MissInformed

Many happy returns of the day!

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If I were to attend another "con" type of thing it would be DragonCon and/or HeroCon. EVERYONE should go to a DragonCon at least once.

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You're only saying that because Traci Lords is a guest at DargonCon.

My travel budget is all used up for the year.

Many happy returns of the day, Karo!

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So you need your "OPTIMAL" team 95% of the time to make this work, everyone else gets left out.

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This just isn't true.

Unless you define "optimal team" as "something that can tank an AV and a lot of damage and buff/debuff". Some healing doesn't suck.

I agree with Uber_Guy on this one. You do not need any specific combination of characters to play. Anyone who insists you do either wants only to do it the easiest/fastest way, has only been on teams where it's been done that way and doesn't know any better, is afraid of doing it any other way, or is just incompetent.

Most of them probably fall into the first or second category. If your goal is to get it done the fastest/easiest way, yes, you might well want a certain mix of powersets. If you just want to get it done, you just need a balanced team of good players who don't mind things getting tough and who won't quit when things get dicey.

Seriously, that's the only requirement.

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While you might have mitigated the difficulty of the SF itself, you're still using several specific combos to do it.


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You don't need specific combos to do it. I've done it many times with many different combinations. I've seen a lot of people mention VEATS - what about all the times it was completed before those even came into the game? You don't need any specific combination other than a balance of defense and offense and yes, some Shivans certainly help. You don't need to stack Vengeance to get it done, but having Vengeance in any capacity helps. You should also expect to die, probably more than once, in the last mission.

I avoid doing this TF, or most any TF, on a PuG because you never know who won't be a team player or who will up a quit when things get dicey. Could this TF be changed and made less difficult? Absolutely. Is it unfairly difficult in comparison to the STF? I think it is. Getting the MoLRSF without being a "powergamer" is going to be much harderf than just completing it. It it broken? I've completed it far too many times to go so far as to call it that.

And though it is tricky, I've seen the Phalanx pulled apart in the last mission. It's not likely you'll be able to get just one or even two at a time, but I know I'v done it without getting alll of them. I do wish it were easier to separate them.

I also wish they'd put a freaking hospital on that map. That fact alone makes the LRSF unnecessarily difficult in comparison to the STF.

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Sorry I don't know how to get it to format nicely where it's not a big link like this.


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As long as you're not doing a quick reply, you can use the "instant UBB code" located under the message text entry box. It will give you prompts to enter the URL, then enter the text you want to appear in the messsage that you want to link to the URL. The code ends up looking like this:

{url=http://www.YourURLHere.com}Text to show up here{/url} only it will have [these brackets] instead of the curvy ones.

That turns into:

Text to show up here

You can use the "Quote" link to respond to this message and see the formatting of the code, too.

I don't Tweet. I'm pretty sure no one cares when I'm in a cafe eating a bagel or whatever.

Thanks. And I'll have that email address for as long as I renew the domain name and server.

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Really? I found them rather.. well, easy.

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Mean and Easy are two separate things and not mutually exclusive.

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It is because I chose not to make friends, cause there is no reason at all to trust anyone you interact with on the net. I think if you do, then you are foolish.

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Then you're a fool.

Love,

your friend, Miss Informed

Emma Thorne - level 50 Spines/Regen Scrapper. Or whatever is needed.

Invisibility Cloak Closer Than Ever to Reality

Jan. 15, 2009 -- An invisibility cloak for visible light could be made within six months (...and that was back in January! ~ Missy), say scientists from Duke University, who, in a new paper published today in Science, explain how to hide objects from a dramatically extended range of wave lengths.

"I think that within six months it's certainly viable [a cloak for visible light]," said David Smith, a professor at Duke University and author of the Science paper.

"A large number of folks are looking at it, and I think it's a matter of coupling the right material to the right device."

A metamaterial is a material with unique properties that derive from its physical structure, not its chemical make up. To manipulate light, the microscopic surface of a material must be much smaller than that of the wave length of light being used.

Smith's original 2006 invisibility cloak provided invisibility to longer microwaves, letting them flow around the object and regroup on the other side. As you move through microwaves and into the infrared (and soon, visible light) wavelengths become shorter, so the microscopic structure of the material has to get even smaller.

Advances in nanotechnology are making it easier to create ever smaller structures that can manipulate ever smaller wavelengths, said Smith.

To conduct the experiment, the scientists assembled a roughly 20- by 4-inch platform and covered it with the mirror-like metamaterial. Then they covered a roughly 1-square-inch rounded bump in the same metamaterial, placed it on the other surface, and shined infrared light on the set up.

Any normal curved material would scatter the light at a variety of different angles. The metamaterial covered bump instead reflected light back towards the source like a flat surface would do, hiding the bump underneath.

The Duke cloak does have its limitations. It only works in two dimensions. Both the background and the hidden object must also both be wrapped in the metamaterial.

It also has advantages. Unlike Harry Potter's one-of-a-kind invisibility cloak, a real invisibility cloak will likely be cheap and easily reproducible. It took Smith and his colleagues about nine days to design and implement the experiment.

The scientists used hobby-level circuit boards; Smith's rough estimate was that it took about $1.00 in circuit boards to cloak the one-inch bump on the metamaterial.

"If you were to commercialize this technology it would cost next to nothing," said Smith.

Hiding a small bump is great for science, and for hiding things in general, but invisibility technology has a much wider range of uses besides mere concealment.

Just as one example of many, Smith says that cloaking technology could remove cell-phone interference in buildings, letting people have clear conversations even inside an elevator.

"We are just scratching the surface," said William Padilla, a professor at Boston College who is developing a metamaterial to hide objects in the terahertz range. "There are hundreds of possible applications for this. We just need to think creatively about how it can be used."

Here's an update from March

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Yeah, that doesn't fly in the States. Who wants to walk around with a pocket full of change?

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They keep trying to make us change. Austin is a "test city" for the newest dollar coin and they've had ads on TV and the radio. Of course, we've been a test city for around 6 months or more and I have yet to see one of these new dollar coins. I guess if I really wanted to, I could go get change at the post office - that was the only place I ever got a Sacajawea dollar. And, as LJ said, I wasn't thrilled about carrying those around.

There are benefits of the coin. They stay in circulation longer and can be reminted/recycled, whereas the paper money gets torn and taken out of circulation longer and then gets destroyed or shredded and sold as souvenirs. The govenment's position is that the coins will be less expensive to produce. The savings was pretty big, from what I recall of the news story I heard on NPR last year. They also mentioned that dollar coins will make it easier for the visually imparied to keep track of their money. The repoprt said they also plan on making several new dollar coins every year, meaning collectors will want to hunt each version and hang onto some. But even though I heard about all the practical reasons to make the change in a single news story, none of the ads from the government have mentioned any of these practical reasons. I think the campaign is a failure and will result in yet another failed dollar coin.

Which means I'll keep using my credit card to pay for things at the post office so I don't end up with a purse full of dollars.

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Hyper? Did ever occur to the guy that his cat was just being a typical kitten??

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Occur to him? Possibly. Does he have the mental faculties to process anything reasonable that might occur to him? Obviously not.

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And here I was thinking the price of gas had gone down...

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Hehehe

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MALDEF claimed the family attacked, harassed, threatened and held the illegals against their will, because they were motivated by racial and class-based discrimination. The complaint said the Barnetts allegedly caused the group "severe emotional and mental distress," including fear, anxiety, humiliation, stress, frustration and sadness. Each illegal alien sued for $1 million in actual damages and $1 million for punitive or exemplary damages.


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Hmmm.... I could be wrong, but it seems to me that just being an illegal alien would be enough to cause "fear, anxiety, humiliation, stress, frustration and sadness." Wouldn't you always be afraid of getting caught (like the ones who refused to use their real names in the suit)? Wouldn't that fear make you feel anxious and stressed? I'd also be frustrated over not being able to tell the truth, get a good job (I doubt I'd call any job held by an illegal alien a "good" job), and pretty sad about leaving my family and friends behind.

I can't imagine how someone would say that this one short event caused all those feelings and their everyday lives had nothing to do with it. And really, if you lived in a place you thought was so awful you'd cross the border and live illegally to get away from it, wouldn't you have felt all of those things even before you left? Sure, if they get a job they can make more money here than they would in Mexico, but they exchange one set or worries for another. Nope, not stressful at all.

That made me cry.

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I give to the forum for analysis:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

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Oh yes... I saw that. I plan on skipping it. And the new musical Pride and Predator. Although I might enjoy a flat-out parody.

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They played some dialogue from this on NPR last night. It sounded pretty funny, but it's impossible to tell if that was the only good part or if it's all funny.

They also mentioned a book called Jane Bites Back. Apparently in that one, Jane Austen is a vampire who goes after all the people who have profitted from her books. (Irony! Think the writer is wearing a garlic necklace?) I can't say I'm thrilled about the vampire Jane idea, but I do like the idea that she comes back to get revenge on all the people who've treated her characters so poorly.

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And I threw a Pride and Prejudice sequel across the room when it was revealed that Elizabeth was a medium.

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Wow... just... wow. Some books make me wonder what editors and publishers are thinking. They also make me fear that maybe people really DO enjoy crap like this. I just don't get it.

I'm a member of bookcrossing.com and we give books away when we finish them. (It's fun; check it out!) I remember reading one so bad it's the only mystery where I read the ending before I was half-way through the book, just so I wouldn't have to read the rest. Then I wrote a scathing review on Amazon and, since I couldn't bring myself to give it away to any unsuspecting innocent, I threw it in the garbage with the other trash.

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I understand the logic behind that a bit more, but my concerns are still that even with a draft, the finisher is bringing and substracting things and can only guess the intent of the original author. Of course, with the Wheel of Time, I long ago reached the point where I thought it needed to be put down, not put to bed. Since I think its garbage, I don't care as much if it continues to be garbage, even if the stench is slightly different.

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I generally feel the same way. I'm not big on children finishing work for their fathers (Tolkien, Herbert) and I'm definitely not big on strangers doing it/ (I'm looking at you, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Gone with the Wind sequel.)

I will say, however, I thought it was really neat that Raymond Chandler's estate asked Robert B Parker to finish Chandler's last Philip Marlowe novel, Poodle Springs. That's some pretty amazing validation, right there. Parker went on to write, on his own, a sequel to Chandler's The Big Sleep and called it Perchance to Dream. Parker's own Spenser series has always had a Chandler flavor and I don't think anyone carries on the tradition better than Parker. Chandler was one of Parker's heroes and I can't imagine how amazing it must have been to be hand-picked to complete the work and then write his own Philip Marlowe novel. Plus Parker was already hugely successful, so it didn't seem like he was some guy cashing in on someone else's name or milking someone else's work for every last penny. (I'm not sure I can say the same for the people behind Chandler's estate...)

Huckleberry Haven, Inc. of Kalispell, MT is voluntarily recalling the chocolate covered peanuts they package in Novelty “Poop” bags

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- February 5, 2009 -- Huckleberry Haven, Inc. of Kalispell, MT is voluntarily recalling the chocolate covered peanuts they package in Novelty “Poop” bags, because the chocolate covered peanuts packaged by Huckleberry Haven, Inc. have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. The Chocolate Covered Peanuts packaged as Novelty “Poop” were packaged using peanuts recalled by Peanut Corporation of America. The peanuts from Peanut Corporation of America have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. Salmonella is an organism, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.

The Chocolate Covered Peanuts that may have been affected were packaged in red, green, black, white, or brown paper bags and contain 4 ounces of Chocolate Covered Peanuts. The product label on the front of the package may read: Bear Scat, Bear Poop, Moose Droppings, Buffalo Chips, Deer Droppings, Dino Eggs, Cow Pies, Cow Patties, Fish Eggs, Dino Eggs, Osprey Poop, Lizard Eggs, Monster Eggs, Chicken Coop Poop, Prairie Dog Pebbles or Crew Rations.

UPC labels may be found on the following packages; Bear Scat (UPC=725901311801),
Fish Eggs (UPC=725901311870), Deer Droppings (UPC=725901311849), Osprey Poop, (UPC=725901311917), Lizard Eggs (UPC=725901311924), Monster Eggs (UPC=725901311931). Please note: Not all packages will have a UPC label.

All potentially affected Chocolate Covered Peanut packages will have a white ingredient label with black lettering for the Ingredient and Allergy information and purple lettering for the Company information located on the bottom of each package. See label example below.

Milk Chocolate Peanuts
Ingredients: Peanuts, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Powder, Whole Milk Powder, Chocolate Liquor, Lecithin (an emulsifier), Vanilla and Confectioners Glaze.

Allergy Information: Contains milk and soybeans. This product is manufactured on equipment that processes peanuts/nut.

Huckleberry Haven, Inc. * Kalispell, MT 59903
(800) 774-8257 * www.huckleberryhaven.com


All future non-affected Chocolate Covered Peanut packages will have a white ingredient label printed in all black lettering located on the bottom of each package.

The Chocolate Covered Peanuts that were packaged as Novelty “Poop” Products were distributed through specialty, resort retail stores in the cities listed below. (You can go look them up....I won't include that part here)

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The Salmonella is a bad thing, but I'm more disturbed by the fact that any company has an entire line of feces-themed candy products.

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The case is very interesting and it will detail how far someone can go to protect private property and whether or not a citizen can detain someone while the authorities arive.

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Here's what Wikipedia has on a citizen's arrest. But that's not the point I was making. My point was that you can't detain someone who is unwillling to be detained unless you use force or have some kind of power over them. This guy has less authority than a mall cop. A mall cop likely has video surveilance to use as evidence or find you again and the perception of authority because he has a badge and a uniform. (Perception is a huge component in "authority." It's why you might call one person a "natural leader" and not someone else.) A mall cop also works in an environment where there are many other people and the social mores to assist him. While it's certainly possible, it's unlikely that a group of people is going to try and resist by beating him down in the food court. And the people the mall cop brings in may well be known by others in the community and they wouldn't want to make an embarrassing scene.

This guy has a gun and he's alone and likely rounding people up at night. They don't know him, they don't know anyone else in the area and have no ties to the community or any reason to feel social pressure to back down. While many have been willing to be detained, likely because, hey, possible crazy guy with a gun, he risks the chance that a group will figure out they can overpower him and run. No one knows them, they have no documentation, they're going to be hard to find again. He may be telling them that the police are just over there a ways or something else to make them think he has more power than he really does, I don't know. He has a gun and is probably good at intimidating people, which will work on some as a form of authority, but I think he's been lucky so far.

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Again, I don't think it is so much about detaining them and defending property as it is about his actions when engaged in doing so.

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Agreed. And I don't know enough about that to judge one way or another. Of course, the issue then may become "how do you detain someone (or a dozen someones) for arrest if you have no real power." This guy has detained many people over the years, apparently. They were probably all afraid because he had a gun, sounded scary, and presented himself as someone who seemed to have authority. Once word gets out that he has a gun he'll go to jail for using, I doubt people are going to allow themselves to be detained. He'll go from detaining people for arrest to being a fist-shaking "Hey, you kids get off my lawn" guy. That doesn't seem like the best solutuion, either.

How do you detain someone when you have no authority, you don't know the name of the person you're detaining, the person has no known address, and the person likely has little or nothing to lose? If you do it with a gun, the person at the other end of it needs to believe that there's a real probability you'll use it. It seems to me this guy is pretty lucky. Depending on proximity, a group of people desperate enough probably could take one guy down and get away, gun or no. Most of them probably have families back in Mexico they want to send money to and think seeing them again is worth letting this guy hold them. He just needs a few who don't feel that way and he's in more trouble that a lawsuit.

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In the States, isn't it the right of the landowner to protect his land? Isn't that where the second amenmdent comes from, ultimately? To allow private citizens the right to bear arms against oppressive governments and to allow them to defend themselves against militaries who would use their property, against the will of the owner, to do things like billot troops and the like?


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Yes. But the immigrants weren't doing any of the above. They were not an imminent threat to his person and they were not in his house. He was outside waiting for them, so it's not self-defense either. And though he claims that immigrants have, in the past, destroyed his property and killed his animals, he has made no claims that these immigrants had done or were doing any of those things. Trespassing is all he has on these immigrants and the laws don't really say that it's ok to hold a gun on people for walking over your property. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Is the lawsuit ridiculous? It sounds like it, though I don't know what happened and what's going on with the part about kicking someone. I don't know of any law that says it's ok for you to kick people who are on your property. I also don't know what led up to that or if it's even true.

Do people who aren't citizens deserve to have the rights accorded to US citizens? I think that's part of what makes us what we are - we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. It doesn't say that only applies to American citizens. The poem of the Statue of Liberty reads "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Granted, we aren't saying "Send them to us and we'll let them break the laws." And we shouldn't. But I can see how people may be confused when we send out a welcoming message, then build fences and have people waiting with guns. We may need to have Lady Liberty issue a memo saying, "Please note: only applicable when said huddled masses come through proper channels." That seems fair to me.

On the one hand, I think these immigrants, considering their status, should let this go (I'm sketchy because of the kicking part and what harm may have actually been done on either side). It seems the wrong way to go about things when you're the huddled masses hoping for a new life. You break into someone's home (America, in this case) and you shouldn't expect them to roll out a red carpet, no matter what some poem says. On the other hand, litigation is the new Apple Pie, so maybe they're just trying really hard to be Real Americans.

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I'm tryin' to wrap my head 'round this...they trespassed on his land to enter this country illegally, and they're suing him for stopping them? The crazy lawyers for these people and the idiot judge should all be removed from the legal profession. If caught in the commission of a crime involving trespass by the owner of the property you are trespassing on, you don't get to complain about how he reacts. If he'd started blasting off willy nilly, he'd have been in the wrong morally but I'm not sure about legally, as if he felt threatened on his own property he has a right to defend himself.

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It's worth doing some research on your rights as a property owner and the laws around that. Assuming that you're safe from anything that you do or that happens to a trespasser on your property can get you into trouble. If you own things like pools, hot tubs, or trampolines and don't put reasonable protections in place to prevent people (I think especially children) from wandering into you yard and drowning or getting injured, you can be held responsible. I think they're called "attractive nuisances." I worked at a camp where the owners also lived on the property and these were things they always worried about and guarded against. I don't know what else is on the list, so there could be more and it may vary by state. Those are the ones I remember from California.

It's probably also worth looking into if you're a dog owner and someone trespasses on your preoperty and your dog bites him. I have no idea what would happen - you might think you're safe, but that's something I'd research before getting a dog.

Sometimes I'm amazed we don't all live in bubbles.