Spore

Will Wright, Nerdiest of Nerds, says the much anticipated Spore will be released in 6 months. He says the game is done an is just being tweaked and balanced at this point, but healthy skepticism would not be remiss here. Still, it's nice to think that then end might be in sight. Link.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

You know how I've been talking about that HD-DVD player for the 360 lately? Well I bit the bullet and got one. It seems Best Buy has changed its initial position and is considering the player an actual HD-DVD player and not an Xbox 360 accessory. This means the machine is eligible for the 2 free movies of your choice they were giving away with all the other HD-DVD players. This means that when you purchase the player for $179 at Best Buy you get King Kong (packed in with the player), 2 free HD-DVD movies of your choice, Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD, and 5 free HD-DVD movies in the mail through the Toshiba promotion. HD-DVD movies run between $25 and $35 and Heroes Season 1 is $99, so that's about $300 worth of movies/tv shows for free. Granted, I don't really want King Kong and the selection from Toshiba only has two or three movies that I'd want to hold on to, but if I can get $50 in store credit from Gamestop trading the movies in that I don't want then I'll still consider this a steal. For those of you with an Xbox 360 or who are planning on getting one, this is a hell of a deal.

It's Alive!!!!

I received a brand new Xbox 360 from Microsoft today to replace the dead one. At under two weeks turnaround between shipping it out and getting the new one, I have to say that I'm impressed with the service and no longer worried about whether this new machine might die.

Win A 360 And More

Update to a previous post: I know nobody will see this if I post it to the original post, but in addition to the 5 free HD-DVDs you can get from Toshiba for purchasing an HD-DVD player for your Xbox 360, now you can also get the first season of Heroes for free from Buy.com and Best Buy in addition to the five free movies. Best Buy is also running a deal this week where you get two free movies from them with the purchase of any HD-DVD player but there is some dispute as to whether this applies to the player for the 360. Even without those last two free movies, if you've got a 360, a fan of Heroes, and you're in the market for an HD player, this is a pretty sweet deal. Link.


Don't have an Xbox 360? Amazon is giving away 90 Heroes themed 360s over the next month, so there's your shot. Link.

Unreal Tournament 3 is going to allow PC gamers to build levels and other modifications on their PCs and then export them to the PS3, where presumably anyone can download them. Now, my experience in mods for the PC is a little out of date, but I played plenty of mods in college and about half of them were utter crap, 45% wouldn't be worth your time if they hadn't been free, and 5% were legitimately good. So yeah, this is really interesting news and there's some real potential for cool free stuff to come out of this, but it doesn't make my heart sing the way it seems to make some people. Link.

Microsoft and Toshiba are working on an Xbox 360 that will include an HD-DVD player in the machine itself. Now, I think the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD competition has been and continues to be horrible for consumers and is still nowhere near being resolved, but I suppose this could be an interesting system as a replacement for the Elite. Link. Update: After mulling a bit I think this probably is referring to the next generation of Xbox and probably not a replacement for the Elite. Crazy though it may seem, the replacement for the 360 will probably be announced in less than two years and be released in three, so it would make sense that they're in the planning stages now.

Thanks, EA.

Video Game Blog Dump

The new NPD numbers are out for the month of September (though there seems to be some question as to whether they count the first week of October here as well) and Halo 3 sold 3.3 million units. Keep in mind that Halo 3 came out the last week of September. The game also bumped the hardware sales up to over half a million as well, surpassing the Wii. We'll see how that carries through to the holiday season, but my guess is this is only the beginning. Link.

Microsoft is offering five free HD-DVDs if you buy the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360. At $200 it's not super cheap, but it's probably the cheapest of the HD players and five free movies helps a bit I guess. Plus, as far as deals like this go, this is a fairly decent list of options. Link.

When the PS3 launched both 20gb and 60gb versions contained both the CPU and the GPU (graphics processing unit) of the PS2 in addition to all the computing stuff that makes PS3 games go. When they brought out the 80gb version of the PS3 they ditched the PS2 CPU in order to cut some costs. From what I understand this solution worked pretty well for playing PS2 games. For the new 40gb version, however, Sony is *also* ditching the PS2 GPU, meaning the machine will be completely unable to play PS2 games. It will, of course, be $399 rather than $499 they're charging for the 80gb version, but Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton thinks we're actually better off without backwards compatibility. You see, now you can buy a PS3 and a PS2 for a combined price of $70 less than the original 60gb PS3. What a deal! (/sarcasm) Link.

Will Wright Also Resolved The Iran Hostage Crisis

Wow, it's amazing it took this long to come out, but before he made Sim City and all the other Sim games, Will Wright won the race eventually known as Cannonball Run. Dom DeLuise was his navigator. Will Wright is the awesomest ever. Link.

One Of Us! One Of Us!

EA has assimilated Bioware and Pandemic, two of the best video game studios out there. Link.

P.S. The comments following that post are of varying interest, but are worthwhile if only because they produced this:



You know the sick part? I knew within a few seconds what episode that shot is from. Kudos to anyone who can name the episode *and* tell me what Picard is quoting.

Quite possibly the bestest thing ever

Pour Silk Chocolate Soymilk in a mug. Microwave for 2 minutes or so. Add a dash of paprika.

A Moment Of Silence

Please, everyone, bow your heads out of respect for my fallen comrade, my Xbox 360. It was quite nearly two years old and had played many games but the recent strain of finishing Halo 3 in two days was just too much and it finally died yesterday afternoon. I've sent the body off to Microsoft where, like any good pet, it will be quickly replaced. I suppose they might try to repair it. If that's the case, ZOMBIE 360!

Holy Crap!

Somebody get a home loan now. We're moving to a decommissioned missile base in Central Washington State. Link.

Tip o' the hat to PA.

Cannon Rock

Insomnia set in, so I listened to twenty or so versions of Cannon Rock. I love that the internet allows musicians to gather like this, showing each other what personal twist they can each put on a basic song. Also, I think this song is ripe for an appearance in Rock Band.

And because I'm still up....

Hammer tricks.
Crazy claymation.
Funny cat.
Holy crap, some dude getting tasered at a Kerry rally.
That's one tall bike/Ron Paul advert.
Honestly, I was only hoping there was a reason they misspelled "lucky". There wasn't.

Is The Whale Coming Back Next?

Winnipeg is being considered as an expansion city for the NHL. Is there anyone in the world that thinks expansion is a good idea? I'm not a contraction hawk, but come on, move a team to Winnipeg if it's such a good place for a hockey. Link.

I Needs Me Some Of That Haloez Money

Halo 3 has raked in $300 million in one week of sales. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm betting that there will be a Halo 4 at some point. Link.

A hypothesis

The reason scientists dislike philosophers (as a discipline) is that they -- the scientists -- have no idea what the hell philosophy is.

Be sure to skim the comments thread. Commenters Caledonian and Glen Davidson are especially wacky in the having-no-idea-what-philosophy-is respect.

I think I'm done reading PZ, frankly. The biology-for-the-masses posts are what really hooked me on his blog in the first place, and those are few and far between lately. His atheist shtick is really nothing more than disingenuous ad hominem attacks on religious believers. I'm still not a theist, and have no interest in theism, but I've had enough of `only stupid people believe in God, except I didn't mean stupid even though that's what I've said ad nauseum'.

PZ's spot on my daily reading list, I think, will now be occupied by Feminist philosophers, which, based on the past week, is pretty good at exactly what you would expect from the name.

The Brave And The Bold

Who among us is brave enough to try a beverage purposefully trying to taste like sports cream? Link.

Well Color Me Shocked

A while ago I reported that Rock Band was a top selling game already despite the fact that it won't be released until November. I bemoaned the people pre-ordering the mega package of the game for $200 as that pretty much guaranteed that the game would not sell for any less than that. Well, then my resolve broke and I became exactly one of those people who pre-ordered the game and now we get final pricing and it's $30 cheaper. Still no small investment, but hooray anyhow! Link.

Competition To Make Adam Smith Happy

Amazon.com is getting into the mp3 business with DRM-free songs available at $.89 a pop and many albums at below $10.00. Now, I've always thought $1 per song was a bit high, but what really kept me away from itunes is the possibility that I would buy an mp3 player from another company and would have to buy my music all over again. The Amazon store also doesn't require you to download any software to buy songs (only to buy some whole albums) and provides 30 second clips of songs so you can get an idea of whether you actually want to buy it.

It's going to be really interesting how Apple and MS respond to this, but it's only good for us.

Tip o' the hat to EA.

Pretending that economics is the right way to think about problems of justice

Background: NARAL PCA wants to use text messaging to send action alerts to members who sign up to receive such alerts. Verizon, citing a longstanding internal rule prohibiting text messaging about `controversial' topics, refuses to let NARAL PCA run this program with Verizon customers. (Cont'd below the fold.)

What's to be done? One response suggests expanding something called the common carrier rule to include text messaging, now that text messaging has become a major form of interstate communication.

Professor Wu pointed to a historical analogy. In the 19th century, he said, Western Union, the telegraph company, engaged in discrimination, based on the political views of people who sought to send telegrams. “One of the eventual reactions was the common carrier rule,” Professor Wu said, which required telegraph and then phone companies to accept communications from all speakers on all topics.

But this isn't the only response.

Some scholars said such a rule was not needed for text messages because market competition was sufficient to ensure robust political debate.

“Instead of having the government get in the game of regulating who can carry what, I would get in the game of promoting as many options as possible,” said Christopher S. Yoo, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You might find text-messaging companies competing on their openness policies.”

Well, yes, you might find text-messaging companies competing on their openness policies. Just the same way you might find organic foods being served at McDonald's and Burger King. Or the way you might find $500 in your winter coat next week.

The supply and demand model (which I presume Prof. Yoo is utilising here, the Times not having quoted him citing any more sophisticated model) assumes, among other things, that the marketplace is in a state of perfect competition. Primary features of this state include perfect and complete information (everyone knows everything), equal access (it's easy for consumers to move from one producer to another, among other things), free entry (it's easy to start up a new company in the market), and the independence of consumers and producers (the fact that my best friend chose to go with company A in no way influences my choice between companies A and B).

It should be clear that none of the assumptions made in the previous sentence obtain in the case of today's telecommunications giants. A quick Google search isn't turning up a nice chart or graph, so I don't have evidence, but AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint (I might be forgetting one or two prominent others) have almost complete control over the cell phone network within the United States. Critically, this includes the infrastructure, the physical network itself. A new carrier trying to enter the market must either pay one of these companies to use their infrastructure, or invest billions of dollars (and, most likely, engage in tedious legal fights) to build their own infrastructure. The big telecoms require customers to sign two-year service contracts, so buyers cannot easily move from one service to another. And, of course, the service contracts are specifically designed to encourage customers to use the same network as their friends, family, and co-workers, with significant discounts for in-network communications.

Again, a quick Google search isn't turning up the information I need to make good on this claim, but I think the cell phone networks in the US would be better described as an oligopoly. If this is the case, then both competition and collusion are likely, and a simple model can't predict with any reliability. For example, the telecommunications giants might start competing with each other to let NARAL PCA send action alert text messages. Or they might just as well all decide to ban NARAL PCA from their networks. Critically, in neither case do consumers have any real say over what happens. The ability of NARAL PCA to effectively communicate with its members using text messages depends on decisions made at the highest levels within the big telecoms.

Which leads to the real problem I have with Prof. Yoo's suggestion that we just let the invisible hand sort things out. There's a difference between NARAL PCA communicating action alerts to a list of members and what kinds of frozen pizzas we can find at the local megamart. The Times reporter recognises that difference, albeit only in one short sentence: `Messages urging political action are generally thought to be at the heart of what the First Amendment protects.'

The real, effective ability of citizens to express their political beliefs is at issue here. It's true that there are plenty of other ways for citizens to engage in political speech -- NARAL PCA has a website and sends out messages to its members by both e- and snail mail. But if Verizon is allowed to prohibit the communication of controversial ideas over its network, then mutatis mutandis so is FedEx, and so are landline phone companies and television stations and cable television and internet companies. Hence, by contraposition, if we accept a principle requiring these other common carriers to give NARAL PCA access to their networks (whether that principle is grounded in the First Amendment or something else), then we must accept a principle requiring Verizon to give NARAL PCA access to its text messaging network.

Finally, once we highlight this aspect, we realise that Yoo's economic argument (such as I assume he had; the Times just quoted his conclusion, not his reasoning for that conclusion) is a huge red herring. When we start debating the proper economic policy, we end up completely ignoring the deeper, and far more important, issue of justice: What impositions can and should we place on members of our society to ensure that everyone has a real ability to express their political beliefs?

Review: Teh Haloez 3

So I just finished the Halo 3 single player campaign. Yeah, unemployment has given me some spare time. The story was good. Yeah, in a world post-Bioshock (and several games before that for that matter, it's just on my mind having finished it so recently) it's no longer acceptable to say "Good enough for a video game". Both games have plenty of action, but Bioshock was Serenity, Halo 3 was Die Hard. Well actually, Halo 3 has a few missteps that Die Hard doesn't in that there are a couple times where you might be scratching your head if you don't pay close attention or haven't played the previous games. Still, it's not a movie, it's a video game and though the story could definitely be better (or perhaps just better told), the game is plenty of fun to play.

Really though, it's hard for me to fairly judge Halo. I finished the single player campaign, which is pretty rare normally, but the real focus of this game is multiplayer. While I'm really hoping to play matches with my friends over Live, I really don't have the time or energy to get good enough at multiplayer to really compete online, so there's a rather large chunk of the game that I'm not going to really play much of.

In the end I do really like the game. It's 8-10 or so hours of fun single player goodness, even if it won't blow your mind. The multiplayer will undoubtedly be tons of fun if I can get my friends into it, but I'd recommend the game even if you don't plan on using this feature. Is it the best single player campaign I've played all year? No, but it's quite good and definitely worth your time.

Differentiating human and non-human animals

In a 1986 article in the New England journal of medicine, `The case for the use of animals into biomedical research', Carl Cohen gives a handful of arguments against the work of Tom Regan and Peter Singer, who in turn had previously argued against the use of non-human animals as research subjects. (Cont'd below the fold.)

One of Cohen's arguments is to attack an analogy of Singer's, between the denial of the moral status of non-human animals and racism. Cohen quotes Singer:

The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race .... Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.

(NB Singer also makes the analogy to sexism. For the sake of simplicity, I will confine my remarks to the racism analogy. I believe all that follows will apply, mutatis mutandis, to sexism.)

Cohen goes on to argue against this analogy (my emphasis):

Racists ... do grave moral wrong precisely because there is no morally relevant distinction among the races ....

Between species of animate life, however -- between (for example) humans on the one hand and cats or rats on the other -- the morally relevant differences are enormous .... Humans engage in moral reflection; humans are morally autonomous; humans are members of moral communities, recognizing just claims against their own interest.

Elsewhere in the article, Cohen seems to think living in a moral community supervenes on autonomy, and that the ability to engage in moral reflection and act with moral autonomy are one and the same. So I take the central claims here to be that the ability to engage in moral reflection is (A) not a morally relevant distinction among human beings, and (B) a morally relevant distinction between human beings and non-human animals.

Why accept (A)? Prima facie, one might attempt to claim that the ability to engage in moral reflection is an essential property of human beings: if a being does not have this ability, then that being simply cannot be a human being. But as it follows immediately from this that all human beings have the ability to engage in moral reflection, and this is clearly false, this is not a plausible reading of (A).

Cohen himself recognises this problem. However, his solution to the problem is simply to assert (B):

The issue is one of kind. Humans are of such a kind that they may be the subject of experiments only with their voluntary consent .... Animals are of such a kind that it is impossible for them, in principle, to give or withhold voluntary consent or to make a moral choice. What humans retain when disabled, animals have never had.

This appears to be nothing but a non-sequitur.

Why accept (B)? One might, following Kant, claim that the possession of a capacity for moral reflection is the only thing that is good or valuable in itself. Then the possession of this capacity is not just a morally relevant distinction between (many) human beings and non-human animals, but is in fact the only morally relevant distinction one can make in any circumstance.

But Cohen cannot follow Kant down this path. He denies `that we are morally free to do anything we please to animals' and affirms that `In our dealings with [non-human] animals, we are at least obliged to act humanely -- that is, to treat them with the decency and concern that we owe, as sensitive human beings, to other sentient creatures' (my emphasis). He denies, that is, that the capacity for moral reflection is the only thing that is good or valuable in itself: non-human animals have a certain intrinsic moral worth because they are sentient.

With this admission, Cohen not only undermines the classical argument for (B). He also leaves open the possibility that (C) the morally relevant distinction between human and non-human animals with respect to the capacity to engage in moral reflection is overridden by the morally relevant lack of distinction between human and non-human animals with respect to sentience. If (C) is true, then even if both (A) and (B) are true, Cohen's argument still fails: morally speaking, human and non-human animals are more similar than dissimilar, very much in the same way that humans of different `races' are more similar than dissimilar, and Singer's analogy holds up.

Why accept (C)? If the capacity to engage in moral reflection is less morally important than other features, common to impaired humans, non-impaired humans, and non-human animals, then this could explain obligations to impaired humans in ways that imply obligations to non-human animals. Sentience or an ability to reason above a certain threshhold (significantly lower than the classical, implicit standard of a highly-trained philosopher), could be capacities of this sort. This is not yet an argument, but is a line of thought that could be pursued.