Profile for Or else o'erleap.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Or else o'erleap. |
| Member number | 335 |
| Title | Law Bringer |
| Postcount | 14579 |
| Homepage | http://www.polarisboard.net |
| Registered | Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Satanism in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 11:04
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From a biological standpoint, everything that every organism does is motivated by selfishness, and for good reason: selflessness quickly breeds out of the gene pool. I'd rather have a religion that embraces the reality of selfishness than one that holds everyone to an impossible standard. —Alorael, whose personal belief is that everyone should be free to be as selfishly happy as possible until they start infriging on others' selfish happiness. At that point it becomes a question of balancing net happiness and net unhappiness to maximize the former and minimize the latter. This is, of course, functionally impossible ethical calculus, but it's a better creed than universal suffering for reward in the afterlife. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| How did you discover Avernum? in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 07:57
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I found Avernum because I already liked Exile and Nethergate, and I played them in order. A2 is my favorite, both because it is the best and because I am a mindless sheep that follows popular opinion. —Alorael, who does not have any deep psychological insight into why he does anything, much less why he specifically plays Avernum. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Slithy, Slithier, Slithzerikai - a grammar question in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 07:51
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-ai is a suffix that obviously denotes race and that equally obviously has no bearing on singular or plural. With a sample size of two, how far wrong could this analysis be? Slith is a nickname for slithzerikai the way troglo is short for troglodyte. Because slith seems like a more standard English word, it gets an S for its plural form. After years of fighting vahnatai Avernum will probably complain about those bug-eyed vahns. —Alorael, who very much doubts that the voice at the alter is the slith goddess. It might be a slith goddess, but there's a notable absence of divine intervention in Avernum. The few gods that do show up are only mentioned by their worshippers. As for the gender, any guess has a 33% chance of being right, so it's probably wrong. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| could a game like exile be programmed with in The Exile Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 07:46
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He said C++, but that was several years ago. He could conceivably have switched to another language. —Alorael, who doubts that he did. He would be unsurprised if Jeff were using the same old Metrowerks CodeWarrior to produce the games, too. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Satanism in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 9 2006 16:17
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Except since nobody but Christians go to heaven, there's no reason not to be a Satanist as long as you aren't a Christian. Heck, why am I bothering with Judaism? Magick with a K and philosophically justified narcissism, here I come! —Alorael, who in fact believes that most gangsters, drunks and stoners are Christian, at least in America. (Stoners less so than other such groups.) Most people are Christians, period. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Hell freezes over. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 9 2006 09:46
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You may not have to select an operating system every time you start your computer, but you can only have one OS running with Boot Camp. Parallels allows you to have both simultaneously, but the virtual Windows doesn't work as well as a full Windows partition for some tasks. VPC definitely allows games, but it's very slow and it falls apart when it has to emulate a graphics card. This can occasionally result in strange problems. Even fairly advanced sprite-based games will run, sometimes flawlessly, but the simplest of 3D games will fail. —Alorael, who has faith in tech-savvy Spiderweb's ability to commit nefarious deeds. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| A3: Heavily Biased Toward the Light Side? in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 9 2006 09:35
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Killing priests who aren't technically evil priests isn't going to endear you to the locals, even if they are particularly fiscally-oriented priests. Slaughter doesn't always have to mean helpless foes. You killed a lot of them, so they're slaughtered. And yes, you can loot their temple. After all, if you don't, some other greedy people who aren't saving the world will. The hieves guild, perhaps. The Dread Curse makes perfect sense. They Church of the Divine Lucre likes their stuff and their lives. Anyone who messes with them is likely to get all the cursing they can devise. —Alorael, who would also take the narrator's words with a grain of humor. It isn't always the most serious voice. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Running the games on Intel Macs? in Tech Support | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 9 2006 09:30
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Get Info on the application and look under the Open With choices. I've occasionally had my computer decide that various Spiderweb offerings would be best treated as documents, but the application itself remains one of the choices for opening. —Alorael, who also has seen the applications' icons go through a number of fascinating permutations. They particularly want to be Sibelius documents. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What happens when you die? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 8 2006 18:10
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I've never posted on Spiderweb with a puppet account. I have posted elsewhere, though. I can think of only one board where I have been both Alorael and something else at the same time, and I think I had fewer than ten posts between both accounts. —Alorael, who will not reveal where he sank to such low trickery. He has his pride. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Alternate Reality Games in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 8 2006 16:06
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[Edit: Remove foot from mouth, chastise TM and hint that using "krauts" on Spiderweb is a bad thing. Check!] —Alorael, who has never noticed that Germans had much trouble with English. In fact, he has known a large number of Germans learning English, and many managed to not only become fluent but also learned to speak without any obvious accent. [ Saturday, April 08, 2006 16:07: Message edited by: A desperate cry for attention ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What instruments do you play? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 8 2006 16:02
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I described the instruments because I somehow overlooked that part of your post, Thralni. Sorry! —Alorael, who can slowly and painstakingly produce painful cacaphony using Sibelius, which is neither free nor intended for such use. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Rate Galactic Core. (1 Meat/1 ur mom lol) in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 8 2006 12:52
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That would be more meaningful if it were venereal. —Alorael, who has never heard any VD described as boring. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Av4 Character Editor... will one ever be made in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 8 2006 09:38
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I hope that Micael posted at the same time as Infernal. —Alorael, who doesn't think more hosting or emailing is necessary at this time. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What instruments do you play? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 19:51
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I'd apologize, but I'm really just not sorry. —Alorael, who has been told that the recorder is less commonly "taught" in European elementary schools. The recorder also has more of a reputation as an uncommon baroque instrument rather than a fake instrument for small children. He suspects a causal link. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| 15,000 Coin Limit? in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 19:48
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You get a perfect bell curve and your chance of getting a 3 or an 18 is 1/216, or less than half of a percent. But, moving right along, each binary digit is called a bit, and each bit has to be stored somewhere. The more information you want to store, the more memory you have to allocate to do it. Thus, most programs you encounter will have limits on accepted numerical values, although in many cases those limits are so large that you'll never notice. I don't think memory is really a problem for Avernum, but for whatever reason Jeff is stingy with his bits. —Alorael, who is a little bit embarassed that he misremembered his powers of two. Or his powers of two minus one, actually, which makes that even value even more suspicious. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Best Spiderweb game in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 19:36
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I can't justify liking A2 as much as Nethergate, but I do. Nethergate has a better plot, a better setting, and a wonderful two-sided presentation. Avernum 2 has caves. I like it anyway! —Alorael, who wonders if sliths with woad could defeat nephils in armor. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What happens when you die? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:48
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I actually post reasonably frequently without appending my signature. Those accounts don't go by Alorael, though. —Alorael, who can only gimmick so much and in so many places. There are a few places where someone else grabbed the gimmick first, too, and he wouldn't want to infringe on someone else's (apparently local) patent. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Hell freezes over. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:45
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OS X on non-Mac Intel processors is a hack. It works, but it's not supported and I've never heard of it running everything very well. Remember that many computer users are apparently paralyzed at the sight of "OK / Cancel" choices. I think installation of pirated, hacked operating systems is unlikely to become widespread. —Alorael, who isn't quite sure why he likes the idea of being able to dual boot so much. He dislikes Windows and doesn't really have any program he desperately needs to run that won't work in VPC and presumably better with Parallels. It's just a cool new Mac gizmo, really. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What instruments do you play? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:38
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Harp is string, recorder is a woodwind (a non-transverse flute, actually), and bassoon is a woodwind too. Vocals aren't an instrument. An instrument is something that isn't you that you use. You don't ever play your voice like you play an instrument. This is an utterly insignificant distinction, but I like to make it. I'm willing to consider vocal cords a stringed instrument, though. If you've got two singers you can get vocal chords! —Alorael, who has played recorder for more years than he can easily count, although he has never formally studied music and thus does more muddling through than real understanding of baroque style. He is thus always angered by people who "played" recorder in elementary school. You wouldn't claim you can play xylophone because you once banged on one, would you? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| wat is better? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:32
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You can take your Geneforge and stick it where the sun don't shine. Then it would have the best of both worlds! Not really. Avernum's still better. —Alorael, who would love to give Nociduas a taste of his own medicine. He can summon a demon, but can he summon an army of Terror Vlishes? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| WooHoo! in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:32
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There's nothing early about 500. He's already a lost cause. —Alorael, who delivers his condolences. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Avernum V in Avernum 4 | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, April 7 2006 07:25
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The Avernites were so disgusted by Chevyn that the exiled him to the surface... forever! —Alorael, who believes that being stupid above ground is somewhat less likely to get you eaten by an angry lizard with four feet or speared by an angry lizard with two feet. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Hell freezes over. in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, April 6 2006 19:40
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With an Intel processor, Apple had the choice of doing it themselves or having others make it work. I think they made the right choice, and it makes me want an Intel Mac myself. In other news, Windows can now be run on a virtual machine. Goodbye, VPC. Hello, closest thing to Rosetta for Windows to Mac that we're going to get for a while. I didn't know Microsoft sold an emulator. There are a number of Windows emulators, the most popular of which are Virtual PC and SoftWindows, but they don't allow 3D graphics or a number of other things for reasons of incompatibility, not deliberate prevention. —Alorael, who would guess that just about everything you can do on a PC you can do with Boot Camp and at about the same speed. You're running the same OS on its native chip, so there's nothing that would cause slowdowns like emulation and virtualization do. Mac hardware incompatibility with Windows might crop up at some point, but basically you could probably decide to buy an iMac solely to run Windows. It would be a strange choice, but you could do it. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Geneforging in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, April 6 2006 17:53
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Genes encode series of amino acids that form proteins. Transplanting a gene from one animal to another won't necessarily have any effects, because it's quite possible that a "smart" gene needs a special receptor we lack. Genes are complicated things. Scientists can also analyze our current proteins and the like and decide on the protein structures most likely to have a desired effect. That's an enormously difficult task, though, and it's made even more complicated by the fact that there's no easy way to guess how a protein will fold in three dimensions from its amino acid sequence. Virtual protein folding is a major processing task (often accomplished by distributed computing!). Folding is influenced by the amino acids, the solution, and other molecules near the protein. One day we may decide what protein is right for a task, how to assemble such a protein, and then either mass produce it in factory cells for injection or splice genes for the protein into ourselves. Craig Venter may believe that customized genomes are likely in the near future, but there are significant barriers to overcome first. So, now we either have hybridization to create chimeras with transgenic (mixed) genomes or ordinary organisms with artificially designed genomes. The former is ethically problematic. The latter has results that could be achieved by breeding. The difference, of course, is that breeding effects subsequent generations and involves a significant element of randomness. It's a statistics-dependent, long term project. Altering the genome of a living organism is like getting the desired breeding results immediately in a current generation. If eugenics and human breeding weren't considered dangerous and often evil, non-chimeric genetic engineering wouldn't be an ethical problem at all. Those are most definitely issues, though, so we're left to decide the rights and wrongs of customized people. —Alorael, who isn't terribly afraid of customized, non-transgenic genomes. The potential for great things is very real, and the potential dangers are far more hypothetical. Yes, they deserve attention, but until genome alteration becomes commonplace there is little opportunity to cause disaster. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What happens when you die? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, April 6 2006 14:05
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All valuable numbers and passwords of mine are stored safely. For humor value I also have the numbers in files on my computer, but the files can only be decrypted with the passwords they contain. I haven't made any explicit provisions for disseminating information about my death online, but enough people know my online haunts and there's enough overlap that everyone would hear in relatively short order. —Alorael, who briefly considered not posting for a week or two before April 1st and then having someone post that he had died on the 1st. Ultimately, the lure of Spiderweb and a touch of guilt over morbid humor made him decide otherwise. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |