taks

oh, btw, on first glance i don't think you got anything wrong. what happens is that the velocities do not add linearly, though at slow speeds, much less than the speed of light, the linear approximation works fine, within any reasonable measurement error. at higher velocities, the linear approximation begins to diverge to the point that two objects approaching each other at the speed of light appear to be approaching only at the speed of light w.r.t. each others' view point. oh, i say "velocity" rather than speed because velocity includes direction, but in a 1-D application it is immaterial. taks

most schools introduce relativity in a first-course on atomic/nuclear phycics, aka a-bomb. if you're really that interested, i'd suggest taking it. however, you will need significant calculus and probably differential equations work (as well as the first couple classical physics classes) to understand a lot of the mathematics behind it all. i agree, however, it is extremely counterintuitive and difficult to grasp in general. were i to go for another degree, this would be one of my options (the other being statistics, but my school does not offer any advanced statistics degree). taks

i gotcha... it's been so long that all i remember is that level scaling was an issue. i couldn't tell you when, or against what, that i noticed it, but i did. that was hardly my ONLY reason for disliking the game, just the one that sticks in my mind probably because plenty of people gripe about it (and i read that more than anything). i agree with gromnir, and i probably played for 15 hours. after i did carbon copy after carbon copy of the strange gates i finally just stopped playing. taks

hmmm... did not see them. must restart. like i said, i can debug console them in, but that's no what i wanted to do. somebody mentioned that there is also an associated quest, know anything about that? taks

so, where did those that got the mystra's blessing from gamestop find it? it is apparently and item, and i even heard a rumor that there's some book with a quest you find in the same place, both in the barrows, yet i did not see it. i can add them through the debug console (well, the blessing), but i'd rather _find_ the damn thing since semi-paid for it... (no actual money, just the fact that i got it from gamestop). taks

i recall some of the old C-64 games that were ported to work on modern PCs used to do this. fortunately, some of them came with timer adjustments (as i recall), that let you insert delays between operations to allow operation at normal human perception ability. otherwise, everything looked like it was on a perma-haste spell. taks

hehe, when does 4 gigs = 3 gigs? when using a microsoft operating system. the 64-bit operating systems are really the only way i've found to actually use all 4 gigs. i'm not in a hurry to step up to 64-bit land and step down to driver hell... isn't the raptor SCSI, btw? personally, i have no way to use more than a few hundred GB at the moment, so i'm sticking with the seagate drives that have been doing me righteous for several years now. taks

i'm probably too biased by the D&D combat method whether TB or RT+pause - simply from extended use and abuse since the days of the gold box games. i did not like gothic's combat either, and i found it far superior to that which is implemented in oblivion/elder scrolls (though mechanically more difficult). taks

i never played long enough for them to stop getting stronger. taks

goblins then... taks

i am thinking more on the correlation/causation issue, btw. i just don't have time to really put it to paper at the moment (so to speak). i'm working from the house right now (i pick up my child at 1 on T/TH), and i really need to pay attention to that, and school tonight. no rest for me i suppose. i'll come back later. taks

and they continue to update it, verify signatures, and remove people if requested. you still have opinion on opinion. neither are the wiki comment valid, nor are the 19,000 signatures valid to formulate any reasonable argument about consensus. i merely pointed out that there are "many" scientists that disagree. even if half of them no longer wish to be on the list, there's still a lot. 30 of the 1400 from SA, which holds a pretty high opinion of GW theory to begin with. phrases like "crudely extrapolating" and similar should raise eyebrows, btw. and the notion that "a core of 200 climate researches" is anything meaningful is absurd. the climate science field covers any analytical background. climate science uses concepts from signal processing, statistical analysis, chemistry, physics, etc. to rule those professions out because they are not "climate scientists" is unbelievably narrowminded. ok, i'll grant that you don't use the consensus, and are merely pointing it out. the true "consensus" however, is not measured by how many organizations are "on board" or how many people sign a petition. really what we would need to get at here is a survey of all the literature, which has been done. GD linked to the recent study which actually looked deeper into the oreskes study: less than 20% agreed with all the conclusions. as i've noted many times, using the term most scientists is really only applicable to one concept: the planet is warming, or has warmed. the oreskes study? yes, it was horribly flawed and has been discredited. which i am doing. personally, though nobody seems to understand this, i'm pretty apathetic towards an opinion one way or the other. i'm more worried about cooling since that will increase death and poverty. i'd prefer there to be warming, but sadly, those pushing the political side of things are using this possibility as a means to further limit human growth... oh well. enough of this off topic stuff! we aren't really disagreeing anywhere and it is not furthering any intellectual discourse. taks

just like any other niche market, once the playing field levels out, and there are many choices but a limited market, you won't see massive incomes such as these. it may take a while, however, and it is hard to gauge what the market actually is. taks

no, not really. the on-topic replies are really about what the meaning of causation is, and how that relates to correlation. it is in the context of GW, which is primarily based on correlations, and trends, but there was no intent (originally) to get into which side is right or wrong. more just what it means in general. i see meta enjoys hume as much as i do. i intend to read some of his work as a result of this, btw. ultimately, i think science and hume will never agree. taks

yes, OSIM. no more than the union of concerned scientists. you'll note that this link has a "disputed" tag on it regarding neutrality. interesting that you are advocating an argument by consensus as if it means something, particularly given your logic/philosophical background. i only posted the OSIM stuff to point out that many scientists disagree. also, that all these organizations agree is immaterial, and not surprising. most scientists don't actually dig into the details, either. they read the news like you and i do and simply assume all of what is being reported is the whole story. on the surface, it really does make "sense," it is not until you dig deep and look at what's going on underneath, the uncertainty, causality implied from weak correlation, etc., that you begin to doubt. personally, i have a particular interest in the reconstructions that mann, et. al. have done. they generally use a method that i use in order to isolate "signals" in the proxies that they have. these proxies are usually tree-ring cores. tree-rings respond in a non-linear fashion to a variety of inputs, many of which are also correlated. however, they are using linear methods that require uncorrelated inputs in order to generate meaningful data. by hypothesis, two of the biggest growth factors CO2 and temperature, are correlated, rendering any results from PCA meaningless. they also manipulate the data from these rings, and have failed to report results that don't match their initial hypothesis (e.g. the failed r2 statistic). as i noted, given your apprehension towards assigning any cause-effect based on correlation, many of these shenanigans should make your hair rise. it is quite amazing the audacity of the leading scientists that are actually publishing. taks

no, favoring the ideas of someone that seems to think of causation as an invention of the human mind, over hard science, is a joke. that you would support such a concept is no surprise. science doesn't get done by people that sit around and think about what is going on in the universe, it gets done by people that do something about it. i also read hume's billiard example and it is equally incompatible with the real concepts of the real world. folks like you and qwerty can think about how much meaning he imparts on our lives, but in the end, folks like me are using the concepts of causation to do everything it is you do in life. all technology, all science, indeed all progress, is due to science, not unprovable thought problems. taks

um, sorry, but i made my points pretty clear and i never said there can be a without-a-doubt link between correlation and causation. in fact, i even remarked that "proof" only exists in the mathematical realm. i've always said "implied," except on the issue of causation itself. the burning cotton example is definite cause and effect, in spite of the lofty notions of esoteric philosophers. it is not simply correlation. based on what i read of humes, which admittedly isn't much, i fundamentally disagree with him. i'd be willing to bet most hard sciences types such as i am would as well. taks

btw, qwerty, given your obvious apprehension at accepting causal relationships resulting from science, i offer you this challenge. look into how some of these conclusions have been derived by the various organizations that are proffering them. many are related to results from climate models, which don't even correlate well with known climatological history. the now infamous hockey stick is based on an unproven assertion that tree-rings are good proxies for temperatures - a correlation that does not even exist in modern times. in fact, an NAS panel convened on the subject stated quite clearly that the primary culprit of the "blade" of the stick was due to the bristlecone pine proxies, and it recommended that they be avoided for reconstructions (yet still they are touted as viable). phil jones, a UK scientist in control of their temperature data has been quoted as saying (paraphrased) "why should i open my data and methods resulting from 25 years of effort to those whose sole purpose is to find flaws"! wow, if you are truly skeptical of science in the manner you suggest, this should be as appalling to you as it is to me. given the flaws of science that i cannot disagree with, if proper procedures are not followed, doesn't that make it even more flawed? the efforts by a few to hide contrary results are numerous, and in many cases, significant (michael mann actually told congress regarding his hockey stick reconstruction, for which he claimed "significance" for r2 in his original paper, that it would be silly to calculate r2 - he did calculate it, and failed to report it was nearly zero for all but the calibration period of the current century. the actual results were recently published in a paper by wahl and amman). taks

i disagree. cause-effect is easily observed, at least at the macro level (quantum causality gets strange). this is one of the "truths" we have to accept as existing. your assertion that i need to provide some satisfactory justification of causal relationships is a philosophical nit. few, if any, scientists would agree with that. i consider myself a scientist. no, the known physical relationship was known from a different empirical test. it is quite easy to test the solubility of CO2 in a liquid outside of the correlation between ocean temperature and CO2 content. put a coke can in your driveway on a sunny day. it is one we have to live with. hume is not an end-all be-all, either. even the wiki points out that his conclusions are flawed. whomever wrote the wiki article clearly disagrees with his notions of causality. so do i. apparently you don't. the differences between scientist and philosopher are clearly irreconcilable. a bit of both, actually. i'm a signal processing engineer (electrical engineering degrees), which necessarily requires a significant background in statistical analysis methods (though we approach problems differently than pure statisticians). i do research and development for my career (and next degree), which is why i consider myself a scientist as well. really, i'm a theoretical engineer that gets to do practical engineering as well. point noted. i simply disagree with this explanation. most of my peers would agree with my position, though i'm sure most of yours would agree with your position. uh, that's not the point i was trying to make. what i meant is that since it is an opinion piece, its estimation of "consensus" is at the very least biased. they choose not to point out all the significant numbers of people that disagree, or have made significant counter claims. i.e., saying that article is truly representative of "the vast majority of scientific organizations" is disingenuous at best (i'm not accusing you here of being disingenuous, rather, the article is). 19,000 signed the OPIM petition. your first link is to a report on the IPCC SPM, which is NOT any indicator of any consensus. it was written by only a few people and many of the "consensus" scientists that are included in the group are slowly coming forward voicing their disagreement with many of the SPM conclusions. your second link is more of the same but for the the 3rd IPCC report. indeed, the 3AR was where the hockey stick got promoted heavily, which has now been shown to be the result of spurious correlations as a result of overfitting (among other problems. no, both links demonstrate that the same authors still hold the same views they did in 2001 as they do in 2007. the consensus view of the IPCC is manufactured. the IPCC, in general, does not conduct its own studies, btw. it is a political body, not a scientific body. taks

yeah, the SPM. written by the same guys that reviewed their own work in the working groups. there were also some that complained the results were exaggerated. note, too, the SPM was written before the body of work was released, which is highly unusual for standard publications. taks

peer review is not without its problems. peer review is NOT audit, nor does it constitute any form of an attempt at falsification. there is also a form of confirmation bias that results from reviewers that are not otherwise unbiased: they control the keys to publication, which may result in a sort of filtering of ideas that do not adhere to widely held views. there are plenty of "con" AGW papers out there, btw, they simply don't get press. this isn't necessarily a condemnation of peer review, or science in general, or even of climate science, but more of media expectations of what the public wants to hear. of course, nobody wanted to hear einstein's theory either, until it finally did make it mainstream and oila, an upheaval of quite a few rather cherished opinions that had been otherwise mainstream for a long time (what rarely gets mentioned is that einstein's theories were largely based on a lot of previous work that simply didn't get a lot of press, see lorentz, for example). yes, btw, tale, most journals do have a profit motive which can clearly affect their objectivity, though i do not think it fair to condemn them all as a result. there are also many scientists that are afraid to speak their minds (i personally am in contact with two competent statisticians/signal processing experts that refuse to divulge their names for fear of losing their jobs) because of the political climate surrounding, well, the climate... taks

curious if BLUE means "best linear unbiased estimator?" though off-topic, the actual IPCC report was actually only written by a handful of scientists, which is probably why many of the "contributors" do not agree with all the conclusions. this is also the basis of my assertion that most do not agree with all the conclusions of AGW theory, the sole testable component being rising temps. and yes, the oreskes study has been largely discredited since their assumption of implicit endorsement included even those papers that only agreed with part, often only one piece, of the complete theory (or hypothesis, as i prefer, though that is semantic as well). what is on-topic, however, is that most connections between the CO2/rising temperature conundrum is primarily based on correlation, sometimes strong, other times not at all. the concepts of heat retention by CO2 have some scientific basis, though the magnitude of the effect is currently fiercely contested, particularly theories on how much CO2 equates to X rise in temperature. steve mcintyre over at climateaudit has requested a mainstream text that explains why a doubling of CO2 would add 2.5 C to the temperatures without any reasonable response to date. taks

"why don't you go stand your drinking partner up since we'd rather he not sleep on the bar" is the version i've heard most often. taks

you're citing hume as a reference, and based on what i read, he seems to conclude that cause-effect is purely a philosophical idea, invented by the mind. in nature, this is fundamentally a flawed premise: cause-effect certainly exists, though we can only test it empirically. here's where your argument becomes scientifically untenable. cause-effect relationships do indeed exist. if we take your exposition at face value, we can never empirically know anything about the world around us. the known physical relationship satisfied the sufficiency, and the correlation satisfied the necessity. in science, one must always believe in certain truths, which is not necessarily valid for a philosophical debate. empirically measured relationships are such truths. if we are not allowed to do so, then all of science suffers from the same problem, and nothing can ever be stated with any measure of certainty. heck, even the "law" of gravity would be invalid. this is preposterous. you are looking at it through the eyes of a philosopher, not a scientist. again, science is not possible unless at least some truths are accepted as fact through empirical study. proof can never exist in science, or at least rarely, as that is generally attributed to mathematical expositions. though immaterial, i did not infer your position one way or another from any statements you made. indeed. that's an opinion piece, which really has no relevance in terms of evidence for or against my assertion. clearly nearly everyone agrees that the planet has warmed. even with the latest problems uncovered with the data and methods, there's still at least some warming, though the exact magnitude is debatable. satellite data showed warming from the late 70s till the late 90s, and it has been mostly flat since then (hard to really give a 30 year trend any significance in light of a 4 billion year climate history, however). in order for you to conclude that "most" agree humans play a significant, you'd need a bit of the empirical evidence which you otherwise don't seem to think exists. indeed, even if we ignore that strangeness, it would require polling all scientists with any interest in climate for their opinions. that said, it is a stretch for me to say "only thing" as well, but that's the easiest to uncover because most of the data is irrefutable. there have been plenty of studies, and all of them seem to disagree to what extent any consensus exists OTHER than what we can absolutely test: a warming trend. oh, i know all about the feedback argument, and it is nonsense. this is a control theory problem. feedback cannot violate causality, no matter how much they hand wave on the idea. the ONLY way for cause to follow effect is through an acausal (or non-causal) system, which is not possible in nature. i can construct an acausal system simulation, for sure, but it is not really acausal because i'd be operating on data that already existed. if nature was suddenly able to develop psychic powers, i suppose it could be done, but i'm not sold on this possibility either (john edwards is a hoot, and a hoax). by definition, feedback causes LAG, not lead. consider the simple difference equation (x is input, y is output): y(n) = y(n-1) + x(n) for a DC input, the phase response is a 90 degree LAG, which increases up to 0 at pi radians/sample. in order to get a phase lead, you'd have to reformulate the equation as y(n) = y(n+1) + x(n) the phase lead starts at 0 degrees and increases up to 90 degrees LEAD at pi radians/sample (pi radians per sample implies an oscillation at exactly half the sample rate, in binary terms it would be +1, -1, +1, -1, etc...) however, at time n, the feedback term is from time n+1, which has not occurred yet. their argument is absolutely bogus. taks

i already supplied the reason why the word never is false. every definition you can find will say the same thing i said above: again, there needs to be some sufficient mechanism in order to justify using the term implies, which exists in the specific case i pointed out. and i have shown why, in this specific case, the implication is true. there is a known physical relationship between the temperature of the ocean and the amount of CO2 it releases. i.e., i met the condition of sufficiency. this is science, not philosophy. what? the sufficiency in this statement is that there is a known physical relationship between the heat of the fire, and the burning of the cotton. now you're getting into philosophical nits, but even you note that the concept is increased probability, which is entirely what the correlation is attempting to show. actually, what correlation shows is increased dependence, though not necessarily cause-effect. wiki makes it clear that causal relationships need another factor in order to be established. in nature, most things being either random or chaotic, correlations typically result from either direct cause-effect e.g. rain makes sidewalks wet, or indirect cause-effect, e.g. the sun causes temperatures to rise in both the atmosphere and the oceans, and the oceans release more CO2 as a result. the atmospheric temperature is thus highly correlated (at a time lag). this does not imply that the atmospheric temperature causes the CO2 rise, rather, it implies that there is likely to be some causal relationship between the two. in this case, the causative agent is the solar irradiance, which directly caused the rise in both atmospheric and oceanic temperatures and thus, increased CO2. i actually made that point several times and i noted that the "cause" was likely some other agent, namely the sun. the correlation alone does not establish the causation. i noted in several places that the contributing factor was the known physical relationship between the oceanic temperature and rate of CO2 release (though that is not immediately clear with this quote alone, it must be deduced from the rest of my argument in which i made my assertion more clear). i.e. i met both conditions, necessity, and sufficiency. note, too, i never claimed this was a proven causality. the use of the word "implied" can be debated on a semantic level for sure, and even the wiki entry uses "suggests," which is probably, from a philosophical standpoint, more appropriate. taks