Profile for Spidweb
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Spidweb |
| Member number | 1 |
| Title | Board Administrator |
| Postcount | 960 |
| Homepage | http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com |
| Registered | Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Avernum games: slowly in 10.4.8? in Tech Support | |
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Board Administrator
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written Thursday, October 5 2006 22:07
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The problem is very unpredictable. It can vary from machine to machine. It can even come and go on the same machine. (I'm hearing a lot about it in the Geneforge 4 beta test). The idea of modifying all of the Avernum games yet again to Universalize them is excruciating, but it is appearing to be necessary. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Avernum games: slowly in 10.4.8? in Tech Support | |
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written Thursday, October 5 2006 12:38
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Apple changed the old software emulation in the new version of OS X. This seems to be affecting people with a case of the slows. I'll see what Apple does about Rosetta (the emulation software). If nothing improves, I'll probably address this after Geneforge 4 is out. I can't do it sooner because I'll be using Geneforge 4 to learn how to make Universal programs. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Sex! Yay! in General | |
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written Thursday, September 21 2006 10:23
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IBTL -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Scripting Language... in General | |
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written Saturday, September 16 2006 14:34
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Only C++, these days. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Developer Question for Spiderweb in General | |
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written Monday, September 11 2006 14:18
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I did a lot of research. The reason I wrote my own was because I guessed it would be easier, in the long run, than figuring out how to imbed an existing one. Plus I thought it would be fun. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Random Double Take of the Day in General | |
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written Thursday, September 7 2006 14:53
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I have informed the mods that, should it look like we're being flooded with accounts to generate spam, they should ban enthusiastically. If some poor, Russian waif who wants nothing more than to discuss the glories of my games gets caught in the crossfire, well, our E-mail address is all over the site. They can drop me a note to assure me they're a regular human being and they can get a proper account. But I'm not holding my breath. That's pretty much the beginning and end of the discussion. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Infallible Skeptic? in General | |
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written Thursday, September 7 2006 11:23
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"How does it become a philosophy course, especially one that isn't dependent on complicated math?" Here's my guess. A good chunk of Game Theory is based on finding ways to partition a set based on some idea of "fairness". But what is "fair"? Actually, that's pretty lame. How about this. I bet they could get a lot of mileage about real world applications of the Prisoner's Dilemna and the Tragedy of the Commons. A lot of modern philosophers are struggling, understandably, to develop real world uses and applications for their field. And this is a natural place to start. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| I think in General | |
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written Wednesday, September 6 2006 16:07
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"Did Jeff just get trolled, or was that unintentional?" Neither, really. I was riffing. I had an idea for a column, and I was just going with it. Some of the words above may end up on a web site somewhere. In a more processed form, of course. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| I think in General | |
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written Wednesday, September 6 2006 15:03
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"Oh, come on. The episode I saw had the heroine finding an enemy organic spaceship, which she figures out how to fly by burrowing inside and pulling nerve endings. And somehow, neither the no-longer-airtight seal or the (very convenient) slit she looked through to see where she was going caused any air shortages when she got the thing into space. This is not masterpiece stuff." Dude! Hamlet is stupid! The guy gets help from a ghost! There are no ghosts! Not going to get bogged down in a discussion of this or that bit of techie trivia from one of dozens of episodes. (Though it strikes me as entirely plausible that either Starbuck's emergency kit would have ways to seal a leak or that the cylon ship would have the same.) Anyone can look at anything and nitpick until time itself grinds to a halt. Science fiction is especially prone to this, as you can easily declare the vision of technology in this different time and place that lives in your brain to be completely superior to everyone else's. The genius in Battlestar Galactica isn't in the minutiae of airtight seals or control mechanisms, but in planning and politics, and in the various ways different sorts of people respond to crisis. The engineering may occasionally shaky, but the characters are almost always spot-on. But, just to make sure we're on the same page, it sounds like you've only seen one episode. Yes? I personally don't make judgments on a large collaborative effort like a TV show (whose writers and directors change from episode to episode) without seeing it a couple times, but hey. Whatever floats your boat. - Jeff Vogel [ Wednesday, September 06, 2006 15:04: Message edited by: Spidweb ] -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| I think in General | |
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written Wednesday, September 6 2006 12:49
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Babylon 5 was a very good and very influential show, that really went off the rails when its creator decided that he had to write all the episodes. Half-baked plots, unconvincing speeches, excess cases of the cutes, and general shakiness followed. But a pretty darn good show nontheless. Battlestar Galactica stands on the shoulders of giants. Doctor Who ... meh. OK episodes, terrible endings. If I want SF-lite, I'll watch my Futurama DVDs for the eightieth time each. (And this is from someone who watched every pre-cancellation episode three times during his adolescence. Having people debate the merits of Doctor Who in this new millenium tickles the hell out of me.) - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| I think in General | |
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written Tuesday, September 5 2006 22:39
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The new Battlestar Galactica is a masterpiece in progress. There has never been a SF TV series (and very little written SF) that so revels in the way nothing big is ever easy and even the most extreme situations almost always deny us simple black and white choices. It's dark, dense stuff, and it's not for everyone. But it's brilliant. Now, my favorite TV show is The Wire, on HBO, which covers a lot of the same moral territory, without robots. But I'm the only person in the world who watches it. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Expose in Tech Support | |
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written Monday, September 4 2006 12:12
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The only way to prevent this conflict is by setting Geneforge to take over the entire system. This is possible, but it prevents switching out of the game while playing, which is a greater aggravation. If Apple gave me a way to turn off Expose while in my game, it would be great, but ... :-( - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Geneforge 3 on Intel Mac - fails to start in Tech Support | |
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written Saturday, September 2 2006 23:01
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Look on the Geneforge 3 support page. http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/geneforge3/techsupp.html There is a fix that takes care of most weird sound problems. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| WoW in General | |
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written Friday, September 1 2006 17:55
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"A normal server, Jeff? I expected better of you." PvP servers are for people who enjoy pain (or, at least, the inability to ever walk away from the keyboard to use the john without getting ganked). PvE servers are for people who like their fun to be fun. Believe me, I get all the PvP I want. And none of the PvP I don't want. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| WoW in General | |
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written Thursday, August 31 2006 20:38
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60 Tauren Warrior. Proudmoore. Spend a merry evening downing Skeram (after too many wipes) and one-shotting Sartura. If that tells you anything. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Riddle Me This, Batman! in General | |
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written Friday, August 18 2006 12:20
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/agree Aloreal. Oh, and stop using the word "infinite". Slap your hand when you type it. It will only confuse everyone. The math for probability distributions on infinite serieses is complicated and skunky and involves a high-end thing called a "measure" and is best avoided when unnecessary. Use the words "arbitrarily large" instead. This means big as you like, but still a finite quantity you can do sensible math on. (And people who remember your calculus, yes, we are basically talking about limits as n -> infinity here.) - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Riddle Me This, Batman! in General | |
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written Wednesday, August 16 2006 21:13
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"The ratio does always tend to 1:1; however, I would still like for someone else to help confirm for me that the number of families is important. I still doubt I should post up my math since it would be difficult to explain, so perhaps someone for whom dealing with a little math is trivial could PM me?" The Law of Large Numbers says that, when you flip a coin a large number of times, you will eventually reach a point (with probability 1) where you get as close as you like to 50% heads. That's why the number of flips/families is important. In the short run, all kinds of stuff can happen. In the long run, 50/50. - Jeff Vogel PS Actually, the Law of Large Numbers is a far more powerful theorem than what I said. But I'm restricting my discussion of its glories to coins/babies. -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
| Riddle Me This, Batman! in General | |
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written Tuesday, August 15 2006 23:01
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OK. Here is a real explanation for why the proportions will be 50/50 after a huge number of coin flips, no matter what rule you come up with to end with more heads in the long run. Suppose I come up with a rule for how many times to flip the coin. (Maybe I flip until I get heads. Or I flip until I get 2 heads. Or any other rule you care to name, with the intent of ending up with more heads in the long run.) I flip the coin until the rule is fulfilled, recording the outcome. Then I start flipping it again until the rule is fulfilled. And I repeat this a huge number of times. (Until I get millions of flips, or whatever you want.) Now I look at all of the flips I recorded. No matter what rule I was using, I have recorded an enormous number of fair, independent coin flips. The Law of Large numbers say that (with probably approaching 1 as the number of flips increases) the flips will be half heads and half tails. It doesn't matter what the rule was. In the end, you have a huge pile of independent coin flips. And that is roughly 50/50 heads tails. The key is repeating the same trial with the same stop condition many many times. I don't really have any interest in writing it out as a formal proof. If you really don't believe it, try it yourself with a coin, paper and pencil. You will soon see, in actual reality, why it is true. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |