For years, people have been saying that things have been going to the dogs. This is not new. You should read some of the Roman documents that we still have. They were complaining about it back then!
And they were right. Rome did go to the dogs, and eventually fell. And you can't tell me the dark ages were an improvement.
it makes me cringe whenever I hear people say that we broke off because of "unfair" taxation.
It wasn't unfair taxation that made them mad, it was taxation without representation.
Huh? They've always had lighting effects for other cards through D3D. They just said it ran better on 3DFX cards, but I can't tell a difference between my radeon and my wife's voodoo3. The effects look identical.
So did they nerf all the other characters abilities, or did they make her better--or does she still suck?
Since no one else seems to want to actually answer your question - she still sucks. Probably more now than before.
First off, spell timers. No more spamming meteor or firewall. Or blizzard and frozen orb. Cast one, then wait a few seconds. Most of the sorc beta testers have said that they now never get close to running out of mana, since they can't cast fast enough to get low.
Second, immune monsters. On hell dificulty, around 75% of all monster types are immune to at least one type of magic. So you need to specialize in at least 2 trees to have a chance, or go heavy in cold mastery to pierce the immunity. And, of course, sometimes boss monsters get to be triple immune. Have fun.
Third, they've totally changed blocking. To get maximun block out of your shield, you need to add 2.5 skill points to dex every level up. Otherwise, it soon drops to almost nothing. Don't feel like pumping dex? Then don't plan on blocking anything.
And, of course, they still haven't fixed lighting and chain lightning - you still get locked through the whole casting.
They did increase the damage on a lot of skills, and fixed the fire mastery/hydra bug, but it doesn't make up for the increased killing power given to the other classes. All the reports I've read indicate that it's possible to survive, if you have a merc to tank for you, but, overall, the sorc is the only character that will have a really dificult time in the expansion.
G0del
P.S. That's assuming, of course, that you don't take advantage of the conviction/static bug. With the right paladin helping, the sorc kills faster than any character, ever. But I'm pretty sure Blizzard will fix that before the game ships.
First off, yes, it was 144,000 with 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel. Revelations 7:2-8 talks about them (mostly going into detail about how there are 12,000 from each tribe). I don't understand the reasoning behind saying that only these people make it to heaven, since verse 9 seems to indicate that there are a lot more that make it, but who knows. Revelations reads like it was written by someone on a bad acid trip. And I'm religious - I hate to think of what atheists would think of it.
I've heard that the JW's have backed off the strict "only 144,000 will make it" doctrine, which makes more sense. Especially since a strict reading of revelations reveals that . . . actually, I think I better let the bible speak for itself here. Quoting from Revelations 14, the KJV:
3: . ..and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.
4: These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follor the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and the Lamb.
Hatch is a Mormon Republican, which makes him about as close to a white supremist as you can get.
What?? I'm Mormon, with Republican leanings, and this is the first time I've ever been accused of being a white supremacist (note the correct spelling). The truth is, Mormons are ordinary people, who happen to belong to the L.D.S. church. Yes, there are some Mormons who are wackos, but there are plenty of non-Mormons who are wackos, too.
Oh, screw it. I'm not going to change anyone's mind, and denying that Mormons want to take over the world will just be seen as proof of a cover-up. So, in conclusion, there is no Mormon conspiracy, no Usenet cabal, and no Illuminati fnord.
G0del
Amazing - you know it's from middle english, and yet don't know it's proper definition. Ere means before, and the palindrome is in reference to Napoleon, who was exiled to Elba for awhile. He came back, but only a few months later was the battle of Waterloo, and his days as Emporer were pretty much over.
Short answer - very specialized equipment. HDD makers don't do this because it's difficult to fit electron microscopes into a computer case.
G0del
Re:Traveling Salesman
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
Quoth the genius above me: "It gives you a path in P time, that is moderately close to optimal."
That's nice, but that doesn't solve the problem, which is discovering the minimal path, not just a very short path that might be close to minimal. There are several different algorithms that will give a good approximation to the solution, which might be useful if you really are a travelling salesman, but won't work when converted to other NP-complete problems.
In other words, to apply it to crypto like many here are, what good is an algorithm that gives you a key that's "moderately close" to the actual key?
But it is his hard drive space, his processor cycles, and his network bandwidth. He's saying that napster service relies on his resources, and he isn't willing to pay to let people download music from him, whether it's his music or not.
And I agree - I don't use napster often, but when I do, I consistently download fewer songs than I upload. So napster is getting a service from me, and I don't want to pay them for it.
G0del
You don't have a right to take other people's music without their permission
Really? I don't? Are you sure? Let me go check. **digs out my copy of the constitution** Let's see here . . . freedom of speech, religion, right to bear arms, no unreasonable search and seizure, oh! You're right - there is a section on copyright here. But that's funny - it seems to say that after 14 years, I do have the right to take other people's music without their permission. So where did this "artists life plus 700 million years" crap come from?
In all seriousness though, I will admit that many people download mp3's for the free music. But some people are practicing civil disobedience - hoping to draw attention to the fundamentally broken concept of intellectual property we have today. I don't want a society in which I must have permission to do anything, and get a license agreement on everything I buy, watch, hear, etc. And so, until intellectual property is fixed, I refuse to recognize it's validity, and do believe that downloading free music can be a form of civil disobedience.
People are continually saying how now that we have entered the "information age" everything is free because it can be copied and there is no way to stop it. So, what do you propose to stop this copying? Do we let people take what they want? Since everything can be copied (and once copied and on the net it can never be contained again) do we just give up and expect everyone to give everything away? And if we do do this, how do keep the economy running?
Why, you're right! All those farmers in the world will starve, since no one will buy food anymore, they'll just copy it! And the automotive industry is dead, because everyone will just copy new cars instead of buying them. And why should I pay rent for an apartment - I'll just copy it!
On a serious note - dont' be an idiot. The world got along fine without intellectual property for a very long time, and could survive without it now. I'll still get paid - I don't care what you copy for free, my boss still needs people who can admin a system. I'm not calling for a complete abolition of intellectual property (though I think it would be nice), simply pointing out that whatever the corps tell you, freely copying dvds will not destroy the economy.
G0del
I agree - way too many people are misdiagnosed. ADD has become a fad - any parent who has a little bit of trouble with their children wants a doctor to tell them it's not their fault, and there is a pill they can take for it. This does a great disservice to mis-diagnosed people and to people who really do have ADD.
I never advocated giving ritalin or other psychoactive drugs to any child who acts a little different. And I am aware that many different problems can cause a lack of attention. And even for people who actually have ADD, medications can have differing effects. The same dosage of dexedrine (similar to ritalin) that helped me throughout high school eventually started causing severe depression as I got older - not because I didn't have ADD, but because my body started reacting differently.
In an ideal world, there would be a perfect way of testing, that would allow doctors to identify actual sufferers of ADD, while weeding out those with other problems, to avoid the problems you describe. But that's not possible now. The best they can do now is really research every child, and eliminate other problems before diagnosing ADD. When I was diagnosed, on top of having to fill out a gigantic (hundreds of questions) form and have several interviews with the doctor, my parents and several teachers were interviewed and had to fill out forms describing my problems and what they saw me do.
And then, after they started me on medication, I was closely monitored to get the dosage right - seeing the doctor once a week for awhile, and after that, at least every other month, just to avoid problems with the medication.
Unfortunately, very few doctors and parents are this careful anymore. And that's why there are so many problems with mis-diagnosis, and the resulting backlash against ADD. So when you're a parent and the pop shrink suggests ritalin, don't just take his word for it - investigate, rule out other possibilities, get a second opinion, do everything you can to verify or disprove that diagnosis - but don't deny people with ADD the medicine they need simply because you think ritalin is over-prescribed.
You make some good points, but have you asked anyone with ADD? I have it, and while sometimes it is nice, growing up I would have killed for something that would make me more normal - not because society demands conformity, but because so many things are much harder when you have the attention span of a gnat. I remember once taking an hour and a half to finish a calc assignment - 10 problems, each of which I could do in less than a minute (I was pretty good at math). And this was in my room, with no music or other obvious distractions - I just couldn't concentrate.
It's not that I want to be cured so much as I would like to be able to do things that others do with ease - watch a tv show all the way through without getting the urge to do something else, maybe read just one book at a time instead of starting 5 or 6, then maybe finishing them later - I could go on. My brother (who has it worse than me) loves baseball, but can't sit still long enough to watch an entire game on tv.
The problem is, the HOWTOs and the masq app don't explain how to get all games to work - and for many games, the only way to get them to work is to forward the ports to a single machine, making it impossible for others behind the NAT box to play the game.
For instance, my wife and I could both play quake or quake3 at the same time on the net from behind my NAT box with no problems. But it is impossible for us both to play Diablo at the same time. It has to be one machine or the other, and I would have to change the port forwarding rules to do that.
And as for saying the game coders should get it right, Blizzard programmers have said that they did, and Linux gets it wrong. I just looked for the link and couldn't find it, but they claimed the linux masq worked great for tcp games, but didn't handle udp masquerading properly. They then said that the only proxy that worked was WinGate. I don't know what WinGate does that other programs don't, but it would be nice to know so linux could get it.
You're right about Jehovah, but it's how most people pronounce the tetragrammaton, YHWH, which, by the substitution of the wrong vowels, became Jehovah (the J was originally an I, which had a Y sound.) So Jesus is how we pronounce the name that was Joshua, or Jeshua, or Yeshua, or Jehoshua (I've seen all 4), which means YHWH is salvation. G0del
As someone who has been following the Diablo II development for quite a while, as well as previous blizzard games, I wasn't at all surprise by this. Doesn't anyone remeber Starcraft, which they originally though would be out by Christmas 97, but instead didn't make it out until April 98.
As for possibly slashdotting the servers, well it happened with the Starcraft beta sign up, and as a result Blizzard extended the sign up time considerably. I can only hope that they've upped their server capacity considerably.
Finally, I'm surprised that no one mentioned the recent announcement that after the limited 1000 person beta test (encompassing the entire 1st act, or 1/4 of the game) there will be an open beta test to stress test the battle.net servers! Yes, that means everyone can get a small fix of Diablo II before it comes out.
Seems to me that if this program were doing it's job, the bullies and people doing the harassing and hazing would be being watched, not the ones being harassed.
Besides, your reasoning seems a little circular here - geeks are picked on because they're potentially dangerous, and they're potentially dangerous because they're picked on.
I'll agree that different is not necessarily good, and going with the flow is undoubtedly easier. However, that doesn't make different bad, neither does it make going with the flow the right thing to do. Examples of significant innovations in civilization made by people going against the flow are left as an exercise for the reader, they are too numerous and too obvious to list here.
I guess it's possible your whole post was meant as a joke, but if so, considering how close it is to the attitude of so many of the people I grew up with, I didn't find it funny at all. And if it is serious, what are you doing reading "News for Nerds", anyway?
G0del
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls. But it was just so tempting, I couldn't resist!
Perhaps I should have been clearer. I meant to say that I didn't feel it was right or fair to discriminate against someone because of violent tendencies if those tendencies are indicated solely by a screening test, and not any past violent behavior. At this time, though, I do not believe that any tests can accurately determine the chance that someone will be violent later on if that person has never been so before. This, of course, would leave a rational basis for discriminating (i.e. the previous violent behaviour).
I would personally have no problem hiring or working with a person who had tested as being "violence prone" (something very different from undependable, IMO), if that person had never actually been violent. Whereas, I would be extremely wary of working with someone who had exhibited violent behaviours in the past, and yet had passed the test with flying colors.
It's been a few years since I read the book, so my memory might be a little off, but it reminds me of the book Sundiver by David Brin. A sub-plot in the book deals with "permanent probationers", or those people who showed as prone to violence in a test similar to this one (though supposedly foolproof). These people were then implanted with tracking devices, so that whenever a violent crime occurred, the police could just pick up all the violence-prone people who were nearby, and quickly find out who did it.
Of course, this lead to a large group of second-class citizens who had little say in what would happen to them, and very little opportunity to do anything with their lives (why hire someone who might someday blow up the place when all the other applicants won't?)
And now to the topic at hand: what worries me is the ease with which people seem to accept that this test will not only be fair, but be a good thing. And they're probably right about some things. It probably will do a good job of weeding out those who are prone to violence. But what then? Do we have the right to treat some people differently because they might act violently later? Not because they have been in the past, but because they might?
I always thought one of the great things about the United States was that there was opportunity to overcome the disadvantages you start with, whether they be poverty, disabilities, prejudices against your race, sex, creed, etc. Why is a disposition to violence treated differently?
How this one got past the moderators is beyond me, but really, what's wrong with being Mormon? Of course, by calling it "mormonism" you show that you don't know enough of the religion to really say. I might get really worked up about it, but it's late, and I know how boring it can be, reading someone else rambling on about their religion. So I'll just finish by saying that I hope you learn a little about the LDS Church before you go bashing on us again.
43 states in favor of the proposal, six against, two abstaining, and two not present. Doesn't this add up to 53 states? When did those last 3 get added? I know, it's probably Puerto Rico, Guam, and something else. But it still sounds strange.
Slashdot Mirror
And they were right. Rome did go to the dogs, and eventually fell. And you can't tell me the dark ages were an improvement.
it makes me cringe whenever I hear people say that we broke off because of "unfair" taxation.
It wasn't unfair taxation that made them mad, it was taxation without representation.
G0del
G0del
G0del
Since no one else seems to want to actually answer your question - she still sucks. Probably more now than before.
First off, spell timers. No more spamming meteor or firewall. Or blizzard and frozen orb. Cast one, then wait a few seconds. Most of the sorc beta testers have said that they now never get close to running out of mana, since they can't cast fast enough to get low.
Second, immune monsters. On hell dificulty, around 75% of all monster types are immune to at least one type of magic. So you need to specialize in at least 2 trees to have a chance, or go heavy in cold mastery to pierce the immunity. And, of course, sometimes boss monsters get to be triple immune. Have fun.
Third, they've totally changed blocking. To get maximun block out of your shield, you need to add 2.5 skill points to dex every level up. Otherwise, it soon drops to almost nothing. Don't feel like pumping dex? Then don't plan on blocking anything.
And, of course, they still haven't fixed lighting and chain lightning - you still get locked through the whole casting.
They did increase the damage on a lot of skills, and fixed the fire mastery/hydra bug, but it doesn't make up for the increased killing power given to the other classes. All the reports I've read indicate that it's possible to survive, if you have a merc to tank for you, but, overall, the sorc is the only character that will have a really dificult time in the expansion.
G0del
P.S. That's assuming, of course, that you don't take advantage of the conviction/static bug. With the right paladin helping, the sorc kills faster than any character, ever. But I'm pretty sure Blizzard will fix that before the game ships.
I've heard that the JW's have backed off the strict "only 144,000 will make it" doctrine, which makes more sense. Especially since a strict reading of revelations reveals that . . . actually, I think I better let the bible speak for itself here. Quoting from Revelations 14, the KJV:
Well, I'm married, so I guess that leaves me out.
G0del
Hatch is a Mormon Republican, which makes him about as close to a white supremist as you can get. What?? I'm Mormon, with Republican leanings, and this is the first time I've ever been accused of being a white supremacist (note the correct spelling). The truth is, Mormons are ordinary people, who happen to belong to the L.D.S. church. Yes, there are some Mormons who are wackos, but there are plenty of non-Mormons who are wackos, too. Oh, screw it. I'm not going to change anyone's mind, and denying that Mormons want to take over the world will just be seen as proof of a cover-up. So, in conclusion, there is no Mormon conspiracy, no Usenet cabal, and no Illuminati fnord. G0del
Amazing - you know it's from middle english, and yet don't know it's proper definition. Ere means before, and the palindrome is in reference to Napoleon, who was exiled to Elba for awhile. He came back, but only a few months later was the battle of Waterloo, and his days as Emporer were pretty much over.
Idiot.
G0del
That's nice, but that doesn't solve the problem, which is discovering the minimal path, not just a very short path that might be close to minimal. There are several different algorithms that will give a good approximation to the solution, which might be useful if you really are a travelling salesman, but won't work when converted to other NP-complete problems.
In other words, to apply it to crypto like many here are, what good is an algorithm that gives you a key that's "moderately close" to the actual key?
G0del
But it is his hard drive space, his processor cycles, and his network bandwidth. He's saying that napster service relies on his resources, and he isn't willing to pay to let people download music from him, whether it's his music or not. And I agree - I don't use napster often, but when I do, I consistently download fewer songs than I upload. So napster is getting a service from me, and I don't want to pay them for it. G0del
Really? I don't? Are you sure? Let me go check. **digs out my copy of the constitution** Let's see here . . . freedom of speech, religion, right to bear arms, no unreasonable search and seizure, oh! You're right - there is a section on copyright here. But that's funny - it seems to say that after 14 years, I do have the right to take other people's music without their permission. So where did this "artists life plus 700 million years" crap come from?
In all seriousness though, I will admit that many people download mp3's for the free music. But some people are practicing civil disobedience - hoping to draw attention to the fundamentally broken concept of intellectual property we have today. I don't want a society in which I must have permission to do anything, and get a license agreement on everything I buy, watch, hear, etc. And so, until intellectual property is fixed, I refuse to recognize it's validity, and do believe that downloading free music can be a form of civil disobedience.
G0del
People are continually saying how now that we have entered the "information age" everything is free because it can be copied and there is no way to stop it. So, what do you propose to stop this copying? Do we let people take what they want? Since everything can be copied (and once copied and on the net it can never be contained again) do we just give up and expect everyone to give everything away? And if we do do this, how do keep the economy running? Why, you're right! All those farmers in the world will starve, since no one will buy food anymore, they'll just copy it! And the automotive industry is dead, because everyone will just copy new cars instead of buying them. And why should I pay rent for an apartment - I'll just copy it! On a serious note - dont' be an idiot. The world got along fine without intellectual property for a very long time, and could survive without it now. I'll still get paid - I don't care what you copy for free, my boss still needs people who can admin a system. I'm not calling for a complete abolition of intellectual property (though I think it would be nice), simply pointing out that whatever the corps tell you, freely copying dvds will not destroy the economy. G0del
I never advocated giving ritalin or other psychoactive drugs to any child who acts a little different. And I am aware that many different problems can cause a lack of attention. And even for people who actually have ADD, medications can have differing effects. The same dosage of dexedrine (similar to ritalin) that helped me throughout high school eventually started causing severe depression as I got older - not because I didn't have ADD, but because my body started reacting differently.
In an ideal world, there would be a perfect way of testing, that would allow doctors to identify actual sufferers of ADD, while weeding out those with other problems, to avoid the problems you describe. But that's not possible now. The best they can do now is really research every child, and eliminate other problems before diagnosing ADD. When I was diagnosed, on top of having to fill out a gigantic (hundreds of questions) form and have several interviews with the doctor, my parents and several teachers were interviewed and had to fill out forms describing my problems and what they saw me do.
And then, after they started me on medication, I was closely monitored to get the dosage right - seeing the doctor once a week for awhile, and after that, at least every other month, just to avoid problems with the medication.
Unfortunately, very few doctors and parents are this careful anymore. And that's why there are so many problems with mis-diagnosis, and the resulting backlash against ADD. So when you're a parent and the pop shrink suggests ritalin, don't just take his word for it - investigate, rule out other possibilities, get a second opinion, do everything you can to verify or disprove that diagnosis - but don't deny people with ADD the medicine they need simply because you think ritalin is over-prescribed.
G0del
It's not that I want to be cured so much as I would like to be able to do things that others do with ease - watch a tv show all the way through without getting the urge to do something else, maybe read just one book at a time instead of starting 5 or 6, then maybe finishing them later - I could go on. My brother (who has it worse than me) loves baseball, but can't sit still long enough to watch an entire game on tv.
G0del
The problem is, the HOWTOs and the masq app don't explain how to get all games to work - and for many games, the only way to get them to work is to forward the ports to a single machine, making it impossible for others behind the NAT box to play the game.
For instance, my wife and I could both play quake or quake3 at the same time on the net from behind my NAT box with no problems. But it is impossible for us both to play Diablo at the same time. It has to be one machine or the other, and I would have to change the port forwarding rules to do that.
And as for saying the game coders should get it right, Blizzard programmers have said that they did, and Linux gets it wrong. I just looked for the link and couldn't find it, but they claimed the linux masq worked great for tcp games, but didn't handle udp masquerading properly. They then said that the only proxy that worked was WinGate. I don't know what WinGate does that other programs don't, but it would be nice to know so linux could get it.
G0del
You're right about Jehovah, but it's how most people pronounce the tetragrammaton, YHWH, which, by the substitution of the wrong vowels, became Jehovah (the J was originally an I, which had a Y sound.) So Jesus is how we pronounce the name that was Joshua, or Jeshua, or Yeshua, or Jehoshua (I've seen all 4), which means YHWH is salvation.
G0del
Here's to reality - here is an article about the Air Force using Starcraft in training.
G0del
As for possibly slashdotting the servers, well it happened with the Starcraft beta sign up, and as a result Blizzard extended the sign up time considerably. I can only hope that they've upped their server capacity considerably.
Finally, I'm surprised that no one mentioned the recent announcement that after the limited 1000 person beta test (encompassing the entire 1st act, or 1/4 of the game) there will be an open beta test to stress test the battle.net servers! Yes, that means everyone can get a small fix of Diablo II before it comes out.
G0del
P.S. www.diabloii.net is my main source of D2 news.
Besides, your reasoning seems a little circular here - geeks are picked on because they're potentially dangerous, and they're potentially dangerous because they're picked on.
I'll agree that different is not necessarily good, and going with the flow is undoubtedly easier. However, that doesn't make different bad, neither does it make going with the flow the right thing to do. Examples of significant innovations in civilization made by people going against the flow are left as an exercise for the reader, they are too numerous and too obvious to list here.
I guess it's possible your whole post was meant as a joke, but if so, considering how close it is to the attitude of so many of the people I grew up with, I didn't find it funny at all. And if it is serious, what are you doing reading "News for Nerds", anyway?
G0del
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls. But it was just so tempting, I couldn't resist!
I would personally have no problem hiring or working with a person who had tested as being "violence prone" (something very different from undependable, IMO), if that person had never actually been violent. Whereas, I would be extremely wary of working with someone who had exhibited violent behaviours in the past, and yet had passed the test with flying colors.
G0del
Of course, this lead to a large group of second-class citizens who had little say in what would happen to them, and very little opportunity to do anything with their lives (why hire someone who might someday blow up the place when all the other applicants won't?)
And now to the topic at hand: what worries me is the ease with which people seem to accept that this test will not only be fair, but be a good thing. And they're probably right about some things. It probably will do a good job of weeding out those who are prone to violence. But what then? Do we have the right to treat some people differently because they might act violently later? Not because they have been in the past, but because they might?
I always thought one of the great things about the United States was that there was opportunity to overcome the disadvantages you start with, whether they be poverty, disabilities, prejudices against your race, sex, creed, etc. Why is a disposition to violence treated differently?
G0del
How this one got past the moderators is beyond me, but really, what's wrong with being Mormon? Of course, by calling it "mormonism" you show that you don't know enough of the religion to really say.
I might get really worked up about it, but it's late, and I know how boring it can be, reading someone else rambling on about their religion. So I'll just finish by saying that I hope you learn a little about the LDS Church before you go bashing on us again.
43 states in favor of the proposal, six against, two abstaining, and two not present.
Doesn't this add up to 53 states? When did those last 3 get added?
I know, it's probably Puerto Rico, Guam, and something else. But it still sounds strange.