does differently for XBL), except a PS3 (or XBox) has many more uses than simply accessing a service provider.
Sustainable forestry doesn't hurt the ecosystem. We can harvest trees until kingdom come and still have trees left, as long as we do it properly.
It's the fossil fuels, inks, and man hours that go into harvesting, producing and shipping the materials and final products that's the problem.
With cable boxes in particular, I'm not surprised the hardware is locked down. Since it has exactly one legitimate use (watching cable from your provider), there's little need to hack it. But really, any limits on that hardware is really a limit on the service provided.
That said, it's interesting that Sony has chosen this method to counteract (I assume) hacking and piracy. Microsoft just kicks people off their network when they mod their 360, I'm surprised Sony cripples all use.
That's the trojan that Sony is able to use. They can't force you to accept a new hardware EULA, but they can require in their PSN EULA that all devices connected have the latest firmware. If you don't accept the new Hardware EULA they take away PSN access, then pester you to update (or do it surrepticiously through a game disc). Since a PS3 is mostly worthless without network access, this is a pretty effective strategy to get their way.
So the question is: will they automatically push this update along with the new EULA terms (which probably would be illegal), or do they just make it inconvenient until you opt in?
In other words: buyer beware. Personally, I hope MS continues on their path to fix their poor practices on the 360 (the extended RRoD and E74 warranties, license transfers, and USB mass storage of game data have been huge steps), rather than taking a turn for the worse, like Sony.
Give me game play OVER pretty any day.
Of course, the issue is that different people have different expectations for gameplay. You obviously prefer the more realistic physics as part of the game. Others prefer for the game portions to be interesting, rather than realistic.
For example, racing simulators versus racing games. The sims (the hardcore stuff, like SimBin) often have very little game attached to them beyond 'here are cars and tracks, and all the physics and race rules to use them'. This appeals to your hardcore drivers who care more about lift-throttle oversteer and their tire temperature and pressure, but not to your typical 'gamer'. They want a career mode, the ability to purchase and install vehicle upgrades, and a compelling reason to race the tracks (beyond dropping a lap time by 0.005s). Both are gameplay, but very different types.
I guess what I'm saying is that unlike what you seem to be implying, realism != gameplay. Sure, we're seeing a lot of games which merge the two (you could say the first one was Asteroids), but just because an FPS is more realistic than TF2 or Quake doesn't mean it has better gameplay.
Intelligent criticisms of things like Apple, Google, Linux, etc. will still result in the fury of downmods.
Only if you sound like a douchebag when you say it.
I usually don't bother arguing with irrational, delusional psychopaths, but this caught my eye.
The gospels date to between 65 CE and 110 CE. The earliest of them references events that happen in 60 CE - 62 CE. Your line about "assumptions of usual first writing compared to date of first manuscript" is pure bullshit.
Right, and the gospels are dated to 65-110AD because the earliest papyrus found dates from 100-250AD. It's always assumed that your oldest copy of the document isn't the original, unless you have some way of knowing that to be the case. That's my only point: we're within the margin of error on the calculations, the gospels could have been written by the original disciples.
I also think that your dating at earliest referenced events being 60AD is a little... late. Pilate's reign ended in 36AD.
You're also forgetting the small matter of life expectancy. Until very recently, 25-28 years was all you could expect to get. 35 if you were very very lucky. That would be like living to 95 today. The numbers just don't add up. The authors of the gospels were not around to witness anything.
Herod the Great lived 70 years, reigning for about 40, and Herod Antipas lived beyond 60. It's not unreasonable that a group of religious ascetics in good physical fitness (nearly all were day laborers) and abstaining from unhealthy vices couldn't live to 50 and beyond.
It's not like they had to conspire, either. Christianity has been exploited for political gain by individuals CONSTANTLY since before it even got started.
I assume you would be referring to Christianity before it was written down? Otherwise, how do you use something that doesn't exist for political gain?
That's all I felt like saying. Not going to bother with more, people like you don't WANT to think.
I'm not trying to convince you that these are proofs of what I believe. However, I don't see any of these pieces of evidence so unlikely as to refute my view that the Gospels were written by first-hand witnesses. Unlikely, yes, but not disproven.
Of course, we're at an impasse, I'm starting with the assertion that Jesus was the son of God, you're starting with the assertion that the Gospels are a fabrication. All the numbers above make both answers plausible, but you're making just as many assumptions as I am, so don't presume yourself to be more 'logical'. You have just as much of a philosophical/spiritual/whatever axe to grind as I do.
I find it highly ironic that there are at least a dozen different sects (or uhm, denominations) where there are pretty vast differences in interpretation, all with "scripture" reference.
For the most part, these are cases of issues not covered directly. But nobody said people were perfect followers or interpreters.
Half of the world's Christian population buys the Lev 18:22 view of homosexuality but 99% of them reject the 11:22 view of unholy shellfish.
Srsly?
That's because they have read Romans 1:26 which corroborates the judgment that homosexuality is wrong, and 1 Corinthians 7:18 which corroborates that the Levitical practicises that come with circumcision are unnecessary for salvation through Jesus. This is repeated elsewhere. Again, only a problem if you ignore the rest of the Bible.
I won't even go into technicalities of translations, except that there are clearly a variety of issues that have been pointed out over the years, not the least of which is the fact that the "gospels" were written between 50 and 150 years after the events took place, after the authors had been traveling together preaching the story for their entire life as a means of livelihood. The fact that they are textually identical in a number of accounts (75-100 years after the fact?) simply reinforces the probability that it was all a carefully chosen fabrication from the authors, unless, of course, you choose to believe it was all divinely inspired, which really makes one question the areas of the four gospels that textually DISAGREE about certain events.
The original texts are assumed to have been written after 50AD, based on assumptions of usual first writing compared to date of first manuscript (itself an inexact science). How confident are you that there is absolutely no way they were written by first-parties?
And I'll pull an Occam's Razor here: if 4 accounts of a person's life have identical text, is it not a simpler explanation that all 4 witnessed the same thing, rather than that they formed a conspiracy to manufacture a religion and intentionally littered it with inconsistencies?