You know space isn't completely empty. There are particles floating around there. How is a solar sail thinner than a human hair going to hold up to being bombarded with small particles, especially if they fly it at any decent velocity?
There is still no technology that is superior to paper when it comes to reading and reviewing articles.
Although I write on the computer all day, when it comes to giving my full attention to reading a complex paper, I cannot do it without printing it out. Somehow the ability to find a comfortable position and scribble all over it with the freedom of an actual pencil allows me to relax and go into deep-thinking mode much better.
Ebook readers just aren't anywhere near what they need to be in order to replace paper for reading PDFs.
And I see nothing wrong with a company that sells paper launching an advertising campaign encouraging people to use their product. They are just a business trying to make a profit at what they do. If you think printing on paper needs to be cut back, then lobby for some new laws to limit how much paper can be produced, but attacking the paper companies for trying to make a profit is not the right way to go about it.
I allow myself little breaks here and there to check Slashdot, read my email, watch a quick TV show, etc.
I don't see a difference between actually typing up code versus jotting down notes to sketch up an algorithm. As far as I'm concerned that's also part of programming and definitely still working.
On some weeks I can spend up to 100 hours programming. I doubt I've ever gone below 35 hours a week in the past 4 years during a work week, although I have taken some vacations during which I didn't work at all.
If your company sold them security software with a bug, your company should first fix the bug and then give them a patch for it (free of charge).
Not tell them that it's bugged and ask them to pay you to fix it. If they don't want to accept the patched version, that's their problem, but most of your other customers will.
I have an idea. How about a tax for shoe shining, because some people want their shoes shined but they don't want to pay 25 cents for it, and they are too lazy to do it themselves. That would be about equivalent. Read on....
It's necessary to charge a tax for health care because people get sick and we it's considered inhumane to leave those people out on the street to die. Therefore, we heal them, and taxes foot the bill.
Computer malware is another issue entirely. First of all there is nothing inhumane about not cleaning someone's computer of malware when they can't afford it. They won't die from it.
Second of all computer viruses can be avoided by following good practices unlike health care related issues which eventually happen to everyone.
Finally, there is no need to pay a professional to fix the problem because anyone can simply reformat their machine or buy a new one if they are too lazy.
Finally x2, it is not a service that benefits everyone. Namely those people who follow good practices and don't ever get viruses, or are willing to spend the few hours to reformat when it does happen, shouldn't be forced to pay for those people who are too lazy to insert CD and click reinstall.
So really, there is no need for a forced tax for malware cleanup...worst idea ever,and I think it is unconstitutional to ask taxpayers to pay for someone else's laziness and incompetence.
I could not find any examples showing similar image reconstructions on Jarvis Haupt or Robert Nowak's websites/publication histories -- the researchers credited with the Obama restoration photo.
Therefore, I am skeptical that this wired article is not to be trusted.
First of all, the radiation from these towers is often strong enough to vibrate your brain waves making you imagine that you are hearing it. Interestingly the subject always hears the sounds as if they are right behind their head. The army has investigated using this technology to confuse enemy troops by inducing the sound of voices behind their enemy's heads.
Here's are some more scientific publications to "ease your mind" on the subject:
Magnetic-Field: Induced DNA Strand Breaks in Brain Cells of the Rat Author(s): Henry Lai and Narendra P. Singh Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 112, No. 6 (May, 2004), pp. 687-694 Published by: Brogan & Partners Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435995
Nerve Cell Damage in Mammalian Brain after Exposure to Microwaves from GSM Mobile Phones Author(s): Leif G. Salford, Arne E. Brun, Jacob L. Eberhardt, Lars Malmgren, Bertil R. R. Persson Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 111, No. 7 (Jun., 2003), pp. 881-883 Published by: Brogan & Partners Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435159
NEURAL FUNCTION AND BEHAVIOR: DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP Allan H. Frey, Sondra R. Feld, and Barbara Frey
SECTION 6 EVIDENCE FOR GENOTOXIC EFFECTS (RFR AND ELF Genotoxicity) Henry Lai, PhD Department of Bioengineering University of Washington Seattle, Washington USA
Senior year is no less beneficial than the years before it.
In fact, education has exponential rewards as a function of time invested. I'm a 4th year graduate student and without a doubt, I have learned more in each year than I learned in the year before it, going back as far as I can remember. This is because I don't just learn facts -- I learn how to learn faster. On top of that, I learn a lot of facts as well...and on top of that, the more facts you know, the more you can put new facts into perspective.
Anyone who thinks they have finished learning by 11th graduate (a stupidly arbitrary threshold if I may say so) probably hasn't done much learning to speak of...
My point is not that 12th grade is important for everyone. Some people will go on to be janitors or other members of blue collar society where it is not necessary to read, write, etc....and that's perfectly fine. But if that's FINE as far as the state is concerned, then there's no reason to make the first 3 years mandatory either. In fact, I like the idea of school being entirely optional.
Well, there is just one caveat -- if school is entirely optional than we may need to make suffrage a privilige rather than an inalienable right. This would be necessary to avoid all the uneducated idiot masses from voting the next GW into office without any clue of what they are voting for.
I don't like China, and I think their government is insanely authoritarian. From Green Dam to pulling Avatar out of theaters to having no health standards on the toys they produce is only the beginning. I've heard so many bad things about the Chinese government I wouldn't even know where to begin. But it doesn't take a genius to realize China is NOT behind these attacks.
Let's look at the facts. First Google releases a statement saying they were attacked, and they think it was China, and as a result they are going to remove search restrictions on Google china. Almost immediately following this Hillary Clinton demands that China explain themselves and Obama somehow diverts the issue of the attack into a case against how we all don't like Chinese govt internet policies...which is really a separate issue.
The fact is, if the Chinese gov't were to hack into Google, they wouldn't make it so damn obvious. Secondly, after suspicion is squarely put on China, and China vehemently denies it, there is a DDoS attack against those Chinese human rights organizations...for 16 hours. Ok...denial of service for 16 hours....what does this accomplish? There was no extortion. It accomplished absolutely nothing. That is, absolutely nothing beneficial for China. All it does is make China look even more guilty to the idiots who buy into this little hoax. But China is not so stupid. If they had been responsible, and caught, they would be trying to lay low...not exacerbate the situation! The only purpose that those DDoS attacks served was to further frame China and make people angry at them. It wasn't China.
I don't know who it was, but my gut tells me it was more likely the US looking for an excuse to further degrate US-China relations. Why would the US want to degrate US-China relations? I don't know, but maybe it has something to do with the trillions of dollars we owe China and have no way to pay back. Just saying...
Sure, everything could be encrypted but encryption data requires more bandwidth to transmit the same amount of data. This would make your internet connection appear slower. It also requires more processing power to encrypt and decrypt, which again, would make the internet appear slower for the end-user.
It's not just about speed. Because of the increased computational effort, it would require more power to do equivalent tasks. This means laptop batteries would not last as long, and it would increase greenhouse gas emissions because ultimately that means power plants would have to produce more power.
For sending important private data, sure, encrypt that stuff...but let's not all get paranoid and ask that EVERYTHING be encrypted.
Scientists already know that the human genome (DNA) is not the complete blueprint for an organism.
The human epigenome, which is far more complex, and contains more of the details about how to put those building blocks together, is no less important...and seems likely that it contains more of what separates us as individuals.
"All applications will be web apps, all data will be stored in the cloud and the operating system will be booted from Flash - no hard disks will be supported."
"Google will also allow some data and applications to be accessed offline. Users will be able to listen to music and read eBooks without an internet connection,"
Since apparently there is no problem accessing music that is stored in the cloud while offline, I can only assume that they are referring to some other form of 'cloud,' such as a cloud of gnats that follows you around your head. It wouldn't be the first time biology inspired swarm techniques have been used in computer science.
First, this is not a scientific study, it's simply a survey that shows a slight correlation between some increased risk behaviors and mixing alcohol with caffeine...
All this study shows is that people who make increased risk choices are more likely to make increased risk choices in other unrelated issues...because they are risk takers.
Correlation is not causation! Wake up!!
For reference, let me start by giving my opinion of some previous BioWare titles.
In my opinion, Baldur's Gate is the best RPG series ever made. I also enjoyed Neverwinter Nights, but I was a bit disappointed that the tilesets and UI made the game feel stale. I enjoyed the LAN play ability of BG, and I thought NWN online was a bit of a failure.
I was also really blown away by Mass Effect, I loved the dialoge interface that allowed me to easily choose options that corresponded to my emotional response without needing to read in my head the exact words that my character would be saying. The dialogues were so well recorded that they seemed more engaging than Star Wars episodes 1-3. Truly this is one of the first games where I actually enjoyed sparking new dialogues.
Now onto my review of Dragon Age Origins. The game feels like NWN with improved graphics mixed with Mass Effect style scripted dialogues. Unfortunately the dialogues do not work so well in Dragon Age and quickly become monotonous, because none of the character responses are pre-recorded (making them sound oddly one-sided), and also because you need to read through the full sentence as opposed to the easy to use dialogue interface of Mass Effect. This was a step backwards towards Baldur's Gate style dialogue. Despite BG being my favorite RPG, I can admit to sometimes getting impatient with the dialogues. Also, there is a bit too much dialogue in this game and not enough fighting.
I was excited that they strayed from traditional D&D rules with Dragon Age because I thought it would be fun to learn new spells. An example of where that worked very well was Guild Wars. Unfortunately, the skill trees remind me more of Hellgate London...although a little better than that.
First, they are highly unbalanced. There are WAY too many "sustained" abilities because you can only active one at a time and yet they occupy nearly 1/3 of all skills. This is a waste because any build is simply going to pick 1 that remains active 99% of the time.
Second, the skills themselves are highly unbalanced...some of them are awesome, and some of them totally suck. There's no way to tell which ones are good because the skill descriptions don't give any stats or equations, so the only way to figure it out is by trial and error. Trial and error works fine in an action RPG like Diablo, but it's not fun to re-do the same story lines over and over just to try out a different spell build, especially when there's no easy way to go out and level without having to go through the story.
The skills for the Warrior are even more unbalanced. The skill categories are broken into sections like "dual wielding," "sword and shield" and "two handed." Obviously a fighter is going to specialize in only 1 area, which makes 1/3 of all skills useless. Then because 1/3 of those are all sustained, this makes only 1 + 1/9N of all N skills actually by any one build. A further 1/3 of those are passive, leaving only a petty few active combat skills to choose from, and 90% of those are so useless that when I level up, I can't think of a single skill to put a point into that would have any practical value...so sometimes I don't even bother to use the skill points anymore. Also, the skills all have level requirements for the Fighter, whereas the Mage skills (spells) have no level requirements. That's not really fair!
There are more class/party unabalances. First, it seems like 2/3 of all chests in the game are locked, but for the entire first act you can't open these locked chests unless you are a Rogue. It's really annoying to torture the other 2 more popular classes (Fighter and Mage) by not being able to open any chests, and not providing any party members that are Rogues that could join the party except for short durations of time.
this brings me to my next complaint: The chests never contain anything useful. After a while, you will discover that pretty much the only loot you ever find is useless crafting materials and potions. I'v
" 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using only three bits of information: ZIP code, birthdate, and sex."
I'll be generous and overlook the gross misuse of the term "bits" in this context and pretend that the author wrote "tidbits" instead. That said, I do not for a second believe that 87 percent of Americans were the only person of the same gender born in their particular zip code on the same day. That's just ludicrous. Now if "birthday" is actually referring to a more specific point in time, such as the exact second of birth, then sure...but that's not really common knowledge.
I think the coolest feature from D2 was finding runes and forging runewords with them using the horadric cube. Runewords are much more magical and interesting than the usual "crafting" mechanic whereby a character sews his own clothing, knits himself a hat, or whatever. My question, is there any possibility of rune words coming back?
Slashdot Mirror
You know space isn't completely empty. There are particles floating around there. How is a solar sail thinner than a human hair going to hold up to being bombarded with small particles, especially if they fly it at any decent velocity?
There is still no technology that is superior to paper when it comes to reading and reviewing articles.
Although I write on the computer all day, when it comes to giving my full attention to reading a complex paper, I cannot do it without printing it out. Somehow the ability to find a comfortable position and scribble all over it with the freedom of an actual pencil allows me to relax and go into deep-thinking mode much better.
Ebook readers just aren't anywhere near what they need to be in order to replace paper for reading PDFs.
And I see nothing wrong with a company that sells paper launching an advertising campaign encouraging people to use their product. They are just a business trying to make a profit at what they do. If you think printing on paper needs to be cut back, then lobby for some new laws to limit how much paper can be produced, but attacking the paper companies for trying to make a profit is not the right way to go about it.
It's called Face Off, but you probably already knew that didn't you...
I allow myself little breaks here and there to check Slashdot, read my email, watch a quick TV show, etc.
I don't see a difference between actually typing up code versus jotting down notes to sketch up an algorithm. As far as I'm concerned that's also part of programming and definitely still working.
On some weeks I can spend up to 100 hours programming. I doubt I've ever gone below 35 hours a week in the past 4 years during a work week, although I have taken some vacations during which I didn't work at all.
This little comment of yours is more informative than the article which was originally linked to.
It also does not contain nonsensical statements like this:
"Splitting water is one way to solve the basic problem of solar energy: It’s only available when the sun shines."
If your company sold them security software with a bug, your company should first fix the bug and then give them a patch for it (free of charge).
Not tell them that it's bugged and ask them to pay you to fix it. If they don't want to accept the patched version, that's their problem, but most of your other customers will.
I think this would have been more aptly named:
"Rapidshare Trying To GET RID OF their Customers who are Pirates"
instead of
"Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers" ..which is just...the opposite.
Anyone remember this article?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/02/1330245/Thorium-the-Next-Nuclear-Fuel
I have an idea. How about a tax for shoe shining, because some people want their shoes shined but they don't want to pay 25 cents for it, and they are too lazy to do it themselves. That would be about equivalent. Read on....
It's necessary to charge a tax for health care because people get sick and we it's considered inhumane to leave those people out on the street to die. Therefore, we heal them, and taxes foot the bill.
Computer malware is another issue entirely. First of all there is nothing inhumane about not cleaning someone's computer of malware when they can't afford it. They won't die from it.
Second of all computer viruses can be avoided by following good practices unlike health care related issues which eventually happen to everyone.
Finally, there is no need to pay a professional to fix the problem because anyone can simply reformat their machine or buy a new one if they are too lazy.
Finally x2, it is not a service that benefits everyone. Namely those people who follow good practices and don't ever get viruses, or are willing to spend the few hours to reformat when it does happen, shouldn't be forced to pay for those people who are too lazy to insert CD and click reinstall.
So really, there is no need for a forced tax for malware cleanup...worst idea ever,and I think it is unconstitutional to ask taxpayers to pay for someone else's laziness and incompetence.
I could not find any examples showing similar image reconstructions on Jarvis Haupt or Robert Nowak's websites/publication histories -- the researchers credited with the Obama restoration photo.
Therefore, I am skeptical that this wired article is not to be trusted.
First of all, the radiation from these towers is often strong enough to vibrate your brain waves making you imagine that you are hearing it. Interestingly the subject always hears the sounds as if they are right behind their head. The army has investigated using this technology to confuse enemy troops by inducing the sound of voices behind their enemy's heads.
Here's are some more scientific publications to "ease your mind" on the subject:
Magnetic-Field: Induced DNA Strand Breaks in Brain Cells of the Rat
Author(s): Henry Lai and Narendra P. Singh
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 112, No. 6 (May, 2004), pp. 687-694
Published by: Brogan & Partners
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435995
Nerve Cell Damage in Mammalian Brain after Exposure to Microwaves from GSM Mobile
Phones
Author(s): Leif G. Salford, Arne E. Brun, Jacob L. Eberhardt, Lars Malmgren, Bertil R. R.
Persson
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 111, No. 7 (Jun., 2003), pp. 881-883
Published by: Brogan & Partners
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435159
NEURAL FUNCTION AND BEHAVIOR:
DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP
Allan H. Frey, Sondra R. Feld, and Barbara Frey
SECTION 6
EVIDENCE FOR GENOTOXIC EFFECTS
(RFR AND ELF Genotoxicity)
Henry Lai, PhD
Department of Bioengineering
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
USA
In answer to your question, that's 'nuff said...
DUM dum DUM dum DA-DUM dum DA-DUM!
DIM dim DIM dim DI-DUM dum DA-Daaaam!
Him hum ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum --
ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum...
And so began the Imperial March of Google...
Senior year is no less beneficial than the years before it.
In fact, education has exponential rewards as a function of time invested. I'm a 4th year graduate student and without a doubt, I have learned more in each year than I learned in the year before it, going back as far as I can remember. This is because I don't just learn facts -- I learn how to learn faster. On top of that, I learn a lot of facts as well...and on top of that, the more facts you know, the more you can put new facts into perspective.
Anyone who thinks they have finished learning by 11th graduate (a stupidly arbitrary threshold if I may say so) probably hasn't done much learning to speak of...
My point is not that 12th grade is important for everyone. Some people will go on to be janitors or other members of blue collar society where it is not necessary to read, write, etc....and that's perfectly fine. But if that's FINE as far as the state is concerned, then there's no reason to make the first 3 years mandatory either. In fact, I like the idea of school being entirely optional.
Well, there is just one caveat -- if school is entirely optional than we may need to make suffrage a privilige rather than an inalienable right. This would be necessary to avoid all the uneducated idiot masses from voting the next GW into office without any clue of what they are voting for.
I don't like China, and I think their government is insanely authoritarian. From Green Dam to pulling Avatar out of theaters to having no health standards on the toys they produce is only the beginning. I've heard so many bad things about the Chinese government I wouldn't even know where to begin. But it doesn't take a genius to realize China is NOT behind these attacks.
Let's look at the facts. First Google releases a statement saying they were attacked, and they think it was China, and as a result they are going to remove search restrictions on Google china. Almost immediately following this Hillary Clinton demands that China explain themselves and Obama somehow diverts the issue of the attack into a case against how we all don't like Chinese govt internet policies...which is really a separate issue.
The fact is, if the Chinese gov't were to hack into Google, they wouldn't make it so damn obvious. Secondly, after suspicion is squarely put on China, and China vehemently denies it, there is a DDoS attack against those Chinese human rights organizations...for 16 hours. Ok...denial of service for 16 hours....what does this accomplish? There was no extortion. It accomplished absolutely nothing. That is, absolutely nothing beneficial for China. All it does is make China look even more guilty to the idiots who buy into this little hoax. But China is not so stupid. If they had been responsible, and caught, they would be trying to lay low...not exacerbate the situation! The only purpose that those DDoS attacks served was to further frame China and make people angry at them. It wasn't China.
I don't know who it was, but my gut tells me it was more likely the US looking for an excuse to further degrate US-China relations. Why would the US want to degrate US-China relations? I don't know, but maybe it has something to do with the trillions of dollars we owe China and have no way to pay back. Just saying...
Sure, everything could be encrypted but encryption data requires more bandwidth to transmit the same amount of data. This would make your internet connection appear slower. It also requires more processing power to encrypt and decrypt, which again, would make the internet appear slower for the end-user. It's not just about speed. Because of the increased computational effort, it would require more power to do equivalent tasks. This means laptop batteries would not last as long, and it would increase greenhouse gas emissions because ultimately that means power plants would have to produce more power. For sending important private data, sure, encrypt that stuff...but let's not all get paranoid and ask that EVERYTHING be encrypted.
These types of theories are not "just math"...they are mostly just theoretical explanations to explain the math we already know works.
Scientists already know that the human genome (DNA) is not the complete blueprint for an organism. The human epigenome, which is far more complex, and contains more of the details about how to put those building blocks together, is no less important...and seems likely that it contains more of what separates us as individuals.
Like this:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/04/1226227/Overwhelming-Evidence-For-Magnetic-Monopoles
And this:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/01/30/1619244/Making-Magnetic-Monopoles-and-Other-Physics-Exotica
And this:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/03/10/03/1648239/Evidence-of-Magnetic-Monopoles-Found
?
"All applications will be web apps, all data will be stored in the cloud and the operating system will be booted from Flash - no hard disks will be supported." "Google will also allow some data and applications to be accessed offline. Users will be able to listen to music and read eBooks without an internet connection," Since apparently there is no problem accessing music that is stored in the cloud while offline, I can only assume that they are referring to some other form of 'cloud,' such as a cloud of gnats that follows you around your head. It wouldn't be the first time biology inspired swarm techniques have been used in computer science.
First, this is not a scientific study, it's simply a survey that shows a slight correlation between some increased risk behaviors and mixing alcohol with caffeine... All this study shows is that people who make increased risk choices are more likely to make increased risk choices in other unrelated issues...because they are risk takers. Correlation is not causation! Wake up!!
For reference, let me start by giving my opinion of some previous BioWare titles.
In my opinion, Baldur's Gate is the best RPG series ever made. I also enjoyed Neverwinter Nights, but I was a bit disappointed that the tilesets and UI made the game feel stale. I enjoyed the LAN play ability of BG, and I thought NWN online was a bit of a failure.
I was also really blown away by Mass Effect, I loved the dialoge interface that allowed me to easily choose options that corresponded to my emotional response without needing to read in my head the exact words that my character would be saying. The dialogues were so well recorded that they seemed more engaging than Star Wars episodes 1-3. Truly this is one of the first games where I actually enjoyed sparking new dialogues.
Now onto my review of Dragon Age Origins. The game feels like NWN with improved graphics mixed with Mass Effect style scripted dialogues. Unfortunately the dialogues do not work so well in Dragon Age and quickly become monotonous, because none of the character responses are pre-recorded (making them sound oddly one-sided), and also because you need to read through the full sentence as opposed to the easy to use dialogue interface of Mass Effect. This was a step backwards towards Baldur's Gate style dialogue. Despite BG being my favorite RPG, I can admit to sometimes getting impatient with the dialogues. Also, there is a bit too much dialogue in this game and not enough fighting.
I was excited that they strayed from traditional D&D rules with Dragon Age because I thought it would be fun to learn new spells. An example of where that worked very well was Guild Wars. Unfortunately, the skill trees remind me more of Hellgate London...although a little better than that.
First, they are highly unbalanced. There are WAY too many "sustained" abilities because you can only active one at a time and yet they occupy nearly 1/3 of all skills. This is a waste because any build is simply going to pick 1 that remains active 99% of the time.
Second, the skills themselves are highly unbalanced...some of them are awesome, and some of them totally suck. There's no way to tell which ones are good because the skill descriptions don't give any stats or equations, so the only way to figure it out is by trial and error. Trial and error works fine in an action RPG like Diablo, but it's not fun to re-do the same story lines over and over just to try out a different spell build, especially when there's no easy way to go out and level without having to go through the story.
The skills for the Warrior are even more unbalanced. The skill categories are broken into sections like "dual wielding," "sword and shield" and "two handed." Obviously a fighter is going to specialize in only 1 area, which makes 1/3 of all skills useless. Then because 1/3 of those are all sustained, this makes only 1 + 1/9N of all N skills actually by any one build. A further 1/3 of those are passive, leaving only a petty few active combat skills to choose from, and 90% of those are so useless that when I level up, I can't think of a single skill to put a point into that would have any practical value...so sometimes I don't even bother to use the skill points anymore. Also, the skills all have level requirements for the Fighter, whereas the Mage skills (spells) have no level requirements. That's not really fair!
There are more class/party unabalances. First, it seems like 2/3 of all chests in the game are locked, but for the entire first act you can't open these locked chests unless you are a Rogue. It's really annoying to torture the other 2 more popular classes (Fighter and Mage) by not being able to open any chests, and not providing any party members that are Rogues that could join the party except for short durations of time.
this brings me to my next complaint: The chests never contain anything useful. After a while, you will discover that pretty much the only loot you ever find is useless crafting materials and potions. I'v
" 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using only three bits of information: ZIP code, birthdate, and sex." I'll be generous and overlook the gross misuse of the term "bits" in this context and pretend that the author wrote "tidbits" instead. That said, I do not for a second believe that 87 percent of Americans were the only person of the same gender born in their particular zip code on the same day. That's just ludicrous. Now if "birthday" is actually referring to a more specific point in time, such as the exact second of birth, then sure...but that's not really common knowledge.
I think the coolest feature from D2 was finding runes and forging runewords with them using the horadric cube. Runewords are much more magical and interesting than the usual "crafting" mechanic whereby a character sews his own clothing, knits himself a hat, or whatever. My question, is there any possibility of rune words coming back?
There are no roadkills in the city because there are no homeless people in the country. This is because homeless people eat the roadkills.