xrieg

OK sorry for delay: resized: [attachment=2613:avy010a.gif] some color balance manipulations; changed to RGB, colorize: [attachment=2614:avy010b.gif] alpha channel added: [attachment=2615:avy010.gif] quality difference isn't it? what do I do wrong?

Admin: I think it would be a good idea to pin this thread so that people could share their tricks and solutions here Question: how to get grey? I have shading in my original drawings, they scal all righr - but when I export it Gimp translates colors to indexed (or greyscale - one can choose but result is more or less the same)and it looks like all colors go to either black or white (tried brighness etc - it looks like a threshold; up to some color white, otherwise black)

one more attempt, less direct as suggested: [attachment=2606:avy009.gif] I seem to have problems with greys - they appear all right before creating avy but transparent gif creation seems to kill everything that is not black :-(

Hmmm... Is it a regular auction (no minimal price), sell if/when price is satisfactory? Any minimal prices to avoid prices you would consider ridiculous? Sharptear and Imp (well, Santa of course - but let's be real :-P) attract my attention - if the price is acceptable (looow)

(long and really boring application form fully filled) UPDATE: Please assign me any task that needs completing; preferences in order creation, solving, testing. However, I cannot be fully active more than 1.5-2.5h/day - so if the job would require more activity, you may prefer to find more worthy assets (hence my reluctance in signing up for the creation team so far)

count me in

Could someone write a brief instruction on how to prepare avatar using gimp from raw scan/ photo file with basic tricks (which filters, what should be paid attention to)? It seems many decent quality drawings may be trasnformed to dismal quality avatars; some would not even take a pencil after a few conversion atempts. Such a public MD resource could only help to get more original graphics in game; I think when someone decide to draw something for MD, MD-requirement digitilizing should not be a major obstacle. (I have just spent a few hours doing that - alpha conversion and resize kept killing any quality I managed to put on paper)

Well, I attach below my attempt; it's a rescaled photo (would have to do some gimping to improve pic quality; do not know how much corrections are accepted - please let me know :-)); all I can say it's a da Vinci comparing with my other avy attempts :-P [attachment=2570:P2180027_smaller.JPG] UPDATE: finally managed to convert it to avy: [attachment=2605:avy007.gif]

[quote name='apophys' timestamp='1297734438' post='78869'] @xrieg - do not say "mere" animals. They are more similar to us than you give them credit for."Mere" would be more suited for plants or fungi. [/quote] Figure of speach in that sentence. As I have not much faith in spirit/ soul etc. I consider human to be nothing more or less than highly evolved animals.

Words, words, words.... People do not like to consider themselves mere animals - and yet love behaving that way. They babble about free choice and the only thing they ever choose is 'coffee or tea' on the way downstream :-P Relationship is a byproduct of multiple hormons, events, and coincidences. Most research show initial attraction is decided within a few minutes (at most); we act upon this stimulus. God's will, love, desire - sifferent names for the same thing :-P Then comes long (well, or short) period of conditioning (and other hormons). To stay here requires a consious effort as distractions are multiple. If I was to call something love it would be that

(bump!)

I'll try to be brief. Science deals with causality, implications, and reasoning. The goal is to be able to find explanation to observed phenomena based on as limited number of underlying fundamental laws as possible. For complex systems using effective theories and/ or degrees of freedom is a must. And very often sloppy scientist fails because of their effective theories or selected degrees of freedom blindly applied or ill-considered. As a consequence multiple disciplines may be called science from the basic definitions - but the rigorousness of everyday workshop can be seriously questioned. MD is a dream world with multiple dreamers. Principles are supposed to be a basic denominator of influencing the realm and other players. And as dreams are often indistinct, blurry and with no clear causality, Principles are no sharply defined basic building blocks, but more like underlying concepts that set some perspective in gameplay, even if almost everybody I talked about them with have a bit different perception of Principles. In real life science is the only valid description - and Principles or their equivalent may only be used in some dedicated effective models in relevant context to make any sense at all. In MD talking pure science makes no sense by the same token - one can only consider Principles and their meaning. Even cornerstone of science, causality, is not that obvious when talking Principles - different people think/ dream in different regimes and we are supposed to leave the box in MD :-P

Resurrectioners (here in thread I assume?)

Huh BBR was also my first consideration - but it emits 'black light' only in a sense that it does not scatter light (standard mechanism) only emits thermal radiation (which, in turn, may include quite a lot of visible light depending on T)

I will also add a few words to fellow mp3s: If you heard that there is a fascinating world of MD but so far you can only see very small world (with any real life concentrated in a single MDP) I strongly recommend Princ Rhaegar's quest - it is excellent first step, giving you directions on MD symbolism and mystery (also: very highly recommend Mya's and Burns's tutorial quests). Just a word of caution: do dot rush through - you may get your prizes all right and yet overlook the major one: taking the first step in MD world with some directions where to look for second one. Good luck - and thank you Princ Rhaegar!

Wikipedia: '(...) In physics, the term light often comprises the adjacent radiation regions of infrared (at lower frequencies) and ultraviolet (at higher), not visible to the human eye.(...)' So, technically speaking and accepting your UV prejudice, the close IR can be called light and is invisible/ black to human eye. I hope the answer is satisfactory. PS Light (including black I think) is dicsussed in detail by Mr Pratchett in his multivolume research papers

[quote name='Chewett' timestamp='1296756837' post='78420'] PS: Xrieg, you are trying to help but your statements about things without knowing anything technical are merely ludicrous and factually wrong. [/quote] I certainly hope that the remark that 'ANYTHING can be changed in the database (...)' is not the way everyday MD support works :-P Glad to hear it is not. It seems my 'if' was overlooked - I would never presume to make definite statement about the product without seeing a line of code/ documentation. PS please no capitals in my name :-( it's xrieg

(just a side remark ad. 1: If the game is supported using direct DB access and people who 'have access to it and you know what to change and how to change it' then it's a miracle it's not crashing twice a month... That would explain, why such a request would be outright rejected, though...)

Hmmm just to clarify... 1. The technology does not allow for manual override? 2. Manual override function is a low priority improvement and has not been implemented yet? 3. If one request was honored, 100 would follow? (edit: 4: It is the policy, accept it) Which one is the answer? It seems to be an overkill penalizing many honest players with irl MD friends (well, and not enough care/ knowledge) and leaving other people (mobiles, dynamic networks) free to do as they wish

In standard game: 1. you do not watch/ read intro - it's a waste of time and does not influence gameplay 2. 'storyline' questions are used to customize character usually in some minor factor; meaningless otherwise, 3. first typical game actions you perform in tutorial; it's mostly to learn where to click (colorful arrows and highlighting) 4. some how-tos and walkthrough will give you a compressed version of game features and objectives; in case there were something worth reading in introduction/ tutorial you rushed through As a consequence ads-brought new player will most probably click several times 'all right, all right, let me see the actual game' - and before he knows what hit him, he is left alone at MDP and is supposed to play. He may be persistent and attack someone (at this level - most probably he will loose and get 'read the sign!' message). It seems the approach is to make more people enter the game - and playing the first few days in permanent confusion is the first player quest :-P

Hell, I _did_ like the hyperactive feeling of 105% activity :-(((

I am confused - there are different information in announcement and contest progress page - one states first 3 in each group will be rewarded, the other - 4. Please clarify PS I do hope the contest page info is valid - I read it much more often than an announcement and made my plans upon information therein

Working, so just a few remarks: 1. In most leading peer reviewed journals there are but 2-3 reviewers per paper; major difference between good journal and bad one is _who_ reviews (and of course supply and demand) 2. We talk two separate problems here: dishonest researchers and those too dumb/ incompetent to do real science. In both cases scientific scrutiny (collaboration, peer reviews) addresses the problem - but with high level of specialization there are many fields that the only people that could competently review the paper are already among its authors (or their everyday collaborators). And pretty often review follows the line: do I know/respect the guy? text/figures formatting; are all my pals' papers in bibliography? and finally: is there anything really new I should consider - or it's just a reheated version of their last 5 papers 3. Publications in peer reviewed journals is the best known method to evaluate scientists' performance - but 'the best' is not 'perfect'. Most researchers nowadays does not bring anything new to human knowledge during their lifetimes and yet (depending on a field) between a few and several papers annually is required to secure their positions and grants money. Consequently the paper flow is overwhelming, everybody publishes - and quality vary

[quote name='Chewett' timestamp='1296502779' post='78304'] Just to derail the topic more. Thats a load of BS. There were MANY different people devolping the learning about MANY different things. They just seem basic to us know and thus some people ignore them. You wouldnt say a Crossbow is "High Tech" but there was a lot of work that went into devolping it. Many scientific minds made gunpowder and all sorts of weponry way before the time you suggest. [/quote] Think what was discovered and built before late XIX/XX century. With a small exception of some mechanics of celestial bodies (I believe) researchers and engineers could immediately verify their claims - it either worked or not. It is the last 100 years that we move in the grey area. Example: what are huge high evenrgy facilities _really_ doing? Trying to find a trace of beings that are nessesary to make one theory work (incidentally - they keep moving threshold, no definite answers).

@Kamisha: A hundred years ago you could have assembled all top scientific minds of the time on a single real photo (OK let's say 50% to avoid arguments)and they could have talked and understand each other. Nowadays you have more PhDs than cab drivers and they all do research in more and more specialized areas, with less and less communication with general scientific community. Every single field have their authorities, refereed papers and conferences. And the very scale and dispersion makes _average_ research quality go down - and as there are more and more young angry men trying to get a foothold to immortality, some of them cannot withstand the pressure - and they cheat. It's just a statistical effect. A few years ago there were a few well publicized hoaxes in science - you may find info about them; there was also a White Paper and a set of guidelines for researchers I believe by American Physical Society. It's definitely worth scanning at leat. My background is science (well, used to be anyway) - and whenever I came across some well published case of inexpected results in social sciences etc I begin reading with assumptions, experiment design, errors analysis. And quite often that is all I do as after reading these sections come to conclusion that the paper is rubbish - just a unqualified individual observation without scientific merit. But then I may only assume that heavy work and sound research cannot easily produce 'scientific discoveries' popular papers would notice :-P @Kafuuka (we were wrinting simultanously): I think some arguments above are relevant. In a crowd of scientists of today some are competent - some are not; just like in every other profession :-P (and in developed countries science in many respects works as every other business; it's neither good or bad - it's just too big to work smoothly otherwise :-P)