"There's nothing in that philosophy that says it's not perfectly OK to publicly call out a bunch of jackass robot-head mods for the dumbfucks that they are."
He's complaining about the way certain moderators are using their mod points in the way they see fit, and doing it in such a way that denies him access to people who do not browse comments at a low enough level. Were he to follow his position, instead of complaining and insisting that others refrain from moderating him down for reasons he personally does not agree with, he should "vote with his wallet" (or, more properly, advertisers' wallets) and frequent a different website.
"In fact, it's remarkably consistent with the idea above that it would only take a few 'chair bound folks crawling into Target stores on their bellies with the media in attendance to change things."
No, parent to whom I responded vehemently insisted that they should instead simply shop elsewhere, and would likely wholeheartedly agree with the store owners' right to have the police show up and remove such protesters from private store property before any such scene could commence.
Besides, as TFA is about Target's online presence rather than their brick-and-mortar stores, it would be rather difficult to picket the online storefront, and the handicapped in question are blind, not paraplegic, so it would be rather silly for people, wholly capable of walking, to crawl into a Target store, next to the (government mandated) wheelchair ramps already in place at all of their stores.
Interesting dichotomy. You rail against a lawsuit designed to compel accessibility to their services, saying that the stores should be free to choose to cater to these people, but when moderators freely choose to reduce accessibility to your diatribe by moderating you down, you reverse yourself and demand equal respect and accessibility rather than shopping elsewhere for a more receptive audience (while denying Slashdot ad revenue by reducing its readership).
"but it really doesn't help the cause when - to a casual newsreader - an important test case seems to be about weed."
Why not? The reason the election result was contest in court to begin with was because of how close a vote it was, suggesting that "to a casual news reader" it's something contentious and debatable, rather than simply the refuge of scoundrels.
"The Renaissance predated and helped produce the Reformation which itself made such challenges more viable, not the other way around."
I wasn't talking specifically of the Reformation. On the political front, the Reformation was more a symptom than a cause of a trend of monarchical chafing under papal edicts that had been building for centuries. One example that comes to mind is the interdiction of England under the reign of King John I and the monarch's eventual excommunication at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century; not an everyday occurrence at the time, to be sure, but John was willing to defy the religious order of the time, people were willing to follow him, and Rome eventually had to backpedal to avoid losing touch with the English people.
And really, the fact that the Church resorted to such excommunications and interdictions, with greater frequency with the approach of the Reformation, shows the lack of direct political power the religious class had over the people. The Pope couldn't just tell the faithful to rise up and overthrow a particular monarch and expect even a majority to abide by it.
"...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence)."
Um, no. Islam was the cause of the scientific enlightenment, or at least the unification and civil advances under its banner were. Mohamed introduced the idea of religious text to the peoples of the region (Judaism and Christianity didn't go much further east than Constantinople), a concept that goes hand-in-hand with the rule of law (in both cases, the written word is treated as more important than a particular leader's opinion, providing stability). Also important in the particular example of Islam (in contrast to Christianity as practiced at the time) was a requirement for literacy among the general public, allowing for a faster and wider distribution of ideas and information. Put these together and you have a people that have enough resources and free time to sit around and debate philosophy rather than deal with the day-to-day struggles of basic survival.
The problem in the modern Islamic world is that the religious and ruling classes are now considered the same estate. Mullahs were free to participate in the discourse on natural philosophies (providing, for example, the impetus for a better understanding of the lunar cycle), but were not in a position to dictate the terms of the discussion as much as they are today. The ruling class, without outside influence, is more concerned with the mundane than the fantastic, and don't have a natural inclination to get involved in any such discussion in favor of one side or another. And, without direct political power, the religious class is free from the temptation to use is to insist that its views on the physical world are as unassailable as its views on the divine.
The Renaissance didn't happen in Europe until it became acceptable for king to challenge pope, while in modern times "mullah" and "imam" are treated as synonyms. Science and Islam (or just about any other mainstream religion) aren't naturally antagonistic, rather the enemy of both is politics, where leaders find advantage in playing one against the other for personal gain, to the detriment of both.
"Instead, we should attempt to understand the arguments that are being made and discuss the logic behind both sides in the argument."
Science is not a democracy; all ideas and proposals need not and should not be given equal weight, and it is proper for ideas that are outlandish on their face to be casually dismissed without bothering to engage in such a dialog; the nature of the claims make it apparent that a truly rational discourse with its adherent is not forthcoming.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: don't expect to be considered until you've gathered such proof.
"There have been plenty of intelligent people who believed that space plasmas are electrical."
And they did their work in the Nineteenth Century. Not that "plenty" matters any because, as you correctly pointed out, science is not a democracy.
"There is a person on wikipedia called ScienceApologist, who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia on the basis that there are no published papers which support EU Theory."
I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system! 40 points on Ye Olde Crackpot Index.
"EU theorists did in fact get published in September in an IEEE publication. "
Science is not a democracy: electrical engineers and cosmologists are not equals. Electrical engineers are not qualified to comment on the nature of the observable universe any more than a cosmologist is qualified to design a microprocessor.
"Not being popular is not an excuse to avoid reading about something,"
Science is not a democracy: it's not being ignored because it's unpopular, it's being ignored because it's unlikely.
"especially when there are such over-zealous censors who believe it is their duty to prevent the public from understanding the debate about electricity in space."
Science is not a democracy: in the interest of promoting human understanding, it is his duty to fight mis- and disinformation, to "prevent the public from misunderstanding the lack of a debate about electricity in space," as it were.
"Evaluating theories purely on the basis of who looks or sounds the smartest is a downward spiral."
But evaluating theories based on an educated guess as to their likelihood, and noting when proposals cherry-pick favorable observations and conveniently ignore damning evidence to the contrary, is a necessary culling. Again, science is not a democracy, and extraordinary proof is required.
As I mentioned earlier, many imaginative thinkers from the Nineteenth Century would have agreed with what you espouse, due to the lack of collected evidence, of observations. But here in the Twenty-First, not only have we gathered a mountain of evidence to the contrary, but we now apply the science learned from that contrary evidence on a daily basis; computers that rely on the quantum mechanical properties of semiconductors, powered by nuclear fission, have been propelled by general relativity to places scarcely imagined a century ago, and you're spending your time trying to sift through data collected by these space probes, trying to find something that can be twisted and misconstrued to support your pet theory, all while ignoring (indeed, hoping to dismiss) the science behind how those probes were built, how they got there, and how they gathered that data.
"The article neither proves nor disproves either theory."
Only if you ignore the reported figures for what was ejected from the impact: 250,000 metric tons of water.
"What isn't mentioned in that wikipedia article is the arc between the probe and the comet just before impact. If you think about it, the comet is passing through a charged region of space (solar wind), hence it will be equalise potential to the surrounding plasma. Hence as a probe with a different potential approaches (similar to that of the Earth), an arc discharges between the two."
Only if the difference in electrical potential is great enough to cause a current to flow through a vacuum (or is the vacuum something else you don't believe in?). Here's an idea: maybe the arc wasn't discussed because there wasn't one.
"other texts I have read about that space mission indicated virtually no ice at all."
And if it's written, it must be true and require no verification! Especially the more outlandish writings!
"I have yet to the scientists who know what they are talking about refuses quantisisation of the EU or the relate theories."
Because you decide who "does" and "does not" know what they're talking about. If you don't like what they say, they just "don't know."
Because rational people have better things to do with their time than try to explain to those who refuse to listen
"For instance, there is still no aether theory that everybody can agree on."
Only because you insist on including yourselves in "everybody." Any hand-waving explanations for the lack of an aether wind belong in the same category as epicycles.
"There is legitimate disagreement amongst the theorists on how to replace quantum mechanics"
Replace quantum mechanics? Why? Have all of our semiconductors suddenly stopped working?
"gravitational lensing, for instance, appears to be quite bunk,"
And what of the 70 other total eclipses during the Twentieth Century?
"These are all legitimate questions that can only be resolved through additional observation."
How can these questions be resolved through "additional observation" when the only reason you still have such questions is that you are ignoring all the observations that indicate just how wrong-headed your questions are?
"but is there really any substance to your allegation that delicate egos are the cause of a lack of quantification? No, it appears that you just made this up."
Don't you mean that I need to make more observations?
"Keep in mind that there is a difference between saying that a theory is not properly quantified and a theory *cannot* be quantified."
A theory can be unquantifiable due to its subject matter (intelligent design) or, as is the case with the "electric universe theory," due to its authors' refusal to let it be quantified when it would be to their egos' detriment. Only observations that have a (usually fleetingly small) connection to this pet theory are allowed in, permitting people such as yourself to churn out several paragraphs of "We're right!" all while cheerfully ignoring something as trivial as we've fucking been there! In that respect, you have more in common with the Flat Earth types than the ID folks you allude to, whose statements are truly unassailable (placing it outside the realm of science) rather than willfully ignorant.
At least you're "interesting" rather than "informative." Thank His Noodliness for such small blessings.
After seeing how many music disks are sold without the CD-DA logo, strongly suggesting that there is non-audio, likely executable code on the disk to interfere with ripping, I have my doubts about this. I find myself wondering if, at this point, buying a DRM-free MP3 from Amazon actually leaves the consumer more liberated than buying a music disk.
"The truth is a solid majority of the MMO audience does, in fact, approach the game largely mechanistically."
Then why are they playing a massively-multiplayer, online game to begin with? Any number of offline games will provide the same (if not superior) stat-building experience, and as I've been repeating so much in this topic, any desire to converse while doing it can be handled in an IRC channel. There are also plenty of such games that allow instanced play for a small, finite number of players, and again, this is without the added cost of a monthly subscription fee.
However, instead of MMOs being a niche market for these stat-building types, they are quickly becoming the dominant type of comptuer game out there, and talk of "addiction" has been out there for the better part of a decade now. And yet, the only fundamental difference between these games that charge a paid subscription and offline games that do not is the aspect of in-game socialization with large numbers of people, most of which do not and will not ever know you outside of who you choose to present yourself as in the game, on the game's terms.
So, no, the majority of players do not approach these games from a mechanicallistic viewpoint, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Why they believe they are playing and why they are actually playing, of course, can easily differ, which is why I'm on a soapbox here to begin with.
"I think you're confusing MMOGs with role-playing. My in-game character is a tool I use to accomplish objectives, whatever they may be."
If you're choosing to play an MMO, one of your objectives is to obviously interact with other real people through your chosen avatar.
If it was just about grinding and stat-building, you'd be on an offline game, and if you just wanted to chat with others while doing it, you'd open an IRC client, or perhaps go so far as to play a game with online play between a finite number of players. But you are going so far as to pay a monthly fee (something required neither by an offline game or an IRC channel) for the privelege of interacting with large numbers of other people within the game on the game's terms. This is why you're doing it, your friends are doing it, and why all the masses of people drawn to the genre are doing it.
Once you cave in and give your credit card number to Blizzard or SOE or whoever your pusher of choice is, your choice of avatar is no longer about just what you want to look at on your screen but how you want to look on everybody else's screen as well. Not just you, not just your friends, but everybody you happen to come across and interact with. For the vast majority of those people you come across, you are your avatar and your avatar is you, as there's nothing else for them to interact with, and if you didn't want to interact with the masses of strangers like that, you wouldn't be paying the monthly fee to begin with.
And that's the problem. You are wholly satisfied with stat-grinding, so offline games are more your style. If you want to talk while stat-grinding, you open an IRC client in a different window while playing.
An MMO comes from integrating social interaction with the gameplay (something you seem to have little desire for), and in an MMO your avatar is necessarily part of the social interaction; your choice of gender is not only for yoruself but for all the other people you interact with, how you choose to present yourself to the (online) world around you.
"but this is the style of everybody I know who plays or has played them (most of them being non-technical people)"
How much have you actually played MMOs with them? Since my accusation is "They're in denial," you should be basing your judgment on your own observations of how they play and interact, rather than their own accounts of their behavior.
Because it's not my goal. If the goal of picking a female avatar truly is "To see an attractive female avatar," more can be accomplished playing as a male than a female. I am not saying I share the same goals as these guys, only that I accomplish far more doing the exact opposite (and unintentionally at that).
"Could it also be that you use your Tarutaru avatar like some men use cute pets in the park to attract women, except you yourself remain hidden from view?"
Or it could be that I just like Teh Cute. The incidents I have described are interruptions, stopping me on the way to an experience point party, playing with me while I wait for the other members of a Promyivion party to gather. When it happens, it's not "Man cruising to pick up women" but "Man and woman having similar tastes."
And I have to say I'm insulted by your accusation, but it's interesting that it is easier to believe that than it is to believe that a heterosexual man could honestly appreciate cuteness. But this situation is perpetuated by the "I just like looking at my avatar" types, the ones who are so afraid of what other people think of them that they have to justify their feminine desires to look pretty and try on different outfits in hypermasculine terms, so than when one of us is more honest about our desires for feminine tastes, it automatically means we're lying and actually trying to be some sort of super playboy.
"Guys that play female avatars in games are not closeted homosexuals."
I don't care if they are or they aren't. What I do find aggravating about the specific "Because I like to look at my avatar" stripe of guys-playing-girls is that it avoids having to deal with "I enjoy playing as a girl." And even that doesn't make one homosexual; the problem is that the excuse offered comes from the assumption "Wanting to play as a girl would make me gay," so they try to find ways to wave their hands and explain away how "I don't really associate with my avatar" and "I just like looking at it because I'm that much of a macho butch man." It's not a denial of homosexuality (an accusation, you'll note, I never made in my posts here) but of femininity, which certainly need not be homosexual in nature.
For example, you assume that my choice of race was based on my desire to meet women; it wasn't. I chose Tarutaru because I like cute, period. The fact that women tend to like it is a happy and enjoyable coincidence, but don't mistake it as anything more. If anything, if I were to try to say that I did it to meet women, I myself would be guilty of the same denial that aggravates me in others, denying my own desire to pursue cuteness in spite of its decidedly anti-masculine connotations, trying to "justify" something that, ultimately, needs no justification; I like what I like.
What I was trying to point out was a logical flaw in the "To look at a female avatar" argument: playing as a male avatar has allowed me to see far more female avatars in a wider variety of outfits than I would see if I were playing as a female avatar. What it doesn't allow me to do, however, is be a female fashion model.
"The "most important part" is to have fun playing the game, not to use FFXI as your personal Adult Friend Finder."
Even if I were using it in the way you accuse, that would certainly be more fun for everybody involved than having the intelligence of the user population insulted by "I... uh... just like looking at myself."
"On a similar note, bespectacled lanky computer nerds who choose muscular hulking warrior-types as avatars - which are naturally associated with the player, after all - are clearly engaged in fraud, denial, and working out complicated identity issues."
No, you missed the important part: the insistence by these male players that "I don't really see it as representing me" and "I just like looking at my avatar." Otherwise you'd also be trying to argue that it is wholly impossible for a truly heterosexual man to admire and envy another man's physique, and that the minority of male players who pick female avatars are the only truly heterosexual men on the server.
Avatars are about who you want to pretend to be. A scrawny geek will pick the butch male because he wants to pretend to be, and a guy will pick a female character because that is who he wants to pretend to be. But once the second guy starts dropping the "I just like looking at my avatar" excuse, it's less about pretending in the game and more about pretending in real life; the scrawny geek with the ripped barbarian avatar at least knows he's pretending.
It's the ones who enjoy pretending to be a woman and don't admit it to themselves that are the problem here, and that's what the "It's not really me" rationale is all about.
I'm a guy and I play Final Fantasy XI as a male character, a Tarutaru paladin who looks absolutely adorable if I do say so myself. Of course, the cuteness factor was a big part of my decision, but in spite of how relatively androgynous Tarutaru tend to appear to the untrained eye, I still picked a male avatar, one of the ones that's more recognizably male.
Am I sexually attracted to my own avatar? No. But what I am sexually attracted to are all the female avatars (and the female players behind them) that are drawn to my male avatar. I'm so cute that I've lost track of the number of times a woman has asked me to stop so she could get a picture taken with me, and if I'm sitting around in a crowded town long enough, at least one random woman (often two or three, as they bring their friends) will come up to me, gush over how cute I am and start to tease and play with me a little.
Granted, being "cute" rather than "butch" means a higher percentage of those female avatars are controlled by female players, but in general, being a male avatar gives me a far greater opportunity to meet, talk to and flirt with women than I would otherwise, something that simply wouldn't happen if I had chosen to play as a hot chixx0rz. And if you're truly a straight guy, isn't that the most important part?
Unless, of course, you get a sexual thrill out of having to disappoint lustful guys...
" - People (males) give you free stuff if you're a female character, especially a newbie
- People are more likely to help you if you're an attractive female character"
"and don't like having sexual or gendered attitudes imposed on them,"
No, it doesn't work that way. If you pick your avatar's gender to reap the benefits of your choice, you don't then get to complain, to cherry-pick the kind of attention you want.
" - Men want to look at an attractive avatar, and don't necessarily think of it as being themselves"
Denial denial denial. Let us not forget what the "MMO" in "MMORPG" stands for. Players are not the only ones who look at someone's avatar; it is what you present to each and every other person you interact with. Everybody around them will naturally associate the avatar with the player, since it is, after all, what avatars are for. The "It's not really me" argument is one made by guys who deny using other men's sexual desires to their advantage, or who deny far more complicated sexual issues.
"Yer lucky if you get any sort of disk at all, even an OEM one that puts all the crap on."
The HP laptop I bought recently came with a "recovery partition" and, in lieu of including physical media, they included a tool to make a set of recovery CD-Rs based on the information on that partition (now if only they included an uninstall tool to remove all the OEM crap...). The only physical CD it did come with was the Vista "Anytime Upgrade" disk, which makes sense since you'd need something to install the upgraded version from. And with all Vista discs having the same information (it determines what version to install based on the CD key you enter), I can easily install Home Premium (the version that came pre-installed on my laptop) from that disk using my laptop's CD key.
By contrast, my older Sony laptop came with a set of five or six CDs to perform "recovery" with (yes, because I don't know what I'd do without the Yahoo toolbars, the bass-ackwards partitioning scheme, etc.). But there isn't any one disk from which I can install XP in a normal fashion. I've even contemplated building such a CD by cutting-and-pasting the important bits from the Windows directory after such a "recovery."
"I've since tried several times to install XP using my OEM key and one of several OEM XP copies floating around the net all to no avail."
So far I've only tried to install a retail copy with the OEM key. I made sure that, other than retail vs. OEM, I was installing the same version as the key indicated (Home+SP1). Have you tried making sure that you were installing the same SP version as the key?
Slashdot Mirror
"There's nothing in that philosophy that says it's not perfectly OK to publicly call out a bunch of jackass robot-head mods for the dumbfucks that they are."
He's complaining about the way certain moderators are using their mod points in the way they see fit, and doing it in such a way that denies him access to people who do not browse comments at a low enough level. Were he to follow his position, instead of complaining and insisting that others refrain from moderating him down for reasons he personally does not agree with, he should "vote with his wallet" (or, more properly, advertisers' wallets) and frequent a different website.
"In fact, it's remarkably consistent with the idea above that it would only take a few 'chair bound folks crawling into Target stores on their bellies with the media in attendance to change things."
No, parent to whom I responded vehemently insisted that they should instead simply shop elsewhere, and would likely wholeheartedly agree with the store owners' right to have the police show up and remove such protesters from private store property before any such scene could commence.
Besides, as TFA is about Target's online presence rather than their brick-and-mortar stores, it would be rather difficult to picket the online storefront, and the handicapped in question are blind, not paraplegic, so it would be rather silly for people, wholly capable of walking, to crawl into a Target store, next to the (government mandated) wheelchair ramps already in place at all of their stores.
Interesting dichotomy. You rail against a lawsuit designed to compel accessibility to their services, saying that the stores should be free to choose to cater to these people, but when moderators freely choose to reduce accessibility to your diatribe by moderating you down, you reverse yourself and demand equal respect and accessibility rather than shopping elsewhere for a more receptive audience (while denying Slashdot ad revenue by reducing its readership).
You do your cause no credit.
"but it really doesn't help the cause when - to a casual newsreader - an important test case seems to be about weed."
Why not? The reason the election result was contest in court to begin with was because of how close a vote it was, suggesting that "to a casual news reader" it's something contentious and debatable, rather than simply the refuge of scoundrels.
"The Renaissance predated and helped produce the Reformation which itself made such challenges more viable, not the other way around."
I wasn't talking specifically of the Reformation. On the political front, the Reformation was more a symptom than a cause of a trend of monarchical chafing under papal edicts that had been building for centuries. One example that comes to mind is the interdiction of England under the reign of King John I and the monarch's eventual excommunication at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century; not an everyday occurrence at the time, to be sure, but John was willing to defy the religious order of the time, people were willing to follow him, and Rome eventually had to backpedal to avoid losing touch with the English people.
And really, the fact that the Church resorted to such excommunications and interdictions, with greater frequency with the approach of the Reformation, shows the lack of direct political power the religious class had over the people. The Pope couldn't just tell the faithful to rise up and overthrow a particular monarch and expect even a majority to abide by it.
"...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence)."
Um, no. Islam was the cause of the scientific enlightenment, or at least the unification and civil advances under its banner were. Mohamed introduced the idea of religious text to the peoples of the region (Judaism and Christianity didn't go much further east than Constantinople), a concept that goes hand-in-hand with the rule of law (in both cases, the written word is treated as more important than a particular leader's opinion, providing stability). Also important in the particular example of Islam (in contrast to Christianity as practiced at the time) was a requirement for literacy among the general public, allowing for a faster and wider distribution of ideas and information. Put these together and you have a people that have enough resources and free time to sit around and debate philosophy rather than deal with the day-to-day struggles of basic survival.
The problem in the modern Islamic world is that the religious and ruling classes are now considered the same estate. Mullahs were free to participate in the discourse on natural philosophies (providing, for example, the impetus for a better understanding of the lunar cycle), but were not in a position to dictate the terms of the discussion as much as they are today. The ruling class, without outside influence, is more concerned with the mundane than the fantastic, and don't have a natural inclination to get involved in any such discussion in favor of one side or another. And, without direct political power, the religious class is free from the temptation to use is to insist that its views on the physical world are as unassailable as its views on the divine.
The Renaissance didn't happen in Europe until it became acceptable for king to challenge pope, while in modern times "mullah" and "imam" are treated as synonyms. Science and Islam (or just about any other mainstream religion) aren't naturally antagonistic, rather the enemy of both is politics, where leaders find advantage in playing one against the other for personal gain, to the detriment of both.
"Science is not a democracy, by the way."
Agreed.
"Instead, we should attempt to understand the arguments that are being made and discuss the logic behind both sides in the argument."
Science is not a democracy; all ideas and proposals need not and should not be given equal weight, and it is proper for ideas that are outlandish on their face to be casually dismissed without bothering to engage in such a dialog; the nature of the claims make it apparent that a truly rational discourse with its adherent is not forthcoming.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: don't expect to be considered until you've gathered such proof.
"There have been plenty of intelligent people who believed that space plasmas are electrical."
And they did their work in the Nineteenth Century. Not that "plenty" matters any because, as you correctly pointed out, science is not a democracy.
"There is a person on wikipedia called ScienceApologist, who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia on the basis that there are no published papers which support EU Theory."
I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system! 40 points on Ye Olde Crackpot Index.
"EU theorists did in fact get published in September in an IEEE publication. "
Science is not a democracy: electrical engineers and cosmologists are not equals. Electrical engineers are not qualified to comment on the nature of the observable universe any more than a cosmologist is qualified to design a microprocessor.
"Not being popular is not an excuse to avoid reading about something,"
Science is not a democracy: it's not being ignored because it's unpopular, it's being ignored because it's unlikely.
"especially when there are such over-zealous censors who believe it is their duty to prevent the public from understanding the debate about electricity in space."
Science is not a democracy: in the interest of promoting human understanding, it is his duty to fight mis- and disinformation, to "prevent the public from misunderstanding the lack of a debate about electricity in space," as it were.
"Evaluating theories purely on the basis of who looks or sounds the smartest is a downward spiral."
But evaluating theories based on an educated guess as to their likelihood, and noting when proposals cherry-pick favorable observations and conveniently ignore damning evidence to the contrary, is a necessary culling. Again, science is not a democracy, and extraordinary proof is required.
As I mentioned earlier, many imaginative thinkers from the Nineteenth Century would have agreed with what you espouse, due to the lack of collected evidence, of observations. But here in the Twenty-First, not only have we gathered a mountain of evidence to the contrary, but we now apply the science learned from that contrary evidence on a daily basis; computers that rely on the quantum mechanical properties of semiconductors, powered by nuclear fission, have been propelled by general relativity to places scarcely imagined a century ago, and you're spending your time trying to sift through data collected by these space probes, trying to find something that can be twisted and misconstrued to support your pet theory, all while ignoring (indeed, hoping to dismiss) the science behind how those probes were built, how they got there, and how they gathered that data.
"How many units of the NES did Nintendo sell at that price, anyway?"
Ultimately, half as many as the PS2, which debuted at a little more than half of your inflation-adjusted price. Coincidence?
Only if you ignore the reported figures for what was ejected from the impact: 250,000 metric tons of water.
"What isn't mentioned in that wikipedia article is the arc between the probe and the comet just before impact.
If you think about it, the comet is passing through a charged region of space (solar wind), hence it will be equalise potential to the surrounding plasma. Hence as a probe with a different potential approaches (similar to that of the Earth), an arc discharges between the two."
Only if the difference in electrical potential is great enough to cause a current to flow through a vacuum (or is the vacuum something else you don't believe in?). Here's an idea: maybe the arc wasn't discussed because there wasn't one.
"other texts I have read about that space mission indicated virtually no ice at all."
And if it's written, it must be true and require no verification! Especially the more outlandish writings!
"I have yet to the scientists who know what they are talking about refuses quantisisation of the EU or the relate theories."
"For instance, there is still no aether theory that everybody can agree on."
Only because you insist on including yourselves in "everybody." Any hand-waving explanations for the lack of an aether wind belong in the same category as epicycles.
"There is legitimate disagreement amongst the theorists on how to replace quantum mechanics"
Replace quantum mechanics? Why? Have all of our semiconductors suddenly stopped working?
"gravitational lensing, for instance, appears to be quite bunk,"
Um...
"as does the 1919 eclipse"
And what of the 70 other total eclipses during the Twentieth Century?
"These are all legitimate questions that can only be resolved through additional observation."
How can these questions be resolved through "additional observation" when the only reason you still have such questions is that you are ignoring all the observations that indicate just how wrong-headed your questions are?
"but is there really any substance to your allegation that delicate egos are the cause of a lack of quantification? No, it appears that you just made this up."
Don't you mean that I need to make more observations?
"this appears to confirm the Electric Universe hypothesis that comets are not sublimating dirty snowballs, but rather electrical phenomenon."
Why mod you down when I can point you here?
"Keep in mind that there is a difference between saying that a theory is not properly quantified and a theory *cannot* be quantified."
A theory can be unquantifiable due to its subject matter (intelligent design) or, as is the case with the "electric universe theory," due to its authors' refusal to let it be quantified when it would be to their egos' detriment. Only observations that have a (usually fleetingly small) connection to this pet theory are allowed in, permitting people such as yourself to churn out several paragraphs of "We're right!" all while cheerfully ignoring something as trivial as we've fucking been there! In that respect, you have more in common with the Flat Earth types than the ID folks you allude to, whose statements are truly unassailable (placing it outside the realm of science) rather than willfully ignorant.
At least you're "interesting" rather than "informative." Thank His Noodliness for such small blessings.
The point is they're trying to tag it "my piracy is still justified."
"fewer restrictions"
After seeing how many music disks are sold without the CD-DA logo, strongly suggesting that there is non-audio, likely executable code on the disk to interfere with ripping, I have my doubts about this. I find myself wondering if, at this point, buying a DRM-free MP3 from Amazon actually leaves the consumer more liberated than buying a music disk.
"The truth is a solid majority of the MMO audience does, in fact, approach the game largely mechanistically."
Then why are they playing a massively-multiplayer, online game to begin with? Any number of offline games will provide the same (if not superior) stat-building experience, and as I've been repeating so much in this topic, any desire to converse while doing it can be handled in an IRC channel. There are also plenty of such games that allow instanced play for a small, finite number of players, and again, this is without the added cost of a monthly subscription fee.
However, instead of MMOs being a niche market for these stat-building types, they are quickly becoming the dominant type of comptuer game out there, and talk of "addiction" has been out there for the better part of a decade now. And yet, the only fundamental difference between these games that charge a paid subscription and offline games that do not is the aspect of in-game socialization with large numbers of people, most of which do not and will not ever know you outside of who you choose to present yourself as in the game, on the game's terms.
So, no, the majority of players do not approach these games from a mechanicallistic viewpoint, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Why they believe they are playing and why they are actually playing, of course, can easily differ, which is why I'm on a soapbox here to begin with.
"I think you're confusing MMOGs with role-playing. My in-game character is a tool I use to accomplish objectives, whatever they may be."
If you're choosing to play an MMO, one of your objectives is to obviously interact with other real people through your chosen avatar.
If it was just about grinding and stat-building, you'd be on an offline game, and if you just wanted to chat with others while doing it, you'd open an IRC client, or perhaps go so far as to play a game with online play between a finite number of players. But you are going so far as to pay a monthly fee (something required neither by an offline game or an IRC channel) for the privelege of interacting with large numbers of other people within the game on the game's terms. This is why you're doing it, your friends are doing it, and why all the masses of people drawn to the genre are doing it.
Once you cave in and give your credit card number to Blizzard or SOE or whoever your pusher of choice is, your choice of avatar is no longer about just what you want to look at on your screen but how you want to look on everybody else's screen as well. Not just you, not just your friends, but everybody you happen to come across and interact with. For the vast majority of those people you come across, you are your avatar and your avatar is you, as there's nothing else for them to interact with, and if you didn't want to interact with the masses of strangers like that, you wouldn't be paying the monthly fee to begin with.
"I'm not a MMO player"
And that's the problem. You are wholly satisfied with stat-grinding, so offline games are more your style. If you want to talk while stat-grinding, you open an IRC client in a different window while playing.
An MMO comes from integrating social interaction with the gameplay (something you seem to have little desire for), and in an MMO your avatar is necessarily part of the social interaction; your choice of gender is not only for yoruself but for all the other people you interact with, how you choose to present yourself to the (online) world around you.
"but this is the style of everybody I know who plays or has played them (most of them being non-technical people)"
How much have you actually played MMOs with them? Since my accusation is "They're in denial," you should be basing your judgment on your own observations of how they play and interact, rather than their own accounts of their behavior.
Because it's not my goal. If the goal of picking a female avatar truly is "To see an attractive female avatar," more can be accomplished playing as a male than a female. I am not saying I share the same goals as these guys, only that I accomplish far more doing the exact opposite (and unintentionally at that).
"Could it also be that you use your Tarutaru avatar like some men use cute pets in the park to attract women, except you yourself remain hidden from view?"
Or it could be that I just like Teh Cute. The incidents I have described are interruptions, stopping me on the way to an experience point party, playing with me while I wait for the other members of a Promyivion party to gather. When it happens, it's not "Man cruising to pick up women" but "Man and woman having similar tastes."
And I have to say I'm insulted by your accusation, but it's interesting that it is easier to believe that than it is to believe that a heterosexual man could honestly appreciate cuteness. But this situation is perpetuated by the "I just like looking at my avatar" types, the ones who are so afraid of what other people think of them that they have to justify their feminine desires to look pretty and try on different outfits in hypermasculine terms, so than when one of us is more honest about our desires for feminine tastes, it automatically means we're lying and actually trying to be some sort of super playboy.
"Guys that play female avatars in games are not closeted homosexuals."
I don't care if they are or they aren't. What I do find aggravating about the specific "Because I like to look at my avatar" stripe of guys-playing-girls is that it avoids having to deal with "I enjoy playing as a girl." And even that doesn't make one homosexual; the problem is that the excuse offered comes from the assumption "Wanting to play as a girl would make me gay," so they try to find ways to wave their hands and explain away how "I don't really associate with my avatar" and "I just like looking at it because I'm that much of a macho butch man." It's not a denial of homosexuality (an accusation, you'll note, I never made in my posts here) but of femininity, which certainly need not be homosexual in nature.
For example, you assume that my choice of race was based on my desire to meet women; it wasn't. I chose Tarutaru because I like cute, period. The fact that women tend to like it is a happy and enjoyable coincidence, but don't mistake it as anything more. If anything, if I were to try to say that I did it to meet women, I myself would be guilty of the same denial that aggravates me in others, denying my own desire to pursue cuteness in spite of its decidedly anti-masculine connotations, trying to "justify" something that, ultimately, needs no justification; I like what I like.
What I was trying to point out was a logical flaw in the "To look at a female avatar" argument: playing as a male avatar has allowed me to see far more female avatars in a wider variety of outfits than I would see if I were playing as a female avatar. What it doesn't allow me to do, however, is be a female fashion model.
"The "most important part" is to have fun playing the game, not to use FFXI as your personal Adult Friend Finder."
Even if I were using it in the way you accuse, that would certainly be more fun for everybody involved than having the intelligence of the user population insulted by "I... uh... just like looking at myself."
"On a similar note, bespectacled lanky computer nerds who choose muscular hulking warrior-types as avatars - which are naturally associated with the player, after all - are clearly engaged in fraud, denial, and working out complicated identity issues."
No, you missed the important part: the insistence by these male players that "I don't really see it as representing me" and "I just like looking at my avatar." Otherwise you'd also be trying to argue that it is wholly impossible for a truly heterosexual man to admire and envy another man's physique, and that the minority of male players who pick female avatars are the only truly heterosexual men on the server.
Avatars are about who you want to pretend to be. A scrawny geek will pick the butch male because he wants to pretend to be, and a guy will pick a female character because that is who he wants to pretend to be. But once the second guy starts dropping the "I just like looking at my avatar" excuse, it's less about pretending in the game and more about pretending in real life; the scrawny geek with the ripped barbarian avatar at least knows he's pretending.
It's the ones who enjoy pretending to be a woman and don't admit it to themselves that are the problem here, and that's what the "It's not really me" rationale is all about.
I'm a guy and I play Final Fantasy XI as a male character, a Tarutaru paladin who looks absolutely adorable if I do say so myself. Of course, the cuteness factor was a big part of my decision, but in spite of how relatively androgynous Tarutaru tend to appear to the untrained eye, I still picked a male avatar, one of the ones that's more recognizably male.
Am I sexually attracted to my own avatar? No. But what I am sexually attracted to are all the female avatars (and the female players behind them) that are drawn to my male avatar. I'm so cute that I've lost track of the number of times a woman has asked me to stop so she could get a picture taken with me, and if I'm sitting around in a crowded town long enough, at least one random woman (often two or three, as they bring their friends) will come up to me, gush over how cute I am and start to tease and play with me a little.
Granted, being "cute" rather than "butch" means a higher percentage of those female avatars are controlled by female players, but in general, being a male avatar gives me a far greater opportunity to meet, talk to and flirt with women than I would otherwise, something that simply wouldn't happen if I had chosen to play as a hot chixx0rz. And if you're truly a straight guy, isn't that the most important part?
Unless, of course, you get a sexual thrill out of having to disappoint lustful guys...
"Why can't my avatar be something I like looking at?"
If you had to work with a mirror on your desk, would you start padding your shirt and putting on makeup before you go to work?
"You don't spend 30+ hours a week staring at the cartoon picture of a guy's ass."
You'd rather spend 30+ hours a week getting your cartoon ass stared at by other guys?
Sounds like an over-compensating butch excuse for downright closeted behavior to me.
" - People (males) give you free stuff if you're a female character, especially a newbie
- People are more likely to help you if you're an attractive female character"
"and don't like having sexual or gendered attitudes imposed on them,"
No, it doesn't work that way. If you pick your avatar's gender to reap the benefits of your choice, you don't then get to complain, to cherry-pick the kind of attention you want.
" - Men want to look at an attractive avatar, and don't necessarily think of it as being themselves"
Denial denial denial. Let us not forget what the "MMO" in "MMORPG" stands for. Players are not the only ones who look at someone's avatar; it is what you present to each and every other person you interact with. Everybody around them will naturally associate the avatar with the player, since it is, after all, what avatars are for. The "It's not really me" argument is one made by guys who deny using other men's sexual desires to their advantage, or who deny far more complicated sexual issues.
"Yer lucky if you get any sort of disk at all, even an OEM one that puts all the crap on."
The HP laptop I bought recently came with a "recovery partition" and, in lieu of including physical media, they included a tool to make a set of recovery CD-Rs based on the information on that partition (now if only they included an uninstall tool to remove all the OEM crap...). The only physical CD it did come with was the Vista "Anytime Upgrade" disk, which makes sense since you'd need something to install the upgraded version from. And with all Vista discs having the same information (it determines what version to install based on the CD key you enter), I can easily install Home Premium (the version that came pre-installed on my laptop) from that disk using my laptop's CD key.
By contrast, my older Sony laptop came with a set of five or six CDs to perform "recovery" with (yes, because I don't know what I'd do without the Yahoo toolbars, the bass-ackwards partitioning scheme, etc.). But there isn't any one disk from which I can install XP in a normal fashion. I've even contemplated building such a CD by cutting-and-pasting the important bits from the Windows directory after such a "recovery."
"I've since tried several times to install XP using my OEM key and one of several OEM XP copies floating around the net all to no avail."
So far I've only tried to install a retail copy with the OEM key. I made sure that, other than retail vs. OEM, I was installing the same version as the key indicated (Home+SP1). Have you tried making sure that you were installing the same SP version as the key?