Responding to comments.

Well, I haven't responded to comments in a while (yes, this blog does get comments) so I figured I might as well do one now, since it's only four days until Uni starts and I can't get any sleep at all.

Both are from "truthers" and both come from the post Debunking 9/11.com is a PNAC front.

The first is from some guy called "John". His comment is technically spam, because it's just telling us about Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -- Arthur Schopenhauer

Yes, clearly being ridiculed means that what you say must be true. Just like saying "the moon is made of purple dinosaurs" or "gold is really blue cheese". Clearly being ridiculed for holding such a view means that what you say is true, it's the first stage of being true. Now all I need is someone to beat the crap out of me for saying one of these stupid comments and I'll be one stage further then the "truth" movement.

"1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation "

More than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.

Yep. Because in todays world, one thousand people is a huge number, I mean it's only 0.0003288827559417241% (July 2008 - 304,059,724) of the US population, or 0.00001494314817189223% (2008 number - 6,692,030,277) of the population of the world or 0.0046785814541031% of the population of Australia (2008 - 21374000).

To be fair if they were in say, the Vatican then they would be a powerful force because there are more of them then people in the Vatican, but that's irrelevant.

Compare that 1000, with the ~1.5 million people who are fans of this pickle. But I guess that means that the architects are more truthful.

Either way it's just an argument from numbers.

Perhaps there should be a list of architects and engineers who don't think that there should be a new investigation?

The second is from "anonymous". It's very much a disjointed rant which I shall make more disjointed by responding to it thusly:

There is no need for pseudo-scientific ranting of vectors or Newton's Laws of Motion.

Wow, I never knew that I made a pseudo-scientific rant on the laws of motion. If someone can point out where I did, I'd appreciate it.

The JREF forum has debunked Newton countless times.

I wonder which Newton this is? Perhaps some clarification is in order.

He also has not taken the million-dollar challenge.

Maybe someone should tell him?

It is quite evident that 2+2=5 as shown on the JREF forum(a place to discuss pseudo-skepticism, denial, the obvious in an unfriendly and ridiculing way)This is the link to the debunking of the conservation of momentum...

(the link was to a pile of shit by the way)

As far as I'm aware 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2

The towers fell the way they did because energy and momentum are never conserved.

Yes... because 9/11 showed the world that thermodynamics doesn't exist.

Newton was a delusional pseudo-scientist who refuses to debate on the forum.

Like the "million dollar challenge" quote I suggest someone tells him. If you happen to be in London I hear he hangs out in the Nave of Westminster Abbey. I believe he hangs out with people like Charles Darwin, William Thompson, 1^st Lord Kelvin, David Livingstone, Ernest Rutherford and Clement Attlee. Say hi to them from me if you happen to go.

Some kooks and lunatics claim that he is no longer living without providing the link to the source. Without the link, we cannot deny, ignore, and ridicule the evidence presented, which are the three steps in the JREF debunking process.

Yes, without those links those fools at the JREF will have to listen to us.

Let us put an end to these nonsensical discussions of the conservation of energy/momentum(both have been debunked, and shown to be religious beliefs) and move on to proving and disproving claims without the use of mathematics.

Brilliant, I hate math, I shall give you 0.001% of all my savings for suggesting this... err... how do you figure that out again?

Perhaps I should pray to the gods of conservation of energy and momentum, I'm sure they'll help me.

If any fellow pseudo-skeptics enjoyed this ranting, then please do not open this link… (link removed)

Yes, I did enjoy your rant, so I won't open your link. It's probably got something to do with the first comment or something.

So there you have it. I've responded to a couple of comments.

I'm not happy with Ubisoft (A Rant)

Well, it's official as it's ever going to get with them.

Assassin's Creed II will have Ubisofts fancy new DRM. Now not all DRM is bad, Steam works quite well in terms of DRM, but I don't think this one will.

Why?

Well, it seems that you need an active internet connection for a single player game. It's not single player as in MMORPGs like WoW, but single player as in say, solitare. You don't need an active internet connection to play solitare, neither do you need one for single player games like Tropico 3, Supreme Commander, or even any Steam game with a single player mode.

Now I wasn't happy with Ubisoft to begin with. They were announcing a simultaneous release of the game on PS3, XBox 360 and PC, but they decided to delay it. And what kind of notice did they give PC gamers? Well, a twitter message. That was all the warning that we got.

So, hopefully this "best quality game" will be fucking amazing, or their definition of "better quality game" is one that doesn't try to take advantage of the latest Direct X (opting to use 9 instead, because it's essentially a port of the 360 game, incidentally Assassin's Creed used Direct X 10), and completely retarded DRM.

Clearly they did this because that's what PC gamers want, a reason to pirate the game.

Now, I'm going to state for, the record as it were, that I'm not going to pirate it. I was given a pre-order as a late Christmas present/early birthday present (back when it was slated for a January release) so my copy will be a proper copy so Ubisoft will get their money.

They are essentially punishing honest PC gamers with this DRM. Even some developers agree.

Why don't I like it? Well because I have a crappy connection and there is no offline play.

None whatsoever.

At all.

Right now my connction is probably as fast as a dial up one. I don't know why, the ISP doesn't know why, I suspect that Telstra (who run the exchange, but aren't my ISP) knows why but won't tell anyone, but it's really slow. It also hangs on pages.

Now ACII will have cloud saving, like Modern Warfare 2, except not on Steam. Now both games save locally, so the cloud is only really there as a backup or the off chance you'll go somewhere else to play.

What do I do if the internet is slow with MW2? I go into Steam, click 'File', click 'Go offline' and then wait for it to restart in offline mode. I can now play my game, which I bought legally in a store. Same applies with Empire: Total War.

In fact the only game where this doesn't apply is Audiosurf, and that's because while I can play it offline, I like being able to submit my scores to the server and see how good I am compared to other people. (It's been a while since I last played it, properly working internet or not.)

I suspect that ACII might sell pretty well on PC, but it will also be one of the most downloaded, because people will want to play online, and the pirates will take advantage of this. I think that it will be like Spore. People bought the game, but didn't install the proper copy because of fears of SecuROM. EA still got their money, but they also lost money because of it.

Treating honest gamers like this is only going to end badly. I my opinion Ubisofts decision is just punishing us for not having, or wanting, a console. People are already speculating on their official forum that this is the very plan. Make more people pirates so they can claim "piracy is too bad on PC, we're not making games for them".

But it's not just DRM that's annoying me. Ever since the twitter "announcement" (note: twitter is not a proper way to announce something if you are a company) Ubisoft have been virtually silent on the PC version. No real reason why they delayed the PC version, no reason why they initially promised a simultaneous release several months beforehand, not even release dates. People are still wondering about ambiguous statements regarding the Black edition, apparently Asia doesn't have an official release date yet.

They tell us essentially nothing, and yet they still expect us to buy their product.

I honestly don't think this is a sound business model that they are adopting.