Are old games harder than younger ones?oO

1 month 3 weeks ago

"I believe most of what I will write has already been mentioned, so I will just re-iterate; old games, and by "old" I would consider, say, 1990s, are much MUCH harder than current games by a long shot. For the older crowds, I'm sure you will remember the original Super Mario Bros, Battle Toads, and the Mega Man series. To this day I have yet to beat Battle Toads.

Nowadays, as the gaming industry matures, the suits are basically trying to expand the market to your everyday folks, not just the stereotypical gamer demographic. As such, we see a huge decrease in the difficulty of games that we see nowadays (or, as mentioned in previous posts, extremely flexible scalability in terms of difficulty). Granted, there are still some very difficult games produced these days, thankfully (Devil May Cry 3, I'm looking your direction), but these are the exceptions and hardly the norm."
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Your thoughts Proposition 8

1 year 5 days ago

"Axion-akari, a vast majority of Blacks and Latinos voted in support for Prop 8, but you're dead wrong when you include Asians in that mix. Both initial polling, and actual votes counted, confirm this.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=California_Proposition_8_(2008)#Asian-American_sentiment

You are also dead wrong when you say "religous establishments whom run certain public and private programs must now go against their personal beliefs and practices because the states is forcing them to fill a quota for gay couples or gay groups, thus the state is infringing on they're religous beliefs for someone elses rights."

For one, public funds that religious establishments receive cannot be used for "private programs." Additionally, should a religious establishment procure public funding for a public program, THEY CANNOT DISCRIMINATE IN THE FIRST PLACE, so I'm not sure what you're getting at with the idea that religious institutions would be "infringed" upon. Not being of any particular religion, it's not like I would be able to get a Jewish wedding at a Jewish temple, or some sort of Mormon ceremony in a Mormon temple, even though both belong to tax-exempt institutions, so why would a religious organization be forced to "fill a gay quota," whatever that means?

But back to the demographics, Blacks and Latinos are generally much more religious than their Asian counterparts. Sure, Vietnamese are usually Catholic, Koreans are usually Protestant, Japanese are usually non-religious or lightly Buddhist/Shinto, and Chinese are usually all over the place, ranging from very Protestant to very atheist. However, no matter what metric one uses, religiosity is not nearly as encompassing in the Asian demographic as it is in the Latino and Black demographic, and one could not deny the sheer correlation between being very religious and being anti-gay marriage.

It is absolutely absurd that this kind of bigotry still persists in 21st century America, and California at that. I guess this is what happens when you cut so much funding from education; it lets strict religious dogma, many of which are thousands of years old, to poison the mind.

And as a footnote, for all of those who think being gay is a choice, one could also surmise that being straight is also a choice, as both are inherently considered a "sexual orientation." I propose then, for those whom are straight who still believe in this nonsense, to try to choose to be "gay," JUST for a moment, to be sexually attracted to the same sex, and when you're done confirming such a change, just choose to go back to being straight. Let me know how it works, yeah?"
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Dying arcades

1 year 1 month ago

"Arcades were once a bastion where more of the powerful, technically superior games were placed, as computers and consoles at the time could not compete with chips designed specifically for particular games. That's why all those fighters and racers and shooters all looked so much better and played so much more smoothly, on top of usually sounding better, than the home-ported versions.

Nowadays, with powerful computers (of which a modern graphics card alone is more powerful than any current arcade machine) and multiple gaming consoles that rival the power of modern computers, but with the added benefit of being optimized for gaming, there just isn't a market for arcades anymore, from a financial perspective. At least, a pure arcade; Dave and Busters and Chuck 'E Cheese, etc, will always have some arcade games, but they are by no means an arcade in the classical sense.

I guess what's left of arcades are specialized games, like you mention, bass hunting, deer shooting, boxing or drumming, etc. But even these novelties are slowly encroaching the living room (Rock Band, and now Nintendo wants to make a rhythm-based Bongo game or sorts, plus we've had steering wheels on consoles and computers for quite awhile now), edging away the once-dominant share of arcades."
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Opinions on old favorite games changed?

1 year 1 month ago

"I find that classics stay as classics, and that the best of the best age really well. For example I popped in Sonic 3 and Knuckles the other day on emulator out of boredom, and it was a joy to behold once more, almost as fresh as the day I first played it. Games like Chrono Trigger, the Mega Man X series, Tales of Phantasia on the SNES, and Shining Force I and II, Gunstar Heroes, the Sonic games on the Genesis, amongst many others, stand the test of time very well.

Perhaps it has something to do with well-crafted hand-drawn sprites and colorful 2D backgrounds. I can't say the same for the earlier 3-D games, some of those "gems" are horrendously hard to swallow nowadays. Final Fantasy VII is probably the best example; I thought it was an OK game, the battle system was pretty fun, though the story was pretty butchered thanks to a horrible translation (though when I played it at the time, that didn't seem to bother me, as I had yet to understand how great literature and writing can make all the difference). When I tried playing FF VII again about a year ago, I couldn't stand it and stopped right after picking up Aerith. This is not a game that ages well. Pop in Tales of Phantasia or Chrono Trigger and I'll be choppin' away for hours at a time."
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Economic meltdown

1 year 1 month ago

"Ah Gvnkwyr, I am rather flattered that you were even at one point impressed by my "redundant verbosity," as surely I do make an effort to have my writings as succinct and relevant as possible. Let me address your point:

"Is naive and even selfish to consider that a US economic crisis would affect the whole world, but that way of thinking is typical of all Americans."

This is not naivety, this is fact. Seeing your response, I am almost certain you didn't even bother to click on the links I had on my previous post, yet you then tell me to "search for stock market and you'll notice that a few countries are in fact taking benefit of [the United States'] crisis" without giving any links nor semblance of what particular country you speak of, nor what particular markets or industries even. Because certain industries DO benefit from an overall financial crisis, such as commodities markets (gold, etc) and fast foods in general, but that doesn't mean the rest of the economy is doing so well, on the contrary as currently seen, just about every industry save a few is suffering. So you want me to go out of my way to find links to support your claim now? Talk about a lack of credibility, that would be like for me to say "Hey Santa Claus is real, it's your fault for being ignorant to not know it, Google it and you'll notice quite a few sources backing this."

I'll also confidently bet that you did not bother to read my extremely long post about central banking systems and fractional reserved banking, as you don't seem to understand why this mess is happening in the first place. ALL major economies of the world today have a central banking system which robs the government and its people of a huge amount of money, and are driving said countries more and more into greater and greater debt. It just so happens that (until the advent of the Euro), all major economies buy a HUGE amount of U.S. treasury T-bills, essentially investing and lending the U.S. an equally huge amount of cash assets. Financial failure, subsequent injection of cash into the market, at the value of $700 billion or greater, will immeasurably dilute the amount of value that these foreign governments (China, Japan, countries in Europe, etc) have in their banks as dollars. That plus OPEC only trades in dollars, and recently, euros. That is why a U.S. financial crisis results in a global crisis; the entire world uses and stores a huge amount of money as dollars.

And you're right $SWhisssper, the United States does have plentiful resources, petroleum included, the government just doesn't want to rape its own land in fear of voter backlash, so all the toxic petroleum factories and plastic factories are overseas where poor (and in this regard I do sincerely, sympathetically mean the really unfortunate as well as being economically disabled) workers have to toil with litte to no worker rights nor safety regulation, poisoning their rivers and soil. So in this respect, though there are natural resources to exploit, the United States is in effect, very much dependent on global trade, albeit by choice.

The Senate had a mock-trial of voting for a revised $700 billion bailout plan, and overwhelmingly passed. I am very worried; I certainly will be writing my Congressmen that those who have voted for or are intending to vote for this bailout will be losing quite a significant amount of votes, mine included, with absolutely no exceptions or excuses. Battling the previous overinflation with, essentially more inflation, is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of."
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Economic meltdown

1 year 1 month ago

"Gvnkwyr, I don't know which planet you live on, but would you please tell me? I would LOVE to live there, as apparently the place of your residence does not seem to be affected by this terrestrial GLOBAL CRISIS [caused largely by the incompetency of the United States], being on another planet and all.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c09530d2-8e57-11dd-9b46-0000779fd18c.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-stocks-plunge-global-credit/story.aspx?guid={C157D8ED-3F03-4486-B621-B43C2DB1C7C1}&dist=msr_1

By the way SWhisssper, the United States has long depended on foreign countries, especially the Middle East, for natural resources. Sure, there are some resources that are wholly abundant in the U.S. that are freely extracted (various raw metals, cotton, agricultural products, etc), but PETROLEUM is vastly imported. That plus the fact that because labor in America is so expensive, we end up importing a lot of the things we can produce ourselves anyway, so this who "more independent" thing is a misconception. America is very, VERY dependent on the global market, as are any of the other developed nations.

And I am extremely pleased that Congress rejected the absolutely absurd $700 billion bailout plan; corporate greed (in the form of bad loaning and over-extension of fractional reserved banking) in the financial sector needs a swift boot in the arse. Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson were both big shot bankers before taking on their high government posts, talk about foxes guarding the chicken den. Don't you think that a solution proposed by bankers to a problem caused by bankers will be for the bankers?"
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Internet

1 year 1 month ago

"I will go out on a limb and say that the internet is the best invention of the 20th century, and it certainly will continue to grow drastically in the 21st. The [currently] free exchange of information across continents at a mere seconds whim allows so much more insight for people whom ordinarily would not have the luxury to access such knowledge. With the exception of a few intentional gaffes, mainly state censorship of information of certain countries, one can find just about any information that one requires on the internet.

Oh and the free pr0n. The free pr0n just seals the deal regarding the internet being the best thing ever."
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Economic meltdown

1 year 1 month ago

"*cracks knuckles* O boy, where do I even begin with this one... I will give a forewarning to potential readers that this will be a long, long post delving deeply into the root of ALL of these financial problems plaguing, not only the United States, but the world in general, in modern times, so bear with me.

To first reply to thread-starter SWhisssper, this is in no way caused by the Bush presidency (although I highly resent the man and any and everything he has done since taking office and wish many ill-omens upon him), as this is something that has been brewing for way past a century. Let me begin by quoting one of the prominent founding fathers of the United States:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing
armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it
properly belongs."
-Thomas Jefferson

Central banks are inherently bad for the average citizens but very favorable for investment and international bankers because of the way currency is handled with a central banking system. The current United States central bank (of which there were previously two others, both shut down by the government), the Federal Reserve, is essentially a private bank (with a "governmental-sounding" name to give it the illusion that it has government oversight and regulation.) that the U.S. government illegally handed the sole power of currency-creation to back in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve has the sole power to create currency (inflation), and lends money to the government and various banks, at interest which must be paid back, without an increase in the money supply, therefore causing an infinite spiral of debt. This is popularly known as the "compound interest paradox" and is the reason why we are ALWAYS trillions of dollars in national debt, and will NEVER have the money, even with the entire world's wealth, to pay it back. Simply, it is mathematically impossible.

Not surprisingly, with the unconstitutional passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, a federal income tax was also instantiated as the Sixteenth Amendment, also unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly states that any and all viable taxes must be apportioned (that is, calculated based by population), whereas federal tax today is on a flat bracket system. The income tax is used to pay off the interest that is accrued upon the federal government when borrowing money from the Federal Reserve.

As an example, let us say there are 10 people each with $100, the Federal Reserve with $0, and the government with $0. There is a total money supply of $1000, and no one owns any other assets. There is a 20% federal income tax, so the Federal Reserve takes $20 from each of the 10 people, leaving the Federal Reserve with a balance of $200, ten people with $80 each, and the government with $0. That's right, your federal tax money goes to the Federal Reserve, NOT the federal government (at least the simplified version, the Federal Reserve Act states that a small portion of the money, in the first place unconstitutionally collected, must go to the government). Total money supply: still $1000.

The government now wants to partake in some program that will need a lot of capital, so they borrow $100 from the Federal Reserve, at say 5% interest. So the Fed loses its $100, leaving it with a balance of $100. The government now also has $100, and each of the ten people have $80. Total money supply: still $1000, BUT, the government owes the Fed $5 because of interest from borrowing, so the amount of currency there really is would be $1005, but there is only a money supply of $1000! This is the never-ending spiral that allows the phenomena of our ever-growing national debt to foster.

How does this relate to our economic crisis (and many previous ones in the past)? Central banks do not only loan to the government, they also loan to other banks, of course again, at interest, but at a LOWER interest than the average Joe would receive from the local Wells Fargo. Let us say the Fed lends Wells Fargo some absurd sum of money, at 5% interest. Wells Fargo then, has this instant infusion of currency (on record, but not in cash per se), and they begin lending money to potential home-buyers and mortgages at, say 10% interest. There's also a little something called "fractional reserve banking" where banks are allowed to lend MUCH more money than they possess in cash, and the current ratio is 10:1. That is, Wells Fargo can lend you $100 even though their own balance say they only have $10. Guess how the credit and housing crisis happened? The news media all played surprise when it hit, but this should have long been seen, and most definitely known by the people who run the institutions, as this entire banking structure is what caused all of the great depressions of the past [after the creation of central banks].

So Joe takes out a huge loan for a house after an initial down payment, and is able to pay it back because he is able to make his payments, due to the fact that there is a high enough money supply to support him because Jane next door also took out a huge loan and put a significant down payment in cash. What happens to the last people that take out these loans? There isn't enough money in the money supply (due to interest from bank lending), so foreclosure happens in an explosive wave, banks shut down (due to fractional reserve banking, they don't have the cash to back up their investments), and all hell breaks loose.

But then our buddy Ben Bernanke (also previously a banker) at the Fed decides that it would be too "dangerous" to let these banks fall, and that it would destroy the confidence and foundation of our economy, so prescribes a motherload $300 billion to absorb the toxic mortgage assets of Bear Stearns. What just happened is that your average Jane and Joe's tax dollars are being used to bailout a greedy and corrupt institution that led to this mess in the first place. If banks weren't allowed to lend at a fractional reserve system, and if the central banks were abolished, we wouldn't have had this money supply and compound interest problem. The free market will reevaluate itself and everything will go on.

As a glimpse into that vision, this is exactly what happened; after the failure of a $700 billion bailout for the financial institution, the Dow and Nasdaq had a relative whimper (despite being a huge single point drop still) when compared to the doom-and-gloom premonition of Fed chairman Bernanke. This basically tells us that the U.S. financial sector is oversaturated in the first place; the market is not large enough to sustain so many firms. What the government wanted to do was prolong this inevitable tirade, at taxpayer expense (and with inflation), to prolong the profiteering of greedy and corrupt bankers.

In short, our incumbent (and dare I say mostly incompetent) politicians and the central bank has got to go. Old man TJ warned us over 200 years ago, what a visionary.

/end rant"
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other peoples grammar

1 year 1 month ago

"Maxi-Ryu99, you hit it on the nail with that one; to be able to learn a language at the COMMUNICATING level (else what good use is learning a language for were it not for communicating?), a greater emphasis must be placed on conversational ability. Of course, no one can get away without knowing the basics of grammar, but to focus so intently on grammar and vocabulary is a lost cause.

When I was taking Chinese at my university, our professor was being threatened of losing his tenure and subsequent firing (which was eventually what happened) because he went against the university's Chinese department's guidelines on structured teaching. Basically the Chinese department faculty set these standards that a certain amount of time must be spent drilling grammar, certain amount of time drilling vocab, etc, which leaves very little for just plain reading or even "shooting the breeze."

My professor's approach was low emphasis on grammar and vocabulary, taking the philosophy that if you SPOKE and HEARD enough (with attentiveness, which isn't hard if conversations and topics are interesting, which it generally is. Much easier to focus and pay attention to than drilling grammar/vocab), you will naturally pick up the vocab and grammar, with the added benefit of being more comfortable with communicating with an actual speaker of the language.

I mean, humans were wired to learn language by HEARING and TALKING; we don't teach infants and small children how to speak different languages by drilling grammar and vocab, we TALK to them. This seems like such a simple and straightforward concept that I am baffled as to why the vast majorities of institutions teach with the classical method of learning language. Suffice to say, our class protest was not enough to prevent our professor from being fired, even though our test scores and competency were higher than the other classes'.

So back on topic to reiterate, I always let bad grammar slide if I know, and it's usually pretty easy to tell, someone is a foreign speaker. Native speakers, however, shall have to feel the full extent of my wrath lest they take penitence in the wrongs of their feeble grammar MUAAHAHAHAHAHA."
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We're all going to die tomorrow.

1 year 1 month ago

"At a "mere" $8 billion price tag split between many developed nations, I don't think it's an outrageous sum at all (the winner for that category would go to the Iraq War from the perspective of America, at roughly $0.72 BILLION dollars a day. We could have built tons of these colliders already if we chose to have that kind of money spent on physics), especially considering the HUGE potential in scientific advance in our understanding of the universe.

For example, people back in the day thought electricity and magnetism were separate phenomena, until someone figured out that these are two facets of the same fundamental force: electromagnetism. This opened the doors to a whole slew of inventions, like all types of motors (therefore all modern vehicles like cars and airplanes), speakers, microwaves, etc.

We understand three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force (although there is currently the possibility based on experimentation that electromagnetism might be somehow related to the weak nuclear force, deemed the electroweak force). But it seems the last one, gravity, though being the first to be discovered, is the most elusive. No one really understands why we have gravity or what causes it, BUT, if we did have that understanding, I couldn't even imagine the types of things people would be able to come up with.

So I think $8 billion is a pretty good price tag for finding the deepest secrets of the universe, wouldn't you say?"
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Call of Duty 5 & 6

1 year 1 month ago

"Man I don't know how they'll be able to top CoD4, that was one friggin' amazing game. A visceral, albeit short, solo campaign topped off with gripping gameplay and DANGEROUSLY ADDICTING online play, and you have yourself a winner in any regard.

Is Infinity Ward really not developing CoD5? That would be such a shame, seeing as to the relatively poor quality of CoD3."
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Star Ocean 4 : The Last Hope

1 year 1 month ago

"Jeebus those are some impressive graphics; the next-gen systems have always amazed me time after time with their unrelenting eye-candy saturated with sweet, sweet saccharine. I hope game play, characterization, and narrative is up to par with these graphics though, else all will be for naught *cough cough INFINITE UNDISCOVERY cough*. I also hope that the Japanese developers can think of some newer, unique looking characters instead of all having Cloud Strifeclones for protagonists and stereotypically-designed doll-face female accomplices."
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A Changing Society

1 year 1 month ago

"These are some very good points LenasLover and OmniDevil. If we're constricting the topic to changes in societal perception in regards to homosexuality within the United States, there is indeed a shift in paradigm of how people view homosexuals, a zeitgeist almost, if you will. This trend is GENERALLY a result of two shifts currently taking place: the lessening impact of religion in private life (though it may not seem like it on the surface given the circus that is the current and previous two presidential elections) and the more numerous associations that people make with homosexuals nowadays (friends, relatives, coworkers, etc, that reveal themselves).

I'm too lazy to dig it out right now, but a few Pew and other polls show that religion is playing less and less of a role in peoples' lives in the United States, even if the U.S. in general is still much more religious than other developed nations of the world. The statistics show that the younger you are, the less religious you tend to be, correlating (but perhaps not as far as to be causal) to a shift of less religiosity in the country. In relevance to homosexuality, this makes perfect sense, as the vast majority of religious individuals adhere to Protestantism, and many of these individuals denounce homosexuals based on the scripture of their Bible. A decrease in religiosity will naturally be an increase in tolerance of homosexuality.

The second shift is that, as more and more people come out (due in no small part to the lessening of religious impact), straight people now have far more contacts and associations with homosexuals. When you personally know someone who is gay, it's very different than denouncing something you've no personal relation or experience with. People find it much harder to denounce an attribute, much less one that is not attributed to choice, when they have a personal relation with someone of that quality that they denounce. I could say that society is become more empathetic with homosexuals as they get to know more of them, and seeing that they are just like Joe or Jane, and pay taxes and take care of their children as well, without the added benefit that heterosexuals take for granted, such as inheritance rights, funeral attendance rights, child custody issues in case of death of partner, joint tax filing for federal taxes, and many more.

Simply put, it will only be a matter of time before this whole episode of gay-bashing will be a social and cultural blemish in the eyes of history, along with the lines of de jure racial discrimination and denial of women's suffrage back in the "good 'ol days.""
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ATI 4870

1 year 1 month ago

"GMSniper, wow 70+C temperatures, that's not bad at all for a high-end GPU, and to add insult to injury, you had to mention that you can get it to 50-60C =). My aging GeForce 6800 regular IDLES at around 50-60, and loads easily exceed 80 if playing games for prolonged periods of time. I don't know what voodoo magic you've casted or what polar regions you live in, but that's pretty amazing. Or, it could just be that the card is very good with heat management =)"
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Spore

1 year 1 month ago

"Mmmm I have generally two things to say about Spore.

First things first; EA screwed up BIG time putting up that nasty DRM with Spore. With a game as far-reaching (in terms of target demographics for the game, which is supposedly attractive to both hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike) as Spore, you bet that people will lend their copies or install it on multiple networked computers in their homes to play with family or friends. I mean, three installations per disc is highway-robbery, it's no wonder that Amazon ratings for Spore have been so dismal. I hope EA eats it hard with all of this high-profile negative feedback so that they might learn something from using overly-restrictive DRM.

In contrast, Betheseda's Oblivion had only a standard CD lock, which simply requires that the CD be present when loading the game. That didn't stop the PC sales of Oblivion from going into the stratosphere. In short, pirates will always be pirates, and no amount of copy-protection will stop them from getting what they want. Having a DRM-crippled legitimate copy only hurts LEGITIMATE players that buy the game legally; I wish the ignorant blockheads that run these companies would realize this, but alas, that is too much to ask for.

The second thing about Spore is, it is a very great game on paper and its ambitions certainly is laudable. The creature creation in itself is a joy. However, a huge failing point in Spore is that after the first 2 hours or so, things become VERY tedious and VERY repetitive. With no sense of direction (in terms of a thematic significance or a story or characterization), the game becomes a task and a bore rather than a fun game to be played. The Civilization and various Sims games work because, though lacking any semblance of a narrative, the interactions between game characters themselves is a charm to behold. This aspect of the game is lacking in Spore.

In short, if I had known what I know now, I would have avoided getting Spore altogether. Definitely a "rent" over a "buy," though commercially renting is a concept unseen in PC games."
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Man rapes 8 day old baby

1 year 2 months ago

"Of course this is a horrible crime, but Omnidevil, what does religiosity have anything to do with the article? The thread summary makes no logical connection to its contents..."
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The Dark Knight

1 year 2 months ago

"Cutelilgaara, would you mind extrapolating why you thought what you opined in regards to Dark Knight, especially on how you think that the movie was "too over the top and dramatized" and a supposed possession of "forced suspense" as well as your gripe with "camera angles?" In fact, what exactly does forced suspense mean? One would assume that suspense can't really be "forced" now can it? Either something is suspenseful because, well, that something is able to generate a significant amount of tension that is yearning to be relieved, or something is NOT suspenseful because the viewer feels no tension and no need to watch further to resolve anything.

Additionally, Dark Knight, unlike Spider-Man, Superman, or Iron Man, relies relatively little on CGI and special effects, as most of its action is based on good'ol filmed stunts and pyrotechnics, so I'm not getting at where you're going with the whole "abundance of special effects" thing. And would you also care to explain how the ending was corny? Because statements without support just sound like ranting, no offense."
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Google Chrome Impression

1 year 2 months ago

"It will be interesting how the browser wars will pan out, but one thing is for certain is that Chrome doesn't exactly eat into Internet Explorer's marketshare, but will definitely eat into Firefox's. If you think about it, the demographics that will willingly go out of their way to download Firefox (instead of using the perfectly usable stock IE that comes with Windows, or Safari with Macs) are probably the same people that will adopt Chrome to see what it's about. Internet Explorer users are typically satisfied with the default browser and would not waste the effort to try something new.

With that said though, I don't think Google's main objective is that of a browser; I believe they wanted something that, besides being able to browse the internet, also replace the OS as the main element to do work with. So instead of being stuck on Microsoft Word this or Apple something else, if one can do all the work on a browser like Chrome, one can technically do any work on any computer with just Chrome. That's Google's main objective. How will it work? Only five years or so will tell..."
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281 users and 1880 guests are currently online made me realize...

1 year 2 months ago

"Heh I was a shadow lurker until I saw some badass wallpapers/scans that I wanted to have. Ahhh capitalism, it works because it takes advantage of our inherently greedy nature. Posting for papers for the win!"
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MATH or SCIENCE? what do you most prefer?

1 year 2 months ago

"Science is pretty reliant on math, so asking which one prefers is a pretty silly thing unless speaking purely of interest in the subject. Can you imagine attempting to do some biological (where tons of research is happening) research without employing statistics? How on earth would you know if your results are significant, or merely by chance of coincidence? This isn't even accounting the more math-heavy sciences like physics and chemistry. Newton invented calculus independently (although the more nuanced, area-under-the-curve limit based calculus, not the modern method of 'carrying the exponential over' that we're used to) for the purpose of advancing physics, not the other way around. Chemical interactions at the atomic and sub-atomic levels is all math oriented, from electron orbitals to quantized energy packets. With that said, we probably can't advance further to the deepest cores of science (physics) without advancing math."
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Damn you spyware/malware!

1 year 2 months ago

"Unfortunately that's the huge, central drawback to most anti-virus packages; they use up so much resources and makes your computer so slow sometimes (because it's always scanning incoming files, outgoing ones, etc) that it is probably more detrimental to system performance than most of the more stealthy viruses that the antivirus is meant to protect against. I really do believe if you know what you're doing, you don't need an anti-virus program since you most likely will not be getting viruses. There are still many preconceptions about viruses that the general populace has, such as getting viruses from movies or mp3s (absolutely impossible, as neither have executable code).

I think, when one is using Windows, having a registry cleaner of sorts and HiJackThis, an awesome clean-up utility, and combining these utilities with the stock Windows tools such as Msconfig and services.msc, on top of messing with the registry itself and various permissions, one wouldn't even need an anti-virus program to get rid of viruses. Or for the lazy, there's always System Restore, although some viruses are malignant enough to clear your restore points prior to infection."
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Prince of Persia

1 year 2 months ago

"So I took a look at some of features and style of the new Prince of Persia and it's making me like it more and more. Farah's out for sure, but the new sorceress girl in there is apparently a non-playable character that you, nevertheless, have to use on occasion to solve puzzles or get to places! That is a really cool concept, and reminds me a lot of Beyond Good and Evil, where a single player has to know how to use the non-playable "sidekick" to advance further into the game.

Oh and, the cell shading looks more incredible every time I look at it."
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Anime & Science

1 year 2 months ago

"Mmm I seem to have missed quite a bit being away for the Labor Day weekend. In any case Gvnkwyr, I'll continue to address your examples because they are still faulty, and having actually studied science, it wouldn't be right to let your misinformed examples to slip without a refutation on why they're bad examples. If you don't want to address my points, don't bother, but I won't let others whom might not know as much science to take in your false reasoning at face value. So again, let me address a point in which you still do not seem to grasp: sufficiently large creatures at an Eva level size cannot survive on land because of the constant force of gravity acting on its mass will crush itself.

Something as big as an Eva cannot exist on land [as a biological creature] because there is ALWAYS, CONSTANTLY, a ridiculous amount of force being applied on its structural support system, in this case, most likely the bones. You throw out these examples about martial artists training and astronauts in centrifuges without even understanding the physics behind it.

10g of course is quite a lot to handle and usually would result in permanent injury or death for prolonged periods, and people will most certainly die by higher g's at a constant rate, because this is about a CONSTANT rate of acceleration. Applied to F=ma, the force from a constant 16g-force acceleration would definitely kill even the strongest human. BUT, did you know a slap to the face is in the magnitude hundreds of g's? That's right, a mere slap to the face is HUNDREDS of g's, but most people would brush off such an affront as a mere nuisance, certainly nothing life-threatening. That's because our skin, flesh, collagen, and even bone structure, help distribute that split second of force, thereby not causing any permanent damage. When we're talking about constant g-force, there is no "recoil cushion" to pad a force applied, unlike the slap to the face.

By the way your attempt at explaining bone strength ("where is not extra calcium what makes the bone stronger but a more dense microscopic structure") clearly shows that you haven't really studied physiology nor have you really researched how bone strength works. Calcium IS what makes your bone stronger (ask any doctor or any mom), why do you think so many people tell kids to drink their milk? More specifically, Ca allows bone to withstand higher compressional forces, whereas collagen fibers and various crystalline salts in bone allows bone to withstand higher stretching forces, but the threshold for withstanding stretching forces is a moot point when talking about giant Evas walking around because it wouldn't even be able to withstand its own body's compressional force acting on its bones, because bone is still bone and has that ~120MPa of tensile strength tolerance before it deforms/breaks. You can saturate the bones as much as you want with Ca but there is a point at the molecular level where Ca becomes saturated and bone cannot "take in" any more Ca, in simple terms. It's the same reason you can't keep "compressing" concrete by adding more stuff to the same volume to make it stronger.

If you still feel that scientific logic, well, offends you, you probably shouldn't have started the thread, but I completely welcome any more points or examples you wish to be examined from a sound scientific perspective. In this respect, at least the pheromone topic is pretty sound."
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Anime & Science

1 year 2 months ago

"Relax, I don't think anything I've mentioned can be considered in any way remotely even close to being an umbrage. You said it yourself that "a living creature that big can exist" and you follow it up with absolute certainty that it won't be crushed under its own weight yet fail to provide any compelling evidence (evidence being obviously the foundation of science). I've discounted your martial arts example already because it is wrong, as are your latest examples of boneless animals living in deep depths.

Animals are able to live at such depths, without the need for bones, because the ocean provides pressure from EVERY ANGLE. Did you know that atmospheric pressure on land, that is, just standing outdoors, we are pushed by 100 megapascals (roughly 1atm) of pressure? That's almost 15 lbs per square inch of weight put on us all over the surface of our body, but why aren't we writhing in pain? Why is it that just adding 20 pascal more of pressure doesn't break our bones? Because that 100 megapascals of pressure is applied ALL OVER THE SURFACE of our body, so your example about the deep ocean creatures is a bad example once again. I don't know what kind of pressure is at the bottom of the ocean, but whatever creatures that thrive there have that kind of pressure applied all over its body, so it doesn't rupture for the same reason our bodies don't implode on land.

Which, back to our X-Men example, it is every bit as legitimate a claim as your claim that creatures can evolve bones with both the tensile strength necessary and the flexibility to not crack under pressure. After all, you can't provide any compelling scientific evidence or observations about your super-strong adamantium-like bones, and I can't provide any evidence for guys shooting beams from his eyes. So yes, I remind you, let us stick to science."
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Cheating

1 year 2 months ago

"Wow I absolutely cannot believe how many of you think that merely coveting about another is in equal magnitude to actually partaking in the act of infidelity. What a particularly naive and childish notion, however idealistic it may seem to its many beholders, and I do believe that these same people must also be the least experienced in having actual relationships to test their mettle.

Thinking about cheating is in no way even close to actually cheating, and in fact, thinking about it cannot be considered adultery at all. If someone asks you something and you think about telling them a lie for whatever reason or purpose you have in mind but you don't lie to the person, would lying be in equal severity of just thinking about lying? Or how about some victimized kid who has been wronged by a bully and the kid is thinking about how he would feel better if the bully fell down from the monkey bars and broke both legs? Is thinking about such a thing considered as much "violence" as the kid actually going up and pushing the bully down? Going down this logic, one might as well think that merely the thought of murder is just as bad as murder.

The level of naivety is astounding."
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