And the moment you do that, the page is updated. That's just the way Slashdot works. In any case, even for non-logged users, the page is updated every 2 minutes, so your whole "justification" is pointless.
You didn't bother to read the thread you were replying to. It happens. When you miss something, just say you missed it, don't try to come up with excuses.
A hypothesis that can be neither proven or disproven by existing evidence should not be considered false; it should be considered an unknown, meriting further research. Absolutely. As long as it is a testable hypothesis.
You know, you really don't need to make a complete fool of yourself. You can simply post a comment, reload the page, and confirm that your comment is displayed immediately, as I told you.
Or you could look up how Slashdot works and learn that only non-logged users are served the "static page" (which, in any case, is updated every two minutes or so). Logged-in users get dynamically generated pages, that reflect all the latest database updates.
If you hadn't seen something, just say "I didn't see it". Or when you misunderstand something, just say "I didn't understand it". Don't dig yourself into a hole by building obvious straw-man arguments or trying come come up with "technical" justifications that are easily shown to be wrong.
Also, I'm not sure that claiming to have "owned" a "lame" thread carries the same weight here in Slashdot as it does, say, in your average Counter-Strike forum.
It wasn't a mistake; I was pointing out a completely different thing (which apparently you still don't undertstand). I just said that, if someone wanted to complain about my post, they should complain that it wasn't about the same phenomenon as the post I was replying to (which it wasn't meant to be; I just used its first paragraph to talk about something that annoys me - the tendency people have to think that the Sun is some sort of "absolute reference frame", or that using a different one makes calculations impossible).
And picking one reference is as "scientific" as picking any other (do you even understand what "science" is...?). Some just hapen to be more practical in some situations. Do you base your measurements on the centre of the universe, when you're putting up shelves?
Oh, and comments do display immediately (or after a couple of seconds, anyway).
I'm certain it will take longer for science to disprove any theory of a God, than it will to disprove the continents were joined. Science describes and tries to predict the behaviour of the natural world (the second part is the really important one).
Since gods are, by definition, supernatural (i.e., "beyond nature"), they are not the subject of science. It's really not a very productive use of scientists' time to try to prove the non-existence of something which, by definition, does not have a physical existence.
You might as well say it'll take a long time for science to disprove the existence of alien pink elephants. Not only is "disproving" that virtually impossible, but no one in their right mind is going to waste his or her time trying it, because there's nothing to be gained even if it were possible to search every last corner of the universe and confirm that there's isn't a single pink elephant in it.
It would be great if we could prove the existence of gods, and find some way to interact with them or predict their behaviour (maybe that would offer some insights into the "weird" parts of modern physics). Sadly, no religion provides any kind of information that could be used to test that existence (in fact, most religions try very hard to make any sort of test impossible), so the whole thing is completely useless.
Explaining something by attributing it to a god (or to some other supernatural entity) means that a) you don't really know why or exactly how it happens, b) you aren't brave enough to admit that you don't know and c) you are giving up on trying to find out.
And that is why "faith" (and religion in particular) is a thorn in the side of progress. Because it makes people actively ignorant. It's no coincidence that, according to the Bible, Adam and Eve were punished by God for tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Religion is a control tool; ignorant people are easier to control. Especially if they're told that the rulers have a direct connection to some supernatural being that can hit them with lightning if they don't "comply". It's also no coincidence that some religions describe their followers as "sheep".
Rant over.
For the record, I "believe" in God (for a very specific - and completely meaningless, but logically provable - definition of "God"), but I loathe any form of religion.
Heh, all of you are wrong. The appearance of the sun moving through the sky has nothing to do with the Earth's orbit around the sun. We have day and night cycles because the Earth rotates on its axis. Good job pointing that out ten minutes after I did, in the same thread, and telling me I'm "wrong"...:-)
I've also pointed out [slashdot.org] your "misdirection" Yes. Ten minutes after I did, which kind of steals the "thunder", I fear.
saying the Earth is motionless while everything else moves around it is wrong, no matter what inertial frame of reference you use, because it's not a scientific statement. Sigh...
1. Where did I say "the Earth is motionless while everything else moves around it"?
2. If your reference is the Earth, then by definition the Earth is "motionless".
As a child, I could plainly see that the Sun moves through the sky and the Earth is motionless. As a child, I could plainly see that the road and trees were moving while my father's car was motionless. Sadly I allowed my teachers to convince me that I was wrong, or I may have figured out relativity during 2nd grade.
The fact is that it's perfectly correct to use the Earth as your reference point, so saying that the Earth is still and the Sun moves around it is perfectly correct. Obviously, it's a lot more practical (when dealing with the solar system) to use Sol as the reference point, but "less practical" doesn't mean "wrong".
What is wrong is to say that the other planets orbit the Earth (unless your definition of "orbit" covers some very weird relative trajectories). And that was the fundamental flaw in the geocentric theory (not the relationship between the Earth and Sun, which is compatible in both models). I'm always amazed by how many people (teachers included) fail to understand that.
A child saying "those look like they could fit together" is something any scientist would, and should, dismiss as an actual argument for the existence of tectonic plates. So, in your opinion, scientists should formulate hypotheses based purely on imagination, and ignore observation?
When it turned out there was a massive volcanic conveyor belt discovered at the bottom of the ocean in between the two continents [...] now there's something worth considering. I see. So we should wait until we happen to stumble into the cause, rather than form conjectures based on observation, and then go test them?
Hey, lucky thing those scientists just happened to be taking a walk along the bottom of the ocean. I mean, they couldn't possibly have been looking for evidence to support a conjecture based on the observation of something else (such as, say, the similarity between the atlantic coastlines of Africa and America), could they...?
Yes, the ragdoll (and associated issues) is a huge technical reason, in modern 3D RPGs.
It means the game must have different kinds of clothes for adults and children (at least - possibly also intermediate sizes), or that clothes must adapt themselves to all body sizes. It also means that all animations need to be done for different body sizes (it's not just a matter of scaling them down; children have different body proportions). Plus a ton of extra animations (children playing, adults picking them up, children using objects and interacting with the world, etc.) and animation variations (ex., adult greeting child, adult greeting adult, child greeting child).
I think it would add a lot of realism to a game world, but it also adds a lot of time to development, and since children are less "useful" in terms of game quests, most developers just don't bother. And, of course, I'm sure that in some countries some groups would imeediately use some variations of "we must protect the (virtual) children" to make it impossible to interact with them in any way (which is probably how those people deal with their own children).
Ultima VII is "it" as far as RPGs (possibly computer games) go. It deals with religion, politics, sex, drugs, racism, you name it (there's even the possibility of having a gay relationship). Right at the start of the game you come across a very bloody murder (think ritual disembowelling) and the son of the murdered man (who looks about 10) offers to join your party. I remember when we came across a cave where a naked couple lived (one of their lines was "Me Mama, he Papa. We make zug-zug. Babies come."), the kid opened his eyes wide and started grinning, and an older guy in my party tried to cover his eyes, while the kid protested. It felt natural and funny and realistic.
I don't think eating people was part of Ultima VII. I miss it because it dealt with normal aspects of (non-cannibalistic) life and society in a sane, believable way (though, more and more, "sane" and "believable" seem be incompatible concepts when talking about society).
Going around naked would get old soon. Part of the reason why people wear clothes, even in places where it's warm enough not to, is to show off their unique / expensive clothes, and through them their status. And besides, it would mean no armour bonuses, possibly a health loss in cold regions (if the game models weather realistically), possibly undesirable reactions from NPCs or other players (making fun, refusing to deal with, etc.), and so on.
But if I have a big quest coming up, I definitely want to be able to remove my boring white polygon and put on some +5 Lucky Underpants.
By all means, add the option to cover the "sinful bits" with a (large?) black rectangle, or an american flag, or whatever, but it just doesn't make sense to make underwear part of the body. BTW, there was a running joke in Morrowind / Oblivion that the reason why there aren't any children in those games is that all the NPCs have their underwear welded on, so they would have no way of making (let alone giving birth) to babies. The actual reason was that it would require a much more elaborate ragdoll system (with different-sized clothes, extra textures, different animations, etc.).
How is showing a perfectly normal part of the human body "resorting to the gutter"?
It never ceases to amaze me how some people (or some societies) look at a movie or game where dozens of people get shot or hacked into pieces, and are offended by... a nipple.
But only if it's a female nipple; male nipples are fine (although those have no purpose other than sexual arousal). Probably because men won't take shit about not being allowed to go shirtless when they want to.
Personally I think any game where characters have undetachable underwear is simple pandering to pseudo-moralistic puritan pricks.
Which I guess gives us another fact about Chuck Norris: he can have two completely contrary opinions on the same matter at the same time. Or maybe his brain gets flipped with each roundhouse kick.
I doubt the book's author would lie (in print, too) about a meeting with Chuck Norris and his laywer. I mean, why bother? He could simply not mention any of that and, if he ever got sued, claim the book was satire (which it obviously is), and therefore fell under free speech (which it obviously does).
My guess is that Norris was fine with the original website but, when it was published, decided he wanted a share of the profits. Which I agree he should be entitled to... if he can prove the "facts" are actually based on him and his real abilities.
This is odd, because I have the book (my girlfriend got it for me a couple of months ago), and in it the author says that he met with Chuck Norris and got his OK.
Is this really old news (from before the book's latest edition), or did Carlos Ray give the OK and then decide to sue?
Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day. The human body is indeed a wonderful thing. Its infinitely complex way of functioning would take a computer, working flat out, day and night, excluding Bank Holidays and Christmas, 3,971 years to work out. The slightest flicker of the eyelid, the smallest movement of the big toe, involves such extraordinarily complex processes that the average man, working flat out, excluding Bank Holidays and Christmas, but including weekends, would take 84,643 light years to work it out. If you can imagine an Airedale terrier jumping in and out of a watering can once every 7 minutes for 12 years you have some idea how long that would take. And that's only one light year.
Even the most simple process that the body can perform -- like paying the doctor -- would take a piece of asbestos over 9 billion years to work out. If you can imagine a man at a cocktail party congratulating the hostess on the avocado dip 40,000 times every second for 2 1/2 hours twice a week for 28,000 years you can begin to realise what an extraordinarily wonderful thing the human body is.
To put it even more simply, if you can imagine a doctor leaving his lucrative Harley St. practice to a younger partner, and cruising round the world 4 times a year, drinking 3 bottles of champagne with a friend's wife every afternoon, and writing an article on How Your Body Works once every 96 days, you'll get some idea of why I was struck off the register. Good evening.
the game & story were basically for kids [...] yet Ragnar Tornquist included profanity in the dialogue, which was totally out of place You obviously didn't go to the same primary school I did.:-P
BTW: A very exclusive private school that shall remain nameless. Most pupils were children of people in show business, and we could all swear like sailors. As a result, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the difference between being offensive (which you can do using the nicest words) and using expletives.
The limited number of voices was a problem with Oblivion, but sadly just one of many. Even with just a few voices it would have been easy to do better. For example, by recording multiple sentences for each "meaning". Instead of getting "I hear there's a siege around Kvatch." in 4 different voices, repeated over and over, you could have different wordings ("Kvatch is under siege", "Someone has sieged Kvatch", and so on). Even RTS games do that, and have done for the past decade. It's just another sign of poor planning and closed development.
Morrowind, for all its faults (very static world - and the bloody cliff racers), did have an atmosphere, which is something completely missing from Oblivion. I think that's due to the fact that Oblivion's "quest lines" were developed by separate teams. There's no unifying vision, and no interaction between different parts of the game. For example, there are 3 or 4 vampire-related "quests" but you never even get the chance to ask the NPCs involved in one quest about issues related to the others. You can go on a vampire-slaying quest while you are a vampire, and the other vampire hunters won't complain or even notice. The game is just a collection of mini-missions that don't add up to a consistent, interactive game world. Great sights, nice monsters, but no substance.
Black Gate was good enough on its own, and when you add Stygian Abyss (texture-mapped, depth-lit 3D one year before Wolfenstein), Serpent Isle, Labyrinth of Worlds and the add-ons (Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed), which are really all part of the same story, you have (by far) the best CRPG ever made. The world and NPCs felt alive and believable, the story was adult, funny and throught-provoking, the dialogues were intelligent, and the games had more memorable moments than Hollywood manages to create in one year's worth of film production.
Anyone designing a RPG today should be required to spend at least two months playing them.
Oh, and by the way, thank you, EA, for killing Origin. Fuckers.
Slashdot Mirror
And the moment you do that, the page is updated. That's just the way Slashdot works. In any case, even for non-logged users, the page is updated every 2 minutes, so your whole "justification" is pointless.
You didn't bother to read the thread you were replying to. It happens. When you miss something, just say you missed it, don't try to come up with excuses.
Forget what I said about you not having to make a fool of yourself; new data clearly suggests that might not be a choice under your control.
You know, you really don't need to make a complete fool of yourself. You can simply post a comment, reload the page, and confirm that your comment is displayed immediately, as I told you.
Or you could look up how Slashdot works and learn that only non-logged users are served the "static page" (which, in any case, is updated every two minutes or so). Logged-in users get dynamically generated pages, that reflect all the latest database updates.
If you hadn't seen something, just say "I didn't see it". Or when you misunderstand something, just say "I didn't understand it". Don't dig yourself into a hole by building obvious straw-man arguments or trying come come up with "technical" justifications that are easily shown to be wrong.
Also, I'm not sure that claiming to have "owned" a "lame" thread carries the same weight here in Slashdot as it does, say, in your average Counter-Strike forum.
It wasn't a mistake; I was pointing out a completely different thing (which apparently you still don't undertstand). I just said that, if someone wanted to complain about my post, they should complain that it wasn't about the same phenomenon as the post I was replying to (which it wasn't meant to be; I just used its first paragraph to talk about something that annoys me - the tendency people have to think that the Sun is some sort of "absolute reference frame", or that using a different one makes calculations impossible).
And picking one reference is as "scientific" as picking any other (do you even understand what "science" is...?). Some just hapen to be more practical in some situations. Do you base your measurements on the centre of the universe, when you're putting up shelves?
Oh, and comments do display immediately (or after a couple of seconds, anyway).
Take English classes and maybe you'll be able to read (and understand) what other people write, instead of "replying" to something you made up.
Since gods are, by definition, supernatural (i.e., "beyond nature"), they are not the subject of science. It's really not a very productive use of scientists' time to try to prove the non-existence of something which, by definition, does not have a physical existence.
You might as well say it'll take a long time for science to disprove the existence of alien pink elephants. Not only is "disproving" that virtually impossible, but no one in their right mind is going to waste his or her time trying it, because there's nothing to be gained even if it were possible to search every last corner of the universe and confirm that there's isn't a single pink elephant in it.
It would be great if we could prove the existence of gods, and find some way to interact with them or predict their behaviour (maybe that would offer some insights into the "weird" parts of modern physics). Sadly, no religion provides any kind of information that could be used to test that existence (in fact, most religions try very hard to make any sort of test impossible), so the whole thing is completely useless.
Explaining something by attributing it to a god (or to some other supernatural entity) means that a) you don't really know why or exactly how it happens, b) you aren't brave enough to admit that you don't know and c) you are giving up on trying to find out.
And that is why "faith" (and religion in particular) is a thorn in the side of progress. Because it makes people actively ignorant. It's no coincidence that, according to the Bible, Adam and Eve were punished by God for tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Religion is a control tool; ignorant people are easier to control. Especially if they're told that the rulers have a direct connection to some supernatural being that can hit them with lightning if they don't "comply". It's also no coincidence that some religions describe their followers as "sheep".
Rant over.
For the record, I "believe" in God (for a very specific - and completely meaningless, but logically provable - definition of "God"), but I loathe any form of religion.
1. Where did I say "the Earth is motionless while everything else moves around it"?
2. If your reference is the Earth, then by definition the Earth is "motionless".
You must be replying to someone else. Where did I say anything about using the Earth as a reference point for the centre of the solar system?
The message above was posted by me, BTW. For some reason the "anonymous" box got checked.
The fact is that it's perfectly correct to use the Earth as your reference point, so saying that the Earth is still and the Sun moves around it is perfectly correct. Obviously, it's a lot more practical (when dealing with the solar system) to use Sol as the reference point, but "less practical" doesn't mean "wrong".
What is wrong is to say that the other planets orbit the Earth (unless your definition of "orbit" covers some very weird relative trajectories). And that was the fundamental flaw in the geocentric theory (not the relationship between the Earth and Sun, which is compatible in both models). I'm always amazed by how many people (teachers included) fail to understand that.
Hey, lucky thing those scientists just happened to be taking a walk along the bottom of the ocean. I mean, they couldn't possibly have been looking for evidence to support a conjecture based on the observation of something else (such as, say, the similarity between the atlantic coastlines of Africa and America), could they...?
Yes, the ragdoll (and associated issues) is a huge technical reason, in modern 3D RPGs.
It means the game must have different kinds of clothes for adults and children (at least - possibly also intermediate sizes), or that clothes must adapt themselves to all body sizes. It also means that all animations need to be done for different body sizes (it's not just a matter of scaling them down; children have different body proportions). Plus a ton of extra animations (children playing, adults picking them up, children using objects and interacting with the world, etc.) and animation variations (ex., adult greeting child, adult greeting adult, child greeting child).
I think it would add a lot of realism to a game world, but it also adds a lot of time to development, and since children are less "useful" in terms of game quests, most developers just don't bother. And, of course, I'm sure that in some countries some groups would imeediately use some variations of "we must protect the (virtual) children" to make it impossible to interact with them in any way (which is probably how those people deal with their own children).
Ultima VII is "it" as far as RPGs (possibly computer games) go. It deals with religion, politics, sex, drugs, racism, you name it (there's even the possibility of having a gay relationship). Right at the start of the game you come across a very bloody murder (think ritual disembowelling) and the son of the murdered man (who looks about 10) offers to join your party. I remember when we came across a cave where a naked couple lived (one of their lines was "Me Mama, he Papa. We make zug-zug. Babies come."), the kid opened his eyes wide and started grinning, and an older guy in my party tried to cover his eyes, while the kid protested. It felt natural and funny and realistic.
I don't think eating people was part of Ultima VII. I miss it because it dealt with normal aspects of (non-cannibalistic) life and society in a sane, believable way (though, more and more, "sane" and "believable" seem be incompatible concepts when talking about society).
Going around naked would get old soon. Part of the reason why people wear clothes, even in places where it's warm enough not to, is to show off their unique / expensive clothes, and through them their status. And besides, it would mean no armour bonuses, possibly a health loss in cold regions (if the game models weather realistically), possibly undesirable reactions from NPCs or other players (making fun, refusing to deal with, etc.), and so on.
But if I have a big quest coming up, I definitely want to be able to remove my boring white polygon and put on some +5 Lucky Underpants.
By all means, add the option to cover the "sinful bits" with a (large?) black rectangle, or an american flag, or whatever, but it just doesn't make sense to make underwear part of the body. BTW, there was a running joke in Morrowind / Oblivion that the reason why there aren't any children in those games is that all the NPCs have their underwear welded on, so they would have no way of making (let alone giving birth) to babies. The actual reason was that it would require a much more elaborate ragdoll system (with different-sized clothes, extra textures, different animations, etc.).
Oh, how I miss Ultima VII...
Wrong. It's a "girl painted like a cow". Not a "drawing of a girl with a cow tail".
http://0.content.collegehumor.com/d1/ch6/1/e/collegehumor.3150e271f162ffca7c54c5ae13edef34.jpg
1. Because Slashdot lacks the "Funny Troll" mod option.
2. ???
3. In Soviet Russia hot grits cover YOU!
Okay, bad example.
IANAL, but I bet it was this one:
http://www.magyver.com/FunStuff/got%20milk.jpg
How is showing a perfectly normal part of the human body "resorting to the gutter"?
It never ceases to amaze me how some people (or some societies) look at a movie or game where dozens of people get shot or hacked into pieces, and are offended by... a nipple.
But only if it's a female nipple; male nipples are fine (although those have no purpose other than sexual arousal). Probably because men won't take shit about not being allowed to go shirtless when they want to.
Personally I think any game where characters have undetachable underwear is simple pandering to pseudo-moralistic puritan pricks.
Which I guess gives us another fact about Chuck Norris: he can have two completely contrary opinions on the same matter at the same time. Or maybe his brain gets flipped with each roundhouse kick.
I doubt the book's author would lie (in print, too) about a meeting with Chuck Norris and his laywer. I mean, why bother? He could simply not mention any of that and, if he ever got sued, claim the book was satire (which it obviously is), and therefore fell under free speech (which it obviously does).
My guess is that Norris was fine with the original website but, when it was published, decided he wanted a share of the profits. Which I agree he should be entitled to... if he can prove the "facts" are actually based on him and his real abilities.
This is odd, because I have the book (my girlfriend got it for me a couple of months ago), and in it the author says that he met with Chuck Norris and got his OK.
Is this really old news (from before the book's latest edition), or did Carlos Ray give the OK and then decide to sue?
Even the most simple process that the body can perform -- like paying the doctor -- would take a piece of asbestos over 9 billion years to work out. If you can imagine a man at a cocktail party congratulating the hostess on the avocado dip 40,000 times every second for 2 1/2 hours twice a week for 28,000 years you can begin to realise what an extraordinarily wonderful thing the human body is.
To put it even more simply, if you can imagine a doctor leaving his lucrative Harley St. practice to a younger partner, and cruising round the world 4 times a year, drinking 3 bottles of champagne with a friend's wife every afternoon, and writing an article on How Your Body Works once every 96 days, you'll get some idea of why I was struck off the register. Good evening.
(from "Monty Python's Brand New Papperbok")
BTW: A very exclusive private school that shall remain nameless. Most pupils were children of people in show business, and we could all swear like sailors. As a result, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the difference between being offensive (which you can do using the nicest words) and using expletives.
The limited number of voices was a problem with Oblivion, but sadly just one of many. Even with just a few voices it would have been easy to do better. For example, by recording multiple sentences for each "meaning". Instead of getting "I hear there's a siege around Kvatch." in 4 different voices, repeated over and over, you could have different wordings ("Kvatch is under siege", "Someone has sieged Kvatch", and so on). Even RTS games do that, and have done for the past decade. It's just another sign of poor planning and closed development.
Morrowind, for all its faults (very static world - and the bloody cliff racers), did have an atmosphere, which is something completely missing from Oblivion. I think that's due to the fact that Oblivion's "quest lines" were developed by separate teams. There's no unifying vision, and no interaction between different parts of the game. For example, there are 3 or 4 vampire-related "quests" but you never even get the chance to ask the NPCs involved in one quest about issues related to the others. You can go on a vampire-slaying quest while you are a vampire, and the other vampire hunters won't complain or even notice. The game is just a collection of mini-missions that don't add up to a consistent, interactive game world. Great sights, nice monsters, but no substance.
Black Gate was good enough on its own, and when you add Stygian Abyss (texture-mapped, depth-lit 3D one year before Wolfenstein), Serpent Isle, Labyrinth of Worlds and the add-ons (Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed), which are really all part of the same story, you have (by far) the best CRPG ever made. The world and NPCs felt alive and believable, the story was adult, funny and throught-provoking, the dialogues were intelligent, and the games had more memorable moments than Hollywood manages to create in one year's worth of film production.
Anyone designing a RPG today should be required to spend at least two months playing them.
Oh, and by the way, thank you, EA, for killing Origin. Fuckers.