Actually, that's pretty much false. Religion has heavily borrowed from secular sources to inform it's opinion of what morality is. The Stoics and the Epicureans weren't religious.
Contrary to your opinion, there are reasons beyond absolute good and evil for the rule. A system of morality can be based on religion or it can be based on something else. In fact society's rules are almost always based on the golden rule. It's a little thing called the social contract. If you're actually interested in the moral basis of society, that's the best starting point.
Our laws may be difficult to defend with logic, reason and science because essentially they're decided by popularity (assuming you live in a democracy). Because we believe in the right to self-government we allow capricious and sometimes wrong laws to be created, though we attempt to limit what can be done by setting basic rules (the constitution, charter of rights, etc.) that can't be contravened. It could be worse, they could be decided by a successive line of individuals who have been declared infallible or who impose their will through force of arms.
In fact, it is my opinion that most religions are a poor source of ethics, the biggest problem being the authoritarian nature of most religions. It frequently comes down to a question of is something good because god commands it or is god commanding it because it's good? The former possibility is a path that leads to a very twisted morality where anything is justifiable, the second runs contrary to the Christian, Islamic and Jewish idea of God. It acknowledges that morality exists seperately from God, and therefore there exists and seperate a equally good code of ethics that does not depend on the existence of God. And of course there is the problem of inertia and failure to embrace change. We know from history that the Bible was more often used as an argument for slavery than against it up to the American civil war. Thus we run into the problem that an imprecise, poorly edited series of books written by disparate authors can be used to justify just about any rule you want to make up.
1) They were at war 2) The Japanese Emperor refused to surrender (twice, I think, before the bombs were dropped) 3) They didn't know that he intended to surrender but was just playing games (some believed he was, some didn't) 4) The Japanese were well known for suicide attacks and fighting despite the odds 5) They had really big bombs that hadn't been tested under battlefield situations 6) They wanted to scare the Russians out of invading China and Japan 7) They didn't know anything about radiation
It's still an atrocity, but it all goes back to #1, when you're at war you do what you have to end it quickly and decisively. You do not risk the lives of your soldiers when you don't have to.
Really the Department of Justice deliberately bungled the law suit, and now they have no choice but to claim it's a success till the bitter end. The last thing they want is yet another investigation into official mismanagement and White House interference in a anti-trust case. Immediately after Bush was elected they pulled all senior DoJ staff off of the case and left only a few inexperienced lawyers (from that Bible School they're so fond of hiring from) on the case.
They had Microsoft up against a wall, and then suddenly they were best buddies with Microsoft and nothing had ever really been wrong in the first place. It was sickening and another black eye for the United States, but if at any point the DoJ admits that it's unsastisfied with the results, it opens up an old can worms for the house or the senate to investigate.
I'm sorry, you're just unbelievably stupid. If that fact bothers you, you might want to do something about it. That's the sole reason you're on my foe list, so I don't have to read the stupid shit you post. Frankly, I didn't bother to read beyond first line of this post. Everything you write is utter garbage.
I bet Take Two's age verification system is much better than that used by the classifieds in your newspaper, though. So once again, you're left wondering WTF is JT talking about?
That could be the case, but remember we're talking about doubling the entire cost of the game. I'm sure you can double the cost of the art for HD, but you'd have to at least triple or quadruple the cost of the art before you'd manage to double the cost of the game (depending on what percentage of your total costs got to art assets).
I'm not sure that more realistic physics is should be blamed on the HD, though. The physics system seems to be a gameplay component rather than a display component. It'll be interesting to see how this ends up shaking out. The whole physics and HD thing seems to sounds like a perfect opportunity for some of the small companies to specialize. We already have companies that produce engines and license them to other companies, I wonder if eventually there will be room for companies to produce physics systems and license them. On the one hand, I think development companies should be reluctant outsource gameplay development, but on the other, it seems it would promote efficiency to do so.
Maybe you live in a country where street racing is legal, but I doubt it. And you can't always have 5-19 friends ready to run out and play your favourite sport.
Gardening however, is: a) boring to a great many people b) has low entry cost (you need dirt and seeds) c) a solo activity d) is usually enjoyed because
i) it gets you outdoors
ii) you get to see something real grow
If you're going to make a comparison at least put some thought into.
You do realize that if a game costs 25%-50% of another game, those extra savings are coming from somewhere other than a nebulous void right?
Wii games cost less because they don't make the game as big, as long, or as in depth as they would for another console. I'm absolutely sure that the difference in costs between HD graphic development and regular is far less than 50%. They're saving money because they're making simpler games designed for your grandmother or your 5 year old.
Obviously it's the internet's fault that people are surfing it instead of working, it has nothing to do with boredom, bad management, overworked and underpayed employees. Let's just ignore the fact that people spend the same percentage of time slacking now that they did 20 years ago and blame the internets! It's new. Blame it!
It's not really going to be whether anyone follows the standard. Microsoft is buying talking points they can use to win big contracts. They'll be pushing the "our stuff is an ISO certified standard" down the throats of every buyer they talk to, they're marketing people will be using it to produce FUD like the "Get the Facts" campaign.
They're not just buying just a standard they're buying ammunition.
On the flip side, this has shown that the ISO certification boards are essentially unreliable, if the only qualification necessary to vote is $2500, then how can you trust them to be anything but biased corporate whores?
Maybe it's me, but it seems mostly designed to sell to the gullible, parents, and the elderly.
Why those three groups?
1) Gullible people think that having a motion sensing controller is a revolutionary advance that will force great new games to be created. 2) Parents want:
a) their children to get exercise, the Wii at least gets them moving around while they play video games (or more than before)
b) games they can play for extremely short times because they have kids instead of time 3) The elderly can use the games to:
a) get some excercise for themselves in a fun and non-stressful way
b) try and keep their minds more alert with games like brain age.
All the people I know who are "real" gamers (excluding the Nintendophiles) don't actually like the Wii. The favourite party game for the Wii? Bomberman 64. To me that says a whole lot about the Wii.
We'll see maybe there's enough real gamers who will buy a Wii that we'll see real, good games come out for it. But I'm not terribly hopeful that anything that I like (excluding Zelda and Metroid because they're Nintendo's) will show up on the Wii. I don't think the target audience for the games I like is moving anywhere right now.
There's a handful of states who matter in Presidential Elections and the rest don't. The ones who matter are the ones that have a lot of votes and give them all to whoever gets 50.1% of the popular vote or more. The states who do the reasonable thing and split their votes based on the popular vote in the state are entirely ignored as are any states that are likely to vote entirely one way or the other.
This means that candidates for the white house only have to appeal to a small subsection of American voters who really matter, and not to the whole country, even though they will represent and govern the entire country. That seems like an unhealthy situation to allow to continue. In theory, you can win the white house based on 50.1% of the popular vote in 13 states (iirc), while loosing 100% of the vote in all 37 others.
Actually, in government run health care you go to whatever hospital you want. There's no point in trying to force you to go to one particular hospital. Pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.
The greatest concern of public healthcare has nothing to do with government control over your health care, but rather underfunding. You see a public health system produces much better results for the average person. Which is usually worse than what a rich person will get and much, much better than what a poor person will get. A downside is that utilization of the system will go up, and an upside is that because utilization goes up and you now have a single entity buying healthcare services, costs go down. It's called purchasing power, drug companies have to play nice with government purchasers or a competitor will get all of the business. A downside of that is that nurses and doctors make tend to make less money because they have fewer alternative options and by economic thought that means fewer people will want to be nurses and doctors.
In the end you tend to get a system that more equitable, less profitable, with the biggest worry being having to wait for your health care rather than having to spend the rest of your life paying off your or your loved one's health care debts.
Now from what you've said, I see that you have little to benefit from now. You're probably in your late twenties or early thirties, healthy with little to worry about in the way of healthcare costs. I bet you're uninsured or minimally insured and you're ok with that. That makes you oblivious to certain fundamental facts like serious health costs more than you can afford to pay. I know of several friends of friends who will never own a home unless they inherit from their parents because they were in a accident, one that wasn't their fault and were seriously injured and now have mortgage-sized debts that they will likely never be able to fully pay off.
Let's face facts. In the U.S. electoral system, apathy, protest, and disenfranchisement are indistinguishable and effectively invisible. If the non-voters in the U.S. were to suddenly start voting, the entire election system would choke and die. The state's don't even bother allocate enough resources to allow everyone to vote, and in cases like Ohio, they deliberately engineer it so that even many of the people who want to vote can't.
Personally, I have never stood in line for more than 5 minutes to vote, I can't imagine having to stand in line for hours to exercise my funamental right (and duty) as a citizen of a democractic nation.
Realistically, if everyone who didn't vote voted instead for a third party, any third party at all. They'd throw both major parties into complete disarray. All of the system works right now on the basis of a predictable 2 party race. All that gerrymandering? IT works on the notions that:
A) people tend to vote for the same party regardless of the issues (partisanship) B) people only vote for the Republicans or Democrats in numbers large enough to matter
As long as few people support 3 parties, gerrymandering is simply to do with a program. Get enough people voting for third parties and suddenly gerrymandering becomes much more computationally complex because instead of 2 dimensional optimization you need to do 3, 4 or more dimensions.
Of course, what's really needed in the U.S. is basic electoral reforms to change the basic voting system. The 1 vote, first-past-the-post, winner takes all system isn't working. It gives too much power to too few people.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed how will we know if he's as good and honest as Jim Bakker or as evil and corrupt as Abraham Lincoln?
Athiesm isn't a recent development, we have records of athiests going back over 2500 years.
Actually, that's pretty much false. Religion has heavily borrowed from secular sources to inform it's opinion of what morality is. The Stoics and the Epicureans weren't religious.
Contrary to your opinion, there are reasons beyond absolute good and evil for the rule. A system of morality can be based on religion or it can be based on something else. In fact society's rules are almost always based on the golden rule. It's a little thing called the social contract.
If you're actually interested in the moral basis of society, that's the best starting point.
Our laws may be difficult to defend with logic, reason and science because essentially they're decided by popularity (assuming you live in a democracy). Because we believe in the right to self-government we allow capricious and sometimes wrong laws to be created, though we attempt to limit what can be done by setting basic rules (the constitution, charter of rights, etc.) that can't be contravened. It could be worse, they could be decided by a successive line of individuals who have been declared infallible or who impose their will through force of arms.
In fact, it is my opinion that most religions are a poor source of ethics, the biggest problem being the authoritarian nature of most religions. It frequently comes down to a question of is something good because god commands it or is god commanding it because it's good? The former possibility is a path that leads to a very twisted morality where anything is justifiable, the second runs contrary to the Christian, Islamic and Jewish idea of God. It acknowledges that morality exists seperately from God, and therefore there exists and seperate a equally good code of ethics that does not depend on the existence of God. And of course there is the problem of inertia and failure to embrace change. We know from history that the Bible was more often used as an argument for slavery than against it up to the American civil war. Thus we run into the problem that an imprecise, poorly edited series of books written by disparate authors can be used to justify just about any rule you want to make up.
To be fair, the wealthy industrialists didn't really know how to cook. It was the inventor and the actress who cooked.
Unfortunately, it is all to easy to defend:
1) They were at war
2) The Japanese Emperor refused to surrender (twice, I think, before the bombs were dropped)
3) They didn't know that he intended to surrender but was just playing games (some believed he was, some didn't)
4) The Japanese were well known for suicide attacks and fighting despite the odds
5) They had really big bombs that hadn't been tested under battlefield situations
6) They wanted to scare the Russians out of invading China and Japan
7) They didn't know anything about radiation
It's still an atrocity, but it all goes back to #1, when you're at war you do what you have to end it quickly and decisively. You do not risk the lives of your soldiers when you don't have to.
Really the Department of Justice deliberately bungled the law suit, and now they have no choice but to claim it's a success till the bitter end. The last thing they want is yet another investigation into official mismanagement and White House interference in a anti-trust case. Immediately after Bush was elected they pulled all senior DoJ staff off of the case and left only a few inexperienced lawyers (from that Bible School they're so fond of hiring from) on the case.
They had Microsoft up against a wall, and then suddenly they were best buddies with Microsoft and nothing had ever really been wrong in the first place. It was sickening and another black eye for the United States, but if at any point the DoJ admits that it's unsastisfied with the results, it opens up an old can worms for the house or the senate to investigate.
Good point.
I'm sorry, you're just unbelievably stupid. If that fact bothers you, you might want to do something about it. That's the sole reason you're on my foe list, so I don't have to read the stupid shit you post. Frankly, I didn't bother to read beyond first line of this post. Everything you write is utter garbage.
I bet Take Two's age verification system is much better than that used by the classifieds in your newspaper, though. So once again, you're left wondering WTF is JT talking about?
Yeah, they figure he's "on the news" therefore he must know what he's talking about.
That could be the case, but remember we're talking about doubling the entire cost of the game. I'm sure you can double the cost of the art for HD, but you'd have to at least triple or quadruple the cost of the art before you'd manage to double the cost of the game (depending on what percentage of your total costs got to art assets).
I'm not sure that more realistic physics is should be blamed on the HD, though. The physics system seems to be a gameplay component rather than a display component. It'll be interesting to see how this ends up shaking out. The whole physics and HD thing seems to sounds like a perfect opportunity for some of the small companies to specialize. We already have companies that produce engines and license them to other companies, I wonder if eventually there will be room for companies to produce physics systems and license them. On the one hand, I think development companies should be reluctant outsource gameplay development, but on the other, it seems it would promote efficiency to do so.
My god, you're a stupid ass.
Maybe you live in a country where street racing is legal, but I doubt it.
And you can't always have 5-19 friends ready to run out and play your favourite sport.
Gardening however, is:
a) boring to a great many people
b) has low entry cost (you need dirt and seeds)
c) a solo activity
d) is usually enjoyed because
i) it gets you outdoors
ii) you get to see something real grow
If you're going to make a comparison at least put some thought into.
You do realize that if a game costs 25%-50% of another game, those extra savings are coming from somewhere other than a nebulous void right?
Wii games cost less because they don't make the game as big, as long, or as in depth as they would for another console. I'm absolutely sure that the difference in costs between HD graphic development and regular is far less than 50%. They're saving money because they're making simpler games designed for your grandmother or your 5 year old.
Why would someone want a "garden simulator" when they could have a garden?
If I found mini-games fun, I'd be playing Minesweeper instead of posting to slashdot.
Obviously it's the internet's fault that people are surfing it instead of working, it has nothing to do with boredom, bad management, overworked and underpayed employees. Let's just ignore the fact that people spend the same percentage of time slacking now that they did 20 years ago and blame the internets! It's new. Blame it!
It's not really going to be whether anyone follows the standard. Microsoft is buying talking points they can use to win big contracts. They'll be pushing the "our stuff is an ISO certified standard" down the throats of every buyer they talk to, they're marketing people will be using it to produce FUD like the "Get the Facts" campaign.
They're not just buying just a standard they're buying ammunition.
On the flip side, this has shown that the ISO certification boards are essentially unreliable, if the only qualification necessary to vote is $2500, then how can you trust them to be anything but biased corporate whores?
Maybe it's me, but it seems mostly designed to sell to the gullible, parents, and the elderly.
Why those three groups?
1) Gullible people think that having a motion sensing controller is a revolutionary advance that will force great new games to be created.
2) Parents want:
a) their children to get exercise, the Wii at least gets them moving around while they play video games (or more than before)
b) games they can play for extremely short times because they have kids instead of time
3) The elderly can use the games to:
a) get some excercise for themselves in a fun and non-stressful way
b) try and keep their minds more alert with games like brain age.
All the people I know who are "real" gamers (excluding the Nintendophiles) don't actually like the Wii. The favourite party game for the Wii? Bomberman 64. To me that says a whole lot about the Wii.
We'll see maybe there's enough real gamers who will buy a Wii that we'll see real, good games come out for it. But I'm not terribly hopeful that anything that I like (excluding Zelda and Metroid because they're Nintendo's) will show up on the Wii. I don't think the target audience for the games I like is moving anywhere right now.
No, it will likely be down to who can pay the most to have media companies support their standard exclusively.
PS2 - 222k
Maybe he meant Sony sold twice as many consoles as Microsoft?
Condorcet is generally better because it never changes the winner based on which of the least popular candidates is eliminated first.
How about this:
There's a handful of states who matter in Presidential Elections and the rest don't. The ones who matter are the ones that have a lot of votes and give them all to whoever gets 50.1% of the popular vote or more. The states who do the reasonable thing and split their votes based on the popular vote in the state are entirely ignored as are any states that are likely to vote entirely one way or the other.
This means that candidates for the white house only have to appeal to a small subsection of American voters who really matter, and not to the whole country, even though they will represent and govern the entire country. That seems like an unhealthy situation to allow to continue. In theory, you can win the white house based on 50.1% of the popular vote in 13 states (iirc), while loosing 100% of the vote in all 37 others.
Actually, in government run health care you go to whatever hospital you want. There's no point in trying to force you to go to one particular hospital. Pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.
The greatest concern of public healthcare has nothing to do with government control over your health care, but rather underfunding. You see a public health system produces much better results for the average person. Which is usually worse than what a rich person will get and much, much better than what a poor person will get. A downside is that utilization of the system will go up, and an upside is that because utilization goes up and you now have a single entity buying healthcare services, costs go down. It's called purchasing power, drug companies have to play nice with government purchasers or a competitor will get all of the business. A downside of that is that nurses and doctors make tend to make less money because they have fewer alternative options and by economic thought that means fewer people will want to be nurses and doctors.
In the end you tend to get a system that more equitable, less profitable, with the biggest worry being having to wait for your health care rather than having to spend the rest of your life paying off your or your loved one's health care debts.
Now from what you've said, I see that you have little to benefit from now. You're probably in your late twenties or early thirties, healthy with little to worry about in the way of healthcare costs. I bet you're uninsured or minimally insured and you're ok with that. That makes you oblivious to certain fundamental facts like serious health costs more than you can afford to pay. I know of several friends of friends who will never own a home unless they inherit from their parents because they were in a accident, one that wasn't their fault and were seriously injured and now have mortgage-sized debts that they will likely never be able to fully pay off.
Let's face facts. In the U.S. electoral system, apathy, protest, and disenfranchisement are indistinguishable and effectively invisible. If the non-voters in the U.S. were to suddenly start voting, the entire election system would choke and die. The state's don't even bother allocate enough resources to allow everyone to vote, and in cases like Ohio, they deliberately engineer it so that even many of the people who want to vote can't.
Personally, I have never stood in line for more than 5 minutes to vote, I can't imagine having to stand in line for hours to exercise my funamental right (and duty) as a citizen of a democractic nation.
Realistically, if everyone who didn't vote voted instead for a third party, any third party at all. They'd throw both major parties into complete disarray. All of the system works right now on the basis of a predictable 2 party race. All that gerrymandering? IT works on the notions that:
A) people tend to vote for the same party regardless of the issues (partisanship)
B) people only vote for the Republicans or Democrats in numbers large enough to matter
As long as few people support 3 parties, gerrymandering is simply to do with a program. Get enough people voting for third parties and suddenly gerrymandering becomes much more computationally complex because instead of 2 dimensional optimization you need to do 3, 4 or more dimensions.
Of course, what's really needed in the U.S. is basic electoral reforms to change the basic voting system. The 1 vote, first-past-the-post, winner takes all system isn't working. It gives too much power to too few people.