I think a lot of folks are just getting tired of the same stale dungeon-crawling that D&D has been pushing for the last 25 years, moving on to bigger and better things (like GURPS, as mentioned in the tags).
This is more a reply to a lot of the posts that I have seen reading though the comments, I just picked this one because I wanted to grab that quote.
I think that the whole worth of AD&D (I'm from the 2ed era) was that it was a gateway RPG. You come in, start seeing min/max opportunities and are hooked. From there you'll either start changing the rules, or you'll start experimenting with other systems. Personally I just developed a very malleable sense of what the rules were. The whole set of complaints about different rules in 3rd ed or ideas that things should be different or the conception that there were poorly covered areas is a little foreign to me. Has a certain rules aspect always bothered you? Change it.
Of course, this leads to people changing the rules in sub-optimal ways. Certainly other games should exist to provide examples of polished, optimised, consistant gameplay. But the idea of trying to make D&D into that seems like a bummer. I liked playing a game where the rules were mostly just a suggestion and different DMs had different ideas about how the rules worked. I guess it made different games not so interoperable (like if you want to start a big, boston-wide gaming metagroup), but I mostly only played with the same group of friends over and over again anyway.
I think there is (was) value in having a somewhat half-formed game system; which isn't to say that there isn't value in having a well-made and complete system. Making D&D too slick makes it into not-D&D.
Has anyone else noticed that since moving to WSUS 3 updates tend to sneak out without authorization?
I've had updates not ok'd for install get out, and I've had updates spread beyond the test list that they are approved for. Limited approvals are sent out to a limited computer list, and then random users all over the place start calling in about slowdowns b/c they are downloading a big, non-approved update (.net 3, some others). Maybe I'm just lame and I'm doing it wrong. Anyone else?
I'm reminded of the words of the great Stanley Spadowski, who said:
George, you know I was wondering, like if you were traveling through outer space, I mean like you're going real fast, like the speed of light, you know... hoooohhhhh... and all of a sudden you started screaming... aaaahhhhh aaaaahhhhh... Do you think your brain would blow up?
Corp America and even the Government see the 'Net as the goose that lays golden eggs. It makes possible an information economy that the USA wants to own. But you can only cash so much out of a system before it ceases to be self sustaining.
The thing that defines the internet is its flexability. People can dream up new business models and attach it to THE INTERNET. Exert rigid control over the system and it will cease to be economically productive.
The Internet needs to be treated like a fishery. Some economic exploitation is to be expected. But the Government needs to step in to prevent big players from fucking it all up to make a quick buck. If Joe Blow finds that all the free stuff provided through flexible non-corporate-controlled channels (the reason Joe hits the web in the first place) has been replaced by pay-only stuff from the latest Corporate income generator then he might as well not even bother.
Comcast think people downloading free stuff are sponging off the businesses who invest money in the system. But they've got it backwards. Business attempting to make money from the system are sponging off of the interest generated by people providing free content.
Here is my possibly erroneous understanding, based on my undergraduate degree in physics.
I've always wondered if all black holes do this but we simply aren't able to tell from our perspective.
Any black hole into which stuff falls xrays emerge from. This is electromagnetic radiation, not matter. Yes, yes, energy/matter equivelency notwithstanding, it's light that comes out, not rocks and stuff.
Here's how it works. A black hole sucks things into it. When things go in the black hole, they spin around it on the way down, like water going down your bathtub drain. The varying amount of spin at different distances from the sucking object tends to pull things apart. Eventually things get really pulled apart, down to an atomic level, and ionized. Ions have charge. Charges acclerating in a circle make an electromagnetic wave, perpendicular to the plane of rotation (right hand rule). When the acceleration is big, the energy of the resulting electromagnetic wave is high. Black hole = big acceleration = high energy output. Things are torn up and spun around the black hole when they are still outside of the event horizon (the line of no return, where escape velocity becomes equal to the speed of light), so the energy is able to escape the black hole.
Such as a pen laser, you can't really tell if it's on unless it's aimed at or near your eye, if you can see what it is hitting, or if there is something in the air to illuminate.
Astronomers can see this. Space is mostly empty, but there's enough stuff to scatter this effect that it is known.
This would certainly go in line with the theory that black holes can never actually exist. That is, everything that appears to be a black hole is on the teetering edge of becoming one at all times, but constantly bleeds matter so no event horizon can form.
Speaking energetically about a black hole is kinda wierd. My understanding is that the energy coming from the black hole in this story was never actually in the black hole. The black hole isn't bleeding energy (much less matter) at the nearby galaxy, rather the act of falling into the black hole liberates some potential energy from the matter that is falling. (Anything that has the potential to fall has potential energy, this PE is the source) Black holes can (maybe) evaporate (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation), but that isn't what is happening here.
I have no formal education in this stuff nor have I even bothered to read a book, but I'm full of poorly educated gut feelings on the matter!
=) So I thought I'd provide some possibly approximately correct information for you or anyone else who in the same boat.
What I've forgotten is where was Johnny Depp in Top Gun. Or Flashdance? Having Depp play a stripper is certainly looking at things a bit differently, though. At least it is in the subcultures in which *I* participate...
they have big fighgt! Thers a HUGE SWARD and esplosions! RAND R0XX0RS THE BL0XX0RS, and he kills all the b4d guys! teh bene gesserit I MEAN AES SEDAI (d0h!) help some, but so do some Fremen I MEAN AIEL and they spend the hole time arguing wether dudes or chicks r00le m0r3 (LOL).
At teh end all the bad guys are dead -- EXCEPT 1 of THER BODIES IS GONE LIKE HE SNUCK OFF OR SOMTHN!! AND RAND IS FATALLY INJURD! *SOB* But doont wory he gets reencarnated 'cause the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin!
"a scientist who drilled into his hard drive in order to pour oil into the mechanism to stop the squeaking"
Venkmen: Hey Egon, this reminds me of that time you tried to drill a hole in your head! Egon: That would have worked too, if you hadn't stopped me.
living room furniture != office furniture
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 1
My lap is too small, too low, and too close to me to ever support a worthwhile work surface. I have always figured that the "lap desk" sort of item was forever doomed to be a poor substitute for an actual desk. If you really want to sit in a lazy boy to work, I think you'd have to DIY some extra large wheeled furniture style option to roll in over it. But since the situation presumes a very large chair, that might not be practical either.
I think everything that isn't an actual desk and work chair is going to be a compromise. You may find some favorites, but I don't think a satisfactory answer is possible. I've a table beside my sofa for my media machine, but it sucks for anything other than light use.
I've never been a good person dealing with meatspace crowds. I was on the verge of panic the whole night. I had scallops and tried to smile and be polite when I just wanted to hide in the corner. I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
and then...
(although I went to Vegas countless times since for fun- NYC, Las Vegas and Tokyo are the 3 cities I love to visit)
be much more vulnerable to attack by potential adversary countries with access to space, e.g. the Russians or the Chinese.
Just a theory here: Countries that have access to space are likely invested in the status quo, and wouldn't be interested in catastrophically upsetting things. The new cold war isn't against space capable countries, it's against terrorists ie, entities that hate the modern economic system. Space capable countries are almost by definition winners in the current economic system.
That's not the point. The point is how certain people can be that the pens don't do crap when they really have no justification for it. In too many cases there is no more scientific basis for claims of no difference than there is for claims of difference.
the *best* that it could do would be to cause a failed disc read to become a successful disc read.* It can't cause a successful disc read to become a 'better' disc read, because a successful disc read is perfect. There's nothing for the pen to *do*.
If a successfull disk read is perfect, why is a robust error recovery system implemented in CDs? (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cd/mediaECC-c.html) The implication being that read errors can be generated and then recovered from without generating an audible 'skip'. One of the techniques implemented in CD error recovery is interpolation. Will a series of interpolated bits sound as good as accurately read bits? Would data misread and then recovered from by some procedure (which would presumably take a non-zero amount of time) generate an audible amount of jitter? Would the pen even make a difference in accurate bit reads? I don't know. That's not the point. The pen isn't the point. The point is that audiophile skeptics don't question their own certainty.
I frequently see the 'mark the edges of your cds' thing held up as an example of stereophile gullibility. The thing is, I don't see why it's necessarily bogus.
The CD laser pickup is a light based thing. There's a story of an expensive CD player being demo'ed and some reporter took a picture and the flash made the player skip (http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/634/index3.html). So the idea that ambient light can interfere with an optical pickup seems valid.
So you shine your pickup laser on a CD. Who says the light can't bounce around within the plastic layer, and maybe interefere with the primary beam? Who says that absorbing stray photons around the optical pickup might not help? Well lots of people, if you read the comments on stereophile-type stories on/. I don't know either way.
And that's the part that I think is irritating / ironic. For everyone who is sure that placing expensive gewgaws around their listening room improves their stereo, there are people to tell you what a dumb idea it is. Neither group has any actual knowledge of what is going on, but the 'sceptics' are as positive these tricks don't make a difference as the audio-gullibility folks are positive that they do.
'I don't understand how that could make a difference' and 'I can't hear any difference' so quickly becomes 'That couldn't possibly make a difference' and 'Nobody can hear any difference.' Not that any particular trick does or doesn't make a difference, but how would I know? My cd player isn't that fantastic, and I mostly listen to music off my computer these days anyway.
In the future, slashdot will have a flying car! In the future, slashdot will achieve sentience! AI researches predict this is less than 5 years away! In the future, androids will do all the work for the editors! As miniaturization continues, in the future slashdot will move to 8 pt. type! In a year and a half, slashdot will have twice as many transistors as it does now! In the future, slashdot will be ready for the desktop!
1) Bowling is a team sport, its common knowledge that >1 ninja suddenly becomes the faceless gang that dies to the heroes When bowling, the team faces the pins one at a time. Perfect.
2) Bowling shoes, nuff said These will be a bigger problem for pirates. Peg leg + bowling shoe = scratched up lane + ejection from alley.
3) Flying is a foul Not as long as you both start and land behind the line.
re - pirates
1) The cannonball/bowling ball connection Neither can you put bowling shoes on a cannon, tho I would love to see a cannon fired at a set of bowling pins.
2) Bowling is a sport you can drink beer while participating, this is pirate territory Priates drink rum, you scurvy dog!
3) Starrrrrrike! Ok, you got me there, just be glad this isn't baseball.
Slashdot Mirror
Who are they trying to convince? If you have silverlight then you've clearly already drank the kool-aid. Maybe it requires WGA as well?
I think a lot of folks are just getting tired of the same stale dungeon-crawling that D&D has been pushing for the last 25 years, moving on to bigger and better things (like GURPS, as mentioned in the tags).
This is more a reply to a lot of the posts that I have seen reading though the comments, I just picked this one because I wanted to grab that quote.
I think that the whole worth of AD&D (I'm from the 2ed era) was that it was a gateway RPG. You come in, start seeing min/max opportunities and are hooked. From there you'll either start changing the rules, or you'll start experimenting with other systems. Personally I just developed a very malleable sense of what the rules were. The whole set of complaints about different rules in 3rd ed or ideas that things should be different or the conception that there were poorly covered areas is a little foreign to me. Has a certain rules aspect always bothered you? Change it.
Of course, this leads to people changing the rules in sub-optimal ways. Certainly other games should exist to provide examples of polished, optimised, consistant gameplay. But the idea of trying to make D&D into that seems like a bummer. I liked playing a game where the rules were mostly just a suggestion and different DMs had different ideas about how the rules worked. I guess it made different games not so interoperable (like if you want to start a big, boston-wide gaming metagroup), but I mostly only played with the same group of friends over and over again anyway.
I think there is (was) value in having a somewhat half-formed game system; which isn't to say that there isn't value in having a well-made and complete system. Making D&D too slick makes it into not-D&D.
You know, about 1995 I thought to myself "The intarweb sure is neat! But eventually they'll turn it into TV."
That is to say, it will become cheap to listen to what THA MAN wants to tell you, and prohibitively expensive to hear or say anything else.
Opinion Piece: People and/or companies should give me what I want, regardless of actual cost to deliver.
I have seen many writings that boil down to this.
Has anyone else noticed that since moving to WSUS 3 updates tend to sneak out without authorization?
I've had updates not ok'd for install get out, and I've had updates spread beyond the test list that they are approved for. Limited approvals are sent out to a limited computer list, and then random users all over the place start calling in about slowdowns b/c they are downloading a big, non-approved update (.net 3, some others). Maybe I'm just lame and I'm doing it wrong. Anyone else?
By the same logic, fat men and televisions in close proximity are CREATING couches.
On the contrary, sir! Couches and televisions in close proximity are producing fat men!
BOO YA the scientific process at work!
I'm reminded of the words of the great Stanley Spadowski, who said:
George, you know I was wondering, like if you were traveling through outer space, I mean like you're going real fast, like the speed of light, you know... hoooohhhhh... and all of a sudden you started screaming... aaaahhhhh aaaaahhhhh... Do you think your brain would blow up?
...and those too lazy to work.
In sharp contrast to those of us posting on slashdot.
No doubt. Tack their asses to the wall!
Corp America and even the Government see the 'Net as the goose that lays golden eggs. It makes possible an information economy that the USA wants to own. But you can only cash so much out of a system before it ceases to be self sustaining.
The thing that defines the internet is its flexability. People can dream up new business models and attach it to THE INTERNET. Exert rigid control over the system and it will cease to be economically productive.
The Internet needs to be treated like a fishery. Some economic exploitation is to be expected. But the Government needs to step in to prevent big players from fucking it all up to make a quick buck. If Joe Blow finds that all the free stuff provided through flexible non-corporate-controlled channels (the reason Joe hits the web in the first place) has been replaced by pay-only stuff from the latest Corporate income generator then he might as well not even bother.
Comcast think people downloading free stuff are sponging off the businesses who invest money in the system. But they've got it backwards. Business attempting to make money from the system are sponging off of the interest generated by people providing free content.
Here is my possibly erroneous understanding, based on my undergraduate degree in physics.
I've always wondered if all black holes do this but we simply aren't able to tell from our perspective.
Any black hole into which stuff falls xrays emerge from. This is electromagnetic radiation, not matter. Yes, yes, energy/matter equivelency notwithstanding, it's light that comes out, not rocks and stuff.
Here's how it works. A black hole sucks things into it. When things go in the black hole, they spin around it on the way down, like water going down your bathtub drain. The varying amount of spin at different distances from the sucking object tends to pull things apart. Eventually things get really pulled apart, down to an atomic level, and ionized. Ions have charge. Charges acclerating in a circle make an electromagnetic wave, perpendicular to the plane of rotation (right hand rule). When the acceleration is big, the energy of the resulting electromagnetic wave is high. Black hole = big acceleration = high energy output. Things are torn up and spun around the black hole when they are still outside of the event horizon (the line of no return, where escape velocity becomes equal to the speed of light), so the energy is able to escape the black hole.
Such as a pen laser, you can't really tell if it's on unless it's aimed at or near your eye, if you can see what it is hitting, or if there is something in the air to illuminate.
Astronomers can see this. Space is mostly empty, but there's enough stuff to scatter this effect that it is known.
This would certainly go in line with the theory that black holes can never actually exist. That is, everything that appears to be a black hole is on the teetering edge of becoming one at all times, but constantly bleeds matter so no event horizon can form.
Speaking energetically about a black hole is kinda wierd. My understanding is that the energy coming from the black hole in this story was never actually in the black hole. The black hole isn't bleeding energy (much less matter) at the nearby galaxy, rather the act of falling into the black hole liberates some potential energy from the matter that is falling. (Anything that has the potential to fall has potential energy, this PE is the source) Black holes can (maybe) evaporate (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation), but that isn't what is happening here.
I have no formal education in this stuff nor have I even bothered to read a book, but I'm full of poorly educated gut feelings on the matter!
=) So I thought I'd provide some possibly approximately correct information for you or anyone else who in the same boat.
What would help music sales, cd or otherwise, is a decent way to find the music people wants to hear.
Didn't radio stations used to do that?
I know what goatse is, but...?
Nevermind. Forget I said anything.
What I've forgotten is where was Johnny Depp in Top Gun. Or Flashdance? Having Depp play a stripper is certainly looking at things a bit differently, though. At least it is in the subcultures in which *I* participate...
I wonder what the peaceful applications of this could be?
Making enormous Swiss Cheese? Let the engineers worry about it. I respect you, Lazlo, but I graduated!
they have big fighgt! Thers a HUGE SWARD and esplosions! RAND R0XX0RS THE BL0XX0RS, and he kills all the b4d guys! teh bene gesserit I MEAN AES SEDAI (d0h!) help some, but so do some Fremen I MEAN AIEL and they spend the hole time arguing wether dudes or chicks r00le m0r3 (LOL).
At teh end all the bad guys are dead -- EXCEPT 1 of THER BODIES IS GONE LIKE HE SNUCK OFF OR SOMTHN!! AND RAND IS FATALLY INJURD! *SOB* But doont wory he gets reencarnated 'cause the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin!
(GOTO BOOK 1)
"a scientist who drilled into his hard drive in order to pour oil into the mechanism to stop the squeaking"
Venkmen: Hey Egon, this reminds me of that time you tried to drill a hole in your head!
Egon: That would have worked too, if you hadn't stopped me.
My lap is too small, too low, and too close to me to ever support a worthwhile work surface. I have always figured that the "lap desk" sort of item was forever doomed to be a poor substitute for an actual desk. If you really want to sit in a lazy boy to work, I think you'd have to DIY some extra large wheeled furniture style option to roll in over it. But since the situation presumes a very large chair, that might not be practical either.
I think everything that isn't an actual desk and work chair is going to be a compromise. You may find some favorites, but I don't think a satisfactory answer is possible. I've a table beside my sofa for my media machine, but it sucks for anything other than light use.
I've never been a good person dealing with meatspace crowds. I was on the verge of panic the whole night. I had scallops and tried to smile and be polite when I just wanted to hide in the corner. I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
and then...
(although I went to Vegas countless times since for fun- NYC, Las Vegas and Tokyo are the 3 cities I love to visit)
umm. because you are a masochist?
be much more vulnerable to attack by potential adversary countries with access to space, e.g. the Russians or the Chinese.
Just a theory here: Countries that have access to space are likely invested in the status quo, and wouldn't be interested in catastrophically upsetting things. The new cold war isn't against space capable countries, it's against terrorists ie, entities that hate the modern economic system. Space capable countries are almost by definition winners in the current economic system.
If time becomes space-like, what would that mean for us?
The rapture?
The point is, the little pens don't do crap.
That's not the point. The point is how certain people can be that the pens don't do crap when they really have no justification for it. In too many cases there is no more scientific basis for claims of no difference than there is for claims of difference.
the *best* that it could do would be to cause a failed disc read to become a successful disc read.* It can't cause a successful disc read to become a 'better' disc read, because a successful disc read is perfect. There's nothing for the pen to *do*.
If a successfull disk read is perfect, why is a robust error recovery system implemented in CDs? (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cd/mediaECC-c.html) The implication being that read errors can be generated and then recovered from without generating an audible 'skip'. One of the techniques implemented in CD error recovery is interpolation. Will a series of interpolated bits sound as good as accurately read bits? Would data misread and then recovered from by some procedure (which would presumably take a non-zero amount of time) generate an audible amount of jitter? Would the pen even make a difference in accurate bit reads? I don't know. That's not the point. The pen isn't the point. The point is that audiophile skeptics don't question their own certainty.
I frequently see the 'mark the edges of your cds' thing held up as an example of stereophile gullibility. The thing is, I don't see why it's necessarily bogus.
/. I don't know either way.
The CD laser pickup is a light based thing. There's a story of an expensive CD player being demo'ed and some reporter took a picture and the flash made the player skip (http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/634/index3.html). So the idea that ambient light can interfere with an optical pickup seems valid.
So you shine your pickup laser on a CD. Who says the light can't bounce around within the plastic layer, and maybe interefere with the primary beam? Who says that absorbing stray photons around the optical pickup might not help? Well lots of people, if you read the comments on stereophile-type stories on
And that's the part that I think is irritating / ironic. For everyone who is sure that placing expensive gewgaws around their listening room improves their stereo, there are people to tell you what a dumb idea it is. Neither group has any actual knowledge of what is going on, but the 'sceptics' are as positive these tricks don't make a difference as the audio-gullibility folks are positive that they do.
'I don't understand how that could make a difference' and 'I can't hear any difference' so quickly becomes 'That couldn't possibly make a difference' and 'Nobody can hear any difference.' Not that any particular trick does or doesn't make a difference, but how would I know? My cd player isn't that fantastic, and I mostly listen to music off my computer these days anyway.
So to have 'http' and 'www' in the same URL is redundant and needless.
ah, I think I understand and comprehend.
In the future, slashdot will have a flying car!
In the future, slashdot will achieve sentience! AI researches predict this is less than 5 years away!
In the future, androids will do all the work for the editors!
As miniaturization continues, in the future slashdot will move to 8 pt. type!
In a year and a half, slashdot will have twice as many transistors as it does now!
In the future, slashdot will be ready for the desktop!
etc... I'm sure you can come up with your own...
re - ninjas
1) Bowling is a team sport, its common knowledge that >1 ninja suddenly becomes the faceless gang that dies to the heroes
When bowling, the team faces the pins one at a time. Perfect.
2) Bowling shoes, nuff said
These will be a bigger problem for pirates. Peg leg + bowling shoe = scratched up lane + ejection from alley.
3) Flying is a foul
Not as long as you both start and land behind the line.
re - pirates
1) The cannonball/bowling ball connection
Neither can you put bowling shoes on a cannon, tho I would love to see a cannon fired at a set of bowling pins.
2) Bowling is a sport you can drink beer while participating, this is pirate territory
Priates drink rum, you scurvy dog!
3) Starrrrrrike!
Ok, you got me there, just be glad this isn't baseball.