Nappi

I still don't get what's wrong with the UI. As I have understood it, the whole point was to make an interface that can be used with a controller and from afar. It's bound to be a bit "console-y", isn't it?

Good to hear ysbreker! Speedy recovery!

Any word on the developers fixing the checkpoint bugs? Or do they consider it a feature? The fact that enemies respawn and item positions are reset after you load a checkpoint makes the system almost completely useless in the non-linear levels. Apart from the annoying save system and the idiotic story, I'm actually enjoying this game so far. While, the linear levels are a bit dull, I find the playground sections really fun. I remember being completely devastated by the sheer size of the levels in Hitman: Blood Money. In fact, I quit playing when I reached the hospital level and realized that "studying" it would take me ages. Smaller playgrounds in Hitman Absolution mean that I may actually be able to complete the mission in a satisfying way in a reasonable time without having to consult a walkthrough.

What's wrong with Big Screen mode? It feels more fluid than any console UI I have tested and doesn't look half bad.

Cool stuff! Welcome back!

At least they haven't streamlined the PC controls. I appreciate the fact that I can select between 4+ contextual actions at a time without having to rotate the view, but Jesus that's a lot of keys. Hitman Absolution: The Typing of the Dead with nuns.

:tup:

Haha.. I have not read Gravity's Rainbow, so that was the only comparison I was able to make. I quite liked The Crying of Lot 49 actually.

At least it is much shorter.

Finally one that I have already read. Cool!

I just bought my first comic book ever*, Alan Moore's Watchmen, because of the almost unanimous praise it has received and not just in comic book circles (if those even exist). I don't know what took me so long. I guess I will head here for further recommendations when I'm finished with that one. *if you don't count the Donald Ducks of my childhood and Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway of my adulthood, and I don't actually see why you wouldn't.

And what is your excuse for all those latex nun assassin cosplay pictures on your Myspace page? Or your Myspace page for that matter? I played a couple of hours of Blood Money some time ago and I came to the similar conclusion: the game would have seriously benefitted from the next-gen treatment. I think the last straw was continuously failing to stick a syringe on a guard simply because he was sitting. I got Absolution for 17 euros, but I haven't played it yet. Sad to hear that the developers stumbled in so many placed. How did the disguises work in Blood Money by the way?

I was not really considering this from the point of view of the benefit of the society or family, though I agree that it may have sounded like that. My point was it does not make much sense to consider perhaps the most essential part of all life fundamentally immoral. True, if we stopped reproducing, then in a hundred years or so there would be nothing immoral in the world of men (and women) simply because we would all be extinct. Where is the point in that? As for the individual level, if it is truly moral to not have children, then who are you being kind to? The nothingness? Certainly not the child. As far as looking at things from the child's perspective and betting with nothing goes, perhaps I simply don't understand the concept of your actions being harmful or immoral to something that only exist after that action (or continues to not exist if you do "the right thing"). Is a "bad" life really worse than the void? How can you even compare these things? Only the angstiest teen can say something like "I would have been better off if I had never existed at all!" As I see it, that statement only makes sense if you believe in some sort of repository of souls where you just wait to be born. As a concept this seems completely unnecessary to me. "Silly teen, of course you would not have been better off, you would not have been anything at all. There wouldn't have been a you." I find it very hard to explain myself properly, but I guess that is okay. I don't take this discussion too seriously.

This is the part that I find the most perplexing in the idea that having children may be somehow fundamentally immoral. If following a certain moral code, almost by definition, leads to the extinction of the whole human race and with it the collapse of the entire moral system, then what is the point? Especially when much of our core moral code (at least seemingly) stems from the question of survival as a family/group/tribe/civilization/species. A hunter-gatherer tribe of stabbers does not survive for long. Neither does a society of incestors. Or a childless civilization.* I'm not saying that all people have moral obligation to have children — they don't — but I find it hard to see how having children could somehow be inherently immoral. I also completely agree with Thunderpeel and Nachimir, having children may still be irresponsible in certain cases. I still have issues with this part as well. It is not a gamble where you first roll a dice to see how the child's life will turn out and then check whether not existing would have been a better solution. It simply does not make sense to me to compare "a good life" or "a bad life" to non-existing, because non-existence is not a zero in the happiness scale (how would you even define this scale, by the way?); it is an uninitialized value. You seem to really stress the gambling aspect of this thing. It is not as if you are placing a newly born child on red and spinning the wheel. First of all, vast majority of people I know (or knew) enjoy being alive, to the extent that they haven't committed or tried to commit suicide. In fact, most of them seem to be generally happy with their life, despite the various hardships they may have faced. So I would say that you are not taking a fifty-fifty chance — far from it — at least here (or there for that matter). Second and more important point is that you can't really gamble if you have nothing to bet with. You are not some monster that places your own child on the table when chances are that his/her life will turn into a nightmare as a result. The child does not exist, remember. You don't have the chips. I hope this did not sound too aggressive or anything. That is was not my intention. I'm just puzzled by the idea and would like see you explain it a bit more. * I think the point is a valid whether or not you believe in the evolution of morality.

It is clear enough that Forbin was not trying to answer the orignal question but instead raise an interesting historical point related to the discussion.

Haha.. Now, that could have turned into a heated debate.

Bluetooth ?

I don't have much to contribute to this discussion, but to me it seems like an unnecessary complication to ask whether you want your potential children (whose actual existence depends on your answer) to experience life™. Are you, on average, grateful that you exist? Do you want to keep on living? And so on. If you, despite the various hardships associated with life, enjoy being alive, then chances are that your children might too. Also, reasoning that perhaps something shouldn't exist in the first place because that would mean that it would one day have to perish feels a bit bizarre to me. Equally puzzling is the whole concept of "unwanted gift" when discussing something that, by definition, does not even exist before the "gift" is given. Granting the gift of non-existence to nothingness. Hmm... I would also like to hear your reasoning behind the creation of life happening solely for the pleasure of the parent. (NOTE: I don't have and I don't want to have kids for purely selfish reasons.)

Why would you do something like that to yourself?

Haha.. That Permit the Frog is awesome!

Congrats subbes!

Probably to make sure that he is not a horrible murderous dick.

I think their goal is to make that thing as mule-like as possible. Then all you have to do is to kill one of the enemy mules and replace it with the robot. Just think of all the trouble you can cause.

I was actually quite surprised by this statement, to the point that I suspect that I may have missed the point entirely. I don't have nearly as much experience with this stuff as you must have, but I have sat through a dozen or so 15-minute practice talks followed by 45+ minutes of (mostly negative) critique. This is a standard procedure in our lab for everybody who is attending a scientific conference from research assistants to senior research scientist alike. I think all of us know why this is so important and why the focus is on the negative. If you don't fix your problems you are going to be ripped to shreds in the conference or during the peer-review process no matter how cool your figures look like. For example, if you make statements based on "bad data" or even incomplete data, you are simply doomed. There is no excuse. If we fail to address that and instead focus on how strong some other aspects of the presentation or article are, then I feel like we have seriously failed as scientists and colleagues. As a result of this process, the presentations or articles have always come out infinitely stronger in the end. In my opinion, if a scientific article can be ripped to shreds, then it should be, for the benefit of all. The sooner the better. (I have not played Far Cry 3, nor have I finished this podcast)