I worked in a small office area attached to a magazine printing plant. I had a window looking out onto the factory floor and the ink storage warehouse. I was informed at one point how flamable the ink was, and that it would be unlikely anybody would get out of the office should a fire occur.
The thinner used in the ink is called toluene or something like that, which not only causes cancer but is highly explosive, related to the explosive in dynamite. They had a million dollar fire suppression system around the ink storage, but if the fire started in the wrong place it wouldn't be able to keep up. It would only buy us a few seconds.
On top of this, the fire alarm system was constantly being tested. Alarms would go off two or three times a week, shortly followed by a warning that it was only a test. People had gotten so used to them they wouldn't even look up.
So if there ever was a fire, our corpses would be found still in our desk chairs.
I've been a beginner fan of anime for just under two years now. The biggest problem I've run into is that Anime is just like any other form of media out there. 95 percent of it is crap, but if you know where to look you can find some real gems.
In my opinion, the biggest pain is figuring out what age category a piece is aimed at. Most stuff isn't rated with the MPAA's G, PG, PG-13, R etc. ratings, or any similar system. Suncoast uses age recommendation stickers, but I've found them to be wildly inaccurate at times. Until recently, you couldn't find much anime at Blockbuster or other rental places, so you had to risk $20-30 on something that might be highly rated, but completely wrong for your interests or age.
I bought the first couple of disks of Bubblegum Crisis 2040 after reading very positive reviews, only to find out that the target audience is probably in the 12-14 range. The last couple of disks in the series turned into a glorified version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
But there is quite a bit of Anime that's good. I'll just list off a few of my favorites.
Cowboy Bebop: An excellent series of 26 half-hour episodes aimed at 15 and up. A small group of bounty hunters track criminals throughout the solar system while dealing with their own shady backgrounds. The music in this one is legendary, and really makes the stories pop. The plot bogs down a bit around episodes 12-15, but the series overall is excellent. This is my favorite Anime and has turned me into a die-hard fan of the music composer, Yoko Kanno.
Princess Mononoke: An incredible 120 minute movie aimed at 10 and above. I've shown this movie to dozens of members of my friends and family, and with only one exception everybody has liked it. A human mining community is destroying a forest populated by ancient animal spirits. A young boy is cursed by one of the displaced spirits, and goes on a journey to end the conflict. This one really stands out because there are no good or evil characters. Every side has their good and bad traits, and no side is completely innocent or guilty.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Another decent series of 26 half-hour episodes. The subplot is aimed at 15 and up, but younger can watch the surface story and be entertained. Giant robot combat on the surface, but with some very interesting religious undertones if you look closely. Basically, what would happen if technology progressed sufficiently that man becomes capable of resisting the will of God? Some don't like this series because the ending leaves so many unanswered questions.
Gunsmith Cats: A series of 3 half hour episodes aimed at ages 15 and up. This is the Anime version of Starsky and Hutch. A pair of female gun shop owners are forced to go undercover working for the ATF. One of the girls is an explosive expert, and is really the one that sells the show. She's always wanting to blow up anything and everything, and the other characters have to keep her in check. All her grenades have feminine touches, like a pink ribbon tied around the pin, or a lipstick kiss mark. This is a good one if you want to have fun but don't want to think very hard. My wife loves this one.
My Neighbor Totoro: A 90 minute movie, definitely aimed at children. My son is a bit young to follow most of the movie, but he thinks the Totoros are hilarious. The movie is a warm, fuzzy feel-good childrens movie all the way through. One of the best scenes is at a bus stop in the rain. A Totoro is loaned an umbrella to try to stay dry, and makes a game out of the sounds of raindrops hitting the fabric. My son laughs hysterically at this scene.
Lain - Serial Experiments: A series of 13 half-hour episodes aimed at 18 and up. A young girl discovers the internet, and a hidden world behind it. It quickly turns into philosophical ruminations on the nature of conciousness and existence. If you're not an armchair philosopher you may get bored with this one, but I liked it. There's not a lot of action here, but plenty of stuff to make you think.
Grave of the Fireflies: A 90 minute movie that can be watched by all ages, but will probably only be enjoyed by adults. This is a strong anti-war movie, and one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. It's set in the last few days of WW2 Japan, and centers around a pair of children whos parents have both been killed. The children are struggling to survive on their own surrounded by a society that's too caught up in the war to help them. This one's a tear-jerker, but a solid and enjoyable picture none the less.
Supposedly Garasaki is decent, with a strong political backstory, and I may get into that series next, when I have money again. That might be a while.
There's a couple of Animes I didn't like, as well. Bubblegum Crisis 2040, as I said above, is aimed for a younger age category than I prefer. Akira is supposed to be great, but I've never read the comic books, and it just didn't do anything for me. The Robotech series (I know, not really Anime) that I loved as a kid turned out to be nothing more than nostalgia. It's truly one of the worst things I've ever seen. The different Gundam Wing variants are awful. I don't know what people see in them. It seems like nothing more than one very powerful hero fighting off hordes of incompetent enemies. The different DragonBall series are very popular with the 8-12 year old category, and even some older people, but really it's nothing more than steriod pumped angry people in a never-ending run of trash talk a la Professional Wrestling.
If you're interested in Anime, I'd say the best thing you could do would be to lurk on a couple of locations on the internet and look for suggestions. Once you've seen and liked a couple of pieces, and know what types you prefer (political, comedy, action, etc.) people should have a much better idea of what other things you might like. If you go to a site that does ratings, make sure they are honest about bad ratings. Too many sides offer 8.5 of 10 as their lowest possible rating.
If you get the Cartoon Network, they're always playing Anime for the 10-14 year old category. Late nights on Sundays they play Cowboy Bebop. A lot of stuff on this channel is highly edited to make them suitable for television, but you can still get a taste. So far I haven't been too disappointed in the editing done to Cowboy Bebop.
Here's a challenge to any mathematically-minded geeks with way too much spare time:
I want a new form of encryption. I want this form of encryption to take two separate plain text messages and two separate passwords. I want the algorithm to generate a single cipher text.
This allows me to have one real message and one 'bluff' message. If my password is ever demanded of me, I can provide the 'bluff' password. Lo and behold it reveals an innocent, readable message.
I probably have the skills to implement this such that the cipher text contains both messages in separate blocks, but it would be too easy for someone to detect the fact that the cipher text contains two messages. It would be great if somebody knew how to make this sophisticated enough to appear to any reasonably intelligent encryption buff to be a single message.
My limited experience in this field makes me think this would be very computationally difficult. Hundreds of thousands of internal keys would need to be generated until a set of keys is found that yield the same ciphertext for the two messages. Brute force would be unrealistic, so you'd need someone with some fairly serious math skills to come up with some fancy algorithm.
Even better would be if the 'bluff' text could be decrypted by some common tool like PGP. This would do no good if the person asking for passwords knew to ask for two of them.
Why do you consider programming to be something other than art? Sure, a non-programmer may not be able to appreciate the code in raw form, but even a layman can appreciate an intuitive, well-written interface or an efficient-running program.
No matter what field you're in, be it Programming, Painting, Architecture or Demolitions, there is beauty and art to be found. If you ever get a chance to watch a demolitions crew topple a tall building, go see it. Watching a skyscraper coming down is a sight to behold. The fact that the moment is gone when the dust clears doesn't change the fact that it's art.
If you are one that likes to burrow into code, make sure to check out the code for Ogg Vorbis. I don't understand most of the math behind the encoding algorithm, but the structure is beautiful and easy to understand. This code was definitely written by artists. The code for the Apache Foundation's Xerxes XML is another project that I would consider to be great art.
Those who judge programming and art by seperate measures need to go back and read their Zen. It may all come down to differences in the definition of 'art', but I'll always shake my head when someone claims there's something that falls outside the scope of what can be considered art.
I believe that portion of "ZapMe!" went down in flames a little while ago. See previous Slashdot story here. They provided free computers to school computer labs in exchange for the right to feed ads to the students.
They backed off their threat to force the schools to pay for their "free" computers when they pulled out, but it sounded like their creditors would sue to force them to bill the schools. I haven't heard anything since.
Scientific American ran an article in one of their special edition magazines this last June called The Famine of Youth. It's a very informative article with several sub-parts covering the type of diet necessary, as well as the type of lifestyle you can expect to live. Unfortunately the web page doesn't seem to contain everything the magazine article did. The full story of Greg Smith that was in the magazine was eye opening and a little frightening.
After reading this article, it seems to me that the diet involved is quite a bit more severe than is being assumed here. It's not nearly enough just to give up snacking. According to the article It's four or five small meals a day, predominantly vegetables and fruits, and a life in which you are perpetually cold, painfully thin and constantly hungry. Calorie restriction, quite simply, is a Draconian diet and a lifelong one at that. Once you start living this diet, you can lose the ability to produce your own body heat.
The required diet is so small that it would come close to being torture. As an American I can fully appreciate the need to reduce unnecessary calorie intake. I ate enough to feed three people all through my teenage years. I eat fairly small meals now, but I don't know anyone who even approaches this kind of a diet. This is closer to a carefully controlled anorexia with special attention given to nutrient density.
I can appreciate this science for its goal, but it's still in the stage where the cure is worse than the disease. I would definitely take 70 comfortable years of life over 100 years of life on this program. Interesting, yes, and I'd expect that this concept will be the foundation to several new and innovative ideas in health, but it's not ready yet. American or no, I don't see too many people being willing to subject themselves to this kind of a life just to tweak out a few more years.
The biggest problem I have with the whole Big Bang argument is, where did all the 'stuff' come from? Granted, my understanding of physics at this level is fairly weak, but in order to have a Big Bang, you have to have an n-dimensional volume of space or space time, and you have to follow conservation of energy.
The only way I can see for the Big Bang to follow conservation laws is to state that for every particle created, a matching anti-particle is created and the net mass/energy of all creation is zero.
Even if this is true, according to (at least my) human understanding, something had to be around before the big bang to cause the whole thing. Everything I know about Physics follows cause-effect relationships, but to me the creation of the universe seems like an effect with no cause.
My understanding states that either the universe must have a creator that exists beyond the capabilities of my understanding, or at some point the whole concept of 'creation' must be thrown out for something that doesn't need to follow a cause-effect relationship.
Currently, I am unable to resolve the existance of the universe without this concept of the 'all powerful' to achieve any of the things I can't understand. At some point in the future, my situation may seem as silly as thinking the world is flat, or that lightning is thrown down at us from above by some guy named Zeus. When science further clears my understanding, I am sure I will adjust my beliefs accordingly.
I consider myself to be a moral agnostic. I believe in a God, but I try not to restrict myself to a particular religious group.
I have no trouble with the human issue of God and science co-existing. I believe that this God created the laws of Physics that we live under. I don't know if God is bound by those same laws of Physics, but I believe the Universe itself follows them objectively.
I have no trouble with the human issue of monotheism vs. polytheism. If this God is omnipotent as I belive, then this God would trancend the ideas of existing as one or many beings, and would trancend the idea of a gender.
I don't differentiate between the God of Christianity, the God of Islam, or the God(s) of any other major religion. I feel that many of this world's religions are just different cultures and practices all directed towards the same entity, and that all of these differing and sometimes conflicting religions are really just different interpretations of the same. I choose to practice as an ELCA Lutheran, but I would feel comfortable worshiping with members of any other religion who would feel comfortable in my presence.
Did God, either directly or through a servant such as Jesus or Muhammed, ever walk here on this earth? I don't know. The limitations and failures of human knowledge and history keep me from knowing with certainty, but I believe it to be possible. Certainly there are some epic stories that suggest that something great of this nature did happen, perhaps more than once.
Can I call what I belive 'faith' in God? This is the question that I've never been able to answer. Every Sunday I worship as a Lutheran, I recite the Apostles Creed, which is a statement of the beliefs of the Lutheran church. I'm not sure I believe some of the parts of this Creed.
According to many religions, in order to receive Salvation, I am required to believe some set of statements as truth. I don't belive it is possible to find a least common denominator of beliefs that would grant me Salvation by the Creeds of all religions. Because of this, I just try to be the best person I can be, and I hope that's enough.
I do believe in a Salvation and a life after death. I believe that anyone who tries to be a good person and to help others deserves that Salvation, no matter what any faith says they may not have done right.
My faith can be an uncomfortable one, because of the eternal question: "What if?" What if one religion is the correct one, and by taking my generic stance I will be left out of the Salvation? According to the different religions, being wrong has some pretty severe consequences. I have fear of this possibility, but I still choose to hold to my faith. I believe that if God is truly a good and caring entity, that no lack of a particular ceremony or statement of beliefs will exclude a good person.
As always, I will continue to examine and evolve my faith as I learn and grow through my life. That's all I feel I can do.
Perhaps it would be better if we had multiple presidents, instead of a single one - and they voted on issues (say, three presidents) that come before them.
Way back at the birth of the US, there actually was some push to have three presidents with equal power. Unfortunately there was also a push to make George Washington a king, basically creating a new monarchy.
The two views (and probably a handful of others) were blended into the hybrid that we have today.
Sometimes I'm curious, if the founding fathers of the US were alive today and had a chance to rewrite the constitution, what would they do differently?
I fully agree with your point. EQ's game balance is terrible. Granted balancing a game like this is a fairly challenging task, but Verant's efforts have been falling well short of the mark.
That said, I thought I'd comment that being attacked through walls has a reasonable explanation, and I don't fault Verant for this bug/feature.
The reason you can be attacked through walls is that EQ has server-side collision detection turned off. That means to all the monsters and NPCs that live on the servers, doors, walls, rocks and trees don't exist. They walk around a flat, empty plane with all the other PCs and NPCs. Verant did this to save CPU cycles. Running an EQ server that can support thousands of players already requires world-class hardware, so they need to save every cpu cycle they can.
That's quite a big sacrifice to make. It really hurts the illusion of reality when NPCs can see and walk right through walls. It was a sacrifice that had to be made though, because server-side collision detection is so hard on the CPU. In each zone there might be hundreds of PCs and NPCs, plus hundreds more bits of landscape like walls and trees. If each of these objects has to test whether or not they might be touching every other object in the zone, you can very quickly end up with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of collision tests every second for each zone in the game. That amount of work makes CPUs throw up their hands and start crying. If they had left the collision detection on, an EQ server might only be able to support half or a quarter as many players as they currently support. It was an unfortunate, unavoidable sacrifice.
The only reason that you can't walk through those same walls and trees is that player collision detection is done on each individual EQ client. If somebody ever wrote a custom EQ client that ignored collision detection, you'd be able to walk through walls and locked doors too.
I quit playing EQ about three months ago for some of the reasons you've stated, but I don't fault Verant for this decision. I'd expect that they'll have to make the same sacrifice in their next game too, unless they come up with an amazing algorithm for checking all those objects.
Hardwired or no, the Raedon is too young to have been the original graphics system used in the Cube's design and development. Even if the card was hardwired in there, Apple almost definitely has early prototypes with older graphics chipsets lying around.
Sponsorship, aka underwriting, is basically like giving money to Public Television. The recipient of the money can say "Thank you to ??? for supporting us...", but they can't endorse you or your products, or encourage people to use you and your products over your competition.
Advertisement is like TV commmercials where the whole purpose is trying to people to buy and use your products and services.
Slashdot Mirror
Would it become illegal to drop an intelligent bomb? Or would the bomb be insulted that its intended purpose is going unfulfilled?
I worked in a small office area attached to a magazine printing plant. I had a window looking out onto the factory floor and the ink storage warehouse. I was informed at one point how flamable the ink was, and that it would be unlikely anybody would get out of the office should a fire occur.
The thinner used in the ink is called toluene or something like that, which not only causes cancer but is highly explosive, related to the explosive in dynamite. They had a million dollar fire suppression system around the ink storage, but if the fire started in the wrong place it wouldn't be able to keep up. It would only buy us a few seconds.
On top of this, the fire alarm system was constantly being tested. Alarms would go off two or three times a week, shortly followed by a warning that it was only a test. People had gotten so used to them they wouldn't even look up.
So if there ever was a fire, our corpses would be found still in our desk chairs.
I've been a beginner fan of anime for just under two years now. The biggest problem I've run into is that Anime is just like any other form of media out there. 95 percent of it is crap, but if you know where to look you can find some real gems.
In my opinion, the biggest pain is figuring out what age category a piece is aimed at. Most stuff isn't rated with the MPAA's G, PG, PG-13, R etc. ratings, or any similar system. Suncoast uses age recommendation stickers, but I've found them to be wildly inaccurate at times. Until recently, you couldn't find much anime at Blockbuster or other rental places, so you had to risk $20-30 on something that might be highly rated, but completely wrong for your interests or age.
I bought the first couple of disks of Bubblegum Crisis 2040 after reading very positive reviews, only to find out that the target audience is probably in the 12-14 range. The last couple of disks in the series turned into a glorified version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
But there is quite a bit of Anime that's good. I'll just list off a few of my favorites.
Cowboy Bebop: An excellent series of 26 half-hour episodes aimed at 15 and up. A small group of bounty hunters track criminals throughout the solar system while dealing with their own shady backgrounds. The music in this one is legendary, and really makes the stories pop. The plot bogs down a bit around episodes 12-15, but the series overall is excellent. This is my favorite Anime and has turned me into a die-hard fan of the music composer, Yoko Kanno.
Princess Mononoke: An incredible 120 minute movie aimed at 10 and above. I've shown this movie to dozens of members of my friends and family, and with only one exception everybody has liked it. A human mining community is destroying a forest populated by ancient animal spirits. A young boy is cursed by one of the displaced spirits, and goes on a journey to end the conflict. This one really stands out because there are no good or evil characters. Every side has their good and bad traits, and no side is completely innocent or guilty.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Another decent series of 26 half-hour episodes. The subplot is aimed at 15 and up, but younger can watch the surface story and be entertained. Giant robot combat on the surface, but with some very interesting religious undertones if you look closely. Basically, what would happen if technology progressed sufficiently that man becomes capable of resisting the will of God? Some don't like this series because the ending leaves so many unanswered questions.
Gunsmith Cats: A series of 3 half hour episodes aimed at ages 15 and up. This is the Anime version of Starsky and Hutch. A pair of female gun shop owners are forced to go undercover working for the ATF. One of the girls is an explosive expert, and is really the one that sells the show. She's always wanting to blow up anything and everything, and the other characters have to keep her in check. All her grenades have feminine touches, like a pink ribbon tied around the pin, or a lipstick kiss mark. This is a good one if you want to have fun but don't want to think very hard. My wife loves this one.
My Neighbor Totoro: A 90 minute movie, definitely aimed at children. My son is a bit young to follow most of the movie, but he thinks the Totoros are hilarious. The movie is a warm, fuzzy feel-good childrens movie all the way through. One of the best scenes is at a bus stop in the rain. A Totoro is loaned an umbrella to try to stay dry, and makes a game out of the sounds of raindrops hitting the fabric. My son laughs hysterically at this scene.
Lain - Serial Experiments: A series of 13 half-hour episodes aimed at 18 and up. A young girl discovers the internet, and a hidden world behind it. It quickly turns into philosophical ruminations on the nature of conciousness and existence. If you're not an armchair philosopher you may get bored with this one, but I liked it. There's not a lot of action here, but plenty of stuff to make you think.
Grave of the Fireflies: A 90 minute movie that can be watched by all ages, but will probably only be enjoyed by adults. This is a strong anti-war movie, and one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. It's set in the last few days of WW2 Japan, and centers around a pair of children whos parents have both been killed. The children are struggling to survive on their own surrounded by a society that's too caught up in the war to help them. This one's a tear-jerker, but a solid and enjoyable picture none the less.
Supposedly Garasaki is decent, with a strong political backstory, and I may get into that series next, when I have money again. That might be a while.
There's a couple of Animes I didn't like, as well. Bubblegum Crisis 2040, as I said above, is aimed for a younger age category than I prefer. Akira is supposed to be great, but I've never read the comic books, and it just didn't do anything for me. The Robotech series (I know, not really Anime) that I loved as a kid turned out to be nothing more than nostalgia. It's truly one of the worst things I've ever seen. The different Gundam Wing variants are awful. I don't know what people see in them. It seems like nothing more than one very powerful hero fighting off hordes of incompetent enemies. The different DragonBall series are very popular with the 8-12 year old category, and even some older people, but really it's nothing more than steriod pumped angry people in a never-ending run of trash talk a la Professional Wrestling.
If you're interested in Anime, I'd say the best thing you could do would be to lurk on a couple of locations on the internet and look for suggestions. Once you've seen and liked a couple of pieces, and know what types you prefer (political, comedy, action, etc.) people should have a much better idea of what other things you might like. If you go to a site that does ratings, make sure they are honest about bad ratings. Too many sides offer 8.5 of 10 as their lowest possible rating.
If you get the Cartoon Network, they're always playing Anime for the 10-14 year old category. Late nights on Sundays they play Cowboy Bebop. A lot of stuff on this channel is highly edited to make them suitable for television, but you can still get a taste. So far I haven't been too disappointed in the editing done to Cowboy Bebop.
Hope that helped!
Seth
Here's a challenge to any mathematically-minded geeks with way too much spare time:
I want a new form of encryption. I want this form of encryption to take two separate plain text messages and two separate passwords. I want the algorithm to generate a single cipher text.
This allows me to have one real message and one 'bluff' message. If my password is ever demanded of me, I can provide the 'bluff' password. Lo and behold it reveals an innocent, readable message.
I probably have the skills to implement this such that the cipher text contains both messages in separate blocks, but it would be too easy for someone to detect the fact that the cipher text contains two messages. It would be great if somebody knew how to make this sophisticated enough to appear to any reasonably intelligent encryption buff to be a single message.
My limited experience in this field makes me think this would be very computationally difficult. Hundreds of thousands of internal keys would need to be generated until a set of keys is found that yield the same ciphertext for the two messages. Brute force would be unrealistic, so you'd need someone with some fairly serious math skills to come up with some fancy algorithm.
Even better would be if the 'bluff' text could be decrypted by some common tool like PGP. This would do no good if the person asking for passwords knew to ask for two of them.
Why do you consider programming to be something other than art? Sure, a non-programmer may not be able to appreciate the code in raw form, but even a layman can appreciate an intuitive, well-written interface or an efficient-running program.
No matter what field you're in, be it Programming, Painting, Architecture or Demolitions, there is beauty and art to be found. If you ever get a chance to watch a demolitions crew topple a tall building, go see it. Watching a skyscraper coming down is a sight to behold. The fact that the moment is gone when the dust clears doesn't change the fact that it's art.
If you are one that likes to burrow into code, make sure to check out the code for Ogg Vorbis. I don't understand most of the math behind the encoding algorithm, but the structure is beautiful and easy to understand. This code was definitely written by artists. The code for the Apache Foundation's Xerxes XML is another project that I would consider to be great art.
Those who judge programming and art by seperate measures need to go back and read their Zen. It may all come down to differences in the definition of 'art', but I'll always shake my head when someone claims there's something that falls outside the scope of what can be considered art.
Seth
I believe that portion of "ZapMe!" went down in flames a little while ago. See previous Slashdot story here. They provided free computers to school computer labs in exchange for the right to feed ads to the students.
They backed off their threat to force the schools to pay for their "free" computers when they pulled out, but it sounded like their creditors would sue to force them to bill the schools. I haven't heard anything since.
Seth
Scientific American ran an article in one of their special edition magazines this last June called The Famine of Youth. It's a very informative article with several sub-parts covering the type of diet necessary, as well as the type of lifestyle you can expect to live. Unfortunately the web page doesn't seem to contain everything the magazine article did. The full story of Greg Smith that was in the magazine was eye opening and a little frightening.
After reading this article, it seems to me that the diet involved is quite a bit more severe than is being assumed here. It's not nearly enough just to give up snacking. According to the article It's four or five small meals a day, predominantly vegetables and fruits, and a life in which you are perpetually cold, painfully thin and constantly hungry. Calorie restriction, quite simply, is a Draconian diet and a lifelong one at that. Once you start living this diet, you can lose the ability to produce your own body heat.
The required diet is so small that it would come close to being torture. As an American I can fully appreciate the need to reduce unnecessary calorie intake. I ate enough to feed three people all through my teenage years. I eat fairly small meals now, but I don't know anyone who even approaches this kind of a diet. This is closer to a carefully controlled anorexia with special attention given to nutrient density.
I can appreciate this science for its goal, but it's still in the stage where the cure is worse than the disease. I would definitely take 70 comfortable years of life over 100 years of life on this program. Interesting, yes, and I'd expect that this concept will be the foundation to several new and innovative ideas in health, but it's not ready yet. American or no, I don't see too many people being willing to subject themselves to this kind of a life just to tweak out a few more years.
Seth
However, DC cried out "foul!" and "DMCA!" at the same time.
Hmmm... how would you pronounce that? Perhaps 'fo.dum.see.owl '?
Nah, I don't think that's even close.
The biggest problem I have with the whole Big Bang argument is, where did all the 'stuff' come from? Granted, my understanding of physics at this level is fairly weak, but in order to have a Big Bang, you have to have an n-dimensional volume of space or space time, and you have to follow conservation of energy.
The only way I can see for the Big Bang to follow conservation laws is to state that for every particle created, a matching anti-particle is created and the net mass/energy of all creation is zero.
Even if this is true, according to (at least my) human understanding, something had to be around before the big bang to cause the whole thing. Everything I know about Physics follows cause-effect relationships, but to me the creation of the universe seems like an effect with no cause.
My understanding states that either the universe must have a creator that exists beyond the capabilities of my understanding, or at some point the whole concept of 'creation' must be thrown out for something that doesn't need to follow a cause-effect relationship.
Currently, I am unable to resolve the existance of the universe without this concept of the 'all powerful' to achieve any of the things I can't understand. At some point in the future, my situation may seem as silly as thinking the world is flat, or that lightning is thrown down at us from above by some guy named Zeus. When science further clears my understanding, I am sure I will adjust my beliefs accordingly.
I consider myself to be a moral agnostic. I believe in a God, but I try not to restrict myself to a particular religious group.
I have no trouble with the human issue of God and science co-existing. I believe that this God created the laws of Physics that we live under. I don't know if God is bound by those same laws of Physics, but I believe the Universe itself follows them objectively.
I have no trouble with the human issue of monotheism vs. polytheism. If this God is omnipotent as I belive, then this God would trancend the ideas of existing as one or many beings, and would trancend the idea of a gender.
I don't differentiate between the God of Christianity, the God of Islam, or the God(s) of any other major religion. I feel that many of this world's religions are just different cultures and practices all directed towards the same entity, and that all of these differing and sometimes conflicting religions are really just different interpretations of the same. I choose to practice as an ELCA Lutheran, but I would feel comfortable worshiping with members of any other religion who would feel comfortable in my presence.
Did God, either directly or through a servant such as Jesus or Muhammed, ever walk here on this earth? I don't know. The limitations and failures of human knowledge and history keep me from knowing with certainty, but I believe it to be possible. Certainly there are some epic stories that suggest that something great of this nature did happen, perhaps more than once.
Can I call what I belive 'faith' in God? This is the question that I've never been able to answer. Every Sunday I worship as a Lutheran, I recite the Apostles Creed, which is a statement of the beliefs of the Lutheran church. I'm not sure I believe some of the parts of this Creed.
According to many religions, in order to receive Salvation, I am required to believe some set of statements as truth. I don't belive it is possible to find a least common denominator of beliefs that would grant me Salvation by the Creeds of all religions. Because of this, I just try to be the best person I can be, and I hope that's enough.
I do believe in a Salvation and a life after death. I believe that anyone who tries to be a good person and to help others deserves that Salvation, no matter what any faith says they may not have done right.
My faith can be an uncomfortable one, because of the eternal question: "What if?" What if one religion is the correct one, and by taking my generic stance I will be left out of the Salvation? According to the different religions, being wrong has some pretty severe consequences. I have fear of this possibility, but I still choose to hold to my faith. I believe that if God is truly a good and caring entity, that no lack of a particular ceremony or statement of beliefs will exclude a good person.
As always, I will continue to examine and evolve my faith as I learn and grow through my life. That's all I feel I can do.
Seth
Perhaps it would be better if we had multiple presidents, instead of a single one - and they voted on issues (say, three presidents) that come before them.
Way back at the birth of the US, there actually was some push to have three presidents with equal power. Unfortunately there was also a push to make George Washington a king, basically creating a new monarchy.
The two views (and probably a handful of others) were blended into the hybrid that we have today.
Sometimes I'm curious, if the founding fathers of the US were alive today and had a chance to rewrite the constitution, what would they do differently?
Seth
I fully agree with your point. EQ's game balance is terrible. Granted balancing a game like this is a fairly challenging task, but Verant's efforts have been falling well short of the mark.
That said, I thought I'd comment that being attacked through walls has a reasonable explanation, and I don't fault Verant for this bug/feature.
The reason you can be attacked through walls is that EQ has server-side collision detection turned off. That means to all the monsters and NPCs that live on the servers, doors, walls, rocks and trees don't exist. They walk around a flat, empty plane with all the other PCs and NPCs. Verant did this to save CPU cycles. Running an EQ server that can support thousands of players already requires world-class hardware, so they need to save every cpu cycle they can.
That's quite a big sacrifice to make. It really hurts the illusion of reality when NPCs can see and walk right through walls. It was a sacrifice that had to be made though, because server-side collision detection is so hard on the CPU. In each zone there might be hundreds of PCs and NPCs, plus hundreds more bits of landscape like walls and trees. If each of these objects has to test whether or not they might be touching every other object in the zone, you can very quickly end up with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of collision tests every second for each zone in the game. That amount of work makes CPUs throw up their hands and start crying. If they had left the collision detection on, an EQ server might only be able to support half or a quarter as many players as they currently support. It was an unfortunate, unavoidable sacrifice.
The only reason that you can't walk through those same walls and trees is that player collision detection is done on each individual EQ client. If somebody ever wrote a custom EQ client that ignored collision detection, you'd be able to walk through walls and locked doors too.
I quit playing EQ about three months ago for some of the reasons you've stated, but I don't fault Verant for this decision. I'd expect that they'll have to make the same sacrifice in their next game too, unless they come up with an amazing algorithm for checking all those objects.
Hardwired or no, the Raedon is too young to have been the original graphics system used in the Cube's design and development. Even if the card was hardwired in there, Apple almost definitely has early prototypes with older graphics chipsets lying around.
Sponsorship, aka underwriting, is basically like giving money to Public Television. The recipient of the money can say "Thank you to ??? for supporting us...", but they can't endorse you or your products, or encourage people to use you and your products over your competition.
Advertisement is like TV commmercials where the whole purpose is trying to people to buy and use your products and services.