I said Judeo-Christian tradition because that's what (most) Western society has in common. Doubtless it exists in most of the other religions of the world, including Buddhism and even children raised in Atheist households are taught that this is what's expected of them.
The Chinese aren't overly religious. We're more of a conservative superstitious lot. China is a heterogeneous mix of various super superstitions and true religious beliefs (many argue they are the same) but underlying the majority of the culture is a focus on family. If I chose to opt out I'd have a huge row with the family and I'd excommunicate myself from them. The option exists but I don't feel compelled in that direction. The link between religion and family is only that all older cultures lean on religion as a behavior regulation tool thus it ingrains one int he other. Religion is often the culture and the culture can be a religion. But the value on family has real value as it promotes more kids which promotes larger numbers of people who think like you.
There are scarce few socio-economical problems you could talk about that would not be helped, and many that would be outright eliminated, by a decline and ultimate stabilization of the world population. If you could get the population down to say, 2B or less it would be possible for nearly everyone to live as well as middle class Westerners do today. And the notion that you are unable to make a free choice because of your heritage is laughable, you just don't want to. Pleas understand that I'm not attacking you for this, it's a normal thing to want, but it's only helpful as long as we're still trapped in the farcical rat race with the other cultures and nations of the world, where out producing your enemy with your genetic resources is the goal. I don't accept social Darwinism as an inevitability, and it's certainly not some sort of universal, perfect truth. We can do better. We have a responsibility to better as the only species in history that has had the capacity to.
Dont' worry, I'm mature enough not to take internet conversation seriously.
Like it or not you general think like your parents. So if you want more people who general share your culture you need more kids. Reproduction is not yet centrally controlled so it's not "why can't we reduce our reproduction and not over tax our earth." So while we're slowing down in producing Little jimmy Chans who plays hockey and grows up to be an engineer they are rapidly producing little Farooq Chans who who grow up and become engineers over there. We've hedged the problem by allowing the best and brightest in thus stealing their thunder. But the birth rate of talent is not governed by who has the most valid outlook on ecology. We've been fortunate that we're rich and attractive to the talented of other nations but if a place like Iran developed on it's own into a japan or china continues it's rise we will not have the luxury of poaching their talent. Eventually the smart ones will stop coming and if we don't' foster an environment that exponentially produces more talent we'll fall by the wayside in history. We may persist as the greeks did after the collapse of their allied city states. But we'll never again be as prominent. We'll decline into a vacation destination for the Chinese, Indian, and Iranians. Having lived through high school I'm fairly certain we aren't exponentially more effective at harboring talented individuals that I think we need to shift the "liberal" culture into having kids or we'll be drowned by all those that do focus on having kids.
There is no universal perfect truth. Just dirty messy numbers. We have case studies. Look at many European states. Too few to run the country, bringing in other without culturally assimilating them causes violence. It's not an unreasonable project to have the native pop a minority and witness the minority culture overtake it (See the history of Malasia and Singapore). You may think "social darwinism" is a bad word and the ideals behind it are incorrect
I didn't "opt-out" of anything, it just sort of worked out that way. You might as well have a tax system based on height or skin color, makes about as much sense. I'm sure you could find studies saying tall white people do better, society should promote them to have more kids! It wouldn't make me as frustrated if the motivation really was a "greater good" altruism, but I'm suspicious that most of it comes from Judeo-Christian tradition and pure cultural momentum propagating down through the generations by way of self fulfilling laws and various shaping mechanisms such as stigmas and what's considerd "normal". There is a better way.
Not Jeudeo-christian, virtually every culture has a big push for family in some way. I'm ethnic Chinese with a Buddist/Athiest house hold. We have a massive kick towards kids and family. I could not opt out if I wanted to. Majority of or rituals and such relate to that. Kicking out kids is our biological imperative. If you opt out or are opted out it's a dead end for you genes so in a big group way things that opt you out tend not to be a very large portion of the pool (you may think it's unfair but it's explicitly how natural selection works, even with todays "artificial" world it still count for something.) Culture has developed with a similar type of selection. Cultures without a big push to reproduce like the Spartans tend to die out in the long run. It might be cruel if for some reason you can't have kids there is always adoption it's a cultural reproduction. Which in this day and age is nearly as good.
Like it or not the West as in the Us, Canada, Europe is a dying race (a multi-ethnic race) because of a focus away from raising kids. In the long run if we don't subvert this trend we will die out and all of our ideals and goals will fade from prominence. I am not first generation, I am an immigrant but I grew up here and culturally I am like any other Canadian. I value this culture and I'll have and raise as many kids and my GF is willing to have. but thats my personal opinion and I have a few friends who can't or won't have kids and the thing about our ideals is thats fine. I'll just pick up the slack by having kids with more women:D
That's not far from the truth in the US already. It's in our tax structure, insurance, oh and all the wonderful benefits you'll get screwed out of when you're in the military and unmarried. You're pretty much punished for being single, which really sucks for people who aren't ever going to get married.
Society maintains itself through having kids. It's been observed that family units tend to give kids better starts and are less prone to crime. Thus the society has a vested interest to promote this. If you've made a conscious choice to opt out, then they be wise to push you towards making a greater contribution through higher taxes. Your singledom generally doesn't forward the society. Occasional outlyers exists (Alan Turing etc..). beside the tax credit a family gets does not even make up half of what kids cost. I am single and I don't mind. A $2000 tax credit means a lot to a family but only a new HDTV for me. Society would make the right choice in pushing us toward shaving more kids. Opting out is umm... letting the terrorist win:D
And now you are trying to whitewash a strength as a weakness. Free markets work by teaching unbiased object lessons to the participants. The invisible hand does not care whether you are black or white, how good of a nanny your parents could afford, whether you have a strict neighborhood association, or any other claptrap. Sometimes the lessons hurt, but if you want to run you have to expect a few skinned knees. (Remember than the sub-prime mortgage "crisis" amounts to a percent or three of GDP for a single year.)
For a couple of mod point, please point to a truly free economy. unencumbered by government regulation, government interference or taxes. I bet you the closer to that ideal you get the more corruption and monopolies you see. In fact I bet the closer to that ideal you get the lower the general standard of living is.
The lines are exaggerated although present for some surgeries. Mostly those related to old age due to a demographic problem int he system. It'll right it self in 20 years are so. Going to the local media center can mean a weight of around an hour. If your doctor takes appointments then much less waiting. Things like specialists can take a few months to get to see. My mum need a stomach specialist which took about 1 and a half months. My dad had a bleeding ulcer and he saw 3 specialist within a few days of admittance to the Hospital. The system is going to get slightly more gummed up before it gets better but it's not that bad. So long as you aren't a baby boomer getting old you have a fair system, if you are it's decent but a notch below. Emergency rooms generally aren't so bad depending on what you have wrong with you. My dog bite was treated within an hour of admittance with a shot and bandages and a blood sample. My younger brother broken arm took 2h to get a doc to look at then another 4h to go it no surgery to properly set and pin it. Although it was 3 am.
statically the US gov spends x2 per person on it's system. Despite much of it being private. All together you guys pay more then anyone else on earth per capita (private + public) to have one of the lowest life expectancies in the west and a fairly high infant mortality. They use you guys as political propaganda to say "hey look, the conservatives are going make us like the US." which is actually sort of true. Obesity may also account for studies that suggest the US is unhealthy. The US and Canada are pretty close in diet but we're still a bit ahead on the fat people department due to.. I don't know really. maybe we just like Ding dongs less.
Actually, I don't think it's at odds with the summary, it's just that the BMI is a pretty useless measure of someone's health.
Isn't there an easy and much more useful measure. The waist-hip ratio is more informative. It can be skewed by genetic anomalies like really big hips but it's basically a proportion of bone to tissue which measure what your bone structure aught carry and what you really carry.
If he is correct in his hypothesis then we're in trouble. If the article post last week about Smart Teens having less sex can be extrapolated to adults then we should see the opposite happen in the US. It already felt like the general populace of the USA is getting dumber this just seems to confirm my suspicions.
We should introduce an artificial selection pressure. How about a mechanical sphynx that targets pre-pubescent with random algebra, English, and social questions and if you fail ti eats you.
You and I have no idea and the article says nothing.
Sony does not have a habitof selling things at a loss.
I find this an amusing case of discrediting one's own statements. It may be the case that Sony doesn't make a habit of selling at a loss; but as you yourself said none of us are in a position to say one way or the other. The two statements are not mutually exclusive. Fross and myself have no idea of the true margin of the Ps3. From all released data, Sony does not sell products at a loss. No HDTV's, Not walkmans, not the Ps2, not anything. So both statements can be true. Sony does not make a habit of losing money on units sold and we have no idea of in this particular case if this habit is repeated.
A example:
I do not know if my GF likes her last present. she does not have a habit of disliking gifts. One statement is a statement of this case, and the other is a statement about general history and trends.
Exactly. Now instead of testing console games to death to make sure there are absolutely no errors making the game unplayable, they can just shovel crap out the door and throw a ton of patches your way like they currently do with PC gaming. All hail the hard drive!
MS and Sony have standing policies against "fix" patches. You can sneak it into a content patch though. I did notice a patch for resistance but it added futures (it may have also fixed bugs). It means out of the box old copies of games may not provide the same experience (happens with games like FFX where international versiosn got bug fixed and extra content). It now means buying early does not preclude you from getting some of the extra content and fixes bundled in. I doubt we'll have a PC situation where the game is shipped brokena nd fixed after the fact.
Just ordered one myself for the same reasons - my ps2 recently died, and although there's nothing I really want to play on ps3 at the moment, I still play a lot of ps2, and it seemed worth it to go ahead and grab one while the hardware emulation was in place.
The good news is the emulation on the ps3 is a lot better with only occasional quirkiness on a few games. FFXII and MGS3 work fine. As does odin sphere and a bunch of other have aboslutely no issues on my version of those games. The compatability list is available and even the "marginal" ones are playable with issues. Conversely the 360's compatability is less then 50% and even some of the compatable ones have issues.
Hm. Actually kind of a tough choice, because this isn't "OMG GIMME NOW!" kind of thing, but more a "If I don't act now, I'll wind up getting the kind of crappier one later." Yeah, I know, the software emulation does all sorts of neat tricks to "upscale" it, but I usually find I don't give a crap. (Heck, I just put in the original "Persona" into my PS2 the other day for the first time and was perfectly pleased with them old 1990's graphics.)
Sw is around 80% and improving with most of the incompatible ones being companies who didn't follow spec.
Re:At least it won't piss off their existing owner
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80 Gig PS3 Arrives in US
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Funny that it's a "next-gen gaming console" but you can't list a reason to play games on it *now* than minigames. I mean, you want to spend several thousand dollars to play fl0w in HD? Then you really do not know what value for money is.
Blu-ray, ninja gaiden sigma, Resistance, motostorm, use as a media center, spare linux boxen, and future potential. Value is relative. I doubt you'd find value in getting a Lexus Rx350 but my GF thought $67,000 CND + tax provided value. I doubt most would find value in buying a $2000 CND gucci purse but I felt it had enough value to get it for the GF. Similiarly the PS3 provides me with value on my two HDTV's. I make a modest slary. Likely less then you but I save well and skimp ont he unnessacary expenses and splurge on the big things.
The only way they can profit at the moment is to sell _fewer_ consoles.
You and I have no idea and the article says nothing. Sony does not have a habitof selling things at a loss. Only Microsoft and Sega have ever done that for more then a few weeks (PS2 was confirmed ot be sold ata a loss for all of a month). Otherwise it's just analysts talking out their ass comparing "wholesale" part prices which don't reflect "manufactured inhouse" prices. They ussually fudge a certain discount figure into their numbers but they really have no idea.
Could someone tell me why the blood should not boil immediately due to zero atmospheric pressure but having essentially body temperature? I could imagine this might be an issue, at least for veins close to the skin, or in areas less protected by "dead" skin, like eyes and mouth.
The tissues you have is enough to keep the blood sufficiently pressurized. Liquids boil at 0 but the blood would be at a pressure much greater then this. You'd problably have a lot of copilaries burst so you'd have a almost full body bruise. But it wouldn't boil, and you wont' freeze or explode.
Apophis is a perfect example of how flawed the current system for identifying potentially hazardous near-earth asteroids is. A two body analysis showed that it was on a collision course, but a more intensive three body analysis showed it would miss by a lot. Thing is, the opposite could potentially also be true - a two body analysis might show that an object is not a threat when, in fact, it is and a more heavy analysis would show that. We need more resources dedicated to this very real threat to our planet. Only with early detection do we have any chance of deflecting a planet killer.
Well given this info I think we should authorize a N body simulation where n = number of objects in the solar system. I'm sure it's an easy and scalable problem./joke
I think they do need to prioritize this a wee bit more. We spend more money on college sports then safeguarding our continued existence.
And until recently, that's what "medicine" and "science" thought was the case with the young man in the story.
But now he's up and talking.
Think about it.
Should we then freeze dry everyone that dies. you know just in case?
I've had 2 friend that have been in a coma. 1 was thought to have been brain dead and fortunately the doctors were wrong and her mother screaming bloody murder when they pulled her off the respirator (miscommunication due to a language barrier) was the right choice. The choice is there for the families. It's easier in some situation then others. But your statement is bordering on the ridiculous. Think about it? We have to work with the information we have now. Perhaps one day they will have a cure for 47 deep stab wounds. Perhaps not. Perhaps he's a vegetable perhaps not. But we can't work with what might be possible in the future.
You're assuming that everyone with a mod chip, on average, uses it to play twenty copied games that he otherwise would have paid $50 for? Hilarious.
I have about 80 games at $20-$75 CND (most were $29.95) a piece easily makes it about $2800 of games for PS2. I have about $500 for the DS, $300 for the Ps3, $140 for me wii. I'm on the upper end of the consumer market. I have a friend who is in the industry and his collection dwarfs mine. Most of my peer group has about 1/2 what I do. So it's sort of reasonable to assume if we were to mod for piracy we would not spend that $1000 on games since the peer group who mods tends to be very much like me. (asian, geeky, middle to upper middle class).
Try Total Annihilation. The AI in that game is ridiculously smart, and learns between sessions. I remember when I first started playing I went heavy on bombers and fast airborne strafing runs across the enemy base. A couple of games later I tried to steamroll the CPU again, but this time all my aircraft were met with a hail of grisly anti-air death. I was shocked, and amazed.
In the end it really forces the player to constantly be trying new playing styles, new strategies, and the resourcing became even more important. TA worked on a "income vs. expenses" model, instead of having resource "stockpiles" like traditional RTSes. This allowed you to maintain a totally automated production line, whose unit AI you can set before it even rolls out of the factory. It allowed truly large-scale thinking, where you can hold a line and fight a massive war instead of micro'ing your units and engaging in limited skirmishes.
TA is the favored game of the arm chair general with no dexterity. The AI wasn't that grand it had the same pitfalls as most AI s. Bad on the offense tried to be balanced in everything end up being terribly predictable. You just had to D, tech a bit mass units and attack. Same as all RTS AI's. The game itself is a massing/defensive game whose play is reminiscent of C&C1. It was fun, but the extreme game length kept it off my list of games to play. It's successor suffers form that as well.
That's because the fans of Starcraft, and RTS games in general, really just want to know how to "win".
Is there any RTS game that hasn't been completely "figured out"? I mean, everyone knows what strategies/units to use and when after the game has been out for a month or so. At that point, if you are a "hardcore" player, you aren't really PLAYING the game so much as following the predetermined steps necessary to win. And in multiplayer, well, we all know that in multiplayer RTS games, if you aren't following one of a couple of strategies, and building the right units in the right order, you will lose.
All of which is why I could never get into RTS games.
There is tree of optimal strategy that take a short time to work out. Predetermined is true as blizzard did make these trees. There is a lot of room to mix it up in both SC and war 3. And the strategy is knowing how to use your units and how to read your opponent. You argument if we translated to chess would be : "there are only so many moves that can win the game. If you do anything other then the branches that win you lose. God I wish it would just let me play and win with my awesome strategies. All of which is why I could never get into chess."
Each race in SC/war 3 have some roles that can play. Gaining an early advantage means giving up late game options. Building for late game is gambling against early attacks. playing a balanced games means you will be out matched at some points in the game. Time is critical so if you don't optimize you will lose against low skill players. I assume you never really got into it but given exactly the same build I'd probably crush you. It's not about what units you make available to yourself but also how you use them and how your opponent reacts. Complaining about the need for an optimal build is highlighting how little you know about the game and getting +5 insightful for it just means some people with mod points were similarly disenchanted with multilayer because they found out they didn't know how to play.
honestly, in what online game is there not a optimal general strategy. If you can't remember where the power ups are in a FPS you will be similarly eaten alive online. If you can't remember how to do apex turning in a racer your will be as well. Ever try playing a 2d fighter online, if you can't execute moves on command you haven't a hope. Knowing your units and what is the optimal path in getting them is a basic skill in RTS's. Not advanced or hardcore, basic. It gets more complicated from there. unit control, counters, etc... I suppose the ideal game for you is one where both side start with exactly the same units on a symmetrical map and each unit is perfectly the same. Well buddy you go play checkers.
Slashdot Mirror
I said Judeo-Christian tradition because that's what (most) Western society has in common. Doubtless it exists in most of the other religions of the world, including Buddhism and even children raised in Atheist households are taught that this is what's expected of them.
The Chinese aren't overly religious. We're more of a conservative superstitious lot. China is a heterogeneous mix of various super superstitions and true religious beliefs (many argue they are the same) but underlying the majority of the culture is a focus on family. If I chose to opt out I'd have a huge row with the family and I'd excommunicate myself from them. The option exists but I don't feel compelled in that direction. The link between religion and family is only that all older cultures lean on religion as a behavior regulation tool thus it ingrains one int he other. Religion is often the culture and the culture can be a religion. But the value on family has real value as it promotes more kids which promotes larger numbers of people who think like you.
There are scarce few socio-economical problems you could talk about that would not be helped, and many that would be outright eliminated, by a decline and ultimate stabilization of the world population. If you could get the population down to say, 2B or less it would be possible for nearly everyone to live as well as middle class Westerners do today. And the notion that you are unable to make a free choice because of your heritage is laughable, you just don't want to. Pleas understand that I'm not attacking you for this, it's a normal thing to want, but it's only helpful as long as we're still trapped in the farcical rat race with the other cultures and nations of the world, where out producing your enemy with your genetic resources is the goal. I don't accept social Darwinism as an inevitability, and it's certainly not some sort of universal, perfect truth. We can do better. We have a responsibility to better as the only species in history that has had the capacity to.
Dont' worry, I'm mature enough not to take internet conversation seriously.
Like it or not you general think like your parents. So if you want more people who general share your culture you need more kids. Reproduction is not yet centrally controlled so it's not "why can't we reduce our reproduction and not over tax our earth." So while we're slowing down in producing Little jimmy Chans who plays hockey and grows up to be an engineer they are rapidly producing little Farooq Chans who who grow up and become engineers over there. We've hedged the problem by allowing the best and brightest in thus stealing their thunder. But the birth rate of talent is not governed by who has the most valid outlook on ecology. We've been fortunate that we're rich and attractive to the talented of other nations but if a place like Iran developed on it's own into a japan or china continues it's rise we will not have the luxury of poaching their talent. Eventually the smart ones will stop coming and if we don't' foster an environment that exponentially produces more talent we'll fall by the wayside in history. We may persist as the greeks did after the collapse of their allied city states. But we'll never again be as prominent. We'll decline into a vacation destination for the Chinese, Indian, and Iranians. Having lived through high school I'm fairly certain we aren't exponentially more effective at harboring talented individuals that I think we need to shift the "liberal" culture into having kids or we'll be drowned by all those that do focus on having kids.
There is no universal perfect truth. Just dirty messy numbers. We have case studies. Look at many European states. Too few to run the country, bringing in other without culturally assimilating them causes violence. It's not an unreasonable project to have the native pop a minority and witness the minority culture overtake it (See the history of Malasia and Singapore). You may think "social darwinism" is a bad word and the ideals behind it are incorrect
Or spelling words.
Well. It'll select for intelligence and the ability to dodge mechanical sphynxes.
I didn't "opt-out" of anything, it just sort of worked out that way. You might as well have a tax system based on height or skin color, makes about as much sense. I'm sure you could find studies saying tall white people do better, society should promote them to have more kids! It wouldn't make me as frustrated if the motivation really was a "greater good" altruism, but I'm suspicious that most of it comes from Judeo-Christian tradition and pure cultural momentum propagating down through the generations by way of self fulfilling laws and various shaping mechanisms such as stigmas and what's considerd "normal". There is a better way.
:D
Not Jeudeo-christian, virtually every culture has a big push for family in some way. I'm ethnic Chinese with a Buddist/Athiest house hold. We have a massive kick towards kids and family. I could not opt out if I wanted to. Majority of or rituals and such relate to that. Kicking out kids is our biological imperative. If you opt out or are opted out it's a dead end for you genes so in a big group way things that opt you out tend not to be a very large portion of the pool (you may think it's unfair but it's explicitly how natural selection works, even with todays "artificial" world it still count for something.) Culture has developed with a similar type of selection. Cultures without a big push to reproduce like the Spartans tend to die out in the long run. It might be cruel if for some reason you can't have kids there is always adoption it's a cultural reproduction. Which in this day and age is nearly as good.
Like it or not the West as in the Us, Canada, Europe is a dying race (a multi-ethnic race) because of a focus away from raising kids. In the long run if we don't subvert this trend we will die out and all of our ideals and goals will fade from prominence. I am not first generation, I am an immigrant but I grew up here and culturally I am like any other Canadian. I value this culture and I'll have and raise as many kids and my GF is willing to have. but thats my personal opinion and I have a few friends who can't or won't have kids and the thing about our ideals is thats fine. I'll just pick up the slack by having kids with more women
That's not far from the truth in the US already. It's in our tax structure, insurance, oh and all the wonderful benefits you'll get screwed out of when you're in the military and unmarried. You're pretty much punished for being single, which really sucks for people who aren't ever going to get married.
:D
Society maintains itself through having kids. It's been observed that family units tend to give kids better starts and are less prone to crime. Thus the society has a vested interest to promote this. If you've made a conscious choice to opt out, then they be wise to push you towards making a greater contribution through higher taxes. Your singledom generally doesn't forward the society. Occasional outlyers exists (Alan Turing etc..). beside the tax credit a family gets does not even make up half of what kids cost. I am single and I don't mind. A $2000 tax credit means a lot to a family but only a new HDTV for me. Society would make the right choice in pushing us toward shaving more kids. Opting out is umm... letting the terrorist win
And now you are trying to whitewash a strength as a weakness. Free markets work by teaching unbiased object lessons to the participants. The invisible hand does not care whether you are black or white, how good of a nanny your parents could afford, whether you have a strict neighborhood association, or any other claptrap. Sometimes the lessons hurt, but if you want to run you have to expect a few skinned knees. (Remember than the sub-prime mortgage "crisis" amounts to a percent or three of GDP for a single year.)
For a couple of mod point, please point to a truly free economy. unencumbered by government regulation, government interference or taxes. I bet you the closer to that ideal you get the more corruption and monopolies you see. In fact I bet the closer to that ideal you get the lower the general standard of living is.
The lines are exaggerated although present for some surgeries. Mostly those related to old age due to a demographic problem int he system. It'll right it self in 20 years are so. Going to the local media center can mean a weight of around an hour. If your doctor takes appointments then much less waiting. Things like specialists can take a few months to get to see. My mum need a stomach specialist which took about 1 and a half months. My dad had a bleeding ulcer and he saw 3 specialist within a few days of admittance to the Hospital. The system is going to get slightly more gummed up before it gets better but it's not that bad. So long as you aren't a baby boomer getting old you have a fair system, if you are it's decent but a notch below. Emergency rooms generally aren't so bad depending on what you have wrong with you. My dog bite was treated within an hour of admittance with a shot and bandages and a blood sample. My younger brother broken arm took 2h to get a doc to look at then another 4h to go it no surgery to properly set and pin it. Although it was 3 am.
statically the US gov spends x2 per person on it's system. Despite much of it being private. All together you guys pay more then anyone else on earth per capita (private + public) to have one of the lowest life expectancies in the west and a fairly high infant mortality. They use you guys as political propaganda to say "hey look, the conservatives are going make us like the US." which is actually sort of true. Obesity may also account for studies that suggest the US is unhealthy. The US and Canada are pretty close in diet but we're still a bit ahead on the fat people department due to.. I don't know really. maybe we just like Ding dongs less.
Actually, I don't think it's at odds with the summary, it's just that the BMI is a pretty useless measure of someone's health.
Isn't there an easy and much more useful measure. The waist-hip ratio is more informative. It can be skewed by genetic anomalies like really big hips but it's basically a proportion of bone to tissue which measure what your bone structure aught carry and what you really carry.
If he is correct in his hypothesis then we're in trouble. If the article post last week about Smart Teens having less sex can be extrapolated to adults then we should see the opposite happen in the US. It already felt like the general populace of the USA is getting dumber this just seems to confirm my suspicions.
We should introduce an artificial selection pressure. How about a mechanical sphynx that targets pre-pubescent with random algebra, English, and social questions and if you fail ti eats you.
flamebait?
Once again, a good example of using percentages to hide actual statistics. Check this:
there are lies,
Damn Lies,
and stastistics.
-Mark Twain
Sony does not have a habitof selling things at a loss. I find this an amusing case of discrediting one's own statements. It may be the case that Sony doesn't make a habit of selling at a loss; but as you yourself said none of us are in a position to say one way or the other. The two statements are not mutually exclusive. Fross and myself have no idea of the true margin of the Ps3. From all released data, Sony does not sell products at a loss. No HDTV's, Not walkmans, not the Ps2, not anything. So both statements can be true. Sony does not make a habit of losing money on units sold and we have no idea of in this particular case if this habit is repeated.
A example:
I do not know if my GF likes her last present. she does not have a habit of disliking gifts. One statement is a statement of this case, and the other is a statement about general history and trends.
The biggest compatibility problem is Guitar Hero II, in that even with the right adapter, the control scheme is substandard. It's playable, though.
I have no personal exxperience but word is that most fo the peripherals have sketchy compatability. eyetoy, the guitars etc..
Exactly. Now instead of testing console games to death to make sure there are absolutely no errors making the game unplayable, they can just shovel crap out the door and throw a ton of patches your way like they currently do with PC gaming. All hail the hard drive!
MS and Sony have standing policies against "fix" patches. You can sneak it into a content patch though. I did notice a patch for resistance but it added futures (it may have also fixed bugs). It means out of the box old copies of games may not provide the same experience (happens with games like FFX where international versiosn got bug fixed and extra content). It now means buying early does not preclude you from getting some of the extra content and fixes bundled in. I doubt we'll have a PC situation where the game is shipped brokena nd fixed after the fact.
Just ordered one myself for the same reasons - my ps2 recently died, and although there's nothing I really want to play on ps3 at the moment, I still play a lot of ps2, and it seemed worth it to go ahead and grab one while the hardware emulation was in place.
The good news is the emulation on the ps3 is a lot better with only occasional quirkiness on a few games. FFXII and MGS3 work fine. As does odin sphere and a bunch of other have aboslutely no issues on my version of those games. The compatability list is available and even the "marginal" ones are playable with issues. Conversely the 360's compatability is less then 50% and even some of the compatable ones have issues.
Hm. Actually kind of a tough choice, because this isn't "OMG GIMME NOW!" kind of thing, but more a "If I don't act now, I'll wind up getting the kind of crappier one later." Yeah, I know, the software emulation does all sorts of neat tricks to "upscale" it, but I usually find I don't give a crap. (Heck, I just put in the original "Persona" into my PS2 the other day for the first time and was perfectly pleased with them old 1990's graphics.)
Sw is around 80% and improving with most of the incompatible ones being companies who didn't follow spec.
Funny that it's a "next-gen gaming console" but you can't list a reason to play games on it *now* than minigames. I mean, you want to spend several thousand dollars to play fl0w in HD? Then you really do not know what value for money is.
Blu-ray, ninja gaiden sigma, Resistance, motostorm, use as a media center, spare linux boxen, and future potential. Value is relative. I doubt you'd find value in getting a Lexus Rx350 but my GF thought $67,000 CND + tax provided value. I doubt most would find value in buying a $2000 CND gucci purse but I felt it had enough value to get it for the GF. Similiarly the PS3 provides me with value on my two HDTV's. I make a modest slary. Likely less then you but I save well and skimp ont he unnessacary expenses and splurge on the big things.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135142-pg,1/arti cle.html
The only way they can profit at the moment is to sell _fewer_ consoles.
You and I have no idea and the article says nothing. Sony does not have a habitof selling things at a loss. Only Microsoft and Sega have ever done that for more then a few weeks (PS2 was confirmed ot be sold ata a loss for all of a month). Otherwise it's just analysts talking out their ass comparing "wholesale" part prices which don't reflect "manufactured inhouse" prices. They ussually fudge a certain discount figure into their numbers but they really have no idea.
Could someone tell me why the blood should not boil immediately due to zero atmospheric pressure but having essentially body temperature? I could imagine this might be an issue, at least for veins close to the skin, or in areas less protected by "dead" skin, like eyes and mouth.
The tissues you have is enough to keep the blood sufficiently pressurized. Liquids boil at 0 but the blood would be at a pressure much greater then this. You'd problably have a lot of copilaries burst so you'd have a almost full body bruise. But it wouldn't boil, and you wont' freeze or explode.
Apophis is a perfect example of how flawed the current system for identifying potentially hazardous near-earth asteroids is. A two body analysis showed that it was on a collision course, but a more intensive three body analysis showed it would miss by a lot. Thing is, the opposite could potentially also be true - a two body analysis might show that an object is not a threat when, in fact, it is and a more heavy analysis would show that. We need more resources dedicated to this very real threat to our planet. Only with early detection do we have any chance of deflecting a planet killer.
/joke
Well given this info I think we should authorize a N body simulation where n = number of objects in the solar system. I'm sure it's an easy and scalable problem.
I think they do need to prioritize this a wee bit more. We spend more money on college sports then safeguarding our continued existence.
Wait, I'm confused. Are we talking about an average Microsoft customer, or a mugging victim? (possibly one and the same)
Thats easy to tell. Notice the chair marks on his forehead. It's Balmer for sure.
And until recently, that's what "medicine" and "science" thought was the case with the young man in the story.
But now he's up and talking.
Think about it.
Should we then freeze dry everyone that dies. you know just in case?
I've had 2 friend that have been in a coma. 1 was thought to have been brain dead and fortunately the doctors were wrong and her mother screaming bloody murder when they pulled her off the respirator (miscommunication due to a language barrier) was the right choice. The choice is there for the families. It's easier in some situation then others. But your statement is bordering on the ridiculous. Think about it? We have to work with the information we have now. Perhaps one day they will have a cure for 47 deep stab wounds. Perhaps not. Perhaps he's a vegetable perhaps not. But we can't work with what might be possible in the future.
You're assuming that everyone with a mod chip, on average, uses it to play twenty copied games that he otherwise would have paid $50 for? Hilarious.
I have about 80 games at $20-$75 CND (most were $29.95) a piece easily makes it about $2800 of games for PS2. I have about $500 for the DS, $300 for the Ps3, $140 for me wii. I'm on the upper end of the consumer market. I have a friend who is in the industry and his collection dwarfs mine. Most of my peer group has about 1/2 what I do. So it's sort of reasonable to assume if we were to mod for piracy we would not spend that $1000 on games since the peer group who mods tends to be very much like me. (asian, geeky, middle to upper middle class).
Lobbying exists in every political system. In the American system it is simply more of them.
You had a typo. Fixed it for ya. Easy mistake.
Try Total Annihilation. The AI in that game is ridiculously smart, and learns between sessions. I remember when I first started playing I went heavy on bombers and fast airborne strafing runs across the enemy base. A couple of games later I tried to steamroll the CPU again, but this time all my aircraft were met with a hail of grisly anti-air death. I was shocked, and amazed.
In the end it really forces the player to constantly be trying new playing styles, new strategies, and the resourcing became even more important. TA worked on a "income vs. expenses" model, instead of having resource "stockpiles" like traditional RTSes. This allowed you to maintain a totally automated production line, whose unit AI you can set before it even rolls out of the factory. It allowed truly large-scale thinking, where you can hold a line and fight a massive war instead of micro'ing your units and engaging in limited skirmishes.
TA is the favored game of the arm chair general with no dexterity. The AI wasn't that grand it had the same pitfalls as most AI s. Bad on the offense tried to be balanced in everything end up being terribly predictable. You just had to D, tech a bit mass units and attack. Same as all RTS AI's. The game itself is a massing/defensive game whose play is reminiscent of C&C1. It was fun, but the extreme game length kept it off my list of games to play. It's successor suffers form that as well.
That's because the fans of Starcraft, and RTS games in general, really just want to know how to "win".
Is there any RTS game that hasn't been completely "figured out"? I mean, everyone knows what strategies/units to use and when after the game has been out for a month or so. At that point, if you are a "hardcore" player, you aren't really PLAYING the game so much as following the predetermined steps necessary to win. And in multiplayer, well, we all know that in multiplayer RTS games, if you aren't following one of a couple of strategies, and building the right units in the right order, you will lose.
All of which is why I could never get into RTS games.
There is tree of optimal strategy that take a short time to work out. Predetermined is true as blizzard did make these trees. There is a lot of room to mix it up in both SC and war 3. And the strategy is knowing how to use your units and how to read your opponent. You argument if we translated to chess would be : "there are only so many moves that can win the game. If you do anything other then the branches that win you lose. God I wish it would just let me play and win with my awesome strategies. All of which is why I could never get into chess."
Each race in SC/war 3 have some roles that can play. Gaining an early advantage means giving up late game options. Building for late game is gambling against early attacks. playing a balanced games means you will be out matched at some points in the game. Time is critical so if you don't optimize you will lose against low skill players. I assume you never really got into it but given exactly the same build I'd probably crush you. It's not about what units you make available to yourself but also how you use them and how your opponent reacts. Complaining about the need for an optimal build is highlighting how little you know about the game and getting +5 insightful for it just means some people with mod points were similarly disenchanted with multilayer because they found out they didn't know how to play.
honestly, in what online game is there not a optimal general strategy. If you can't remember where the power ups are in a FPS you will be similarly eaten alive online. If you can't remember how to do apex turning in a racer your will be as well. Ever try playing a 2d fighter online, if you can't execute moves on command you haven't a hope. Knowing your units and what is the optimal path in getting them is a basic skill in RTS's. Not advanced or hardcore, basic. It gets more complicated from there. unit control, counters, etc... I suppose the ideal game for you is one where both side start with exactly the same units on a symmetrical map and each unit is perfectly the same. Well buddy you go play checkers.