[Gay bombs, invisible armor, and remote controlled sharks.]

While the article brings up a few freaky examples of things with questionable use on a battlefield, some of the stuff mentions is quite far along in development towards practical usage. Take the microwave riot disperser we had a thread about some months ago for example. Other examples brought up in the article that aren't quite so whacky, like the prothestitcs or self-diagnosing gear would have huge benefits in terms of lives, and the prosthetics would obviously have some serious civilian applications.

 

 

 

But I don't get the ESP [cabbage]. Yeah, yeah, every once in a while you hear something about how US military research programmes conclude it works, but I don't recall ever hearing anything about it being turned to practical use, or even development towards practial use.

 

 

 

Thanks for leaving a discussion there, with your opinion.

Calm down dear, it's a forum thread.

[Jobs for 13yr olds]

Huh, why? :P It was meant as a serious comment. A paperround is the kind of thing a paperboy has, right? You can do that from your 13th here.

 

 

 

The originial post features a subject and three sentences. One of these three sentences is; "So I was wondering APART from a paper round, what is there?"

 

 

 

Why not just type '+1'?

[Jobs for 13yr olds]

Get a paperround or something.

 

 

 

I actually laughed when I read that.

 

 

 

Washing windows is another practical household option. Not very complicated, easy to learn, yet taxing enough for people not to want to do it themselves. Takes a while too.

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

Open your sound options and disable error speech.

[You can see stars in the daytime]

And now, all of a sudden, I'm challenging your manhood? O...K. Trust me, my participation on these forums isn't with that intention. I don't really know where you got that idea from, paranoia, maybe. E-cred, manhood...all these things you've brought up, not I. So yeah, enjoy that discussion with yourself. :\ Reading into stuff that isn't there FTL.

So... What did you mean with "Sorry... Who are you?" then?

[Worst reason for being fired]

I'd say anything that has to do with discrimination, whether it's skin colour, religion or sexual preference.

 

 

 

If you served yourself that'll most likely be why.

 

 

 

Is that the worst reason for being fired?

[Louisiana residents? Banning saggy trousers.]

So wait... There's people here who are actually offended by a fashion that shows not skin, but a kind of cloth we have chosen to designate 'underwear'?

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

I really can't explain it better than I already can BlueTear.

 

 

 

You never really did answer me though, whats your gear like? I promise you that no well-geared lock is going to fear a rogue.

 

 

 

Also a large portion of your damage comes from DoTs. My resiliance does nothing with that. While I'm losing a large amount of damage, you aren't.

 

 

 

But once again, when I'm fully stunlocked til I die, I do no damage. I don't know if I ended up watching the full version of that movie, or just a trailer (patching TBC on my newly aquired laptop starting with only originial WoW discs from 2005 so I'm trying to preserve bandwidht >_>), but there's a couple of points worth raising.

 

 

 

First of all, I'd like to point out that the warlock did pretty much exactly what I predicted; The spell left at his disposal was shadowburn and the _instant cast_ DoTs - and since CoA does 40% of it's damage on the last 3 ticks, CloS'ing out of it means more than you might think, reapply or no reapply - no immolate nor anything else with a casting time until the last drain in the fight I saw. And by then he'd used the felguard stun to gain some distance (Though I wonder how the heck that was possible... Crippling poison FTW?). I didn't quite expect him to solve that problem by spamming shadowburn (lol, I'll have to try that. It's as likely to piss me off as the rogue, but occasionally, it'll be worth it) but it worked out. It was not, however, always a win, nor a crushing victory - 452hp is pretty much a lifetap margin remaining.

 

 

 

Second of all, why are destro/affliction 'locks not getting anywhere in the arena? 'cause they die, plain and simple. If warlocks are _forced_ to chose a particular specc to beat rogue/warriors (and both felgaurd and shadowburn are talented), and then and only then they have a shot, well, I'm not really seeing that as a case for rogues needing a buff. Especially not when it's still not a guaranteed victory nor a crushing one.

 

Really that explains it better than I ever can. Like I said you really can't have any idea if you are running around with a low amount of hp and resiliance.

I'm totally clueless because my PvP gear isn't extensive - and it isn't, resilience is still somewhere below 75, but mostly, I'm not soullink - but you know exactly how troublesome these issues are, without having the same gear as where the troubles would arise? Please, give me some credit for more than a year and a half of playing as a warlock.

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

Next patch players can trinket out of our blind which means that our stunlocks will be even shorter and/or we won't be able to blind > bandage.

 

*shrug* Fear's the same.

 

I'll put it into a bit more of a mathmatical idea for you.

 

 

 

Lets first take a rogue versus, say, a warlock when both are in blues.

 

 

 

the rogue is sporting 8k hp, a little bit of resiliance (not much) and can crit backstabs for 2k. (we'll use a 30/0/31 build for this purpose)

 

 

 

The warlock is sporting around 8k hp along with his other stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

Now a rogues stunlock at the best can be something like this:

 

 

 

cheapshot > backstab > Kidney shot > backstab > Blind > Stealth > Sap > cheapshot > backstab > kidney shot > backstab.

 

 

 

Cheap shot = 4 seconds, kidney shot is 6 seconds with 5/5. This full stunlock would allow roughly 20 seconds of uninterupted hits. This is assuming that the warlock does not trinket out of the blind or kidney shot.

 

 

 

 

 

with a 30/0/31 build I'll have 100 energy. Backstab costs 60 energy. Energy ticks every two seconds for 20.

 

 

 

During the course of 20 seconds that will mean that the rogue can have a total of 200 energy regenerated during the stunlock.

 

 

 

The entire stunlock in cost is as following (talented)

 

 

 

45 > 60 > 25 > 60 > 15 > 30 > (regen to full) > 45 > 60 > 25 > 60.

 

 

 

As far as damage goes we can assume a rogue in that gear has a 20% chance to crit. Add in the 30% and backstab will crit half of the time on average.

 

 

 

There are 4 backstabs in that stunlock. On average that means it will do 2k+2k+1k+1k damage not counting white damage, a total of 6k. That means that arguably we can throw in another cold blood eviserate after all of this or something and destroy the said lock.

 

 

 

Again this is without the trinket put into play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now lets look at it like this:

 

 

 

The rogue has 11k hp, 30% crit and his backstabs on a target without resiliance crit for, say 2600.

 

 

 

The lock has 12k hp and 400 resiliance.

 

 

 

 

 

Now again lets say that the lock doesn't have a trinket. I'll add in that a bit later.

 

 

 

cheapshot > backstab > Kidney shot > backstab > Blind > Stealth > Sap > cheapshot > backstab > kidney shot > backstab.

 

 

 

Again we do that combo versus the lock. Now lets look at the damage.

 

 

 

backstab, like I said, with a top end weapon is probably critting for around 2600 on a non-resiliance target. 400 resilliance is an 11% less chance to get critical hits and reduces critical damage by 20%. That means that this backstab will crit for 2080 while it will hit for roughly 1300.

 

 

 

The rogue has 30% chance to crit, or a 60% with backstab. However with resiliance that is lowered down to a 49% chance to crit backstab, or for numbers sakes its a half again.

 

 

 

So the damage could be something like 2k + 2k + 1.3k + 1.3k. That is 6.6k damage on the lock, only 600 more damage then what a blue geared rogue would do to a blue geared lock. And yes these numbers are fairly accurate.

 

 

 

Now at this point the lock is at half hp. While in the other fight the rogue could easily just finish off the lock without much trouble (one more hit really) this fight is different. The white damage may add in another 1.5k but nothing big, hit rating is rare to find in PvP gear.

 

 

 

So you chug half his HP off, then lay down and die? You have not kicked him to lock a single spell school, you have not CloS'ed - and depending on when you use it you can completely negate a DoTstack, a deathcoil, a fear or all three, while offering another five seconds in which the warlock can do just about nothing - or poisoned. You're undead, just like 8 out of ten rogues, so you've got WotF to cover your [wagon] aswell. 'cause guess what, once you've poisoned a warlock, his deathcoil is spent and you're hitting him, he has no way to get you out of his face. And then there's the trinket. Garrote silences, doesn't it?

 

 

 

If the damage differential is only 600 (and not having played a rogue I'm taking it at face value, even though most deaths to rogues do not involve blinds or saps, nor does my little brother who play a rogue use them in that manner) for the rogue, what kind of damage differential are we looking at for the warlock? Well, let's see, how much damage do we reckon he's going to do in the first example? 500 or less? Yeah, you know, if he isn't incapacitated, you might take more damage, but you're not exactly likely to go *squish* seeing as without the extra HP, the damage you take is less than my lifetap margin.

 

 

 

And then there's the nature of that damage. First of all, scratch most spells with a casting time. If you kick a fear you've locked the shadow school, which means no DoTs nor deathcoil. You kick fire only if you have some other means to get out of fear. DoT whoring is out, CloS clears the best built DoT stack, and chances are you've already used your deathcoil by that time. Waitaminute... You can negate the instant cast DoTs, and anything with a casting time likely to do damage. That leaves me shadowburn and shadowfury, both talented. Both of which are affected by _your_ resilience, like anything that isn't a DoT.

 

Also keep in mind this is 1v1. The arena is not 1v1 but a 2v2 and there is going to be another class beating on you during this time most likely.

 

Doubt it. I do arena's with a rogue, and we've had some seriously stupidly long series of fights where we've won, but I've died. You approach stealthed, so they target me first. 'course, then we usually sap one guy and nuke the crap out of the other guy.

 

 

 

Also I forgot to mention but rogues are extremely squishy when we don't have our opponent incapacitated. Our armor is equal to that of clothies with buffs (since all clothies have some sort of armor buff).

 

Lol, yeah, except warlocks chose between extra armour and extra spell damage. The armour one is not more common.

 

 

 

 

 

While rogues after our initial stunlock really can't keep our opponent at bay other squishy classes can. A mage can kite someone for pretty much forever if they know how to play and a warlock will only have to suffer or drain tank through a bit of diminishing returns with fear. (not like you need it as a soul link build anyways).

 

 

 

You deadly throw the mage and if you don't manage to kick + CloS + trinket + WotF out of the warlock's fear long enough to kill him... And that's just against rogues.

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

No I don't blue. But if you read my post on the forums you would have understood that. :)

 

 

 

The point is a warlock is going to have trouble with rogues in lower "gear tiers" so to speak. If you're running around in blues or PvE epics you'll get destroyed. Resilience and hp destroy rogues in the arena.

 

 

 

 

Again, which cloth users are you not going to kick the crap out of? 12K soullink warlocks, well, sure, but it's not like they're much use anywhere else. Depending on spec, the mage is going to kill you with hugeass crits - then again, at that point you should have comparable resilience and stamina as well.

 

 

 

And that's completely ignoring the idea that *maybe* rogue's biggest use in PvP is no longer huge amounts of damage, but it's disabling abilities. As someone said in the thread, go stunlock a healer and see what happends.

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

Sprint, CloS and stuns don't last long.

 

 

 

I do 2v2 arena with my little brother, who plays a rogue. The average fight is what, between 1-3 minutes? It's not about lasting long, it's about lasting long enough to get the job done. A CloS eating a deathcoil, or preventing it's use in those 5 seconds is can very well make or break the fight completely.

 

 

 

Either way I'd be willing to bet you don't have 12k + hp and 400 + resiliance like the bracket i'm talking about.

 

 

 

Oh, so I need to play it to see where things are going. Do you have that much hp and resilience?

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

Nad, what the heck?

 

 

 

Agreed. We are supposed to be strong versus clothies which, in a sense, we are. But only in lower brackets or gear tiers.

 

 

 

What lvl 70 cloth user are you not strong against today? And I'm defining strong as "will win 75%+ of the times". As someone who played a lvl 60 warlock (well, two) pre-TBC and a lvl 70 warlock post-TBC - which is basically me winning over an equal leveled rogue going from 95% of the times to less than 5% - I really don't get it.

 

 

 

PvP mobility - You have CloS, crippling poison, vanish, sprint, stun. This means that you have a complete negation of any effects I put on you, an effective slow, a get out of combat and sight, a movement speed increase *and* a crowd control ability (set of abilities). How are you not one of the most mobile classes in PvP? A mage can blink. Of course, mages are squishy + garrote + deadly throw. CloS and sprint and they should be dead by the time sprint is up. A warlock can... Well, just about nothing that CloS can't negate. A priest, CloS. Add crippling poison to what you're fighting. Oh look, just like warriors, you play a class that can actually _pin_ an opponent in battle.

 

 

 

So you can reduce the PvP mobility of what you're fighting to almost zero. You can use crowd control and burst DPS to knock 'em over. And in the instances where this doesn't work - i.e. warriors pretty much, possibly feral druids - well... Some fights you just aren't going to win. And increasing the mobility of one of the most mobile classes in the game is just not going to balance properly.

[Loopholes in the Senate Immigration Bill]

Think about this, non-US citizens wearing the uniform of American soldiers.

 

I was under the impression that citizens of Puerto Rico can already join the US armed forces?

These troops would be more likely to fire on US citizens and follow extreme orders.

Er, why?

 

Every empire, when it represses its own people, brings in foreign troops to do the job. Urban warfare drills we have covered over the years show that the military is being prepared for this.

 

Lol.

[What makes school the "right thing"?]

Thanks you. And I totally agree with you. If you wanted to just move to one of those islands today, it wouldn't work because of todays current society. But it everybody lived how I was describing, (and those places weren't over populated), it would work. And thanks for correcting me on the bacteria thing. Small mistake on my part.

 

 

 

So, has humanity ever lived under such ideal and nice conditions?

[The official World of Warcraft thread.]

Man I'm just entering the levels where you quest in Strangethorn Vale. Gank heaven! Must be the place bored 70s go to kill lowbies. It's pretty annoying. You basically have to be with a group

 

 

 

Yeah, Gankthorn Vale has always been bad. Last time I leveled a character there, I only spent "off hours" questing in STV, then did Desolace during "prime hours" so I'd spent more time getting exp and less time plotting my revenge...

[Sid Meier's Civilization 4.]

I own 2 and 3, never played 1. Like both those (I've had 2 longer, so I have more stuff stored up on it; but 3 is fun too), I might get 4, I dunno.

 

Aside from graphics, what does civ4 have that makes it better than civ3? I'm curious.

 

 

 

Well, I never really got into CivIII - I prefered Alpha Centauri due to the freedom in unit design and terrain manipulation - but the culture and cultural borders system in CivIV is very nice, and I think it's been expanded on since CivIII. It's also using a civic system much more akin to the that of AC (I always did miss running an environmentalist fascist state...) where you match different pieces togheter for different result. The religion system is also quite engaging, it adds an interesting strategic consideration to the development of your policies, as well as simulate how religion has been a very important aspect of human civilization.

 

 

 

Combat is also quite a bit more interesting as far as I've found. With defensive terrain bonuses, unit upgrades, and unit bonuses, the composition of your armies becomes more important. I had a truly epic battle in a zone of plains with jungle and to the north, and temperate friendly territory to the south. I don't remember ever maneuvering as much in a turn based strategy game as I had to then to draw the enemy out of position - the sucker had a considerably larger army running around on those plains, and the composition meant I did a lot of hiding behind rivers, in mountains and forests to utilize my defensive bonuses. While these were factors in earlier games, it was mostly a matter of having one or two extra units who would soak up the damage. In CivIV you need to pay a lot more attention to your units.

 

 

 

 

 

... man, now I want to play.

[Day 3: Asia's Slaves]

It is sickening that this stuff goes on. I do question why someone would blame ourselves or other western nations like it is our fault it happens because we haven't gone to war to stop it. Don't call western nations names like they are the ones that did something wrong. The people that are wrong are the freaks that go to these prostitutes, the government officials of these countries that are paid off or allow the industry to go on and the people that run the system and kidnap the women and girls. That is who your anger should be directed at because those are the people that did something wrong.

 

 

 

Seen any numbers on how many trafficking victims are trafficked into first world countries? How many of the customers who actually keep the industry ridicolously profitable compared to the punishments?

 

 

 

It's not third-world males who has trouble paying for their own food, that much is certain.

[Just how bad is an integrated graphics card anyway?]

yes, I have. Also, many of my friends ONLY play on laptops. My best friend used a laptop for WoW, and he got perfectly good frame rates. The only problem was that it did take a while to get back to the OS after exiting. Come to find out, it does that on my machine too, and just about every machine I've seen it played on (except one particular mac :P )

 

 

 

How good a laptop does he run, and does he raid? (raiding is quite likely to be the most resource intense type of WoW gaming)

 

 

 

I asked my dad - who isn't busy being in the military - to look around until my next furlough when I'll actually buy my new piece of equipment, and the guy at the store he went to basically said you'd never get a computer capable of what I wanted it to do at that price range, but tried to double it. I personally call complete and utter BS on that, the equalent of 900ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì is quite enough looking at the spec's in theory, but it still made me curious as to how good the laptops that are used for WoW are.

 

 

 

And yeah, the RAM should be enough. I saw no major difference in performance when my stationary RAM got upgraded from 1.5 to 2, where as it was definitely felt going from 512 to 1.5.

[Just how bad is an integrated graphics card anyway?]

Skipping the integrated graphics card (though I'm keeping that thing about the monitors in mind when I upgrade my stationary. Last time I dual screened my gfx card... uh... fried itself >_>) and going for a standalone one then. Also seriously considering buying blocks of coolant you use in portable refridgerators and use 'em in conjuction with the computer.

 

 

 

The weather on Gotland is friggin' making *me* melt...

[Underage Drinking]

It isn't about whether it's brain altering or not. It's about trust. Your trsuting a 16 year old to go kill people but not to drink.

 

Concepts like "judgement impairing" and "brain altering" just aren't getting through to you are they? It doesn't matter how much I trust the person, regardless of age, when they are sober. When under the influence of alcohol, they will not act the same way they would have when sober.

 

Assumption, many people under the age of 21 are mature in how they drink.

 

Living in a country were the drinking age is 18, I find that statement fairly laughable. Add to that the fact that physiologically (that's me fixing the typo) has more to do with the growth state of their bodies than anything else.

 

Thats why the required age to drink is lower in most other countries. I see the physological effects of seeing people killed, and indeed killing people much more adverse than drinking.

 

... despite the typo, physiology and psychology is pretty far apart. Unless you're going to make a really interesting argument about the effects of combat?

[Underage Drinking]

The decsion to drink responsibly. Im sure the majority of people here who have drank before 21 have never hurt or harmed anyone when under the influence.

 

 

 

First of all, I'd like to point out the difference between hurting someone and responsible drinking. Generally speaking, if you don't remember what you did last night because you were too drunk, it wasn't responsible, regardless of hurt inflicted on your fellow humans. Second of all, once you've started drinking, your judgement is going to be impaired. There is no getting around this fact.

 

 

 

Drunk you, is not sober you. Drunk you do not neccesarily share your moral codex, your thoughts, idea's, opinions and behaviour of the sober you. Most importantly, drunk you does not neccesarily make the same decisions a sober you would have done. Saying "I'll never drink and drive" while sober is one thing, and I'll happily applaud you for saying it, but am I going to trust you, 100%, to stick by that decision if enough chemicals are cruising your synapses?

 

 

 

Heck. No. Your judgement is chemically impaired. You can talk about trust til your face turns blue, brain altering chemistry is still going to be at work.

 

 

 

The risks of drinking is much less than the risk of being killed during war.

 

The phrase that comes to mind is "in charge of one's mental faculties.

 

 

 

And to the rest, don't you think that the army takes a responsible person to do that job? If you arn't trusting someone with the ability to handle drink responsibly then even after training what reason is there to trust them to do their job which is much more dangerous to themselves and others, properly?

 

 

 

Lol, I suppose it could just be the whole brain altering chemistry thing again. I just tend to favour people without chemicals messing with their heads to do things, properly.

 

 

 

Your basically saying, here take a gun and go kill. But don't take a beer, you're not responsible enough yet.

 

Or maybe not physologically mature enough in terms of the effects?

[Just how bad is an integrated graphics card anyway?]

I'm putting some serious thought into expanding my personal tech park with a laptop, because I'll end up loads of time away from home in the coming six months. My only requirements so far is cheap as possible, but still able to put out a decent performance on games like WoW and CivIV,so we're talking 1.6ghz+ processor and at least one 1gig of RAM, but most importantly a decent graphic's card.

 

 

 

Looking around in retail site's, there's one top candidate - HP's NX9420 (without vista, 'cause that means I save 200ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì+ and I don't need vista to run WoW...). It has acceptable processor speed, 1 gig of RAM and a ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256 MB. I've read a bit about it and it seems like it will perform up to the spec's I want.

 

 

 

Then I wandered into Dell's homepage and found a laptop with 2 gig's of RAM, slightly lower processor speed called 640M Inspiron (N066M7). Price is pretty much the same. But I'd get Vista (which I'm fairly ambivalent about) and an integrated graphic card called IntelÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî Graphics Media Accelerator 950.

 

 

 

Now from what I've heard, integrated graphic's cards are just a major no-no due to their crappy performance. But I'd be looking at a pretty large RAM increase, and WoW eats RAM pretty fast. Opinions on which option would give me the better performance?

 

 

 

(Completely different suggestions for laptop's capable of a similar performance wouldn't be too bad either)

[~ Help Me Make My iTunes Work... ~]

Most modern firewalls (read: all I've ever heard of) recognizes significant change in programs and then ask you again whether you want to allow the modified version of the program to access the internet. It'll work fine, then you update it, and don't properly give it firewall access and it dies on you. Been there, done that. That's where I'd start; Open you firewall config (most likely from someone near the clock) and then find the list of program access, locate iTunes, and make sure it's checked to allow all traffic.

 

 

 

Which firewall are you running?

[Underage Drinking]

Your not trusting those who drink to make correct decisions. The majority of people still have common sense.

 

Is this before, or after crippling your decision making faculties with chemicals?

 

 

 

If you don't trust 16 year olds to drink responsibly then why do you trsut them to use a gun responsibly when in a combat situation. You know, bullets flying at them and civilians running everywhere?

 

 

 

They may have had training tobe responsilbe in the army, just like they have had lessons to tell them to drink responsibly.

 

'cause it's not like military grade weapons training is so different in depth, scope and layout from high school classes where they go "drinking is bad, 'mkay?" to make the comparison not only invalid, but ridicolously so?

 

 

 

For starters, there's the whole theoretical education that has to be passed before you get to touch a weapon. If you don't pass it, you don't get your weapon. Period.

 

 

 

Then there's the whole handling the weapon. Should your instructors at any point during the weeks or months (depending on what we're learning, and how well we're meant to shoot with it) - not hours - feel you are not observing proper safety regulations, they'll take your gun away and send you back to stage one - or if the severity is grave enough, just plain not train you, and you don't get to handle a weapon.

 

 

 

And amusingly one, of the first lessons involves the use of alcohol, and other substances that alter your brain chemistry. You do not, ever, EVER, use these when you're going to be shooting. Zero tolerance.

 

 

 

Funny thing that really. They train you for ages, rigorously, and then they don't actually trust you to handle the weapon while even recovering from the influence of alcohol. It's almost like they think all those weeks of training is going to be forgotten, or ignored, while alcohol is busy fiddling with your brain chemistry, altering your perceptions and behaviour.

 

 

 

 

 

Red *hint* tags regarding important paragraph's available on request.

[Underage Drinking]

So you would trust someone with a gun who you can't trust not to drink and harm others or themself?

 

So you're asking me, would I trust a sober person with the proper training to handle a gun to handle said gun in a correct fashion, or would I trust someone under the influence of a chemical substance known to impair judgement, causes memory loss or just plain some really messed up decisions.

 

 

 

... is this a trick question?