What about an item that, when activated, destroys all magical objects within a certain range, including those of the user? M:TG had such an artifact (hence the topic of this message), and bringing that into play and just leaving it on the table untapped had a definite effect on the opponent's play from that point on (you could use it prior to any attempt to destroy it, since it functioned as an interrupt).
Limit players to one such item per spawn, and make it moderately rare (but common enough to be feared) and non-transferable (when you die you can either trigger it or not, but it disappears either way). Or rather than rare, make its cost proportional to the player's level, so that n00bs would get them cheap but griefers would have to pay a pretty penny for them. Think of it as a medieval corbomite device.
Mal-2
Re:This won't please YHWH/Allah/insert deity here
on
New Calendar Proposal
·
· Score: 1
Actually the day names DO change, as they're named after the five basic tastes (sweet, boom, pungent, prickle, and orange). If compared to the Gregorian calendar, the weeks just don't line up. If Sweetmorn matches Sunday this week, next Sweetmorn will match Friday, the subsequent one will match Wednesday, etc.
Frankly, I just like the idea because I only want to work 3 of every 5 days.:)
Mal-2
Re:This won't please YHWH/Allah/insert deity here
on
New Calendar Proposal
·
· Score: 1
Well to a certain extent, they already do. For example, is winter solstice in the northern hemisphere on December 21 or December 22? Which was it last year, or the year before that? I just use this example because it's today.
Mal-2
Re:This won't please YHWH/Allah/insert deity here
on
New Calendar Proposal
·
· Score: 1
No but it breaks traditions such as Easter (which is what, first Sunday after the fourth Monday after spring equinox, or something equally bizarre?), because attaching a fixed date to that would mean that as the calendar drifts relative to the seasons, Easter might come a week early or a week late. *GASP!* It's the end of the world as we know it!
I guess that's what I really meant. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.:)
Mal-2
This won't please YHWH/Allah/insert deity here
on
New Calendar Proposal
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
Unfortunately, any effort to replace the current calendar will be met with grave opposition by the hyper-religious, who seem inclined to believe that a box on a chart MUST correspond with their chosen Sabbath (be it Friday, Saturday, or Sunday). This is why I prefer the Discordian calendar with five day weeks, it screws everyone up equally. It's also why I'm supposed to eat a hot dog every Friday.:)
1. Register net.net, info.info, org.org, etc. (news.com.com.com.com has com.com already locked up. Bork bork bork.) 2. Re-sell everyone their same domain names as mysite.net.net, but charge them HALF what ICANN + registrars do. 3. ??? (wait till ICANN goes broke?) 4. PROFIT!!!
I have only fired a gun once and that was a shotgun with the help of my uncle at some cans.
Well that explains itself. If you want to keep a kid from getting interested in guns, take him to the range with nothing but a 12-gauge shotgun. Make him put 20 shells through it, then go home. When he can't lift his arms the next day, or the day after that, he's probably not going to want to go to the range again.
On the other hand, if you want to give him a lifelong interest in shooting, go to that range with a.22 rifle and several boxes of ammo. Picking off metal targets at 100 yards with a.22 is great fun, and you can do it all day since there is essentially no kick. He'll probably want to go back again the next weekend (which is ok,.22 ammo is really cheap).
Most handguns are also not terribly demanding physically. It's when you get into shotguns and high-powered rifles that you really take a licking with each shot. To make this somewhat topical, this is totally not reflected in games. You don't have to bear any physical effects shooting off that double-barreled shotgun at an imp, it's just fun. But it's considerably less fun when you try the real thing.
Better yet, just put it in the network card... that market is totally cut-throat, so I'll bet that anyone who offered a network card manufacturer a large sale or two in exchange for some extra firmware... well...
Why bother?
1. Set up front company to buy network cards wholesale. 2. Open them, flash the firmware, re-package them. 3. Sell them really cheap to retailers and mid-level distributors. Give them to Dell for almost free. 4. Exploit hole. 5. PROFIT!!!
Or do the same with motherboards, since many people won't need a discrete PCI NIC, and most people never flash their BIOS. Point is, it doesn't require the assistance of the manufacturer to get compromised hardware in almost everyone's machine.
"The Best Way to Skip a Stone" isn't silly. In fact, skipping stones was the basis of the concept of Dambuster bombs back in WW2.
One rather bizarre note appears here . "If the bomb breaches the dam, code word is Nigger but if it does not breach, code word is Gonner."
In any case, skipping objects off water is hardly a new area of research and does not belong on a list of things "new and innovative" as it is neither. But it is not at all silly.
No, I trust none of these "bakeoffs". Or any other IT advertising for that matter. There isn't a single mainstream IT rag which is even marginally trustworthy.
Oh please. Next you'll be telling me you don't trust statistics and pretty color pie charts. This is unamerican fnord!
Celebrities have always been manufactured from scratch for the most part. They aren't usually born famous. (Some are, and always have been, by virtue of being born to famous and/or rich parents.) The difference is in who manufactures the fame, and how. Used to be you could get famous by being in the right places at the right time, and having the ability to perform. But you could also get famous just by knowing the right people and not sucking TOO hard (or by sucking genitalia).
Now, it seems that the "next big thing" is pre-determined by the trendmongers running MTV, reality shows, and the like, then they find someone who fits what they already want (or is willing to fake it), regardless of whether they actually have any ability or not. How far would Janis Joplin have gotten if she'd tried out for "American Idol"?
I, for one, welcome our new "3 boxcars per disc" Blu-Ray overlords. DVD-R made being a digital packrat practical, but 25 GB discs are going to make it downright trivial.
Of course nobody REALLY knows the lifespan of such discs, or their damage resistance, so I don't expect to be one of the early adopters. I've had pretty good results with carefully stored burned DVDs, but they aren't really suitable for careless handling. For example I'd never stick an unprotected DVD-R in my pocket and expect it to survive. I've done this many, many times with CD-R and CD-RW discs. (Incidentally, this is why I find CD-RW to be a suitable floppy disc replacement, while DVD-RW is not.)
Think about it, electrical fields fall of at the square of the distance. This means that at normal conversational distances the already faint signals are going to be essentially undetectable.
This is true for signals radiated in all directions, but why assume this is the case? You don't get a mile out of WiFi with a rubber ducky antenna. So long as it can be isolated from noise, intelligible data can be had from a very weak signal, and it's easier to isolate a highly directional signal. If ESP does exist and is transmitted by electromagnetic energy, that still doesn't mean it's sent everywhere. "Beaming" it would provide efficiency, clarity, and to a limited extent, security.
Not that I'm saying ESP has anything to do with sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads or anything...
Getting electrical signals to OR from the brain through an intact skull is going to be a lossy process. In the case of getting signals out, this is apparently manageable. But as for getting signals IN, it's not going to work -- this way at least. This doesn't rule out some much more precise (and much more advanced) tech in the future, but this isn't going to work for making zombies.
Besides, is drilling a hole in the head of your zombie really THAT bad?
The main problem with this is that it is possible to gain a small advantage by cheating, although there is a higher cost to the system as a whole. Then everyone cheats, and you have... well, what you have now.
It might be possible to demand transparency in scheduling, that we be informed our show will run two minutes over. Also synchronized clocks would be very nice. But look how nicely truth-in-advertising laws have worked... at making marketing lawyers dance around them. I fear you'd have much the same problem here.
Primaries can be hacked just as well as genreal elections;-)
Actually I'd say primaries are MORE susceptible to hacking than general elections, as there is no "other party" to object to a result. It wouldn't take as much arm-twisting to make a candidate of the same party keep quiet, unless they're incensed enough to switch party.
I got sick of FAX spam at work, especially since most of them came from the same Canadian company I couldn't contact directly. They left only a (toll-free) removal number.
The first time, I tried it. I think they stopped for all of a month.
Once they restarted, I decided to make us unprofitable to FAX. I called their toll-free removal number, and when asked to confirm that I had entered the correct number, I would press "2" for no, starting the whole process over again. Then I automated this with just the autodialer on the phone. It got to the point that when I got through (which wasn't often), the autodialer could hold their line open for upwards of an hour. To prevent this from tying up the main phone line, I tapped the FAX line so that it now was usable on one office phone (in addition to the FAX) only -- mine. Once the legitimate FAXes stopped at 5 pm, but I still had hours to kill before the day's paperwork arrived, I'd set the autodialer to work. All I had to do was hit a button if the phone actually got through to the removal service. Having access to the FAX line also came in handy at other times, but that was just a nice side effect of the need to autodial.
Since we had a toll-free line ourselves, I knew they were probably paying about 7 or 8 cents a minute for their incoming calls. I wanted to cost them ten dollars a day, but I just couldn't get through all that often as the line was almost always busy (big surprise).
Then I got the bright idea to subject one of our contractors (who NEVER paid on time, or paid less than was billed) to a little annoyance of their own, so I had the autodialer helpfully "remove" them instead of ourselves. This part at least I know to have worked, their level of Canadian FAX spam tripled instantly. It didn't get us any of the owed money, but it still felt nice.:)
Mercedes is actually Mercedes-Benz, which was a part of Daimler-Benz, which merged with Chrysler corporation to make Daimler-Chrysler. So Maybach, Mercedes, Chrysler, and Dodge cars all come from the same parent corporation.
You forgot Poland... err, I meant Plymouth, Jeep, and Eagle as well.
Well I'm glad I get my printers out of someone else's trash and take parts from two or three to make units that work! That should slow anyone down just a bit...
Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder at the fact that light with more red than blue is deemed "warmer", though such light comes from COOLER incandescent objects? I guess it's just an artifact of times when people didn't understand the physics, just as diodes are drawn the "wrong way 'round" on schematics.
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What about an item that, when activated, destroys all magical objects within a certain range, including those of the user? M:TG had such an artifact (hence the topic of this message), and bringing that into play and just leaving it on the table untapped had a definite effect on the opponent's play from that point on (you could use it prior to any attempt to destroy it, since it functioned as an interrupt).
Limit players to one such item per spawn, and make it moderately rare (but common enough to be feared) and non-transferable (when you die you can either trigger it or not, but it disappears either way). Or rather than rare, make its cost proportional to the player's level, so that n00bs would get them cheap but griefers would have to pay a pretty penny for them. Think of it as a medieval corbomite device.
Mal-2
Actually the day names DO change, as they're named after the five basic tastes (sweet, boom, pungent, prickle, and orange). If compared to the Gregorian calendar, the weeks just don't line up. If Sweetmorn matches Sunday this week, next Sweetmorn will match Friday, the subsequent one will match Wednesday, etc.
:)
Frankly, I just like the idea because I only want to work 3 of every 5 days.
Mal-2
Well to a certain extent, they already do. For example, is winter solstice in the northern hemisphere on December 21 or December 22? Which was it last year, or the year before that? I just use this example because it's today.
Mal-2
No but it breaks traditions such as Easter (which is what, first Sunday after the fourth Monday after spring equinox, or something equally bizarre?), because attaching a fixed date to that would mean that as the calendar drifts relative to the seasons, Easter might come a week early or a week late. *GASP!* It's the end of the world as we know it!
:)
I guess that's what I really meant. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Mal-2
Unfortunately, any effort to replace the current calendar will be met with grave opposition by the hyper-religious, who seem inclined to believe that a box on a chart MUST correspond with their chosen Sabbath (be it Friday, Saturday, or Sunday). This is why I prefer the Discordian calendar with five day weeks, it screws everyone up equally. It's also why I'm supposed to eat a hot dog every Friday. :)
Mal-2
1. Register net.net, info.info, org.org, etc. (news.com.com.com.com has com.com already locked up. Bork bork bork.)
2. Re-sell everyone their same domain names as mysite.net.net, but charge them HALF what ICANN + registrars do.
3. ??? (wait till ICANN goes broke?)
4. PROFIT!!!
Mal-2
I have only fired a gun once and that was a shotgun with the help of my uncle at some cans.
.22 rifle and several boxes of ammo. Picking off metal targets at 100 yards with a .22 is great fun, and you can do it all day since there is essentially no kick. He'll probably want to go back again the next weekend (which is ok, .22 ammo is really cheap).
Well that explains itself. If you want to keep a kid from getting interested in guns, take him to the range with nothing but a 12-gauge shotgun. Make him put 20 shells through it, then go home. When he can't lift his arms the next day, or the day after that, he's probably not going to want to go to the range again.
On the other hand, if you want to give him a lifelong interest in shooting, go to that range with a
Most handguns are also not terribly demanding physically. It's when you get into shotguns and high-powered rifles that you really take a licking with each shot. To make this somewhat topical, this is totally not reflected in games. You don't have to bear any physical effects shooting off that double-barreled shotgun at an imp, it's just fun. But it's considerably less fun when you try the real thing.
Mal-2
Better yet, just put it in the network card... that market is totally cut-throat, so I'll bet that anyone who offered a network card manufacturer a large sale or two in exchange for some extra firmware... well...
Why bother?
1. Set up front company to buy network cards wholesale.
2. Open them, flash the firmware, re-package them.
3. Sell them really cheap to retailers and mid-level distributors. Give them to Dell for almost free.
4. Exploit hole.
5. PROFIT!!!
Or do the same with motherboards, since many people won't need a discrete PCI NIC, and most people never flash their BIOS. Point is, it doesn't require the assistance of the manufacturer to get compromised hardware in almost everyone's machine.
Mal-2
Looks to me like the computer geek is just going to become a staple of the successful organized crime family in Kangaroo-land, that's all.
W00t, a new sector for well-paid IT jobs!
Mal-2
If they don't have a spare gun handy, I'm sure they could just borrow one from the neighbors.
Mal-2
Those planting the mines could easily till salts and/or herbicides into the soil at the same time. When nothing grows there, these plants won't work.
On the positive side, this would prevent people from trying to farm or graze on the mined land.
Mal-2
"The Best Way to Skip a Stone" isn't silly. In fact, skipping stones was the basis of the concept of Dambuster bombs back in WW2.
One rather bizarre note appears here . "If the bomb breaches the dam, code word is Nigger but if it does not breach, code word is Gonner."
In any case, skipping objects off water is hardly a new area of research and does not belong on a list of things "new and innovative" as it is neither. But it is not at all silly.
Mal-2
Downside 2: You can't open the window even though you are doing 90,000 miles an hour and REALLY want to tilt your hand up and down in the wind.
Mal-2
No, I trust none of these "bakeoffs". Or any other IT advertising for that matter. There isn't a single mainstream IT rag which is even marginally trustworthy.
Oh please. Next you'll be telling me you don't trust statistics and pretty color pie charts. This is unamerican fnord!
Mal-2
Celebrities have always been manufactured from scratch for the most part. They aren't usually born famous. (Some are, and always have been, by virtue of being born to famous and/or rich parents.) The difference is in who manufactures the fame, and how. Used to be you could get famous by being in the right places at the right time, and having the ability to perform. But you could also get famous just by knowing the right people and not sucking TOO hard (or by sucking genitalia).
Now, it seems that the "next big thing" is pre-determined by the trendmongers running MTV, reality shows, and the like, then they find someone who fits what they already want (or is willing to fake it), regardless of whether they actually have any ability or not. How far would Janis Joplin have gotten if she'd tried out for "American Idol"?
Mal-2
I, for one, welcome our new "3 boxcars per disc" Blu-Ray overlords. DVD-R made being a digital packrat practical, but 25 GB discs are going to make it downright trivial.
Of course nobody REALLY knows the lifespan of such discs, or their damage resistance, so I don't expect to be one of the early adopters. I've had pretty good results with carefully stored burned DVDs, but they aren't really suitable for careless handling. For example I'd never stick an unprotected DVD-R in my pocket and expect it to survive. I've done this many, many times with CD-R and CD-RW discs. (Incidentally, this is why I find CD-RW to be a suitable floppy disc replacement, while DVD-RW is not.)
Mal-2
Think about it, electrical fields fall of at the square of the distance. This means that at normal conversational distances the already faint signals are going to be essentially undetectable.
This is true for signals radiated in all directions, but why assume this is the case? You don't get a mile out of WiFi with a rubber ducky antenna. So long as it can be isolated from noise, intelligible data can be had from a very weak signal, and it's easier to isolate a highly directional signal. If ESP does exist and is transmitted by electromagnetic energy, that still doesn't mean it's sent everywhere. "Beaming" it would provide efficiency, clarity, and to a limited extent, security.
Not that I'm saying ESP has anything to do with sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads or anything...
Mal-2
Getting electrical signals to OR from the brain through an intact skull is going to be a lossy process. In the case of getting signals out, this is apparently manageable. But as for getting signals IN, it's not going to work -- this way at least. This doesn't rule out some much more precise (and much more advanced) tech in the future, but this isn't going to work for making zombies.
Besides, is drilling a hole in the head of your zombie really THAT bad?
Mal-2
The main problem with this is that it is possible to gain a small advantage by cheating, although there is a higher cost to the system as a whole. Then everyone cheats, and you have... well, what you have now.
It might be possible to demand transparency in scheduling, that we be informed our show will run two minutes over. Also synchronized clocks would be very nice. But look how nicely truth-in-advertising laws have worked... at making marketing lawyers dance around them. I fear you'd have much the same problem here.
Mal-2
...they'd better send us this fad as well.
Mal-2
Primaries can be hacked just as well as genreal elections ;-)
Actually I'd say primaries are MORE susceptible to hacking than general elections, as there is no "other party" to object to a result. It wouldn't take as much arm-twisting to make a candidate of the same party keep quiet, unless they're incensed enough to switch party.
Mal-2
I got sick of FAX spam at work, especially since most of them came from the same Canadian company I couldn't contact directly. They left only a (toll-free) removal number.
:)
The first time, I tried it. I think they stopped for all of a month.
Once they restarted, I decided to make us unprofitable to FAX. I called their toll-free removal number, and when asked to confirm that I had entered the correct number, I would press "2" for no, starting the whole process over again. Then I automated this with just the autodialer on the phone. It got to the point that when I got through (which wasn't often), the autodialer could hold their line open for upwards of an hour. To prevent this from tying up the main phone line, I tapped the FAX line so that it now was usable on one office phone (in addition to the FAX) only -- mine. Once the legitimate FAXes stopped at 5 pm, but I still had hours to kill before the day's paperwork arrived, I'd set the autodialer to work. All I had to do was hit a button if the phone actually got through to the removal service. Having access to the FAX line also came in handy at other times, but that was just a nice side effect of the need to autodial.
Since we had a toll-free line ourselves, I knew they were probably paying about 7 or 8 cents a minute for their incoming calls. I wanted to cost them ten dollars a day, but I just couldn't get through all that often as the line was almost always busy (big surprise).
Then I got the bright idea to subject one of our contractors (who NEVER paid on time, or paid less than was billed) to a little annoyance of their own, so I had the autodialer helpfully "remove" them instead of ourselves. This part at least I know to have worked, their level of Canadian FAX spam tripled instantly. It didn't get us any of the owed money, but it still felt nice.
Mal-2
Mercedes is actually Mercedes-Benz, which was a part of Daimler-Benz, which merged with Chrysler corporation to make Daimler-Chrysler. So Maybach, Mercedes, Chrysler, and Dodge cars all come from the same parent corporation.
You forgot Poland... err, I meant Plymouth, Jeep, and Eagle as well.
Mal-2
Well I'm glad I get my printers out of someone else's trash and take parts from two or three to make units that work! That should slow anyone down just a bit...
Mal-2
Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder at the fact that light with more red than blue is deemed "warmer", though such light comes from COOLER incandescent objects? I guess it's just an artifact of times when people didn't understand the physics, just as diodes are drawn the "wrong way 'round" on schematics.
Mal-2