qeltar

1. I haven't seen any objective evidence that such was on the ship. 2. If Israel was worried about that, it could have and should have dealt with it in some way OTHER than violating international waters. All they had to do was stop them from landing, and if they suspected arms were on board, ask for a third party to inspect. But no, Israel seems to think that the rule of law doesn't apply to it -- they are wrong. And so Israel goes and gives them good reason to be biased against them? Brilliant tactical move, guys. Thanks for the clarification, but if you're going to damn countries based on religious focus, guess what? Israel is the only country in the entire area that provides reasonable rights to those of minority religions. So you should temper your viewpoints on that basis. And your rhetoric does come across as anti-Semitic, at least to me. It's one thing to criticize some of what they do, but you appear to have bought the whole "Gaza is an innocent victim of Jewish oppression" bullspit -- hook, line and sinker. If the people of Gaza want a better life, they could start by not electing a government devoted to eternal war with its most important neighbor. Hard to have good relations after that.

I don't believe the two are the same. But I do believe one is often used as a cover for the other. There's no way for me to read anyone's mind and know for sure what they are thinking. But when some of the rhetoric goes over the top, the balance of probabilities begins to tip. The reality to any objective observer is that both parties are right in many ways and wrong in many ways. This isn't a simple situation and there is no simple, easily-identified "bad guy". When an individual tries to boil down an event into something to entirely damn one side and portray the other as innocent victims, it is easy to tell that there's an agenda at work. It doesn't bloody well matter. They had no right to search the ships, period. "You'd be glad to give up your rights if you had nothing to hide" is the creed of tyrants and sheeple. Israel instigated this incident and is responsible for the outcome.

Everything I've seen so far suggests that Israel is in the wrong here. They do not have the right to insist that ships in international waters do anything, and so anything that occurred as a result of them attempting to board those ships was their own fault. However, when I see stuff like this... ...it's pretty clear that something else has "reared its head" as well. And it's not pretty. Israel is over-zealous and reactionary, but the Palestinians are not the innocent victims being portrayed here. Well, most of the regular civilians are, but the government and the militants in Gaza bear responsibility for most of the woes that befall the people.

I do not doubt you, but your claim over the claim for clams is invalid. Anyway, I'm glad that's over with. That was quite possibly the most boring and attrictional argument I've ever had. I litterally just reworded my argument five times and slightly adjusted it to counter whatever points he brought up. The funny thing is that part of me wants to try doing a full run of 1-35 solo on comp 6 just to see what I'd get and how it compares to xpx's clams. However, I realize there is no point: he won't tell us exactly what he's doing, so there's no way to make a valid comparison. And if the numbers come out lower than his (which is almost certain, since I'm pretty sure those numbers are bogus) he'll just say it's because I don't know his "Uber Secrets [tm]". Trying to reason with unreasonable people is a waste of time. Sorry, not sure what you're trying to say here...

I just woke up and am kinda tired, so at first I misread "claims" above as "clams". I just want to state for the record that I do not doubt xpx's clams. I'm sure they are very fresh and of the highest quality.

You're right -- I misread one of your posts. Apologies.

Decent introductory article on the issues with the GE and price manipulation. The problems with it are easy to understand, and in fact easy to predict. Many people knew this would happen from the very start, because history shows that whenever you try to put excessive controls on a marketplace, you usually get worse problems than the ones you tried to correct. Jagex is apparently not able to understand that you cannot create market stability through restraint of trade. the tight control mechanisms on the GE don't prevent abuses and manipulation, they enable these activities to occur.

Um. Huh? You first brought up your church in post #10 in response to a comment about the pedophilia scandal, saying "Marriage status is only a problem for bishops, as I am part of an Eastern Catholic Church rite and our priests are allowed to marry..." etc. An article from the Catholic League, which takes *some* valid stats and twists them every which way in order to further apologize for the unscrupulous, immoral, criminal behavior of the church. Very impressive. :rolleyes: A good example of abuse of statistics. You said this: "I provided objective stats preceding the subjective articles as I know you're intelligent enough to make the inference that 1.5%(priests)<5%(teachers)<3-12%(psychologists) therefore molestation is relatively a lot lower amongst Catholic clergy than other professions." But when we actually look at the article you referenced, here's what it says: "Between 3 and 12 percent of psychologists have had sexual contact with their clients." Doesn't say they were children. In fact, given the lack of such a qualifier, it is reasonable to assume they were not -- most people who go to psychologists are adults. So your comparison is apples and oranges. This is also in the report you referenced: "The report concluded that “The disturbing aspect of all research is that the rate of incidence for clergy exceeds the client-professional rate for physicians and psychologists.”" You claimed that "In fact rabbis have a similar percent of sexual abuse cases". This is not borne out by the article quoted. In summary: you are being dishonest, misrepresenting reality and trying to engage in an apologetic coverup. Which, uncoincidentally, is how the RC church has always dealt with this abuse issue, and why a lot of people don't want to be associated with it in any form.

I have a feeling that when people mention reticence to be associated with the Catholic Church due to pedophilia scandals, they are referring to the RC church proper, not to the church you are a member of. So bringing that up in reference to those scandals is really a red herring. I'm intelligent enough to know that stats provided without reliable sources are worthless. Source? I'm referring to Bernard Law. I highly doubt he's in a bad "environment".

Thanks for the reply. I'd agree with you except RS goes from completely unusable to completely smooth even if I sleep and then "wake up" the machine immediately...

Okay, I have had this problem for ages and never been able to resolve it. Maybe someone here knows what to do... Basically, my RS frame rate drops over time. When I reboot the game is smooth, but as the day progresses it gets more and more choppy. The more I use the game, the worse it becomes. There are only two things that fix this: rebooting or temporarily putting my machine into sleep mode. Nothing else matters: graphics settings, killing and restarting IE, killing and restarting Java, etc. The rebooting I can understand, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why sleeping the PC has this effect. And unfortunately, sometimes my machine refuses to sleep and I have to reboot it, which is a real hassle. If anyone has any ideas about what is happening here, or how I might be able to fix this other than sleep mode, I'd be grateful!

Actually, I fully accept that there are players faster than I am. But when someone is making claims about speed that go well beyond what most people can do, and refuses to even specify how they did it, I find that dubious. Most players are not accurate in how they measure things, and they tend to take small samples, extrapolate them, and then make grand announcements that are bogus. You are now basically saying you rushed 7 floors and got good figures with them. Great! Entirely possible. I said that, didn't I? But that's very different from what he is claiming, which is a consistent speed far above what anyone I have ever seen actually measure, *plus* XP rates more comparable to fully completing floors than rushing them. The details matter. So do the floors. So does luck. I've actually timed 6-floor runs (rushing on complexity 1) and done them in a little over 20 minutes, then did a different 6 floors and had it take over *30* minutes.

I think that's great, but realize that while the Eastern Catholic Church is obviously very important to you and many others, it has little direct bearing on this discussion. Maybe I'm just blind this morning, but I don't see the actual figures you quoted in these sources (some of which are of dubious value anyway.. what should I expect from a site called "Catholicity"?) It's a cover-up when child molestation victims are told "here's some money if you shut up". It's a cover-up when priests with known histories of molestation are, rather than removed from positions of power, shuffled to different parishes. It's a cover-up when the bishop in charge of an area with rampant molestation is, rather than disciplined, moved to a cushy job at the Vatican. Maybe because it has been *underblown* by the church for centuries.

Oh, give me a break! Here I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt with respect to your claims and politely asking for details so I can verify your numbers, and you give me this crap? I just spent a month writing a 200 page guide to Dungeoneering where I spilled every tip and trick I had learned and seen others use, but your "secrets" are so wonderful that you can't share them even in general form? Selfish. As far as *I* can tell, you are full of spit. You claim XP rates that make no sense and refuse to specify how you got them with any level of detail -- pretty clear what that actually means.

And you *actually* think that deliberately pissing them off by acting like a jerk is going to make them *less* stressed out? I thought you were smarter than that. I can understand reacting to "dungeon Nazis"... my usual response to people who micromanage is something along the lines of "if I wanted to be bossed around, I'd talk to my wife" (though she doesn't really do that either...) But you're taking it too far in trying to rationalize what is really just griefing. It's not your position to force other people to "have fun" in the way *you* decide. For some players, getting the dungeon done quickly *is* fun. Also, if you joined a team made on W117 or the RSOF, you should assume they are trying to be efficient, because most players are. If you want to just play casually, great -- start your own team, say in advance that you want to play that way, and get teammates who agree. Going onto a team of players trying to play efficiently and acting the way you described is just selfish asshat behavior.

You can get at least 50k per hour (and likely a lot more) killing regular TzHaar.

Some floors, sure. But as an average? I don't see how. All you need is to get one "brick" of a level that takes 15 minutes and your average is shot, and those are quite common. I just had a floor 30 that was going fine until I hit one of those stupid barrel puzzles, and then the skeletal horde "boss". That boss room takes 5 minutes to do and that's that -- you can't really speed it up. Soloing Stomp can also easily take 5 minutes, and a couple of other bosses are also very slow (icefiend, Sagittare, night gazer, etc.). One monolith room or maze puzzle or 10-statue combat triangle puzzle... all of these make a floor take 10-15 minutes or possibly even more. This is why I find these claims of 6+ dungeons per hour very suspect. They just don't jive with my own timed tests, when you actually include the full spectrum of possible outcomes and not just the best case.

Okay, when you say "30k an hour pure soloing" what exactly do you mean? Doing all 35 floors the same way? Doing some in different ways? What complexity level and bound items? Also, what strategy are you using? Meaning: kill every monster, kill all monsters except dead ends, kill only monsters in guardian rooms, etc? tortilliachp: This is a discussion board. There's not much to discuss about what Jagex has said about this, which is virtually nothing.

did you know that the rate of pedophilia in priests is lower than for almost all other groups of figures of authority? policemen, judges, teachers, counselors - they all fare worse off when you look at the statistics. the stigma of the church is why the press even bothers. I'd like to see the source for that claim. Even if it is true, there are several reasons why the church would receive more flak than those other groups. Chief among them: higher expectations, wrapping oneself in the mantle of "holiness", the matter of celibacy, and the deliberate coverups.

If you really want to do it yourself, the fastest way to kill them is using Dharoks with prayer.

Obviously if you already get to 120 you gain nothing. But you were complaining that I was discussing the current XP rates for soloers in the context of levels over 99, and there *are* reasons to go over 99 even now. If I stop at level 74 until batch 2 comes out, I'll be training batch 2 unable to access 23 of the likely 25 new floors. If I get to level 100, I'll be only unable to access 10 of them. So it does matter that soloing is slow now. And it's not going to get any better *relative to teaming* unless Jagex changes it. Actually, I have not once said or implied this. I've said that I accept Jagex's decision to make this mainly a team skill. I simply disputed your implications that there wasn't that much of a loss in XP soloing. "Significant" but not "dramatic". I can't even begin to guess as to what that means. :)

Sorry, we don't use commas for decimals here so I didn't realize that was what you meant. I don't have much more to say to you (nor do I really want to, given your obnoxious attitude). If you think getting less than 2/3 of the XP of teaming is not a big difference, good for you. Most people think that's pretty major. And that's giving you very big benefit of the doubt on your figures, which I find highly doubtful based on my own measurements. If you go fast, you skip a lot, and XP goes down. Get more XP, and floors per hour goes down. Under 9 minutes *and* 4400 XP average, even including the low-numbered floors? Dubious. When batch 2 comes out, soloing will get faster, but without any other changes, teaming will get even *more* faster. There's also an advantage to getting your level up now, as you'll be able to get higher prestige figures when batch 2 comes out. So much for "half a brain". :rolleyes:

As I've already said at least twice, I am not talking about teaming all of the floors. I am talking about floors from 25 or 30 to 35, as the ones where it is a no-brainer to do teams. The overhead involved in getting these floors done in teams is very low relative to the time spent on them. And even with the occasional 90 minute floor (which is not typical) you *still* get a *lot* more XP than soloing. 25k XP/hr is pretty much the maximum practical solo XP over time, and that's pretty pathetic. In fact, it makes this close to the slowest skill in the game. Given the level 120 limit with 104 million XP, people have a valid complaint. This will hopefully get better with batch 2, but there's no denying that right now, it's pretty darned slow. No offense, but I find these numbers quite dubious. 6 high-numbered dungeons per hour solo on complexity 6 is pushing the bounds of believability, and 8 such dungeons per hour is well beyond it. I just now did floors 27 and 28 solo, and one took 15 minutes and the other 12 minutes. Even with a lot of luck, a 7.5 minute *average* for solo complexity 6 dungeons is IMO not credible. Even if your numbers were true, though, they still aren't impressive in terms of an overall rate. If you're getting 4400 XP that's only 30K or so on the deeper floors, and you're going to get less on the low-numbered floors. At best you are going to average out at 25k XP per hour or so. People who do teams can easily get 60%, 75% or even greater XP premiums, even taking into account overhead and other hassles. That's a major difference, IMO.

I think they should really figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin first.

You're entitled to your opinion. It just happens to be contrary to the facts in this case. Average players get more XP in teams. Good players get more XP in teams. And that's even taking into account the overhead issues, problems with teams and so forth. Even a mediocre team of 5 on a large floor will get more XP than a typical good player soloing. I agree that teams can be a pain, and that's why I recommend against bothering with teams for the low-level "rush" floors. But for the high-numbered large floors, teaming is generally effective, the overhead is a small percentage of time spent, and the XP is substantially higher. If you are only soloing, you're giving up a large amount of XP on each run. You're the only person I've ever encountered to even dispute this. And by the way, I've done a large floor with a guy from my forum who is a top-ranked player, and I've seen what he can do. When he says he *averages* over 50k XP/hr across all floors in his team of high-leveled players, I believe him. These guys are efficiency freaks, and they would not be doing teams if there weren't a damned good reason for it.