I have some logical points to make about God's creation of the world.

First off, let's get the initial formalities out of the way: the existence of God. Recently, Ar Tonelico 2 was announced for a December 2008 release stateside. This alone is sufficient proof of a very benevolent supreme being. But that's not really what I'm getting at, I'm here today to talk about creation.

No, not about whether or not it happened, I'm talking about how it happened. Specifically, the question raised in the webcomic XKCD: What language did God code the universe in?

To ansewer this question, I will be quoting from the King James version of the Bible.

To start:

1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1

This is a little ambiguous, but at least its clear that in the very beginning there was a sort of word. In most languages, this would indicate the presence of libraries. Whether these libraries were actually a part of the divine Programmer is a matter for varying translations.

Moving on, the book of Genesis states:

3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Genesis 1

What can we glean from this? Well, ifwe take into account that a good portion of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew Poetry, we can figure out that "Let there be light" is a poetic way of depicting the following command:

import light

Additionally, we note that there was light immediately after Godimported the library. Clearly, he was typing into an interpreter of sorts which would execute the program as he was writing it: this rules out languages like C++. This is repeated throughout the chapter; the term "and it was so" is repeated after each command God inputs: the program is being interpreted, compiled, and executed as it is being written.

But what is the nature of this interpreter? We have to infer this, but it becomes clear from a later passage in Genesis:

1: Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2: And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Genesis 3

Here Eve speaks to a serpent. It is clear from the passage that Eve understood the serpent perfectly. As parceltongue is not real and humans cannot normally understand serpents and snakes, obviously there was something making the snake intelligible. And I contend that, given the context, this is our missing link. Eve could speak to the snake through the very same python interpreter that God had used to code the universe.

Therefore, given the evidence, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the universe was written in Python.

I've always said it was an angelic language. :)



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Boring Stuff: Seriously, AR TONELICO 2!

I installed Ubuntu, and am now happily dual-booting my system. Linux is a nice, powerful operating system, but it's in no way user-friendly. I've started using it pretty much constantly while I learn to program, and I'm having a lot of fun learning the numerous ins and outs. Still, it's not at all something I would reccommend to anyone who's not at least an intermediate-level computer user. Without the omnipresent aid of Google, I'd be totally and completely sunk.

I now have clear experience with every major modern OS, and my ideas remain unchanged: in terms of stability, support, customizability, usability, and interface, Windows Vista is the clear victor.

My brother moved back home after getting his Computer Science Degree from UCSD. and he's been using his vast technical knowledge to make life better for everyone in the house. By "using his vast technical knowledge" I mean "suggesting we use two routers to unify our network, then play Mario Kart while I engineer the methods and iron out the problems."I love my brother, and I'm certainly not complaining, but he's the official computer engineer around here, so why am I the one doing all the technical work? I've barely got through my first year of Electrical Engineering...

I'm trying to get back into anime. If you, kind reader, have paid attention to my ramblingls for this long, I thank you. I am loathe to ask a favor at this point, but could you please leave some reccommendations for anime in the comments? Specifically, pretty clean stuff. I don't care about the genre. Thank you!

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36201.html

Yeah... yeah, that's what I thought. Eat your heart out, No Mutants Allowed. All of you who whined? Owned. Bethesda owned you.

This and Mirror's Edge are the only games I'm interested in right now, unless NIS ever decides to localize Ar Tonelico 2...

Vista's been out for a while, and it's catching flak. People all over the place are singing the praises of XP over Vista, and saying Microsoft has stumbled like never before.

This is interesting to hear, certainly. I've always been comfortable and empowered in the Windows/Microsoft world, and my forays into OSX and Linux have been nice, but in the end all they've done is remind me how much I prefer Windows. So naturally, hearing all these complaints about Vista is alarming: has Microsoft lost their touch? Did they bungle this one up completely?

For your reading pleasure, I present two articles. Given the things you hear about Vista, they should be very familiar in terms of content and language. I'll present the reasons I post these articles in a moment.

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ARTICLE 1:

I've been diddling around with Windows Vista now and again on my system. My first take on Windows Vista was "wow, this looks really different", but then quickly realized that different is not necessarily good.

All the die-hard Windows users will find that they will spend much of their first hours of using Windows Vista in order to re-orient themselves with the new interface. But fear not, Windows Vista can be configured to look like its predecessors if you're resistant to Microsoft's monopolizing change.

The biggest issue I have with any new Microsoft Operating System (OS) -- specifically Windows Vista -- is its incompatibility with existing hardware and software. The most popular complaint from many of my colleagues is that their CD Burners won't work with Vista.

Even my favorite text editor wasn't compatible with Windows Vista.

...

So is it fair for me to judge too soon about Windows Vista not being what I expected? Absolutely. My reasoning is that Microsoft has to get me to drop my existing OS in order to start using their latest and greatest. So far, that hasn't happened.

Windows XP Professional is the most stable, up-to-date Microsoft OS available and is reasonably supported by many hardware and software vendors. Windows XP Professional is built on the same technology as Windows Vista and doesn't come with the extra overhead that would require me to purchase a newer, faster computer. Bonus.

My bottom line advice is that if you're thinking about upgrading to Vista, wait a bit. At least wait long enough until a Service Pack is released (a Service Pack is thought of as a major patch to the OS) and is freely available from Microsoft. I would imagine that by the time the first Service Pack is released, most of the software and hardware vendors will also find solutions to their incompatibilities. If you're looking for an OS that doesn't crash on you constantly and cause you to reboot your machine, run Windows XP Professional.
Dennis Faas

SOURCE

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ARTICLE 2:

HOPELESS OPTIMISM must be a fundamental part of human nature, because we want to believe that new operating systems truly represent an improvement on their predecessors. It's easy to point to certain features in a new OS as examples of progress, but end-users often find that a new OS performs like molasses compared to the version they were using. As a result, CTOs wanting to capitalize on the benefits of a new OS may find that new hardware investments are necessary -- and expensive -- requirements.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's Windows Vista appears to be maintaining that tradition, as indicated by results of independent testing performed by CSA Research and confirmed by our work in the InfoWorld Test Center. Our tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows Vista and Windows XP demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows XP significantly outperformed Windows Vista. In the most extreme scenario, our Windows Vista system took nearly twice as long to complete a workload as did the Windows XP client. Our testing also suggests that companies determined to deploy Windows Vista should consider ordering desktop systems with dual CPUs to get the most out of the new OS.

...

In every test we performed on systems with a single CPU, OfficeBench ran in less time under Windows XP than under Windows Vista. The differences ranged from slight to dramatic, depending on the hardware configuration, but Vista was always slower. For example, our initial baselining using Office 2007 and an optimized UI on the Core 2 Duo system indicated a lag of a modest 11 percent, but things went downhill from there. The baseline reading for the Pentium 4 system showed that under Windows Vista and Office 2007, OfficeBench took 27 percent more time to execute than under Windows XP and Office 2007.

Generally, Windows Vista proved increasingly slower than Windows XP as load increased, with a few rare exceptions. For example, in the first multitasking scenario, using light database, messaging, and multimedia workloads, we got mixed results using Office 2007 on our Core 2 Duo client. Under the default UI, Windows Vista with Office 2007 narrowed the performance gap to 24 percent, compared to a gap of 35 percent in the baseline scenario.

Except for a few instances, Windows Vista increasingly ate the dust of Windows XP as load ramped up, regardless of machine specs or Office version. When the Core 2 Duo client with Office 2007 was tested, script execution generally took between a quarter and a third longer with Windows Vista as with Windows XP, and as much as half again as long with the heaviest load and a stock UI. The Pentium 4 client fared even worse. Running Windows Vista with our heaviest workload and the default UI raised script execution time to more than twice that of Windows XP. Optimizing the UI helped Windows Vista to narrow that gap, taking 1.6 times as long as Windows XP to process the workload.

...

Overall we are quite disappointed with Windows Vista's ability to pull serious weight when compared to Windows XP. We are not certain where the problem lies. Our follow-up testing indicates that the additional database and multimedia workloads are breaking the proverbial camel's back. Microsoft claims it's been unable to duplicate our results, but hasn't supplied us with a better explanation or identified a major flaw in our testing. Whatever the cause, until the problem behind Windows Vista's performance is resolved, we can't recommend Windows Vista as a client for serious database crunching.

In fact, until fast Dual-core desktop PCs become commonplace, we have a hard time recommending widespread adoption of Windows Vista at all. Granted, it appears that for light-duty service on the newest hardware, Windows Vista with Office 2007 is an acceptable choice -- if an 11 percent performance hit, or 53 minutes added to an 8-hour day, is acceptable. But beware of this combination in more demanding environments, whether the workload is greater or the equipment is older.

Barring the need for Windows Vista-specific features, IT departments should take advantage of license downgrade provisions and continue to press forward with Windows XP deployments until the installed hardware base catches up with Vista. Shops lured by Vista features should weigh their options carefully. In many cases, these features may not be compelling enough to justify saddling your end-users with a slower OS. Although differences between Windows Vista and Windows XP can be measured in seconds, what business can afford to put a 20 percent or greater bite on worker productivity?
Infoworld

SOURCE

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The thorough researcher or the technically well-read most likely knows exactly what I just did, but if you do not yet understand the significance of those two articles, follow their sources and examine the original articles carefully.

[spoiler] In my quotes, I replaced all instances of the word "XP" with "Vista" and replaced all instances of the word "2000" with "XP". [/spoiler]

I think it sheds a lot of light on the whole "everyone bash Vista!" bandwagon. It's merely an example of history repeating itself. Vista is powerful, new, in a high position, and therefore the popular thing to attack.

I've seen a lot of talking on the forums about the restriction of objectionable content in games across different cultures, specifically around the time Manhunt 2 got AO (I know, proves I've been neglecting this blog, huh?). A lot of people have drudged up the differences in cultures between the US and Europe in these topics, taking note of how the US seems to giggle at violence and cry foul at any sexuality in the material. A point often made about this obviously observable phenomenon is the seeming silliness of the States for making a big deal about sex, which certain european citizens view as much less of a deal than brutally killing people. Basically, because the US condones violence in media while screaming about sex in same, people say the US is dumb.

Makes sense, right? Right?

Unfortunately this argument suffers from a common failing: Letting good sense take you to an obvious conclusion before the brain kicks in.

First, let's think about why people would view this content as objectionable in the first place. If a man kills another man in a fake enviornment on a screen, and it has no effect on the thoughts or intentions of anyone around, is it a problem? No. Likewise with a sexual act performed in some sort of media: if the "objectionable content" inspires no intent in anyone viewing it, where's the objection? Nowhere. And that's the reason some things in the media are controversial and unacceptable: They have a possiblity of inspiring imitation, particularly among young, impressionable children. Monkey see, monkey do, if you will.

Let's consider something else, a hypothetical experiment: A movie has both a brutal killing and a sex act contained, and a young woman watches it. She dearly likes the movie and this moves her to act. Now, there are two paths this influence could take: she could go and murder someone, or she could engage in sex. Because, despite being rather impressionable, she is otherwise a well-adjusted human being, it is HIGHLY doubtful that she would even consider taking a human life, and therefore she would take the alternative, which sadly may have potentially life-wrecking consequences.

Now, it's true that even most children aren't nearly that open to suggestion, but please recall that modern culture inundates them in smut practically to their eyebrows. MTV screams it at them. Magazines and products holler it. Television and Movies glamorize irresponsible sexuality. Violence is there, too, but it's doubtful that that will be acted upon in imitation.

To illustrate my argument, I call upon the mighty power of statistics.

There were only 9.0 Homocides per every 100,000 people ages 14-17 in the US in 2002, according to the US Department of Justice.

On the other hand, there were 7539.8 pregancies for 100,000 teenage women aged 15-19, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

I think this data speaks for itself. If a youth is going to react to a piece of media, they're much more likely to go out and have irresponsible sex than kill someone. Irresponsible sex can have terrible consequences, as well: it can destroy a girl's health, have potentially deadly complications, or result in her needing to drop out of school. In addition, teenage pregnancies have a higher rate of birth defects. These pregnancies also lead to Abortions 25% of the time, and regardless of your stance on their morality, abortions are often painful and unhealthy procedures that can leave lasting guilt and emotional scars.

So, this brings me to my point: glamorized sexuality in media, like games, is a greater threat to society than glamorized violence because it has a much higher chance of leading to imitation.

While no one in their right mind will tell you that the results of irresponsible sex are worse than the results of murder, the fact remains that irresponsible sex is still a great harm to youth's lives, and there is nothing silly about being up in arms about throwing it happily into the hands of impressionable teens.

Most people make a blog entry when they update their signature, right? Well, I suppose I oughtta do that, to keep with current vogue. Here y'all are:



I know, it's a stupid take on an old joke, but no one ever said I had a brilliant sense of humor.

EDIT: Seems the right side of the picture got cut off. To view to whole thing I guess you have to download it or view it at its source location.

Nintendo's Demon:

My PSP is seeing a lot of use lately, what with the recent aquisition of Syphon Filter, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, and Tekken: Dark Ressurection. Three sterling games, of course, and a great addition to the PSP's lineup, which can hardly be called lacking any longer.
There has been a lot of anti-Sony sentiment in this blog, but I've always said that I'm willing to give Sony as many chances as it takes. Thankfully, my patience has been rewarded. Anyone who honestly feels that the PSP is a failure any longer, from a true gamer's perspective, is either mistaken, tainted with fanboyism, or merely uninformed (as many will inevitably be).
But the near-impossible has happened. Between Valkyrie Profile and Tekken, playing my DS has been put on the back burner, even with my VAST horde of Metroid Prime: Hunters playing friends. This is odd, because I haven't beaten half my DS games yet. It's just in the face of such opposition from the PSP that they lose some of their appeal. It's a thing I never thought would happen: I sit in the back seat of the car during a road trip playing only my PSP, while my younger sister (An artistic genius who can do a brilliant chibi rendering of Vincent Valentine) plays Castlevania in the seat ahead of me.
I did some analysis on the situation, and came to the following conclusion: Something in those PSP games was attracting me during those long hours of otherwise boredom. Something made those PSP games seem better, and my guess is the very reason the PSP is bashed. Let me compare the two situations where I usually pull out my portable systems:

1: A few days ago (last Sunday), I was in my father's car for a short drive (~10 minutes). I pulled out my DS and went through half a battle in Advance Wars DS, closing the system and putting it on sleep mode for the duration fo my stay at my destination. We went several other places, making five-minute hops between destination, and my copy of Advance Wars served quite well to keep me amused (at least in the time when my father wasn't cracking puns).
2: Here I sit in a Honda Oddesy headed eastbound across the Mojave desert, going to Salt Lake City, Utah to see my extended family (Before anyone asks, I am Mormon). I've been on the road two and a half hours, and been writing this for roughly six minutes. I've had two hours to do nothing but play portable games, and the DS games just didn't seem like they'd hold my attention for very long. Instead, I've just gotten a lot done on Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, and a little bit done on Tekken.

Why the difference? I think because of the structure of the games themselves. PSP games tend to be more akin to their console bretheren, while the DS tries to be a more on-demand handheld experience. When one has the boredom and attention span for a console experience, one will wish to play PSP more. When one has little time or is in a situation where interruptions are likey, the DS is naturally more appealing. Nintendo took a divergent course from normal gaming with the DS in more than just control, and for a handheld, that's just fine.
But what if they take the same course with their console, as they near-threaten now? Are we to sacrifice cohesive, extended play time for a more burst-friendly experience? I don't know about others, but I don't play my console in bursts if I can help it. Does Nintendo understand that? I don't wish to play the next Mario game for ten minutes at a time. I want to be able to indulge my rather severe insomnia with Metroid Prime 3. I want to spend hours on end having fun, and if the Cows (Sony Fanboys on System Wars) are right about the controller, getting a little bit of exercise. I want to be able to command armies for hours in the inevitable RTS's. I want to be able to walk around an open-ended RPG doing nothing but admiring the pixel-shading operations that go into making a modern 3D enviornent. Is that too much to ask? I suppose we can only hope that some of the dark rumbling that we've heard about "shorter games" and "easy access" don't come to fruition, or my insomniac nights will be rather tiresome indeed... Well, more tiresome than they'd be normally. :)

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Boring stuff:
I don't have a single review to my name on this site... Sad, really. I'm thinking about making Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth my first, as it seems easy enough to summarize, and I've got the score pretty much set up, Gamespot-style. I swear, it's a brilliant game in every sense of the word. Gamespot's score of 7.5 may be justified to their eyes, but I personally know that I enjoyed it more than Tales of Symphonia or Eternal Darkness. Ah, well... Such is life.
 

An essay is under construction, so this is the last of the "flash" blog entried for now. This time It's devoted to MGS and it's appearances.

1: MGS 4. Saw the trailer, pretty interesting. It really didn't go much into the game, but we at least know about the story. What really impressed me was Raiden... He has been my favorite character in the series since MGS2, but NOBODY else liked him. Now they're all eating their words while I smile at how my long-time favorite has surpassed what others thought of him. Fact: Jack-knifing over rails beats clambering ANY day.

2: MGS Portable Ops: That's not nearly PS2 graphics. But it is looking vey nice... if they can pull off a decent MGS game with a decipherable story, that's one game that's going into my collection.

3: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii): A true OMGWTFBBQ. Awesome in every sense of the word (the lighting is amazing!), and now it includes SNAKE as a playable character! Is that great, or what?

Oh, my gosh. First Sony announces PS3 Live, and then they show a controller sporting Wii-esque abilities. Who are they kidding? I had no doubt it was gonna happen, but now that it has...

Well, not much. It's not like Sony had any respect of mine to lose.

But as my profile says, I'm willing to give them as many chances as it takes... and there seems to be something very interesting coming up...

OMG U CAN EMULATE TEH PS1 GAMES ON TEH PSP!!!

MGS PSP, here I come. Muten out.

I've been elsewhere, you all know that. But I'm back, and I brought Samus_Vs_Link with me. I'm gonna try to update often, if not regularly as I once did. Nice to see you all again! If you need this manticore, he'll be over at the system wars board. The people there are funny!

I have never played a Famicom or a super famicom. I have, however, played a super nintendo.
It's a long shot, but is it possible that the wii will be chosen as only the name for Japan? If so, then there's hope. If Nintendo demonstrates its past track record in listening to us... then there isn't.

Evidence for theory includes the fact that the name is a pun in JAPANESE.