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Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #33
Yup.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
ADV Shaping (Battle Gamma & Co.) in Geneforge Series
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #36
That might be going a bit too far. I'd say keep it simple.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
ADV Shaping (Battle Gamma & Co.) in Geneforge Series
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #34
quote:
This would mean that Drakon have in theirs genes the ability of shape. No, I wouldn't like it. I suggest, instead, a more powerful attack that scare the player (and more endurance). They are Drakons, big, tall, strong: why don't fear them?
You do realize that in GF2, Barzahl created the Drakon with the ability to shape other creatures, that's what makes them so powerful, dangerous, and unique. They are the only creation with the ability to make other creations and has been well documented. Letting the player use a "summon" like ability would be consistent with the storyline.

I agree, a more powerful attack would be neat, but any other creation could get better attacks. I could say the same thing about Battle Betas and such. I'd say let them use their ability to shape. What you get should probably be dependent upon the intelligence stat.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #193
It's unfortunate the review process gets abused at times. However, by and large, it is quite effective at making sure total trash doesn't get put out.

Just because it's in a peer reviewed journal, does not make it necessarily correct, it just has a higher level of credability.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
One thing say and ask in Avernum 4
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #1
You can pretty much store your excess items wherever, the game preserves them for the most part. I would suggest a common town. The best place is probably in Fort Avernum when you reach there.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
ADV Shaping (Battle Gamma & Co.) in Geneforge Series
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #30
quote:
A little bit of randomness + unpredictability always makes a game more fun!
Sounds like save/load abuse time. :P

But seriously, I do think Vlish need to be depowered quite a bit. Their attacks should do minimal damage, but bestow nasty status effects (heavy stun/curse for normal and terror for the advanced) instead. This would make it hard for a Vlish to kill anything, but it would make their role more of a support one adding to the tactics.

Clawbugs could have a chance to poison in addition to their normal attack, that would make them a bit more effective.

Battle Betas need something special, perhaps 20% resistance to all damage or something sweet like that making them harder to kill. I do like the idea of stun immunity for the battle alpha, beta, gamma class.

Drakons pretty much suck right now. My suggestion would be to allow them to shape random low level creations that disappear after a while. These creations would act more as summons and not be under the player's control, but it would be useful to have more free Fryoas and such.

[ Saturday, June 03, 2006 17:42: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Afraid of consequeses(SP?) in Avernum 4
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #3
As we've learned, don't kill the mage in the lower level of Fort Avernum. You could have problems. :P

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #171
I gave you references to peer reviewed journal articles, there's a big difference. I want you to define these terms as you see them.

You claim to study science, but you still cling to the incompatable notion of belief. Science is not about believing up front, it's about making measurements and observations, developing hypotheses, peforming experiments, and analyzing data to reach a result.

Science can always admit it's wrong on anything, whereas you will never compromise your beliefs despite any evidence. You a priori say you "know" certain things that contradict with your beliefs are wrong. Considering your lack of knowledge on the topic, it's hard to say you know something scientifically and still claim to practice science.

[ Friday, June 02, 2006 17:26: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Hiking in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #5
Actually I just got back from a hike in the hills around Los Alamos. There are a lot of good trails around there.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #167
Major -- I will put things I want you to address in bold.

I want a rigorous definition of organization and complexity, one that is not open to any subjective interpretation. The definition need to be able to quantitatively calculate an object's (say a molecule) level of complexity and compare it with others. Behind this defintion, there have to be a rational and solid basis for defining such a hierarchy, specifically routed in physical principles and preferably related to thermodynamic quantities such as enthalpy and entropy.

What I don't want are quotes or subjective things that say "well that's just organized, not ordered" because one can disagree. There needs to be a metric.

Major, could you also define what you mean by "gene" and helpful. I find it rather perplexing as in the previous discussion I had presented examples of genes being added that were beneficial given a set of environmental criteria. Here are a few references in peer reviewed journals:

Lang, D. et al., 2000. Structural evidence for evolution of the beta/alpha barrel scaffold by gene duplication and fusion. Science 289: 1546-1550. See also Miles, E. W. and D. R. Davies, 2000. On the ancestry of barrels. Science 289: 1490.

Hughes, A. L. and R. Friedman, 2003. Parallel evolution by gene duplication in the genomes of two unicellular fungi. Genome Research 13(5): 794-799.

Zhang, J., Y.-P. Zhang and H. F. Rosenberg, 2002. Adaptive evolution of a duplicated pancreatic ribonuclease gene in a leaf-eating monkey. Nature Genetics 30: 411-415.

I'm sure I could find more if I had the time. Do you have any peer reviewed journal papers (not websites, books, or popular magazine articles) to support your "belief". If not, I would suggest changing your belief to be in line with evidence.

Finally, please define macroevolution.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #162
Creator -- I don't want quotes, they are worthless because they can easily be taken out of context, not even considering the possibility that the author could be either inaccurate or imprecise. Quotes are worthless without either direct experimental evidence or theoretical formulations to back them up.

Entropy has a precise mathematical formulation and if you want your defintions to apply, you need to give them as precise as a defintion. So my question is, using mathematical rigor, how does one define order and complexity?

In my experience, the former can be decently defined by microstates (s = N*kB*ln(W)) whereas the other has a much more subjective definition. Most of what I've seen on "complexity" have been rather ad hoc and defined to meet a certain definition.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #113
quote:
The only evidence I carry with me is the enigmatic series of supernatural events known as my life itself.
Typical response. I've never seen anything but. Of course, such things are subjective interpretations that are historically prone to false positives.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #100
Major -- You may be studying science, but you have a LOT of catching up to do. I mean years of rigorous study judging by your comments on these boards.

A simple search turns up examples of "beneficial" mutations can occur:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html

Also, you should know that the concept of beneficial has no absolute meaning in terms of evolutionary biology. Something that is beneficial in one scenario may be harmful in another. One needs to consider both the mutation and the environment to determine if a mutation is "beneficial" or not.

quote:
In regards to thermodynamics, you are absolutely correct. However, an open system is not sufficient to provide a decrease in entropy. It requires a mechanisim to harness the incoming energy. An exapmle of undirected energy would be a bull in a china shop. A lot of 'work' may be done, but it only increases disorder (entropy). The same bull, however may be harnessed to a machine to spin the potters wheel, and so help create a localised decrease in entropy, but this requres a mechanisim. To read the argument in more depth see Thermodynamics Vs. Evolutionism .
I read the article and remain unimpressed. There is no such thing as undirected and directed energy in an absolute sense, only in human terms. The mechanism is the atomic bonding properties of atoms. Many chemical reactions occur spontaneously decrease entropy locally, the only condition is that the Gibbs Free Energy be negative. The mechanism is a natural one and it's a good thing or our bodies could never function.

The bull argument is, pardon the pun, a load of bull. It's a strawman. You are correct on the surface, but you have failed to address why it applies to the second law. Also, entropy is more than just classic order and disorder. You must define it rigorously to be useful.

quote:
But simply adding energy to a system doesn’t automatically cause reduced entropy (i.e., increased organized complexity, or “build-up” rather than “break-down”). Raw solar energy alone does not decrease entropy—in fact, it increases entropy, speeding up the natural processes that cause break-down, disorder, and disorganization on earth (consider, for example, your car’s paint job, a wooden fence, or a decomposing animal carcass, both with and then without the addition of solar radiation).
This quote sums up your argument. Too bad it's wrong. The answer is that it depends on the chemistry and the atomic properties of what the photons interact with. Plenty of examples of where entropy increases, but never mind things like photosynthesis which causes a local decrease in entropy.

I'm not even going to waste my time responding to the rest. Quotes (especially ones out of context) are not valid arguments in the scientific sense. Give me a rigorous mathemetical article on why the second law does not work.

Also, in my experience, the definition of information used by ID proponents such as Dembski is not very well defined, unlike entropy, making it a useless concept.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #61
quote:
No, but neither is there proof that there isn't a god. (There is more proof of divine intervention than you might think though.)
Care to give some "proof" that goes beyond anecdote? Also, who cares there isn't proof that there isn't a god? There is no proof there aren't gremlins and unicorns, but we don't believe in those.

As far as evolution, you continue to insult large bodies of scientific work by just ignoring them and dismissing it out of hand. You say there is little evidence for it, and you couldn't even address the two arguments I gave last time. You know what? No amount of evidence would convince you because you are unwilling to even learn the basic science behind what you are criticizing.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum 2 part 3 help in The Avernum Trilogy
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #4
Shadow47:

1) Please read the forum headers before you post. It would let you know that this was an inappropriate forum for this question.
2) No double posting is allowed here. Give at least 24 hours for someone to answer a question before giving it a bump.
3) Rude outbursts and replies are frowned upon here.

This topic goes to Avernum Trilogy...

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum 2 part 3 help in Tech Support
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #4
Shadow47:

1) Please read the forum headers before you post. It would let you know that this was an inappropriate forum for this question.
2) No double posting is allowed here. Give at least 24 hours for someone to answer a question before giving it a bump.
3) Rude outbursts and replies are frowned upon here.

This topic goes to Avernum Trilogy...

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #7
I fail to see how this is a Tech Support topic...off to Avernum IV I think...

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum V ideas in Tech Support
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #7
I fail to see how this is a Tech Support topic...off to Avernum IV I think...

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Problems with Blades of Exile in Tech Support
The Establishment
Member # 6
Profile #1
Not likely to happen. You need to run it in classic mode.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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