Dantius

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Have fun being a victim of the new indefinite detention powers. I don't see what the big problem with that is- it's not like the US was unable to indefinitely detain its own citizens before (Hi there, Executive Order #9066!), so why are we suddenly upset that it's "legal" now- the only circumstances where it could be used without massive outcry are situations where the popular sentiment against the detainees is so immense that you wouldn't need to get Congress to pass a law to order detentions, you could just use executive orders or get the military to do it. And besides, who, exactly, is Obama or Romney* going to detain? The power of indefinite detention is like nuclear weapons- sure, you could use it, but no president would be stupid enough to use it to detain innocent citizens or dissenters or anybody who's not manifestly a terrorist operative in an era where governments can be toppled due to Twitter and Facebook- they'd be signing their own death sentence.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon Again, what does that accomplish? Transfer of vinyl to mp3? Edit: In an effort to return to topic... hacktivism vs. blackouts. Which, if either works at all, is more effective? It means that I only need one good speaker system for my house- my computer covers music, movies, and computer sound. I could also do the vinyl-to-MP3 trick, but the quality of the transfers are less than just buying proper CD's or MP3's, and I don't have enough records to force me to transfer rather than repurchase.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I was not aware so many people still had VCRs. I still have a LaserDisc player in one of my closets, to be perfectly honest. My VCR is right next to my DVD player, and it's still hooked up to my TV (and yes, the time is correct). There's even record player hooked up to my new computer! I must be getting old...

Is this a chance for me to link to this WSJ article? I do believe it is! Originally Posted By: WSJ At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul’s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer @Dantius - FORTRAN isn't used much outside scientific programmers anymore and most use a variation of C. Even my university that required it for some classes had very little beyond the required textbooks. I know. I picked FORTRAN because the only purposes I need it for are fast manipulation of large data sets for Project Euler, so I don't really need anything very fancy or with functionality outside pure mathematics*. Plus, it's the only non-4gl language that I'm already at least somewhat familiar with from college, so I might as well take advantage of my sunk costs and learn it fully.

Obama was a pretty good senator, actually. I liked him, and Kirk's okay too, though the jokes are a little too obvious sometimes.

Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman @Dantius: Who made that graph, when, and using what data? It looks interesting. I made it, several months ago, using the data provided in this thread and an app provided by the Political Compass website. To answer your probable next question, no, I'm not modifying it to include new data, because then I'd have to create a new listing of all the data and manually input it by hand onto the website, because the app's UI is godawful and hates me.

Yeah, you'd probably want to check out a university bookstore if you're looking for more textbook type stuff. Barnes and Noble might have some more basic stuff, but I doubt that they have the things you'd be interested in. Just the other day I was hunting around my local bookstores for a copy of Numerical Recipes, and none of the had it- I had to go online and pay through the nose. B&N didn't even have a single book on FORTRAN coding, which actually somewhat shocked me.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Now that we have a protest against SOPA maybe people should pay attention to the US government retaining the right to indefinitely detain US citizens...or assassinate them without due process. But but... those people don't give us funny pictures of cats! Can't you see SOPA is important?

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Edit: @ Dantius, I clearly misread your above statement, but even then, there are inevitably going to a be number of Republican supporters on these forums who support the same ideas you're ranting against. (You did refer to it as polemical at times, but that isn't going to stop people from reading it.) It's just you and me, actually.

I did not label the Austrian school "insane". On the contrary, it is quite sane, inasmuch that is is rigorously logical from its starting axioms (Keynes has a quote on that, but I'm sure you're familiar with it already). Instead, I labelled it "psuedoscience", which others before me have, since by applying deductive reasoning to a set of a priori principles it is not science by definition, despite seeking to cloak this fact in scientific language. By doing so, it appropriates scientific thought as intellectual justification for a nonscientific type of thought-- ergo "psuedoscience". "Insane" is a label I reserve for trickle-down Reagonomics only.

My rant on the subject. Be warned, it does tend to border on the polemical at parts: Click to reveal.. Okay. Cards on the table here. If you asked me in, say 2010, what party I identified with, I'd probably say Republican (Though, to be fair, I did vote for Clinton both times, and also Kerry and Obama). Not anymore. After watching the way the cookie has crumbled (and subsequently having been labelled a socialist for doing so) over the past two years, I have drawn a single conclusion supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence: Either the Republican party, or its supporters, are totally insane. I mean, two years ago after the midterms, Obama had been handed a resounding defeat, the Republican had a mandate again, and the presidential election was handed to the GOP on a silver platter. They then decided that, instead of stepping up and taking it, than now would be a good time to unleash a Mao-style ideological purge upon their party to remove everyone that didn't toe the line exactly, while pursuing an agenda that makes the Great Leap Forward look well-planned. 1. They first demonstrated a utter failure to grasp even basic economic principles by pledging to balance the budget without ever raising taxes, never mind that rates are at pretty much an all-time low despite government being needed more than ever. 2. Then, they decided that playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States and intentionally causing the downgrade of the safest investment on the face of the planet was a better idea than allowing Obama to get a routine debt increase. 3. They then refused to accept any economic plan that didn't toe the lines of the ridiculous blend of supply-side inanity and Austrian pseudoscience that they pass off as "economics", even if it included a deal of $10 in cuts for every $1 in tax increases. 4. They now seem hellbent on wrecking the EPA and disparaging any and all regulation as "job killing" (yeah, because a few hundred jobs are more important than keeping, say all of Chicago's drinking water in Lake Michigan free from pollutants from the Whiting Refinery). And that's just congress! The presidential candidates are so much worse. They've deluded themselves into thinking that Obama is somehow an ignorant bumbling fool who can't speak without a teleprompter and who has no credentials, despite being a powerful orator, Harvard-educated law professor at UC, a US senator from one of the largest states in the union, and president for four years (arguably the best experience for the job). In the face of this, the frontrunners for the nomination have been: A smarmy private equity manager who claims experience as a "job creator" despite pulling deals that would make Gordon Gekko cringe, and who takes pictures like this while blasting Obama for being "out of touch" A semi-literate Texas Governor (seriously, again?) who barely has the brainpower to scrape by with a 2.0 in an animal science major at Texas A&M who thinks that the theory of evolution, arguably the most well-supported scientific theory ever, "has some holes" A man who sold pizza for a living, with no experience in government except a brief stint in the KC Fed, and who didn't even know what was happening in Libya beyond "9-9-9" A woman who thinks vaccines cause autism in children, gays can be cured by prayer, God told her to be a tax lawyer, CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, disaster that kill hundreds are God's way of telling us to vote Republican, and that Jimmy Carter causes swine flu, among other views! Newt Gingrich. NEWT. GINGRICH. And that's just the people they had as frontrunners! They've also dabbled with a man who thinks that dismantling America's military will make us safer and eliminating the department of education will make our kids smarter, and even flirted with a man who thinks bombing Iran to protect Israel is a good idea and that liberalism causes Catholic sex scandals. How on earth did it come to this? How did the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower come to this? These people aren't republicans! They're crazed right-wing demagogues that have somehow hijacked the party that was supposed to be the reasonable one of the two! Why is the party of fiscal discipline advocating cutting taxes even further when we have a one and a half trillion dollar defect, and what on earth went so wrong that one of the two basic political groups in the country started doubting basic scientific claims like evolution or the age of the earth or AGW? [/rant] Sorry about the rant. I tend to get rather passionate on the subject, and ever since Huntsman's dropped out of the race, it's looking bleaker by the day. I just hope that the party gets their stuff together before they go the way of the Whigs.

You do know that Eric Cantor has pretty much tabled SOPA? It's not going to be brought to vote anytime soon. Of course, that dosen't mean PROTECT-IP is dead, but frankly PROTECT-IP is way easier to deal with, even if it still is sub-optimal. Pity I have to support SOPA now. I really didn't want to, but anything Cantor dislikes probably will turn out to be a good thing for America.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Do you have any substantive criticism of RPG theory, apart from the fact that it's supposedly written by hipsters who are too cool and modern for you? Remember, OD&D effectively had no attributes or skills either -- technically it had attributes that you wrote on your character sheet, but they had almost no effect in combat. So this is hardly hypermodernist design I'm pushing here. My main problem with RPG theory is the tendency to throw babies out with proverbial bathwater, by making statements like this: Originally Posted By: An anonymous RPG theorist I think the non-combat skill system is pretty functional as it is, although I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise. , which irks me because it's just changing things for the sake of being able to change them, and a willingness to ditch systems that, by their own admission, are "pretty functional", purely for the sake of design aesthetics or frankly irrelevantly small perceived problems. And claiming that ODnD didn't have attributes either is a red herring- ODnD was kind of terrible anyways, so why would we want to emulate it? Originally Posted By: Lilith If you have your own suggestion for fixing this that doesn't rely on "socially pressure the players into keeping their combat bonuses relatively close to each other", I'm all ears. Easy, and I'm pretty sure it's been discussed here before. Have every player pick a "primary" combat stat (like Martial:Swords or Evocation) that progresses with level without requiring points invested into it and is high enough that no point investment could possibly cause another skill to exceed it (for instance, PCS=4+2*"Level"). That way, everyone has the same main combat bonus, but characters that wish to "specialize" in combat can spend their level-up points to improve other combat skills that just won't each as high as their primary one for increased tactical flexibility without overpowering, while character that want to be generalists can still pursue other noncombat skills without worrying about one-hit kills or becoming irrelevant in combat. See? A solution to your main complaint that didn't require throwing the entire system and forcing everyone to relearn a new one that had no relation to the old. Originally Posted By: Lilith Pretty much every D&D-based system also uses character classes. Part of the balance problems come from the fact that we've got rid of character classes -- this system is an attempt to reinstate the niche protection that classes provide without falling into the class-as-identity trap. And the total removal of classes is one of the issues I have with the system. If you're concerned that you can't create characters unique enough to break past the label that the class attaches to them (which you can do easily, BTW. You come up with some of the best and most original characters here!), then that's not necessarily a problem with the class-based system, but a problem with how one plays it. "Cleric" could just as easily mean Torquemada as Mother Teresa (Hi, Nalyd!), and "Barbarians" could range from Genghis Khan to Thog, so if you're simply playing along with the predetermined stereotypes of class, that's your problem. I mean, as I take another look at your design, you're basically trying to put classes back in without explicitly stating it. So why not just put classes back in? It would be way simpler and more efficient, and you could define just three or four classes broadly enough that you would't fall into the identity trap- for instance, a "magic" class or a "combat" class hardly defines a character in the way that a "sorcerer" or "barbarian" would, and it could be used to balance various characters against one another without slotting them into predefined roles, which seems to be what you want to be able to do.

Mmmmmmmmm... I think not. Look, the purpose of any RPG rules set is to keep things a.) simple and b.) balanced. Since it's pretty clear that not even 3.5 in its arcane complexity could make things perfectly balanced, then it seems foolish to switch out the simplicity of Eph's system for something vastly more complex (cf. your quadratic equation f(L)= x^2+7x+12 (that you didn't even properly declare variables for )). What your system does is replace three attributes (STR, DEX, and INT), and three derived attributes (Spell slots, HP, and AC) with survival strategies, combat strategies, defense strategies, noncombat skills, TH level-dependent bonuses, and a whole bunch of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, jeez. I understand that it's all cool and modern to have RPG's with no attributes and no skills and "keys" instead or whatever, since you seem to insistently link to hipster rule sets like that every time someone brings up a minor and inconsequential problem with the current system that could easily be fixed within the current system. I'm just wondering what exactly is the problem with stats and attributes that makes them so bad that they must be replaced at all costs as soon as possible? Was your family killed by Thulsa DEX/STR/INT at a young age and you grew up swearing revenge against him? Pretty much every successful DnD based gaming system, whether pen-and-paper or CRPG (think KOTOR or NWN) uses attributes and skills, and they seem to be doing fine, so I really thng that you're just posting solutions in search of a problem here. tl;dr: Click to reveal..

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Alright, everyone! Contest time! Who can find the longest chain until a loop? Black Swan > Anatidae > Family (biology) > Biological classification > Organism > Biology > Natural science > Science > Latin > Italic languages > Indo-European languages > Language family > Language > Communication > Information > Order theory > Mathematics > Greek language > Indo-European languages Ugh, that reminds me of the "factorial chains" problem on Project Euler. Don't bring up bad memories like that.

Jeff's documentation is based off of his documentation for prior games, and he rarely changes it, even when he makes changes in the game. It's possible to do empirical testing, assemble data sets, and use statistical analysis to work our the damage dies of spells, and several members do do so when new games come out. I'm not sure if anybody's done it for G1 and G2, though.

Originally Posted By: MMXPERT drayk=drake drakon=dragon The graphics make it clear that the "drakon" is less "Athron" and more "10 foot tall Slith", to use an Avernum comparison. Still terrifying, but not as dangerous.

Ah, the ironclad certitude of religion. It's so wonderfully neat. All the philosophy and intellectual backing was produced so long ago, it's not even a concern. Must be nice to have such deterministic responses to every question that could be asked ready to go at the drop of a hat.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I would love to expand my horizons. Can anyone suggest tolerable Baroque (besides Bach), solid bluegrass, rap that doesn't sample better artists, or any modern jazz that isn't too avant-garde or just dull? Tolerable baroque is called "classical" or "romantic". How much Handel have you tried? Beyond Bach and Handel, you don't have may other major options besides maybe Telemann or Scarlatti.

Originally Posted By: Terribly Ernest Originally Posted By: Triumph That lemur used to fly, but then it took an arrow to the knee. Not here as well?! I was going to refrain from using Skyrim memes of Spiderweb, but then I- STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

Originally Posted By: Iffy Not sure what you'd call the "default" skin to have unless you're racist, and I'm certainly not dark. Perhaps all the coffee I drank has seeped into my skin, though. In all seriousness, though, I just use the default. Evolutionarily speaking, "default" skin color would be the skin color that our ancestors in East Africa had, so you've kind of repeated yourself there.

Sourceror, if Sir Terry Pratchett is to be believed (he is).

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I would find all this significantly more interesting with some graphing and statistical analysis. I also cannot help but wonder what all of those guests are DOING. I assume the majority are looking for specific game info, and not just lurking General. You can stalk viewers and users using this page. It's really quite nifty.