There's a juice bar that a friend and I go to from time to time that has an open AP. We bring our laptops, hang out, drink smoothies, and surf.
In the same strip mall is a LAN gaming establishment that has, among other things, wireless internet access. However, they charge for theirs and have security to ensure that only paying patrons use it. The "problem" (for them anyway) is that the two establishments are close enough that people at the LAN party place can easily access the free AP at the juice bar. The guy who runs the juice bar is pretty laid back and doesn't care one bit who uses his AP. From his perspective he's providing a service to his customers, and if other people benefit from it as well then that's great. However, the owner of the LAN place is furious. He's tried to force the juice bar guy to institute encryption, spread (false) rumors about the juice bar, and as of the last time I was there was apparently looking to pursue legal action. I don't know how that's panned out, but I suspect that he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
...is "The Spirits Within". I like that they finally dropped the pretense and eliminated gameplay entirely (not a significant change from the FF games I've played) and made a "game" that was just pretty cut scenes.;-)
Granted, the plot wasn't significantly more cohesive than that of any of the other FF games, but the graphics were nothing short of stunning! Mmmmm... Aki Ross...
Why would I care about forgiveness if I didn't believe in God? Why would you care about the forgiveness of your fellow man if you *do* believe in God? After all, the world is just a temporary thing to be endured. As long as you get right with God before you die, who cares about what the other people you may have made miserable think? If they were good then they'll spend eternity basking in His glory anyway, and if they were bad then nothing you could possibly do to them in this life will mean a thing compared to the eternity of suffering that they've got in store for them, right?
No, of course not. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you try to be a good person in your day to day life, and that you do so not just because God will kick your ass if you don't, but because it's the right thing to do.
News flash: it's no different with atheists. Believe it or not, ethics and God can and do exist independent of each other. I was raised Roman Catholic and remained so well into adulthood, so I've seen both sides of the fence here. I used to imagine that atheists surely must be totally amoral, having no ultimate authority to answer to and no rigid ethical framework imposed upon them. As my faith in God waned (which happened gradually through introspection, thought, prayer (yes!) and research, not as a result of any particular trauma or negative event), I found that while my feelings on a couple of issues shifted (most notably contraception and other issues centering around the idea that sex for purposes other than procreation is somehow dirty and evil), for the most part nothing changed. Right and wrong are still right and wrong, and doing the right thing now actually seems more noble to me, as my motivations are genuinely ethical, rather than looking out for my own selfish interests vis-a-vis the divine carrot and stick.
You'll find that even without Heaven and Hell as motivating factors, most people do the right thing most of the time. Call me naive if you will, but in my experience people are strongly inclined toward good. Why? Because humans fare better in moderately cooperative social structures, hence nature selects for people who are predisposed toward being socially compatible with each other.
At that point, what does it matter if I was forgiven or not in this life? At the point when you die it won't matter to you. However, up until then I presume you want to make at least the people you care about happy, and want their happiness to continue after you've been liquified and fed to the other blue pills.
Let me ask you this (because I'm genuinely curious, not because I'm baiting you or anything): What's more important to you- being forgiven when you do something wrong or not doing wrong in the first place? Confession is a wonderful thing for getting guilt off of your chest, wiping the slate, and moving on with your life. It's a luxury that those who do not follow your faith don't have, and hence any guilty feelings they have over wrongdoing must either be attoned for in some real way or suffered with for the rest of their life. That's a fairly powerful motivator.
Not at all. Contraception and abortion are about willingness to create the next generation of humanity That seems a weak tie, given that the global population is growing quite nicely, thank you.
But more important, the original poster, who is not you, recognized a duty to SPECIES, which I took to mean the human species above other species I do value the human species above the other species on Earth, but the purpose behind my choice of words was to avoid the possibility of my statment in favor of humanity being misconstrued as favoring any particular nation over another. I notice that your population statement above fell into that very trap, equating the value of the next generation of humanity with the next generation of Americans. I'm an American myself, but when I say that I wish longevity and happiness for humanity I'm not limiting t
Could have fooled me- seems that the first thing that gets jetisoned after belief in God (and sometimes before, and sometimes even causing) is duty to family and future I'd say that says more about the specific people you're referring to than it does about any particular belief demographic. I've met caring, loving atheists, Christians who abused their children, and vice versa. In my own experience (and I've actively looked at this for some time), I've found no correlation between religiosity and whether someone is a good, socially conscious person. Good and evil exist across the spectrum.
that is belief in the evils of contraception and abortion and divorce and not caring for one's parents. As another poster has mentioned, these issues are, to varying degrees, tangental to my point.
That last most of all- it seems that every athiest I meet has problems with a father or with grandparents lurking in their past. Since we don't actually know each other I'll choose not to take offense at your statement.;-) I get along great with my family, and in particular with my dad, with whom I'm very much looking forward to spending the day tomorrow. Sadly my grandparents are all deceased, but I never had an unkind word with or thought toward any of them, and mourn their passing.
Then you are unique- are you saying then that you don't believe in contraception and abortion, and are willing to sacrifice other species to see humanity get ahead? In other words, a socially CONSERVATIVE athiest? You're trying to equate unequal things. At the risk of opening myself up to off-topic flaming, I see contraception as a matter of behaving responsibly, and not at all evil. I think that abortion is, for me, a terrible thing, but that it's not my place to inflict my beliefs on other people across the board through legislation. And yes, I would sacrifice lower species for the benefit of mankind if it came down to it. But I do not consider myself to be socially conservative. For the record, I'm a Utilitarian.
Interesting- so you'd disagree with Nietzche then? For the most part, yes. I am not a nihilist. On the contrary, I see the improvement of human (and posthuman) capability, productivity, happiness, and quality of life, and the reduction of suffering, death, and inefficiency, as the ultimate purpose of life. If and when I die, I won't leave behind just a pile of biohazardous chemicals. I will also have left a positive mark, however small, on the world around me. Making a loved one laugh, helping a burdened stranger through a door, doing charitable work, or teaching strangers on Slashdot that being an atheist doesn't mean being a dour, cynical person all make the world a better place, and thus give meaning to life.
Part of death is accepting your own mortality! To me, living is telling death to go take a leap, refusing to give up no matter how grave the odds, and reserving that last bit of energy in my body for flipping death a bird with my decrepit, withered, fingers. "Accepting" death is a little bit of death unto itself. Fighting for life- no matter how futily- that is living.
Sir, I applaud you. In reading this thread I found that you made every point I thought to make (right down to posting the Dragon Tyrant link), and generally more eloquently than I would've. Bravo!
It's ONLY my belief in God and duty to family and future (futile as that may be, wrong as that may be) that keeps me from lving my life the same way Nietzche did.
One quick point: Belief in God and duty to family and future are not inseparable, and can most assuredly exist independent of each other. In my own experience, I've found that as my belief in God faded my sense of obligation to benefit family, future, and species only increased. I can't count on God to provide a happy future for all the good little boys and girls, so it's up to me to help make the future as positive as possible.
This is going to sound weird, but I have to say it. I'm an atheist, but (based solely on what you've written here) Christians like you are precisely the reason why I bear no ill will toward Christianity as a whole. I think that your conclusions are incorrect and your reasoning flawed, but the fact that your conclusions are based on reasoning, as opposed to "I belive it because I consider unthinking belief to be a virtue", speaks well of you and those like you.
I've met idiots of just about every possible religious persuasion (or lack thereof), and I have far more respect for someone who uses their head and arrives at different conclusions than I'll ever have for someone who agrees with me but can't intelligently explain why.
science is an antidote to superstition which is a very different concept then blind faith. Blind faith is the persistant, willful belief in something despite the complete absence of corroborating proof. I fail to see any practical difference between that and superstition. (This is coming from someone who up until a year or two ago self-identified as a Christian.)
Hope is blind faith and there is not antidote for hope If your hope is based solely on blind faith then I pity you. I have tremendous hope for the future, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole. It's based not on blind faith, but on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends. I have "faith" in mankind because I see that despite the horrors that we bring upon ourselves, the general trend is very much in the positive.
My hope has nothing to do with invisible gods or forces outside of human capability. To claim that hope can't exist without faith is to devalue humanity.
In the documentary miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds", there's an interview with Steve Ballmer where he describes the various factors that led to the fallout between Microsoft and IBM. One of the big things that he harps on is how the IBM programmers were too focused on KLOCs, while the M$ guys were striving for streamlined, efficient code.
Now we've got one of the head guys on the Vista project going on about KLOCs. Is anyone surprised? Me neither.
Would turning the phone off be sufficient, or would the battery need to be pulled as well? I've heard that cell phones still "ping" and can be tracked while "off", but I don't have any reliable sources for this information.
The cable versions would most likely be rated NC-17. Growing up I was told that X, XX, and XXX represented different degrees of "hard core", but there actually is no XXX rating. The MPAA's scale goes up to X-rated, and anything "beyond" that is either marketing fluff by the porn industry or a sticky keyboard.;-)
The "Volkswagen" is reserved as a unit of measurement for large artillery and battleship cannons. The "Hiroshima Bomb" is a much more flexible unit, being usable to describe everything from cometary impacts to the flatulence of the guy in the next cube over.
Having "logged" (pun intended) more hours than I dare to imagine playing Pitfall, I think that this is a wonderful achievement! I salute this guy. As a kid I spent half a summer drawing out sketches of all 255 screens of Pitfall, and made a list of every possible underground route.
That was long before I discovered sex, of course.;-)
Once the rightful owner contacts you requesting its return, and you flat-out refuse because their "white ass doesn't deserve it", yes. At that point it's stolen.
They're scum for not returning it. They're idiots for not returning it when a reward was offered.
If you choose to include HL2 in the equation, then you're spending $100 for *two* games, not one. Episode One doesn't require that you have HL2 in order to play.
As to the argument that textures, weapons, and many character models are re-used from HL2, so what? Ep 1 takes place immediately after HL2, in the same city, interacting with many of the same characters. Why would I expect everything to look completely different? The plot is engaging, and the action and puzzles are fresh, creative, and fun- even compared to HL2. To me, *that's* what makes it worth my $20. If new graphics were the only point then I'd be playing Doom 3.
The idea of an HL movie kept running through my head as I was playing HL2. The story is certainly interesting and deep enough to make a very good movie, but there are some aspects that might not translate well to a movie:
* HL1 is a little too straightforward to be a movie in its own right, but the events in that game are critical backstory to explain WTF is happening in HL2. Movies that open with a long expository narration can cover a lot of ground quickly, but typically make for horrible movies. Opening the movie with "BTW, Earth got invaded 20 years ago and this guy who just woke up on a train had something to do with it" would be hard to hammer into a watchable flick.
* The striders kick much, much ass, but the comparisons with War of the Worlds would be, really, not too far off. Unfortunately, the recent WotW movie pretty much blew, which combined with the "it's yet another video game movie like that crappy Doom flick" factor would hang like a cloud over it.
* You couldn't have a movie without Gordon speaking, which would piss off a subset of fans of the games. Not insurmountable, but a factor to consider.
That said, if they made a Half-Life movie I'd see it on opening day no matter how bad the reviews were, and I'd find a way to bring my trusty crowbar with me.;-) Just the idea of seeing a trailer for the movie, with the Valve opening on the big screen, gives me goosebumps. I wonder if they could get Michelle Forbes, Robert Guillaume and Lou Gossett Jr. to reprise their roles on the big screen? I could see Guillaume playing Eli with no problems at all, and while Forbes doesn't look much like Dr. Mossman she does convey a similar serious attitude in the new Battlestar Galactica. If you've seen Enemy Mine then you know that Louis Gossett can play aliens quite well, though the Vortigaunt physiology might be a stretch.
I agree. For an FPS the character development is unprecedented. I made my wife (who is *not* an FPS fan) watch the interaction between Alyx and D0g. She enjoyed it.
It's pretty clear that the people making the HL games are gamers themselves, and have done their homework. Some of Alyx's jokes were almost eerily on the money. After taking down the gunship near the hospital and seeing it crash into the attic, I closed in to inspect it and give it a couple of whacks with the crowbar for good measure. Alyx's "you wanna hit it with the crowbar just to be sure?" line came as my finger was reaching for the key to switch to the crowbar. I didn't realize that I was so predictable!:-)
Crap! NOW you tell me! I got shredded about a dozen times waiting for that friggin' elevator!:-)
On a somewhat unrelated note, did anyone else notice a plot inconsistency? After you make it to the surface and briefly meet up with a guy with a rocket launcher, you go into a building that has several resistance fighters sitting around watching Dr. Kleiner on TV. One of the male guerillas asks Alyx if she's Dr. Kleiner's daughter, to which she replies that Odessa Cubbage is her father. WTF?
I went back to that spot a few times to verify who was speaking, and it's definitely Alyx. Any idea why she'd deny her father? The fact that Dr. Vance is her dad is hardly a trivial detail. I'm not quite finished with Ep. 1 so maybe it's explained later, but I suspect that it's a script error.
That's funny. The only game that's ever given me motion sickness was also a Valve game, but it was the first Half-Life. I got nauseous from that twice- both times while playing multiplayer at a LAN party (which I've done many dozens of times total). No other game has ever done that, and I've experienced no issues with HL2 or Ep1.
And it's perfectly ok to infringe on copyrights? Did you read my comment, or are you replying to someone else's comment in the wrong place? I said nothing of the sort. What I did was address a fundamental flaw in the argument that you're posting all over this thread- that piracy involves depriving the store (or wherever) of physical media. Re-read your comments. I'm not making any statement one way or the other regarding the moral implications of duplicating data. There are solid, logical, defensible arguments against copyright infringement, but your inane rants haven't even touched upon them.
There's laws for a reason, dude: enough people think it's right to follow them. Again your reasoning is flawed. Laws exist because lawmakers decide, for varying reasons, to propose and ratify them. Laws aren't passed simply because >50% of the population is already behaving a particular way, and often laws are passed against the wishes of the majority of the informed population. Sometimes the courts strike bad laws down. Less frequently, juries do. (Look up jury nullification if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Unfortunately, it seems that with increasing frequency bad laws are being permitted to stand.
I really don't know where you were going with that statement. Please take a moment to clarify your thoughts before posting again. A well thought out response will be much more persuasive than a quick, sloppy one.
There IS loss when copyrights are infringed upon. There is a potential loss of revenue, but nobody is being deprived of physical material. This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it's a very important one, and is therefore covered by an entirely different set of laws. You continue to confuse the two- hence my original comment.
Every person who gets a copy from their friend is one less sale to the record company/television studio/etc. I'm duplicating another response here, but it's worth repeating since your reading comprehension skills seem to be weak. X pirated copies does NOT equal X lost sales. It's more complicated than that. A pirated copy is only a lost sale if the recipient would have otherwise purchased a copy, and it's well-documented that this usually isn't the case. Additionally, factor in the fact that pirated copies of whatever often serve as "demos" that people use to try out a product to decide if they want to purchase it or not. On top of that, a pirated copy of a product (be it movie, music, or software) can generate exposure to audiences that would otherwise have never been made aware of it. This is a powerful marketing mechanism.
I'll go out on a limb and confess that my 3 favorite video games of all time (no, I'm not naming names here) originally came into my possession via pirated copies. In all three cases I ended up deciding to purchase legit copies, and in the case of two of them I've purchased multiple copies for different platforms. My recommendations to friends have directly led to almost a dozen sales that I know of. In all three cases I never would have given them a second look had I not been given a (long since deleted) pirated copy.
Additionally, I came to be aware of one of my favorite bands through a CD that a friend burned for me. I've since bought their entire collection, seen them in concert twice, picked up a concert DVD, and regularly wear one of their t-shirts. I've also exposed several others to their music.
Again, I'm really not intending this as a defense of piracy- just highlighting the factual errors and oversimplification of your argument.
People don't think of this shit. Maybe on your planet, but it sounds to me like you've been listening to the PR spin by the **AA instead of thinking about the issue for yourself.
I assume you're a child, because that's the only way I can see someone wanting to defend this practice. Once again you're incorrect. However, I assume you're either functionally illite
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There's a juice bar that a friend and I go to from time to time that has an open AP. We bring our laptops, hang out, drink smoothies, and surf.
In the same strip mall is a LAN gaming establishment that has, among other things, wireless internet access. However, they charge for theirs and have security to ensure that only paying patrons use it. The "problem" (for them anyway) is that the two establishments are close enough that people at the LAN party place can easily access the free AP at the juice bar. The guy who runs the juice bar is pretty laid back and doesn't care one bit who uses his AP. From his perspective he's providing a service to his customers, and if other people benefit from it as well then that's great. However, the owner of the LAN place is furious. He's tried to force the juice bar guy to institute encryption, spread (false) rumors about the juice bar, and as of the last time I was there was apparently looking to pursue legal action. I don't know how that's panned out, but I suspect that he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
*sigh* I tell 'ya. Some people's kids...
...is "The Spirits Within". I like that they finally dropped the pretense and eliminated gameplay entirely (not a significant change from the FF games I've played) and made a "game" that was just pretty cut scenes. ;-)
Granted, the plot wasn't significantly more cohesive than that of any of the other FF games, but the graphics were nothing short of stunning! Mmmmm... Aki Ross...
Why would I care about forgiveness if I didn't believe in God?
Why would you care about the forgiveness of your fellow man if you *do* believe in God? After all, the world is just a temporary thing to be endured. As long as you get right with God before you die, who cares about what the other people you may have made miserable think? If they were good then they'll spend eternity basking in His glory anyway, and if they were bad then nothing you could possibly do to them in this life will mean a thing compared to the eternity of suffering that they've got in store for them, right?
No, of course not. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you try to be a good person in your day to day life, and that you do so not just because God will kick your ass if you don't, but because it's the right thing to do.
News flash: it's no different with atheists. Believe it or not, ethics and God can and do exist independent of each other. I was raised Roman Catholic and remained so well into adulthood, so I've seen both sides of the fence here. I used to imagine that atheists surely must be totally amoral, having no ultimate authority to answer to and no rigid ethical framework imposed upon them. As my faith in God waned (which happened gradually through introspection, thought, prayer (yes!) and research, not as a result of any particular trauma or negative event), I found that while my feelings on a couple of issues shifted (most notably contraception and other issues centering around the idea that sex for purposes other than procreation is somehow dirty and evil), for the most part nothing changed. Right and wrong are still right and wrong, and doing the right thing now actually seems more noble to me, as my motivations are genuinely ethical, rather than looking out for my own selfish interests vis-a-vis the divine carrot and stick.
You'll find that even without Heaven and Hell as motivating factors, most people do the right thing most of the time. Call me naive if you will, but in my experience people are strongly inclined toward good. Why? Because humans fare better in moderately cooperative social structures, hence nature selects for people who are predisposed toward being socially compatible with each other.
At that point, what does it matter if I was forgiven or not in this life?
At the point when you die it won't matter to you. However, up until then I presume you want to make at least the people you care about happy, and want their happiness to continue after you've been liquified and fed to the other blue pills.
Let me ask you this (because I'm genuinely curious, not because I'm baiting you or anything): What's more important to you- being forgiven when you do something wrong or not doing wrong in the first place? Confession is a wonderful thing for getting guilt off of your chest, wiping the slate, and moving on with your life. It's a luxury that those who do not follow your faith don't have, and hence any guilty feelings they have over wrongdoing must either be attoned for in some real way or suffered with for the rest of their life. That's a fairly powerful motivator.
Not at all. Contraception and abortion are about willingness to create the next generation of humanity
That seems a weak tie, given that the global population is growing quite nicely, thank you.
But more important, the original poster, who is not you, recognized a duty to SPECIES, which I took to mean the human species above other species
I do value the human species above the other species on Earth, but the purpose behind my choice of words was to avoid the possibility of my statment in favor of humanity being misconstrued as favoring any particular nation over another. I notice that your population statement above fell into that very trap, equating the value of the next generation of humanity with the next generation of Americans. I'm an American myself, but when I say that I wish longevity and happiness for humanity I'm not limiting t
Could have fooled me- seems that the first thing that gets jetisoned after belief in God (and sometimes before, and sometimes even causing) is duty to family and future
;-) I get along great with my family, and in particular with my dad, with whom I'm very much looking forward to spending the day tomorrow. Sadly my grandparents are all deceased, but I never had an unkind word with or thought toward any of them, and mourn their passing.
I'd say that says more about the specific people you're referring to than it does about any particular belief demographic. I've met caring, loving atheists, Christians who abused their children, and vice versa. In my own experience (and I've actively looked at this for some time), I've found no correlation between religiosity and whether someone is a good, socially conscious person. Good and evil exist across the spectrum.
that is belief in the evils of contraception and abortion and divorce and not caring for one's parents.
As another poster has mentioned, these issues are, to varying degrees, tangental to my point.
That last most of all- it seems that every athiest I meet has problems with a father or with grandparents lurking in their past.
Since we don't actually know each other I'll choose not to take offense at your statement.
Then you are unique- are you saying then that you don't believe in contraception and abortion, and are willing to sacrifice other species to see humanity get ahead? In other words, a socially CONSERVATIVE athiest?
You're trying to equate unequal things. At the risk of opening myself up to off-topic flaming, I see contraception as a matter of behaving responsibly, and not at all evil. I think that abortion is, for me, a terrible thing, but that it's not my place to inflict my beliefs on other people across the board through legislation. And yes, I would sacrifice lower species for the benefit of mankind if it came down to it. But I do not consider myself to be socially conservative. For the record, I'm a Utilitarian.
Interesting- so you'd disagree with Nietzche then?
For the most part, yes. I am not a nihilist. On the contrary, I see the improvement of human (and posthuman) capability, productivity, happiness, and quality of life, and the reduction of suffering, death, and inefficiency, as the ultimate purpose of life. If and when I die, I won't leave behind just a pile of biohazardous chemicals. I will also have left a positive mark, however small, on the world around me. Making a loved one laugh, helping a burdened stranger through a door, doing charitable work, or teaching strangers on Slashdot that being an atheist doesn't mean being a dour, cynical person all make the world a better place, and thus give meaning to life.
Part of life is accepting your own mortality.
Part of death is accepting your own mortality! To me, living is telling death to go take a leap, refusing to give up no matter how grave the odds, and reserving that last bit of energy in my body for flipping death a bird with my decrepit, withered, fingers. "Accepting" death is a little bit of death unto itself. Fighting for life- no matter how futily- that is living.
Sir, I applaud you. In reading this thread I found that you made every point I thought to make (right down to posting the Dragon Tyrant link), and generally more eloquently than I would've. Bravo!
It's ONLY my belief in God and duty to family and future (futile as that may be, wrong as that may be) that keeps me from lving my life the same way Nietzche did.
One quick point: Belief in God and duty to family and future are not inseparable, and can most assuredly exist independent of each other. In my own experience, I've found that as my belief in God faded my sense of obligation to benefit family, future, and species only increased. I can't count on God to provide a happy future for all the good little boys and girls, so it's up to me to help make the future as positive as possible.
This is going to sound weird, but I have to say it. I'm an atheist, but (based solely on what you've written here) Christians like you are precisely the reason why I bear no ill will toward Christianity as a whole. I think that your conclusions are incorrect and your reasoning flawed, but the fact that your conclusions are based on reasoning, as opposed to "I belive it because I consider unthinking belief to be a virtue", speaks well of you and those like you.
I've met idiots of just about every possible religious persuasion (or lack thereof), and I have far more respect for someone who uses their head and arrives at different conclusions than I'll ever have for someone who agrees with me but can't intelligently explain why.
science is an antidote to superstition which is a very different concept then blind faith.
Blind faith is the persistant, willful belief in something despite the complete absence of corroborating proof. I fail to see any practical difference between that and superstition. (This is coming from someone who up until a year or two ago self-identified as a Christian.)
Hope is blind faith and there is not antidote for hope
If your hope is based solely on blind faith then I pity you. I have tremendous hope for the future, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole. It's based not on blind faith, but on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends. I have "faith" in mankind because I see that despite the horrors that we bring upon ourselves, the general trend is very much in the positive.
My hope has nothing to do with invisible gods or forces outside of human capability. To claim that hope can't exist without faith is to devalue humanity.
Secretly you wish you could stay in your small cubicle for the rest of your life and all eternity for that matter.
:-)
If the alternative is death, sign me up! I can think of worse ways to spend eternity than correcting spelling errors on Slashdot!
In the documentary miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds", there's an interview with Steve Ballmer where he describes the various factors that led to the fallout between Microsoft and IBM. One of the big things that he harps on is how the IBM programmers were too focused on KLOCs, while the M$ guys were striving for streamlined, efficient code.
Now we've got one of the head guys on the Vista project going on about KLOCs. Is anyone surprised? Me neither.
Would turning the phone off be sufficient, or would the battery need to be pulled as well? I've heard that cell phones still "ping" and can be tracked while "off", but I don't have any reliable sources for this information.
The cable versions would most likely be rated NC-17. Growing up I was told that X, XX, and XXX represented different degrees of "hard core", but there actually is no XXX rating. The MPAA's scale goes up to X-rated, and anything "beyond" that is either marketing fluff by the porn industry or a sticky keyboard. ;-)
This new math of yours is amazing! Tell me again how sheep bladders can be used to prevent earthquakes.
The "Volkswagen" is reserved as a unit of measurement for large artillery and battleship cannons. The "Hiroshima Bomb" is a much more flexible unit, being usable to describe everything from cometary impacts to the flatulence of the guy in the next cube over.
Having "logged" (pun intended) more hours than I dare to imagine playing Pitfall, I think that this is a wonderful achievement! I salute this guy. As a kid I spent half a summer drawing out sketches of all 255 screens of Pitfall, and made a list of every possible underground route.
;-)
That was long before I discovered sex, of course.
Once the rightful owner contacts you requesting its return, and you flat-out refuse because their "white ass doesn't deserve it", yes. At that point it's stolen.
They're scum for not returning it. They're idiots for not returning it when a reward was offered.
If you choose to include HL2 in the equation, then you're spending $100 for *two* games, not one. Episode One doesn't require that you have HL2 in order to play.
As to the argument that textures, weapons, and many character models are re-used from HL2, so what? Ep 1 takes place immediately after HL2, in the same city, interacting with many of the same characters. Why would I expect everything to look completely different? The plot is engaging, and the action and puzzles are fresh, creative, and fun- even compared to HL2. To me, *that's* what makes it worth my $20. If new graphics were the only point then I'd be playing Doom 3.
In 20 years, it's likely that the old troll will be long gone, and we won't have to deal with him any longer.
The idea of an HL movie kept running through my head as I was playing HL2. The story is certainly interesting and deep enough to make a very good movie, but there are some aspects that might not translate well to a movie:
;-) Just the idea of seeing a trailer for the movie, with the Valve opening on the big screen, gives me goosebumps. I wonder if they could get Michelle Forbes, Robert Guillaume and Lou Gossett Jr. to reprise their roles on the big screen? I could see Guillaume playing Eli with no problems at all, and while Forbes doesn't look much like Dr. Mossman she does convey a similar serious attitude in the new Battlestar Galactica. If you've seen Enemy Mine then you know that Louis Gossett can play aliens quite well, though the Vortigaunt physiology might be a stretch.
* HL1 is a little too straightforward to be a movie in its own right, but the events in that game are critical backstory to explain WTF is happening in HL2. Movies that open with a long expository narration can cover a lot of ground quickly, but typically make for horrible movies. Opening the movie with "BTW, Earth got invaded 20 years ago and this guy who just woke up on a train had something to do with it" would be hard to hammer into a watchable flick.
* The striders kick much, much ass, but the comparisons with War of the Worlds would be, really, not too far off. Unfortunately, the recent WotW movie pretty much blew, which combined with the "it's yet another video game movie like that crappy Doom flick" factor would hang like a cloud over it.
* You couldn't have a movie without Gordon speaking, which would piss off a subset of fans of the games. Not insurmountable, but a factor to consider.
That said, if they made a Half-Life movie I'd see it on opening day no matter how bad the reviews were, and I'd find a way to bring my trusty crowbar with me.
Wow. I'm a geek.
I agree. For an FPS the character development is unprecedented. I made my wife (who is *not* an FPS fan) watch the interaction between Alyx and D0g. She enjoyed it.
:-)
It's pretty clear that the people making the HL games are gamers themselves, and have done their homework. Some of Alyx's jokes were almost eerily on the money. After taking down the gunship near the hospital and seeing it crash into the attic, I closed in to inspect it and give it a couple of whacks with the crowbar for good measure. Alyx's "you wanna hit it with the crowbar just to be sure?" line came as my finger was reaching for the key to switch to the crowbar. I didn't realize that I was so predictable!
Crap! NOW you tell me! I got shredded about a dozen times waiting for that friggin' elevator! :-)
On a somewhat unrelated note, did anyone else notice a plot inconsistency? After you make it to the surface and briefly meet up with a guy with a rocket launcher, you go into a building that has several resistance fighters sitting around watching Dr. Kleiner on TV. One of the male guerillas asks Alyx if she's Dr. Kleiner's daughter, to which she replies that Odessa Cubbage is her father. WTF?
I went back to that spot a few times to verify who was speaking, and it's definitely Alyx. Any idea why she'd deny her father? The fact that Dr. Vance is her dad is hardly a trivial detail. I'm not quite finished with Ep. 1 so maybe it's explained later, but I suspect that it's a script error.
That's funny. The only game that's ever given me motion sickness was also a Valve game, but it was the first Half-Life. I got nauseous from that twice- both times while playing multiplayer at a LAN party (which I've done many dozens of times total). No other game has ever done that, and I've experienced no issues with HL2 or Ep1.
You're absolutely correct. Enjoy!
*sigh*
And it's perfectly ok to infringe on copyrights?
Did you read my comment, or are you replying to someone else's comment in the wrong place? I said nothing of the sort. What I did was address a fundamental flaw in the argument that you're posting all over this thread- that piracy involves depriving the store (or wherever) of physical media. Re-read your comments. I'm not making any statement one way or the other regarding the moral implications of duplicating data. There are solid, logical, defensible arguments against copyright infringement, but your inane rants haven't even touched upon them.
There's laws for a reason, dude: enough people think it's right to follow them.
Again your reasoning is flawed. Laws exist because lawmakers decide, for varying reasons, to propose and ratify them. Laws aren't passed simply because >50% of the population is already behaving a particular way, and often laws are passed against the wishes of the majority of the informed population. Sometimes the courts strike bad laws down. Less frequently, juries do. (Look up jury nullification if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Unfortunately, it seems that with increasing frequency bad laws are being permitted to stand.
I really don't know where you were going with that statement. Please take a moment to clarify your thoughts before posting again. A well thought out response will be much more persuasive than a quick, sloppy one.
There IS loss when copyrights are infringed upon.
There is a potential loss of revenue, but nobody is being deprived of physical material. This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it's a very important one, and is therefore covered by an entirely different set of laws. You continue to confuse the two- hence my original comment.
Every person who gets a copy from their friend is one less sale to the record company/television studio/etc.
I'm duplicating another response here, but it's worth repeating since your reading comprehension skills seem to be weak. X pirated copies does NOT equal X lost sales. It's more complicated than that. A pirated copy is only a lost sale if the recipient would have otherwise purchased a copy, and it's well-documented that this usually isn't the case. Additionally, factor in the fact that pirated copies of whatever often serve as "demos" that people use to try out a product to decide if they want to purchase it or not. On top of that, a pirated copy of a product (be it movie, music, or software) can generate exposure to audiences that would otherwise have never been made aware of it. This is a powerful marketing mechanism.
I'll go out on a limb and confess that my 3 favorite video games of all time (no, I'm not naming names here) originally came into my possession via pirated copies. In all three cases I ended up deciding to purchase legit copies, and in the case of two of them I've purchased multiple copies for different platforms. My recommendations to friends have directly led to almost a dozen sales that I know of. In all three cases I never would have given them a second look had I not been given a (long since deleted) pirated copy.
Additionally, I came to be aware of one of my favorite bands through a CD that a friend burned for me. I've since bought their entire collection, seen them in concert twice, picked up a concert DVD, and regularly wear one of their t-shirts. I've also exposed several others to their music.
Again, I'm really not intending this as a defense of piracy- just highlighting the factual errors and oversimplification of your argument.
People don't think of this shit.
Maybe on your planet, but it sounds to me like you've been listening to the PR spin by the **AA instead of thinking about the issue for yourself.
I assume you're a child, because that's the only way I can see someone wanting to defend this practice.
Once again you're incorrect. However, I assume you're either functionally illite