I bought Fallout 3, with low expectations. I hated Oblivion, it just wasn't my kind of game. But I'm a fan of Fallout, and I just had to try the game. I can't remember the last time a surprise was so pleasing.
This has got to be the first time I've played a game where the developers took the advice from their previous game to heart, and actually fix things. Fallout 3 is much more immersive than Oblivion, and they actually managed to keep the original flavor of the first two Fallout games.
All the cars looks like concept cars from the 50s, back when everybody thought dorsal fins were a neat idea for dolphins AND cars. I was afraid the game would be like Oblivion with guns, but it's actually just Fallout with a first person perspective.
If a placebo is shown to be effective as a real treatment for a problem, then the process of placebo trials demands that the "real" treatment not be a real treatment. The whole idea of an effective treatment is to have something that can work BETTER than your body's natural methods of fixing things.
I'd call C invalid, because there ain't much left for them to blow up, the Taliban already destroyed the non-Islam artifacts when they were in control.
If they're taking their holy book's rules seriously enough to punish somebody for blasphemy, then I'm betting they'll consider Buddhist statues to be blasphemy against Muhammad or something, and destroy them anyway.
Marijuana, if consumed the same way as tobacco, can still cause lung cancer. Burning plant matter and breathing the smoke in will increase your chances of getting lung cancer.
But yes, the deaths related to cocaine and heroin wouldn't exist for marijuana, because it's impossible to overdose on it.
Hamilton and Jefferson had this argument back int he late 18th century. Before the Civil War, we had a federal government, and today it's more like a national government.
If you look at the region of the world where Islam is most popular, or at least the area where most of the countries that are Islamic theocracies, you'll see that that region was actually very, very, scientifically advanced a few centuries ago. For some reason, the people over there got tired of being enlightened and went BACK into the dark ages.
I doubt the people over there would be comfortable with a renewed enlightenment, and I'm certain their political and religious leaders don't want one.
I disagree about Psychonauts. Psychonauts, and Beyond Good and Evil, set up a sequel the proper way, by ending the story, but just leaving a tiny thread that wasn't finished yet.
As far as games that piss me off the most, I think the crowning jewel would be Half Life 2, bar none. It was beautiful, and I got a free copy with my video card, of course I almost upgraded the video card by the time the game actually came out, but I was hyped for it. I played through twenty or so hours, and then...
Well, everybody who's beaten it knows how shitty the ending was. It wasn't even an ending. I've seen Doctor Who episodes where they've got to stretch to two parts, and the first half had a better ending than Half Life 2.
Why are there so many games coming out these days where publishers insist how they're going to be a trilogy, even before they've released it?
Gears of War, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and now Mirror's Edge. Granted, Bioshock wasn't announced to be a trilogy before its release, I'm sure that 2K was planning it.
These bullshit excuses to not add a concrete ending to the story is really annoying. It's just an excuse to have a shitty plot.
Just some clarification. Interplay was going down the tubes, so they sold the rights to Fallout sequels to Bethesda. After a few months, and more fines and such piling up against Interplay, they sold the rights to the entire Fallout franchise to Bethesda in exchange for some more money and rights to a Fallout MMO.
Human beings have been sex maniacs since our species branched from our common ancestors to actually become "human".
Every life form on this planet has the overriding desire to survive, and right after survival of the organism itself comes the survival of that organisms genes. The only way to ensure your genes survive, is to fuck everything you can find.
Ultra-religious 700s-1800s? You mean during the Dark Ages? Back before the reformation, when the Catholic church was running its own set of brothels?
They stole the idea from the Romans, who had temples where you could donate money and worship the gods of fertility and lust by.. well.. being lustful and trying to procreate.
It's not difficult to stop them, even if you want a diamond. Either buy a used a diamond, something that DeBeers has convinced women not to do over the past century. The other option is to get a synthetic diamond. There are a few companies which make gemstone quality synthetic diamonds. DeBeers has been trying to come up with all sorts of methods for distinguishing one of these synthetics for a natural diamond, but as far as I know, they haven't found a way yet, because these synthetics ARE real diamonds.
And that's exactly why ID is NOT science. It's not even BAD science like Astrology, because Astrology can be tested false or not. ID can't be falsified at all.
I wasn't aware that DeBeers didn't operate in the US. I figured they were ok with paying the monopoly fines, because they more than made up the cost in sales of their over priced carbon.
ATI does indeed sell ATI branded video cards on their website, or at least they used to before AMD bought them. But you're right about Nvidia, they don't sell cards, just the GPU.
Could you please define "religion". I've got two definitions from Princeton:
"faith, religious belief (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny) 'he lost his faith but not his morality'"
and
"organized religion (an institution to express belief in a divine power) 'he was raised in the Baptist religion'; 'a member of his own faith contradicted him'"
I'm afraid the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection doesn't fall into either of those definitions. Evolution is used to describe the natural world, so the first definition is out, because that deals with the "supernatural". And the second definition is out, because evolution is not a divine power. It's not a non-divine power, either. It's simply a mechanism that explains the natural world as we can observe it.
No theory in science can be safely treated as fact. A fact is something that is proven and not open to question.
If something cannot be questioned, then it does not belong in a science laboratory, it belongs in pulpit in a church. The concept of QUESTIONING is what gives science its bad ass record.
The luminiferous ether was widely regarded as the only way for light to behave the way it did. Light was a wave, and that explained the double slit experiment.
Then a few jerks were just messing around and bang, the ether is GONE. The discovery was so important, it got one of those jerks a Nobel Prize. When somebody says they have an idea that's totally irrefutable, their idea isn't science. Even various aspects of evolution are able to be falsified, for example, if a fossilized cat were found in the Jurassic period, then that would throw common decent right out the window. It's doubtful for that to happen, considering the mountains of evidence that support common decent, but it's never going to be an unquestioned fact. An absolute fact would require absolute proof, and the only tool that provides absolute proof is mathematics.
Very well done. I hate Biology, it's terribly boring, but I'd be a fool if I believed there were any other scientific theory which has more support than evolution. Not even gravity has been scrutinized as much. If these ID proponents were really scientists, they should try poking holes in an easier theory, like gravity or the atomic model, or something.
I wouldn't say everybody at the Discovery Institute supports evolution. Michael Behe supports Intelligent Design, but he also accepts the validity of common ancestry, because that damned second chromosome is really hard for a creationist to ignore.
"Evolution is mostly popular because many atheists think it can discount the first two pages of the bible, thereby disproving god forever"
First, we'll start with that... um... mess. Evolution isn't popular because it furthers an agenda for atheists. Atheists are a minority. The majority of people, who believe evolution describes the diversity of life, and who live in the United States are... drumroll... Christians. That's right, you crazy Christians are the majority of proponents of evolution. Also, atheism existed long before Charles Darwin wrote about evolution. The word "atheism" comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "without god".
Or that, chemically and mathematically, life on Earth only has a 1:1,200,000,000,000,000,000 chance of happening the way evolutionists predict?
I'm assuming you're calculating that based on the number of atoms in every molecule in a protein or amino acid or something. Chemistry is not bound by probability. It's governed by the electromagnetic force. There's no chance involved. When you pour vinegar into a bowl filled with baking soda, there's no probability that there's going to be a reaction, the reaction is inevitable.
Is that what they'll want to teach? That science doesn't have all the answers yet...
The day science has all the answers is the day science is no longer done. When you know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING, you've got no reason to ask any questions about anything you see, because you already have the answer. Scientists do NOT have the answers. Back when science was used to discover the earth was NOT the center of the universe, the scientists had no preconceived notions about whether or not it would actually be in the center of the universe, they just had to check. When the first scientists discovered the earth was much older than their holy texts told them it was, they were amazed. You think the first person who used science to determine that the earth wasn't made a few thousand years ago had an agenda? He was trying to confirm his faith through science, but the reality of the situation was: his faith was wrong. Sure, it's possible he had an agenda to deconvert everybody into a bunch of raving heathens, but the key with science is evidence, not belief. You're free to believe what you want, but if you want to convince a scientist of your belief, you need EVIDENCE, and a single book written about 1800 years ago is NOT compelling evidence. Science also provides verifiable predictions. It's almost like seeing into the future, with astounding accuracy, because they've already done all the hard work and can calculate how something will be, if their idea has merit.
All the YEC apologists I've encountered believe in a deity who is incapable of deception. Their deity didn't make the world appear old even though it was young, they believe the earth IS young and all the science we rely upon is flawed.
The Pastafarians are the ones who claim the earth is young, but the FSM made it appear old.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought Fallout 3, with low expectations. I hated Oblivion, it just wasn't my kind of game. But I'm a fan of Fallout, and I just had to try the game. I can't remember the last time a surprise was so pleasing.
This has got to be the first time I've played a game where the developers took the advice from their previous game to heart, and actually fix things. Fallout 3 is much more immersive than Oblivion, and they actually managed to keep the original flavor of the first two Fallout games.
All the cars looks like concept cars from the 50s, back when everybody thought dorsal fins were a neat idea for dolphins AND cars. I was afraid the game would be like Oblivion with guns, but it's actually just Fallout with a first person perspective.
If a placebo is shown to be effective as a real treatment for a problem, then the process of placebo trials demands that the "real" treatment not be a real treatment. The whole idea of an effective treatment is to have something that can work BETTER than your body's natural methods of fixing things.
Allow me to quote Bill Hicks:
"Playboy doesn't lead to sexual thoughts. There ARE sexual thoughts and therefore there is Playboy."
Yes, if anything can help this guy it's MORE religion.
I'd call C invalid, because there ain't much left for them to blow up, the Taliban already destroyed the non-Islam artifacts when they were in control.
If they're taking their holy book's rules seriously enough to punish somebody for blasphemy, then I'm betting they'll consider Buddhist statues to be blasphemy against Muhammad or something, and destroy them anyway.
Marijuana, if consumed the same way as tobacco, can still cause lung cancer. Burning plant matter and breathing the smoke in will increase your chances of getting lung cancer.
But yes, the deaths related to cocaine and heroin wouldn't exist for marijuana, because it's impossible to overdose on it.
Hamilton and Jefferson had this argument back int he late 18th century. Before the Civil War, we had a federal government, and today it's more like a national government.
If that damned asteroid hadn't killed the dinosaurs, THEY might have reached sapience and developed a society instead of mammals.
Imagine what kind of society could exist with a 65 million year head start.
If you look at the region of the world where Islam is most popular, or at least the area where most of the countries that are Islamic theocracies, you'll see that that region was actually very, very, scientifically advanced a few centuries ago. For some reason, the people over there got tired of being enlightened and went BACK into the dark ages.
I doubt the people over there would be comfortable with a renewed enlightenment, and I'm certain their political and religious leaders don't want one.
I disagree about Psychonauts. Psychonauts, and Beyond Good and Evil, set up a sequel the proper way, by ending the story, but just leaving a tiny thread that wasn't finished yet.
As far as games that piss me off the most, I think the crowning jewel would be Half Life 2, bar none. It was beautiful, and I got a free copy with my video card, of course I almost upgraded the video card by the time the game actually came out, but I was hyped for it. I played through twenty or so hours, and then...
Well, everybody who's beaten it knows how shitty the ending was. It wasn't even an ending. I've seen Doctor Who episodes where they've got to stretch to two parts, and the first half had a better ending than Half Life 2.
Why are there so many games coming out these days where publishers insist how they're going to be a trilogy, even before they've released it?
Gears of War, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and now Mirror's Edge. Granted, Bioshock wasn't announced to be a trilogy before its release, I'm sure that 2K was planning it.
These bullshit excuses to not add a concrete ending to the story is really annoying. It's just an excuse to have a shitty plot.
Why is ME included with 95 and 98? As far as I'm aware, ME was the first consumer iteration of Windows that wasn't a DOS shell.
Just some clarification. Interplay was going down the tubes, so they sold the rights to Fallout sequels to Bethesda. After a few months, and more fines and such piling up against Interplay, they sold the rights to the entire Fallout franchise to Bethesda in exchange for some more money and rights to a Fallout MMO.
Human beings have been sex maniacs since our species branched from our common ancestors to actually become "human".
Every life form on this planet has the overriding desire to survive, and right after survival of the organism itself comes the survival of that organisms genes. The only way to ensure your genes survive, is to fuck everything you can find.
Ultra-religious 700s-1800s? You mean during the Dark Ages? Back before the reformation, when the Catholic church was running its own set of brothels?
They stole the idea from the Romans, who had temples where you could donate money and worship the gods of fertility and lust by.. well.. being lustful and trying to procreate.
It's not difficult to stop them, even if you want a diamond. Either buy a used a diamond, something that DeBeers has convinced women not to do over the past century. The other option is to get a synthetic diamond. There are a few companies which make gemstone quality synthetic diamonds. DeBeers has been trying to come up with all sorts of methods for distinguishing one of these synthetics for a natural diamond, but as far as I know, they haven't found a way yet, because these synthetics ARE real diamonds.
And that's exactly why ID is NOT science. It's not even BAD science like Astrology, because Astrology can be tested false or not. ID can't be falsified at all.
I wasn't aware that DeBeers didn't operate in the US. I figured they were ok with paying the monopoly fines, because they more than made up the cost in sales of their over priced carbon.
ATI does indeed sell ATI branded video cards on their website, or at least they used to before AMD bought them. But you're right about Nvidia, they don't sell cards, just the GPU.
Could you please define "religion". I've got two definitions from Princeton:
"faith, religious belief (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny) 'he lost his faith but not his morality'"
and
"organized religion (an institution to express belief in a divine power) 'he was raised in the Baptist religion'; 'a member of his own faith contradicted him'"
I'm afraid the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection doesn't fall into either of those definitions. Evolution is used to describe the natural world, so the first definition is out, because that deals with the "supernatural". And the second definition is out, because evolution is not a divine power. It's not a non-divine power, either. It's simply a mechanism that explains the natural world as we can observe it.
No theory in science can be safely treated as fact. A fact is something that is proven and not open to question.
If something cannot be questioned, then it does not belong in a science laboratory, it belongs in pulpit in a church. The concept of QUESTIONING is what gives science its bad ass record.
The luminiferous ether was widely regarded as the only way for light to behave the way it did. Light was a wave, and that explained the double slit experiment.
Then a few jerks were just messing around and bang, the ether is GONE. The discovery was so important, it got one of those jerks a Nobel Prize. When somebody says they have an idea that's totally irrefutable, their idea isn't science. Even various aspects of evolution are able to be falsified, for example, if a fossilized cat were found in the Jurassic period, then that would throw common decent right out the window. It's doubtful for that to happen, considering the mountains of evidence that support common decent, but it's never going to be an unquestioned fact. An absolute fact would require absolute proof, and the only tool that provides absolute proof is mathematics.
Use. Fucking. Google.
Very well done. I hate Biology, it's terribly boring, but I'd be a fool if I believed there were any other scientific theory which has more support than evolution. Not even gravity has been scrutinized as much. If these ID proponents were really scientists, they should try poking holes in an easier theory, like gravity or the atomic model, or something.
I wouldn't say everybody at the Discovery Institute supports evolution. Michael Behe supports Intelligent Design, but he also accepts the validity of common ancestry, because that damned second chromosome is really hard for a creationist to ignore.
Oh goodie! A fundie!
"Evolution is mostly popular because many atheists think it can discount the first two pages of the bible, thereby disproving god forever"
First, we'll start with that... um... mess. Evolution isn't popular because it furthers an agenda for atheists. Atheists are a minority. The majority of people, who believe evolution describes the diversity of life, and who live in the United States are... drumroll... Christians. That's right, you crazy Christians are the majority of proponents of evolution. Also, atheism existed long before Charles Darwin wrote about evolution. The word "atheism" comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "without god".
Or that, chemically and mathematically, life on Earth only has a 1:1,200,000,000,000,000,000 chance of happening the way evolutionists predict?
I'm assuming you're calculating that based on the number of atoms in every molecule in a protein or amino acid or something. Chemistry is not bound by probability. It's governed by the electromagnetic force. There's no chance involved. When you pour vinegar into a bowl filled with baking soda, there's no probability that there's going to be a reaction, the reaction is inevitable.
Is that what they'll want to teach? That science doesn't have all the answers yet ...
The day science has all the answers is the day science is no longer done. When you know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING, you've got no reason to ask any questions about anything you see, because you already have the answer. Scientists do NOT have the answers. Back when science was used to discover the earth was NOT the center of the universe, the scientists had no preconceived notions about whether or not it would actually be in the center of the universe, they just had to check. When the first scientists discovered the earth was much older than their holy texts told them it was, they were amazed. You think the first person who used science to determine that the earth wasn't made a few thousand years ago had an agenda? He was trying to confirm his faith through science, but the reality of the situation was: his faith was wrong. Sure, it's possible he had an agenda to deconvert everybody into a bunch of raving heathens, but the key with science is evidence, not belief. You're free to believe what you want, but if you want to convince a scientist of your belief, you need EVIDENCE, and a single book written about 1800 years ago is NOT compelling evidence. Science also provides verifiable predictions. It's almost like seeing into the future, with astounding accuracy, because they've already done all the hard work and can calculate how something will be, if their idea has merit.
All the YEC apologists I've encountered believe in a deity who is incapable of deception. Their deity didn't make the world appear old even though it was young, they believe the earth IS young and all the science we rely upon is flawed.
The Pastafarians are the ones who claim the earth is young, but the FSM made it appear old.