>> ^SDGundamX:
>> ^ridesallyridenc:
Live and let live, people. Sheesh.

But that's the problem: the religious (who vastly outnumber us) are not willing to live and let live. They want to tell us who we can and can't marry depending on our gender. They want our kids to believe that evolution is "just a theory" by trying to force their religious beliefs to be taught in public education. They want to stifle medical and scientific research that could potentially save millions of lives. They want to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies.
I don't think these guys are "pushing values" on this show. They're giving religious folk an opportunity to state their side of the case--something pretty much every caller has failed to do convincingly or even coherently (Loch Ness Monster, wtf?).


All true. And, at the same time, I can't help but feeling like two wrongs don't make a right. Being preachy is being preachy, and these guys have a particularly smug nature that just rubs me the wrong way.

>> ^ridesallyridenc:
Live and let live, people. Sheesh.


But that's the problem: the religious (who vastly outnumber us) are not willing to live and let live. They want to tell us who we can and can't marry depending on our gender. They want our kids to believe that evolution is "just a theory" by trying to force their religious beliefs to be taught in public education. They want to stifle medical and scientific research that could potentially save millions of lives. They want to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies.

I don't think these guys are "pushing values" on this show. They're giving religious folk an opportunity to state their side of the case--something pretty much every caller has failed to do convincingly or even coherently (Loch Ness Monster, wtf?).

Ive done some work in Direct X and rendering to screen. Every time something happens the buffers have to update. That's a huge world ...that needs to update for every user.

That's why world of war craft has that cartoon texture. And Even then it may or may not work well. In all that I have played or researched, for college papers on the industry, rendering is done on the client sides with the information for the world stored in database files. To do this on the server side is going to require a massive connection and a huge bank of hardware. That is why it is so easy to hack client to server applications including games, Gary Hoglund goes into detail about this his books exploiting online gaming.

I find it hard to believe that they can do this with no latency on a horrible internet commercial. This seems alot like the lochness monster, or that Iraq had WMDs.

Even in Unreal all the meshes and textures were stored as ASCII files that held location points about the objects, and the rest was rendered on the users computer, and the goal was to make all objects as low poly as possible. Because once the lighting and geometry is added it will start to slow things down. That's why they came up with new ways to map textures so that they wrap around the geometry like bubble wrap seen in Gears of War.

In short(not short): it is not best practices to render from the server, the server is just there to facilitate communications. That is what a client server system does. The clients talk to each other through the server, with the simplest of messages.

Article about Otoy:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/07/otoy_serverside_3d_rendering_is_taking_the_wrong_path.html

OMG I FISHED UP THE LOCH NESS MONSTER! What to do now? Oh I know, I'll just keep it for myself a week or two and take thumbnail sized photos of it in a dark room! Those pesky scientists would kill the magic.

Ever got the feeling that news people cooperate with people who have incredible stories that are incredibly stupid but can't be proved wrong by the TV stare-er. "But he says he has the evidence! How could he lie about that? This is SO exciting!!!"

Die *instaban mit dem Wasserhans....
zurück zu Ihrem Loch!!!

Good thing you can't prove that there isn't a monster in the loch, because that would cost them billions in lost tourism.

I wonder how much money has been wasted looking for the loch ness monster. I suppose its good for area tourism, or something like that.

No joke, technically (if I'm remember correctly) The water horse is the Loch ness monster...

Still though, that is crazy to have a hologram like that, next thing you know, we are going to have a 200 (or 400) ft hologram of Godzilla...

They should so retire that thing to Loch Ness.

I saw some episodes (installments?) from these series several years ago... they play in Ann Arbor on one of the international channels that is part of the expanded cable package I no longer get. They air in Chinese, with English subtitles (sometimes), and are shown during the day like a soap opera.

As I am familiar with some of the historical novels this genre is based on, like Monkey King, and the Warrior Hero tales from the Warring States Period, I thought they were kind of fun, and not too terribly dissimilar from Sam Raimi's Hercules or Xenia Warrior Princess, although lacking in the self deprecating camp humor that popularized those two shows, the LOCH and ROCH episodes were kind of cool in the same way that they took old old old stories, and reinvented them in a serialized fashion for modern audiences. I can see getting addicted to them if I had the time.

So you're just going to jump right in? That's excellent!

The Brave Archer was actually not a TV series, but a series of films starting in the late 70s. If you really want to get right into it, I'd say first watch The Brave Archer movies (all parts, 1 thru 4) then follow that with the full second series Condor Heroes 2006, which is just superb. Then whenever LOCH 2008 is released on DVD go back and watch that.

Are you familiar with using BitTorrent to download stuff? (You can find 1-3 on MiniNova, which I prefer, and all four parts on The Pirate Bay.) I don't know how to acquire The Brave Archer series other than via download, but you can (and should) purchase the Condor Heroes DVD. It's very well worth it.

Please feel free to let me know if you need any guidance or assistance. Very happy to help.

(Funny note about The Brave Archer: there is never a single bow or arrow used in any of the series.)

Awesome, Farhad. That's one that Charms knows well and really, really loves. She has always really wanted me to see it, but that series is not offered with English subtitles anywhere. That one is called Journey to the West and was published in the 1590s. (Yes, it's that old!)

Updated the post with a little more info about LOCH and ROCH.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Humans believe a lot of crazy sh*t. (Alien abductions, ghosts, the yeti, the Loch-Ness Monster, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, The Secret, Amway, and countless absurd 911 conspiracies to name a few.) I don't think that a natural desire to believe in any of these things provides any evidence that these things exist. (IMO) The same goes for God.
not everyone has a natural desire to believe in the Easter Bunny. God is different. Universal. Across cultures, even if they never met.
You're just poking fun at genuine religious belief and feeling, by using a ridiculous comparison that doesn't actually compare.


Why do humans want to believe in the supernatural? Because the supernatural is exiting, mysterious, different and most of all AWESOME, but that doesn't make it real. We are imaginative creatures.

and also we FEEL the supernatural.. but some people aren't listening and don't count it as evidence.

Why do people NOT want to believe the supernatural? Because they were taught in school in a certain restrictive way that cut off their imagination. Then they get all excited about being superior to the "stupid" religious people.
They turn their back on god and then say "i can't see god! so he doesn't exist!"


I think your animosity towards science in misguided. Religion and science aren't mutually exclusive, in fact, if religion is to be believe, they are one in the same.

what animosity? I just don't think science will ever "prove" atheism, that's studpid, and i don't think the scientific method is compatible with investigation of the spirit, i think science will progress until it discovers God.
then maybe there will be a big shiny display of wonder, nintendo style and then everything explodes and we start again hahaha.


If religion is to be believed, then science would be the best way to understand how God put this universe together. Rather than judge science by intangible assumptions about God, perhaps it would be better to use science as a way to better understand God.

yes. that is what i do. but there are limits. there is no "happiness meter" just theories about endorphins. science has to get a lot more advanced before we understand these things. In the meantime, why not refer to religion and art, which describes the human condition much better than science does.

and you call it "intangible assumptions" whereas i call it "things i feel in my heart and in my gut, which is generally much more reliable than my head or wikipedia"


I like and agree with your 'fuck it' definition of faith, but most people who share that definition don't bother to argue about science, because it is irrelevant to their world view. You, on the other hand, seem to be genuinely bothered by the fact that science contradicts some of your personal beliefs. I think you have an internal conflict to work out here. (IMO) This inner conflict means you are a thoughtful person.

no. you just hear "anti science" in my writing somehow, you are pushing the polarisation on me, not me on you.

science does NOT contradict any of my beliefs, in fact i would say in the last century science started to prove my beliefs... think fractals, quantum mechanics, string theory, that kind of thing. Science isn't currently capable of contradicting my beliefs, and i believe it never will be.


Minor distinction. You see God as time/space/etc.; I see God as a euphemism for time/space/etc..

euphemism scheuphemism. makes very little difference to me. you just use the word euphemism in an attempt to degrade the idea. God is Love. God is a euphemism for Love. What's the difference? It's all abstract.


FWIW, I was baptized Catholic and believed in God until I was 12 or 13 years old.

Ahh the catholic church.
FWIW i quit going to (anglican) church when i was about 8, because church is a waste of time. I remember we had to draw round our hands and write "Thankyou God for giving me hands". I thought this was absurd, because that implies that god is some kind of asshole who denies some people hands for no reason and i am supposed to be grateful he didn't deny me MY hands? Horrible.

I studied physics and maths till i was 18. Then i realised that was probably a waste of time as well

In summary, i think you are allergic to the concept of god, because you have been exposed to so much god related bullshit. But you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Science and God together in your brain (and heart) helps you understand the world a lot better than science alone. Maybe science will catch up, but if science can explain love, then you will say it "disproved" god and i will say it "discovered" god.

hope that makes some kind of sense.

Humans believe a lot of crazy sh*t. (Alien abductions, ghosts, the yeti, the Loch-Ness Monster, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, The Secret, Amway, and countless absurd 911 conspiracies to name a few.) I don't think that a natural desire to believe in any of these things provides any evidence that these things exist. (IMO) The same goes for God.


Why do humans want to believe in the supernatural? Because the supernatural is exiting, mysterious, different and most of all AWESOME, but that doesn't make it real. We are imaginative creatures.

I think your animosity towards science in misguided. Religion and science aren't mutually exclusive, in fact, if religion is to be believe, they are one in the same.

If religion is to be believed, then science would be the best way to understand how God put this universe together. Rather than judge science by intangible assumptions about God, perhaps it would be better to use science as a way to better understand God.

I like and agree with your 'fuck it' definition of faith, but most people who share that definition don't bother to argue about science, because it is irrelevant to their world view. You, on the other hand, seem to be genuinely bothered by the fact that science contradicts some of your personal beliefs. I think you have an internal conflict to work out here. (IMO) This inner conflict means you are a thoughtful person.

Minor distinction. You see God as time/space/etc.; I see God as a euphemism for time/space/etc..

FWIW, I was baptized Catholic and believed in God until I was 12 or 13 years old.

In reply to this comment by MINK:
i just wonder why we naturally want to assume there is a reason for everything. why would that basic urge be so deep in us? why would it emerge in the first place? I don't think that "survival instinct" line explains eveything, we do plenty of stuff that's not for survival, we even die for that stuff. I don't think a concept called the "selfish gene" can be the answer. I just don't think like that.

so in a way, the instinct to think about God is my proof of God (in a wordy twisted logic way, not a lab experiment).

I think, therefore He is, I might say.

but that doesn't impress people in an age of lab experiments and petri dishes and electron microscopes. i guess you want to detect the God particle before you'll believe.

Fine. As long as you are looking for it (because as any scientist can tell you, observation affects things), not just waiting for it to hit you in the face without asking.

And, fine, as long as you understand that my "faith" is kinda like "fuck it, i'm pretty damn sure this feeling comes from God, I don't need to wait for someone to find the God particle, I'm already convinced, and I don't care if that isn't scientific by todays standards, it's cool."

And fine, if you don't call me stupid for going on this hunch.

Thanks for forcing me to think about that.

btw god IS infinity, time, space, death etc. we totally agree. but maybe you're more optimistic about todays understanding of the scientific method being the ideal way to find the answers. and i am pretty sure the answer we find will look pretty much like God. some kind of beautifully simple mathematical formula that can unfold into an entire universe. Then, accept that the formula wanted to become a universe so that's God.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
(I believe) Religion is a all-purpose placeholder for things that are beyond our comprehension (infinity, time, space, death, existence, etc.....) As humans we want to believe there is some grand overarching reason for our existence, but my gut tells me that the only meaning in our lives is the meaning we create for ourselves, which is pretty fucking cool, actually.

If God wants to prove me wrong, I'm open to that.

In reply to this comment by MINK:
following is for sheep. but jesus wasn't far wrong. i just know that there's a reason. I don't know how i know, but i don't try to ignore the gut feeling just because it isn't verifiable in a laboratory (yet).

you?

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Fair enough. If not the big C, then what faith do you follow?

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