From what I've seen, they have basically worked the game so down to the nuts and bolts as to make it fit into a three year old console. For starters, how about dynamic weather? None? Shame. Carmack is loosing sight of what made games great to buy and own on a PC, that you could enable advanced new graphics techniques on the PC with the latest graphics cards that were not available to the main stream. Even FarCry2, now a year old, has dynamic weather, and good weather too! I've played Crysis and FarCry2, and I think both games are well ahead of idTech5 in some areas, behind in others. FarCry2 is absolutely amazing when played at 1900x1200 with everything turned on. The mornings and evenings are soo real, with the evironmental audio effects as well. Shadows and foilage are quite fantastic. (The night doesn't seem so accurate however, with the night lighting is just too bright.) We've got quad processors now with 4 Gig PC memory standard, and 1 Gig graphics cards. What was the point of me even spending money on a high end machine? When I buy a game, I expect to see some graphics capabilities in the game that are experimental in nature, like volumetric clouds, wind, rain, dust storms, fog, frigid cold/heat haze effects, etc. I expect HDR lighting. I'm not just buying a game to have fun, I'm buying the game to become immersed in a world, and to explore. I want to feel as though I'm there, and have the freedom to just stand around and gawk at the world for hours, just like a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I've owned every id game made in the last 16 years. If all Rage turns out to be is an overblown desert mad max racing game, with pretty good graphics, optimized for a console, I will be thoroughly dissappointed. Thoroughly dissappointed. I may never buy another high-end PC and graphics combo again. What would be the point? When all I really need to browse the web, check email, and watch online videos is a $500 box. So I end up buying a $500 business PC, and a $500 game console, and come out the lesser on both ends?

Error addendum.

Where the following line was stated:
      'Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".'
this should have read,
      'Replace "Google Voice" with "Firefox" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".'

Dyslexia because of thinking too fast.

How could Apple possibly know what "end user experience" best suits me? If I install Google Voice, then that -IS- the end user experience I want! If Microsoft pulled that, they would get dinged for trying to push out the competition. Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows". This is exactly why the iPhone software environment is poison. Apple should not be allowed to decide what kind of "end user experience" I want on my hardware. Yes, if I purchased the hardware from Apple for the "hardware experience", then that means that I liked the "hardware experience" over other vendors, but that doesn't mean I like, or should be required to use their software! All "computing devices" should be "reconfigurable" using software, thats why software exists! Not to lock you into some Nazi form of "I know best what is for you" mentality. Open the devices up vendors!

Related: Buy the phone first, then choose your cell service vendor! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Enough with hardware-cell service vendor tie-up aggreements!

This is a strange response, and one that isn't worthy of a reply, but I will nonetheless reply to it.

It is obvious that if "I" were something else, then "I" would not be "me". And if the "not me" ideas about the world were different, then the "not me" might "require", "want", or have "needs" that are different from "mine". However those ideas are still not god-like qualities (characteristices) in any situation.

I don't pretend to know the minds of gods, or "the" god, yet I can "by definition" rule out those characteristics of un-god-like minds. That is, unless you believe that gods are just like ordinary people, with faults just like our own. This pretty much demotes gods to earthly kinds, or at least aliens from other worlds with technologies beyond our own.

In which case this brings us right back to (again) "theological non-cognitivism"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism

It is very annoying when someone (like you) responds to my posts in such a way as to frame everything in cultural relativism. If every persons unique ideas were the truth, then we would have no need for discussion of any kind. Going on the assumption that you are right, then there are no absolutes, and gods don't exist anyway.

So ok, I gladly agree.

Narcissism is a human fault. What would a god need with worship? If I were a god that "invented" the universe and the humans within it, I certainly would not "require", "want", or "need" any kind of worship whatsoever. Worship is something that was demanded, or desired by earthly kings, and is narcissistic. Worship probably arose out of the "alpha male" aspect of the human animal social groups, or "tribes". The whole idea of worship is utterly silly indeed.

Monty Python's "Holy Grail" made the worship idea poignant in the following exchange...

GOD: Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
ARTHUR: Sorry--
GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's "sorry this" and "forgive me that" and "I'm not worthy". What are you doing now!?
ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord.
GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms-- they're so depressing. Now knock it off!

When most people argue or debate the existence of a "god", most of the time all the "believers" really want is that you "worship" something that they believe in. This is quite shameful actually.

Also since when did the word "god" start standing in for the "name" of the being, and not the "description" of the thing?

The word "god" is mostly "without meaning" anyway. So you can politely ignore people who discuss it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism/

(control)
duh

... the ebook purchase "The Catcher in the Rye" is right out then, eh?

"It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity."

What does that line even mean? Independently exist...where? How?

All experiences and memories are stored in the brain, either by maintained states of chemical ion charges, or by the wiring of the brains net, or both. In information science, memory storage requires a medium of some kind. No medium, no memory. Most people who own computers should have realized this by now. You need a storage medium to carry information from one place to another. Even if you transmit information from one place to another through a communication channel you still need a medium to do it. The electromagnetic spectrum can be seen as a storage medium for transmission. Any one of the four known forces of nature should be usable for information storage and retreival if we work out how.

It sounds as if the parent is pushing some kind of pseudo science mumbo jumbo that memory and experience are just out-there, somewhere, in the spirit world? The magical, unmeasurable, intangible, unknowable somewhere that has no effect on our world. Completely nonsensical.

Everything you know is in your head. When you die, you lose it. The only thing that remains after "you" is "the pattern" that other beings like you continue to replicate. It is "the pattern" of a replicating and self-aware machine that knows its existance in and apart from the universe. It is the machine that maintains memory throughout its life cycle, unless otherwise damaged in some way. It is the machine that utters the word "I am" to recognize its existance in the world.

Lastly, to remember everything that is, was, or will be, would require all the known material-energy in the universe. In fact, the universe itself. However since memory retrieval requires a retriever, at least some of the medium of the universe would go towards "the pattern", since self recognition cannot happen without "reflection". This leads us inexorably towards a finite state machine that reflects upon everything in the universe, slowly gathering more and more information, and using the material in the universe for more and more storage and reflection of "the information". This process continues until at such point there is either no new information to gather and reflect on, or there is no material to gather for information storage, or both. Going against this process are black holes, which eat both the material medium of information storage, and the information itself.