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Annoying Abbreviations: EDNA in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #1
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/abbrev.html

Also, ETLA. Since FLA isn't.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
life on mars in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #11
Well, everybody knows there's a very big face on mars which is a sure sign of civilization. Also there's these canals all over the place that can be used to irrigate the entire planet. The martians probably just irrigate the backside so that we won't notice them.

(yay for Zack!)

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Homeland question in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #9
Okay, a small attempt at answering the question, and please note that this in no way implies that I actually like this game (although admittedly the magic system has potential, but that goes unreached as well)

Braccus. You have to read all the books around, then talk to him and answer his questions. Safe first, just in case you don't get the answers right. He'll give you a quest to find a Magic Stone somewhere down there, and bring it to him.
IIRC. And I'm afraid I can't help you much more than that.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
WTF are we still in Iraq. in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #37
Well, installing democracy there would be nice.
However the current idea is, that only village elders may vote (the excuse for this is that census data is insufficient to have everyone vote). Needless to say this is a very aristocratic point of view, and it's very convenient that said village elders have very different political points-of-view than the average iraqi.

That being said I find it hard to understand that a majority of americans still supports GWB. You'd suppose that internal economical problems would make some people think. And he lied to everybody about the nuclear weapons, where lying was the one sin few people were willing to forgive Clinton for.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Nephilim in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #6
I vote for Jeff to get a patent and a trademark on the word 'nephilim'.
And also, 'exile'. Hah!

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Spiderweb webhost in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #5
You will get some advertisments in the corner for most freehosts. If you don't mind that I'd recommend geocities.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Flattery or Thievery? in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #2
There's also a pen-and-paper rpg called Nephilim. Which features millenia-old pcs that reincarnate every couple of centuries, thus making you write a background incorporating such famous aeras as ancient egypt and revolutionary france.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
A Riddle... in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #17
Fans of this kind of puzzle should read
'To Mock a Mockingbird' by Raymond Smullyan. It features tons of them. Including creatures that lie on certain days of the week, and you get to figure out which day it would be.

A classic one is the man who, on april 1st, tells his nephew that he's going to fool him. And then does nothing all day. Since the nephew expected to be fooled, and didn't get fooled - it follows that he was fooled! How's that for a paradox?

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Free Will in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #44
Keep -> No, what I mean is that what you claim to be the laws of physics, aren't actually
what contemporary physicists claim them to be.

FZ -> Reasonably sure. Then again it's been a couple of years and those Russian names don't ring a bell. I think that what you state is the official definition of chaos, then, and what I said is a consequence thereof. If as you say 'an infintessimal deviation must eventual overwhelm prediction ability', then it follows that one cannot take 'shortcuts' to calculate the end result, doesn't it?
I haven't heard of the non-local hidden variable but it sounds interesting, maybe you could offer a brief explanation?

By the way I must say I like Master Chief's argument. It has aesthetic value.

Also by the way I believe that whether or not we have free will is a different matter from quantum theory. I just wanted to point out that one cannot use the laws of physics to prove that we have no free will, since the statement that "one can calculate the one possible future from the present using the laws of physics" doesn't necessarily hold true.

I've read about a many worlds theory where only some of the possibilities actually occur (granted this wasn't in a science book but I found it interesting nonetheless). It operates on the principles that 1) certain things just do not happen (for instance you may have scored an A or a B on your test but you wouldn't score an F at random on some worlds), and 2) most actions have little effect in the long run; this theory is the opposite of the butterfly theory, and states that what exactly you score on your physics test, for instance, likely has no bearing on political decisions in the next decade. Like ripples on a pond of water, they fade into the background with time and distance.
Hence, one can have multiple worlds (a lesser part of infinite) and still have free will.

Actually I haven't read about multiple universes in real physics, except on a quantum level. I'm not sure if any important physicists are considering it.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Free Will in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #32
Keep -> Your statement is incorrect. If you are given the equations and properties for a universe, then by calculating certain things (such as the position of an electron given its current position and momentum) WILL yield two different answers. Study quantum theory before rejecting this one; it has to do with particles not having a position but rather a probability curve of positions. The tunneling effect is related (i.e. an object can travel on a mathematical line from A to C, without passing through B).
Similarly, a ball thrown to the left, MAY actually land on the right. However the chance of this actually occuring is astronomically small to the extent of it never happening in the lifetime of the universe.

As a side point, free will is often asserted as something outside the physics of the universe; humans (and maybe dolphins etc) are said to have a 'soul' or 'spirit' that enables them to think for themselves. Either way, free will indicates the means of having a choice. As opposed to biopsychologists' claims that human 'intelligence' is actually just a series of chemical processes, or people who are mistaken about the laws of physics and state that any given present can have only one future.

The discussion is only pointless if you believe that talking about anything that cannot be proven, is pointless. But if you look at that idea deeply, you'll see that there aren't many things that can actually be proven.
I believe Morgan has a good point about free will mattering to the human ego.
I obviously can't prove that I have free will, but I cherish the belief in it.

Regarding earlier statements, it is indeed easy to label something as 'chaotic'. However the word has a precise meaning in physics, and basically refers to a system where the outcome cannot be calculated via shortcuts.
Example: multiplication is defined as a repeated addition. However you can multiply 123 * 456 in a quicker way than by adding 123 to itself 455 times. This is called a shortcut (not an official term though) and it has full precision. A sinewave is a periodical function and thus 'later' values can be predicted by observing 'earlier' ones.
For a chaotic system, these shortcuts do not exist. However predictions may be made to a certain degree of precision. That being said, the 'butterfly theory' is a gross exaggeration.
For an easy example of such, google for Conway Life and download a sample.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Free Will in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #16
Omlette -> actually it does mean that we'll never be able to. According to the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (an impotant but little-understood part of
modern physics), there are certain things that cannot be known because they
ARE undefined. This doesn't mean that our measurement capabilities or
equipment are lacking, this means that it's a mathematical impossibility
to measure certain things.

For instance, the more certain you become of a particle's location, the
less can be said about its momentum, and vice versa. If a particle's
momentum were exactly known, then it would be absolutely impossible to
determine where the particle would be.

Radioactive decay follows similar laws. And these things do affect larger-scale
objects but because of their probabilistic nature tend to cancel out most of the
time. In a precision object such as the human brain, they may well be important.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
The Mod Board in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #35
(spooky voice)
These aren't the boards you're looking for.
(/spooky voice)

:)

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Artistic ambitions in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #22
I write computer games, does that count?

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Saddam Huu-What'shisface in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #20
I would like to point out that while Saddam is an evil <censored>, he
isn't messing up other countries half as much as Bush is. Given the facts that
there are no proven links between him and alqaeda, and that there are no nuclear
or biological weapons in Iraq, I still hold that the invasion was a gross violation
of the Geneva protocols. It is also doubtful whether American presence in Iraq is
necessary, or even preferred by the Iraqis.

[ Wednesday, December 17, 2003 04:33: Message edited by: Radiant ]

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Which Spiderweb game would you like to live in in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #8
I would want to live in SubTerra, of course. And have a pet munchkin.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
How many of you are.... in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #14
I do object to calling all of mainland Europe a single 'nation'

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
new "oldie" in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #8
Saggery -> Well thank you. And I was only just getting started IMAGE(Spiderweb Software Boards new oldie_files/smile.gif)

Dxzhjk43fhsjdk or whatever -> true. (c) electronic arts iirc. And I do remember
the Might n Magic series having a random item generator which created all
sorts of meaningful permutations such as the Scorching Leather Sword of
Ice Storms. No really.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
On the Reading of Books in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #1
1.Fantasy, in particular Lackey and Card lately.
2.Depends on which novel, really. Some are deserving of respect on grounds of
being groundbreaking (or, if you will, 'novel' ). Some are indeed just plain
lousy. I tend not to bother with most of them anyway but that's a matter of taste.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Will there be an Avernum Online? in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #12
I think next time anybody asks this question we should egg them on a bit
and tell about the deal Jeff recently closed with Electronic Arts regarding
the sequel to Ultima Online.
IMAGE(Spiderweb Software Boards Will there be an Avernum Online1_files/biggrin.gif)

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
A highly technical question in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #19
At the risk of going off-topic...
you seem to know a lot of C64 games. I'm looking for a 4-way scrolling platformer
in which you control a guy that looks like pacman with two feet attached (or
a yellow rectangle when climbing up or down ladders); you're stuck in a toy
factory and have to collect all toys. It plays the tune known as Popcorn (the theme
from such games as Digger, et al). Does it ring a bell? I've forgotten the title.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
Merry Christmas in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #4
Figgy pudding, anyone?

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
25 USD? in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #5
Bad timing maybe, but didn't Jeff used to hold 'november sadness' discounts?

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
A highly technical question in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #13
If the word was Latin, the correct plural would be wumpi, and we could make
a nice line of derivations like wumpus, wumpi, wumpo, wumpum, wumpo. Etc.
Since it's actually an English invention, wumpuses would actually be correct,
even if some people nowadays use 'weird' plurals such as boxen instead of boxes.

The name 'wumpus' actually comes from a game much older than MULE, and is called
'hunt the wumpus' (or maybe it was just 'wumpus'). In the halcyon days where
ADVENT and the first infocommies were really good text adventures, Wumpus was a
really, really bad one. Stuck in a dozen or so rooms and armed with a bow and
two arrows, you had to kill the wumpus (which you could smell from one room away)
without entering its room.
Of course if you were next to it, you were not told in which direction it
actually was.
I believe 50 lines or so of basic code can make an adequate wumpus-clone.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
new "oldie" in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #5
I would say $25 is a bit excessive for a shareware game. Then again Spiderweb
is charging the same IMAGE(Spiderweb Software Boards new oldie_files/smile.gif)

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00
new "oldie" in General
Master Jeweller
Member # 409
Profile Homepage #1
Also worth mentioning are the dozens of detailed animated monsters with EGA
graphics, which was very state-of-the-art for the time. I also believe this is
one of the first games that were mouse controlled.
However my characters had so large a tendency of dying that I never got far in
the game.

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Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heilighthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng getheilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Pieter Simoons aka Radiant

Official Crystal Shard and SubTerra webpage
Posts: 798 | Registered: Monday, December 17 2001 08:00

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