Haha! What's with the "music" tags at the start of them? Is that like what these live journals recommend I listen to, the "theme music" of the post? Hilariously stupid!
So there are a lot of things in the news these days about a big vote about what defines "planetness". One proposed rule set was "if it revolves around a star and is not revolving around another satellite (the gravity "barycenter" is not inside that other satellite, meaning they are revolving around each other more or less), and if it is massive enough that it's gravity overcomes it's own shape to make it spherical, it's a planet. The one they actually voted on was another set of rules saying, if I remember right, it has to orbit the sun, have cleared out it's "surrounding neighborhood", and some others, whatever.
There are a few things I have to say about this. First of all, as many scientists are saying, this really is pointless. Whether you call Pluto a planet or not, it is what it is. Call it a whale, as in redefine whale to mean "marine mammal or icy rock beyond the orbit of Neptune". This also doesn't help science at all as far as I can tell. This isn't a new discovery. They didn't find out something new about Pluto making them reconsider. They are changing the definition, the data hasn't yet changed.
There is no "planetness" somewhere "out there". It's a word. It is merely us saying "this idea represents this", instantiating a class to help us deal with the stream of otherwise meaningless information that is the universe. I know this is all obvious to anyone who's ever even had a passing thought about language, but the news doesn't seem to get that. If we wanted, we could, instead of defining the rock itself, define a carved out shape of the rock and some space to the west of it as a thing we call Pluto. At any rate, this won't change anything about the object, it'll just change what we call it. And so, why is it that big a deal if we call it something else? The only real reason is to make information easier to manage. Somehow I'm not sure this'll do anything of the sort. I'm fine with a rough definition of planet that is pretty much arbitrary myself.
That said, there's an easy solution to this. Leave the science to the scientists, but in cases like "what do we call it?", why not start up a new craze in the form of "name that celestial object!", the new hit show translated into every language where everyone on the planet gets to vote on a selection of names, and whether or not something is a planet or a star or whatever. Since it won't affect the science or anything (if they call a moon-like object a "star" it won't change the fact that it orbits other things and isn't a nuclear inferno), it seems fine by me. Also, it'll get people into science in a more hands-on way. Make people feel like idiots if they don't care about it too, that helps.
So, I'm just wondering what those who are still in school are taking. I actually kinda want to go back to school, 4 months of seems like it's too long.
Anyways, I'm working towards a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Alberta. I'm majoring in Political Science and minoring in Sociology.
My schedule this year looks like this
Fall:
Drama 101: Introduction to Theater Arts -T/R 9:30-10:50
Political Science 220: Canadian National Goverment and Politics - M/W/F 1-1:50
Political Science 260 - International Relations - M/W/F 10-10:50
Psychology 104: Basic Psychological Processes - T/R 11-12:20
Sociology 210 - Introduction Social Statistics - T/R 2-3:20 -Lab M 11-12:50
Winter:
Drama 102: Play Analysis - T/R 9:30-10:50
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 220: Violent Weather - M/W/F 9-9:50
Pol S 220 continued
Pol S 260 continued
Sociology 224: Deviance and Conformity T/R 2-3:20
Sociology 225: Criminology T/R 12:30-1:50
It should be an okay year. I'm not really looking forward to social statistics though, and I'm not quite so ssure about psych. The two poli sci courses should be interesting along with soc 224 and 225. Drama 101 and 102 are to satisfy my fine arts requirements, and involve no acting, so that's good, I think they're pretty much english classes. Psych and Violent weather are to fulfill sciece requirements.
Relative to the Xbox 360. Just compare the numbers...
- means included, + means addon, pay extra, ? means I don't know
PS3: $600
-wi-fi internet included
-DVD playback included
-blu-ray high density DVD playback
-free online service of some kind, for games and downloads (though some games (MMORPGs) may have additional fees)
-60GB HDD
+addon for PS1/PS2 memory card support: price to be determined
?charging kit for the controllers?
-HDMI for 1080p
Xbox 360: $400
-20GB HDD
-DVD playback included (or does it require a separate remote like the Xbox did? not sure)
+wi-fi internet: add $100
+online service: basic functions (online purchasing section, demo downloads, etc): free; online multiplayer game play is $50 a year (MMORPGs and similar titles have additional fees)
+Xbox memory card transfer: several third party addons required, relatively costly
+HD-DVD high density DVD playback - price rumored at $199? To be determined.
+play-and-charge kit for controllers is ~$20 extra
?availability of larger hard drives unknown
-no HDMI
So... to match the PS3's feature list, and assuming a lifespan of five years (for determination of Xbox Live fees), just in these fields the PS3 owner spends $600. The X360 owner probably spends $950 --and that doesn't include a larger hard drive. Or a play-and-charge kit for the controller (though I don't know if PS3 will include such a thing either).
As for the low-end models, despite the higher prices, there I'm not sure. Will the $500 PS3 have an add-on for wireless internet (not built in) or HDMI (doesn't seem so)? It does seem that the hard drive will be upgradable, so its 20GB HDD is probably not irreparably downgraded, but without knowing those other things, the Xbox 360 Core, with its only changes of note things you can add back on, is the better choice -- though no one should actually get a Core. Core isn't actually $300, it's $340 -- you need a memory card... or $400, if you want the hard drive. And then why not just get the normal one for the same price? 20GB for $100 (a massive ripoff, by the way) or $40 for 64MB (flash memory card prices are fun! :D)... which one makes more sense? Yeah.
Anyway, my point... the massive amount of stuff aimed at Sony after its price was announced? It's because they're trying to include everything in one box instead of having only the basics in the box and making the other things optional. That latter strategy is what lets MS get away with its overall higher prices, and get praise for its "lower" price while Sony gets torn apart for a high one... clever, MS, clever. And it's worked brilliantly for them, too.
Nintendo really needs to make clear how similar MS and Sony actually are in price for them to make much impact from their lower price... I don't know if it'll work, though. Historically price hasn't been the major determining factor in who wins the console wars... and people only look at the price on the box, not the additional price of the required extras they'll also need in order to make that box actually work the way they want it to.
Looks like the last of the pre-KQ5 games is getting the unofficial remake treatment from yet another group out there.
Visual quality, as can be expected, still won't exceed KQ6. Odd that, considering that they should be able to get an adventuring engine made these days that could do some decent "super vga" if they wanted, but oh well, it should still be interesting.
I will say after spending a few hours playing KQ3, there are a few things the old parser interface could do better, at least in terms of letting you try a whole lot of different things with things you find instead of just "using" them in a generic command. I can appreciate the difficulty but in bringing it to mouse operation, if they had the time and inclination to, they could always flesh out the experience by giving every thing you can click on it's own context sensitive list of commands. I only say this because there was a certain something... lost... in KQ3 VGA (though honestly there was not such a loss in KQ2 because that was a total overhaul of the puzzles and even some story elements).
We'll see how this one ends up, and after this since the graphical quality is apparently not meant to exceed the KQ5-6 game engine, plus the rest are already mouse driven, the next step is just to release some sort of perfect emulation "shell" for both windows and DOS versions of the later games so people can actually play them again. I'll say right now if they can use the Windows versions (for their higher res icons and "character portraits" (KQ6)), but fix certain aesthetic issues like the bar across the top of the screen, it'd be fine.
Microsoft has released two episodes on Xbox Live, and showed the playable game at GC. Let it be known, this is my most anticpated game of the year. The cartoon is pretty funny, too.
![[Image: eek.gif]](http://tcforums.com/ubb/eek.gif)
How do you use a smiley like that in context? Maybe to have the reader imagine zooming in on my eye in cinema-like shot? Sounds pretty weird to me.
