The lack of a hard drive in the XBox 360 cripples it, because eliminates a fundemental feature that can be used in games. There are no fundemental gaming elements missing from the low-end PS3.
The thing is, the $300 Xbox 360 brings it into a price range where a kid can get it for Christmas and get the hard drive for their birthday or vice versa. Especially if grandma gets them a game and Aunt Sue gets them a memory card. That same kid could get a Wii too. However, there aren't many families that can go shelling $500 to $600 JUST FOR THE CONSOLE. Microsoft's strategy is that it is better to make the console affordable and upgradable than completely put it out of the price range of most people.
If Sony wants to reach the same levels of sales it has been reaching, it is going to have to drop the price ALOT. They didn't sell 100 million consoles just to fanboys wanting to play FF.
What I mean by this is that because the wiimote offers such a more intimate and intuitive interface with the console's game world that we will be able to interact with it in ways that will have the effect of looking even more "real-life" than a console with simply raw video processing power.
Wii looks like a ton of fun. I miss platformers and more simple games on the current line of consoles. However, I'm curious to see what they do with some of the sports games. The problem with sports games is that their is alot more going on, at least in Madden and MLB2k6, than just "throw the ball" or "swing the bat".
For example in baseball, while batting you also have to control the baserunners---how far they lead off, when to steal, etc. In football, you have audibles, hotroutes, motion, etc. Will Wii just remove these from the games, or will they somehow find a way to incorporate them in? And if so, how.
It will also be interesting to see how they translate the movement with the actual motions of the players. For swinging the bat I'm assuming they aren't going to have a one-to-one mapping of a player swinging the controller to the player actually swinging a bat. And all players in the major swing the bat at different speeds (ex pitchers are generally slower).
Actually most of the European policital forces usually mislabeled as 'Socialists' or even 'Communists' by US right wingers are actually modern Social Democrats who have become moderate to the point where they generally do not see a conflict between a democratic society with a capitalist market economy and their own goals which in turn means they have very little in common with Marxism, Communism or classical Socialism.
Maybe, it could be that, for example, the UK's labor party describes themselves as socialist on their website: http://www.labour.org.uk/aboutlabour
The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party....The Labour Party was set up in 1900 to fight for representation for the Labour movement - trade unions and socialist societies
Now you might not think they are "hardcore" socialists or "true" socialists, but you can't blame crazy right-wingers for labelling them socialists when they use that term themselves.
Um, the Internet and Battlenet type services were around long before X Box live, not to mention online multiplayer gameplay
Ever use Live? Live is like having an integrated Battle.net for EVERY game. Your profile is the same for Madden/Battlefront 2/etc. It has integrated messaging, voice, you name it. No more registering for online every time you buy a game. And now cheaters are locked into accounts they have to pay for. Throw in downloads of demos/movie trailers/skins/extra content/patches. There are probably some features I'm missing.
To say MS didn't innovate with Live is like saying Internet gaming is no big deal since it has already been done with modems back in the 80's. Sorry, it just ain't the same.
Plus, truth be told, the people who are complaining the loudest aren't the people the console companies really care about - if you can't dig up $600 for a console, then you're certainly not going to be opening your wallet to buy new controllers, new games, etc.
Sony doesn't sell tens of millions of consoles just targeting wealthy single folks. Remember, there are alot of lower and middle class families buying consoles for their kids. As well as spouses who have to justify their purchases to their significant others. There is a HUGH difference between $300/$400 and $500/$600. And in addition, people can buy the $300 version then upgrade with the Xbox.
Every single product from MS has been a "me too" ripoff of one of their competitors.
Then why is Sony ripping off Microsoft's Live service, even to the point of adding a "middle" button to their controller?
I guess *EVERY* single product is a bit of a reach.
So, wait a second. We've got some guy on some site that has pictures of a DVD in a drive, and this is somehow proof that Sony faked the whole thing? Aren't there just a few holes here?
Ah yes, the whole "They couldn't be THAT incompetent defense". Nice try, fanboy. Just because they are incompetent doesn't mean they didn't do it. The person who discovered this isn't just some random XBox blogger, this is a writer for a major magazine. Someone who would have alot to loose for just making stuff up. Someone does a little investigative journalism in tech for one and all the SonyBoys try to tear him down, instead of asking why Sony is resorting to smoke-and-mirrors
I'm not saying that Sony is the only one doing this kind of stuff. Not at all. But it needs to be exposed no matter WHAT company is doing it. Even if it happens to be your favorite company.
Rumble is moderately interesting. But it's not worth paying those fucks at Immersion for it. It never added much to a game anyway.
Depends on the game you are playing. If you are playing a baseball game (ex MVP, MLB2k6) in 2 player mode the rumble tell you when you are nearing/past the strike zone (so you know and your opponent doesn't. You can't do it visually because you don't want the other guy to see where you are pitching
I'm not sure that qualifies as abuse of the act. An organized group of people (Operation Rescue) attempting to extort legal businesses (abortion clinics) into either changing or closing entirely through threats (see what is on some of their websites), intimidation (in-your-face confrontations directly in front of clinics), and violence (bombings and beatings tacitly accepted as part of the struggle), simply because their view isn't your view (First Amendment issue of everyone, including clinics have rights to free speech and association and freedom from religion)...
1) Violence is NOT tacitly accepted. That is a complete and utter distortion. There have been many more acts of violence committed by environmental groups for their cause. Yet noone is charging Greenpeace and PETA with RICO suits. Not to mention unions, who have a history of being linked with violence and ironically the mob.
2) If in-your-face confrontations were "illegal" you would pretty much ban most union strikes as well as any other demonstration outside of a company that attempted to get a company to "change". Martin Luther King Jr would have been arrested for Racketeering.
3) Clinics have the right to free speech and association, but they don't have the right to limit others' free speech and association rights. Of course, private property rights do exist and protesters should be arrested if they violate these.
4) Threats, if real and physical should lead to arrests. REAL arrests, not RICO suits. But telling someone they are evil and going to hell for supporting abortion is not a real threat.
WHich begs the question why were the republicans so facinated with where bill clinton stuck his cock into?
This is an example of a strawman argument. If you don't know what that is look it up in the wikipedia. THE REPUBS DIDN'T CARE. Paula Jones did. She was a state employee who was escorted to Clinton's hotel room like a prostitute by a state trooper. Something that should make your stomach turn whether Clinton was a D or an R.
During depositions Paula wanted to establish that Clinton had a history of having sexual relationships with people under him. Clinton lied and THAT is what REPUBs cared about
Now I know darn well that the feminist organizations like NOW would have been all over Clinton if he had an R by his name instead of a D. Instead they argued completely opposite as they had during the Thomas confirmations
So go back to Comp 101 and learn logic and argumentation before trying to type next time
Women who willingly, even enthusiastically give the president blow jobs should be part of the public record, because the people have the right to know,
Just for the record, Repubs didn't give a crap Clinton got a BJ. They *DID* care that he lied while giving testamony during the sexual harassment trial of another woman, Paula Jones. Which the press or NOW didn't seem to care about because she was relatively poor and didn't graduate from Harvard. If you think this was somehow wrong, let me refer you to the confirmation of Clarance Thomas.
I'm bring this up because this simplistic strawman argumentation from both sides needs to stop. We are tearing ourselves apart. Clinton had his own "Homeland Security" issues (see Ruby Ridge) and privacy issues (retrieving FBI files of Republican politicians). And some certain flag-waving Republicans bashed the feds as "jack booted thugs" during the Clinton administration and fought against Clinton's Serbian intervention with some of the same intensity as we are seeing from the anti-war left.
However the only 2 things they [unions] are responsible for are:
(a) Provide for their own survival.
(b) Increase benefits to their members.
The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones. It is the difference between viewing things in terms of "win-win" or "win-lose". Unions and the company could work together to both provide for the workers and build a strong and healthy company. Instead, the unions "won" in the case of GM at least in the short term. Long term they will both lose when GM goes bankrupt.
For a different example look at the case of the NFL. The Players Union could completely screw the owners if they wanted. Short term, the salary cap prevents money from going to players. So they are decreasing potential benefits to players. However, in the long term the competitive balance of the NFL has caused its marketshare to skyrocket and has allowed the NFL to pay its players hundreds of millions of dollars more than MLB or the NBA pay its players.
"At least the we know where the United States' priorities are. War? Famine? Fuck that, let's support a sport so they can put synthetic DNA on a football.
Sorry, but sports are valued entirely too fucking much imo."
Why do people always have to view things in zero-sum terms. Just because research is going into something entertaining like sports doesn't mean it won't translate into other usages. We have spent millions and millions of dollars into figuring out how to make athletes perform better and fix them when they are hurt. This has translated into practical, useful things such as Gatorade and much better procedures for knee and shoulder injuries. The NFL anti-counterfiting measures may turn out to be useful in the future for things such as legal documents.
I think people have a bias against science and research that is not done for "the love of knowledge" itself. The truth is that most of our progress comes from necessity, and many times this necessity is a manufactured necessity rather than a real one. Sometimes it is war research, sometimes sports, sometimes other entertainment such as video games. These things merely provide opportunities for challenges to overcome.
Strange, I didn't know all the conservative folks at Fox News liked Hillary Clinton. Oh, you didn't know that she was the loudest opponent of Rockstar and was the one on the news denouncing the mod and pulling out the "think of the children" card on a game already marked 17+?
Oh, its easier to just paint all bad and evil things on GWB and the Republicans? By bad. Why not just make it easy and make all Republicans walk around with a big R on their chest? I mean, if we just "got rid" of all the Republican America would be a perfect utopia with clean air and riches for everyone. And even the trains will run on time.
I'm one of those people who complain about 100+ million dollar sports teams who force taxpayers to build stadiums for them from taxdollars, but there would be 10000+ people who would be SOL without the Superdome. I'm sure people would have scoffed at the idea of funding the dome because "it might come in handy in a natural disaster" but it has definitely saved alot of lives.
My question has always been "Why stop science because a bunch of people don't like it?". Science is science is science and will always be science. The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.
Some of those scientific discoveries were made by use of human subjects. So is it OK for science to start experimenting on "the aged, insane, incurably ill, or deformed children" just because it is science? I mean, our knowledge of disease would be greatly advanced if we just bypassed the animal expermiments and went straight to humans. How about making people suffer through Syphilis while telling them they are treating them all the while just letting them die and observing the progression of the disease.
Science should exist for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of science. Science should not be worshipped like a religion where the ultimate goal of man is its advancement. That is why it is political issue.
"For hundreds of years everyone "observed" that a heavy stone falls faster than a feather."
And, indeed it does out by the Parthenon. So? Were you thinking they had misobserved the experiment done in a hard vacuum?
They absolutely misobserved the experiment. Because whether at the Parthenon or somewhere else the same distance from the earth, all objects fall at about 9.8 m/s.
By the way, do you understand what "random" means? What about "stochastic process"?...A realistic computer program would not yield your "Uncle Bob" and "Aunt Fran" (or even humans); it still might be an excellent model of "reality".
No need to get snippy. Geez. Anyway, since we already have a result (humans) you should still be able model the theory of evolution and find the set of random variables that resulted in humans. This model should also predict the pre-humans, apes, etc that correlate to fossil records. We also should eventually be able predictively assign probabilities to future mutations (humans mutating wings vs humans mutating different skin colors). This sort of evidence is alot more convincing than some random scientist's comparison of butterfly colors. Sadly I don't see too many evolutionary scientists interested in these sorts of hard studies.
Evolution is a fact. It has been observed in the fossil record, and observed in the present day.
"Observation" proves anything. For hundreds of years everyone "observed" that a heavy stone falls faster than a feather. The Scientific Method proves things:
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Observation alone does not satisfy #3 and #4.
here is an extensive fossil record, etc. for evolution. Does this mean that God couldn't have just planted it there to trick us? No. But at the same time if there is a "God" that would do that, then he could also reverse all of the laws of physics tomorrow
One problem that the theory of evolution has in comparison to, say, the laws of Physics is the fact that the much evidence is very different. Anyone can perform empirical experiments to prove for themselves that, for example, F=MA (for relatively slow moving masses of course Mr. Einstein).
However much of the theory of evolution comes from someone subjective studies of skeletons and in this case "wing colours". Evolution has very few hard predictive theories. For example, with the "wing colours" theory these researchers can't predict what the wing colors will be. Of course this has alot to do with the complexity of the theory and the interactions of the species. But the problem still exists.
Personally, many evolutionary studies remind me more of a "soft science" psychology or sociology study than a hard science physics or chemistry theory. The only hard science being done IMHO is in the realm of genetics. I want to see someone come up with a computer model showing how we got from a single celled organism to us with all of the branches inbetween.
You misunderstand the point of the judicial branch. The point of the judicial branch is to make sure that the other branches don't abuse their powers, and that the other branches don't shred the Constitution.
That's nice and all in abstract, but who watches the judicial brance to make sure THEY don't shred the constitution? After all, the whole reason that we have a democracy, 3 branches of government, and checks and balances is because human beings are fallible. If we could find a perfect human beings who make perfect decisions everyone agrees with we could create a dictatorship with all decisions made by that one person. But there is no such person. And the current supremes are obviously biased by their internal politics and beliefs. Most observers can predict what each supreme will do, not based on the observation of law, but each supreme's perception of reality and what is right and wrong.
The danger is that the Supreme Court does not have the same checks and balances as Congress or the President. Supremes are not elected, have lifetime memberships, and the only way to theoretically overrule a decision is to amend the constitution. The more decisions that the Supremes make that overrules the elected bodies, the less we become a republic and the more we become a autocratic society.
I don't imagine that Kilby thought it would lead to less human contact, less face to face time, and less free time for everyone. He probably thought of it as a way to increase efficiency and ultimately reduce our workload.
1) Less human contact? What about cell phones and the Internet? IM and email? Satellites communications? The abilility for at a very low cost to communicate with anyone in the world over the Internet? Human beings are far more connected now then they were.
2) Less face to face time? Depends on what you define as face-to-face time. Does it mean you don't have to fly half-way across the globe for a 4 hour meeting in India or Australia? Or does it mean your not getting out and meeting people as much as you like. For the former, see #1. For the latter, its your own fault. There is nothing the computer is doing to prevent you from hanging out with friends or spending time with people.
What does it matter if a game is played on a PC or a console, as long as it is good? The biggest limitation of a console right now IMHO is the low-res---something that the next-gens are fixing. They can always add a mouse to better support FPS and RTS games.
There is always going to be *someone* around making PC games. But even now the number of high-profile blockbuster games is very low, as are the PC game sections of gaming stores.
You have to laugh at the whole abstinence-based sex education thing, or else you are liable to cry. It would be like if in drivers ed they told people not to drive, because they might get into a car accident. That would be absurd. Just about everyone is going to drive anyway. Instead, the rational thing to do is to teach people to be safe drivers, wear seatbelts, etc. This is how sex education classes should operate as well.
The problem with your analogy is driver's ed is mostly optional, but most sex ed is mandatory in most cases. If I don't want my kid to learn to drive a car because I think cars are an environmental evil and I want them to rely on mass transit, I have that right. As long as sex ed is mandatory, it should conform to the LCD of morality. Since there are very very few people who believe it is immoral to wait for marriage, that is what sex ed should teach.
The school system isn't there to push one morality over another. Pulling schools into culture war territory is a dumb idea, especially since our schools can't even teach kids to read and write anymore or do simple math. And be careful what you wish for, because one day the schools may be pushing a morality that is against your beliefs....
Google's web index and desktop search facility is a database. I don't know about point 1, but Google definitely blows any relational database out of the water on point 2 to 4.
Google is a very unique case. There are two things in Google's advantage that most RDBMS system have to take into account:
1. Google does not have to update in realtime. If I add a page to my website it is not immediately available on Google. Contrast this to a normal RDBMS where if I add a record it must be available immediately. Google is much more similar to a Data Warehouse than a RDBMS.
2. Websites indexes are more easily parallelized because complex joining of data is not needed. Naively, Google can store all websites starting with 'A' on a server, 'B' on a server, etc. You can store the User table and the Address table on separate database servers and expect to query on users and their addresses with any sort of performance.
3. Going along with 3, the queries expected out of most RDBMS systems are much much more complex than any queries expected out of Google right now. I'm assuming you haven't seen any complex financial reports or statistics that have been generated from a RDBMS. Databases do alot more than "select name from user where id=1234".
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The lack of a hard drive in the XBox 360 cripples it, because eliminates a fundemental feature that can be used in games. There are no fundemental gaming elements missing from the low-end PS3.
The thing is, the $300 Xbox 360 brings it into a price range where a kid can get it for Christmas and get the hard drive for their birthday or vice versa. Especially if grandma gets them a game and Aunt Sue gets them a memory card. That same kid could get a Wii too. However, there aren't many families that can go shelling $500 to $600 JUST FOR THE CONSOLE. Microsoft's strategy is that it is better to make the console affordable and upgradable than completely put it out of the price range of most people.
If Sony wants to reach the same levels of sales it has been reaching, it is going to have to drop the price ALOT. They didn't sell 100 million consoles just to fanboys wanting to play FF.
What I mean by this is that because the wiimote offers such a more intimate and intuitive interface with the console's game world that we will be able to interact with it in ways that will have the effect of looking even more "real-life" than a console with simply raw video processing power.
Wii looks like a ton of fun. I miss platformers and more simple games on the current line of consoles. However, I'm curious to see what they do with some of the sports games. The problem with sports games is that their is alot more going on, at least in Madden and MLB2k6, than just "throw the ball" or "swing the bat".
For example in baseball, while batting you also have to control the baserunners---how far they lead off, when to steal, etc. In football, you have audibles, hotroutes, motion, etc. Will Wii just remove these from the games, or will they somehow find a way to incorporate them in? And if so, how.
It will also be interesting to see how they translate the movement with the actual motions of the players. For swinging the bat I'm assuming they aren't going to have a one-to-one mapping of a player swinging the controller to the player actually swinging a bat. And all players in the major swing the bat at different speeds (ex pitchers are generally slower).
Actually most of the European policital forces usually mislabeled as 'Socialists' or even 'Communists' by US right wingers are actually modern Social Democrats who have become moderate to the point where they generally do not see a conflict between a democratic society with a capitalist market economy and their own goals which in turn means they have very little in common with Marxism, Communism or classical Socialism.
Maybe, it could be that, for example, the UK's labor party describes themselves as socialist on their website: http://www.labour.org.uk/aboutlabour
The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party....The Labour Party was set up in 1900 to fight for representation for the Labour movement - trade unions and socialist societies
Now you might not think they are "hardcore" socialists or "true" socialists, but you can't blame crazy right-wingers for labelling them socialists when they use that term themselves.
Ever use Live? Live is like having an integrated Battle.net for EVERY game. Your profile is the same for Madden/Battlefront 2/etc. It has integrated messaging, voice, you name it. No more registering for online every time you buy a game. And now cheaters are locked into accounts they have to pay for. Throw in downloads of demos/movie trailers/skins/extra content/patches. There are probably some features I'm missing.
To say MS didn't innovate with Live is like saying Internet gaming is no big deal since it has already been done with modems back in the 80's. Sorry, it just ain't the same.
Sony doesn't sell tens of millions of consoles just targeting wealthy single folks. Remember, there are alot of lower and middle class families buying consoles for their kids. As well as spouses who have to justify their purchases to their significant others. There is a HUGH difference between $300/$400 and $500/$600. And in addition, people can buy the $300 version then upgrade with the Xbox.
Every single product from MS has been a "me too" ripoff of one of their competitors. Then why is Sony ripping off Microsoft's Live service, even to the point of adding a "middle" button to their controller? I guess *EVERY* single product is a bit of a reach.
So, wait a second. We've got some guy on some site that has pictures of a DVD in a drive, and this is somehow proof that Sony faked the whole thing? Aren't there just a few holes here?
Ah yes, the whole "They couldn't be THAT incompetent defense". Nice try, fanboy. Just because they are incompetent doesn't mean they didn't do it. The person who discovered this isn't just some random XBox blogger, this is a writer for a major magazine. Someone who would have alot to loose for just making stuff up. Someone does a little investigative journalism in tech for one and all the SonyBoys try to tear him down, instead of asking why Sony is resorting to smoke-and-mirrors
I'm not saying that Sony is the only one doing this kind of stuff. Not at all. But it needs to be exposed no matter WHAT company is doing it. Even if it happens to be your favorite company.
Depends on the game you are playing. If you are playing a baseball game (ex MVP, MLB2k6) in 2 player mode the rumble tell you when you are nearing/past the strike zone (so you know and your opponent doesn't. You can't do it visually because you don't want the other guy to see where you are pitching
1) Violence is NOT tacitly accepted. That is a complete and utter distortion. There have been many more acts of violence committed by environmental groups for their cause. Yet noone is charging Greenpeace and PETA with RICO suits. Not to mention unions, who have a history of being linked with violence and ironically the mob.
2) If in-your-face confrontations were "illegal" you would pretty much ban most union strikes as well as any other demonstration outside of a company that attempted to get a company to "change". Martin Luther King Jr would have been arrested for Racketeering.
3) Clinics have the right to free speech and association, but they don't have the right to limit others' free speech and association rights. Of course, private property rights do exist and protesters should be arrested if they violate these.
4) Threats, if real and physical should lead to arrests. REAL arrests, not RICO suits. But telling someone they are evil and going to hell for supporting abortion is not a real threat.
WHich begs the question why were the republicans so facinated with where bill clinton stuck his cock into?
This is an example of a strawman argument. If you don't know what that is look it up in the wikipedia. THE REPUBS DIDN'T CARE. Paula Jones did. She was a state employee who was escorted to Clinton's hotel room like a prostitute by a state trooper. Something that should make your stomach turn whether Clinton was a D or an R.
During depositions Paula wanted to establish that Clinton had a history of having sexual relationships with people under him. Clinton lied and THAT is what REPUBs cared about
Now I know darn well that the feminist organizations like NOW would have been all over Clinton if he had an R by his name instead of a D. Instead they argued completely opposite as they had during the Thomas confirmations
So go back to Comp 101 and learn logic and argumentation before trying to type next time
Women who willingly, even enthusiastically give the president blow jobs should be part of the public record, because the people have the right to know,
Just for the record, Repubs didn't give a crap Clinton got a BJ. They *DID* care that he lied while giving testamony during the sexual harassment trial of another woman, Paula Jones. Which the press or NOW didn't seem to care about because she was relatively poor and didn't graduate from Harvard. If you think this was somehow wrong, let me refer you to the confirmation of Clarance Thomas.
I'm bring this up because this simplistic strawman argumentation from both sides needs to stop. We are tearing ourselves apart. Clinton had his own "Homeland Security" issues (see Ruby Ridge) and privacy issues (retrieving FBI files of Republican politicians). And some certain flag-waving Republicans bashed the feds as "jack booted thugs" during the Clinton administration and fought against Clinton's Serbian intervention with some of the same intensity as we are seeing from the anti-war left.
However the only 2 things they [unions] are responsible for are: (a) Provide for their own survival. (b) Increase benefits to their members.
The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones. It is the difference between viewing things in terms of "win-win" or "win-lose". Unions and the company could work together to both provide for the workers and build a strong and healthy company. Instead, the unions "won" in the case of GM at least in the short term. Long term they will both lose when GM goes bankrupt.
For a different example look at the case of the NFL. The Players Union could completely screw the owners if they wanted. Short term, the salary cap prevents money from going to players. So they are decreasing potential benefits to players. However, in the long term the competitive balance of the NFL has caused its marketshare to skyrocket and has allowed the NFL to pay its players hundreds of millions of dollars more than MLB or the NBA pay its players.
"At least the we know where the United States' priorities are. War? Famine? Fuck that, let's support a sport so they can put synthetic DNA on a football. Sorry, but sports are valued entirely too fucking much imo."
Why do people always have to view things in zero-sum terms. Just because research is going into something entertaining like sports doesn't mean it won't translate into other usages. We have spent millions and millions of dollars into figuring out how to make athletes perform better and fix them when they are hurt. This has translated into practical, useful things such as Gatorade and much better procedures for knee and shoulder injuries. The NFL anti-counterfiting measures may turn out to be useful in the future for things such as legal documents.
I think people have a bias against science and research that is not done for "the love of knowledge" itself. The truth is that most of our progress comes from necessity, and many times this necessity is a manufactured necessity rather than a real one. Sometimes it is war research, sometimes sports, sometimes other entertainment such as video games. These things merely provide opportunities for challenges to overcome.
Strange, I didn't know all the conservative folks at Fox News liked Hillary Clinton. Oh, you didn't know that she was the loudest opponent of Rockstar and was the one on the news denouncing the mod and pulling out the "think of the children" card on a game already marked 17+?
Oh, its easier to just paint all bad and evil things on GWB and the Republicans? By bad. Why not just make it easy and make all Republicans walk around with a big R on their chest? I mean, if we just "got rid" of all the Republican America would be a perfect utopia with clean air and riches for everyone. And even the trains will run on time.
BrianI'm one of those people who complain about 100+ million dollar sports teams who force taxpayers to build stadiums for them from taxdollars, but there would be 10000+ people who would be SOL without the Superdome. I'm sure people would have scoffed at the idea of funding the dome because "it might come in handy in a natural disaster" but it has definitely saved alot of lives.
My question has always been "Why stop science because a bunch of people don't like it?". Science is science is science and will always be science. The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.
Some of those scientific discoveries were made by use of human subjects. So is it OK for science to start experimenting on "the aged, insane, incurably ill, or deformed children" just because it is science? I mean, our knowledge of disease would be greatly advanced if we just bypassed the animal expermiments and went straight to humans. How about making people suffer through Syphilis while telling them they are treating them all the while just letting them die and observing the progression of the disease.
Science should exist for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of science. Science should not be worshipped like a religion where the ultimate goal of man is its advancement. That is why it is political issue.
"For hundreds of years everyone "observed" that a heavy stone falls faster than a feather."
And, indeed it does out by the Parthenon. So? Were you thinking they had misobserved the experiment done in a hard vacuum?
They absolutely misobserved the experiment. Because whether at the Parthenon or somewhere else the same distance from the earth, all objects fall at about 9.8 m/s.
By the way, do you understand what "random" means? What about "stochastic process"?...A realistic computer program would not yield your "Uncle Bob" and "Aunt Fran" (or even humans); it still might be an excellent model of "reality".
No need to get snippy. Geez. Anyway, since we already have a result (humans) you should still be able model the theory of evolution and find the set of random variables that resulted in humans. This model should also predict the pre-humans, apes, etc that correlate to fossil records. We also should eventually be able predictively assign probabilities to future mutations (humans mutating wings vs humans mutating different skin colors). This sort of evidence is alot more convincing than some random scientist's comparison of butterfly colors. Sadly I don't see too many evolutionary scientists interested in these sorts of hard studies.
Evolution is a fact. It has been observed in the fossil record, and observed in the present day.
"Observation" proves anything. For hundreds of years everyone "observed" that a heavy stone falls faster than a feather. The Scientific Method proves things: http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Observation alone does not satisfy #3 and #4.
here is an extensive fossil record, etc. for evolution. Does this mean that God couldn't have just planted it there to trick us? No. But at the same time if there is a "God" that would do that, then he could also reverse all of the laws of physics tomorrow
One problem that the theory of evolution has in comparison to, say, the laws of Physics is the fact that the much evidence is very different. Anyone can perform empirical experiments to prove for themselves that, for example, F=MA (for relatively slow moving masses of course Mr. Einstein).
However much of the theory of evolution comes from someone subjective studies of skeletons and in this case "wing colours". Evolution has very few hard predictive theories. For example, with the "wing colours" theory these researchers can't predict what the wing colors will be. Of course this has alot to do with the complexity of the theory and the interactions of the species. But the problem still exists.
Personally, many evolutionary studies remind me more of a "soft science" psychology or sociology study than a hard science physics or chemistry theory. The only hard science being done IMHO is in the realm of genetics. I want to see someone come up with a computer model showing how we got from a single celled organism to us with all of the branches inbetween.
Brian EllenbergerYou misunderstand the point of the judicial branch. The point of the judicial branch is to make sure that the other branches don't abuse their powers, and that the other branches don't shred the Constitution.
That's nice and all in abstract, but who watches the judicial brance to make sure THEY don't shred the constitution? After all, the whole reason that we have a democracy, 3 branches of government, and checks and balances is because human beings are fallible. If we could find a perfect human beings who make perfect decisions everyone agrees with we could create a dictatorship with all decisions made by that one person. But there is no such person. And the current supremes are obviously biased by their internal politics and beliefs. Most observers can predict what each supreme will do, not based on the observation of law, but each supreme's perception of reality and what is right and wrong.
The danger is that the Supreme Court does not have the same checks and balances as Congress or the President. Supremes are not elected, have lifetime memberships, and the only way to theoretically overrule a decision is to amend the constitution. The more decisions that the Supremes make that overrules the elected bodies, the less we become a republic and the more we become a autocratic society.
BrianI don't imagine that Kilby thought it would lead to less human contact, less face to face time, and less free time for everyone. He probably thought of it as a way to increase efficiency and ultimately reduce our workload.
1) Less human contact? What about cell phones and the Internet? IM and email? Satellites communications? The abilility for at a very low cost to communicate with anyone in the world over the Internet? Human beings are far more connected now then they were.
2) Less face to face time? Depends on what you define as face-to-face time. Does it mean you don't have to fly half-way across the globe for a 4 hour meeting in India or Australia? Or does it mean your not getting out and meeting people as much as you like. For the former, see #1. For the latter, its your own fault. There is nothing the computer is doing to prevent you from hanging out with friends or spending time with people.
What does it matter if a game is played on a PC or a console, as long as it is good? The biggest limitation of a console right now IMHO is the low-res---something that the next-gens are fixing. They can always add a mouse to better support FPS and RTS games.
There is always going to be *someone* around making PC games. But even now the number of high-profile blockbuster games is very low, as are the PC game sections of gaming stores.
Brian
Brian
You have to laugh at the whole abstinence-based sex education thing, or else you are liable to cry. It would be like if in drivers ed they told people not to drive, because they might get into a car accident. That would be absurd. Just about everyone is going to drive anyway. Instead, the rational thing to do is to teach people to be safe drivers, wear seatbelts, etc. This is how sex education classes should operate as well.
The problem with your analogy is driver's ed is mostly optional, but most sex ed is mandatory in most cases. If I don't want my kid to learn to drive a car because I think cars are an environmental evil and I want them to rely on mass transit, I have that right. As long as sex ed is mandatory, it should conform to the LCD of morality. Since there are very very few people who believe it is immoral to wait for marriage, that is what sex ed should teach.
The school system isn't there to push one morality over another. Pulling schools into culture war territory is a dumb idea, especially since our schools can't even teach kids to read and write anymore or do simple math. And be careful what you wish for, because one day the schools may be pushing a morality that is against your beliefs....
Brian EllenbergerGoogle's web index and desktop search facility is a database. I don't know about point 1, but Google definitely blows any relational database out of the water on point 2 to 4.
Google is a very unique case. There are two things in Google's advantage that most RDBMS system have to take into account:
1. Google does not have to update in realtime. If I add a page to my website it is not immediately available on Google. Contrast this to a normal RDBMS where if I add a record it must be available immediately. Google is much more similar to a Data Warehouse than a RDBMS.
2. Websites indexes are more easily parallelized because complex joining of data is not needed. Naively, Google can store all websites starting with 'A' on a server, 'B' on a server, etc. You can store the User table and the Address table on separate database servers and expect to query on users and their addresses with any sort of performance.
3. Going along with 3, the queries expected out of most RDBMS systems are much much more complex than any queries expected out of Google right now. I'm assuming you haven't seen any complex financial reports or statistics that have been generated from a RDBMS. Databases do alot more than "select name from user where id=1234".
Brian