Oh man, Quai d'Orsay for the win In any case, I don't know how old you are, but if you're <= 25yo, train and the Louvre (I think it was a year-long pass that costs the same as 2 one-day tickets and lets you skip the incredibly long queue) are incredibly cheap.

I don't know how close to Toulouse you want to stick, but, IIRC, it's pretty close to Andorres and Spain.

Quebec. Private school (so English classes from kindergarten onward instead of 4th grade) + bilingual friends + lots of trips when I was a kid But really, the intarweb and cable TV seem to have triggered a much higher progression rate, starting when i was ~14yo. What really has me wondering is how people who live in Quebec (and some in Ontario Ottawa) can speak English so badly. FWIW, I believe that Quebecois uses many more sounds than French French, which might explain why Quebecois usually have a less bad accent than Frenchies :p

While we're bashing on Frenchies: Why the h*ll do people think that a Quebecois accent == someone speaking in *English*? I can see how they could not understand at first, but concluding that I'm speaking in English!?!

Ah, yes, you have now learned how to rip CDs to mp3. When will you learn to read?

There's also EndNote in the reference gathering/searching area. There are several personal wiki system that run stand alone, only on your computer. Several of them can also work off usb sticks on public computers.

*cough*university of casablance online¹ *cough*

¹ For phone-esque values of online.

Or maybe it's hiding behind your back.....


tum dum dum~~.

Yes, we lost. No goal in 3 matches or something. Serious wtf, even considering the ruling fuckups.

Try and find which IP your computer thinks tmd has (start cmd, then "tracert themanadrain.com"). Maybe it's still got the old one in its cache. Tracert will also help you know where the f*ck-up is.

I think "knowledge is power" is from that series of ads the US govt (maybe the NSF?) ran in the mid-late 90's to have more kids in college, and especially girls in sciences.

Not sure if that beats a friend of mine buying condoms and KY while we were clearly waiting for him to pay for the stuff...

[EDIT: all guys, obv.]

Wow. And I thought it'd ended in 1990

Matt: Greenland is marketing doublespeak by Erik

/me refrains from making a cheap joke.

Why this card is unlikely to successfully see play in vintage: It doesn't just win, but costs as much as creatures that do. DSC, Akroma, etc. are win conditions in themselves. No one in their right mind expects to hard cast either these or the djinn. The question then becomes, if you know you're not going to be paying their mana cost, why use a creature that requires another card (and some more mana) to be effective instead of bringing a one-card win condition in play? Essentially, Djinn is a two-card combo, while modern win conditions are usually one card win conditions (or one card in synergy with the whole deck). It's cool, but it doesn't win more; it wins less. The djinn is no doubt interesting, but, if I'm going to bring an expensive creature in play without paying its mana cost, I'd usually (for nearly always values of usually) prefer it to be something else.

Oh, and please [everyone] don't turn this into another TMD is eleetist rant. We've been having those since before TMD existed, and I'd say that the precedence of right over nice is what distinguishes our community.

Feh. As long as everyone within an interacting group ignores the same set of people, we're all right

Build your own internet. Be it by using a huge VPN, freenet, or by sneakernet+wireless (*that* could provide immense throughput).

1 year of Preden and half a semester of Dentistry under my belt (beginning maths-cs tomorrow)

I co-own a Sun E4500. It's running solaris 9 on 10x UltraSparc [sparcv9, sparc64] @ 400 MHz, 10 GB RAM, soon to be 14x USparc, 14 GB RAM. If you need to process large data sets in parallel I can always try to set something up. I can also sometimes have access to a relatively large cluster. If the problem is really interesting I might be able to ask its guardian to lend it to me

Exactly what it sounds like. http://www.pvk.ca/misc/hideposts.tmd.user.js  is a greasemonkey (0.6.4) script for Firefox 1.5. It'll let you selectively ignore posts by certain users by clicking on the "(ignore)"/"(unignore)" bit and hide/unhide specific posts by clicking around the [ignored] poster's nickname.

To install it, you need http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox 1.5 and http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ Greasemonkey 0.6.4. Then, go to http://www.pvk.ca/misc/hideposts.tmd.user.js and click on the "Install" button (right of the screen, just below the address bad).

Remember kids, don't flame, plonk!

Just to complete what Kasuras wrote.

However, when drawing cards from a deck, each card drawn affects the odds of the next draw (the ratio of say, FoW:rest is always different, whether you draw a FoW or something else), hence the complexificationation.

Also, the odds can never be >1. Even if have 55 of the same cards, you'll only hit a [negative integer]!, and factorial is undefined over negative integers.

Yeah, it's Asperger's Syndrome. (Whose sufferers often call themselves Aspies, if you ever stumble on that word)

And I've tried finding what makes me feel that way towards dentistry. Basically, I think it comes down to the fact that I don't feel in my place in the clinic. I'm always scared of messing up, I never feel like I know what I should do, and working in it doesn't feel like a good achievement. Apart from that, I think I could have dragged myself through the less interesting courses and liked the rest, but the current ~6h/week of clinic-esque work are already killing me, and it'll only get longer each semester. I think the basic difference between me and the quasi-totality of the other students is that they went in dentistry because they either genuinely liked the job, or because they wanted the money; I went in dentistry by default (I chose the hardest program I could get into, figuring that I could always switch to another one later on). So, while I loved the first year of very general courses, and am having trouble liking this one, most of them just endured last year knowing that this year and the ones after would come soon. Of course, what sucks about this is that dentists usually don't have too much trouble finding a job, which would have made me much more mobile (and that could have been handy to follow my girlfriend, given that her degree is in anthropology, where there isn't that much demand).

Thanks for the help everyone.

I decided that I just didn't feel like the clinic was where I was meant to be. Given that the last two years of the doc will mostly be treating patients, I don't think I could finish the program. I'm gonna go in Operations Research/CS. Hopefully, I'll still be able to keep a door open if I ever want to go back in dentistry

Well, what's making this much harder than it seems is that research in dentistry is really, really, really interesting. I can't stress how cool dentistry will be in a couple decades. Think inducing the growth of new teeth, tissues, etc... So if I were to continue in this, it'd definitely be for the research (where getting grants, etc. is much easier once one has a professional diploma).

Lots of TMDenizens are older than me and have probably gone through such questioning, so I'm posting this here. I'm in my 2nd year of dentistry (out of a total of 5), and I'm having doubts regarding my prospective career. It's a great job, and the research is really thrilling, but the classes are killing me. It seems to me that, unlike most of my classmates, I don't really care about the time we spend in the clinic. Actually, it scares me more than anything. I also definitely don't see myself working in a clinic. If I did that, I'd probably end up bulking up the already large # of suicides among dentists. On the other hand, some courses are really interesting (admittedly, these courses are all much more about basics science than clinic). I'm gonna consult a psychologist to try and figure out whether my lack of concentration and weird anxiety-esque feeling is due to the fact that I don't feel dentistry is my thing, or if there is another reason like depression or something (which would probably encourage me to try another semester with my new, improved and better-concentrated self).

As it is, I'm probably gonna take the next semester off (instead of flunking it anyway), and decide what I'm going to do during that time. I guess that'd be either go back in DMD (one year later) or switch to something more mathsy like operations research.

Any advice, tips, ways to temporise before having to make a decision, etc?

PS. I know that, objectively, leaving DMD would be one of the worst decision in my life ever, and that many people would really like to be in dentistry... I guess that's a warning for those of us considering to get a degree ot because you like the subject matter, but because you think you'll like the lifestyle or to use as a trampoline into, e.g., MD.

TIA

"Despres hitchhiked to the border crossing."
AND "police in Massachusetts saw him wandering down a highway in a sweat shirt with red and brown stains." + "carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood."

And, still, someone gave him a ride. :shock: I guess that's proof there're still extremely nice people in this country.

So, let's say that, against a given match up, a deck has a probability of winning
      P = C + f(skill) + g(skill_gap) (yes, this is very basic and an awful simplification).
Throughout this thread, people seem to only be concerned with maximising f(skill) or g(skill_gap). I'd keep in mind that the end goal is to maximise P. We shouldn't forget C, the base winning rate. If we were to apply the kind of thinking exhibited here carelessly, we would dismiss a deck that was extremely easy to play, but had a large C (think good Belcher .

Just a quick note on what I see, as [mostly] an outsider.

I'm going to be visiting NYC from the 16th to the 21st of May, and we're still planning the places we want to visit. Museums, parks, shops, it's all good. We're also looking for good food on a budget. We're all students and my girlfriend is vegetarian, while someone else <3 meat. Do you have any suggestion?

winamp can output mp3s isntead of sound. IIRC, WMP should be able to do the conversion too. (and I'm seconding iTunes)

Congratulations to both of you. Best wishes to Jes

Toad, I can get you an account in a new KD, warring on WoL. It'll be serious-esque, but if you can login two-three times a day (with a decent spread), you should be able to keep up. I won't play, because I just managed to leave Puffy, but I can coach you. Tell me very soon (in the next ~6 hours) so I can have a french account created for you

PM me here or on IRC.

Toad: I've been playing this game since Age 9. It's gotten dumber and dumber with time (Mehul doesn't seem to actually understand how he made a good game), but anways. Get on irc.evek.org #ehc or #famous. EHC is basically a bunch of people from an old group, we're pretty much all ex-SK (superkingdom - think 25 people who all know each other and "accidentally" got in the same kingdom, all über-active) players. Famous is my own ol' SK. Depending on the people there, it'll either be
1. full, with no one talking
2. only morons talking
3. Tree and some people talking about math.

I'm "Pikachiu" (yeah, don't ask) on that game and community.

Basically, if you can handle basic calculus and use a spreadsheet (or program a wee bit), there are only two things that separate you from top 100: your kingdom and your willingness to log in at extremely random hours.

Oh, and yeah, Utopia is still online crack. You probably don't even want to start playing for real. The game is shit, but I still managed to let myself be traded in a kd (puffy if any of you is following the war wins race). I'm trying to find someone to replace me, though. The only fun part is the first ~2 weeks, before stagnation (basically, when everyone has the optimal draft rate and nearly all the land entering the game is due to the 5 acres bonus) sets in, and you still have to think about your strat. For me it's like 2-3 nights spent in front of my computer with excel, maple and emacs. But, the thing is, I could do that for a kd without actually playing the game... :/