well, i'm glad you asked! you see, mostly i'm working on a Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne map. and i needed an excuse to plug THE BEST GAME EVER.

anything with "USA" in large letters in the middle.

oh, wait, that was terrible. anyhow, to play warcraft you need the game and also a map. it loads the map, and then what happens depends what the map says. of course the game comes with a bunch of maps. but you can make or download more too.

the main elements of a map are: terrain (like basic landforms). doodads (like decorations). units. a map script (think programming telling it what to do).

also war3 is fully 3D and you can put cameras anywhere, and play pretty movies. and you can put sounds in a map.

ok but you still don't really know what a game is like. cause my description of a map is too general. but, that's part of the magic. maps are such a general construct that you can make drastically different types! some of the main types of maps are:

Standard maps -- these maps have no special programming and let you play the game the official way. you start with a town hall and 5 workers, and harvest gold and wood and use it to build more buildings and purchase units (from your buildings) and fight your opponent. this is similar to warcraft 2, starcraft, command and conquer, age of empires, etc (war2 and starcraft actually had custom map editors too. no idea if CandC or AoE did)

gonna take timeout to mention one cool war3 feature: hero units. they get xp, can carry 6 items, and get 4 spells which they level up as they gain levels. they have 3 ability stats.

RPG maps -- the basic idea is you get to control a custom-modified hero, and so do a few or your friends, and you go around killing pre-placed monsters. possible there is a plot with cut-scenes. there's probably a town (or a few) where you can get supplies and heal.

Open RPGs -- either some game masters use special commands to drop monsters then other ppl fight them, or everyone can use special commands and you're supposed to set stuff up then make your own heroes to fight it. i think they're kinda a bad idea, and it'd be better to just make a map with stuff on it. b/c to get a good map you need to balance test, not fight what took you 10 minutes to place.

cinema maps -- just sit back and watch a movie. :-)

tower defenses -- waves of monsters try to get past you. build towers (which can attack but not move) to stop them. sounds simple but can be quite complex.

aos maps -- the name is just the abbreviation of the name of the poster map of this type (Aeon of Strife). anyway, there are 2 computer-controlled towns that constant spawn waves of monsters and send them against each other. both sides are equally powerful and cancel out. players each get a hero and try to turn the tide of battle. there are also 3-way versions.

vampire hunters -- really there's only one map of this type, but it's awesome. the vampire team wins be destroying the main human city in the middle of the map within 7 days. the human team (hunters) wins by defending that long or by killing the vampires often enough. every player has a hero. to aid them, vampires can collect souls from villagers around the map. hunters try to chase them off and save the villages. vampires have a free teleporter system to get to any corner of the map from any other corner. hunters can only teleport from anywhere to the middle, and that costs them money.

single player campaign -- the game comes with some single player maps that are kinda a mix btwn standard and rpg elements. they're well done.

hero arenas -- fight it out! i think they're dumb.

micro wars -- do you have the skill to beat someone fighting a small num of units vs a small num of units? even if they're the exact same units? it's amazing to see even with the exact same units, the guy with better strategy can win often with half his guys alive.

anyway, my map is an RPG, with custom scripted spells (when certain spells are cast, i programmed it to add certain extra effects), and cinemas, and pretty terrain, and a kinda lame plot, but lots of subquests anyway.

oh and i forgot the best part! battle.net! blizzard's *free* online game servers. all you need is an internet connection and you have access to many thousands of war3 players to play with. if you make a crappy map and host a game, you'll probably get joiners immediately. i certain have no trouble finding ppl to beta test my map. the wait time for ladder (standard games for a ranking system based on how much you win/lose) is like 30 seconds.

also good about battle.net is you could play with *me*! think about it :-)

Apparently Palestinians are good at something ... brainwashing their children.

Israel is good at something too. It managed not to jail any concientous objectors since 1980 until yesterday despite the fact the law requires everyone to serve. Of course the media seems more interested in calling Israel fascist. Ho hum.

I do, by the way, oppose conscription. It should be phased out. If that left the IDF understaffed, then the IDF should be paid more in terms of money, honour, working conditions, etc. If that's hard to pay for, then they have too many social programs :-)

Having anti-Israel cranks in the IDF doesn't help anyone.

Loads more about Israel here

source

Really? Do they? I thought Sharon was opposed to the thing, so that's a bit odd.

Oh. The BBC is lying again. "leading cabinet minsters"!? yeah, and Jimmy Carter is a leading US President.

update: fuck. apparently he's a former something *and* a current something. but still, he's not a leading part of sharon's government. israel has a proportional representation system. so sharon is in charge, but there are ppl in government from the other parties too. this is like finding a democrat who'll say bush sucks, and calling that news. and then saying the democrat was a leading part of bush's government b/c he was in congress or something. ok actually i'm told guy is from same party as sharon, but opposite faction. so it's like finding Tracy (a libertarian i know) and getting him to criticise me. (sorry, that's only amusing if u know tracy)

oh, and before i go on, there's a nice picture of a BULLDOZER with a caption saying Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. From the picture, you'd think Israel just built stuff there and took it, and maybe knocked down the homes of the peace-loving Syrians who lived there. did the BBC forget about the six days WAR? fought not with bulldozers, but with bullets. i know they both start with 'bull', but they really are different things.

ummm

fuck you BBC

Amazing how all the people "totally serious about peace with Israel" want concessions before they give even their word to fight anti-Jew terrorism.

heh heh. well thanks for telling me. *sweatdrop*

PS West Wing rocks

PPS go read IMAO

source (as if it needs a source)

curi42 (2:42:51 PM): this senator wants ammendment to give $47mil to fight autism. he starts giving reasons fighting autism is important. ur josh listening. imagine agreeing was politically ok (happens to not be ok to have more ammendments on bill, but forget taht)
curi42 (2:43:22 PM): ok fighting autism is good. but should the money go to that, or to something else that's also good? how could josh tell? HE COULDN"T!
curi42 (2:44:03 PM): this is why government taking everyone's money into a big pool then trying to divy it up for everything is a bad idea. he doesn't have the information for where it should go, and there's no easy or good way to get it in that system.
curi42 (2:45:16 PM): whereas if the ppl kept their money this problem wouldn't exist. they'd do stuff they knew about, comparing only the things they know about. and overall it'd avg out just fine. (or sometimes there'd be common misconceptions and it wouldn't; but messing up common misconceptions beats messing up all of josh's)

curi42 (2:48:46 PM): it just struck me when the guy was trying to sell josh on the idea that ppl argue "u should spend money on my cause b/c my cause is good" whihc *completely misses the point*
curi42 (2:48:53 PM): there are lots of good things.
AnonymousPerson (2:51:23 PM): Like with the risk thingy, before i let Josh decide a thing like how much money autism research should get, I want him to tell me, within two orders of magnitude, how many ball bearings are needed this year.

curi42 (2:57:21 PM): turns out he was asking b/c he had an autistic grandson
curi42 (2:57:31 PM): now *that's* a good way to decide where to spend money
curi42 (2:58:29 PM): there are things where you want a unified policy. but choosing btwn autism research and cancer research isn't one. everyone should go their own way on those, so we'll get some of each.
curi42 (3:02:39 PM): nooooooooooooooooooooooooo wtf
curi42 (3:03:24 PM): ok the guy is doing fillibuster and gonna drop soon but screwing them up. but they realise he can safely yield floor for a question and still get it back.
curi42 (3:03:45 PM): so i figure they will ask "is it true you're only doing this b/c u have a grandson with autism?" or something to embarass him to shut him up
curi42 (3:04:27 PM): instead the question is 22 parts (and from a grandfather) so he can rest, then other ppl ask questions. they decided b/c he was doing it for grandson that they should help him.
curi42 (3:04:37 PM): do leftists really think that's being humane, and i'm an evil bastard?
curi42 (3:04:43 PM): cause if so, they should be shot :)

IMAO who is usually right and often very funny, writes:

well, sorry, but the implied argument is not valid.

the implied argument is that paying attention to politics causes people to be Republican, and that we know this because the poll correlated paying attention to politics with being a Republican (and i expect other polls have too).

BTW I happen to think the conclusion is true: I do think paying attention causes people to become Republican. I just don't think we can say this is true *because* of the poll.

the problem is CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION (which i've never ever once had someone even try to disagree with). see, from the poll all we get is correlation. the causation could be something else entirely besides the one IMAO picked. like maybe something about being a Republican in the first place makes you more inclined to watch the news. or maybe Republicans tend to go to Church more, and Churches tend to promote political thinking (erm, maybe not that one). or maybe religious people care more. or it could be any cause, for all the poll tells us.

UPDATE:

A) Frank J visited *my blog* (see comments). i belive that makes my blog famous by association, so you should visit more often now, and make your friends visit, and stuff.

B) Frank did not intend the argument I said he implied. My apologies for the error. I think he could have been clearer, but he's right that he didn't actually say anything wrong, I just falsely assumed he meant something bad.

C) I'll leave this up because other, lesser people than Frank J might argue that way on purpose (maybe a liberal) so the correction would be important then.

omg this is so good

found here

u might not follow that explanation though, so i'll write it simpler:

computer data is often stored in arrays (basically a bunch of stuff in a row). arrays have a fixed size in memory. sometimes they get full. the basic solution is you make a new, larger array, and copy all the old data into it.

in comp sci classes they generally teach (or maybe only used to, dunno) that you should make the new array double the size of the old. you want to try not to waste too much memory by making it bigger than needed, but also increase the size enough not to have to do this very often, because copying over all the data is expensive.

anyhow, if your array takes up 1 unit of memory, and you double, the new one takes 2 units of memory, with a gap of 1 empty unit behind you. next doubling, your array takes 4 with a gap of 3. then takes 8 with a gap of 7.

see the problem? the array never fits into the gap.

if you increase the array by a factor of 1.5 instead, it will fit into the gap.

actually works pretty fast. 1.5 with 1 gap. then 2.5 gap and array is 1.5*1.5=2.25 ... already fits.

anyway, it's a neat improvement.

they'll just randomly report that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is wrong with no apparent case.

FYI microscopic laws being 'time reversible' means that a movie of the events played backwards does not violate the microscopic laws. (the article uses the term but doesn't say what it means)

so guess what i did on saturday? that's right! i watched ice hockey on tivo (TV with fastforwarded commercials). san jose sharks vs colorado avalanche (i live near san jose, FYI).

anyway, to understand the avalanche, try this statement, "their whole entire team is made up of stars." it sounds odd at first. but they have far more stars than any other team. maybe not actually 4 offensive lines full, but more than 2 (you get 20 players per game, usually 4 groups of 3 forwards, 3 groups of 2 defenders, and 2 goalies. the groups are called lines.) (and if your coach likes, you can keep the 4th line almost entirely off the ice)

colorado simply has significantly more individual skill than any other team out there. btw for this game colorado was missing it's best player, but the sharks were missing three(!). (top scorer, a second center forward, and a defender)

when you watch the game, you can see the insane skill by colorado players. they get the advantage in most 1 on 1 skirmishes. they make space for themselves in the offensive zone sooooo well. they all shoot like gods. they're fast and deadly on a breakaway. etc etc

the sharks are fast too, but honestly most of their team does not have a brilliant shot. sure they can shoot it hard at the net, and pretty much anyone in the NHL can hit the corners if there's no one in the way, but they aren't nearly as dangerous as the colorado players. if a colorado guy gets a few moments alone with the puck in the offensive zone, you're in big trouble. if it's near the net, expect a goal. most shark players will do something useful, but...

most of the shark offensive players won't even try to screw around by themselves. they usually don't make space, they just pass it off to someone else.

hum, digression. if you skate fast, the defender will back up quickly (hockey players skate backwards almost as fast as they skate forwards). if you try to go past him, he will get in front of you but to the center of the ice, and push you to the outside away from the goal. if you stop, he'll stop, and then he'll come forward into you. but you have a few moments after you stop before he can get to you, which is space. the other main way to get space is to pass it, move away from your defender, then get it passed back to you. but there's another way, and it's called insane individual skill. if you can threaten to skate somewhere important enough, the defender will have to worry about that, and you can get some space elsewhere. if you're good enough with the puck, and fast enough, you can try to avoid the defender when he comes for you, and get away (it's generally hard to skate near someone and keep the puck on your stick, cause they just hit your stick with theirs, and off it goes. you have to dodge their stick with not just the puck, but also your stick. this usually requires letting the puck off your stick a while, but then you have to worry about it hitting a skate, getting away from you, or you not being able to chase after it b/c the defender runs into you)

so what advantages did the sharks have? well, their goalie was totally Player of the Game (the backup goalie played, too! sharks have the best goalie coach around, and ended up with lots of top quality goalies (they traded some off too)) and the sharks were a bit more unified as a team, especially on defense. ok sure the avalanche could make space, pass all around the shark's zone, and score if they got a moment alone in front of the net. but they never got a moment alone anywhere. ever. there was no missed coverage (there were, *ahem*, a pair of 2-on-1 breaks though).

in a 2-on-1 the defender guards the pass, and the goalie deals with the shot. so our goalie rocked them, and that was that :-)

so anyhow, it's great fun to watch all these super skilled players going around, with the amazing ability to keep the puck for long periods of time even in the offensive zone, but everywhere they go, a shark follows, maybe not quick enough to steal the puck or even check the guy (run into him and knock him away from puck, or at least stop him from skating around by pinning him to the boards (edge of rink)). and eventually our teamwork would keep them from getting anything too dangerous, and we'd get the puck.

the avalanche scored once. a defender shot it from far away, and there were a bunch of guys in front of our goalie, so he never saw the shot coming. the sharks scored twice, both times off turnovers by the avalanche in their defensive zone (the sharks didn't do that). and that was that.

update: here is a game summary