Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Was this faster than it would have been if the bottle glitch (RBA? I don't recall the name offhand) was used to get access to the warping songs and other equipment?
The movie makes no claims as being glitchless, so I would have to assume that the use of that glitch would be fair game.
Did it turn out not to be helpful?
Here is what I said when voting for that movie:
Twelvepack wrote:
I hate to be a band-wagon jumper, but I have to confess that I had the same problem. I only got 1 hour into the run before totally loosing myself to boredom.
I thought giving it a second try later on would be good, but the same problems returned.
"Its not you, its me" I don't think I have the patience to watch any run that long, and I don't think I ever will. Going to vote meh. What I saw seemed well done, but entertainment value just wasn't there for me.
The fact it got published does not change my opinion about it. Read the thread to that movie if you want to avoid looking like an idiot in thinking that its publication supports your point.
and as for this:
Enterim wrote:
Also, meh + meh + meh averages out to "meh", in case you do not know how math works.
3 strikes and you are out, in my book. If this movie only had one real problem, I could vote meh confidently.
Question: did you register just to troll this thread?
If so, you got me.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
I would vote meh because choice of goals results in an unwatchably long movie.
I would vote meh because the goals are strange. What things are skipped and what are not seem arbitrarily chosen; albeit by a different community.
I would vote meh because the choice of rom causes crazy gibberish to be printed out where text belongs.
and I think a good guidline for voting might be :
meh + meh + meh = no.
Sorry swordless =[
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
I guess what I am really getting at is how does
Bobo the King wrote:
The second definition (which I'm most comfortable with) is the log of the number of microstates of a system corresponding to a given macrostate. We might look at a gas in a box and count how many ways it can exhibit the pressure and temperature we see.
relate to
Warp wrote:
Isn't a more modern, semi-informal definition that entropy describes how much energy there is available for useful work in a system
I really don't see any connection between these two concepts. They both make sense on their own, but I keep getting confused trying to bridge the gap. Are they just separate ideas that share a name?
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Kuwaga wrote:
Memes are the cancer that kills science and creativity. The ponies are cute likeable girls that males are programmed to care for, protect and defend. Their effects are amplified by stimulating and shiny colors, big eyes and talented voice actresses. They hijack our brains so that we keep watching the show. There is hardly any good reason to, entertainment is not an end of its own. Memes are cancer. There are one or two good episodes, being a fan of the entire show is an utter waste of time. You might argue that joining the beautiful MLP community is not a waste of time, but it is in light of more productive and founded in reality communities that you could have been joining instead. It might be ok to watch MLP to explore a part of your personality you haven't been familiar with thus far, but being a fan seems to be overdoing it. It's a bit like glorifying drugs like chocolate for its mood-boosting effects, ignoring the loss of potential to feel positive emotions for more sensible reasons that comes with frequent consumption of chocolate. Doing something that makes you feel good for no good reason is usually bad. Besides being a waste of time, it makes the positive emotions that are associated with doing normal, less rewarding things for good reasons seem less significant in comparison, in short it kills all motivation to do the little but important things in our lives. Memes and drugs must be fought, they are cancer.
are you completely insane?
This honestly sounds like the ranting of someone who has no less than 4 personalities, each of which is clinically depressed.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Yes vote here. I especially enjoyed the Bullring bit.
Just curious: why do you start some stages by going switchfoot? is this just to change direction?
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Bobo the King wrote:
Also, I know pitifully little about information entropy. Could you give me a quick definition?
I think that the simplest way of thinking about it is the amount of information gained by observing previously unknown values.
It can be expressed in units that would be familiar to computer scientists (bits or bytes) but because it is a measure of information gained, entropy is zero if you can somehow predict the unknown values. If I told you that I flipped a double- headed coin 10 times and recorded the results, there is no information entropy because you already know what the result was, and gain no information by looking at what I recorded.
If that coin was normal (as likely heads as tails), the results of the 10 flips would have 10 bits of entropy, because any guess you make at each of the 10 flip results is as likely to be wrong as right, so you gain 1 bit of information per flip.
What makes it hard to think about is that the information gained in a case where one outcome is far more likely than another. If I had 10 lottery tickets last week, the amount of information gained by finding out if they won the lottery is almost zero, because for each ticket, it is really unlikely that it was a winner. This result can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy, so the entropy is small.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Can anyone explain what entropy is in a thermodynamic context? I believe that I understand entropy as the term is used in information theory, but articles like the one on wikipedia are greek to me.
Is it that the concept in information theory is so different from what it means in thermodynamics that the association is just confusing me, or is there some relationship that I just don't see?
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Is there a reason that people feel a need to present a scientific argument in order to disprove a faith based belief?
It is every bit as incongruous as the creationist documents that were linked; offering a faith based argument in order to disprove a scientific belief. That document highlights the idiocy of mixing science and a faith based belief system. You end up with bullshit pseudo-science with its roots in faith, or you end up with another scientific argument that contradicts the accounts of a book that is believed because the adherents have chosen to believe it without proof.
Neither side presents the kind of argument that the other will find compelling, so no progress is ever made. I really don't understand why people keep doing it anyway.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
If they actually cared about stolen card numbers they would have switched to digital signing as a validation method a long time ago.
It would be simple:
1. have the store generate a file containing a list of what you want to buy and its price
2. transmit this to a device containing your bank account's private key
3. have the device sign the file and send it back to the merchant
4. the merchant can send the signed file to the bank to get paid.
The bank can then read the file using your public key, and be quite sure that you authorized the transaction.
Impossible to fake a transaction, impossible to store transaction data for use for fraud later.
There would be no card number to steal (only the private key which would never be revealed to anyone, since it would stay on the device), the only way this system could break down would be when people lose their "cards".
It is not exactly a unique idea, so the only reason that a system like this is not in common use is that changing the infrastructure would cost more than the added security is worth. It would also probably put paypal out of business, so mabey they are the ones making sure we actually need their added layer of protection.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
I think Tub is right, but there is one factor that might give a slight edge to B, though probably not enough to actually make that strategy the better one.
The issue is circulation. Because temperature gradient is important, stirring would make it heat up a little faster, by preventing the water near the bottom from being any hotter than the average for the pot. This is why convection ovens have a fan to circulate the air within the oven.
That said, the act of pouring more water in would circulate things an appreciable amount, but I still think that A is faster.
As enlightening as this is, I still think the garbage has gotten worse. At least the old garbage was real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o&feature=related
Number 1 song from 1969. it may be more "real" because it was not too heavily synthesized, but the band does seem to be extremely poorly drawn.
Also, the lyrics are worse than cancer. This is easily as shitty as anything from today.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
What we really need to do is redirect the path of a river so that the home town of the banned author is no longer on the map.
Just a little page out of the Genghis playbook.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Derakon wrote:
So let's suppose that the government doesn't force companies to provide healthcare to fulltime employees. Immediately, every company stops providing that healthcare, because healthcare is leeging expensive. Sure, they pass on the savings to their employees in the form of higher salaries, but now that each employee has to buy their own healthcare, economies of scale go right out the window (everyone has to deal with health care companies on a one-to-one basis),
You make a good point, but its not like group bargaining is all that great either. It leaves little room for personal choice (because most employers have only a few flavors of health care to choose from) so ultimately, instead of people getting the money in hand and deciding what is best for them personally, they take whatever gets handed to them.
Also, it means that if you loose your job, you loose your insurance as well. If you get a new job, you might end up with a new carrier, one with plans you don't even like, and if you spend some time unemployed, you will have to go get independent coverage instead of just continuing to pay your premiums from savings.
I just think people should get to choose what they want instead of their employers doing it.
Inzult wrote:
That said, yes, you are a lot more likely that you will be covered with group benefits because if a certain company has millions tied up in a certain insurance company, they would never risk losing that client.
I believe that to be true, but the problem is not with independent health coverage, but the way health insurance works in general.
The bottom line is that the insurance company should be forced to give you what they have contracted to provide. The fact that they sometimes don't is a problem weather or not you insurance is gained through an employer, so I feel like the solution is to force them to do what they are contractually obligated to do, not use this behavior to prop up this screwed up employer based system.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Bobo the King wrote:
But do you consider yourself an economic libertarian?
Mostly, but I have my limits.
I feel like government intervention is important to keep competition between businesses fair. (including an organization like the FDA. Making sure that labels are accurate and that food is what it claims to be is important) Without some regulation you would just have cartels and rampant fraud.
But that said, things like social security and shit like tax incentives that make businesses provide health insurance to their employees makes my skin crawl. People should be trusted to save for their own retirement, and health insurance is something you should buy at your own discretion.
I just don't like when government makes decisions for me. They apply higher taxes on things like gasoline and beer just because people can rationalize that taxing it might help to curb its consumption. They let you deduct more from your taxes if you have a home or children. I don't think that the government should be in a position where they are paying me to do certain things or live a certain way.
Short answer: I think radical ideas like disposing of the US treasury or undermining the authority of the FDA is stupid, but backing off a bit and letting people control their own money would be nice.
*apologies for US centered examples. The gist should apply in general however.*