Is it me or does the poster sound like he's a got a chip on his shoulder to push a plasma cosmology. Although I haven't sufficient information to clearly debunk you at the moment, I do recall some allusions as to how electromanetic forces simply do not have enough power over stellar distances to actually cause any of the stuff you imply. That is the primary reason astrophysisits have not examined the theory. Most people who point to the establishment and say to the effect of "they say I'm wrong because they're poo heads" tend to be wrong.
You get points in my book for at least attempting to spell "asinine". Perhaps I was under the mistaken impression that I was talking about recent events, not stuff that happened almost fifty years ago (not to imply that what happened then was unimportant).
You're right about hippies and anti-abortionists, but you present a one or a zero. Reality is shades of grey.
If you can take me to task for "not remembering the sixties" it's fair game for me to point out your apparent forgetfulness of lefty-type demonstrations in the recent past that have featured violence and general anarchy.
It actually seems you have troubles distinguishing shades of grey. You also suffer from confirmation bias. Protests occur often without much press because they lack violence. In my fair berg there was a fairly substantial anti-war rally that was peaceful and documented by the local press. 400 people in a courtyard at the locla university. Because you didn't hear of it, it did not contribute to your image of the subject. The only news you get is the ones when violence does occur, and it's often the same morons who cause riots without a cause. 1/1000 protests get violent but you onyl hear about the violent one so you form a demented picture of reality. A lot of peopel suffer from this. This is why people think "things are getting worse" when in general violent crime is down and so is the murder rate, because they have only the sensationalist and often retarded press to get info from. A political stance does not often dictate your association with violence.
The KKK is a "right-wing" movement. They love violence. The black panthers are a "left-wing" organization and they claim to love it too. The Nazi's were "right-wing" movements prone to violence, the Moaists were "left-wing" people and for a period prone to violence as well. But the "left-wiong" "right-wing" is all very subjective. The Nazi's were a "socialist" movement but their doctrine was very much "capatalist/dictatorship" with a huge conservative bent. The Maoist were "communists" but their actions were simple class inversion. The twits who were ruled, elevated to rule. Those who rule were subjigated or fled. In the end their communism was more kingdom building and popularism then any hippie ideology. Their attempts to move towards their idea of communism resulted in the greatest public policy failure that i can think of, the great leap forward. After the Central comitee effectively castrated Mao, they went on a almost free market push. There are few social service in China, few government intrusions into peoples lives... per capita. You lived or died by your own efforts. A very non-socialist communism.
in conclusion, your associating of violence with a particular political bent is mind bogglingly stupid. Violence is associated only in so far that people tend to violence under certain circumstances.
Fight back? Sometimes they're fighting with you. Canadians, brits etc.. the US has a pretty bad friendly fire record. Mostly due to overzelous soldiers and inadaquete command structures.
Did you sleep through the sixties. Lefties and violence is just as associated as Righ-wing and violence. That is to say a very weak link. Not every anti-abortionist will murder a abortion doc, not every hippie is a rioter. Your assumptions are assinine and not based in any reality that i have seen.
So you would like to highlight the fact that your a sexist too? What exactly is your point? Your are a turk, thus a caucasian with a bit of an asian taint. Although you might be opressed by the west for the moment, you are in fact mostly the same ethnicity as good old Geedubya.
For context, no human interaction can really be evaluted without it. Any attempt to do so is a excersise in stupidity. If I smack my GF Tits am I abusing her or am I engaging in a little rough play SM. If you and I yell epithets at each other, are we engaging in some friendly ribbing or are we argueing. I call some of my jordanian friends sand nigger and they call me chink, how acceptable would it be for me to call you a sand nigger. Context means a lot.
It might be easier to define one set of behavior for everyone but unfotunately that be a exstremely stupid simplification of human interation that would be unrealistic to enforce. Thus you draw your own limits of what you and your culture can abide by and I will do so myself. Imus started a firestorm that his employers could nto wether and was fired. Used loaded words with intent that was malicious. But he did in fact get to say his words and was not coerced by the state to do otherwise. Thus the situation is pretty predictable with most of the ethical arguements coming from people who wish they could freely call a black guy a nigger.
you like any other group of the society are NOT allowed to discriminate. If some black person CAN use the a slang, a white man or an indian can ALSO use that slang. Carve these words into your heads.
Intent of the words, Not the words themselves matter. When My former black employer calls my asian self a nigger. The intent is a silly title thats meant to be ironic. When a random person calls me a chink, their intention is to fire me up and try to "remind me" of my place. So when a white person calls a black person a nigger. There is a chance it's a friendly ironic statement, but it's more likely to be trying to offend the black guy. The problem is that for third parties determining intent can be hard. So it's best to stick to your usual language. If someone pisses you off use ethnic neutral slang and call em a fucker. Because third parties will take racial slang as you attempt to remind someone of their place. And it heats minorities up because there isn't a fucking thing we can do abotu being black, asian, native, etc... And we've clawed tooth and nail to get ourselves out of the "place" you put us in.
It's disingenuous to be a proponent of free speech and then clamor to shut someone up.
Voicing displeasure != telling someone to shut up. Telling companies that you choose not to purchase their product because of their sponsorship of speech you disagree with != telling someone to shutup.
The "crazy guy" preaching all day on campus isn't having his freedom of speech violated just because nobody chooses to listen or associate with him. actually, telling someone to shut up is still free speech and doesn't controvene the idea. Forcing him to shut up with violence or goverment mandated coercion is against free speech.
It may have been an economic decision by his employers, but how is it an economic decision by the advertisers? Did they really think the show would lose that many listeners/viewers? I've never listened to his show, but from what I've heard, this was far from the most offensive thing he's ever said. If people were still listening to his show when he said it, were they going to stop listening because of that one comment? As a company you do not want to piss of your customers. If Tide gave a 500,000 endowment to the KKK it would win the business of a small group but alienate nearly everyone else. Thus the advertisers made an economic decision not to invoke controversy by sponsoring a controversial figure.
Also, anything done within African-American culture is beyond criticism or comment or observation outside its membership. The proper way for non-Africans to discuss such things is offline and out-of-range.
You can discuss the short comings of african-american culture. Just have to be more academic about it. The difference between me coming to your house and saying your son was misbehaving and it might be in his best interest if you did somethign about and me coming to your house saying your son if a fucking moron wigger and problably gets fucked up the ass by you. Both convery the same message in a different way. One may cause a fist fight, the other likely will not.
Of course. That law was written specifically TO cause failure. It was a law wanted by companies that distribute media through traditional outlets so they could disrupt the new media distribution outlets which they couldn't figure out how to profit from, and weren't setup to profit from.
I guess the irony is that if Google chooses to they can persecute the individual under the same law as it has provisions to punish you for doing this with material you do not own.
I was thinking about this just the other night, strange coincidence. There are probably a lot of functions like photosynthesis that rely on quantum effects. One of them might be the idea of consciousness. Consciousness may not be so easily explained without taking into account quantum effects. If self awareness is enabled through some sort of quantum effect, imagine the philosophical implications.
The Answer is No. although the braind and it's compnents are all physical objects in this universe, that are there fore also subject to some quantum effects, thought and consciousness can be easily explained with standard physics/chemeistry. No further explanation is needed at this point. Most people who think like you just enjoy romantasism and mysticism.
A SC MMO would compete almost directly with WOW. they are wiser to make a SC RTS and continue their fine tradition of addicting and occasionally killing asian people (I'm chinese, I can poke fun at us.. and am a war 3 addict... *shiver*.. must play).
Well, how much sense would it make to place a dvd-drive on a 386SX? (33Mhz for those that don't know)
Not saying what he said was right, just saying that there are devices that can't make adequate use of a ton of storage...
Depends on what your doing. Lets say we have a 386sx with all the drivers and OS support for DVD. And all we're doing on the 386 is doing is displaying a 64x64 movie no buffereing linearly. And then you claim it's not powerful enough to use the storage, well for this task it's fine. yes that statement in general is indeed stupid. The two aren't so directly related. My PIII 450 can indeed eat up and utilize a full 40 gig HD. My PIII 450 is not as powerful in most ways then a PS3, and the HD is smaller then the BD. So in context the statement was stupid. Big ole textures will inflate the size of a game and require very little extra work since most artists do things in very high definition and shrink them, as well as 7.1 audio requiring more space, various bump maps and light maps too, HD increases all the media require to be 6-8 times in size and HD video is 6-8 times larger, more polies means mroe textures which mean more space etc.... So specifically that statement was stupid.
that they need the amount of space Blu-Ray provides. To my knowledge there aren't any 2 disk 360 games (or even any DVD based games that immediately spring to mind). Two reasons spring to mind, 9gig is enough for a game and/or publishers don't want you to be able to give a disk to your mate when you've gone passed half way. Oh and whilst on the subject, I was under the impression that PS3 cached to the HD as the transfer speed on Blu-Ray wasn't quite up to it (I seem to remember reading somewhere that you could get data off a 360 DVD faster with X gen DVD drive faster than you could on PS3s 1st gen Blu-Ray). Secondly, in this age of increasing dev costs, does Sony can produce enough 'game data' to fill a BR disk and make a profit?
From some people I know who have worked on dev kits of both, the difference exists. It isn't a deal breaker. it's 7s of load time vs 5.5s. The universal availability of a HD on the ps3 basically negates most of the advantage of the 360's DVd drive.
A Blu-Ray win is probably more valuable to Sony than a gaming console win, the market for movies is simply bigger and if high def DVD movies take over the DVD market a win here is very important to Sony. Since the bundling of the PS3 and Blu-Ray are doing really well for Blu-Ray (so far), I would think that Sony got this one right. We'll see if time will tell, but I think the developers opinion is pretty much irrelevant for the moment and the PS3 price will eventually come down.
The game division of sony has been vastly more profitable then the music or movie side. Strategically it was mixed. They expected mroe brand loyalty then they got. Consumers and Developers alike. They missed the consumer electronics price sweet spot to score a win for a less profitable side of their business. But it's easy to make decision in retrospect. They still may beat the 360 and they may not be actaully competing with the Wii. Since the Wii has gotten a lot of casual gamers who may not keep up the game buying. I am a gamer, I got myself a PS3, I've already bought 4 games (resistance, Genji, AC4, VF5) for it and a dozen BD movies. My Wii obsessed non gamer best friend has gotten the wii (with wii sports), and wario ware in the same time frame. She has a lot of fun with those numerous and dull to me minigames. I need more depth, I buy more games....
I'm a 100% sure that no matter what the actual events are the police report / fbi report will state you assulted the police officer without provocation after they had identified themselves. I can also promise that unless you are white, protastant, and affluent that you will be severely beaten if you managed to hurt that officer in anyway. Possibility of being murdered and then passed off as a guilty party is also there. These promises were valid before 9/11 as well.
Hacking has exploded along with the explosion of the internet. Virtually every computer user I know has been affected by viruses and trojans and such. Furthermore the costs of hacking are paid primarily by customers. Even if they didn't hack my account I still pay. Also, many hacks are covered up by the company that was the victim in order to avoid embarrassment. terrorists odds 1:1,000,000
After the first World Trade Center bombing people were still thinking like you. But after 911 most people realized what you still haven't: The threat is real and it can get MUCH WORSE. One suitcase can drastically change those one-in-a-million odds. The probability of being the victim of a terrorist in the future isn't calculated by dividing the number of victims in the past by the population. this is a very weak arguement. Your saying it's not the total victims that matter but instead the posibility fo a few people to kill many. What you fail to realize is that causing large scale destruction is hard. The avenue to do so are often tracable and the organization needed to do so without detection is very hard. Since 911 the number of domestic terrorist incidents is about the same as before 911. Your basing your arguement on an emotional plea that it will be much worse. There is no factual basis. Countries like Isreal face constant terrorist attacks but even there the odds you will be a victim are low. Terrorism is a matter of PR. Both how the current american admin uses it and the actual effects and intentions of the act. The "terrorist" wishes to draw attention to his cause, the "powers that be" wish to draw attention away from their short comings. The stats of world wide terrorism has not gone up. They are the same as before when adjusted for the greater population. You have no basis for your arguement.
drug dealers 1:2 "The potential harm for most people is minor."
"Most" people sure, but that leaves a lot of room for misery and death in the other 49% or 10% or whatever percent of the population. The number of people with serious drug problems is not 49%, according to some stats it's ~3.3% of the US.
child molesters 1:100,000
Wikipedia refers to studies estimating molestation rates starting at 3% According to the department of justice roughly 2.7% of the US populace has ever gone to jail for anything(5.6 mil adults as of 2001). Assuming that the percentage didn't dramatically rise in the last 5 years it means 3% occurance of child molesters seems a bit high. Perhaps child molesters aren't arrested often but if the incident was gatitous enough to caus emental harm it should also result in jail time.
communists 0:1 "Communism is an idea."
The danger of communism is that it's an idea that can be used to trick poor people into supporting the rise of a crooked totalitarian government. The tempting nature of the idea itself IS responsible for millions of deaths and much ongoing misery. The correlation between massacres, genocide, and totalitarianism is high. The correlation between "communism" and massacres and genocide is mixed. Most nations have an incidence of genocide or massacre in their history. Republics, dictatorships, monarchies, theocracies, communist, capatalist, anarchy, facist, etcc all have a pretty regular rate of atrocities. The only common factor is people. It's not any particular ideology. It seems it's exstremists of any ideology that cause the most problems so the idea that communism is any different then facism or religion or sectarianism or ethnicity or nationalism is a logical fallacy. Any thing that divides people into two or more groups can compel them to kill eahc other.
Ever had your credit rating trashed by someone who lifted your financial info through a crack of a third party system? Many thousands of people have.
Odds 1:10,000 worse is you bank with retarded banks.
terrorists
Are you alive? Many thousands of people are not. Another couple dozen just died in Algiers today, killed by the local franchise operators of the same group that has attacked embassies, a US naval vessel, the WTC, the Pentagon, bars, nightclubs, hundreds of markets and restaurants, etc. This month, they are on a new campaign to ambush and kill anyone who reports to work in rural Afghanistan to teach young women how to read. It's super duper, though, that you don't find the people in London, or Madrid, or Detroit that preach the warm-up act for the same crap to be any concern at all. That's comforting!
odds 1:1,000,000 worse if your brown and live in a poor nation
drug dealers
You cite drug dealers, and then complain about "control?" These bastards deliberately seek to make behavioral slaves of generations of their neighbors, and think nothing of the resulting waste of lives and all of the accompanying damage. You'd rather that Wal-Mart sold heroin? Have you ever met someone with their teeth rotting right out of their meth-cooked skull? What is it that encourages you to gloss over the people that seek to make money peddling meth to school kids, or pretend they don't exist?
1:2 But the majority are pot pushers who sell to your kids. Your kids use it like you used to use beer... or pot/lsd. The potential harm for most people is minor.
child molesters
Ever met someone who had their youth stolen by someone like that? Let's find you a few thousand of them, and then you can address them, explaining how the people who did it to them don't exist, or aren't really a problem, and should be allowed to keep doing it. I'm sure you'll be persuasive.
1:100,000 Although these sick bastards affect everyone around their victims, they aren't that numerous. Many people still lead okay lives afterwards with some issues about security and sex. It's not a very homogenous group either.
communists
Well, you've got me there. They only killed a few hundred million people in the last century, so that's not so bad.
0:1 Communism is an idea. What killed most of the people your refering to is mob justice, fear, racial hatred, green, xenophobia, and poor management. Communism is general is a useless idea that was never fully implemented by anyone, could never be so, and used liek religion to clobber people.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it me or does the poster sound like he's a got a chip on his shoulder to push a plasma cosmology. Although I haven't sufficient information to clearly debunk you at the moment, I do recall some allusions as to how electromanetic forces simply do not have enough power over stellar distances to actually cause any of the stuff you imply. That is the primary reason astrophysisits have not examined the theory. Most people who point to the establishment and say to the effect of "they say I'm wrong because they're poo heads" tend to be wrong.
Wouldn't the kid then be guilty of perjury?
Because someone brought it to the attention of those who could inflence the masses.
You get points in my book for at least attempting to spell "asinine". Perhaps I was under the mistaken impression that I was talking about recent events, not stuff that happened almost fifty years ago (not to imply that what happened then was unimportant).
You're right about hippies and anti-abortionists, but you present a one or a zero. Reality is shades of grey.
If you can take me to task for "not remembering the sixties" it's fair game for me to point out your apparent forgetfulness of lefty-type demonstrations in the recent past that have featured violence and general anarchy.
It actually seems you have troubles distinguishing shades of grey. You also suffer from confirmation bias. Protests occur often without much press because they lack violence. In my fair berg there was a fairly substantial anti-war rally that was peaceful and documented by the local press. 400 people in a courtyard at the locla university. Because you didn't hear of it, it did not contribute to your image of the subject. The only news you get is the ones when violence does occur, and it's often the same morons who cause riots without a cause. 1/1000 protests get violent but you onyl hear about the violent one so you form a demented picture of reality. A lot of peopel suffer from this. This is why people think "things are getting worse" when in general violent crime is down and so is the murder rate, because they have only the sensationalist and often retarded press to get info from. A political stance does not often dictate your association with violence.
The KKK is a "right-wing" movement. They love violence. The black panthers are a "left-wing" organization and they claim to love it too. The Nazi's were "right-wing" movements prone to violence, the Moaists were "left-wing" people and for a period prone to violence as well. But the "left-wiong" "right-wing" is all very subjective. The Nazi's were a "socialist" movement but their doctrine was very much "capatalist/dictatorship" with a huge conservative bent. The Maoist were "communists" but their actions were simple class inversion. The twits who were ruled, elevated to rule. Those who rule were subjigated or fled. In the end their communism was more kingdom building and popularism then any hippie ideology. Their attempts to move towards their idea of communism resulted in the greatest public policy failure that i can think of, the great leap forward. After the Central comitee effectively castrated Mao, they went on a almost free market push. There are few social service in China, few government intrusions into peoples lives... per capita. You lived or died by your own efforts. A very non-socialist communism.
in conclusion, your associating of violence with a particular political bent is mind bogglingly stupid. Violence is associated only in so far that people tend to violence under certain circumstances.
Fight back? Sometimes they're fighting with you. Canadians, brits etc.. the US has a pretty bad friendly fire record. Mostly due to overzelous soldiers and inadaquete command structures.
How does it work with un-uniformed combatants?
Skin color, anything darker then a light cream will be shot and assumed to be a un-uniformed combatant. Sounds fair right?
Did you sleep through the sixties. Lefties and violence is just as associated as Righ-wing and violence. That is to say a very weak link. Not every anti-abortionist will murder a abortion doc, not every hippie is a rioter. Your assumptions are assinine and not based in any reality that i have seen.
refer to this, please : http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230787&thresho ld=1&commentsort=1&mode=thread&cid=18734559
So you would like to highlight the fact that your a sexist too?
What exactly is your point? Your are a turk, thus a caucasian with a bit of an asian taint. Although you might be opressed by the west for the moment, you are in fact mostly the same ethnicity as good old Geedubya.
For context, no human interaction can really be evaluted without it. Any attempt to do so is a excersise in stupidity. If I smack my GF Tits am I abusing her or am I engaging in a little rough play SM. If you and I yell epithets at each other, are we engaging in some friendly ribbing or are we argueing. I call some of my jordanian friends sand nigger and they call me chink, how acceptable would it be for me to call you a sand nigger. Context means a lot.
It might be easier to define one set of behavior for everyone but unfotunately that be a exstremely stupid simplification of human interation that would be unrealistic to enforce. Thus you draw your own limits of what you and your culture can abide by and I will do so myself. Imus started a firestorm that his employers could nto wether and was fired. Used loaded words with intent that was malicious. But he did in fact get to say his words and was not coerced by the state to do otherwise. Thus the situation is pretty predictable with most of the ethical arguements coming from people who wish they could freely call a black guy a nigger.
you like any other group of the society are NOT allowed to discriminate. If some black person CAN use the a slang, a white man or an indian can ALSO use that slang. Carve these words into your heads.
Intent of the words, Not the words themselves matter. When My former black employer calls my asian self a nigger. The intent is a silly title thats meant to be ironic. When a random person calls me a chink, their intention is to fire me up and try to "remind me" of my place. So when a white person calls a black person a nigger. There is a chance it's a friendly ironic statement, but it's more likely to be trying to offend the black guy. The problem is that for third parties determining intent can be hard. So it's best to stick to your usual language. If someone pisses you off use ethnic neutral slang and call em a fucker. Because third parties will take racial slang as you attempt to remind someone of their place. And it heats minorities up because there isn't a fucking thing we can do abotu being black, asian, native, etc... And we've clawed tooth and nail to get ourselves out of the "place" you put us in.
Voicing displeasure != telling someone to shut up.
Telling companies that you choose not to purchase their product because of their sponsorship of speech you disagree with != telling someone to shutup.
The "crazy guy" preaching all day on campus isn't having his freedom of speech violated just because nobody chooses to listen or associate with him. actually, telling someone to shut up is still free speech and doesn't controvene the idea. Forcing him to shut up with violence or goverment mandated coercion is against free speech.
Also, anything done within African-American culture is beyond criticism or comment or observation outside its membership. The proper way for non-Africans to discuss such things is offline and out-of-range.
You can discuss the short comings of african-american culture. Just have to be more academic about it. The difference between me coming to your house and saying your son was misbehaving and it might be in his best interest if you did somethign about and me coming to your house saying your son if a fucking moron wigger and problably gets fucked up the ass by you. Both convery the same message in a different way. One may cause a fist fight, the other likely will not.
Of course. That law was written specifically TO cause failure. It was a law wanted by companies that distribute media through traditional outlets so they could disrupt the new media distribution outlets which they couldn't figure out how to profit from, and weren't setup to profit from.
I guess the irony is that if Google chooses to they can persecute the individual under the same law as it has provisions to punish you for doing this with material you do not own.
I was thinking about this just the other night, strange coincidence. There are probably a lot of functions like photosynthesis that rely on quantum effects. One of them might be the idea of consciousness. Consciousness may not be so easily explained without taking into account quantum effects. If self awareness is enabled through some sort of quantum effect, imagine the philosophical implications.
The Answer is No. although the braind and it's compnents are all physical objects in this universe, that are there fore also subject to some quantum effects, thought and consciousness can be easily explained with standard physics/chemeistry. No further explanation is needed at this point. Most people who think like you just enjoy romantasism and mysticism.
You'd think that Bethesda had raped everyone's dog the way people are reacting to this news.
Well, it's like being a tolkien fan and finding out Micheal Bay is directing the trilogy. It might be fun, but it's really far from what you wanted.
A SC MMO would compete almost directly with WOW. they are wiser to make a SC RTS and continue their fine tradition of addicting and occasionally killing asian people (I'm chinese, I can poke fun at us.. and am a war 3 addict... *shiver*.. must play).
Well, how much sense would it make to place a dvd-drive on a 386SX? (33Mhz for those that don't know)
Not saying what he said was right, just saying that there are devices that can't make adequate use of a ton of storage...
Depends on what your doing. Lets say we have a 386sx with all the drivers and OS support for DVD. And all we're doing on the 386 is doing is displaying a 64x64 movie no buffereing linearly. And then you claim it's not powerful enough to use the storage, well for this task it's fine. yes that statement in general is indeed stupid. The two aren't so directly related. My PIII 450 can indeed eat up and utilize a full 40 gig HD. My PIII 450 is not as powerful in most ways then a PS3, and the HD is smaller then the BD. So in context the statement was stupid. Big ole textures will inflate the size of a game and require very little extra work since most artists do things in very high definition and shrink them, as well as 7.1 audio requiring more space, various bump maps and light maps too, HD increases all the media require to be 6-8 times in size and HD video is 6-8 times larger, more polies means mroe textures which mean more space etc.... So specifically that statement was stupid.
that they need the amount of space Blu-Ray provides.
To my knowledge there aren't any 2 disk 360 games (or even any DVD based games that immediately spring to mind). Two reasons spring to mind, 9gig is enough for a game and/or publishers don't want you to be able to give a disk to your mate when you've gone passed half way. Oh and whilst on the subject, I was under the impression that PS3 cached to the HD as the transfer speed on Blu-Ray wasn't quite up to it (I seem to remember reading somewhere that you could get data off a 360 DVD faster with X gen DVD drive faster than you could on PS3s 1st gen Blu-Ray). Secondly, in this age of increasing dev costs, does Sony can produce enough 'game data' to fill a BR disk and make a profit?
From some people I know who have worked on dev kits of both, the difference exists. It isn't a deal breaker. it's 7s of load time vs 5.5s. The universal availability of a HD on the ps3 basically negates most of the advantage of the 360's DVd drive.
A Blu-Ray win is probably more valuable to Sony than a gaming console win, the market for movies is simply bigger and if high def DVD movies take over the DVD market a win here is very important to Sony. Since the bundling of the PS3 and Blu-Ray are doing really well for Blu-Ray (so far), I would think that Sony got this one right. We'll see if time will tell, but I think the developers opinion is pretty much irrelevant for the moment and the PS3 price will eventually come down.
The game division of sony has been vastly more profitable then the music or movie side. Strategically it was mixed. They expected mroe brand loyalty then they got. Consumers and Developers alike. They missed the consumer electronics price sweet spot to score a win for a less profitable side of their business. But it's easy to make decision in retrospect. They still may beat the 360 and they may not be actaully competing with the Wii. Since the Wii has gotten a lot of casual gamers who may not keep up the game buying. I am a gamer, I got myself a PS3, I've already bought 4 games (resistance, Genji, AC4, VF5) for it and a dozen BD movies. My Wii obsessed non gamer best friend has gotten the wii (with wii sports), and wario ware in the same time frame. She has a lot of fun with those numerous and dull to me minigames. I need more depth, I buy more games....
Time will tell.
I'm a 100% sure that no matter what the actual events are the police report / fbi report will state you assulted the police officer without provocation after they had identified themselves. I can also promise that unless you are white, protastant, and affluent that you will be severely beaten if you managed to hurt that officer in anyway. Possibility of being murdered and then passed off as a guilty party is also there. These promises were valid before 9/11 as well.
The trouble with Platinum is, where do you go from there? It's like an amp that only goes up to 10.
Californium? Plutonium? there are so many more valuable metals. Maybe natural diamond?
apologies for the bad formating of the terrorism response. should have previewed but lacked the time. I'm at work.
Odds 1:10,000
Hacking has exploded along with the explosion of the internet. Virtually every computer user I know has been affected by viruses and trojans and such. Furthermore the costs of hacking are paid primarily by customers. Even if they didn't hack my account I still pay. Also, many hacks are covered up by the company that was the victim in order to avoid embarrassment. terrorists
odds 1:1,000,000
After the first World Trade Center bombing people were still thinking like you. But after 911 most people realized what you still haven't: The threat is real and it can get MUCH WORSE. One suitcase can drastically change those one-in-a-million odds. The probability of being the victim of a terrorist in the future isn't calculated by dividing the number of victims in the past by the population. this is a very weak arguement. Your saying it's not the total victims that matter but instead the posibility fo a few people to kill many. What you fail to realize is that causing large scale destruction is hard. The avenue to do so are often tracable and the organization needed to do so without detection is very hard. Since 911 the number of domestic terrorist incidents is about the same as before 911. Your basing your arguement on an emotional plea that it will be much worse. There is no factual basis. Countries like Isreal face constant terrorist attacks but even there the odds you will be a victim are low. Terrorism is a matter of PR. Both how the current american admin uses it and the actual effects and intentions of the act. The "terrorist" wishes to draw attention to his cause, the "powers that be" wish to draw attention away from their short comings. The stats of world wide terrorism has not gone up. They are the same as before when adjusted for the greater population. You have no basis for your arguement. drug dealers
1:2
"The potential harm for most people is minor."
"Most" people sure, but that leaves a lot of room for misery and death in the other 49% or 10% or whatever percent of the population. The number of people with serious drug problems is not 49%, according to some stats it's ~3.3% of the US. child molesters
1:100,000
Wikipedia refers to studies estimating molestation rates starting at 3% According to the department of justice roughly 2.7% of the US populace has ever gone to jail for anything(5.6 mil adults as of 2001). Assuming that the percentage didn't dramatically rise in the last 5 years it means 3% occurance of child molesters seems a bit high. Perhaps child molesters aren't arrested often but if the incident was gatitous enough to caus emental harm it should also result in jail time. communists
0:1
"Communism is an idea."
The danger of communism is that it's an idea that can be used to trick poor people into supporting the rise of a crooked totalitarian government. The tempting nature of the idea itself IS responsible for millions of deaths and much ongoing misery. The correlation between massacres, genocide, and totalitarianism is high. The correlation between "communism" and massacres and genocide is mixed. Most nations have an incidence of genocide or massacre in their history. Republics, dictatorships, monarchies, theocracies, communist, capatalist, anarchy, facist, etcc all have a pretty regular rate of atrocities. The only common factor is people. It's not any particular ideology. It seems it's exstremists of any ideology that cause the most problems so the idea that communism is any different then facism or religion or sectarianism or ethnicity or nationalism is a logical fallacy. Any thing that divides people into two or more groups can compel them to kill eahc other.
Hackers
Ever had your credit rating trashed by someone who lifted your financial info through a crack of a third party system? Many thousands of people have.
Odds 1:10,000
worse is you bank with retarded banks.
terrorists
Are you alive? Many thousands of people are not. Another couple dozen just died in Algiers today, killed by the local franchise operators of the same group that has attacked embassies, a US naval vessel, the WTC, the Pentagon, bars, nightclubs, hundreds of markets and restaurants, etc. This month, they are on a new campaign to ambush and kill anyone who reports to work in rural Afghanistan to teach young women how to read. It's super duper, though, that you don't find the people in London, or Madrid, or Detroit that preach the warm-up act for the same crap to be any concern at all. That's comforting!
odds 1:1,000,000
worse if your brown and live in a poor nation
drug dealers
You cite drug dealers, and then complain about "control?" These bastards deliberately seek to make behavioral slaves of generations of their neighbors, and think nothing of the resulting waste of lives and all of the accompanying damage. You'd rather that Wal-Mart sold heroin? Have you ever met someone with their teeth rotting right out of their meth-cooked skull? What is it that encourages you to gloss over the people that seek to make money peddling meth to school kids, or pretend they don't exist?
1:2
But the majority are pot pushers who sell to your kids. Your kids use it like you used to use beer... or pot/lsd. The potential harm for most people is minor.
child molesters
Ever met someone who had their youth stolen by someone like that? Let's find you a few thousand of them, and then you can address them, explaining how the people who did it to them don't exist, or aren't really a problem, and should be allowed to keep doing it. I'm sure you'll be persuasive.
1:100,000
Although these sick bastards affect everyone around their victims, they aren't that numerous. Many people still lead okay lives afterwards with some issues about security and sex. It's not a very homogenous group either.
communists
Well, you've got me there. They only killed a few hundred million people in the last century, so that's not so bad.
0:1
Communism is an idea. What killed most of the people your refering to is mob justice, fear, racial hatred, green, xenophobia, and poor management. Communism is general is a useless idea that was never fully implemented by anyone, could never be so, and used liek religion to clobber people.
Maybe, but what happens when your public relations go down the toilet because you have a bunch of "hackers" working for you ?
If you mean black hats then the 6 people who care will boycott your product.