I'm currently in Europe (Germany) and I must say that it's really awesome to be able to look at the menu and figure out exactly how much I owe. I had this 8 Euro item from the menu? Oh, ok, then here's the 8 Euros I owe.
My experience in America was much more frustrating, to say the least. I had this 8 Dollar item from the menu, you say? How much is that after tax? And I wonder how much I have to tip?
I definitely think that the European system is much better for all parties. And please don't try to tell me that America cares more about "equal distribution of wealth" than the Europeans or some bull**** like that. Tipping is just an artifact of American culture that has nothing to do with equal distribution of wealth.
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[edit] I think the issue raised in this thread is being completely misunderstood by those who are defending tipping culture (e.g. MikeyG, dcarticst, etc.). In a society where tipping is the norm, obviously it is rude and / or cheap not to tip. That's why I always tipped when I lived in America - because I subscribe to the maxim "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." But the larger question being raised by this thread is: why is tipping the norm in American society? Wouldn't it be better to get rid of this norm in favor of a more user-friendly service model?
I also think that it would be a better fix to increase the number of mods modding the rumor mill. But for the increased number of mods to actually make a difference, there would have to be a clearly structured division of labor system. Compared to the other sections of MTGS, it looks like the rumor mill is heavily under-staffed for the amount of traffic it gets.
MTGS might be the most awesome forum ever. I just want to say thank you to the staff and the community for making MTGS as awesome as it is!
I just wanted to share two anecdotes from the past few days that made me come to this conclusion:
1. In my German class we had to read some text excerpts taken from an internet forum (probably to familiarize ourselves with informal writing in German). The posts generally looked like they were written by 13 year olds i.e. full of text speak, walls of text, lack of proper syntax, etc. So I said in class that these posts are **** and that they're written horribly. All the other students jumped to their defense and said "this is the internet" and "that's how people write on internet forums." Then I tried to explain to them that "the internet" isn't a homogenous entity and there are various forums where such poor communication is unacceptable. Most of them were like "what kind of internet do you live in?" or "what kind of forums do you visit?" Then one of them offered the following explanation that everybody seemed to concur with: "well, you probably visit some forums about really heady / intellectual topics like literature or art and that's why you're expecting such a high quality of posts." I think I literally blew their minds when I told them that it was in fact a forum about a magic card game.
2. I recently signed up for a forum about law school (because I'm exploring the possibility of going to law school) - a place where you think you would find intelligent discussion. Although there's a lot of useful information on that forum, it's littered with spam. About 60% of the all the posts in that forum would be warned / infracted for spamming or trolling or flaming.
Seriously, I think the only negative thing about MTGS is that you've raised my bar too high for what I should expect from an internet forum.
Why was it necessary to have a "bump" from a vanilla member in order to have someone from staff admitting that the idea had been scrapped?
This is a very good question. I think that the staff handled this situation in a disrespectful manner. If you have decided behind closed doors that this tribunal idea is no longer feasible and needs to be scrapped, then members of this community certainly deserve to be informed of this decision.
After all, in the words of the great Albert Einstein, "If you keep doing the exact same things, eventually there will be different results."
I have no idea where you got that quote. What you have quoted is an extremely mangled version of a quote that is frequently attributed to Einstein. The quote is:
"The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
Although this quote is frequently attributed to einstein (just google for "Einstein definition of insanity") I doubt that it was something Einstein actually said or wrote.
I'm pretty sure this is textbook constructive termination in every state in the US, and most likely in Canada as well. If this ever comes in front of an unemployment board, you WILL lose, guaranteed.
This is the first time I"m reading this thread and when I saw the original post, I too was appalled by this fact. I'm surprised nobody else brought it up so far. I have no idea why this was even mentioned in the original post.
Talk to anyone who has ever been involved in a judge based athletic event and they will tell you the ins and outs of getting a good score, and little of that has to do what is done in the field of play.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Please do elaborate on the "ins and outs of getting a good score." How is it possible for the score to be determined by anything other than what is done in the field of play? This only makes sense if you're trying to level charges of bribery / corruption against the judges.
There is a difference between a judge that is there to ensure fair game play by all involved, and a panel of judges that decide the outcome of an event. The outcomes of an event should come from athletic prowess, not looking good to a panel of judges.
Take gymnastics, 2 girls can do the exact same routine and who ever goes first has the advantage. Not to mention everyone sees things differently. Just because the American judge sees a routine one way, doesnt mean the rest will see it that way. Then we have the drama we had for the all-around for girls gymnastics. It just seems all the judged events are more political then actually about what is done in in the field of competition.
I would propose to only have events that could be decided from head to head competition and remove those that are decided by judges. Let the athletes decide the games, not the judges.
The outcome of the events under discussion IS in fact determined based on athletic prowess and not based on "looking good," whatever you think that means. If you investigate the criteria based on which judgments are made for these events you will certainly find that "looking good" is not the primary criterion.
You're accusing the event of being useless simply because it employs judge? By that logic, the Supreme Court of the United States should be the most useless institution in the world.
Judges are instructed, trained and educated not to make judgments based on whatever you are calling "looking good." They have an intricate knowledge of the content they are judging and know exactly what to look for. In particular, they are able to recognize the difference between merely "looking good" and having "true athletic prowess" with respect to the event being judged.
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EDIT: I would be able to sympathise with your grievances if you were trying to claim that the quality of judging isn't up to par or that the judges aren't being as impartial as they should - but your complaint involves no such claim. Your complaint is simply directed against the fact that there exists a judge. Well, the event needs to be judged! And your solution is to chuck the event out completely? Pray, do tell, on whose behalf do you think you are making such a complaint?
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EDIT 2: My real concern is this: I fear the day when judges will be eliminated and viewers will be asked to judge the event by SMS a la American Idol. Now, that's something to worry about.
The primary usepoint is for video streaming, which can take up immense amounts of bandwidth, particularly if HD content is being streamed. YouTube and Netflix and Hulu already take up huge amounts of American internet usage, and that's only going to grow as more and more people shed increasingly legacy cable and satellite television packages.
This sort of ultra-fast internet isn't so much about right now as it is about five or ten years from now. It's an attempt to make the system more future-proof.
The primary usepoint [sic] of a 10gbps connection is to stream videos? Even the highest quality HD videos can comfortably be streamed on a 10mbps connection (which is 100x slower than the connection we are currently discussing).
only if the person on the other end can support it. speed is pretty much determined by the pipe of which you take to get there and the amount of other traffic on that pipe.
with p2p it depends on the number of users and their connection speeds.
Hmm... it still isn't clear to me. Suppose I have a 1Gbps connection and I am connected to 100 peers but all of my peers have connection speeds that are less than or equal to 10mbps. If I am downloading at 10mbps from each one of the 100 peers, does this mean that my total download speed is in fact 1Gbps?
That's 1G/sec, right? I'm still flabberghasted that this is so close to reality.
I'm not sure what you mean by 1G/sec but if by "G" you mean "Gb" as in "Gigabit" then yes, you're right. It's a 1Gbps connection. As Google correctly advertises, this is about 100x faster than your average internet connection (from Comcast, et. al.).
Pretty silly that Google based it's initial offerings on who could make the best video to get them to come to their area. I am not sure that Kansas will be able to give them the numbers they need. The reason 99% of offerings like this hit huge cities first like NYC or LA is due to the potential for more customers. But hey, I just watched the Kansas video it was fairly neat. I assume they will plan to roll out it soon assuming people in Kansas actually follow through and buy the damn thing.
Here is the link to the video that apparently won the competition.
Really? Is this what Google based this decision on? That seems rather silly. It would make much more sense to base their decision on a proper market analysis.
This isn't necessarily good news for everyone in Kansas City because not everyone in Kansas City will have the opportunity to get a Google Fiber connection. They've divided the city up into small neighborhoods (called "fiberhoods") and you can only get the connection if enough people in your fiberhood pre-register for the service.
I'm 15. A while back at SCG Madison I was with my friend. We were copying our decklists as behind me we heard a rather loud "look, we have kids here." We were pretty pissed and just ignored it. Although I went 2-6 with Food Chain (The deck worked so well online), I beat some top tier decks. Have any of you ever faced this?
The only information you've given us is that somebody said "look, we have kids here." Then, you go on to characterize this behavior as "hatred towards young players." I'm not sure what's going on, but such a characterization certainly isn't warranted based on the information you've given us. Somebody could have said "look, we have kids here" for any number of reasons. As somebody in this thread already pointed out, perhaps another player was using profanity and was asked to stop using such language because "we have kids here."
Unless there's something more to it that you're not telling us, I think you're just reading too much into a simple remark. It's quite unlikely that they "hate" you. Just relax!
The question I pose is what are the best cards to spend life? My favorite that I have found is Bloodletter Quill.
Lifegain is a White strategy.
Spending life is a Black strategy.
Lifegain on it's own is quite useless. As you have yourself noticed, you need a way to spend the life you're gaining otherwise lifegain serves no purpose. If you want a good way to spend life, you need black cards. This means that you need to be running a Black + White deck.
Here are some cards that I can recommend off the top of my head for a B/W life gain / life spend / life loss deck:
My experience in America was much more frustrating, to say the least. I had this 8 Dollar item from the menu, you say? How much is that after tax? And I wonder how much I have to tip?
I definitely think that the European system is much better for all parties. And please don't try to tell me that America cares more about "equal distribution of wealth" than the Europeans or some bull**** like that. Tipping is just an artifact of American culture that has nothing to do with equal distribution of wealth.
---
[edit] I think the issue raised in this thread is being completely misunderstood by those who are defending tipping culture (e.g. MikeyG, dcarticst, etc.). In a society where tipping is the norm, obviously it is rude and / or cheap not to tip. That's why I always tipped when I lived in America - because I subscribe to the maxim "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." But the larger question being raised by this thread is: why is tipping the norm in American society? Wouldn't it be better to get rid of this norm in favor of a more user-friendly service model?
I just wanted to share two anecdotes from the past few days that made me come to this conclusion:
1. In my German class we had to read some text excerpts taken from an internet forum (probably to familiarize ourselves with informal writing in German). The posts generally looked like they were written by 13 year olds i.e. full of text speak, walls of text, lack of proper syntax, etc. So I said in class that these posts are **** and that they're written horribly. All the other students jumped to their defense and said "this is the internet" and "that's how people write on internet forums." Then I tried to explain to them that "the internet" isn't a homogenous entity and there are various forums where such poor communication is unacceptable. Most of them were like "what kind of internet do you live in?" or "what kind of forums do you visit?" Then one of them offered the following explanation that everybody seemed to concur with: "well, you probably visit some forums about really heady / intellectual topics like literature or art and that's why you're expecting such a high quality of posts." I think I literally blew their minds when I told them that it was in fact a forum about a magic card game.
2. I recently signed up for a forum about law school (because I'm exploring the possibility of going to law school) - a place where you think you would find intelligent discussion. Although there's a lot of useful information on that forum, it's littered with spam. About 60% of the all the posts in that forum would be warned / infracted for spamming or trolling or flaming.
Seriously, I think the only negative thing about MTGS is that you've raised my bar too high for what I should expect from an internet forum.
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[EDIT] Off Topic:
I have no idea where you got that quote. What you have quoted is an extremely mangled version of a quote that is frequently attributed to Einstein. The quote is:
"The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
Although this quote is frequently attributed to einstein (just google for "Einstein definition of insanity") I doubt that it was something Einstein actually said or wrote.
This is the first time I"m reading this thread and when I saw the original post, I too was appalled by this fact. I'm surprised nobody else brought it up so far. I have no idea why this was even mentioned in the original post.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Please do elaborate on the "ins and outs of getting a good score." How is it possible for the score to be determined by anything other than what is done in the field of play? This only makes sense if you're trying to level charges of bribery / corruption against the judges.
The outcome of the events under discussion IS in fact determined based on athletic prowess and not based on "looking good," whatever you think that means. If you investigate the criteria based on which judgments are made for these events you will certainly find that "looking good" is not the primary criterion.
You're accusing the event of being useless simply because it employs judge? By that logic, the Supreme Court of the United States should be the most useless institution in the world.
Judges are instructed, trained and educated not to make judgments based on whatever you are calling "looking good." They have an intricate knowledge of the content they are judging and know exactly what to look for. In particular, they are able to recognize the difference between merely "looking good" and having "true athletic prowess" with respect to the event being judged.
----
EDIT: I would be able to sympathise with your grievances if you were trying to claim that the quality of judging isn't up to par or that the judges aren't being as impartial as they should - but your complaint involves no such claim. Your complaint is simply directed against the fact that there exists a judge. Well, the event needs to be judged! And your solution is to chuck the event out completely? Pray, do tell, on whose behalf do you think you are making such a complaint?
----
EDIT 2: My real concern is this: I fear the day when judges will be eliminated and viewers will be asked to judge the event by SMS a la American Idol. Now, that's something to worry about.
The primary usepoint [sic] of a 10gbps connection is to stream videos? Even the highest quality HD videos can comfortably be streamed on a 10mbps connection (which is 100x slower than the connection we are currently discussing).
That's a really interesting question. I too would like to know the answer to this question.
Hmm... it still isn't clear to me. Suppose I have a 1Gbps connection and I am connected to 100 peers but all of my peers have connection speeds that are less than or equal to 10mbps. If I am downloading at 10mbps from each one of the 100 peers, does this mean that my total download speed is in fact 1Gbps?
"I am studying Psychology at XYZ University."
"I have a bachelor's degree in Mathematics."
Is it required to use upper case letters for the words "Mathematics" and "Psychology?"
I'm not sure what you mean by 1G/sec but if by "G" you mean "Gb" as in "Gigabit" then yes, you're right. It's a 1Gbps connection. As Google correctly advertises, this is about 100x faster than your average internet connection (from Comcast, et. al.).
Converting to Megabytes, it's 128 Megabytes/sec.
Really? Is this what Google based this decision on? That seems rather silly. It would make much more sense to base their decision on a proper market analysis.
This isn't necessarily good news for everyone in Kansas City because not everyone in Kansas City will have the opportunity to get a Google Fiber connection. They've divided the city up into small neighborhoods (called "fiberhoods") and you can only get the connection if enough people in your fiberhood pre-register for the service.
The only information you've given us is that somebody said "look, we have kids here." Then, you go on to characterize this behavior as "hatred towards young players." I'm not sure what's going on, but such a characterization certainly isn't warranted based on the information you've given us. Somebody could have said "look, we have kids here" for any number of reasons. As somebody in this thread already pointed out, perhaps another player was using profanity and was asked to stop using such language because "we have kids here."
Unless there's something more to it that you're not telling us, I think you're just reading too much into a simple remark. It's quite unlikely that they "hate" you. Just relax!
In short, God (capital G) >>>>> gods (small g)
Lifegain is a White strategy.
Spending life is a Black strategy.
Lifegain on it's own is quite useless. As you have yourself noticed, you need a way to spend the life you're gaining otherwise lifegain serves no purpose. If you want a good way to spend life, you need black cards. This means that you need to be running a Black + White deck.
Here are some cards that I can recommend off the top of my head for a B/W life gain / life spend / life loss deck: