It's my understanding that there will be rules for monster levels when you want them OR simpler rules for boosting or weakening monsters. So the GM doesn't need to pick every feat and spell for, say, an Ogre Mage that he wants to give 5 extra HD if he does not feel the need to do so.
I like the option of giving monsters class levels too, and I understand that option is still present. But they also have simpler rules for boosting and or weakening stock opponents and it makes DM preparation easier when he doesn't need to add monster levels.
I disagree on the blandness of tactical choices. When the party wizard cast a Fireball, or even Sleep in combat or something like Read Languages or Detect Evil out of combat it was a big deal. That was the player's moment to have their character shine and really hold the spotlight. For a player running a Fighter, they only got something similar if they were lucky enough to land and confirm a critical hit, and also roll well on the damage dice. Otherwise, mechanically their combat options were pretty limited. I think the change is good.
I think the unlimited weak spells, once per encounter moderate spells, and once per day strong spells is every bit as tactical as the Vancian system and dramatically simpler for bookkeeping in play. (I would also be happy with a true Vancian system: wizards can cast a much smaller number of dramatically more dangerous spells. That makes bookkeeping easier too.)
Level drain meant keeping track of what was taken away. I also disliked it because getting levels restored was more difficult than raising the dead, which seems counter-intuitive. I also think it's especially frustrating for a player, because losing a character is often easier to deal with than having one with moderately or severely reduced competence. What if your 5th level Rogue gets knocked back to level 1? Tough luck, if you're lucky you get to tag along on a long quest while all of the other 5th level characters do the hard work to find someone to restore you. You've been relegated to baggage handler. It would have been easier if your PC died, and then you can create some new 3rd (or if the DM is generous, 4th) level character to bring in with the rest of the game.
I think the presence of a cleric with the attendant ability to heal wounds makes for cinematic gameplay too. The healing surge abilities of classes is no more over the top, it just lets groups get by without needing a PC or NPC cleric in the party. If you want a gritty game, you already needed to house-rule away magical healing in previous editions, so I don't see a difference.
I think the 3.0/3.5 system is too complicated, especially for multi-class characters trying to keep track of skill costs and cross class skills as they progressed. If you ran a mostly single class game (which is what I prefer, but doesn't seem too common), it wasn't as much of an issue. But the new system still allows for variation, so I'm satisfied. Dungeons and Dragons has always had a big combat element to it - for any edition, total up the number of pages on combat rules, monster combat stats, armor, weapons, and combat-oriented magical items and compare it to the number of pages on non-combat skills. Combat is dramatically more important, and the new skill system is easier without becoming so general that it's useless.
Some of that stuff is just undoing stupid changes they made in the past...Confirmation on criticals, Magical Items costing experience (wtf was that about anyway? Nothing irritates me more than the idea that I get dumber by practicing something). It's an improvement, isn't it? We're comparing 4th to 3rd. If you're still at Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition or earlier, you've never cared what Wizards of the Coast does.
Some of the other stuff is just making up for stupid DMs, and that irritates me. Monsters can be scaled down? So? A good DM should be able to come up with an easy or hard encounter with any sort of monster anyway, and relying on the "book difficulty" with monsters means you run out of monsters that your PCs can't beat around lvl 15. Lots of nice stuff can be done with a good DM and house ruling. If that's your test for whether a particular RPG is worthwhile, why not run original Dungeons and Dragons and house rule the rest?
Likewise magic items and buffs; if I decide that they're spending too long on their buffs, I start throwing random encounters at them. If they keep going into combat, blowing all their spells/abilities, and trying to rest, I make resting very difficult. After a while, that starts to get contrived. Building it into the rules ultimately makes for less work.
Some of the other stuff I like; level drain is awesome...It forces players to pay attention when certain undead are on the loose. Level drain is a bookkeeping nightmare. Which spells are lost? What did it to to attack bonuses? Skill levels? Feats?
And besides, the threat is very artificial. Raise Dead is easier, if I recall correctly, than Restoration. If the reverse were true - and the reverse is more intuitive (returning lost energy should be easier than raising the dead) - a giant or dragon, or even a poisonous snake would be scarier than a wight.
Spell preperation, while I never really liked it, forces a certain amount of tactical thinking that is completely removed by unlimited spells. Can't rest? Who cares!
Just doesn't sound like fun to me. Well, there is still limit on casting. Some spells can only be cast once per day, some once per encounter (aka battle) and some an unlimited times per day. The unlimited use powers are obviously weaker than the others. The per encounter powers are weaker than the once per day powers.
So the tactical thinking is still required. This just makes it easier than a list of spells known and spells prepared or memorized.
There were official Wizards of the Coast supplements for 3/3.5 and also third party D20 products that allowed for swashbuckling Fighter characters too.
This is all much ado about nothing. You're a fool if you're upset that Wizards of the Coast is trying to make a profit with a new gaming line.
I'm not thrilled by all of the changes, but some make sense. Among the changes that are partly or totally confirmed that make sense:
1. Monsters no longer must have class levels.
2. Racial abilities that improve with level are basedon feats, instead of Level Adjustments which were a bookkeeping mess.
3. Hit points are fixed per class and level, plus ability modifier, instead of the luck of the dice. (There are already luck in dice for combat. Adding luck in die rolls for hit points can really screw PCs. )
4. Spells are unlimited use, per encounter, or per day - a big improvement over memorization/preparation/whatever.
5. No confirmation rolls on critical hits (a roll of 20) or different tables for critical hit damage multipliers. Instead a critical hit just does maximum damage.
6. Spell levels correspond with caster level, so a 12th level Wizard can cast a 12th level spell, instead of having 12th level Wizards casting 6th level spells.
7. No feats or experience point expenditure is required to make magical items.
8. No spells require experience point expediture to cast. The Wish spell is also gone.
9. No level drain from undead or spells.
10. Fewer magical items can be worn, to reduce that complexity.
11. Fewer buff (temporary improvement) spells, and fewer buff spells that overlap, so your group doesn't spend 10 minutes in spell preparation before each combat.
12. Save or die spells are replaced with spells that do large amounts of hit point damage, so trick instant kills become less common.
13. Full attacks are removed.
14. The rules for attacks of opportunity are (supposedly) simplified and clarified.
15. Monsters can be scaled down for lower level encounters.
16. Other class abilities get moved to the same once per day, once per encounter, or unlimited use mechanic as spells.
17. Characters get healing surges, which let them recover from damage outside of combat more quickly without requiring a caster with healing magic. This mitigates the need to have a priest healer in every gaming party.
18. The skill system is dramatically simplified. PCs have trained skills and other skills, and no individual skill ranks in (potentially) dozens of different skills. The skill list is also condensed.
19. Defenses and saving throws follow a simpler progression than the various charts in previous editions.
That's just a decent helping of the changes we know about, and I'd say a lot of it makes good sense. I'm far from uniformly excited about all of the changes, but there's definitely some good with the bad.
If you really aren't tied too tightly to the official rules as written, I suggest:
Keeping the core books.
Ditch the rest of your rule books.
Make up the extra rules (like prestige classes, spells, feats, and so forth) as you need them, or download the thousands of free fan-created ones online.
Use a library card to get new setting content. It's cheaper.
I admit, I may pick up the 4th edition books out of curiosity. But for actual playing, I prefer Spirit of the Century, True20, and The Dying Earth RPG. I think the three of them are more interesting games, and all run fine with just a single core book and no supplements. You might also like Savage Worlds.
When I was an adolescent, I read the R.A. Salvatore, Douglass Niles, Troy Denning, and so forth Forgotten Realms books and loved them.
When I was a teenager, I read the vast majority of the Dragonlance Books and loved them. I also re-read the Forgotten Realms books, and decided they were really bad.
In college, I re-read many of the Dragonlance books. I realized they're really bad too, and their main virtue over Forgotten Realms was a different setting.
Good fiction in an RPG universe is very rare. In my humble opinion, all of the best fantasy novels don't have a computer or pen and paper roleplaying game logo or a movie name on the cover.
I personally have come to enjoy Robert Howard, Jack Vance, Jim Butcher, and Steven Brust, and it's been over a decade and I still enjoy them on second and third readings.
Your tastes may vary, but I strongly suggest you branch out from gaming fiction. There are a few good gems in there - I do really enjoy some of Richard Knaak and Mel Odom's stuff - but most isn't that good.
I think involvement inside the technical market is a problem. I think the volatility and unpredictable nature of the tech market is a problem.
I can't think of that many people outside the tech industry who have enough knowledge to get rich investing in it through anything more than luck.
Warren Buffett is an overused example, but I'll bring him up anyway: he avoids tech stocks entirely in favor of things he does understand, like insurance, soft drinks, retail stores, restaurants, and recently, railways.
It was an honest mistake. Now I need someone to check my math.
According to calculations in the first post here http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/03/24/nevadas-solar-one-power-plant/ a CSP plant like the Nevada one can expect, optimistically, the equivalent of full output for 5 hours per day. 64 MWh * 5 hours * 365 days = the annual output would be 117 million kWh or 117 gigaWatt hours.
So 19698 of them would output about 2.3 petaWatts of power per year. Coal is roughly 6.67 kWh per kg, so 2.3 petaWatts of energy from coal requires 345 billion kg of coal, or 379 million US tons. At $40 per ton currently, give or take, that's about $15 billion.
If my numbers are more or less accurate, that's why the move off of coal is so difficult. Even if the price of coal goes up 10% per year, we can pay it for decades before replacing it with solar becomes cost effective. If you want this type of transition to occur, you have no choice but to advocate major government intervention.
It's 92 miles on a side, or 92x92=8464 square miles.
640 acres per square mile and the Nevada plant is 275 acres, so that's 2.3272 plants per square mile.
So we need 2.3272x8464=19698 of those plants, just like the original post said.
This article says the Nevada One plant cost $250 million to build: http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/7150
$250 million times 19,698 gives just under $5 trillion dollars in construction costs. Now at some point economies of scale will kick in and save us money, and by most accounts maintaining the solar plant is cheaper than constantly paying for more coal or nuclear fuel. But no matter how you slice it, that's a lot of money.
On the other side of the coin, the lesson to take home is simple - job networking is critical. Mild competence and the ability to kiss the boss's ass without looking like you're kissing the boss's ass will take you six figures further than superior competence and a strictly professional relationship with the higher-ups.
Love it or hate it, that's how it works and the only reasonable response is to adapt your job strategy accordingly. Know your craft, but more importantly make friends with the bigwigs.
The Dummies books breaks the information into tiny chunks and feeds it to you at a sixth grade reading level, give or take. There are graphics and pictures, but they're almost all simple illustrations of concepts.
Head First tries to make things interesting by using funnier images, plays on words, puns, and pop culture references (mainstream stuff, not obscure) to get your attention. Every few pages they also include a creative quiz or simple programming exercise to test your knowledge. The examples are also a little bit more oddball, like beer selection programs or a program to transfer more money to the authors.
They make it clear at the start that the books are not intended as reference manuals. They're also more annoying than useful if you're already moderately comfortable with the subject material. But for someone totally new to the subject, I think they're good. I definitely don't regret buying Head First Servlets and JSP, it was extremely useful to me.
You forgot the Microsoft tax. That adds another $100-$200 depending upon what you buy.
But your main point is absolutely correct - you can assemble a machine that can handle basically every modern PC game save maybe Crysis plus do everything else a PC can do for pretty cheap.
Smart shopping will run you $600 for an entire PC that can handle the majority of current games. If you want to re-use old components - and learning how to do that will save you money in the long run - you can spend much less.
The article lists $57.5 billion as the amount the US government has spent on alternative fuels in the past 30 years. That sounds like an unbelievable amount of money. However:
1. I would bet that a substantial portion of the money was spent on corn Ethanol subsidies, which (as has been debated endlessly) are not among the more efficient ways to generate a renewable fuel alternative to petroleum.
2. As of 2000, the US used 98 quadrillion BTU in total energy, or the equivalent of 784 billion gallons of gasoline or 3.7 billion tons of coal. Measured against that, $57.5 billion in alternative fuels research is peanuts.
My own personal view is that regardless of how you feel about the environment, increased domestic energy production has enormous political and economic benefits for any country, and renewable energy production that's anywhere near cost competitive is the best long term investment. For a government willing to spend $3 trillion per year, $57.5 billion spent over 30 years is tantamount to criminal neglect.
Can you picture any number of dimensions for objects, or do you have a limit? I would think that eventually, you would hit a point where you can make mathematical models about the item but your brain isn't capable of generating an image of the shape.
Once you get past 3-dimensions, you can have mathematical concepts that you can't associate with any shape our minds are capable of accurately imagining.
You can also use mathematics to manipulate infinitely large numbers, or irrational numbers - what shape do they represent?
Or consider a very simple form of substitution algebra:
a = pq
x = by
qb = ag
You can prove ax = ppqgy. How would you represent that geometrically?
Fantasy Flight Games bought the license from Games Workshop and intends to publish the rest of the Dark Heresy product line. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/workshop-sabertooth-faq.html . On the other hand, the reviews I've read of Dark Heresy were not all positive. Great artwork and production values, but oddities around career path (none of the career choice freedom of the Warhammer RPG) and power level (PCs start out as space farm boys and don't get to be Inquisitors and their lethal retinue until they've accumulated massive amounts of experience).
I'm cautiously pessimistic about these Dungeons and Dragons 4 previews. Dungeons and Dragons hasn't been a quick pick up game since the basic set decades ago. The second edition was too complicated. The third edition simplified and unified the mechanics of the second edition, and then added in feats, attacks of opportunity, monster character levels, challenge ratings, and a host of other things to keep the game painfully complicated. The fourth edition looks like it expands character options further, and while more options are often nice, the last thing third edition needed was added complexity.
I think I'll stick with simpler games, like Savage Worlds (www.peginc.com) or Spirit of the Century (http://evilhat.wikidot.com/spirit-of-the-century).
HappyEngineer, you describe the type of mistake I used to make as a fresh graduate and even as a not-so-fresh graduate, and have since outgrown.
All the training and mentoring in the world won't make Forrest Gump into a skilled software developer. But there are an awful lot of mediocre developers out there who could be damn good.
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
Sales positions are paid partly or entirely through sales commissions.
It creates a conflict between being ethical and paying your mortgage. It's the reason most people can't stand car salesman or real estate brokers: telling you the truth costs them money. The job becomes a drive to the lowest ethical standards, because anyone with too much integrity either quits or gets fired for missing their quota.
Any company that doesn't motivate its sales staff by hinging their mortgage on sales has a tough time competing with the other players that do.
The price and freedom of the operating environment matters a lot. If I'm playing around with something on the LGPL QT toolkit or GNOME on Linux, I can install it on a dozen machines, swap around hard drives, run from CD, and remotely access as many of the machines concurrently as I would like.
I don't care how good Microsoft's Visual Studio is, you have to pay me quite a bit of money to run it. License management in a multi-server, multi machine Windows development environment is a nightmare.
I think he's mostly right. I work as a Java programmer, I have worked as a C programmer.
I don't learn a lot of new technologies or have a lot of exciting projects to describe that I built in my spare time. Not because I don't want to do them. I do want to do them. But I'm just too damn busy. I have a job, a long commute, a marriage to maintain, and kids. I even have a fitness program, although I'm lucky if I work out twice a week. By the time I can relax in the evening, I just can't concentrate on new material.
Weeder courses are a totally wrong way to approach a subject. You eliminate a whole host of perfectly intelligent candidates who could be brilliant if they just had some more time to assimilate the material.
It's like taking a bunch of guys who want to be strong into a weight room, putting them on the bench, and then kicking out everyone who can't bench press 225 pounds the first day. Just because some of the trainees aren't strong yet, it does not mean they lack the genetic potential to ever be strong.
Slashdot Mirror
It's my understanding that there will be rules for monster levels when you want them OR simpler rules for boosting or weakening monsters. So the GM doesn't need to pick every feat and spell for, say, an Ogre Mage that he wants to give 5 extra HD if he does not feel the need to do so.
I like the option of giving monsters class levels too, and I understand that option is still present. But they also have simpler rules for boosting and or weakening stock opponents and it makes DM preparation easier when he doesn't need to add monster levels.
I disagree on the blandness of tactical choices. When the party wizard cast a Fireball, or even Sleep in combat or something like Read Languages or Detect Evil out of combat it was a big deal. That was the player's moment to have their character shine and really hold the spotlight. For a player running a Fighter, they only got something similar if they were lucky enough to land and confirm a critical hit, and also roll well on the damage dice. Otherwise, mechanically their combat options were pretty limited. I think the change is good.
I think the unlimited weak spells, once per encounter moderate spells, and once per day strong spells is every bit as tactical as the Vancian system and dramatically simpler for bookkeeping in play. (I would also be happy with a true Vancian system: wizards can cast a much smaller number of dramatically more dangerous spells. That makes bookkeeping easier too.)
Level drain meant keeping track of what was taken away. I also disliked it because getting levels restored was more difficult than raising the dead, which seems counter-intuitive. I also think it's especially frustrating for a player, because losing a character is often easier to deal with than having one with moderately or severely reduced competence. What if your 5th level Rogue gets knocked back to level 1? Tough luck, if you're lucky you get to tag along on a long quest while all of the other 5th level characters do the hard work to find someone to restore you. You've been relegated to baggage handler. It would have been easier if your PC died, and then you can create some new 3rd (or if the DM is generous, 4th) level character to bring in with the rest of the game.
I think the presence of a cleric with the attendant ability to heal wounds makes for cinematic gameplay too. The healing surge abilities of classes is no more over the top, it just lets groups get by without needing a PC or NPC cleric in the party. If you want a gritty game, you already needed to house-rule away magical healing in previous editions, so I don't see a difference.
I think the 3.0/3.5 system is too complicated, especially for multi-class characters trying to keep track of skill costs and cross class skills as they progressed. If you ran a mostly single class game (which is what I prefer, but doesn't seem too common), it wasn't as much of an issue. But the new system still allows for variation, so I'm satisfied. Dungeons and Dragons has always had a big combat element to it - for any edition, total up the number of pages on combat rules, monster combat stats, armor, weapons, and combat-oriented magical items and compare it to the number of pages on non-combat skills. Combat is dramatically more important, and the new skill system is easier without becoming so general that it's useless.
There were official Wizards of the Coast supplements for 3/3.5 and also third party D20 products that allowed for swashbuckling Fighter characters too.
This is all much ado about nothing. You're a fool if you're upset that Wizards of the Coast is trying to make a profit with a new gaming line.
I'm not thrilled by all of the changes, but some make sense. Among the changes that are partly or totally confirmed that make sense:
1. Monsters no longer must have class levels.
2. Racial abilities that improve with level are basedon feats, instead of Level Adjustments which were a bookkeeping mess.
3. Hit points are fixed per class and level, plus ability modifier, instead of the luck of the dice. (There are already luck in dice for combat. Adding luck in die rolls for hit points can really screw PCs. )
4. Spells are unlimited use, per encounter, or per day - a big improvement over memorization/preparation/whatever.
5. No confirmation rolls on critical hits (a roll of 20) or different tables for critical hit damage multipliers. Instead a critical hit just does maximum damage.
6. Spell levels correspond with caster level, so a 12th level Wizard can cast a 12th level spell, instead of having 12th level Wizards casting 6th level spells.
7. No feats or experience point expenditure is required to make magical items.
8. No spells require experience point expediture to cast. The Wish spell is also gone.
9. No level drain from undead or spells.
10. Fewer magical items can be worn, to reduce that complexity.
11. Fewer buff (temporary improvement) spells, and fewer buff spells that overlap, so your group doesn't spend 10 minutes in spell preparation before each combat.
12. Save or die spells are replaced with spells that do large amounts of hit point damage, so trick instant kills become less common.
13. Full attacks are removed.
14. The rules for attacks of opportunity are (supposedly) simplified and clarified.
15. Monsters can be scaled down for lower level encounters.
16. Other class abilities get moved to the same once per day, once per encounter, or unlimited use mechanic as spells.
17. Characters get healing surges, which let them recover from damage outside of combat more quickly without requiring a caster with healing magic. This mitigates the need to have a priest healer in every gaming party.
18. The skill system is dramatically simplified. PCs have trained skills and other skills, and no individual skill ranks in (potentially) dozens of different skills. The skill list is also condensed.
19. Defenses and saving throws follow a simpler progression than the various charts in previous editions.
That's just a decent helping of the changes we know about, and I'd say a lot of it makes good sense. I'm far from uniformly excited about all of the changes, but there's definitely some good with the bad.
If you really aren't tied too tightly to the official rules as written, I suggest:
Keeping the core books.
Ditch the rest of your rule books.
Make up the extra rules (like prestige classes, spells, feats, and so forth) as you need them, or download the thousands of free fan-created ones online.
Use a library card to get new setting content. It's cheaper.
I admit, I may pick up the 4th edition books out of curiosity. But for actual playing, I prefer Spirit of the Century, True20, and The Dying Earth RPG. I think the three of them are more interesting games, and all run fine with just a single core book and no supplements. You might also like Savage Worlds.
When I was an adolescent, I read the R.A. Salvatore, Douglass Niles, Troy Denning, and so forth Forgotten Realms books and loved them.
When I was a teenager, I read the vast majority of the Dragonlance Books and loved them. I also re-read the Forgotten Realms books, and decided they were really bad.
In college, I re-read many of the Dragonlance books. I realized they're really bad too, and their main virtue over Forgotten Realms was a different setting.
Good fiction in an RPG universe is very rare. In my humble opinion, all of the best fantasy novels don't have a computer or pen and paper roleplaying game logo or a movie name on the cover.
I personally have come to enjoy Robert Howard, Jack Vance, Jim Butcher, and Steven Brust, and it's been over a decade and I still enjoy them on second and third readings.
Your tastes may vary, but I strongly suggest you branch out from gaming fiction. There are a few good gems in there - I do really enjoy some of Richard Knaak and Mel Odom's stuff - but most isn't that good.
I think involvement inside the technical market is a problem. I think the volatility and unpredictable nature of the tech market is a problem.
I can't think of that many people outside the tech industry who have enough knowledge to get rich investing in it through anything more than luck.
Warren Buffett is an overused example, but I'll bring him up anyway: he avoids tech stocks entirely in favor of things he does understand, like insurance, soft drinks, retail stores, restaurants, and recently, railways.
It was an honest mistake. Now I need someone to check my math.
According to calculations in the first post here http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/03/24/nevadas-solar-one-power-plant/ a CSP plant like the Nevada one can expect, optimistically, the equivalent of full output for 5 hours per day. 64 MWh * 5 hours * 365 days = the annual output would be 117 million kWh or 117 gigaWatt hours.
So 19698 of them would output about 2.3 petaWatts of power per year. Coal is roughly 6.67 kWh per kg, so 2.3 petaWatts of energy from coal requires 345 billion kg of coal, or 379 million US tons. At $40 per ton currently, give or take, that's about $15 billion.
If my numbers are more or less accurate, that's why the move off of coal is so difficult. Even if the price of coal goes up 10% per year, we can pay it for decades before replacing it with solar becomes cost effective. If you want this type of transition to occur, you have no choice but to advocate major government intervention.
It's 92 miles on a side, or 92x92=8464 square miles.
640 acres per square mile and the Nevada plant is 275 acres, so that's 2.3272 plants per square mile.
So we need 2.3272x8464=19698 of those plants, just like the original post said.
This article says the Nevada One plant cost $250 million to build: http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/7150
$250 million times 19,698 gives just under $5 trillion dollars in construction costs. Now at some point economies of scale will kick in and save us money, and by most accounts maintaining the solar plant is cheaper than constantly paying for more coal or nuclear fuel. But no matter how you slice it, that's a lot of money.
On the other side of the coin, the lesson to take home is simple - job networking is critical. Mild competence and the ability to kiss the boss's ass without looking like you're kissing the boss's ass will take you six figures further than superior competence and a strictly professional relationship with the higher-ups.
Love it or hate it, that's how it works and the only reasonable response is to adapt your job strategy accordingly. Know your craft, but more importantly make friends with the bigwigs.
Nice. I don't have that option.
The Dummies books breaks the information into tiny chunks and feeds it to you at a sixth grade reading level, give or take. There are graphics and pictures, but they're almost all simple illustrations of concepts.
Head First tries to make things interesting by using funnier images, plays on words, puns, and pop culture references (mainstream stuff, not obscure) to get your attention. Every few pages they also include a creative quiz or simple programming exercise to test your knowledge. The examples are also a little bit more oddball, like beer selection programs or a program to transfer more money to the authors.
They make it clear at the start that the books are not intended as reference manuals. They're also more annoying than useful if you're already moderately comfortable with the subject material. But for someone totally new to the subject, I think they're good. I definitely don't regret buying Head First Servlets and JSP, it was extremely useful to me.
You forgot the Microsoft tax. That adds another $100-$200 depending upon what you buy.
But your main point is absolutely correct - you can assemble a machine that can handle basically every modern PC game save maybe Crysis plus do everything else a PC can do for pretty cheap.
Smart shopping will run you $600 for an entire PC that can handle the majority of current games. If you want to re-use old components - and learning how to do that will save you money in the long run - you can spend much less.
Thanks for the information. That daughtersoftiresias page is especially fascinating.
The article lists $57.5 billion as the amount the US government has spent on alternative fuels in the past 30 years. That sounds like an unbelievable amount of money. However:
1. I would bet that a substantial portion of the money was spent on corn Ethanol subsidies, which (as has been debated endlessly) are not among the more efficient ways to generate a renewable fuel alternative to petroleum.
2. As of 2000, the US used 98 quadrillion BTU in total energy, or the equivalent of 784 billion gallons of gasoline or 3.7 billion tons of coal. Measured against that, $57.5 billion in alternative fuels research is peanuts.
My own personal view is that regardless of how you feel about the environment, increased domestic energy production has enormous political and economic benefits for any country, and renewable energy production that's anywhere near cost competitive is the best long term investment. For a government willing to spend $3 trillion per year, $57.5 billion spent over 30 years is tantamount to criminal neglect.
Can you picture any number of dimensions for objects, or do you have a limit? I would think that eventually, you would hit a point where you can make mathematical models about the item but your brain isn't capable of generating an image of the shape.
Once you get past 3-dimensions, you can have mathematical concepts that you can't associate with any shape our minds are capable of accurately imagining.
You can also use mathematics to manipulate infinitely large numbers, or irrational numbers - what shape do they represent?
Or consider a very simple form of substitution algebra:
a = pq
x = by
qb = ag
You can prove ax = ppqgy. How would you represent that geometrically?
Your definition is too limiting.
Fantasy Flight Games bought the license from Games Workshop and intends to publish the rest of the Dark Heresy product line. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/workshop-sabertooth-faq.html . On the other hand, the reviews I've read of Dark Heresy were not all positive. Great artwork and production values, but oddities around career path (none of the career choice freedom of the Warhammer RPG) and power level (PCs start out as space farm boys and don't get to be Inquisitors and their lethal retinue until they've accumulated massive amounts of experience).
I'm cautiously pessimistic about these Dungeons and Dragons 4 previews. Dungeons and Dragons hasn't been a quick pick up game since the basic set decades ago. The second edition was too complicated. The third edition simplified and unified the mechanics of the second edition, and then added in feats, attacks of opportunity, monster character levels, challenge ratings, and a host of other things to keep the game painfully complicated. The fourth edition looks like it expands character options further, and while more options are often nice, the last thing third edition needed was added complexity.
I think I'll stick with simpler games, like Savage Worlds (www.peginc.com) or Spirit of the Century (http://evilhat.wikidot.com/spirit-of-the-century).
HappyEngineer, you describe the type of mistake I used to make as a fresh graduate and even as a not-so-fresh graduate, and have since outgrown.
All the training and mentoring in the world won't make Forrest Gump into a skilled software developer. But there are an awful lot of mediocre developers out there who could be damn good.
Sales positions are paid partly or entirely through sales commissions.
It creates a conflict between being ethical and paying your mortgage. It's the reason most people can't stand car salesman or real estate brokers: telling you the truth costs them money. The job becomes a drive to the lowest ethical standards, because anyone with too much integrity either quits or gets fired for missing their quota.
Any company that doesn't motivate its sales staff by hinging their mortgage on sales has a tough time competing with the other players that do.
Welcome to capitalism.
The price and freedom of the operating environment matters a lot. If I'm playing around with something on the LGPL QT toolkit or GNOME on Linux, I can install it on a dozen machines, swap around hard drives, run from CD, and remotely access as many of the machines concurrently as I would like.
I don't care how good Microsoft's Visual Studio is, you have to pay me quite a bit of money to run it. License management in a multi-server, multi machine Windows development environment is a nightmare.
I think he's mostly right. I work as a Java programmer, I have worked as a C programmer.
I don't learn a lot of new technologies or have a lot of exciting projects to describe that I built in my spare time. Not because I don't want to do them. I do want to do them. But I'm just too damn busy. I have a job, a long commute, a marriage to maintain, and kids. I even have a fitness program, although I'm lucky if I work out twice a week. By the time I can relax in the evening, I just can't concentrate on new material.
Weeder courses are a totally wrong way to approach a subject. You eliminate a whole host of perfectly intelligent candidates who could be brilliant if they just had some more time to assimilate the material.
It's like taking a bunch of guys who want to be strong into a weight room, putting them on the bench, and then kicking out everyone who can't bench press 225 pounds the first day. Just because some of the trainees aren't strong yet, it does not mean they lack the genetic potential to ever be strong.