alanschu

Never thought I'd be able to call Hades a Neo-Conservative.

These groups are not mutually exclusive.

Well it seems I'm not done with this. You asked my why I feel they'll lose in 5. I gave my explanation. I don't think they'll do well. I've seen teams that went hot into the playoffs lose in the first round, and I believe St. Louis will be the same. Then you decided to go and say "oh it surprised me that you of all people." Here's a question for you. What does St. Louis' hot play down the stretch have to do with anything? I see no precedent that it's an indicator of post-season success. What does St. Louis going 2-2 against Vancouver in the regular season have to do with anything? Is there a precedent that regular season success has a bearing on success in a playoff series? You want to play the "oh it surprised me card?" I considered saying the same thing to you. I presented my case, citing evidence of other teams that had similar hot streaks as a way of substantiating my position. All you said was "Hey they finished the regular season strong." So what? Many teams have finished the regular season strong. I can only assume that you're making the assertion that "teams that finish the regular season strong will do well in the playoffs." Otherwise why bother saying it? I provided a counterpoint, that teams can indeed finish the regular season strong, and still do poorly in the playoffs. At least I supported my statement with actual data, which I would have expected someone of your technical background to have appreciated. Instead it's you reiterating "Oh well they did well against Vancouver, including beating them 4-2 in their most recent game. They're also hot down the stretch." All I have to say is "So what?" I provided actual data indicating that that's not a very strong predictor. All you've said is "nah doesn't matter in this case." Why not? Unless I am mistaken, you claimed that St. Louis finishing the regular season hot and having an even 2-2 record against Vancouver as a predictor for the series being a close one right? Am I correct in this assumption? How the **** is your assumption and use of predictors valid, but my counterpoints asserting, based on ACTUAL DATA, that your predictors are in fact poor ones, somehow invalid? If I remember correctly, you're an engineer. If someone in your field makes a claim indicating some type of possible predictor of an outcome in some situation, and you yourself present a host of data that shows similar situations where the claimant's supposed predictors were incorrect, you'd accept a response that goes "well those are different situations." Your claims of a hot end to this season, in addition to an even matchup during the regular season, would be excellent predictors if there wasn't a host of data that contradicted them. As for the "technical background" shot, this IS technical background. Machine Learning is all about looking at past data and trying to make a prediction. You made claims based on this season and made predictions based on it. I found examples based on your prediction criteria that proved a counterpoint to your claim. By stating "oh well that doesn't mean anything in this case" is patently absurd, and you basically just told an entire field of Artificial Intelligence research that their entire foundation for making predictions about future events has no bearing on anything. If you're not going to look at empirical data to make your predictions, then what is the point? The fact that you've caught 1000 Salmon in a particular fishing area, and only 3 Cod, has no bearing on what the fish caught is going to be. But you sure as **** can make a pretty decent prediction on what the next fish caught will actually be. Is it perfect? No. Predictive measures rarely are, unless you've determined a specific causal relationship.

Pronger also played for Hartford EDIT: I remember that season. Pronger's MVP season where he finished +52. That Blues team was scary good. San Jose shocked them by going up 3-1 in the series though.

I thought Stardock was championed by those that would otherwise pirate, for not using DRM, and hence rewarded by said pirates purchasing their games?

All it shows is that it's not uncommon for teams that do well in the regular season to have completely different results in the postseason. Sorry I'm picking on your team, but you're starting to be obtuse now. You made a claim, and I provided previous examples that counteracted your claim (citing that a team that goes into the playoffs hot need not necessarily do well in the post-season) that led to me drawing my conclusion. Closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears, and going "lalalalalalalalalalala" doesn't dispute the information for why I drew my conclusion. Hockey games are all individual, and on any given night any team can beat another team. The fact that St. Louis finished the season very strong isn't lost on me. I don't think they'll carry it over into the postseason. Given history, it's not exactly like I am making an off the wall decision here, given that there's been plenty of examples of teams that were significantly better than this St. Louis Blues team that lost to teams I would consider inferior to these Vancouver Canucks, despite having better records against these teams and hot play down the stretch of the regular season. I provided two examples (one from Hockey and one from Basketball) to illustrate that it is, in fact, possible for a hot team (or a team that dominated another team during the regular season) to lose in a playoff series. If you're not happy with the rationale for why I based my decision, then that is your problem. Quite frankly, I am done discussing this. Enjoy the rest of the playoffs.

Haha. I only caught the first period of the Canucks-Blues, but it looked like a pretty intense game. Washington-New York was a gooder for sure. As I kind of suspected New Jersey had their way with Carolina.

He must have had a head start! Volo: I think it's just that your statement is like saying the Sun is hot haha.

Nice little play by Mottau to get the first goal for New Jersey. EDIT: I thought Tambellini's press conference was a good one.

Everyone always groans and complains.

The Canucks beat the Blues 3-0 just 30 days ago. The other time St. Louis beat the Canucks, Jason Labarbera was in net. my only point with this is that those cases have no bearing on THIS case. Only because you don't want it to - I obviously feel that St. Louis will be similar. The point is, history has several examples of teams going into matchups with big advantages on paper, only to have the outcome of the series go to the other team. The second hottest team in the league over the time St. Louis was #1 was the Vancouver Canucks. Because Edmonton beat Detroit doesn't guarantee that St. Louis won't win. I bring up these examples (also, Detroit beat Edmonton twice during their 20 game point streak to finish up the 2006 season) because it shows that just as easily, St. Louis' regular season finish doesn't preclude them having success in the post season either.

Attackless for months. What are you and I doing differently?

Agreed. I find mods today tend to be of higher quality than back in the day. They also extend the lifespan of games, which is another plus.

i'm just pointing out that there is no evidence vancouver is capable of a 4-1 rout over st. louis after only going 2-2 in regular season play (the last time they played, the blues won 4-2). winning, yes, but 4-1, low probability, particularly given how hot the blues have been in the past two months. face it, they went from 15th seed to 6th by winning repeatedly. the goalie difference is immaterial, too: luongo has it over mason by 0.004 sv. and 0.07 GAA, hardly worth noting in a 7 game series. as for the rest of your post, i'm not sure how any of it is material. sometimes better teams are upset, other times not. the head to head matchup in this case is all that matters, and there's no clear "better team," except for a guess, which is why i asked "how did you come up with that?" personally, i haven't watched enough of the blues (nor the canucks) to see how well they've been doing. we don't get them on tv here in CO unless they're ranked high, which they haven't been in several years. all i have are stats, which pits them not too far apart. we shall see. i do give the edge to vancouver in one potentially key area: experience in the playoffs. mason hasn't ever been there from what i gather. taks edit: i should add, the blues lack of a stanley cup is almost purely the result of poor goaltending in the playoffs. they've repeatedly had some of the best goalies in regular season play with absolutely horrendous playoff performances. my fingers are crossed for mason this time around. Losing a playoff series doesn't even imply a rout. Edmonton once lost to Dallas 4-0 but it was considered one of the closest series of the playoffs, because every game was a 1 goal game with 3 of them going to overtime. The other stuff I posted was to demonstrate that what happens in the regular season doesn't necessarily have much of an indication of what has happened in the playoffs. The head to head matchup had Cleveland spanking Chicago. The head to head matchup had Detroit spanking Edmonton. I don't think that St. Louis will be able to continue their success into the playoffs. Is there any reason why they won't be able to? Not really. Any team can get hot, just like the Oilers in 2006. I just don't think they will.

Taurens lost their racial?

Still waiting for that one to happen. I don't follow the development of trojan horses, but historically the definition of them (and why they differ from computer viruses and worms and whatnot) is that they are an application that gets run with the expectation of one thing happening, and another (usually bad) thing actually occurs. I am unaware of Trojan Horses that don't require user action to take effect. Which ones do? It's news to me. I keep hearing stories that people post on the internet about how they left their firewall down for mere minutes and in that time people already started to attack them. I set up a network connection and port scanner and was a bit disappointed that I didn't seem to be getting persistently attacked

EA and other companies disagree. For all of the evils of how money mongering people demonize them to be, if they felt they didn't get any return on investment, they wouldn't do it.

It used to cost 50 gold for a respec. With the dual spec (and 1000 gold down payment) it no longer does.

I find modding communities to be so much better now. You might get more ****, but that's just because more people are doing it. You get more gems too.

Yup. I think the idea was that people were respeccing anyway, they just made it less of a hassle for people. It is annoying waiting in your Naxx run because someone needs to quickly go and respec.

I do still check my system from time to time. The only time I got a trojan which nuked my computer was when I was stupid and ran a .exe file from a friend. This was in 2000. But fair enough, I've never been burned by it, despite ample opportunity. You also don't find me running unknown applications off the internet or from email.

Slippery Slope. I "defend" them because I think people's ire is misplaced. I am upset at the pirates for forcing companies to think that DRM is necessary.

An equally flimsy argument.

This sentence makes no sense what so ever. It's absurd to be able to get activations back when you uninstall the game? If Electronic Arts feels that casual piracy (which isn't stopped by people de-authorizing a game and then giving the disc to a friend...it just means that only 3 people can have it installed at any given time) is best combated shortly after release, then yes. For better or worse, releasing it at the time would have effectively made the DRM pointless from the very beginning.