Dantius

I believe that the Geneforge titles tanked Servile lowest amongst the classes, which wasn't true in G4 at least.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Personally, I'd prefer a more generic title set that includes elements from multiple game series, but does not arbitrarily rank classes or sects that are seen as equals in-game. I also happen to think "Postaroni, Pizzabella!" is too horrible to put in public view, even if that means not being able to taunt Alorael with its possibility. You're just concerned that the rankings of tiles don't matching up with the min/max potentials of the class, aren't you? Talk about OCD

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Even though many of the ships, aircraft, and military personnell involved in the operation are French and British, the US contributes a significantly greater portion of NATO's budget than any other member state. I highly doubt French and British money is funding most of the effort. So? If it's British and French ships, aircraft, and personnel, then it's a British and French intervention. Nobody's claiming that the First Gulf War was a Japanese intervention instead of an American one, even though the Japanese underwrote the majority of the costs. The nation with boots on the ground, or in this case planes in the air and ships in the sea, is the one "intervening", not the one who writes the check, or even a portion of it.

Originally Posted By: Micawber I don't think they'll exactly give us their oil. There's a reason why Libya is the richest African country. Really? I would think it would be South Africa. Huh. Originally Posted By: Necris Omega I honestly think tribal/ethnic hurdles are the most likely thing to make this revolution in Libya fly off the rails in the long term. With the US, differences between the colonies weren't matters of life and dead, and went back for mere decades at the time of the revolution. Hostilities weren't at a fevered pitch between groups at the time, and any disputes weren't matters of blood. In this region, you can be looking at violent conflicts stretching back ages. Gaddafi might escape and rear his ugly, hideous head, but the greater problem is keeping his ejectors all on the same side when he's no longer there to give them a common enemy. Not really. Turkey is a great example of how, with properly applied military coups, it's possible to transform a insular, Islamist country to a modern Western liberal democracy that's still quite compatible with strong religious belife so long as it stays out of the public sphere and sticks to people's personal lives. I have no doubt that if someone along the likes of Ataturk (but Libyan) emerges, much the same thing could happen. It would actually be easier, because the country has oil wealth that Turkey would have lacked, so it's way easier to get Western interests to lend a helping hand. Originally Posted By: Excalibur The interim government in Egypt hasn't seemed to progressed that much, and people are getting disappointed. I would not be surprised if a similar situation happened in Libya, especially since the US (disguising itself as NATO) intervened in the situation. After all, we don't know a whole lot about the rebel leaders. Sure we're under the impression that they want to institute a better government, but that doesn't mean it will happen. Additionally I would never trust any sort of interventionist military action the United States participates in. Look at the Contras. Look at the Mujahideen. Look at Iraq. Look at Lebanon, etc., etc., etc. Heck, the US once assassinated the leader of Chile, and it was even allied with Hosni Mubarak's government. Um, from what I've heard, this isn't a case of the US disguising itself as NATO or the UN, but rather Britain and especially France doing so, and the US then trying to take a big chunk of credit for it so we look like we can do a Middle East war right.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Although it's become quite common, I still get a funny feeling inside every time you make a long post and I agree with it. Who are you and what have you done with Dantius? Perhaps you're predisposed to agree with people who have sideways avatars with inverted colors?

Originally Posted By: The (Armored) Ratt So this happened with TI's calculators? Citation please. 1. Obtain a TI-nspire CAS, a calculator based in many ways off the TI-89, the prior high-end model the nspire CAS was meant to replace 2. Attempt to compile a program written in C on a computer and run it on the CAS, something that you could do on the 89. Alternately, try to plot a slope field and plot the solution of a differential equation on a vanilla CAS without additional programs installed. 3. Observe that you cannot do either of those things. That certainly seems like they hyped p a product as a "replacement" that actually had less functionality than the product it replaced. Good enough?

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Responsibility to shareholders effectively guarantees that a corporation is legally obligated to behave like a sociopath. There is nobody within the corporate power structure who has the power to place ethics over profit, because they are all subservient to the interests of shareholders who have not given them a directive to do so. Meanwhile, the shareholders themselves are almost all totally disengaged from actual management of the business of which they are part-owners. Not really. I mean, corporations often behave like sociopaths, but you misdiagnosed the reason and prescribed the wrong solution. Corporations behave like "sociopaths" (using an outdated mental health term to describe a collective entity is probably an abuse of notation, but I'll roll with it) not because they are beholden to their shareholders, but because they are beholden to profit. It doesn't matter who actually receives the profit, but corporations both publicly and privately held both act in the same fashion. Furthermore, claims about the "corporate power structure" not enabling people to place ethics above profit, well duh. The only time that it's actually possible for someone to do that is if they founded the corporation in the first place. Otherwise, they wouldn't advance up the structure in the first place. See also: politics in most democracies. If anything, publicly trading a company offers an incentive to behave in a more ethical manner, since the price of a stock and thus the value of the corporation is dependent on public image- look at how BP's stock lost half its value during the Deepwater Horizon fiasco. The only real cost to the business was the writing off of an oil rig, stoppering the well, paying cleanup costs, and the legal funds and fees. To a company with the assets, profitability, and infrastructure of BP, that's not that much in relative terms. But because it was beholden to its shareholders, who decided that they didn't want to own a company that suddenly had a tarnished image and bad PR, it got hit so hard that I can virtually guarantee that the corporation is going to seriously revamp its offshore rigs to avoid another disaster like that, where a privately held company might have had no such incentive. Your solution, somehow placing ethics over profit in the corporate power structure, is laughable. As opposed to stocks which depend on a vast variety of factors, success in the high echelons of the corporate world is based off of profit to a much higher degree. If I'm the president of Dantius Industries (especially if I'm paid in options or something like that), then I have a very, very strong motive to do everything possible to maximize the profitability of my company by, say, bulldozing Ephesos's forests, especially if the company is privately held, so the bad press wouldn't affect my salary much. If I own 100 shares of Slarty Industries, a stock that pays out a decent dividend with good stability, then I don't really need to be concerned with bulldozing Ephesos' forests to squeeze an extra buck fifty worth of dividend every quarter, and if President Slarty of Slarty Industries decided to do so, then the resulting stock tank would make it way, way worse for me in all except the very long haul, which most investors aren't in for. So in the privately held company, the motive to place profit above ethics is quite strong, whereas in the publicly traded company, it's far weaker, and practically nonexistent for the shareholders. The actual solution, of course, is a thing called "regulation". We have agencies like the FTC and EPA for things like security fraud and bulldozing forests and such, and if a corporation in behaving irresponsibly, then the answer is not to decouple it from collective ownership, but to crack down on it with regulation and such. Now, granted, that's becoming more difficult now in the current climate, but that's a political problem, not an inherent flaw in the financial system itself. And if, perchance, your comment was more narrowly focused on Apple, then I highly doubt that paying out dividends will suddenly make Apple behave like a sociopath. After all, they've managed to be pretty shockingly sociopathic without one, they just somehow have good enough PR and a stupid loyal enough fanbase that they can get away with it.

I'm kind of confused at what point you are driving at. Are you saying that the stock market is a construct of the upper classes to stop the poor from becoming enfranchised? Because that's what it seems like your saying, and that's not really the case at all.

Originally Posted By: Lilith It makes sense, when you think about it. TI needs a line of limited-functionality graphing calculators so that they can sell something high schools won't ban their students from using. Yeah, but they have those. The TI-nspire line is actually two lines- the nspire CAS and the regular nspire. The CAS is what I was talking about- an 89 that's prettier and has less functionality. The regular nspire has the functionality of an 84 with the nspire look- it's pretty much a basic level graphic calculation that I can't imagine would be banned. To use a car analogy, if I go to a dealer that says it's offering a Lexus and a Prius, and I buy the Lexus, I expect it to work better than my old-model Lexus. I don't want to hear that they put a Prius engine in it because other car makers were complaining it made their cars look bad and car magazines thought it was too powerful for the money.

Not everyone who buys stock is rich, just smart. Long-term stock purchases, especially dividend stock that you then reinvest, is easily the best way to not only beat inflation but make quite a tidy profit on the side. And it's not like there's a line in the sand saying "YOU MUST MAKE THIS MUCH TO OWN STOCKS," in fact pretty much anyone with a couple thousand dollars to spare can get in the game and do just fine, and even strike it rich if you're smart and lucky.

They're shareholders, you obviously don't understand. If I owned shares of Apple, and I saw that there was $78,000,000,000 worth of money with $15,000,000,000 of profit every year that I could be having a slice of, I'd be complaining. Look at the numbers. Right now Apple pays exactly zero dollars in dividends. Some quick math means that there are about $80 on hand of cash, per share of Apple, with around $16 extra coming in every year. They could pay out a quarterly dividend of a dollar or two or even three per share, and if I were a shareholder with even a couple hundred shares missing out on potentially one to two thousand dollars a year, I'd be pretty mad.

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus Now, it has more money than any other US company. I'm fairly sure GE has around three quarters of a trillion dollars in assets, so unless you define "money" as "cash reserves on hand", that's not true. Furthermore, there's a reason that most companies don't keep massive piles of cash on hand, namely that doing that does nothing to help with profit and every dollar you keep in a bank account is another dollar that the stockholders are angry at you for not a) giving to them in dividends, or investing back in the company. So it's not so much an instance of "Apple is awesome for having this much money", but "Apple needs to learn to not suck at managing the money they make".

Nikki, you have a laughably small post rate of 1.8 posts per day. That puts you below ever single person I analyzed, including TM, who has been gone for the past 2 years. Given current rates, you'll hit the TP list in about a year and three months. Of course, that also isn't factoring in your competition, SOT or *i, both of which have very similar post counts. So if one of them decides to make a sprint for the TP list (aside: *i won't do this, since he's the admin and has to have dignity, though SOT also probably has enough dignity to not do it either. So congratulations, you have the dubious honor of having the least dignity of people almost on the top 10 list, unless Salmon decides *i isn't Hitler in disguise and comes back, and that would throw my number all to hell), then you'd probably have to shoot to knock them off or aim for TM's slot at 7K as opposed to 6.2K. That mean that, given your rate, it might take up to 2 years 2 months to get a slot, but by then I'd have nearly overtaken you, so you certainly wouldn't get to keep it for very long. tl;dr: Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S no.

Not really. The nspire represents a huge leap forward in user friendliness and design, but an equally large step backwards in terms of higher-level functionality from the 89 Titanium. 3D graphing, slope fields, symbolic differential equation solving, and any sort of serious programming capability other than the variant of TI BASIC which frankly sucks all got left out of the nspires. So yeah, it's no longer a 64x96 pixel display, but now it lacks some serious upper-level functionality. Oh, and did I mention that it's now huge? You could fit an 89 in a pocket with slight difficulty, but the nspires have this huge bulge at the top that makes them less portable. OTOH, the cx's look like they're going ot fix these issues, since they're reintroducing slope fields, have a new slim design, and a color screen. Color! Screen! The future is awesome!

Originally Posted By: Sylae Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Master1 That's my friend's picture, not mine. I've upgraded to an 84 Plus. And the 83/84 is still the standard in most calc classes. Unless you're special enough to have an 89. Actually I don't use a calculator much anymore, now that I got a more-or-less fully functional Mathematica clone on my phone. Isn't technology wonderful? is it free and if so name. Spacetime, and it costs either 20 or 25 bucks. Still worth it,even if the UI can be a bit clunky at times.

Originally Posted By: Master1 That's my friend's picture, not mine. I've upgraded to an 84 Plus. And the 83/84 is still the standard in most calc classes. Unless you're special enough to have an 89. Actually I don't use a calculator much anymore, now that I got a more-or-less fully functional Mathematica clone on my phone. Isn't technology wonderful?

Originally Posted By: Master1 This is a friend's picture documenting the extent of the damage here in Maryland. Our house shook pretty well, and all of my friends claim to have run outside. I was still in disbelief throughout the experience. I was searching for alternate explanations until I confirmed with my brother, who was awakened from his extended nap when his bed shook. You're still using an 83? The 90's were over a decade ago, you know...

So, my level: Click to reveal.. (Level 4) Name: Dr. Clyve Fourier Age: 48 Occupation: Ex-researcher Alignment: Might not be Lawful Evil STR: 2 (+1) DEX: 2 PCP: 2 INT: 6 HP 14/14/14 AC: 13 SPD: 3 Engineering: 6 (+12) Gun Knowledge: 6 (+12) First Aid: 3 (+9) Tactics: 2 (+8) Speechcraft: 6 (+3) Observation: 1 (+3) FEAT: Well-Read (+4 INT 1/Day) FEAT: Armed Academic (+6 TH to Semi-automatic pistols) And my inventory: Click to reveal.. (Inventory) -INVENTORY -EQUIPPED -Lab coat (AC 1) -Shirt and tie (White/Black) -Slacks (Black) -Kitchen knife (1 DMG) -Walther P-99 (3 DMG, 10 R) [Laser sight] -Small-caliber rounds (5 R) -Aviators -CARRY-ON BAG -Tommy gun (? DMG 50R 10R/BST) -Assault rifle (5 DMG 20R 4R/BST) -First-aid kit (1 bandage 1 suture) -Solar powered calculator -Lab notebook -Pens/Pencils -Short-sleeved dress shirt (Blue) -Slacks (Tan) -Cigarettes (Many) -Lighter -Cordless Drill -FIRE TRUCK -Calibrated pipette -Microbiology textbook -Lab manual -Vodka (2 bottles) -Rum (2 bottles) -Massive safe (???) -Sugar (10 Lbs) -Teriyaki Jerky (4 Bags)

Name, race, alignment, and skills. Haven't thought up a suitable backstory, though it's not like a complex one will be required. Click to reveal.. Siegmunde Human Paladin Lawful. Melee (Spear): 8 (36) Magic (Vitaemancy): 6 (57) Acrobatics: 5 (67 +1 RB) Athletics: 4 (77) Composure: 3 (83) Melee (Unarmed): 2 (86) Stealth: 2 (89) Perception: 2 (90 +1 RB) HP: 30/30 STA: 10/10

Originally Posted By: Micawber This thread made me giggle; I can't think of a more appropriate way to celebrate Dantius's 3000th post than launching a marxist manifesto. One thing, the second graph has a curious straight line trend. Can anyone explain. What is the x axis anyway. I just assigned a numerical value to the names in sequential order- TM is 1, Eph is 2, Drakey is 3, Slarty is 4, and so on, to make it look nice. The rates are ordered from smallest to largest, so it looks linear, but there's really only one variable that matters, and it's the one plotted on the y axis. The x axis is just the names.

Thanks for the reminder. I almost went ahead with the burlesque show after my lead performer cancelled instead.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan is un able]I was the one who did the whole Hebrew PDN thing. It was only possible with the old UBB. Even then, it took a number of tries to get UBB to accept it. The great thing about that PDN was that it completely messed up the front page (the most recent post for each forum). Apparently, UBB had no idea how to put right-to-left text in the middle of a left-to-right section. EDIT: The old UBB also let you embed BBCode into your PDN, which would break edits, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. Hmm, though, I wonder... (I mainly did this to see what UBB would do with your PDN)

Aha! Tricked by the lure of crossword-style puzzles and arbitrarily assigned scores, you've inadvertently entered my celebratory 3,000.00 post thread! However, instead of being trite and boring and posting pictures involving the number 3000 somehow, I thought I'd throw you all a party! And not just any party, the kind I went to in college! With cheap vodka passed through a Brita filter to drink and spreadsheets for entertainment! Wohoo!!! Just kidding. I can't send vodka through wifi (yet!), and some of you are probably underage, so it's BYOB. I can still provide the data and spreadsheets, though! Code: TOTAL POSTS: 3,000TOTAL POSTS IN DATABASE: 2,956AVG. POSTS/DAY: 4.1AVG. POSTS/DAY, 2009: 5.3AVG. POSTS/DAY, 2010: 4.2AVG. POSTS/DAY, YTD: 3.3 Ooh, and let's compare this to some other top posters! Here's a table: Click to reveal.. (Top Posters) ...that also comes in handy graph form! Click to reveal.. (Chart!) Now, that's just the overall average from the sign-up date. It doesn't count the variations that inevitably occur. I would have broken it down month-by-month or at least year-by-year for everyone on the TP list + me, but I don't have a) the time to do it by hand, since it took me an hour to do it for my 3K posts, or the computer expertise to write a script to do it for me. So here's just mine, complete with a 6 month moving average! Click to reveal.. (Chart AND Graph!) And, of course, I then went to all the trouble of recording what date I made every 20th post (not at the time I made the posts, not even I'm that insane) and painstakingly assembled a cumulative graph detailing the inexorable rise of my now-massive postcount! I would have plotted the posts per day on the same graph, but because of the way Excel formats the dates, the result was a mess, so I just tossed in a linear regression instead. Enjoy! Click to reveal.. (Graph!) WOOOOOHOOOOO PARRRRRTY!

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Edited by Dintiradan (58 minutes 17 seconds ago) Edit Reason: Yes, I know other good stuff has been posted. It's just amusing how often linguistics pops up here. First they came for the linguists, and I did not speak up, because seriously, **** those guys, they always hijack the good threads.

The essential points of human/government interaction and the social contract can be distilled into a Word document of about 15-20 pages worth of text in chapters 14-20 of Leviathan. Please read them, they are some of the most powerful ideas that have ever been conceptualized by mankind, and if you have the time, you will certainly never regret reading the whole book. After you understand those ideas, feel free to argue that government exists as nothing more than an institutionalized bully, when in fact it exists for the very purpose of stopping violation of contract- or, in short, to stop abuse of the weak by the strong.