As an aside, your statement on the Higgs Boson is wrong in pretty much every possible way. If what you said was true, the Higgs would be a fundamentally unscientific concept and there would not be a significant amount of money put into finding it.
On the contrary, the presence of the Higgs can quite certainly be detected (by the standards of particle physics, which means it is quite often performed by inference on the behaviour of other particles, but that is quite sufficient in general) if it exists, and we know exactly what it is meant to be: it's the requirement in the standard model of a field (and hence particle) with a specific set of properties leading to the existence of mass which has led to it existing as part of the standard model to begin with.
And, best of all, its existence is fully falsifiable. There is a finite energy region within which it can exist meaningfully - if we investigate the entire region and fail to find the Higgs, we can declare that it does not exist.
Really, if God was as rigorously defined as the God Particle, these conversations would look very different.
Ummm... right, you realize that a hypothesis is a speculation, conjecture, or guess based on observations, right? A useable theory is just a framework of logical guesses that have so far proven to be reliable in explaining something that is happening in the physical world. But a tested and verified hypothesis is typically given higher status than a "speculation". Indeed, that's what the word Theory implies, in a scientific sense.
That does NOT mean the true and complete explanation of the fundamental forces of nature (what general relativity and quantum mechanics deal with) is in fact anything like quantum mechanics and general relativity. But it does mean that they are in agreement with these theories to a staggeringly high degree for all but a handful of the most extreme conditions that exist in the universe. We aren't going to wake up tomorrow and find out that the quantum theory that predicts the spectral lines of LEDs is off by orders of magnitude and we've been silly all this time. In fact, it's probable that we'll find that they are very like the current theories, with some correcting term for extreme values - such as the relativistic corrections to Newton's laws. Wait, corrections to a law? That leads nicely into this point:
When a theory crosses into fact territory is when that theory can be proven to be correct. When this happens, a theory becomes what we call a Law of Nature. The fact is there are still quite a few problems with Evolution which it has never adequately explained. This is explicitly untrue. A law, in the strictest sense, is a rule which governs the relationship between a group of quantities (or, more generally, any given properties. In terms of physical sciences, these are typically quantifiable values, so I'll run with that term for the time being). Something being a "Law" strictly has no bearing on its scientific accuracy: Boyle's Law and its big brother the Ideal Gas Law? Obviously inaccurate. Newton's laws? As mentioned above, not accurate without relativistic correction, and even then they are obviously still somewhat incomplete. I could go on, but you get the point, I hope - "Law" is not a badge of honour, it's a descriptor used for a particular piece of the framework of a scientific theory.
And, finally, as an aside: You think the "a wizard did it" description is more impressive than the staggering complexity of processes and interactions and struggle that the theory of evolution suggests? That troubles me, a bit.
"Oh well of course micro-evolution exists, silly goose! Whoever would have thought we suggested otherwise? It's that big scary macro-evolution which there is no evidence for!"
The problem with all the pithy short jibes is that the anti-evolutionists are just as capable of batting one back, which gives the impression of some sort of tie to the uninitiated viewer.
In such a debate, I suspect taking the offensive is not the right way to go: Demanding them to acknowledge weakness in their own theories and state what would be sufficient to falsify them is obviously going to put them on the defensive, and viewers would be more willing to accept defensive responses.
Instead, take the opposite approach: Ask them what evidence would convince them that evolution is valid - and, as a followup, you could also ask why they feel the current body of research fails to fulfil these criteria. If they dismiss the theory out of hand, it shows an element of close-mindedness. If they don't, you open the avenue for the discussion of what the actual evidence is.
Of course, such a line of questioning is more valid for a real debate, rather than a 30-second talking point which the candidates respond to.
While nuclear decay is indeed believed to be a random process, it's a bit misleading to say it is a "proof" of truly random processes - while it does appear to be statistically random, this does not strictly rule out the possibility of there being underlying factors which govern when a decay occurs (good old hidden variable theory, for example). Obviously, there are significantly more detailed explanations which address why this process is indeed random, but by itself it is not really a convincing argument.
This serves to illustrate a problem with attempting to put forward a scientific statement as part of a question in a debate - you're given only a tiny timeframe to specify the question, which almost certainly requires that there be some sort of ambiguity in your statement of any given scientific point. A candidate who wants to come off looking reasonably science-savvy can then pick on such a point to give the appearance of countering your argument, even if their argument is handily addressed by some other factor which you were simply unable to include in your question.
While Gauss and Einstein were both very prominent in their fields in later life, it is an oft-repeated story that Einstein underperformed in school, while there are tales about the various mathematical insights Gauss demonstrated even as a very young boy. Hence the point is that just because someone is a slow learner at a young age doesn't mean it's appropriate to extrapolate this to judge their entire future potential.
It does somewhat dent the conclusion when one notes that the stories are certainly exaggerated, if not outright untrue - Einstein performed well in school, and there are questions about the veracity of some of Gauss' more impressive performances.
But the question is, what exactly have companies like Red Hat or MySQL done when they make these kinds of decisions that is intrinsically unethical? You seem to be confusing speech and beer - the codes remain in full compliance with the GPL, they have simply decided to change who they personally distribute it to. The only cost to the community at large involved here is that they have theoretically passed on some of those copying costs which you dismiss as marginal to someone else, so surely your attempt to compare them to the slave trade is just a teeny bit of an overreaction, no?
The problem is that there is a non-trivial fraction of open source supporters who really believe that the instant a company charges money for software and doesn't have it up for free download for anyone who wants to grab a copy, they are acting unethically and demonstrating a "misplaced sense of entitlement" and "poor moral character".
It really does do quite a bit of damage to the potential acceptance of open source software that this idea is so common, but it's certainly not the article writer's fault that many people have this impression.
Isn't the use of the word "time" in all such statements generally taken as shorthand for "processor time"? It's just easier to talk about "time" and assume fixed resources than it is to be distracted by all the different ways this requirement can be met. I always read comments on this topic that way, and as far as I know that's a generally true statement, isn't it?
The interviews implied that Starcraft 2 is going to be an army game, not a hero game. It suggested that, if plot characters are present during the campaign, it will be the exception rather than the rule, so they'll probably be more like the named characters from Warcraft2 and the first Starcraft - regular units with slight buffs and special unit portraits, rather than all-destroying behemoths.
Hmm. Buggered if I can remember what guide it was now, the last alt I leveled was back before the first expansion came out, so it's been a while. Jame's guide, perhaps? In reality, the guide isn't really that important, as provided you plan out your leveling halfway sensibly it's not really that much of a problem. I only really went looking for one as I was just lazy and didn't want to bother cross-referencing the mess of leveling zones scattered across Azeroth in the middle levels as I had switched factions and wasn't familiar with the ordering.
Wait, so that's 6 hours of rested grinding to gain one level at level 34? I'm somewhat baffled by how wrong that sounds, although it is somewhat offset by the fact that you are approaching the game in almost exactly the wrong fashion if you're concerned about efficiency and dislike grinding.
Grinding on oranges is a bad idea as you lose a significant chunk of dps when you go to "orange", so the loss in throughput is nowhere near offset by the increase in xp yield. Similarly, you want to be almost always questing - for most quests, this gives a 50 to 100% improvement per kill (barring some of the particularly stupid ones). Just plan your quests a little and you can generally do fistfuls of quests in a cycle round a zone, which cuts down on time lost traveling and helps mix up the variety of what you're doing to take the edge off the "grind" feeling.
I was a bit lazy, and grabbed a copy of one of the optimal questing guides for when I wanted to try out an alt, and positively tore up the levels, even though I wasn't particularly efficient: time per level steadily increased, but it was only about 3 or 4 hours of not fully rested leveling for level 60. I can imagine you'd think the game was a grindfest if you're somehow taking twice that amount of time per level and are barely into the middle stretch of levels.
To each his own. You favor linear, I favor non-linear. Your assumption that my post indicates I favour linear gameplay indicates you missed my point somewhat, as in general I fully agree with you - I probably played UO for two or three times as long as as I did WoW, and still wait impatiently for a more developed successor. My observation was that almost all the things you list (everything barring boating and housing) as being part of UO's "variety" are not only present in WoW, but better executed. The key point is what you said here:
I feel WOW did not have as much due to WOW's linear nature. That's the key difference - although WoW and UO have basically comparable amounts of underlying systems (barring player housing and how people interact with the world, largely down to engine and world design limitations), UO felt bigger due to the fact that everything is not tied directly to your monster face-smashing skill and your progress through the prescribed path, and this degree of freedom was its main strength, not the actual quality of the underlying game mechanics. A simple enumeration of features does games like UO a disservice, and somewhat misses the point - your reply to the sibling post with the bandit anecdote is a much better example of why that style of game has potential, I would say.
Actually, I just deleted my copy of EasyUO off this very PC two nights ago while doing a clear out in preparation for moving it. That doesn't change the underlying problem that the system was staggering repetitive (and, as a corollary, I never felt the need to download WoW Glider or the like to avoid the grind in WoW for the most part)
I played UO for years and years, it still has a fond place in my heart. But you're complaining about an excess of grinding in WoW, and then lauding UO for its gathering and crafting systems? They were nothing but a grind, and even less engaging in general due to the extremely repetitive nature of the activity and general lack of threat (barring random PvP encounters if you chose to do it in Felucca, obviously). Similarly - hunting and treasure hunting form two of the primary quest archetypes of WoW also (and are, I would argue, better developed in the latter setting). "Dungeons" are much better developed in WoW (although the instancing does somewhat detract from the fun of that, from a certain point of view) and are the main setting of the gear grind in WoW.
In terms of actual game mechanics, I would suggest that WoW beats UO hands down - many of the concepts you laud in UO are not only present in WoW, but are refined and improved on. What's different is primarily the arrangement of the world, and the adjacent mechanics which aren't strictly related to "gameplay". WoW is very clearly a path from A to B, where A is level 1 and B is a pimped out level 70. You can take small diversions along the path (crafting, RP, etc), but basically they are all fitted in to support your primary profession of bashing creatures' faces in. UO, on the other hand, had a much broader scope: there was no fundamental need to go kill beasts of any sort (indeed, it was often not that profitable to do so) and you could build a skillset completely independent of your ability to smash faces and still have a complete, meaningful character. Coupled with the additional mechanics for interacting with the world (which rarely affected actual mechanics), you have a recipe for a much more broader, more realistic feeling world than that offered by the rather linear pathway in WoW and similar MMOs.
Warhammer intrigues me, but most of the press I've seen on it has talked about the game at a very high level, as it were - lots about the overarching systems, little about the nitty gritty of how the game actually handles (maybe I've just been looking in the wrong place though? If anyone has some references, that would be nice).
This is the main problem which crops up when people say that the genre is stale and needs new ideas and so forth - the game which contains those ideas still needs to be satisfying to play - the "Hey look, we have meaningful PvP" angle has been done numerous times in the past, but the problem is most of the games are apparently just not fun to play. This is where WoW's strength really came from: it didn't do anything particularly new or unique, but it took all the scattered ideas in the genre and put it together in a nice neat package that was extremely polished and engaging and so people enjoyed it, lack of unique features be damned.
David Carruthers, CEO (at the time) of BetOnSports.com was arrested while transferring in Texas while transferring on a flight from the UK to Costra Rica. Not sure what the end result was, as the entry in Wikipedia stops while he was under house arrest in the US last year, and I'm too lazy to go on a hunt through google.
Clearly, you haven't been exposed to the sheer range of nuttery which has been going on the UK in recent years over "radiation". I envy you. There are groups claiming literally -all- radiation is bad for you, and advocating the complete removal of not just telephone masts and wifi (one of the main teachers unions put out a call to have it removed from all schools a few months ago), but also for the need for -massive- shielding on pretty much everything: Lead paint (or the modern fancy equivalent) on the walls, extensive shielding on household wiring, and even some particularly bizarre ideas such as a stehtoscope-like attachement to enable you to talk on your (regular, wire-using) phone without having the coils in it too close to your head.
Obviously some of the ideas there are more fringe than others, but there is a non-trivial section of the population who are pretty much terrified of everything between the visual and radio bands of the EM spectrum (and, indeed, maybe beyond)
2%? The accuracy rate for test group as a whole identifying whether or not the transmitter on was about 50% for both groups. If only statistics could give us some insight into why this was the case...
With regard to why people get cancer: There are dozens of mechanisms through which DNA can be damaged, due to the complexity you mentioned. Your cells are in a constant state of flux, and your body generally does its darndest to keep everything more or less in line. Sometimes though, it messes up, and Cancer can be one of the results of that.
This is the standard line from most of the people criticing the study, but it's not totally valid - although it's not appropriate to include it in the analysis in the actual paper, the researchers revealed that among the dozen people who withdrew, none demonstrated symptoms which were more strongly correlated with the mobile phone signals than those who remained in the study - indeed, none of them managed to correctly identify whether the signals were on or off during the initial double-blind phase.
Yes, it raises questions, but this is an issue with studies with such small uptake numbers (they could only get 1/3 of the number of "electrosensitives" they needed to make a truly conclusive study), and doesn't really strongly invalidate the basic conclusions.
Every time there's a topic like this, people say that, and it's just wrong. Blizzard explicitly state in all of their press releases that anyone whose subscription has ended or been canceled is not counted.
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On the contrary, the presence of the Higgs can quite certainly be detected (by the standards of particle physics, which means it is quite often performed by inference on the behaviour of other particles, but that is quite sufficient in general) if it exists, and we know exactly what it is meant to be: it's the requirement in the standard model of a field (and hence particle) with a specific set of properties leading to the existence of mass which has led to it existing as part of the standard model to begin with.
And, best of all, its existence is fully falsifiable. There is a finite energy region within which it can exist meaningfully - if we investigate the entire region and fail to find the Higgs, we can declare that it does not exist.
Really, if God was as rigorously defined as the God Particle, these conversations would look very different.
Are you seriously suggesting that government appointments are done on the basis of merit? Good lord!
And, finally, as an aside: You think the "a wizard did it" description is more impressive than the staggering complexity of processes and interactions and struggle that the theory of evolution suggests? That troubles me, a bit.
"Oh well of course micro-evolution exists, silly goose! Whoever would have thought we suggested otherwise? It's that big scary macro-evolution which there is no evidence for!"
The problem with all the pithy short jibes is that the anti-evolutionists are just as capable of batting one back, which gives the impression of some sort of tie to the uninitiated viewer.
Instead, take the opposite approach: Ask them what evidence would convince them that evolution is valid - and, as a followup, you could also ask why they feel the current body of research fails to fulfil these criteria. If they dismiss the theory out of hand, it shows an element of close-mindedness. If they don't, you open the avenue for the discussion of what the actual evidence is.
Of course, such a line of questioning is more valid for a real debate, rather than a 30-second talking point which the candidates respond to.
This serves to illustrate a problem with attempting to put forward a scientific statement as part of a question in a debate - you're given only a tiny timeframe to specify the question, which almost certainly requires that there be some sort of ambiguity in your statement of any given scientific point. A candidate who wants to come off looking reasonably science-savvy can then pick on such a point to give the appearance of countering your argument, even if their argument is handily addressed by some other factor which you were simply unable to include in your question.
It does somewhat dent the conclusion when one notes that the stories are certainly exaggerated, if not outright untrue - Einstein performed well in school, and there are questions about the veracity of some of Gauss' more impressive performances.
But the question is, what exactly have companies like Red Hat or MySQL done when they make these kinds of decisions that is intrinsically unethical? You seem to be confusing speech and beer - the codes remain in full compliance with the GPL, they have simply decided to change who they personally distribute it to. The only cost to the community at large involved here is that they have theoretically passed on some of those copying costs which you dismiss as marginal to someone else, so surely your attempt to compare them to the slave trade is just a teeny bit of an overreaction, no?
It really does do quite a bit of damage to the potential acceptance of open source software that this idea is so common, but it's certainly not the article writer's fault that many people have this impression.
And of course, after hitting post I reconsider that "processor time" is roughly as vague as just saying "time". But I'm sure you know what I meant.
Isn't the use of the word "time" in all such statements generally taken as shorthand for "processor time"? It's just easier to talk about "time" and assume fixed resources than it is to be distracted by all the different ways this requirement can be met. I always read comments on this topic that way, and as far as I know that's a generally true statement, isn't it?
The interviews implied that Starcraft 2 is going to be an army game, not a hero game. It suggested that, if plot characters are present during the campaign, it will be the exception rather than the rule, so they'll probably be more like the named characters from Warcraft2 and the first Starcraft - regular units with slight buffs and special unit portraits, rather than all-destroying behemoths.
Hmm. Buggered if I can remember what guide it was now, the last alt I leveled was back before the first expansion came out, so it's been a while. Jame's guide, perhaps? In reality, the guide isn't really that important, as provided you plan out your leveling halfway sensibly it's not really that much of a problem. I only really went looking for one as I was just lazy and didn't want to bother cross-referencing the mess of leveling zones scattered across Azeroth in the middle levels as I had switched factions and wasn't familiar with the ordering.
Grinding on oranges is a bad idea as you lose a significant chunk of dps when you go to "orange", so the loss in throughput is nowhere near offset by the increase in xp yield. Similarly, you want to be almost always questing - for most quests, this gives a 50 to 100% improvement per kill (barring some of the particularly stupid ones). Just plan your quests a little and you can generally do fistfuls of quests in a cycle round a zone, which cuts down on time lost traveling and helps mix up the variety of what you're doing to take the edge off the "grind" feeling.
I was a bit lazy, and grabbed a copy of one of the optimal questing guides for when I wanted to try out an alt, and positively tore up the levels, even though I wasn't particularly efficient: time per level steadily increased, but it was only about 3 or 4 hours of not fully rested leveling for level 60. I can imagine you'd think the game was a grindfest if you're somehow taking twice that amount of time per level and are barely into the middle stretch of levels.
Words and phrases in a language with multiple usages? What madness is this?
Actually, I just deleted my copy of EasyUO off this very PC two nights ago while doing a clear out in preparation for moving it. That doesn't change the underlying problem that the system was staggering repetitive (and, as a corollary, I never felt the need to download WoW Glider or the like to avoid the grind in WoW for the most part)
I played UO for years and years, it still has a fond place in my heart. But you're complaining about an excess of grinding in WoW, and then lauding UO for its gathering and crafting systems? They were nothing but a grind, and even less engaging in general due to the extremely repetitive nature of the activity and general lack of threat (barring random PvP encounters if you chose to do it in Felucca, obviously). Similarly - hunting and treasure hunting form two of the primary quest archetypes of WoW also (and are, I would argue, better developed in the latter setting). "Dungeons" are much better developed in WoW (although the instancing does somewhat detract from the fun of that, from a certain point of view) and are the main setting of the gear grind in WoW.
In terms of actual game mechanics, I would suggest that WoW beats UO hands down - many of the concepts you laud in UO are not only present in WoW, but are refined and improved on. What's different is primarily the arrangement of the world, and the adjacent mechanics which aren't strictly related to "gameplay". WoW is very clearly a path from A to B, where A is level 1 and B is a pimped out level 70. You can take small diversions along the path (crafting, RP, etc), but basically they are all fitted in to support your primary profession of bashing creatures' faces in. UO, on the other hand, had a much broader scope: there was no fundamental need to go kill beasts of any sort (indeed, it was often not that profitable to do so) and you could build a skillset completely independent of your ability to smash faces and still have a complete, meaningful character. Coupled with the additional mechanics for interacting with the world (which rarely affected actual mechanics), you have a recipe for a much more broader, more realistic feeling world than that offered by the rather linear pathway in WoW and similar MMOs.
This is the main problem which crops up when people say that the genre is stale and needs new ideas and so forth - the game which contains those ideas still needs to be satisfying to play - the "Hey look, we have meaningful PvP" angle has been done numerous times in the past, but the problem is most of the games are apparently just not fun to play. This is where WoW's strength really came from: it didn't do anything particularly new or unique, but it took all the scattered ideas in the genre and put it together in a nice neat package that was extremely polished and engaging and so people enjoyed it, lack of unique features be damned.
David Carruthers, CEO (at the time) of BetOnSports.com was arrested while transferring in Texas while transferring on a flight from the UK to Costra Rica. Not sure what the end result was, as the entry in Wikipedia stops while he was under house arrest in the US last year, and I'm too lazy to go on a hunt through google.
Obviously some of the ideas there are more fringe than others, but there is a non-trivial section of the population who are pretty much terrified of everything between the visual and radio bands of the EM spectrum (and, indeed, maybe beyond)
With regard to why people get cancer: There are dozens of mechanisms through which DNA can be damaged, due to the complexity you mentioned. Your cells are in a constant state of flux, and your body generally does its darndest to keep everything more or less in line. Sometimes though, it messes up, and Cancer can be one of the results of that.
Yes, it raises questions, but this is an issue with studies with such small uptake numbers (they could only get 1/3 of the number of "electrosensitives" they needed to make a truly conclusive study), and doesn't really strongly invalidate the basic conclusions.
Every time there's a topic like this, people say that, and it's just wrong. Blizzard explicitly state in all of their press releases that anyone whose subscription has ended or been canceled is not counted.
I've found that arrogance goes along much more often with dubiously written Big Bad Evil Guys, myself.