I imagine many, if not most, games in which it matters will be good for both righties and lefties. However, apparently Link's handedness is a factor in the level design, so it's not as easy as just including a setting within the game.
Given that fact, and the fact that the downside is realitivly minor (I can't imagine it being too disconcerting for a left-handing motion to produce a right-handied onscreen action), it makes sense to make Link match up with the majority of the population. If the downside were bigger, I'm sure they would have redisigned for ambidexterous dungions, and made handedness a selectable setting.
I concied the point. There is more to nanotechnology than little tiny robots. However, I still think there is a distinciton that is not being made between true nanotechnology (the little robots, as well as nanowires and that sort of stuff) and nanochemistry (the hair dye, the catalysts you mentioned, and other assorted really small particles).
Both classifications would benifit from that distincion being emphasized more clearly. It seems that the nanochemists really do think nanotechnology is a sexier word.
And I'll second parent's assertion that it's not actually nanotechnology; it's friggin' chemistry. When you can program it, or it can reproduce, *then* you can call it genuine nanotech; not before.
Thank you for saying that. Seriously, eveyone considering writing the word "nanotechnology" should have to say that phrase, or one very like it, ten times before they proceed.
No, you can't have our facny sci-fi word to make chemistry sexy. You'll have to do that on your own.
3) Drugs and Alchohol are physcaly addictive, and physicaly harmful to your health. Gaming in and of itself is not. Gaming is more interactive than TV, but some would consider that a minor point, so we can call them practicaly the same.
I think the crux of the matter is how you define "meaningful" and "real." What is the fundimental difference between a feeling generated from the real world, and one generated from an artificial source? Does the fact that I have an emotional attachment to a virtual character make the attachment any less real than if it was to the neighbor down the street. True one is finite, and the other may not be, but that could be counted as a benefit.
Life, as seen from the inside of this skull of mine, is a series of impressions, senses, and feelings. I don't see a great difference in value in what the source of these things is. In fact the virtual sources for these feelings generaly allow for greater freedom than the real world games you mentioned. There is also the fact that three out of four of your examples generaly come at the cost of exploiting others, a moral dilemma generaly not present in games.
Entertainment, non-productive though it may be, is a nessisary thing for human beings. If you become overly fixated on making your entertainment productive, then you have lost the value in it, at least as entertainment. If you happen to like something that is also productive in terms of sociaty at large, then that's great. However, there should be no guilt in enjoying entertainment that is not so.
You didn't say explicitly that you wanted him to suffer for his political views, but he did outline a clear and likely situation resutling from your suggestion where that is exactly what would happen.
The problem with open voting is this: Right wing boss, left wing employee, or reversed, it doesn't matter. The boss is a jerk, and the employee can't afford to lose his job just now. So he votes in line with his boss to protect his job. That's tampering with the system just as much as ballot stuffing, or cracking a voting machine is. In my opinion it's worse, because it is far easier to do, and far more likely. What a-hole boss is going to take the time to crack a dibold machine, yet how many of them would intimidate their employees into voting the "right way"?
Yes, there are problems with a closed voting system, but those problems are smaller, and more easily protected against than those of an open voting system. The problem lies in the fact that Diebold apparently isn't interested in taking the fairly easy steps nessisary to deal with those problems.
Killing people from half a map away with three pistol shots is fun. It takes a certain ammount of skill, and is satisfying, furthermore it differentiated Halo 1's play from other spray-n-pray shooters. The battle rifle is not an adiquate replacement because it slows the pace down too much. That is why people want it back, and it seems logical to me.
Also, I don't belive your assessment of the pistol as being unbalanced is accurate. It wasn't overpowered, it was simply the most versitile of the light weapons. There are many situations where an AR, Shotgun, or PR would be preferable, and would defeat a pistol. Also, the heavy weapons will all defeat a pistol unless improperly used. Then there is the fact that in any properly set up multiplayer match, everyone has a pistol to start, which should solve any perceved unfairness.
Frankly, I think at least half those opposed to the pistol's performance in Halo 1 simply have a problem with the smallest of the light weapons being the most powerful.
I agree that we have been created, as we do exist. You seem to be arguing from a position of assuming we were intentionaly created, and that leads to the same unprovable can of worms. If no logical analasys can be done on the creator himself, that also applies to such a being's actions. Thus no logical progress can be made on the subject of why we were created, or what atributes the creator did or did not give us.
However in this case, the counterpoint can be analized. It should be perfectly possible to prove that we were created by random circumstances arising out of the natural system. That assertion is entirely internal to our universe, and thus progress can be made.
In any case, my point is that it is as useless to discuss what atributes the creator did or did not imbue us with as it is to discuss the existance of a creator, since the one is dependant on the other.
Re:It's infinity you deal with, show some respect!
on
Dark Matter Exists
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· Score: 1
No, but if you had to reach 0 from -inf, you'd never make it, even if moving at quantized intervals. However, if you said that the concept of numbers just didnt exist past, say, -14 billion and you moved at these quantized intervals, you could very well reach zero. Passing zero and moving again at the same intervals, you could continue to go out forever and still be a measurable distance from zero.
It's not that the present time couldn't exist, it's that the present time couldn't be reached from a point in the infinitely distant past. Hence, the breakdown in the concept of time "before" the Big Bang.
The problem that I see in your argument is that -inf isn't actualy a point, where as the present is. You are correct in assuming that you can't reach "the infinite past", but I don't think that dissalows the concept. If you pick any point in that past, there is a progression between that point and the point that is the present. The number analogy is an apt one, just because you can't actualy count to -inf, doesn't mean that numbers aren't infinite. In the same fasion, just because you can't actualy reach the infinite past does not mean that time is not infinite.
However, in a compleatly different vein: Being that time is a part of the structure of the universe, the concepts of infinite time and the big bang(as currently understood) are mutualy exclusive.
If a god is completely external to our universe, our laws of physics, and any kind of bounds at all, that makes such a being completely immune to any kind of evidentiary testing or logical analysis. Therefore there is no point in thinking about such a being one way or the other. Any discussion on the topic is, by definition, non-provable, pointless speculation. There is nothing to be gained by trying to analyze such a subject, so I find it best to simply discard the topic, and spend my time considering subjects where actual progress can be made.
In response to your statement, I would say that it is only obtuse pride and arrogance that would lead even an intelligent person to make any assertions on the subject at all.
His use of the word "current" is enough implication that the law might be flawed. However, they can't definitly nail it down to a gravitational effect, so it would be premature to say "apparently flawed," as the law may not be.
Our current understanding of gravity fits the definition of a scientific law, thus there is no need to call it anything else. There is also no problem with these laws occasionaly being changed or thrown out. There is nothing in the definition of a scientific law that says it cannot be thrown out due to new data or understanding. The definition mearly requires that there there have never been repeatable contradictions.
It's not their potential validity that makes them incomperable. It's their structure. As I said, one is a valid philosophical theory, with all that implies. The other is a valid scientific theory, with a compleatly different set of implications. Thus, as I said, they're both valid in their respective areas, but you can't really make value judgements for the two, you cannot say one is better than the other. They are different tools for different jobs.
If evolution is the truth, then when you die you'll find out: You'll decay and turn back into dirt to help evolve the next super humans.
If creation is the truth, then when you die you'll find out: You'll find out that when you die, life really isn't over, and you keep living.
The existance of an afterlife of some sort is niether related to, nor dependant on , evolution or creationism. It's a compleatly seperate subject.
For example: A creator has created an afterlife, but chose to create the life we know via the mechanism of evolution. Alternativly, a creator created life according to the more fundamental creationist belief, but has decided that when you die, there is nothing more. Also, there could be no creator, and life evolved an afterlife by some undiscovered mechanism.
I don't claim validity for any of those theories, but my point is that these subjects are not intrinsicly linked.
I'm not entirely certain eather, but I do think they're still not exactly sure what the spark that started life was, they have a couple of likely theories, but no, they're not sure.
So, in turn there are some areas of science that can be called 'blind beliefs', sort of. The difference is that whenever science doesn't know, it makes a guess, but it makes that guess based on the best information they have, and makes it in a testable way, so that it may be disproven later, when more information is avalable.
Religious type 'blind belief' on the other hand is formulated in such a way as not to be testable, or disprovable, not allowing for change due to refined evidence.
It's the difference between science and philosophy. Both involve theories, but they are two very different kinds of theories, so comparison between the two isn't terribly useful.
The survey apparently asked people to respont with true, false, or not sure to the following statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."
So that would likely put you in the not sure catagory. It's a graphic chart, and not very well labled, but it looks like the US's not sure catagory is 15-20%. True seems to be around 50%, with false making up the difference.
Those two are excelent examples, and the columnist's discription of a "highbrow game" was practicaly a review of the Myst series. I'm sure there are a score of other great examples that we're not remembering just at the moment.
I don't think the problem is so much that we don't have highbrow games, as it is that no one, not even snooty columnists, recognizes them when they see them.
You imply malicious intent where there was none. They were not bad kids, they were just kids. There is a not subtile difference between breaking a few small branches and distruction of public property.
In a child's eyes, trees are for climbing, and broken branches grow back. That is the way it should be, and I reject any attempt to change that.
I don't know what sort of chip you have on your sholder that you belive 3, by all acounts, normal and well-behaved 12 year olds should be physicaly beaten for climbing a tree that happened to be owned by the city, but I do belive that type of attitude is far more dangerous to society than any broken cherry tree branch.
They were kids climbing a cherry tree. They were not "destorying public property", they were climbing a tree. When you were a kid, climbing trees, did you spend a lot of time thinking about what you can and can't do in a public tree? Did you even think about if a tree was public or not?
The point is, they were kids, doing kid things. They broke a few branches, they weren't destroying the tree. This is a problem that should have been solved by the cop saying: "Hey kids, you can't break branches on that tree. Why don't you climb down and run on home?"
I don't think I'm out of line for suggesting that 12 year olds should not be arrested for climbing trees, even if they break a few branches.
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Given that fact, and the fact that the downside is realitivly minor (I can't imagine it being too disconcerting for a left-handing motion to produce a right-handied onscreen action), it makes sense to make Link match up with the majority of the population. If the downside were bigger, I'm sure they would have redisigned for ambidexterous dungions, and made handedness a selectable setting.
That's right, I know you ignored that check engine light...
Both classifications would benifit from that distincion being emphasized more clearly. It seems that the nanochemists really do think nanotechnology is a sexier word.
Thank you for saying that. Seriously, eveyone considering writing the word "nanotechnology" should have to say that phrase, or one very like it, ten times before they proceed.
No, you can't have our facny sci-fi word to make chemistry sexy. You'll have to do that on your own.
2) Yes
3) Drugs and Alchohol are physcaly addictive, and physicaly harmful to your health. Gaming in and of itself is not. Gaming is more interactive than TV, but some would consider that a minor point, so we can call them practicaly the same.
I think the crux of the matter is how you define "meaningful" and "real." What is the fundimental difference between a feeling generated from the real world, and one generated from an artificial source? Does the fact that I have an emotional attachment to a virtual character make the attachment any less real than if it was to the neighbor down the street. True one is finite, and the other may not be, but that could be counted as a benefit.
Life, as seen from the inside of this skull of mine, is a series of impressions, senses, and feelings. I don't see a great difference in value in what the source of these things is. In fact the virtual sources for these feelings generaly allow for greater freedom than the real world games you mentioned. There is also the fact that three out of four of your examples generaly come at the cost of exploiting others, a moral dilemma generaly not present in games.
Entertainment, non-productive though it may be, is a nessisary thing for human beings. If you become overly fixated on making your entertainment productive, then you have lost the value in it, at least as entertainment. If you happen to like something that is also productive in terms of sociaty at large, then that's great. However, there should be no guilt in enjoying entertainment that is not so.
The problem with open voting is this: Right wing boss, left wing employee, or reversed, it doesn't matter. The boss is a jerk, and the employee can't afford to lose his job just now. So he votes in line with his boss to protect his job. That's tampering with the system just as much as ballot stuffing, or cracking a voting machine is. In my opinion it's worse, because it is far easier to do, and far more likely. What a-hole boss is going to take the time to crack a dibold machine, yet how many of them would intimidate their employees into voting the "right way"?
Yes, there are problems with a closed voting system, but those problems are smaller, and more easily protected against than those of an open voting system. The problem lies in the fact that Diebold apparently isn't interested in taking the fairly easy steps nessisary to deal with those problems.
No, but additional googleing usualy shows what information is reliable and what isn't.
Also, I don't belive your assessment of the pistol as being unbalanced is accurate. It wasn't overpowered, it was simply the most versitile of the light weapons. There are many situations where an AR, Shotgun, or PR would be preferable, and would defeat a pistol. Also, the heavy weapons will all defeat a pistol unless improperly used. Then there is the fact that in any properly set up multiplayer match, everyone has a pistol to start, which should solve any perceved unfairness.
Frankly, I think at least half those opposed to the pistol's performance in Halo 1 simply have a problem with the smallest of the light weapons being the most powerful.
However in this case, the counterpoint can be analized. It should be perfectly possible to prove that we were created by random circumstances arising out of the natural system. That assertion is entirely internal to our universe, and thus progress can be made.
In any case, my point is that it is as useless to discuss what atributes the creator did or did not imbue us with as it is to discuss the existance of a creator, since the one is dependant on the other.
However, in a compleatly different vein: Being that time is a part of the structure of the universe, the concepts of infinite time and the big bang(as currently understood) are mutualy exclusive.
If a god is completely external to our universe, our laws of physics, and any kind of bounds at all, that makes such a being completely immune to any kind of evidentiary testing or logical analysis. Therefore there is no point in thinking about such a being one way or the other. Any discussion on the topic is, by definition, non-provable, pointless speculation. There is nothing to be gained by trying to analyze such a subject, so I find it best to simply discard the topic, and spend my time considering subjects where actual progress can be made.
In response to your statement, I would say that it is only obtuse pride and arrogance that would lead even an intelligent person to make any assertions on the subject at all.
Our current understanding of gravity fits the definition of a scientific law, thus there is no need to call it anything else. There is also no problem with these laws occasionaly being changed or thrown out. There is nothing in the definition of a scientific law that says it cannot be thrown out due to new data or understanding. The definition mearly requires that there there have never been repeatable contradictions.
The universe doens't need to be static for it to be possible to understand everything in it eventualy, as the second rule implies.
because the human brain need not be static. As we learn more, we will evolve to be able to understand more. Theoreticaly anyway.
It's not their potential validity that makes them incomperable. It's their structure. As I said, one is a valid philosophical theory, with all that implies. The other is a valid scientific theory, with a compleatly different set of implications. Thus, as I said, they're both valid in their respective areas, but you can't really make value judgements for the two, you cannot say one is better than the other. They are different tools for different jobs.
This makes comparisons between the two theories particularly unhelpful, as they are both valid theories in their own arenas.
For example: A creator has created an afterlife, but chose to create the life we know via the mechanism of evolution. Alternativly, a creator created life according to the more fundamental creationist belief, but has decided that when you die, there is nothing more. Also, there could be no creator, and life evolved an afterlife by some undiscovered mechanism.
I don't claim validity for any of those theories, but my point is that these subjects are not intrinsicly linked.
So, in turn there are some areas of science that can be called 'blind beliefs', sort of. The difference is that whenever science doesn't know, it makes a guess, but it makes that guess based on the best information they have, and makes it in a testable way, so that it may be disproven later, when more information is avalable.
Religious type 'blind belief' on the other hand is formulated in such a way as not to be testable, or disprovable, not allowing for change due to refined evidence.
It's the difference between science and philosophy. Both involve theories, but they are two very different kinds of theories, so comparison between the two isn't terribly useful.
So that would likely put you in the not sure catagory. It's a graphic chart, and not very well labled, but it looks like the US's not sure catagory is 15-20%. True seems to be around 50%, with false making up the difference.
Is Dreamfall any good? I've been looking at the box on the shelf for quite a while now, but I can never quite bring myself to buy it.
I don't think the problem is so much that we don't have highbrow games, as it is that no one, not even snooty columnists, recognizes them when they see them.
Just goes to show how up-tight people are on the whole issue. Can't even see a joke when it slaps them in the face.
Ah, funny and true.
In a child's eyes, trees are for climbing, and broken branches grow back. That is the way it should be, and I reject any attempt to change that.
I don't know what sort of chip you have on your sholder that you belive 3, by all acounts, normal and well-behaved 12 year olds should be physicaly beaten for climbing a tree that happened to be owned by the city, but I do belive that type of attitude is far more dangerous to society than any broken cherry tree branch.
The point is, they were kids, doing kid things. They broke a few branches, they weren't destroying the tree. This is a problem that should have been solved by the cop saying: "Hey kids, you can't break branches on that tree. Why don't you climb down and run on home?"
I don't think I'm out of line for suggesting that 12 year olds should not be arrested for climbing trees, even if they break a few branches.