That's an interest point. What constitutes a rape simulator?
It seems to me that such material is such a weak imitation that it's not a simulation -- just as watching a Shakespeare play isn't a simulation of being royalty. For the same reason, it's not a substitute.
These games completely fail to create a realistic representation or model of the situation. The simple fact that you can't, in real life, select from 2-3 pre-written responses of which one will get a bad response, one will get a good response, and one will get a middling response. You can't commit violent acts in real life with the click of a button. The other thing is, no game I've ever played ever accurately captures intercourse itself, meaning that intercourse with a correlary isn't accurately simulated either.
You fool, it's not social stigma! The reason rapes go unreported is that the girls are waiting until episode 20 so they can go batshit insane just in time for the 4 episode finale story arc!
So where in your calculations do you factor in paying for a $150,000 vehicle which requires significant maintenance by law, and will need to have a new engine after 1.2-1.5 million miles. Also, paying a bunch of people enough that they'll willingly spend their entire lives away from home, on the road?
That brings another thing to mind: The PS3 and Xbox 360 are strongly designed with HD in mind. Some games are unplayable on a standard television because the text is so high resolution.
If you own a decent HDTV, it will have a VGA or DVI input.
Your examples don't work well for me. I can't find any numbers showing Doom 3 on any platform beings anything but a roaring success, and Crysis sold 1.5 million copies, which is extremely respectable.
Considering your entire post revolves around different facts showing how terrible piracy is, you'd better clean up your examples and prove things actually happened as you say they did.
What strikes me is the lack of discipline in your arguments. You reiterated without substance, then once again accuse me of not knowing the subject.
My main point was that greek philosophers are an anthropological interest, rather than a philosophical one. My supporting point is that they were crippled by their lack of solid first principles.
My main point isn't at all challenged by your argument. Yes, old philosophy is what today's philosophy came from, just as old science is what today's science came from. However, that means exactly what I've already said: It's interesting from an anthropological point of view. Just as you don't need to know the etymology of a word to know how to use the word, and you don't need to know about al-Khwarizmi to use mathematics, old philosophy is interesting in the historical sense of understanding how thought became what it is today, it's not terribly important by itself. You'll never see a philosopher seriously advocating we follow the Nicomachean ethics. It's interesting because it helps establish what happens next in the story of philosophy. Thus, your argument supports my main assertion, rather than dissuade it. Every electrical engineer learns about how the field of electricity came from the Greeks rubbing amber with different substances(Hence electricity being named after the latin word for "amber-like"), but no engineer in the world actually has a use for that information beyond knowing where the much more refined and complicated study came from.
As for my other point, it wasn't until relatively recently that philosophers started looking at first principles of different areas of thought in earnest(They looked at first principles, but the idea of applying it to the fundamentals of thought hadn't kicked in yet, though they skirted around it as the Greeks often did with brilliant ideas). This was a critical juncture, because before that time, any old philosopher could jump on a soapbox and claim their ethic was axiomatic. The greeks loved doing this. Aristotle tossed out a first principle with very little thought, and turned it into an 8 book set, laughably calling his thoughts spreading from "You want to get the good life and be happy" an ethic.
What philosophers found was simple: Logically, it can be shown that there are no provably axiomatic first principles for many areas of thought. From there, new trains of thought must be explored to justify thinking -- or in fact, any venture of any kind.
In my view, ignoring this was the sin of the Greeks, and of the philologist who took on a lot of their ideas, Nietzsche. Until you reject everything, you're not building anything from a solid foundation. Here in the North, you can build a very nice house and have it completely disappear into the muskeg. You need to scrape away the muskeg before you can build anything. Just like the house that disappeared, the Greeks, and Nietzsche, had many interesting and insightful pieces of architecture, buried and invisible.
And that's why it's interesting from an anthropological standpoint and nothing more. It took millennia to show Democritus was on to something, but it was one thought experiment among an entire culture of philosophy. It rose slightly higher than some ideas because Democritus was slightly better at rhetoric, but even then his idea wasn't the prevailing theory of matter, just one of many. That doesn't sound much different than today, except that today we've got(with the exception of string theory, which I'm still positive exists soley as a joke some hipster put together as a clever deconstruction and reamalgamation of science into the exact thing it's not supposed to be) more sophisticated means to determine the worthiness of theories than simple rhetoric, which is good considering the complicated epistemological implications of the more complicated world created when we're throwing out unfounded axioms. Without the well-developed first principles(or maybe the more appropriate term is zeroth, since you need them before first principles are even possible), you don't even have a platform from which you can analyze the logic that comes after.
Rather than stay with the Greeks, because you've got rose coloured glasses in that respect (Ignore the countless ridiculous trains of thought that more rigour could have easily kicked the feet out from under, focus on the few successes left), I'll use a more recent example.
Nietzsche was a philologist, so he gained the same disrespect for first principles the Greeks had. He wrote book after book on philosophy, but was so busy talking about what would be good, he forgot to actually base it on anything other than "I think it'd be pretty cool if things were like this". Where does the concept of the ubermensch come from? "Well, the greeks talked about this and I think it'd be pretty cool too."
He started with a floors and a roof hovering in mid-air, and build shaky walls around them, ignoring the foundation. That's a neat trick, but in the real world floors and roofs don't float. They need a strong foundation.
Why did it take millennia for existentialism to come about? It's because of the poison that let philosophy use rhetoric to express opinions such as "Strong, decisive people are virtuous because they've got virtues because I said so" as a fundamental philosophical truth of the world. That's why, as I said, ancient philosophy is best taken as an anthropological artefact rather than any sort of real lesson on logic or reason. You practically agree with me by essentially saying "But...it's history! History is important!"
Your point from earlier is taken, by the way. Even though you do spend time on a ferry, I'm sure the denser infrastructure means driving there would be hell anywhere less dense than where I'm living. In such a dense place, I'm not even sure American-style interstate highways (where you never slow down unless you're leaving the highway) would help. Where would you put them?!
Because the results of this post surprised me a bit, I posted to my journal a more detailed analysis of the prius vs. conventional gasoline car. Very interesting results. I figured when I found out that the top hybrid is less expensive than I thought that the hybrid would come out on top, but not a chance. Gas would have to hit $7.8/gal for the cost of ownership to be the same.
Seems like you're doing a bit of knee-jerking yourself.
I agree, mind you -- his costs are out to lunch. I've run the costs, and it looks to me like he's paying about $7140/yr to own and operate a top hybrid(including his insane insurance rate, with all of this amortized to 5 years and reduced maintenance schedule), while I'm paying about 7500/yr to own and operate my vehicle (including my insane socialist insurance rate and reduced maintenance schedule).
A Prius will get about 4.2l/100km. Thus, over 20,000km, you're looking at $842/yr, vs. $1200/yr for my conventional gas vehicle. Apples to apples comparisons are required for them to be meaningful.
A new Prius vs. my car, a reasonably high-end conventional vehicle, the price is $10,000 different. If he financed the way I did, he'd be looking at payments of about 2,000 more per year than I pay.
Doubling your service interval will change the annual oil cost from $200/yr to $100/yr. Ignoring that this could put the warranty in jeopardy, it's the smallest cost of the bunch no matter what.
Insurance for the two vehicles would be about the same. My insurance is high because where I live we have socialized car insurance. 200/yr, however, makes me wonder if this guy only has public liability.
I'm seconding this. I bought some MC Frontalot albums last night, and they came in a M4A format. Obviously no DRM, since I can put the files on a memory stick and play them in my car.
One thing you have to remember with North Americans is how few of us there are for the huge surface area.
For example, Canada and Europe have very similar surface area, about 10 million square kilometers. Europe has almost 800M people, while Canada has only 33M. If you've got a business whose purpose is to move as many people as possible, you're obviously going to be in better shape in Europe, rather than Canada, which has the same surface area to service but only 4% of the people.
It also depends on where you need to go in the city.
Mass transit in my country is horrible. It's a 7 hour drive to the next city for me, but a 13 hour train ride. When I get to the city in my car, I can travel directly to where I want to be. By contrast, when I get to the city by train I've suddenly got to deal with the transit system -- if I even can. The train arrives at either 7am or 10pm, and at both times there's a risk that the buses I'd need to take aren't even running. From there, if I'm looking for time, I'm going to stand around for half an hour at each bus stop hoping I don't get jumped by hobos.
I just ran the numbers for mass transit vs. automobile transport.
I'll pay $6000 on my car loan this year, $2100 on insurance, and about $1200 on fuel (assuming I want to hit year 5 with my waranty intact and limit my driving to 20,000km/yr), and 4 oil changes at 50 dollars(yes, the manufacturer schedule drastically over-maintains the vehicle, but as you can see, maintenance is about the least expensive part of the vehicle). Total cost of using a vehicle for a year will be $9500. By contrast, a year of bus passes at $80/mo will land in at $960.
If you need to own a car anyway(Meaning you factor out the fixed costs), then it doesn't take a lot for the car to become competitive with the bus for a daily commute. The only cost you'd be looking at then is fuel, and as you can see, simply reducing your annual mileage will reduce fuel costs to wherever you need them to be.
Unless you've got perfect planning and Sun Tzu your choice of apartment so there's a bus stop directly in front of it that goes directly to where you need to be, the bus will be faster than a car because you don't need to start it up, warm it up, or find parking. Any destination more complicated will be slower on the bus The reason for this is simple: You may end up waiting in traffic, but if you need to switch buses, you're looking at a portion of your trip spent standing around in a smelly bus stop hoping the hobos sleeping on the benches don't wake up and wishing you had thicker mitts. I remember very well spending half an hour waiting for my second bus to show up when heading to work on a Sunday morning, then showing up either an hour early or an hour late for work.
This brings us to the final, most fundamental truth: Travelling by car is a luxury, and it's much more convenient and comfortable to drive than to take the bus in 90% of situations.
Driving is more convenient. Driving means you can leave from exactly where you live, at any time you want, and arrive exactly where you want to be. By contrast, bus schedules tend to force you to adhere to their schedule, often resulting in huge amounts of time spent just sitting around waiting for things: Either you're waiting for your bus, or you're waiting to transfer, or you're at your destination waiting for the time you were actually supposed to show up. With a GPS, you don't even need to know how to get where you want to go. By contrast, travelling by bus requires large amounts of planning.
Driving is more comfortable. Besides the aforementioned hobo problem, taking the bus you're often stuck in the elements, waiting in rain or snow or blazing heat. On the bus, you have to deal with the same heat/cold problems to some degree (Taking a bus in summer is an exercise in pain), but suddenly you really wish you wore a hazmat suit thanks to the various stains, odours, and textures (yummy, sticky. I hope I don't get the AIDS!). By contrast, my car has heated leather seats for winter, and ice cold air conditioning for summer. It's got a great stereo and plays exactly the songs I want. The doors lock for the bad parts of town. No matter how you slice it, driving is more comfortable than taking the bus.
I didn't have a license until a few years ago, so I took the bus throughout college. It was cheaper than owning a car by far, but the downside to driving was easily apparent -- especially when I finally got behind the wheel. Today, I live in the far north, and the horrible nature of bus and train travel for long distances is obvious. It takes 7 hours to drive to the city, but 15 hours to take the train, and 10 hours to take the bus. When I arrive by train or bus, I've got to navigate the labyrinthine mass transit system to get to where I want to be(If it even goes to where I want to be). That's such a losing proposition that last time I was in that situation I just went to a pawn shop and bought a bike for a day rather than try to make sense of that mess.
I'm SJ Zero No hero I'm Nero On my violin drinking beer yo third time this year, oh Your shit burns when I'm near, bro.
I battle rap like yu-gi-oh I set my trap While you yap At the gap I attack With magic black 1 2 mic check On this track I stack lyrics whack so step back You're filled with fear though.
You know, maybe I'll just let the professionals deal with this...
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interest point. What constitutes a rape simulator?
It seems to me that such material is such a weak imitation that it's not a simulation -- just as watching a Shakespeare play isn't a simulation of being royalty. For the same reason, it's not a substitute.
These games completely fail to create a realistic representation or model of the situation. The simple fact that you can't, in real life, select from 2-3 pre-written responses of which one will get a bad response, one will get a good response, and one will get a middling response. You can't commit violent acts in real life with the click of a button. The other thing is, no game I've ever played ever accurately captures intercourse itself, meaning that intercourse with a correlary isn't accurately simulated either.
How are you supposed to commit rape if you never leave your room except to buy tissue and vasoline?
You fool, it's not social stigma! The reason rapes go unreported is that the girls are waiting until episode 20 so they can go batshit insane just in time for the 4 episode finale story arc!
So where in your calculations do you factor in paying for a $150,000 vehicle which requires significant maintenance by law, and will need to have a new engine after 1.2-1.5 million miles. Also, paying a bunch of people enough that they'll willingly spend their entire lives away from home, on the road?
Really, you need to consider how civil a society can be when being raped is considered part of the punishment, and that's perfectly ok.
This process was upset by the new marketing direction, but it hasn't reached a steady state yet.
Drawing any conclusions whatsoever about the process before it has stabilized is as useful as trying to see the future by reading tea leaves in a cup.
I think at this point you should go back and re-read your posts. You obviously think more is there than you've actually written.
That brings another thing to mind: The PS3 and Xbox 360 are strongly designed with HD in mind. Some games are unplayable on a standard television because the text is so high resolution.
If you own a decent HDTV, it will have a VGA or DVI input.
Yeah, doesn't 'slashdot' know he's only one person talking to himself?
KNEEL, FOR I, THE MIGHTY SLASHDOT, DOTH COMMAND YOU TO GO FORTH, IN MY NAME, AND FETCH FOR ME THE CROWN OF THE KING OF THE WORLD.
Wait...You're just slashdot too. Crap. No wonder all those crazy Napoleons never conquer anything!
There's a problem with your assertion. Nothing I've seen suggests the twilight hack can be used to run commercial software.
Your examples don't work well for me. I can't find any numbers showing Doom 3 on any platform beings anything but a roaring success, and Crysis sold 1.5 million copies, which is extremely respectable.
Considering your entire post revolves around different facts showing how terrible piracy is, you'd better clean up your examples and prove things actually happened as you say they did.
In that case, isn't the whole argument a bit disingenuous, comparing a $300 PC to a $500 console?
The psp makes baby jesus cry for completely different reasons.
I feel bad for him. He dies for our sins and we go and pull that shit.
What strikes me is the lack of discipline in your arguments. You reiterated without substance, then once again accuse me of not knowing the subject.
My main point was that greek philosophers are an anthropological interest, rather than a philosophical one. My supporting point is that they were crippled by their lack of solid first principles.
My main point isn't at all challenged by your argument. Yes, old philosophy is what today's philosophy came from, just as old science is what today's science came from. However, that means exactly what I've already said: It's interesting from an anthropological point of view. Just as you don't need to know the etymology of a word to know how to use the word, and you don't need to know about al-Khwarizmi to use mathematics, old philosophy is interesting in the historical sense of understanding how thought became what it is today, it's not terribly important by itself. You'll never see a philosopher seriously advocating we follow the Nicomachean ethics. It's interesting because it helps establish what happens next in the story of philosophy. Thus, your argument supports my main assertion, rather than dissuade it. Every electrical engineer learns about how the field of electricity came from the Greeks rubbing amber with different substances(Hence electricity being named after the latin word for "amber-like"), but no engineer in the world actually has a use for that information beyond knowing where the much more refined and complicated study came from.
As for my other point, it wasn't until relatively recently that philosophers started looking at first principles of different areas of thought in earnest(They looked at first principles, but the idea of applying it to the fundamentals of thought hadn't kicked in yet, though they skirted around it as the Greeks often did with brilliant ideas). This was a critical juncture, because before that time, any old philosopher could jump on a soapbox and claim their ethic was axiomatic. The greeks loved doing this. Aristotle tossed out a first principle with very little thought, and turned it into an 8 book set, laughably calling his thoughts spreading from "You want to get the good life and be happy" an ethic.
What philosophers found was simple: Logically, it can be shown that there are no provably axiomatic first principles for many areas of thought. From there, new trains of thought must be explored to justify thinking -- or in fact, any venture of any kind.
In my view, ignoring this was the sin of the Greeks, and of the philologist who took on a lot of their ideas, Nietzsche. Until you reject everything, you're not building anything from a solid foundation. Here in the North, you can build a very nice house and have it completely disappear into the muskeg. You need to scrape away the muskeg before you can build anything. Just like the house that disappeared, the Greeks, and Nietzsche, had many interesting and insightful pieces of architecture, buried and invisible.
And that's why it's interesting from an anthropological standpoint and nothing more. It took millennia to show Democritus was on to something, but it was one thought experiment among an entire culture of philosophy. It rose slightly higher than some ideas because Democritus was slightly better at rhetoric, but even then his idea wasn't the prevailing theory of matter, just one of many. That doesn't sound much different than today, except that today we've got(with the exception of string theory, which I'm still positive exists soley as a joke some hipster put together as a clever deconstruction and reamalgamation of science into the exact thing it's not supposed to be) more sophisticated means to determine the worthiness of theories than simple rhetoric, which is good considering the complicated epistemological implications of the more complicated world created when we're throwing out unfounded axioms. Without the well-developed first principles(or maybe the more appropriate term is zeroth, since you need them before first principles are even possible), you don't even have a platform from which you can analyze the logic that comes after.
You need to take a good long look in the mirror. Your numbers WERE out to lunch, and you proved it yourself. Your accounting is worthy of Enron.
Save the moral indignation for times you're actually in the right.
Rather than stay with the Greeks, because you've got rose coloured glasses in that respect (Ignore the countless ridiculous trains of thought that more rigour could have easily kicked the feet out from under, focus on the few successes left), I'll use a more recent example.
Nietzsche was a philologist, so he gained the same disrespect for first principles the Greeks had. He wrote book after book on philosophy, but was so busy talking about what would be good, he forgot to actually base it on anything other than "I think it'd be pretty cool if things were like this". Where does the concept of the ubermensch come from? "Well, the greeks talked about this and I think it'd be pretty cool too."
He started with a floors and a roof hovering in mid-air, and build shaky walls around them, ignoring the foundation. That's a neat trick, but in the real world floors and roofs don't float. They need a strong foundation.
Why did it take millennia for existentialism to come about? It's because of the poison that let philosophy use rhetoric to express opinions such as "Strong, decisive people are virtuous because they've got virtues because I said so" as a fundamental philosophical truth of the world. That's why, as I said, ancient philosophy is best taken as an anthropological artefact rather than any sort of real lesson on logic or reason. You practically agree with me by essentially saying "But...it's history! History is important!"
I was just explaining why that might be.
Your point from earlier is taken, by the way. Even though you do spend time on a ferry, I'm sure the denser infrastructure means driving there would be hell anywhere less dense than where I'm living. In such a dense place, I'm not even sure American-style interstate highways (where you never slow down unless you're leaving the highway) would help. Where would you put them?!
Because the results of this post surprised me a bit, I posted to my journal a more detailed analysis of the prius vs. conventional gasoline car. Very interesting results. I figured when I found out that the top hybrid is less expensive than I thought that the hybrid would come out on top, but not a chance. Gas would have to hit $7.8/gal for the cost of ownership to be the same.
Seems like you're doing a bit of knee-jerking yourself.
I agree, mind you -- his costs are out to lunch. I've run the costs, and it looks to me like he's paying about $7140/yr to own and operate a top hybrid(including his insane insurance rate, with all of this amortized to 5 years and reduced maintenance schedule), while I'm paying about 7500/yr to own and operate my vehicle (including my insane socialist insurance rate and reduced maintenance schedule).
A Prius will get about 4.2l/100km. Thus, over 20,000km, you're looking at $842/yr, vs. $1200/yr for my conventional gas vehicle. Apples to apples comparisons are required for them to be meaningful.
A new Prius vs. my car, a reasonably high-end conventional vehicle, the price is $10,000 different. If he financed the way I did, he'd be looking at payments of about 2,000 more per year than I pay.
Doubling your service interval will change the annual oil cost from $200/yr to $100/yr. Ignoring that this could put the warranty in jeopardy, it's the smallest cost of the bunch no matter what.
Insurance for the two vehicles would be about the same. My insurance is high because where I live we have socialized car insurance. 200/yr, however, makes me wonder if this guy only has public liability.
I'm seconding this. I bought some MC Frontalot albums last night, and they came in a M4A format. Obviously no DRM, since I can put the files on a memory stick and play them in my car.
One thing you have to remember with North Americans is how few of us there are for the huge surface area.
For example, Canada and Europe have very similar surface area, about 10 million square kilometers. Europe has almost 800M people, while Canada has only 33M. If you've got a business whose purpose is to move as many people as possible, you're obviously going to be in better shape in Europe, rather than Canada, which has the same surface area to service but only 4% of the people.
It also depends on where you need to go in the city.
Mass transit in my country is horrible. It's a 7 hour drive to the next city for me, but a 13 hour train ride. When I get to the city in my car, I can travel directly to where I want to be. By contrast, when I get to the city by train I've suddenly got to deal with the transit system -- if I even can. The train arrives at either 7am or 10pm, and at both times there's a risk that the buses I'd need to take aren't even running. From there, if I'm looking for time, I'm going to stand around for half an hour at each bus stop hoping I don't get jumped by hobos.
Your argument is dishonest. If you drive to Paris from London, you're really going by boat.
I just ran the numbers for mass transit vs. automobile transport.
I'll pay $6000 on my car loan this year, $2100 on insurance, and about $1200 on fuel (assuming I want to hit year 5 with my waranty intact and limit my driving to 20,000km/yr), and 4 oil changes at 50 dollars(yes, the manufacturer schedule drastically over-maintains the vehicle, but as you can see, maintenance is about the least expensive part of the vehicle). Total cost of using a vehicle for a year will be $9500. By contrast, a year of bus passes at $80/mo will land in at $960.
If you need to own a car anyway(Meaning you factor out the fixed costs), then it doesn't take a lot for the car to become competitive with the bus for a daily commute. The only cost you'd be looking at then is fuel, and as you can see, simply reducing your annual mileage will reduce fuel costs to wherever you need them to be.
Unless you've got perfect planning and Sun Tzu your choice of apartment so there's a bus stop directly in front of it that goes directly to where you need to be, the bus will be faster than a car because you don't need to start it up, warm it up, or find parking. Any destination more complicated will be slower on the bus The reason for this is simple: You may end up waiting in traffic, but if you need to switch buses, you're looking at a portion of your trip spent standing around in a smelly bus stop hoping the hobos sleeping on the benches don't wake up and wishing you had thicker mitts. I remember very well spending half an hour waiting for my second bus to show up when heading to work on a Sunday morning, then showing up either an hour early or an hour late for work.
This brings us to the final, most fundamental truth: Travelling by car is a luxury, and it's much more convenient and comfortable to drive than to take the bus in 90% of situations.
Driving is more convenient. Driving means you can leave from exactly where you live, at any time you want, and arrive exactly where you want to be. By contrast, bus schedules tend to force you to adhere to their schedule, often resulting in huge amounts of time spent just sitting around waiting for things: Either you're waiting for your bus, or you're waiting to transfer, or you're at your destination waiting for the time you were actually supposed to show up. With a GPS, you don't even need to know how to get where you want to go. By contrast, travelling by bus requires large amounts of planning.
Driving is more comfortable. Besides the aforementioned hobo problem, taking the bus you're often stuck in the elements, waiting in rain or snow or blazing heat. On the bus, you have to deal with the same heat/cold problems to some degree (Taking a bus in summer is an exercise in pain), but suddenly you really wish you wore a hazmat suit thanks to the various stains, odours, and textures (yummy, sticky. I hope I don't get the AIDS!). By contrast, my car has heated leather seats for winter, and ice cold air conditioning for summer. It's got a great stereo and plays exactly the songs I want. The doors lock for the bad parts of town. No matter how you slice it, driving is more comfortable than taking the bus.
I didn't have a license until a few years ago, so I took the bus throughout college. It was cheaper than owning a car by far, but the downside to driving was easily apparent -- especially when I finally got behind the wheel. Today, I live in the far north, and the horrible nature of bus and train travel for long distances is obvious. It takes 7 hours to drive to the city, but 15 hours to take the train, and 10 hours to take the bus. When I arrive by train or bus, I've got to navigate the labyrinthine mass transit system to get to where I want to be(If it even goes to where I want to be). That's such a losing proposition that last time I was in that situation I just went to a pawn shop and bought a bike for a day rather than try to make sense of that mess.
I'm SJ Zero
No hero
I'm Nero
On my violin drinking beer yo
third time this year, oh
Your shit burns when I'm near, bro.
I battle rap like yu-gi-oh
I set my trap
While you yap
At the gap
I attack
With magic black
1 2 mic check
On this track
I stack
lyrics whack
so step back
You're filled with fear though.
You know, maybe I'll just let the professionals deal with this...