Michael Archer

1238 We're over a tenth of a percent of the way there!

Half-Life 2. Oh, something that hasn't been invented? Oh, ok: If the fundamental principles of the game are atmosphere, stealth, and mystery--and the developers never compromise these principles, then everything else follows. Here, let me show you what I mean, and the importance of not deviating from these principles. This trailer shows what would've been my favorite game, had Bungie stayed true to what they were planning: WroxHMo6B_k I'm a huge Halo fan. So when I saw this, I shat my pants. I imagined the game would be exactly like the trailer: you'd wake up and have no idea what happened. You would check your supplies and realize that you were not well armed at all. You were equipped to assault a battleship, with tight corridors, with a team and an HQ supporting you; you now find yourself in a very terrible situation: you're under prepared and it's pouring rain. You step out of the pod, not knowing what to do. Suddenly, you see an enemy dropship overhead, and you duck into the shadows. Only through the flashes of lightning, can you pick out an enemy squad: they're searching for you and they're not happy. Once they pass, you let out a sigh of relief. Something catches your eye: it's attractive and shiny--you walk over to it and pick it up. It's a clue to what happened. It's a clue to something much bigger than you've ever fathomed, and you have no idea what that is. If you played Halo 3: ODST, you'll know that the game was nothing like this. It was a generic shoot-'em-up. The trailer to the game was actually bettter than the game itself. Halo 3: ODST marketed itself on mystery, but the buildup is not subtle, and the "big secret" (remember: Bungie was teasing this secret for years) was something really obvious and stupid. After finally getting to play this game and then, upon finishing it, realized how shit it was, I felt raped. I want a game with atmosphere. I want a game where your character sucks at open assault, but is deadly from the shadows or, better yet, hesitant of the shadows and must use stealth to avoid what comes out of there. I want a game with mystery--I want my sense of curiosity to overcome me and make me have to continue playing. I want rain, and LOTS of it. TL;DR version: Remember Modern Warfare 2? Remember that incredibly short "Second Sun" level? Yeah, I want an entire game just like that level--except with less open confrontations.

I haven't been reading this thread, but because I see that we're well into five pages, I think there's a person who thinks there's a god on this thread. To the atheists: I've learned that it's useless to argue with religious people--you're not going to win. You're probably citing evidence by biologists and scientists to refute the religious people, yes? That's like trying to argue with someone who doesn't believe he's conscious. Religion is a faith-based i.e. there's zero evidence for it and it's to be taken without question, where science is reason-based. These two fields are epistemological conflicting. In conclusion, atheists, you're trying use reason to defend your position against people who think reason is impotent. You're making an argument about the importance of logic, to people who don't believe in logic. You're not going to win.

Half-Life 1 on Hard is absolutely brutal, especially Xen. A marine can take a double-barrel shotgun blast to the face without dying, and Vortigaunts take two revolver shots before dying. If you couldn't hold down the fire mouse button with the crowbar and stun enemies, then I actually don't think hard Half-Life 1 would be possible. Half-Life 2 should only be played on Hard, I think. Normal is too easy.

I also moved my character by jumping like a retard, so I picked up so much speed that the voices started to overlap each other. If it goes to, like, $1 on Steam, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll pass.

Never played Half-Life 2 on the PC. *dodges tomatoes*. I played it many times on the Xbox 360. *dodges a knife*. Relax, it's my favorite video game. If I played it on the PC, then I think it would be there, but as of now, I say that the greatest PC games are Halo: Combat Evolved and Team Fortress 2.

Underseige: Seen it before as a kid, and I thought it was cute. I don't think it's as cool now. It's stupid as hell, but it's got a few funny lines, so I put up with it.

1. Who are you again? (LOL, just kidding) 2. Why is that? 3. What videos? (LOL, just kidding.) 4. So do I, but I'm secure in my self-esteem and I don't need other's approval to determine my worth as a human being. 5. Well, when you say things like this "you guys are pukes", what did you expect?

Well...strictly speaking, you're right, but it's a music video. That's different. Also, Smooth Criminal the song is stupid as hell, but the video makes it exponentially better, in my opinion. I don't even like the song, but I put up with it since the music video is kick-ass. Not true at all. Lord of the Rings, I'd say, relied on visuals equally as much, if not more so, as its soundtrack. 12 Angry Men was pure visual, as was Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs.

When I said this was the "lifeboat" question, I wasn't saying it's a lifeboat question for the billionaire, I was referring to the people that were storming the tractor beam--it's the lifeboat question for them. Given your scenario and you're saying they literally have to use the tractor beam or die, then strictly speaking, there is no proper moral action or any immoral action. This is an unrealistic scenario, because most of the time in real life, just because you're destitute doesn't mean that your only option is to steal from other people. In a society where people are free to trade with everyone else, there's always other options. In your scenario, you're framing the question in a way that the other people have literally no alternative, so there is no morality to be applied there. Is the billionaire being immoral by not using the tractor beam? I would say absolutely yes, assuming that he's not being persecuted on earth. Is he being unethical for not using the tractor beam? That's a bit trickier. Let's address the ethical issue first, but both the moral and the ethical solutions have both the same response and justification, since ethics come from morals: I don't know why the billionaire would not deflect the asteroid. Is the mob a tool of an oppressive civilization and government? I don't think it would be too expensive, as if everyone on earth is dead and there's only three or four of you left on the planet, there's hardly a big enough economy and the value of your money declines sharply if there's, like 6 billion dollars for every human being on earth (assuming that you let five or so friends come with you). Is he protesting against the government's dogma that a man must live for the sake of others? Does he know that once he saves them, they'll continue to fleece him? Actually, I easily see an Ayn Rand hero planning to do something like this. If this was the plot of an Ayn Rand book, I imagine that the entire thing would be the businessman suffering oppression from those around him. When the asteroid is about to hit the earth, the government comes to take the tractor beam away from him "in the public interest." The businessman does the only thing he can do when the government shows up: he concedes it to them unwillingly. The government brutes try to operate the beam by bashing their clubs against the controls, but their use of force will never allow them to operate the beam and the businessman cannot operate under force. The moral of the story would be that you cannot reverse cause-and-effect and that when you initiate force on the businessman and render his mind useless, the product of his mind (the tractor beam) is rendered useless as well. I know you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, but the plot is strikingly similar to your scenario, albeit more subtle. The businessman in Atlas takes his few friends he deems to be valuable--the men of achievement and ability--and takes them to a secret society to live and prosper while the rest of the world burns. It's not only until the parasites are out of the way that they decide to go back to the regular world and rebuild. So let's put it two ways: let's first say that the mob is the symbol of an oppressive people and/or an oppressive government. It would be perfectly ethical to let these people die, as they believe that the initiation of force is the standard, they've surrendered their right to be treated as human i.e. they've surrendered their right to be treated as rational beings, as they're using the opposite of reason. The businessman would be perfectally ethically justified in taking the people he deems valuable, a few thousand women, going to his space station, and only coming back to rebuild the earth when the men of force are gone. They would rebuild the earth and have a fun time having sex with the thousands of woman to repopulate the earth. Now, you might say this solution is really improbable and something out of science-fiction; I respond that if you give me a science-fiction scenario, you can expect a science-fiction solution. On the other hand, what if the businessman and his tractor beam are in a society that bans the initiation of force and everyone is free to trade with each other? The businessman got rich, because he was free to trade with his equals. The mob outside his tractor-beam building would--presumably--be his workers, and other businessmen that he's traded with. Yes, you would be acting unethically towards your fellow man, as you would be acting unethically by walking by a person having a heart attack on the street. As for the people outside, this is the lifeboat-question for them, but I like to think that because they've dealt with this man and that he earned his wealth through achievement and not force, they would trust him to make the right decision. Morality is a code that guides a man through life; it tells him when it's right for him to do something, and when it's wrong to do something. Is it really right for you, when you let an asteroid destroy your home planet, let it destroy the only planet capable of producing and sustaining life, with billions of people who are potential traders in order to make your life easier? Is it conducive to the life of a human being to spend his entire life in space, in radiation, in a desolate world with no resources? I mean, if he has supplies to sustain himself in space, it wouldn't last forever, and he would run out eventually without the natural resources that only earth can produce. When I think about it, this question is the equivalent of asking, "The businessman is on the Titanic (let's presume that the Titanic is sailing for all of eternity) and sees the iceberg coming. He plans to abandon ship, and live out the rest of his days on a tiny little lifeboat with all of his friends in the middle of the freezing North Atlantic Ocean, living off the lifeboat's meager supplies when he can easily save the ship. Is he behaving immorally?" Yes it is immoral, as it would be insanity to let the luxurious and proud Titanic--the vessel that sustains your life and lets you experience happiness and would do it for the rest of your life--to live off a pitiful, depressing, objectively inferior lifeboat. That would be the sacrifice of a greater value, to a smaller one. The earth is objectively more valuable than any space station a human being can build: the earth has untapped oil, valuable minerals like gold, forests, ash billions of gallons of fresh drinking water. Living on the lifeboat when you can live on the Titanic is sacrificing a superior value for an inferior value, which I believe is insane and immoral. Unless of course, the Titanic was being eaten by barnacles, and you had the choice between the lifeboat or staying on the Titanic a little while longer until you're consumed by the barnacles along with the ship. TL;DR version: It's immoral to let your fellow man die if he views you as a man of reason and of trade; it's not immoral to let him die if he views you as a sacrificial animal, as if he thinks it's ok to use force on you, he's lost his right be called a rational being as reason is the opposite of force.

When my friend told me that they changed Derpy's voice, I didn't believe him. He played the audio, over Steam, of the new edit, and I insisted that it sounded fake and I didn't believe they would do something like that. He then posted the Youtube link, and my heart sank. When Rainbow Dash said "Derpy" in the original cut, I burst into a fit of joy; it was one of the best things that could have ever happened on the show. And now I feel like my heart's been ripped out of my chest. It's like giving a child a toy on Christmas that he thought he would never get, letting him warm up to it, and then taking it away from him. What I think is equally as bad, if not worse, is that people on the My Little Pony subreddit and people on Youtube are calling Hasbro's editing of the episode as "censorship." Hasbro owns the property, they get to say what happens to it. How dare the haters compare censorship i.e. an act taken by oppressive governments to silence opposition, to the editing of a children's cartoon. This makes my blood boil. Overall, I'm pretty mad about the Derpy debacle. On the bright side, all that was changed was the iTunes upload and the DVD that's coming out has the original cut of the episode. During depressing times like this, I listen to a song--not necessarily my favorite song--but a song that, no matter how mad I am, always makes me smile. For a long time it was "If You Wanna be Happy" by Jimmy Soul, but it's recently been replaced by something that I'm sure is much more familiar: mNrXMOSkBas The first time I watched this, during the entire song, I was grinning from ear to ear. It's that delightful and it reminds me why I got into ponies in the first place. On a darker note, I read the fan fiction My Little Dashie. Has anyone else read this? It's supposed to be the saddest fan fiction ever written in MLPdom; people say they ball their eyes out at the end. I printed it off and read it a few nights ago when I was alone by myself. At the end, I felt a lump in my throat on the verge of a few tears, but I wasn't crying per se. I felt like there was something wrong with me. I think it's the fact that I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged which has the most beautiful and poetic writing I ever read in my entire life (seriously, even if you don't agree with the philosophy, the imagery and the metaphors are like nothing you've ever read before--but I digress), and that My Little Dashie has spelling errors, grammar errors, run-on sentences and comma splices. I was also thinking about a lot of heavy stuff that was going on in my life that was unrelated to the story. I think I was also tired when I read it; it was about 5 a.m. when I finished it. I really like the story that the guy tried to tell and I really feel like he was making an effort to make me feel the emotions he wanted me to feel; I just think it could've been executed better. Nonetheless, it was a story I was glad to read--and when I'm not as tired and when I don't have any serious pressing issues at hand, I'll probably read it again. On another note, I like to think of this story as the inverse Cupcakes. Where Cupcakes had a terrible story but incredibly well-executed writing (so I'm told), My Little Dashie has a great story but terrible-writing (the writing is ok, but it could have been a hell-of-a-lot better).

What's this love of .mkv I've been seeing recently? Alright fine, I realize that the container won the poll, and I respect that, but BTGBullseye was about to swear on his life that it's higher quality than say, .mp4. It's just a container, ya know. It just holds video and audio files. Argue about audio files and video codecs all you want, but containers? Containers are like clothes: you wear them and stuff. I'm no expert, but isn't saying that one container is a better quality like saying that one web browser is faster than the other? Doesn't it just depend on the video file itself/your internet connection?

Yeah, you're right. That's not very fair. I should've said, "On 4Chan, there are a lot of pedophiles, and Anonymous comes from 4Chan and there are a lot of pedophiles in Anonymous, seeing that they harass underage girls."

I was having a debate with a friend over what was the best kind of music. He said that he only liked soundtracks as lyrics annoyed him because they unsuccessfully combined music with poetry. I disagreed, and I said that musicals were the best music as they're goal was to convey pure feelings to you that the artist wanted you to feel, as opposed to shit like pop which is designed to make the singer look pretty; this is why I believe that the Defying Gravity Broadway recording is literally infinitely better that Idinia Menzel's pop abomination of that great song. I also said musicals' purpose, was opposed to soundtracks which is just supposed to complement the main attraction, like an hors d'oeuvre compliments the main meal. He said that soundtracks are an integral part of the movie and he likes it for the same reason that I like musicals; it conveys emotion that the artist wanted you to feel when the picture wouldn't be enough. I kind of just shrugged this off. Later, I was thinking about the American Civil War and I was thinking about the movie Gettysburg. I remember it being an incredibly long movie--about four hours long. It's also literally the slowest movie I've ever seen, but for what ever reason, I loved it. Now I know why: it's the soundtrack. Without it, Gettysburg would have been a very mediocre movie. The fight scenes are just a bunch of guys yelling at each other, and the rest of the movie is just long dialogue about military strategy. The soundtrack conveys the emotion of the soldiers on the battlefield, that the screaming alone couldn't. Don't believe me? Watch this scene depicting the charge of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment on the second day of battle with no ammo, but watch it with sound turned off. Don't worry, you're not missing any important dialogue; dialogue is simply "We can't hold them sir! Alright, so fixed bayonets! We're going to charge swinging down the hill. Does everyone understand! Yes sir! Alright, sir! Move! BAYONETS! FIX BAYONETS! Right wheel, charge! CHARGE! ARGHHHHHHH" bqT8PMBtIKI Very mediocre scene, right? Just a bunch of Americans charging, like they always do, right? Not very original, in terms of camera shots or other movie effects, and the special effects aren't even that great. You may have even saw a guy at the beginning pretend to die in a totally not convincing way. Now watch it with the sound on. Suddenly, this becomes the best scene in the entire movie. I get shivers every time I watch that scene. I now know that the composer of the music and the director wanted me to feel the passion for which these boys charged. They wanted me to feel the feeling these men felt when they were defending their country for a cause they believed in. They wanted me to feel the feeling these men felt: that they'd rather die than give up their country and homeland to these traitorous aggressors. So yeah, in conclusion, the Gettysburg soundtrack is great and completely changed my opinion on soundtracks. The tracks are on Youtube, so give it a listen if you want to.

You guys realize that Anonymous are bunch of pedophiles that, for every cool "freedom-fighting" they do, there's a hundred pedophiliac things that they do that you don't hear about? Remember the Jessi Slaughter story? Chances are, what happened is not what you think happened. Yes, Anonymous are terrible, terrible people.

Too late, they're already cannon.

Bronies in a nutshell: 0WHvDh8VIWc That's not a terrorist at the very end of the video; that's simply the coach about to tell them something. I know it sounds like a terrorist, but it's not.

I actually missed the crossbow in the cage the first time I played Half-Life. Guess my ineptitude saved my Freeman from looking retard by letting the facehuggers go.

Because this'll really stop pirates. Ha. This is my point. Pirates are the cause of congress over-reacting.

Sorry, I meant to say: by definition, a human being is a rational being. Some people choose to use their rationality in greater amounts, but as a law of nature, a human being (i.e. a homo sapien) is inherently rational. You might say, "alright, fine, but then we can initiate force on those who are irrational, right? We can tax irrational businessmen, right?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that if a human being behaves in an irrational manner, then you have the right to self-defense. No, in the sense that you cannot say "this businessman is irrational" to have a moral blank check on what he makes. To judge whether or not a human being is irrational, objective standards must be used; for example, when a man is proven in the court of law (which should be through objectively-defined laws) to have committed a crime, or when a team of doctors diagnose a patient as irrational. Your asteroid hypothetical actually made me stop and think for a second. There are too many variables for me to properly answer your question. Why do you have a missile base? What do you use it for? Why doesn't the military have a missile base they could use? Naturally, the military should do that, as it's their job to protect the country from attack. Or perhaps is this just your own version of the lifeboat question i.e. four people in a lifeboat and it only supports one--what is the proper moral action for each person? In this scenario, I believe there is no moral action. You have the right defend yourself from people trying to kill you, but you also don't have the right to initiate force on your fellow man. By virtue of taking one action, you violate the rights of others, so really, morality doesn't really "apply" here. Of course, a flat tax would mean you would have to cut a lot of programs. But think about it this way: under the graduated tax system, if you with your 18k income is paying 20%, the golf man would be paying 40%, simply because he's more successful. How is that fair? Again, I'm incredibly confused here; why is that rich people aren't considered people and it's ok to fleece a rich man? I know you're probably going to answer, "he doesn't need it! He can get along fine if I take it away from him!" Again, on a moral level, you're proclaiming your right to treat another human being like a chess pawn if you think it's ok. You're also proclaiming that this man has no right to live for himself. When you initiate force on another man, you're in effect telling him to act in a way that his mind is telling him not to act. His mind is saying, "if you act in this matter, death will occur"--but you make him act anyway. A man cannot exist without his mind, so fundamentally, when you initiate force on another human being, it's a human sacrifice. I don't care whether you're sacrificing him to a god on top of a volcano, to the king of the country, to the welfare of your citizens; a human sacrifice is always immoral. It's actually at this point, where I view anarchy to be a (slightly) more moral system than socialism; because, at least in anarchy, a man is permitted to make tools to defend himself against an aggressor--in socialism, a man is helpless against the agent of force (the government) because they've stripped the means of defending himself. There are other ways of funding the police, courts and the military other than taxes and initiating aggression; I posted an essay on tape earlier. I think everything else should be privately run. In the essay, the author says that under such a system, it's true that the rich would be spending a bigger portion of their money on these functions of the government and the poor would be getting an almost free ride. But she stresses the difference between the outcome of the system, and the actual moral level of socialism. The difference between the poor paying less in a capitalist system and the poor paying the same amount in socialism is the difference between a bus letting homeless people fill the seats in the back that weren't bought by anyone and giving the hobos first class seats with champagne. You say that causing limitation on one's wealth is causing suffering, rather that it's putting a limitation on one's wealth; I could not disagree more. Again, do you remember the cause-and-effect relationship I described earlier? Wealth is what occurs when someone applies their reason to the world. When you limit someone's wealth, you initiate force as you're taking something that didn't belong to you. You're rendering the cause of the wealth useless, and wealth will eventually die without its origin. The only differences between a mugger robbing a poor person on the street and the IRS seizing millions of dollars from a multi-billion dollar corporation is that the latter was elected by a majority vote and it will simply take longer for the latter to die. That's the only difference. I fail to understand why robbery is ok if the majority votes it. I'm just going to get this out of the way, if I haven't already: I don't believe in lassiez-faire capitalism because it achieves the "greater good." I don't believe in a concept such as "the greater good" and I don't even know what that means. It doesn't make any sense. You mean a good that somehow supersedes the good of an individual? A society is simply a group of individuals. How can something be a greater good when it abridges the right of an individual? It's true that capitalism achieves a general greater level of prosperity for all; the difference between what we consider a poor person in South Korea and a poor person in North Korea is self-evident, but that's not why I'm an advocate of capitalism. I believe in lassiez-faire, because it's consistent with man's nature and how he survives and I believe every other system make him act in contrary of his nature. Moving on... It's also not fair that some people are born smarter than other people, and it's not fair that some people are better-looking than other people. It's also not fair that we praise child prodigies in school and we tell the slower ones to keep up, and it's also not fair that we hold beauty pageants where the less-than-beautiful need not apply. Some people inherently have more advantages than other people by fact of their birth, but this is simply another fact of human nature--and the egalitarian solution, like all solutions that attempt to reverse man's nature, ends only in pain and suffering. In other words, if someone went to plastic surgeon and said that he was upset about being ugly and was jealous of the fact that other people are prettier than he was, a rational, capitalistic doctor would try to help him; a egalitarian, socialist doctor would break into people's homes at night and mutilate the faces of everyone else prettier than his patients. Don't just dismiss this paragraph and a scarecrow argument. When you think about it, there's absolutely no fundamental difference. What's the moral difference between the above scenario, and a poor person going to the government "doctor" and asking him to break into all the people's houses who are richer than he is to "mutilate" their bank account? Good question. Irrational people have rights, but not in the same way as other people as their source of rights is impaired. That's why you a doctor can morally institutionalize irrational people, while he can't do the same to a rational person. That irrational person will no choice, but to depend on the asylum to take care of him, his family members, or charity. Surely you're not suggesting that the irrational person has the ability to manage other people's money despite the fact that he can't even manage his own life?

I'm glad that they decided to not make Pinkie go full-on retard. I was worried for a second. I don't mean "retard" in the pejorative sense, but in the sense of literally mentally retarded. I was worried that they would make her cute, naive, innocence into full-on retard, the last few episodes serving as a warning.

Played the free version, game crashed at the end, a lot of bugs, didn't understand it, wouldn't buy.

Look at you guys: some of you are taking pride in the fact that you are pirating. It's people like you that makes people want to pass this bill. BTGBullseye, I'd like to know where you got those statistics on pirates.

Get used to the wait times between episodes, guys. Ross' vocal chords must have taken forever to heal after that. We respect the job and all its hazards you undertake for us, Ross. I bet it will be really painful to record Freeman's lines after he finishes his metamorphosis into pure sound waves. A great episode, as usual. I didn't get the hiccups thing. Is there a joke I'm missing?