Randox

Just don't assume that the lectures will be like that for the whole year. Unless you took a course in...sixth forum?...that covered the first year university syllabus (this happened to me. My chemistry teacher taught us first year chem in grade 12), at some point it will change. You might also find it going in depth in places where primary education did not. It does get a lot more interesting after the first year, and even second term. The first term is the University doing damage control for any haphazard education from the primary education system, making sure that you actually do know what your supposed to know. If you already know it then yeah, kind of boring.

Except that the government not stopping them from doing stupid things is pretty much the same thing as not being regulated at all. In both cases they are free to do as they please. The government doesn't tell a crown corporation what to do (often they literally do not have that authority). They set the mandate, and the corporation determines how to achieve their goals. As an example, the Federal Government of Canada can not set the prime interest rate issued by the Bank of Canada. The Bank is an independent corporation, owned entirely by the current finance minister, and it is their job to set that interest rate to manage our inflation (they have other duties, but this is their primary function). What the federal government does is give them a target inflation rate, and they will set the prime rate to whatever they think will achieve that target.

Except that subsidies didn't create the bubble...thinking money was unlimited (and poor regulations) did. If anything, I would think the housing bubble is a shining example of not more regulation, but smarter regulation, to keep people from doing incredibly stupid things (it's also not the first time in history that someone has made that mistake, I think it was actually the third. Both France and I think England did their best to destroy their economies doing pretty much exactly the same thing, and considering how it worked out for them, the States is taking it quite well).

If you addressed bailouts in particular, I think we both (me and obfuscator) missed it. Rather than repeat yourself, maybe you could link to a post where you did this (if not I'll actually look tomorrow, thread isn't that long and I'm actually not that lazy).

Classy. My wrist has actually held up very nicely. that or Robax becomes more potent with age, seeing as it should have worn off by now. Not sure about the essay, would really like to have some time tomorrow to look it over (it also needs an intro, still thinking about that). The rest of it went faster than I thought, though I took a little artistic license by extending my analysis a bit into the future. After this, I think the project kind of morphs into a much more serious program than anything we have written thus far, that we will work on in stages over the rest of the year, so I am kind of excited for that. Also, tonight I am taking care of my parents dog and house sitting, and while walking, it was one of those nights where you can hear the ocean. The ocean was about as loud, or louder, than my footsteps, and by rough estimation the nearest ocean would be more than a thousand times as far from my ears as my feet are, which is kind of cool (I had some math here, and realized the volume I estimated the waves at would have been well into organ liquification levels of loud). I think I mentioned some place before that I like to think while walking, yet I rarely know what I will be thinking about before I actually leave the door. This would be an example. I also haven't lost the skill to predict when things are coming to the house (I always used to lose interest in things and go to bed right before my parents got home, if I had the house to myself late at night), except now I am apparently predicting rainfall. Classic me timing, about two minutes before arrival (I got back from the walk 2 minutes before the rain started pouring down). Can't say I am particularly into the super natural, though it makes me wonder if its something about the house rather than me (I have no ability to predict the weather at my house).

Had to look that up. Thank you Urban Dictionary. That actually does sound kind of fun. Our local version was always spinning around really fast and then trying to chase someone. Now, I feel like there is a lesson in todays events. A while ago I gave myself a repetitive strain injury from a minecraft bender, and the result has been that I have a much lower tolerance for typing and mouse use in my right wrist now (probably left too, but I injured my right wrist more). I was playing Runescape a couple hours for the last 3 days at pest control, because that's actually how I train range (I hate that skill so much). In retrospect, I could feel my wrist/arm starting to get sore, but it never got bad, and I wanted to finish it up. Fast forward to today, where I have been putting off writing a couple relatively small programs (about 100 lines each), and a thousand word research paper (not really an issue, but that doesn't make doing it a now a good idea). I got through the first program okay, and about 10 lines into the second one, guess what. The RSI is rearing it's head and is if nothing else, quite distracting. So I found the robax platinum, which is about the only thing that can make the pain go away, but now I going to be doing a fair bit of typing on an injured wrist, which will cause more inflamation, and when all is said and done, this will probably take a couple days of minimal use to heal. Tomorrow I have another computer lab to do, which is closer to 800 lines of code, which will also be great for my injury. So yeah, I'm sure there is a lesson about planning in there someplace :lol: And probably some shorter posts from me on thursday and firday, since taking the robax will stop me from healing (because if I can type, I will).

Nicely done, though I have to wonder why a bus would be full of straw in a game where people use smokebombs to begin with.

I just want so say for emphasis, please do not rush your application. We don't finalize the list of who will be invited until after the competition closes, it doesn't matter if your the first or last person to send it in. However, there is serious consideration of the application itself, especially if we don't know very much about you from posts on the forums we have seen, or previous submissions to the website, so at the risk of making all the crew hopefuls nervous, please do take your time when writing your answers, and also give yourself some time after you write it to walk away and do something else, and then come back and read it again before you send it to us. Take your time and follow the directions :) And with that out of the way, I want to wish all the crew hopefuls good luck, and if people have questions about being on the crew that they want to ask before they submit an application, please ask away.

While the legal system has been incredibly slow to move on this, I think there is hope that at some point people who actually do have some understanding of what is going on will eventually enter the legal and political systems, and once this happens, the framework can at least be set up where the the industry can bring its cases to trial, and the legal precedents can be set.

Alright, I get where your coming from now, and that is a particularly interesting road. Right now the laws seem to exist in a weird state, where the virtual currency is the property of the patent holder in an IP case, but not in others (such as a case of virtual theft). Honestly, I kind of like how it is right now, but I'm sure that the legal system will eventually find new, less confusing, ways to deal with this. On the other hand, for a legal system that uses precedents, we could be stuck with the system they develop for quite a while.

A recent medication change out seems to have transformed my dreams from a series of my greatest fantasies into a series on all the things I am worried about, but not thinking about (so unconscious troubles rather than unconscious joys). They aren't exactly nightmare material, so as fun as they are not, they don't have me apprehensive to sleep or anything, and all things considered, some of the insight I am getting about myself could be quite valuable more so if I could remember more than snapshots. There was one a couple days ago that really caught my attention because of memory (though I no longer remember anything from the dream, except for a couple feelings). Specifically, either I dreamed a few memories (3 I think) before the actual dream, or my mind manufactured actual memories for use inside of a dream, memories that I lost access to when I woke up. It is the first time I can remember remembering something (and quite vividly too, hence my confusion about whether it was just a memory, or a memory of a previous dream) like that in a dream. Either way, the feeling of familiarity was lost when I woke up, so I know the memory is not something I experienced while awake (many memories are only accessible while the link created between the conscious and unconscious that forms while sleeping is still active, which is why you lose the memory of your dreams as you wake up, though you can train yourself to have better waking dream recall through the use of a journal). And last night I realized that I have no sense of smell when dreaming. I know that my mind struggles with tactile sense while dreaming (it exists, but only when I actively pay attention to it, and it has quality and quantity issues), but my sense of smell is virtually non existent. I never noticed since last night is the first time I think I have ever tried to smell anything in a dream before (I noticed I had no sense of smell within the dream itself).

As a point about waiting for college, yes it's a great opportunity to start over, but be aware that there is essentially a rush in the first week or two (about a week before and after classes start) where the initial social groups form up, and this is the best time to try and meet a large group of people to increase your chances of having a nice group of friends. The more comfortable you are meeting and talking to people when this time comes, the more you are going to get out of it. Relationship experience is good, but I would say that just being able to talk to strangers and being comfortable at a party is more important. The rest will follow. My point being if you can do anything to get some practice in for that now (if you need it that is) would be good.

Realize that it impacted different play styles very differently. While I was aware of the flaws during that time, they rarely impacted me, because I don't pk and I don't boss (well, not then). Actually, I rarely bought anything at all, and during that time, I was happy to trade a slower buying process for a general lack of bots being in my business, because they had been impacting my training pretty badly. When they reversed that, I lost my access to the wild. Not a huge loss, but I do miss the stars from time to time in particular. I also don't care for merchanting, so I don't particularly benefit from a free market. So while this is a very specific playstyle, realize that not everyone had a miserable time during the restriction. Some of us quite thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you check out any court case involving people making money off of someone elses intellectual property, it's not hard to guess exactly whose favor such a case would go for involving Jagex. They need to prove that the game is their intellectual property, and that someone else made a profit off of it which they didn't authorize. That's really about it. Also, don't forget that the legal precedent for it being their game has already been set. That the game is their intellectual property has already been held up in court in a previous lawsuit. And the steam things isn't a judgement, its an example of another case where access or possession does not equate to ownership.

The trick is to find your way into social circles other than those that you see walking around. Look past all the loud and obnoxious people, and there are many many good people in the game, they just don't talk in public. Spend some time skilling and try talking to people. Sooner or later you'll find someone to talk to, and if your lucky, they'll have a nice clan you can join so that you have more people to talk to. Overtime you'll just come across chats and clans, and you'll make new friends as you move from place to place. I appreciate that starting from scratch on the friends front, with no chats to go to must not be very fun, but give it some time and meet people.

Vodka goes with just about anything, that's what makes it so awesome.

To be clear, my objection to lobbying is based on representation to politicians. Say the Government is re-writing a regulation that impacts an industry, then the Government should be consulting with people in that industry to find out what their needs are, what is realistic, and how much time they are going to need to adjust to the new laws. This turns the regulation into a co-operative effort between regulation makers and industry. With lobbying, you have the firms interacting with the politicians instead of the people who actually write the industry regs (who would be civil servants), which leads to uninformed direction from above that the informed underlings have to follow.

Hmm, that is a pretty big problem I'll admit. I believe the single largest flaw in the american political system are lobbyists. Canada doesn't allow that practice, and we have more restrictions on political funding. A less convoluted legal system would certainly be an interesting avenue to go down. You could do some interesting things with that I expect. My objection to polluting your own land is that it is very difficult to do. You have to deal with things like the water table, runoff, and people hiding things. Disclosure about what exactly people have buried on a property can become an issue. I guess I just have a bias to prefer that the landowner should be the one in charge of making sure they take care of their land rather than relying on other people to complain about it. I do however have a lot of problems with property laws becasue at least here, the government likes to make a neat little rule book that has no ability to react to different situations. There are a lot of issues here when you property has waterfront because people aren't allowed to think. On the other hand, people can be capable of some staggeringly terrible ideas, and you end up with stupid laws to try and keep them say dumping their septic runoff in the lake everyone is drinking from. Ideally my bias is for more government control, but realistically, the government is capable of incompetence that is seemingly rivaled only by oil companies. I don't trust the private sector because their goal is to make as much money as possible, often at the expense of the public. So I am forced to want a balance, where the private sector tries to balance out the incompetence and the government tries to reign in the greed.

Yes, except that would make sense. They'll never go for that :lol: In all seriousness, queueing would be awesome.

Nice of them to acknowledge the problems. Incredibly alarming that they didn't realize some of those problems exist.

Just to be clear, whether you agree with it or not doesn't matter. The law says you account, and everything related to it, belong to them under intellectual property laws. Quite simply, Jagex own the entire game, and your account and all it's items and levels and whatnot, are part of that game, which they own in its entirety. You do not own your gold any more than you own any game you buy on steam (and if you didn't know that you don't own the games you buy through steam, then surprise!).

I can see your point for some markets, but not others. Some markets have a high cost of entry that is not the governments fault (they don't control the price of mining equipment, oil rigs and passenger jets), and would leave a new entry vulnerable to predatory pricing, where the threat of such is enough to keep people from entering the market. You can also have established market situations where the profit sharing prevents the market from being profitable with more new entries, which is another barrier. While I think the property laws are a neat idea, they just seem to be complicating things. Instead of making x illegal, you instead have to prove that what they are doing has a specific impact on you, and you have to sue them, which is really really expensive. I just think it's easier to have government enforcement. It also leaves a loophole for doing some terrible things if you go far enough away from people. In Canada, there is a lot of space no one is using (because no one wants to live there), and it'd be just swell if no one turned it into a wasteland on us.

I would argue that time spent in beta is fairly important, since even if you understand the system, you need to spend some time trying it out in a whole bunch of scenarios, becuase ideally your trying to simulate what it would feel like to actually play a game with this configuration. The majority of players do not have this kind of time logged to make a qualified judgement on whether they would enjoy this update as the main game or not. What you want to see if the last question, but only with answers from the people who answered at least 10 hours in the game (really, more than 20). If I had to hazard a guess, most of the people clearly for or against probably come from the first time and no time categories, because this will be totally new to them and lead strong opinions in one direction or the other. People who spend more time will be more likely to see the potential in the system, and would be more likely to go for the needs more time, or maybe they like both, because each system has it's ups and downs. My point is that the poll doesn't mean anything because most of the people voting haven't spent the time required to make a qualified judgement on how they would enjoy this as the actual game (at least 60% don't have that much time).

Well, if soloing does finally become a viable option I might dunge again. Assuming they don't nerf it in two weeks in response to all the counter outrage (the solo xp rates are the original). I'd really like this to stick because I would like to get another chaotic for EoC.

It's still a bit of a drop for dragon. I would consider Dragon to be comparable to Bandos right now, with a slight defensive edge (melee combat), but lacking the offensive power. After EoC, it will just be worse and expensive (helmet). And don't knock the style. Killing things is always more fun if you can look awesome while doing it. I don't suppose they ever revised bat armour (cosmetically)?