Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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| Civil Unions disallowed in ACT in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, July 4 2006 03:15
Profile
Maimonides holds no patent on terse negatives. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, July 4 2006 03:11
Profile
quote:By leaders I meant bosses in the sense of extra-tough opponents. The assumption about Spawned creations is that they are somehow temporary. But once we start quibbling about which units to count, this discussion becomes arbitrary. To me the bottom line is that in G3 the two sides are balanced until the player comes along, and for one PC to make such a difference it must be that both sides are stretched awfully thin for what they are trying to do. On the specific point about the Isle of Spears: I may well be forgetting how many big monsters were there; I only remember a few Drakons and one Eyebeast that were truly on the Rebel's side. By that stage of the game, as Loyalist or Rebel, the Isle of Spears and Rahul's keep both seemed pretty easy, so the body count didn't really register for me. About Shaper control versus Rebel chaos, I don't think you're taking the proper long-range perspective. The Shaper Council may have as many disasters per year as the Takers have per week, but on the slower time scale, the effect is the same. They are trying to do something which they manifestly cannot really expect to control. Sucia Island was no isolated incident. Sending ambitious and talented Shapers out to research labs in isolated regions seems to be a basic function of Shaper society. Danette was just waiting to happen. Thirst for knowledge and power is as deep a streak in Shaper character as discipline -- or we would not be continually learning about things which Shapers have had to forbid. And Shaper discipline even functions as a kind of enabler, because the Shapers do not just believe in control in the sense that they think that control is a good thing. They also believe in control in the sense that they believe their controls are effective. This is how Shaper discipline and Shaper power-lust strike their truce, by deciding time and again that the risks are adequately managed. Then in the aftermath of a disaster, they conclude that just a bit more restraint was all that was missing, seal everything up, and try again somewhere else a few years later. "It would have been fine if we had just been a little stricter" is the same line we can hear from any mad rogue. I don't see that I have to propose a better way of being a Shaper. The Rebels may simply be right, that the only good Shaper is a dead one. On the other hand perhaps there is a level of caution that could be reached, or a cultural surgery that could eliminate Shaper arrogance, that would make Shaping sane and safe. But by the same token it is conceivable that the Rebellion might turn out well in the end after all, as well. The Shapers and Rebels still seem to me very similar, if you take a certain long-term perspective. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, July 2 2006 11:16
Profile
About understaffing: the Ashen Isles aren't exactly crawling with fully qualified Shapers, but then there aren't a heck of a lot of rebel leaders either. Nothing but spawners and cameos from fugitives Hoge and Litalia until pretty far along on Dhonal, and if I remember rightly the ranking rebel presence even there is just a few Drayks who seem rather to have struck out on their own. On Spears you finally find a few Drakons. The swarms of mass-produced Ur-Drakons are a dream for the future; until then, the Rebellion runs on a comparative shoestring, too. On the Shaper control ethic: I'm serious that the Shaper Council and all its works look like the maddest experiment of all, when you just step back a level or two of scale. They are deeply committed to keeping up Shaper domination, and advancing Shaper power with new techniques and creations. Their history, and for that matter their contemporary geography, are full of example after example of good Shapers gone bad and things gotten wildly out of hand. And their response to all this, on the long view, is just to keep at it: next time more control, next time tighter discipline; ban this creation type, bar that island; on with the show. On the level of correcting mistakes by individuals, the Shapers react and adapt, step back and restrain. But as a society they seem to learn nothing, and on this level their measures of control and containment seem no wiser than the Taker policy of locking the worst failures into Inner Gazak-Uss, and carrying on with the great project. Zoom out, and the Shapers look like Takers writ large. They too will evolve over a few generations from alien monsters dominating humanity into even more alien monsters dominating humanity more thoroughly; and their only comparative virtue is that they won't do it so fast. Sure, time scales matter a lot. And the Shapers are at least the devil we know. But they are not really so different from the Rebels, fundamentally, and I think that under wartime pressures this will become more apparent. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The 4.5986th Chocolate of Last Week Pageant in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 1 2006 13:24
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White chocolate is neither. Blech. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Family Sizes in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 1 2006 12:58
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quote:Carpet shagger. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Viva Italia !!!!!!! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 1 2006 12:42
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I saw the last part of the England-Portugal game, from the last ten minutes or so of regular time on. After a while I started counting players, because it sure looked as though the English just never had enough players around the ball. Were they really that disorganized? Yeah, sure enough: they played with 10 against 11 for nearly an hour in a World Cup quarter-final, and held out until penalty kicks. On the whole, it doesn't seem like evidence that Portugal is a major threat for the Finale. Its remarkable what a difference that one missing player seems to make at this level. It's only 1 out of 10 out on the field, but with such a big field, that means there's always one zone where you're playing 3 against 4 or worse, and that's really tough. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 1 2006 12:29
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Well, maybe instead of a minority of purists opposing a majority of reckless Shapers, the proportions might be the other way around. I still expect some pretty dangerous things will get tried by nominally responsible Shapers. Heck, the games so far are full of leftovers from the dangerous experiments conducted by nominally responsible Shapers even in peacetime. The fierce Shaper discipline and the continual outbreaks of Shaper megalomania seem to be two sides of the same coin. I might even argue that disciplined Shaper society, with its Council that forbids mad experiments, is itself a giant mad experiment. About Barzahl my point was that he began as a Shaper, and became a right-wing rebel by applying the abilities he held as a trained and unusually talented Guardian. If the Shaper ranks hold others as talented as he was, but under better discipline, then it isn't so hard to understand why they're winning. In general I'm not so sure what the distinction is between raw and cooked power; skill is also power. But I'll grant that the Rebel ability to make instant experts with canisters is a concrete advantage. On the other hand, it doesn't seem so easy to make lots of canisters quickly. Barzahl was making Shapers out of sailors, but he was still desperately short of Shapers. The Shapers may have to train their people for years, but they have had centuries to do it on a large scale, and they don't seem to be all that shorthanded. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 1 2006 00:05
Profile
We shouldn't be too sure that the Rebels' 'raw power' exceeds that of the Shapers. Danette and Barzahl were Shapers, and Rahul pulls a neat trick that no Rebel has matched. Khyrryk has a trick that only Akhari Blaze has otherwise been seen to use, and he also knows how to make Rotghroths. And some of the baddest monsters in the games have been experimental beasts made by otherwise relatively conservative Shapers. Sharon may not be orthodox, but she's no rebel, and her Experimental Gamma would be a good pick in a lot of fights. The Shapers we have seen in the games so far have been much more reluctant to release uncontrolled monsters than the Rebels. I don't think that means they couldn't do it if they wanted to. It may be that under wartime pressure the Shapers liberalize. I think it is at least as likely that they also get more reckless, and start doing some of the dangerous things they have forbidden so strictly for so long. Jeff has a lot of scope for secret Shaper war labs doing necromancy, summoning demons, making uncontrolled monsters, or whatever, all of it formally forbidden by the most basic Shaper laws, but all of it secretly sanctioned by the Shaper Council as an emergency measure. And so I could imagine an opposition faction of purists within the Shapers, who would rather lose the war than win it by those means. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Viva Italia !!!!!!! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, June 29 2006 04:43
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The France-Spain game looked close to me up until Zidane put it away with the late third goal. The Spaniards seemed to have slightly more of the possession time, and had about as many shots. The French looked maybe somehow faster; they had a few players who seemed to be able to dash along with the ball amazingly quickly, whereas the Spanish were more apt to make long passes. I'm not enough of a football expert to tell how important this observation is, or even whether it was really true. Just my uninformed impression, sitting under a medium-sized TV screen in a hotel bar in a remote village in the Pyrenees (where I am working hard for Science, yeah) and deciding to cheer for Spain because I was in Spain. To me it looked as though it could easily have gone the other way. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Where is Icshi? in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, June 28 2006 09:57
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Sur, yes sur! -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Flaming my questions. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, June 26 2006 11:12
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[Quoted myself quoting myself, when I meant to edit myself, so now I'm editing my edit, alas. Evidently I could use some aid too.] [ Monday, June 26, 2006 11:14: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Flaming my questions. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, June 26 2006 11:03
Profile
quote:Just a lame joke on the fact that the original red badge of courage referred to a bloody wound or bandage, at least in Crane's novel. [ Monday, June 26, 2006 11:15: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, June 25 2006 23:52
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Yeah, it would be nice if NPCs could react differently to you depending on your creations. I always found it a bit weird that Lord Rahul, for instance, would chat away to me as a mere useful underling, when a crew of Gazers that could take his entire fortress were bobbing at my heels. He ought to freak out, insofar as Shaper Lords can freak out. Maybe a raised eyebrow or something. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Flaming my questions. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, June 25 2006 06:24
Profile
quote:Just a bloody banned-aid. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Removal of waiting and interface things in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, June 25 2006 06:19
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But isn't it now like Geneforge, that if you hit spacebar or the clock-thing, you just waste your whole turn? I thought the point of W was that it still let you act, just later. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, June 25 2006 06:16
Profile
quote:You could get Gazers pretty pretty early in G2, with plenty of room to use them. I joined the Barzites once and used a squad of Gazers throughout the Taker lands. I guess it's true that in G3 the highest level creations do come a bit late, but you can still do a fair bit more with them than just clear the Monastery of Tears. I wouldn't mind a steeper creation acquisition curve, if there were still end-game challenges. A squad of Gazers is so powerful that if you got that early, too much of the game would be too easy. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The 4.5986th Chocolate of Last Week Pageant in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, June 25 2006 00:54
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I'm hearing rumors that hazelnut fondants are lobbying to be included in the next competition. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wow (G4) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, June 24 2006 10:32
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This is looking good. Is the res up? The screenshots are 1024 by 768, and to me the sprites look a bit leaner, which is good. The premise that the Shapers are winning, but you start as a Rebel, is not at all what I was expecting. I rather thought that the Shapers would be on the run, and that if you weren't playing a Shaper, you'd start as some sort of neutral, a Servile or a Sholai or something. But this idea of Jeff now seems brilliant to me. The basic idea of the apprentice Shaper encountering the rascally rebels was indeed getting old, but turning it around interests me again. Now I really want to see what the rebels look like from first level; before you were always 20th or so by the time you really met them. And the other cool thing is that it's really the Shapers that are the most interesting part of the world; they have the history and culture and the unknown number of tricks up their sleeves. The Rebels have had a partially built Geneforge, and that's really it. So making the Shapers the enemy, at least by initial default, means that you're heading into Shaper territory, and finding out more about Shapers. Since discovering Shaper culture was one of the most interesting parts of the game for me, anyway, even when I supposedly was a Shaper, I think this should work very well. The indication that monsters will have a variety of tactical programs, such as hunting leaders, looks very interesting. So does the cryptic reference to "alert level 8". It sounds as though Jeff is building a system whereby guards, etc., can gradually become more suspicious of you, depending on what you do. Maybe alert level 0 is the 'dopey guard' ignoring you completely, and alert level 10 is actively hunting you down, like those nasty Servile hit teams in Benerii-Uss. So perhaps there will be a substantial strategy involved in stealth, as opposed to just pumping Mechanics and Leadership. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Holidays in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 22:39
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quote:I knew that down there Christmas is in summertime, but I never realized the reversal went so far. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Inventions in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 22:30
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The magnetic moment force can also just speed particles up or slow them down, like gravity or electrostatic force. If the direction of B is constant, then the projection of the intrinsic magnetic moment along the magnetic field direction will not change either. So the interaction energy \mu\cdot B is then in this case simply a potential acting on the particle's position. Magnetic traps for neutral atoms work this way. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Inventions in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 11:16
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quote:Hmmm, this seems to be a limitation of Wikipedia. The non-constant field of a bar magnet pulls on nuclear and electronic spins in a ferromagnetic material, and this does do work. I don't have Griffiths at hand to judge whether the error is in Griffiths or by the Wikipedia writer. The resolution to my paradox in the absence of spin, I have just realized, is startlingly simple. If we have a system of more than one spinless charged particles, the total force on the system's center of mass, from all the Lorentz forces on the individual particles, will in general do work on the center of mass. (It is easy to work out what 'in general' means for the case of two particles in a constant magnetic field; it really does mean, 'except in a few very special cases'.) For spinless particles the magnetic field still does no work on the system as a whole. This just means that it does negative work on the relative co-ordinates among the particles. This may sound strange, but there is absolutely nothing odd about it, really. Suppose two oppositely charged particles of equal mass begin moving towards each other at equal speed. The center of mass has zero kinetic energy (it is not moving). In a constant magnetic field the two particles move in circles at the same rate (and at constant velocity) but in opposite orbital directions. So after 1/4 of a circle each, they are moving in the same direction. The center of mass now has positive kinetic energy, even though the total kinetic energy has not changed. The relative co-ordinate -- the separation between the two particles -- is at this moment not changing at all, so it has zero kinetic energy. It began with positive kinetic energy; it has received negative work, from the magnetic field. So can a magnetic field do work on a composite object? To remove the issue of spin, which does allow magnetic fields to do work quite unambiguously, we can rephrase the question as, Can the Lorentz force do work on a composite object? And now the answer depends entirely on what you mean by the object. If you mean its center of mass, then the answer is yes, in spite of Griffiths and anybody else. If you mean the total work done on all of the object's components, then the answer is no. Since the answer thus depends on terminology, you can have it either way you want, if you really want. I'd submit, though, that in cases where all of an object's relative co-ordinates are held tightly together by non-magnetic forces, but the center of mass is comparatively very free, then the practical question, and the one that most people would naturally want to ask, is about the work done on the center of mass. Internal forces do not affect the center of mass at all, so the magnetic force is the only explanation available for acceleration or deceleration of the center of mass. [ Tuesday, June 20, 2006 12:31: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Are you now or have you ever been ... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 08:26
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Are you now or have you ever been a debater? By this I mean a member of a formal debating team. [ Tuesday, June 20, 2006 08:28: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] Poll Information This poll contains 1 question(s). 40 user(s) have voted. You may not view the results of this poll without voting. function launch_voter () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=vote;pollid=xxLGmkTroQOr"); return true; } // end launch_voter function launch_viewer () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=view;pollid=xxLGmkTroQOr"); return true; } // end launch_viewer function launch_window (url) { preview = window.open( url, "preview", "width=550,height=300,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status,menubar=no,scrollbars,resizable,copyhistory=no" ); window.preview.focus(); return preview; } // end launch_window   -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Dinosaurs Are Alive in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 06:54
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As a kid I had a big coffee table book which argued that dragons had really existed, in the form of reptiles adapted to flying by generating internal hydrogen to become lighter than air. This would also allow them to expel flammable gas, which they could supposedly ignite. Since they would thus have been scarey as hell, but fragile as blimps, they were quickly exterminated by humans. But not before a few legends began. No dragon fossils have been found, because their acidic internal chemistry dissolved all their bones upon death. Fun book. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Inventions in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, June 20 2006 04:42
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quote:But the Lorentz force isn't the only force. There is also the magnetic moment term in the Hamiltonian, \vec{\mu}\cdot\vec{B}. Check out the non-relativistic limit of the Dirac or vector Klein-Gordon equations to see that this term is really there. If this term is not constant, it exerts a force. Classical spinless moving charges can produce magnetic moments, leading to the paradox posed above, in which magnetic fields do no work but do enable work to be done. But relativity and quantum field theory together give particles intrinsic magnetic moments, and so real particles do experience non-Lorentz forces from magnetic fields, which can do work. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Inventions in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, June 19 2006 09:26
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Yeah, he should only have been talking about magnetic fields doing no work on spinless electric charges. A magnetic field that varies in space can indeed do work on a magnetic moment. Lots of kinds of particles have intrinsic magnetic moments because of their spin, which is in some senses a quantum property. And ferromagnetism is indeed a phenomenon of spins. Even classically, though, *i's remark deserves some comment, because you can make a classical magnetic moment out of moving charges, for instance by running current around a loop. I have a primitive electric motor which consists of a wire loop free to spin in a frame, with a current driven through the wire by a battery. Nothing happens except for the wire getting warm, until you put a small fridge magnet under the loop. Then it spins like the dickens. It could power a small toy car. (For the experts: the reason it keeps spinning around, instead of just swinging back and forth because the torque reverses once the loop flips 180 degrees, is that the wire is insulated on one side only, so that the current is blocked and the torque ceases when it would otherwise be reversed. Half of every revolution by the loop is unpowered, but when it does get torque, it always gets it in the same direction.) The fact that you do need the battery indicates that the magnet is not driving the loop around all by itself. The magnet does not wear out or run down, though the battery does. And ferromagnetism is only involved here in the fridge magnet that creates the magnetic field; the motion of the loop is just about moving charges, not spin. So since *i is quite right about magnetic fields doing no work on moving charges, the magnet does no work in making the loop spin. Yet the magnet does make the loop spin, in the sense that the loop spins if and only if the magnet is present; and the spinning loop can certainly do work itself, so work is being done on it by something. I leave the resolution of this paradox as an exercise for the reader. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |