Sounds more like an issue with the game than the console. I didn't buy Assassin's Creed because while it sounds cool, it's apparently very repetetive and gets old fast. Half-Life 2 is meant to be awful on the PS3 because the port wasn't done by Valve themselves. Seeing as Assassin's Creed was quite an early PS3 game as well, you can't expect the developers to be as familiar with the system as they will be in a couple of years. Games usually look better and better throughout a console's lifespan. My laptop certainly has nothing like the power of my PS3, and overheats after an hour or so driving my HDTV on medium graphics settings on Test Drive Unlimited (not even at full resolution), so there's more anecdotal evidence to balance out yours!
Ah so you mean that the low gear would still have faster acceleration than the higher one at lower RPMs, but the gearing is so tall on the lower gear that you cruise around in the lower power band at city driving speeds to save power. You'd still be better off using both gears to get the best 0-60 acceleration though, unless it takes a long time to change gear.
If they make them weaker then they'd bend even further. I'm not sure if I believe the guy above because carbon fibre is extremely rigid, and tends to snap rather than bend..
I don't see how I'm meant to know it's not your primary language, your English seems pretty good to me. I guess metal that has been hardened could get brittle and shatter, I'm not an engineer so I'm not an expert. I still wouldn't expect an axel to explode at high rotation, the bearings would go long before the axel loses axial integrity..
Yes, a lower rpm is preferable if possible, I suppose any failure would be less catastrophic with less kinetic energy, but we're not talking about too crazy RPMs here - the Tesla website has info on the motor and it looks like it is only useful up to about 13,500 RPM. Some internal combustion engined racing cars can rev that high, and an electric motor is a lot simpler than a combustion engine so there is less to worry about breaking even at those RPM levels. The Tesla is limited to 125mph too, so again that's a pretty standard speed for car axels and bearings to cope with. So the only thing you'd need to worry about in a parts-of-your-car-disintegrating-at-high-speed type way is your tyres wearing away a bit quicker (and of course the problem that you need a racetrack to be able to drive at 125mph without getting arrested).
Basically I don't think there is anything to worry about, and I look forward to more car manufacturers going the electric route:)
That seems a bit backwards to me. A taller gear would have slower acceleration. So you'd use the shorter gear to get into motion, and then if you want to run the motor at a slower speed you switch into the high gear.
You'd also need to switch into higher gear to achieve higher speeds at some point as you'll simply run out of revs in the electric motor on the lower gear.
If the driver wants to "save battery juice" then moving at high speed and then using regenerative braking isn't a way to charge up your batteries. They'd just stay at lower speeds otherwise they are wasting power. Regenerative braking is nice to reclaim some of your velocity as power again. You have to balance motor efficiency vs aerodynamic drag.
I don't know much about electric motors, but I know about gear ratios and drag from first-hand experience:p In fact I have an electric scooter as well, but the motor in it is incredibly weak so it's hard to tell its performance characteristics.
Was that a very poor attempt at joke, or do you just know nothing about cars and metals?
Assuming the same diameter of wheels, they would be be spinning just as fast at 200mph in an electric car as they would be in a combusion engined car. I would also expect that the axels would melt from friction before the metal 'disintegrated'. Metal doesn't even 'disintegrate' unless you count rusting. It's usually quite malleable and would simply deform if large stresses are places upon it.
I just remember an episode where a girl developed light sensitivity and House punched one of his little team of symptom analysers for being right. He saved a little girl from having a limb amputated though, so it was right to go behind House's back that time:P
As for the economy and immigration thing, yeah Japan is the ultimate in overcrowding among well developed nations at least. While I think controlling families is sensible, it seems almost worse than controlling immigration, but I think they can pay a tax to have more than one kid? Am I thinking of China? Hmm.
I had heard of New Mexico, I didn't realise it linked to Mexico outside of the actual name (places like New York and New England are hardly mirror images of their namesakes!), that's quite strange that non English speaking communities would grow out of American ancestry!
As for Mexico City thriving as well as New York and attracting people in.. well it's like a chicken and egg situation that ends up as a virtuous circle if you manage to get it started - get something interesting in there, start up some industry to attract workers and the economy would surely improve itself over time, and attract in more people etc. Just the same, somewhere like New York could be hit by some natural (or unnatural) disaster and end up like New Orleans:( A quick google shows that they are up to near 2/3rds of their population again after almost 3 years, and at least since the city has some wealth behind it then it's possible to rebuild.. but I saw some footage of the place a year after Katrina, and it was still a nightmare.. every single building was damaged..
Personally I'm quite happy where I am, and am not out looking for making a superstar career in New York or Silicon Valley or anything, I'm quite happy in Scotland:) I used to say if I moved I'd go for Canada or Japan, though I've gone off Canada a bit since I associate it so much with a bad relationship. I know that's pretty dumb but I can't help it, plus I've been to Canada now and know it's not much different from here apart from the larger scale of buildings and cars! oh and New York Fries was awesome! We need to get rid of McDonalds over here and get some New York Fries joints opened up! Anyway, that leaves Japan, and combined with me no longer being a Christian (and therefore able to be a lot more open minded towards the heavily spiritual traditions and ideas they have, which I've always thought were cool but also just had to think of them as 'wrong'), and all the funky technology they get out there, that's still an attractive proposition. I'd really have to learn the language to be able to work properly out there though I think - apparently Japanese business isn't very welcoming of foreigners. I've never even been there on a holiday though, I should do that first before making any big plans! I'm rambling again, I shall stop.
I just remember enjoying the bit where the special ops dude invaded her mansion, as it reminded me of Operation Flashpoint, which I'd been playing a lot around that time:p The second one was just crap though.
I actually expected the first movie to suck though, so that perhaps made it easier for me to enjoy the bits that were good. I have never really liked Tomb Raider as a game, and was always quite cynical about their choice of a big titted heroine as the protagonist. It wouldn't have done nearly so well if it weren't for that.
BTW, while reading more of your comments has made me realise that you were not just trolling with your original remark (I found it rather abrasive myself), I think being a coder and reading up on Microsoft APIs probably puts you into the 'Windows Expert' category, because most people have nothing like that level of knowledge. I only started using Windows around 1998, but within a couple of years I was probably an 'expert' compared to most Windows users too.
Even running in a limited user account is an 'expert' type thing to do, strangely enough. I don't think I could be bothered with doing that though. I do vaguely remember trying it once and just getting hacked off. Linux and OSX are pretty good as they just ask you for your password when you need to do some administration, whereas if you want to for example install a printer on Windows, I'm not sure if there would be a way to do it without logging out, then logon as administrator, then logout and log back in as yourself.. you could perhaps use 'run as' and start up a commandline, then run explorer from there and open up the control panel - but is there a simpler way? It's been traditional where I work to just give all users admin access to their local machines. It stops hassles if they need to install something when out on the road for example. I also know of at least one piece of software we use that pops up errors when you are not running as admin >.< but changing access privileges to its program files directory may possibly cure that.
No, he was simply pointing out that 'controlled environments' are not normal.
Recently one of my users got his laptop infected with spyware because he let his daughter user it - she fell for an ad and installed some fake anti-spyware software which messed up his machine. After some real cleanup it's running okay
One of our MDs, who is over 70, has a habit of screwing up his machines really badly. He is terrified to let me just backup his data and reinstall Windows. He also carries around 2 or 3 bags of paper files with him wherever he goes because he once got sued by an American company claiming they invented something that he claims he invented, and he ended up having to pay a licensing fee or something. Anyway, he currently has 2 machines, one pretty fucked up one and one I'm sure will get there eventually (although after I talked to him a couple of years about not installing random garbage anti-spyware stuff and just sticking to the company anti-virus and spybot, he's bothered me a lot less). He recently talked about the idea of even getting another machine soon.. if he does that I suppose I'll get him a terabyte hard drive and backup both his machines to that so that he can't be paranoid about losing anything. I think he already has bought and filled a 300GB external drive with downloaded movies, music and other crap, rather than just copying the 40GB contents of his old laptop over and dumping it. -_-
To support your argument a little though, my own XP Pro machine is still fine after a year and a half of use though, whereas with 98 I'd be considering a reinstall by now.
Uh.. we run Autodesk products on all our engineering workstations and their hardware doesn't "die all the time". I'd suggest that's more because your school is buying crappy cheap hardware.
I haven't read about TOR for a while, and yes doing a bruteforce MitM attack would be impractical with current technology, but all encryption can be broken, that's all I was implying:p
Does Gallium then have to have appropriate interfaces to nVidia/ATI's version of OpenGL? It seems like this is a case of improper implementation of specifications, like people having to write websites directly to work with IE, rather than writing them to comply with web standards..
61.0237441 cubic inches. So about a 244ci engine. I think that's what you guys measure them in anyway. Or alternatively 1 litre is 1 liter. Something like that.
The point isn't that Linux doesn't have codecs to play play hi-def content, the point is that there apparently are no Linux drivers out there that make use of the HD video acceleration hardware that is currently available.
As for having yet another API to go through, I fail to see how it would be a 'crushing blow to all gaming for Windows', since even if it did have perfect Direct3D compatibility, it would simply make it easier to port Windows games to Linux. We already have Direct3D support through WINE, and even then it isn't 100%, so what makes you think that starting again and trying to route it through another API is going to make it any better?
What would be more of a problem for Windows gaming, is if games manufacturers actually started making games for other operating systems. Even then it is not going to be a 'blow' unless this actually causes less games to be sold for Windows.
I don't mean this post in any hostile or patronising way btw, I simply am trying to point out what I think is the case. I've often wished over the years that more games were made specifically for Mac OS and Linux. Recently I just gave up and got a PS3. Consoles haven't been a very attractive option compared to PC gaming since the controls aren't very suitable for some types of game (RTS/FPS), but at least these days they can download patches and extra content. I still wish all FPS games on the PS3 would support the keyboard and mouse arrangement, but I'm getting okay with the joysticks. And at least for online play, everyone else is limited by the same type of control system. I mostly just miss the mouse when using sniper rifles now, as I know from Counter-Strike and Operation Flashpoint that I am capable of far, far better speed and precision with a mouse.
I think the point is that it is CPU dependent if you don't have any assistance from video hardware acceleration, as is the case if your video drivers are incomplete.
May I point out that while usage may be up in other places, I'd expect American cars to be the heaviest and therefore least fuel efficient of any other country's cars (though Australia makes similarly large cars). European and Japanese markets tend to buy much smaller cars. We also probably have a lot more diesel cars which will increase our average mileage even further.. I've not got any figures, but I don't think anyone who has actually seen the difference between the cars in America and elsewhere could disagree. I have a friend in America who reckons that her 4.0 litre car is an 'economy' version. That amuses me:)
It's been a while since I saw it, and the second was poor, but I remember thinking the first Tomb Raider was quite a good movie. Hitman was okay. Doom was bollocks. This looks a bit cheesy but could be good.
I have to admit that while I enjoyed the first game, I never bothered to buy the second. Since the first game had dynamic difficulty, the level of ability the enemies had by the end was crazy - maybe I should have purposely played badly occasionally so that the enemies didn't react to me immediately as I popped out from a corner even in bullet time. The actual control system and bullet time stuff was done amazingly well though, I loved being able to roll and shoot at the same time, and how it slowed down time slightly while you did it (or maybe I'm getting confused with The Opera, heh).
Yes, my own problem with religion is in fact where would the creator come from, and how did anything come to exist, so you've hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Still, I say 'obvious' because some people just consider it obvious that God must have made everything. I'm not saying I believe that, but lots of people do. The bible says something similar to "the heaven's declare God's glory", and I know lots of people who think that just because of for example the beauty of a starry sky or a scenic view that God exists. It's 'obvious' to them. It may not be very rational, but that doesn't mean they don't believe it, and in fact there is no way of convincing them out of it - even if we do accurately model all the workings of the Universe, we cannot prove that it wasn't created by some other intelligence. But then, where did that intelligence come from? Surely it must have been 'created'?
At some point, something must have existed. I have been dubious as to ideas such as the whole universe showing some type of 'consciousness', but realised yesterday that if biological forms of life can develop to achieve consciousness, then perhaps there are other ways to achieve it. We know we can simulate it via computer, but maybe there are other ways for systems to become self-organising than just the ones that have biological life.
I agree that it's better not to have an answer and search, which is why I am doing just that. Religion is convenient because some people just want to get on with their lives and would rather pretend they have all the answers to life's basic questions, so that they can focus on other things.
Ah I didn't realise you weren't being serious, I haven't heard of that movie, most horror movies I've seen have been rather moronic.
So just reading the start of your post again.. I think there are reasons to speculate on other intelligences greater than our own, or systems outside our universe. There is no evidence enabling rational people to believe those speculations to be true, but I think the idea that we are the only beings ever to achieve our level of intelligence is pretty arrogant. It is of course possible that we are the first, but we don't have much evidence for or against any of that. I remember reading that some scientists think we are in the 8th cycle of our universe, the chances of another system similar to earth's happening even through all that time is probably insanely remote though..
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Heh, and the ass in the Tomb Raider shower scene was actually a body double :p
Sounds more like an issue with the game than the console. I didn't buy Assassin's Creed because while it sounds cool, it's apparently very repetetive and gets old fast. Half-Life 2 is meant to be awful on the PS3 because the port wasn't done by Valve themselves. Seeing as Assassin's Creed was quite an early PS3 game as well, you can't expect the developers to be as familiar with the system as they will be in a couple of years. Games usually look better and better throughout a console's lifespan. My laptop certainly has nothing like the power of my PS3, and overheats after an hour or so driving my HDTV on medium graphics settings on Test Drive Unlimited (not even at full resolution), so there's more anecdotal evidence to balance out yours!
Ah so you mean that the low gear would still have faster acceleration than the higher one at lower RPMs, but the gearing is so tall on the lower gear that you cruise around in the lower power band at city driving speeds to save power. You'd still be better off using both gears to get the best 0-60 acceleration though, unless it takes a long time to change gear.
If they make them weaker then they'd bend even further. I'm not sure if I believe the guy above because carbon fibre is extremely rigid, and tends to snap rather than bend..
I don't see how I'm meant to know it's not your primary language, your English seems pretty good to me. I guess metal that has been hardened could get brittle and shatter, I'm not an engineer so I'm not an expert. I still wouldn't expect an axel to explode at high rotation, the bearings would go long before the axel loses axial integrity..
Yes, a lower rpm is preferable if possible, I suppose any failure would be less catastrophic with less kinetic energy, but we're not talking about too crazy RPMs here - the Tesla website has info on the motor and it looks like it is only useful up to about 13,500 RPM. Some internal combustion engined racing cars can rev that high, and an electric motor is a lot simpler than a combustion engine so there is less to worry about breaking even at those RPM levels. The Tesla is limited to 125mph too, so again that's a pretty standard speed for car axels and bearings to cope with. So the only thing you'd need to worry about in a parts-of-your-car-disintegrating-at-high-speed type way is your tyres wearing away a bit quicker (and of course the problem that you need a racetrack to be able to drive at 125mph without getting arrested).
Basically I don't think there is anything to worry about, and I look forward to more car manufacturers going the electric route :)
You could say the same for any roadster.
For a sports car, and even more a lightweight carbon fibre one with a completely new drivetrain philosophy, YES it's astoundingly cheap.
No, I can't afford one either. Stop whining.
That seems a bit backwards to me. A taller gear would have slower acceleration. So you'd use the shorter gear to get into motion, and then if you want to run the motor at a slower speed you switch into the high gear.
You'd also need to switch into higher gear to achieve higher speeds at some point as you'll simply run out of revs in the electric motor on the lower gear.
If the driver wants to "save battery juice" then moving at high speed and then using regenerative braking isn't a way to charge up your batteries. They'd just stay at lower speeds otherwise they are wasting power. Regenerative braking is nice to reclaim some of your velocity as power again. You have to balance motor efficiency vs aerodynamic drag.
I don't know much about electric motors, but I know about gear ratios and drag from first-hand experience :p In fact I have an electric scooter as well, but the motor in it is incredibly weak so it's hard to tell its performance characteristics.
Was that a very poor attempt at joke, or do you just know nothing about cars and metals?
Assuming the same diameter of wheels, they would be be spinning just as fast at 200mph in an electric car as they would be in a combusion engined car. I would also expect that the axels would melt from friction before the metal 'disintegrated'. Metal doesn't even 'disintegrate' unless you count rusting. It's usually quite malleable and would simply deform if large stresses are places upon it.
Combined with Jacob's ladder technology, I think you just invented Free Energy! Have a gazillion dollars!
I just remember an episode where a girl developed light sensitivity and House punched one of his little team of symptom analysers for being right. He saved a little girl from having a limb amputated though, so it was right to go behind House's back that time :P
As for the economy and immigration thing, yeah Japan is the ultimate in overcrowding among well developed nations at least. While I think controlling families is sensible, it seems almost worse than controlling immigration, but I think they can pay a tax to have more than one kid? Am I thinking of China? Hmm.
I had heard of New Mexico, I didn't realise it linked to Mexico outside of the actual name (places like New York and New England are hardly mirror images of their namesakes!), that's quite strange that non English speaking communities would grow out of American ancestry!
As for Mexico City thriving as well as New York and attracting people in.. well it's like a chicken and egg situation that ends up as a virtuous circle if you manage to get it started - get something interesting in there, start up some industry to attract workers and the economy would surely improve itself over time, and attract in more people etc. Just the same, somewhere like New York could be hit by some natural (or unnatural) disaster and end up like New Orleans :( A quick google shows that they are up to near 2/3rds of their population again after almost 3 years, and at least since the city has some wealth behind it then it's possible to rebuild.. but I saw some footage of the place a year after Katrina, and it was still a nightmare.. every single building was damaged..
Personally I'm quite happy where I am, and am not out looking for making a superstar career in New York or Silicon Valley or anything, I'm quite happy in Scotland :) I used to say if I moved I'd go for Canada or Japan, though I've gone off Canada a bit since I associate it so much with a bad relationship. I know that's pretty dumb but I can't help it, plus I've been to Canada now and know it's not much different from here apart from the larger scale of buildings and cars! oh and New York Fries was awesome! We need to get rid of McDonalds over here and get some New York Fries joints opened up! Anyway, that leaves Japan, and combined with me no longer being a Christian (and therefore able to be a lot more open minded towards the heavily spiritual traditions and ideas they have, which I've always thought were cool but also just had to think of them as 'wrong'), and all the funky technology they get out there, that's still an attractive proposition. I'd really have to learn the language to be able to work properly out there though I think - apparently Japanese business isn't very welcoming of foreigners. I've never even been there on a holiday though, I should do that first before making any big plans! I'm rambling again, I shall stop.
I just remember enjoying the bit where the special ops dude invaded her mansion, as it reminded me of Operation Flashpoint, which I'd been playing a lot around that time :p The second one was just crap though.
I actually expected the first movie to suck though, so that perhaps made it easier for me to enjoy the bits that were good. I have never really liked Tomb Raider as a game, and was always quite cynical about their choice of a big titted heroine as the protagonist. It wouldn't have done nearly so well if it weren't for that.
BTW, while reading more of your comments has made me realise that you were not just trolling with your original remark (I found it rather abrasive myself), I think being a coder and reading up on Microsoft APIs probably puts you into the 'Windows Expert' category, because most people have nothing like that level of knowledge. I only started using Windows around 1998, but within a couple of years I was probably an 'expert' compared to most Windows users too.
Even running in a limited user account is an 'expert' type thing to do, strangely enough. I don't think I could be bothered with doing that though. I do vaguely remember trying it once and just getting hacked off. Linux and OSX are pretty good as they just ask you for your password when you need to do some administration, whereas if you want to for example install a printer on Windows, I'm not sure if there would be a way to do it without logging out, then logon as administrator, then logout and log back in as yourself.. you could perhaps use 'run as' and start up a commandline, then run explorer from there and open up the control panel - but is there a simpler way? It's been traditional where I work to just give all users admin access to their local machines. It stops hassles if they need to install something when out on the road for example. I also know of at least one piece of software we use that pops up errors when you are not running as admin >.< but changing access privileges to its program files directory may possibly cure that.
No, he was simply pointing out that 'controlled environments' are not normal.
Recently one of my users got his laptop infected with spyware because he let his daughter user it - she fell for an ad and installed some fake anti-spyware software which messed up his machine. After some real cleanup it's running okay
One of our MDs, who is over 70, has a habit of screwing up his machines really badly. He is terrified to let me just backup his data and reinstall Windows. He also carries around 2 or 3 bags of paper files with him wherever he goes because he once got sued by an American company claiming they invented something that he claims he invented, and he ended up having to pay a licensing fee or something. Anyway, he currently has 2 machines, one pretty fucked up one and one I'm sure will get there eventually (although after I talked to him a couple of years about not installing random garbage anti-spyware stuff and just sticking to the company anti-virus and spybot, he's bothered me a lot less). He recently talked about the idea of even getting another machine soon.. if he does that I suppose I'll get him a terabyte hard drive and backup both his machines to that so that he can't be paranoid about losing anything. I think he already has bought and filled a 300GB external drive with downloaded movies, music and other crap, rather than just copying the 40GB contents of his old laptop over and dumping it. -_-
To support your argument a little though, my own XP Pro machine is still fine after a year and a half of use though, whereas with 98 I'd be considering a reinstall by now.
Uh.. we run Autodesk products on all our engineering workstations and their hardware doesn't "die all the time". I'd suggest that's more because your school is buying crappy cheap hardware.
I haven't read about TOR for a while, and yes doing a bruteforce MitM attack would be impractical with current technology, but all encryption can be broken, that's all I was implying :p
Does Gallium then have to have appropriate interfaces to nVidia/ATI's version of OpenGL? It seems like this is a case of improper implementation of specifications, like people having to write websites directly to work with IE, rather than writing them to comply with web standards..
61.0237441 cubic inches. So about a 244ci engine. I think that's what you guys measure them in anyway. Or alternatively 1 litre is 1 liter. Something like that.
The point isn't that Linux doesn't have codecs to play play hi-def content, the point is that there apparently are no Linux drivers out there that make use of the HD video acceleration hardware that is currently available.
As for having yet another API to go through, I fail to see how it would be a 'crushing blow to all gaming for Windows', since even if it did have perfect Direct3D compatibility, it would simply make it easier to port Windows games to Linux. We already have Direct3D support through WINE, and even then it isn't 100%, so what makes you think that starting again and trying to route it through another API is going to make it any better?
What would be more of a problem for Windows gaming, is if games manufacturers actually started making games for other operating systems. Even then it is not going to be a 'blow' unless this actually causes less games to be sold for Windows.
I don't mean this post in any hostile or patronising way btw, I simply am trying to point out what I think is the case. I've often wished over the years that more games were made specifically for Mac OS and Linux. Recently I just gave up and got a PS3. Consoles haven't been a very attractive option compared to PC gaming since the controls aren't very suitable for some types of game (RTS/FPS), but at least these days they can download patches and extra content. I still wish all FPS games on the PS3 would support the keyboard and mouse arrangement, but I'm getting okay with the joysticks. And at least for online play, everyone else is limited by the same type of control system. I mostly just miss the mouse when using sniper rifles now, as I know from Counter-Strike and Operation Flashpoint that I am capable of far, far better speed and precision with a mouse.
I think the point is that it is CPU dependent if you don't have any assistance from video hardware acceleration, as is the case if your video drivers are incomplete.
Assuming that the encryption cannot be broken [...] Or am I missing something?
Yes.
May I point out that while usage may be up in other places, I'd expect American cars to be the heaviest and therefore least fuel efficient of any other country's cars (though Australia makes similarly large cars). European and Japanese markets tend to buy much smaller cars. We also probably have a lot more diesel cars which will increase our average mileage even further.. I've not got any figures, but I don't think anyone who has actually seen the difference between the cars in America and elsewhere could disagree. I have a friend in America who reckons that her 4.0 litre car is an 'economy' version. That amuses me :)
What, you mean you bet it has nothing like the giant dark, winged, valkyrie-type-beast at the end of the trailer?
It's been a while since I saw it, and the second was poor, but I remember thinking the first Tomb Raider was quite a good movie. Hitman was okay. Doom was bollocks. This looks a bit cheesy but could be good.
I have to admit that while I enjoyed the first game, I never bothered to buy the second. Since the first game had dynamic difficulty, the level of ability the enemies had by the end was crazy - maybe I should have purposely played badly occasionally so that the enemies didn't react to me immediately as I popped out from a corner even in bullet time. The actual control system and bullet time stuff was done amazingly well though, I loved being able to roll and shoot at the same time, and how it slowed down time slightly while you did it (or maybe I'm getting confused with The Opera, heh).
Yes, my own problem with religion is in fact where would the creator come from, and how did anything come to exist, so you've hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Still, I say 'obvious' because some people just consider it obvious that God must have made everything. I'm not saying I believe that, but lots of people do. The bible says something similar to "the heaven's declare God's glory", and I know lots of people who think that just because of for example the beauty of a starry sky or a scenic view that God exists. It's 'obvious' to them. It may not be very rational, but that doesn't mean they don't believe it, and in fact there is no way of convincing them out of it - even if we do accurately model all the workings of the Universe, we cannot prove that it wasn't created by some other intelligence. But then, where did that intelligence come from? Surely it must have been 'created'?
At some point, something must have existed. I have been dubious as to ideas such as the whole universe showing some type of 'consciousness', but realised yesterday that if biological forms of life can develop to achieve consciousness, then perhaps there are other ways to achieve it. We know we can simulate it via computer, but maybe there are other ways for systems to become self-organising than just the ones that have biological life.
I agree that it's better not to have an answer and search, which is why I am doing just that. Religion is convenient because some people just want to get on with their lives and would rather pretend they have all the answers to life's basic questions, so that they can focus on other things.
Ah I didn't realise you weren't being serious, I haven't heard of that movie, most horror movies I've seen have been rather moronic.
So just reading the start of your post again.. I think there are reasons to speculate on other intelligences greater than our own, or systems outside our universe. There is no evidence enabling rational people to believe those speculations to be true, but I think the idea that we are the only beings ever to achieve our level of intelligence is pretty arrogant. It is of course possible that we are the first, but we don't have much evidence for or against any of that. I remember reading that some scientists think we are in the 8th cycle of our universe, the chances of another system similar to earth's happening even through all that time is probably insanely remote though..