I firstly want to wish everyone a merry Christmas or whatever holiday it is that you celebrate, unless of course your atheist, then have a good time celebrate whatever it is you celebrate, like "nothing happens after you die day", ha I'm not sure what it is what you celebrate if anything but have fun this December!
Anyway, I was thinking the other night. Excluding every generation before the 1600's, I would argue that everyone my age has been born in one of the most difficult and yet privileged generations mankind has ever seen. At work I have chatted with parents who are buying an Ipod Touch for their child for his birthday, I then ask them, "how old is he turning?", you would be shocked about the answers I get. I've gotten as low as 3 and 4 a few times. You know what I got when I turned 3 or 4? Some freaking hot wheels and Lego's, and I was the happiest kid out there. Ah well, I'm not gonna be the one raising a 40 year-old dependent child working at Pizza Hut. I also said we are the most difficult generations to ever live, and by that I mean we have some serious problems that lie ahead, the end of oil, the radical actions of North Korea and China, the demise of the US dollar, politicians that are virtually worthless in every sense of the word, media that only cares about countries besides the US which is tearing our military apart, and the list goes on and on. Ugh...
Onto a happier note, I'm attempting to start lucid dreaming, which for those of you who don't know is being aware that your in a dream when your asleep and/or being able to control your dreams. You must first keep a dream journal, recording every dream you can remember in a book right when you wake up, I remember doing this and I can still remember my dreams that I read from my journal quite vividly from years ago, which I think is just awesome. Next step is to start lucid dreaming, you must keep your mind going when you fall asleep, like imagining climbing up and down stairs, controlling your breathing etc. You can also do reality checks in the daytime normally, like looking at your hands or the ground, as they dream will generally not yield the same results, and therefore you can know that your in a dream. I'm gonna try to do this and post another blog when I have one that I can remember.
Do we truly experience our dreams as they happen, or do we only remember them after we wake up?
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Food for Thought
Lately I've been busy working all the time, not necessarily at my job, just in general. My life is like having three full time jobs when you account in everything for school, tech center, online classes, work, and debate team. I've often wondered, "is it actually worth it?". I generally reach the conclusion that if I had to give up something, work would be first to go because it would be the only one I could lose. I don't generally dislike my job, but it truly does suck the soul right out of you, dealing with ignorance at nearly every acquaintance. Even today I had an individual come up to me and ask a price on an item, when I told her "one hundred fifty", she responded by exclaiming "dollars?!?!". I thought to myself, "did that just really happen?" I then thought about saying "No mam', we accept Euro's and Pesos here, heck maybe even Yen if you play your cards right, of course it's dollars, your shopping in the United States of America, the nation fueled by credit and incompetent government."
In my experience there are often two types of people that you will encounter, those who are ignorant, and those who exploit others' ignorance. "What they don't know won't hurt them." they cry, it is true that ignorance is bliss, for some, but ignorance is often harmful. How do you think people get ripped off or cheated out of a situation? Often if not always it is because they are ignorant. Is ignorance voluntary? Is there an excuse for ignorance? At what point is ignorance detrimental to the individual and society? These are questions I have often found myself getting befuddled into. To tell you the truth I don't have an answer. The only answer you can really provide for questions like that seem to be the most pragmatic and realist answer, which would be a case a case basis or what is most beneficial to the utility of society, the majority of individuals, but wait, didn't we just establish that the majority of individuals are ignorant?
Ugh, and around the circle goes.
I have often wondered about the question of gay marriage, but then again, is it really a question, or is it a debate of preference? I'm a Libertarian, or I like to believe so, and I believe that judgments for such topics or debates should be left up to the judgment of God. I believe every man is entitled to life, liberty, and property as long as it does not directly infringe on the rights of others. Gay marriage conflicts with no rights of others whatsoever, because believe it or not, offending someone doesn't conflict with their inalienable rights, that's the whole point, we are given liberty for the sole purpose of choice, and there is almost always someone who will disagree with or be offended by your choices, but the whole point is to have the liberty to make them as you see fit. If gay's are truly sinful or evil, etc., God will sort it all out, but it's not our place to judge, which is exactly what we are doing by preventing them from marriage. There are plenty of others things to worry about. Every man is a product of his experience, and if someones experiences truly made them to act a certain with virtually no restraint, will they be judged harshly? We shall see, we shall see. Although on the flip side, how can one be for gay marriage and not be for polygamist marriage?
Let yourself ponder and come to your own conclusions, as Socrates said, I'm not teaching you anything, I'm only bringing out the knowledge already inside yourself.
In my experience there are often two types of people that you will encounter, those who are ignorant, and those who exploit others' ignorance. "What they don't know won't hurt them." they cry, it is true that ignorance is bliss, for some, but ignorance is often harmful. How do you think people get ripped off or cheated out of a situation? Often if not always it is because they are ignorant. Is ignorance voluntary? Is there an excuse for ignorance? At what point is ignorance detrimental to the individual and society? These are questions I have often found myself getting befuddled into. To tell you the truth I don't have an answer. The only answer you can really provide for questions like that seem to be the most pragmatic and realist answer, which would be a case a case basis or what is most beneficial to the utility of society, the majority of individuals, but wait, didn't we just establish that the majority of individuals are ignorant?
Ugh, and around the circle goes.
I have often wondered about the question of gay marriage, but then again, is it really a question, or is it a debate of preference? I'm a Libertarian, or I like to believe so, and I believe that judgments for such topics or debates should be left up to the judgment of God. I believe every man is entitled to life, liberty, and property as long as it does not directly infringe on the rights of others. Gay marriage conflicts with no rights of others whatsoever, because believe it or not, offending someone doesn't conflict with their inalienable rights, that's the whole point, we are given liberty for the sole purpose of choice, and there is almost always someone who will disagree with or be offended by your choices, but the whole point is to have the liberty to make them as you see fit. If gay's are truly sinful or evil, etc., God will sort it all out, but it's not our place to judge, which is exactly what we are doing by preventing them from marriage. There are plenty of others things to worry about. Every man is a product of his experience, and if someones experiences truly made them to act a certain with virtually no restraint, will they be judged harshly? We shall see, we shall see. Although on the flip side, how can one be for gay marriage and not be for polygamist marriage?
Let yourself ponder and come to your own conclusions, as Socrates said, I'm not teaching you anything, I'm only bringing out the knowledge already inside yourself.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 vs. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
It has come to my attention that people I often argue or discuss technological topics with, don’t truly have a good reason for their position or they don’t know how to present their position to really advocate it, and quite often in their defense they will stress that life isn’t a debate, or that it’s all opinion, therefore they don’t have to say anything any certain way or provide reasons for their thinking. Is this truly an excuse? Can we not discuss or debate by rules of logic just by the premise that we are not lawyers or in a debate tournament? I often find they say this through an attempt to evade their faulty logic patterns. I’ve grown tired of arguing with the same type of arrogant individual on technical topics. One debate I often find myself running into is that of Call of Duty vs. Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
I usually find that the only Call of Duty (COD) game that is compared to Battlefield Bad: Company 2 (BC2) is Modern Warfare 2 (MW2), this is the most fair comparison that I can provide for the best ground of discussion or debate because both games attempt to achieve the same objective of realism in the modern combat world that we live in today, it is therefore best to compare these two as they were meant to literally compete with one another.
The best way we can set up the debate is to designate certain areas of rating that both games pertain to the most, areas where we can find the most common ground possible. We designate these areas into two main sections, and then subsections in each, firstly, section one would be that of the technical aspects of the game, areas that are not largely debatable as they are mainly specifications rather than analytics, which brings me to the second area of debate, game play. It is most fair to divide the game into these two main sections because these are the two areas that gamers, whether console or PC will care about the most, this is quite obvious as we can see in popular review sources and by looking at basic facts from video game history, facts such as that graphics are becoming possibly one of the most important factors in gaming, especially for PC gamers.
This is evident by the ever-higher priced and performing market for video cards and graphics drivers, also seen by the high demand for games to be compatible with newer versions of directx, a Microsoft graphical user interface utility, the latest version out at the moment is directx 11, most games are built for directx 9 and/or 10, but directx 11, while new, has high demand for implementation in mainstream games, only the PC and the Xbox use directx, but the other consoles have an equivalent that can be compared to directx as almost a duplicate. There is little debate as to whether or not graphics are in high demand by the consumer as an important element in gaming, if this wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be billions of dollars in the video game industry that primarily relies on advancements in graphics and physics, as well as sound quality to keep consumer’s eyes open and wallets empty, otherwise, games would still be released and built by the standards seen in the 1990’s in games such as Doom or Quake, games that revolutionized the industry and proved that the technical side of games is critically important to the consumer.
It is clearly evident that BC2 has an incredibly advanced game engine in comparison to MW2’s utility. The graphics which are utilizing directx 11 are undoubtedly better whether or not they are on a console or a PC, as is the sound quality and physics, not to mention the hacking protection that is much more effective than the poor excuse for a safeguard that MW2 provides, yet it is not completely effective, but then again, what game is? There is little debate on the technical aspect of the games, which reviewers see as important when they compare the two, as BC2 wins virtually every time. There is little debate because mainly it is generally raw facts other than an clash of theories, for example, individuals may legitimately argue that ATI is better than NVIDIA overall, but nobody is going to argue whether or not the Radeon HD 4870 is a better video card than the GTX 580 is, clearly, it’s not even remotely close. The real substance of argument that the debate is sees is when players or critics discuss the gameplay. One-half of the debate has already been overwhelmingly won by BC2.
Both of the games are attempting to mimic a reasonable amount of realism for the player as much as possible, however they planned to achieve it best from different standpoints that are obviously evident. MW2 attempts to replicate some sort of individualism between players, as seen by kill streak rewards and lack of teamwork while playing, to be frank, when playing MW2, the only reason players don’t kill each other in team games (if they don’t) is because they are on teams. Arguably it is the same way for BC2, however in BC2 there is no kill streak rewards of any kind, and that alone shows its objective, because if the history of mankind has shown us anything, its that people will act of incentive, and when there is an incentive for players to be in it for themselves in a video game, and truly themselves only, that proves alone that it isn’t team oriented, if it was, it would have more of an incentive for teamwork, which BC2 provides. Often there is mass communication between players in the forms of text and/or voice throughout the game, which again shows BC2’s approach to create realism, an approach that relies on teamwork and the value of teammates working together, why, because it is needed to win, and there, is the incentive.
What is realistic about MW2 exactly? What is realistic a bunch of players running around shooting randomly in small closed maps with no vehicles etc, that can call in virtually anything that the army has to offer including a nuclear weapon to further their win? Next to nothing is the answer. BC2 offers the far more realistic alternative that many gamers want. As far as this goes, which style you like best is up to you, either approach has pros and cons, however, the BC2 approach achieves a much more realistic environment for players that both games attempt to provide, and by that premise alone, BC2 wins, and at the point where we divide the debate into 2 sections, and 50 percent of it already goes to BC2 for the technical aspects, all that must be done to show that BC2 is truly better is for it to gain ground on one aspect of the other 50 percent, which I have shown that it does on the aspect of realism, which is clearly important to the developers and consumers alike as seen by advancements over the years, so either way, BC2 has already won more than half the debate, therefore winning the debate inherently no matter what. Other than that, the rest is up for debate, but one thing is sure, BC2 wins hands down.
I usually find that the only Call of Duty (COD) game that is compared to Battlefield Bad: Company 2 (BC2) is Modern Warfare 2 (MW2), this is the most fair comparison that I can provide for the best ground of discussion or debate because both games attempt to achieve the same objective of realism in the modern combat world that we live in today, it is therefore best to compare these two as they were meant to literally compete with one another.
The best way we can set up the debate is to designate certain areas of rating that both games pertain to the most, areas where we can find the most common ground possible. We designate these areas into two main sections, and then subsections in each, firstly, section one would be that of the technical aspects of the game, areas that are not largely debatable as they are mainly specifications rather than analytics, which brings me to the second area of debate, game play. It is most fair to divide the game into these two main sections because these are the two areas that gamers, whether console or PC will care about the most, this is quite obvious as we can see in popular review sources and by looking at basic facts from video game history, facts such as that graphics are becoming possibly one of the most important factors in gaming, especially for PC gamers.
This is evident by the ever-higher priced and performing market for video cards and graphics drivers, also seen by the high demand for games to be compatible with newer versions of directx, a Microsoft graphical user interface utility, the latest version out at the moment is directx 11, most games are built for directx 9 and/or 10, but directx 11, while new, has high demand for implementation in mainstream games, only the PC and the Xbox use directx, but the other consoles have an equivalent that can be compared to directx as almost a duplicate. There is little debate as to whether or not graphics are in high demand by the consumer as an important element in gaming, if this wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be billions of dollars in the video game industry that primarily relies on advancements in graphics and physics, as well as sound quality to keep consumer’s eyes open and wallets empty, otherwise, games would still be released and built by the standards seen in the 1990’s in games such as Doom or Quake, games that revolutionized the industry and proved that the technical side of games is critically important to the consumer.
It is clearly evident that BC2 has an incredibly advanced game engine in comparison to MW2’s utility. The graphics which are utilizing directx 11 are undoubtedly better whether or not they are on a console or a PC, as is the sound quality and physics, not to mention the hacking protection that is much more effective than the poor excuse for a safeguard that MW2 provides, yet it is not completely effective, but then again, what game is? There is little debate on the technical aspect of the games, which reviewers see as important when they compare the two, as BC2 wins virtually every time. There is little debate because mainly it is generally raw facts other than an clash of theories, for example, individuals may legitimately argue that ATI is better than NVIDIA overall, but nobody is going to argue whether or not the Radeon HD 4870 is a better video card than the GTX 580 is, clearly, it’s not even remotely close. The real substance of argument that the debate is sees is when players or critics discuss the gameplay. One-half of the debate has already been overwhelmingly won by BC2.
Both of the games are attempting to mimic a reasonable amount of realism for the player as much as possible, however they planned to achieve it best from different standpoints that are obviously evident. MW2 attempts to replicate some sort of individualism between players, as seen by kill streak rewards and lack of teamwork while playing, to be frank, when playing MW2, the only reason players don’t kill each other in team games (if they don’t) is because they are on teams. Arguably it is the same way for BC2, however in BC2 there is no kill streak rewards of any kind, and that alone shows its objective, because if the history of mankind has shown us anything, its that people will act of incentive, and when there is an incentive for players to be in it for themselves in a video game, and truly themselves only, that proves alone that it isn’t team oriented, if it was, it would have more of an incentive for teamwork, which BC2 provides. Often there is mass communication between players in the forms of text and/or voice throughout the game, which again shows BC2’s approach to create realism, an approach that relies on teamwork and the value of teammates working together, why, because it is needed to win, and there, is the incentive.
What is realistic about MW2 exactly? What is realistic a bunch of players running around shooting randomly in small closed maps with no vehicles etc, that can call in virtually anything that the army has to offer including a nuclear weapon to further their win? Next to nothing is the answer. BC2 offers the far more realistic alternative that many gamers want. As far as this goes, which style you like best is up to you, either approach has pros and cons, however, the BC2 approach achieves a much more realistic environment for players that both games attempt to provide, and by that premise alone, BC2 wins, and at the point where we divide the debate into 2 sections, and 50 percent of it already goes to BC2 for the technical aspects, all that must be done to show that BC2 is truly better is for it to gain ground on one aspect of the other 50 percent, which I have shown that it does on the aspect of realism, which is clearly important to the developers and consumers alike as seen by advancements over the years, so either way, BC2 has already won more than half the debate, therefore winning the debate inherently no matter what. Other than that, the rest is up for debate, but one thing is sure, BC2 wins hands down.
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