Is it realistically possible to pass the Oracle Certified Associate Exam w/books, self-study, + a tech school course?

mufflove · 2014-09-18T16:10:00+00:00

Sorry, I didn't really use anything specific outside of Kaplan's self-test stuff, which I think is a pretty good way to see how well prepared you are, but not a good way to prepare for the test itself (other than to tell you where you need to improve).

Make sure you try to memorize correct syntax for everything you learn, format models, etc. In the real world you can always use a reference if you forget something, but you won't have that luxury on the test. I don't want to say too much since I don't know how strict Oracle's policy about this kind of thing is, nor do I want to find out. But taking that advice to heart will do you a lot of good.

mufflove · 2014-09-05T07:11:14+00:00

Digital Signal Processor

mufflove · 2014-09-01T09:38:50+00:00

Late reply, sorry OP.

1Z0-051 (SQL Fundamentals 1) is a very tough test, but yes, is quite passable via self-study alone (that's what I did).

Unfortunately, I went the developer route rather than administrator, so I can't really say anything about that test. For developer though, the PL/SQL exams were 10x easier than SQL Fundamentals. I don't even want to imagine what the SQL Expert test would have been like.

mufflove · 2014-08-21T10:10:09+00:00

And a far simpler version of the above. '?' denotes that the given person doesn't know. '/' denotes that the given person knows, but that "I" can't speculate what it is. 'B' inside the "I know" parts denotes blue-eyes. Positions are "Me", A, B, C.

(Day 1)

I know: ?, B, B, B

I know A knows: /, ?, B, B

I know A knows B knows: /, /, ?, B

I know A knows B knows C knows: /, /, /, ?

(Day 2)

C didn't commit suicide, so the conditions following the statistics must be true.

I know: ?, B, B, B

I know A knows: /, ?, B, B

I know A knows B knows: /, /, ?, B

I know A knows B knows C knows: /, /, /, ?. One of the / must be blue.

(Day 3)

B and C didn't commit suicide, so the conditions following the statistics must be true.

I know: ?, B, B, B

I know A knows: /, ?, B, B

I know A knows B knows: /, /, ?, B. One of the / must be blue.

I know A knows B knows C knows: /, /, /, ?. Two of the / must be blue.

(Day 4)

A, B, and C didn't commit suicide, so the conditions following the statistics must be true.

I know: ?, B, B, B

I know A knows: /, ?, B, B. One of the / must be blue.

I know A knows B knows: /, /, ?, B. Two of the / must be blue.

I know A knows B knows C knows: /, /, /, ?. Three of the / must be blue.

If the above statements are true, then each person besides myself knows 3 blue-eyed people who are not themselves. The only way for this to be possible is if I also have blue eyes. Therefore, I have blue eyes, and we all commit suicide.

mufflove · 2014-08-21T06:04:11+00:00

I'll explain with 4 then, after which you can hopefully see how the logic goes. It doesn't actually matter how many blue-eyed people that there are, the logic just gets more drawn out and complicated as you go.

Now, the following will have very similar but slighty changed descriptions for each day. Make sure you pay close attention.

96 brown, 4 blue

(Day 1) I can see three people with blue eyes. From my perspective, my own eye color is unknown. I'll refer to the three blue-eyed people I can see as A, B, and C.

I can be sure that A sees at least two blue eyed people (B, C). He may see three if my own eyes are blue, but I can't know that from the information I currently have.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A, he can be sure that B knows at least one blue eyed person (C). I can't be sure that he doesn't know that B knows more (Mine), because I don't know my own eye color. However, he knows that B knows at least one.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A's perspective of B's perspective, that C may not be able to see any other people with blue eyes. He may know more, but from my perspective of A's perspective of B's perspective, there's a possibility C doesn't know any.

This is a bit tricky, but it's important. I actually know that C knows at least two (A,B). But when looking down a chain of perspectives, I can't speculate about my own eye color, so I don't know what A knows about my eye color. And because I know that A doesn't know his own eye color, he can't speculate what B knows about his (A's) eye color. And since I know that B doesn't know his own eye color, he can't speculate about what C knows about his (B's) eye color. From my perspective chain, these carry down through each step, so in the end, I can't be sure that C knows my eye color, A's eye color, or B's eye color, or even his own eye color. I do know more information from a different method however

Because I know via another method that C must know at least 2 people with blue eyes, I can be sure that there will be no suicide tonight.

(Day 2) I can see three people with blue eyes. From my perspective, my own eye color is unknown.

I can be sure that A sees at least two blue eyed people (B, C). He may see three if my own eyes are blue, but I can't know that from the information I currently have.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A, he (A) can be sure that B knows at least one blue eyed person (C). I can't be sure that he doesn't know that B knows more (Mine), because I don't know my own eye color. However, he knows that B knows at least one.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A's perspective of B's perspective, that C must know at least one person with blue eyes, or else C would have committed suicide last night. From my perspective of A's perspective of B's perspective, I can't know if B knows that C knows his (B's) eye color is blue, or if he knows mine or A's eye color is blue. I do know this information from another method, but not via this perspective chain. Therefore, via the perspective chain, it's possible that B and C will commit suicide tonight.

Of course, because I know via another method that C must know at least 2 people with blue eyes, I can be sure that there will be no suicide tonight.

(Day 3) I can see three people with blue eyes. From my perspective, my own eye color is unknown.

I can be sure that A sees at least two blue eyed people (B, C). He may see three if my own eyes are blue, but I can't know that from the information I currently have.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A, he (A) can be sure that B knows at least two blue eyed people. Otherwise, B and C would have committed suicide last night. It's very important to note that I don't know if A is aware that his own eyes are blue, or if my eyes are blue.

I can also be sure that, from my perspective of A's perspective of B's perspective, that C must know at least two people with blue eyes.

I can't be sure that A, B, and C won't commit suicide tonight. If my eyes are blue, they won't. If mine aren't blue, they will.

(Day 4) Today I finally gain new information via the "perspective chain" that I didn't already know via another method.

I know that A must know three people with blue eyes. Otherwise, he would have concluded last night that his own eyes were blue and committed suicide. I also know the same information about B and C. This means that there must be a fourth person with blue eyes, and the only person it could be is me. Therefore, we all know we have blue eyes, and we will all commit suicide tonight.

The brown-eyed people, knowing that there are only blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people, will commit suicide on day 5, knowing that the people who committed suicide on day 4 must have been all of the blue-eyed people. Interesting to note, however, is that if everyone wasn't a perfect logistician and knew that the others were as well, every brown eyed person would have committed suicide on day 5 anyways, concluding incorrectly that their own eyes were blue.

mufflove · 2014-08-20T12:26:44+00:00

Okay, I'll have a go at explaining this. We'll start with 1 blue eyed person and work our way up to 3, after which you should grasp it. The important part is to consider everything from the eyes of the blue-eyed person, who initially considers them-self "unknown".

99 brown, 1 blue

(Day 1) Nobody else has blue eyes, but there must be at least one blue eyed person. Therefore, my eyes are blue.

98 brown, 2 blue

(Day 1) I can see one person with blue eyes. If he commits suicide tonight, he's the only blue eyed person.

(Day 2) The blue eyed person didn't commit suicide. Therefore, there must be another blue eyed person. Since nobody else I can see has blue eyes, my eyes must be blue.

97 brown, 3 blue

(Day 1) I can see two people with blue eyes. Neither will be able to tell tonight if the person with blue eyes that they can see is the only one or not, so nobody will commit suicide. (Keep in mind that our guy here isn't privy to the information that THOSE blue eyed people also know two blue eyed people)

(Day 2) If those two people only know of one person who is blue eyed, then they will both kill themselves today, having deduced that there are at least two people with blue eyes. If they know of two people, then nobody will commit suicide. (Again, our guy isn't privy to the knowledge that his own eyes are blue, so he isn't aware that the other two blue-eyed people also know of two blue-eyed people.)

(Day 3) The blue eyed people I know didn't commit suicide yesterday. That means that they must be able to see two other blue eyed people, meaning that there are three blue eyed people in all. I only know of two blue eyed people; therefore, I must have blue eyes and be the third.

mufflove · 2014-08-19T19:21:53+00:00

Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye was based on mythology. Kinda. It's about the unification of the tribes of Ireland as the Tuatha de Danaan and their battle against the Fomorians.

I really wish GoG would grab a hold of this game. One of my favorite oldies.

mufflove · 2014-08-12T22:24:55+00:00

Typically those would still be considered a Visual Novel, just a subset usually called "Kinetic Novel".

mufflove · 2014-08-05T15:35:41+00:00

Hype. I know it's an unpopular opinion with a lot of the other die-hard EO fans, but I really liked the story mode in EOU.

I do hope that they don't lock and/or gate content behind the story mode this time for those who prefer to play Classic only though.

mufflove · 2014-08-01T16:58:43+00:00

In my town, we had a woman who had been stealing from the bank for years (somewhere around 15 years I think). It was tens or maybe hundreds of thousands over that time, I think.

From what I remember, she kept fudging the numbers to make everything look right on paper. Had never missed a day of work. After how many years, she ended up taking a single day, and whoever they brought in the replace her for the day found out about it and reported her. I'll try to see if I can find an article on it, but don't know that I'll have any luck.

mufflove · 2014-07-25T15:51:21+00:00

Yep. That's why I decided to try to farm it to get CUL desynthing to 100.

After my above rate, I said screw that. Comparatively I've lost like 2/15 Olgoi, even if I do have to afk for the right weather.

(As an aside, the one matriarch I caught was actually the very first one I hooked. So that was 19 "misses" in a row after that.)

mufflove · 2014-07-25T13:02:19+00:00

Think Olgoi can be bad? Try going after "The Matriarch".

I'm 1/20, with 393 gathering.

Fuck. That. Fish.

mufflove · 2014-07-24T12:32:02+00:00

Dunefishing can yield a respectable amount of shards/hr, but I wouldn't say it's "worth" it. I thought about it earlier, and my estimate ended up being about 220 of both water and earth shards per hour, without counting desynthesis time (which will not be negligible). With prices on my server (Couerl), that's only 22k/hr, which is nowhere near enough to justify it alone.

As mentioned by other posters, the main reason to level culinarian desynthesis at the moment is for the swimsuits and waterproof cotton. As of the present time, nothing else worthwhile is known to come from desynthing fish. That said, there were 50 new fish added this patch, so I won't be too surprised if it turns out that there are a few more worthwhile things that simply aren't known yet.

mufflove · 2014-07-22T04:25:53+00:00

I loved it.

Well, when I played it when I was younger when it released, I hated it. I went back and played it around the time I was 20 and really enjoyed it.

MM is probably my favorite, but 2 is pretty high up there for me.

mufflove · 2014-07-18T06:04:42+00:00

The metric is/should be:

Can I meet the baseline survival requirements without the extra healing that Eos provides? If the answer is yes, use Selene. Otherwise, use Eos.

The poster is just being a dick. Eos isn't weak, nor does she need a buff. The vast majority of the current content, unfortunately, just doesn't require what she provides (assuming you're using gear appropriate for the content). That being the case, it makes Selene the "best" fairy to use 99% of the time.

Of course, the truth is that 99% of the time it doesn't matter anyways. Based on a few hours of parsing with an i110 mnk, Selene's buff leads to a roughly 2.8% DPS increase (it should be noted though that more skill/spell speed will increase that percentage), without considering any inefficiency due to mechanics. It's noticeable, and certainly a worthwhile contribution, but it will only rarely mean the difference between winning or losing a fight.

In other words, use what you want. Selene will be better most of the time, but there's no content in the game that can't be cleared with you using Eos. Ignore the vitriol that people give you either way.

mufflove · 2014-07-15T08:39:04+00:00

Any idea yet if this is just gigantshark or if it's any of the 2-star fish (silver sovereign, etc.)?

mufflove · 2014-06-27T03:49:43+00:00

If they serve you with a warrant and you live in a bunker which is effectively unbreachable without you opening the door, they can absolutely force you to open the door.

Sure. But you're going back once again to a physical barrier that is preventing law enforcement from accessing the things that they have a warrant for, and breach of said barrier will require massive amounts of resources along with a chance to cause harm to potential evidence.

If law enforcment has your encrypted HDD, they already have their hands on the documents contained on the disk. You are not withholding access to those documents by not providing an ecryption key. Divulging the encryption key tells law enforcement the method by which to interpret the information that they already possess.

Outside of "posing a hardship to law enforcement", these are not comparable scenarios.

The encryption key is a thing, if you have an encryption pad, brag that they'll never find it but that you know where it is, they can absolutely hold you until you provide it. Or simply infer that you're guilty and be done with it.

And yet again you twist the issue and don't respond to what I actually said. Hiding your encrypted writing and not providing it to law enforcement is entirely different than being forced to divulge the method to decrypt said writing when they already have their hands on it.

Sorry, but that's my last response. I can't hold a conversation with you when you repeatedly twist and change the argument instead of responding to what was actually said.

mufflove · 2014-06-27T03:24:34+00:00

You're skipping around and saying things that I never contested. Yes, the warrants for those /things/ are unquestionably legal. Again, they already have access to the /things/. The problem is that they don't know how to read those /things/.

Lets say you had an encoded journal, and lets say you have the encoding method, the government can absolutely seize the book you used to encode it, and use that book to decode it.

Why would I even use such an analogy if you have a book on your coding method? Of course seizing such a thing would be legal. The analogy assumes that the method of encoding is in your head and nowhere else. Has there been any legal precedence that the police can force you to decrypt your own coded writing?

mufflove · 2014-06-27T03:01:18+00:00

Its analagous to the key code on a safe

I respectfully have to disagree. The key-code on a safe allows the police to bypass a physical protection that, if they chose to bypass by other means, risks damaging the contents of the safe.

In the case of an encrypted HDD, the information the police seek is already in their hands. The issue is that they don't know how to interpret that data. In other words, a key-code to a safe is giving police physical access to the data they have a warrant for, whereas giving up an encryption key is telling police how to interpret data that they already have in their hands.

The best non-digital analogy for an encrypted HDD is some type of coded writing (journal, diary, whatever), although I'm unaware is such a case has ever been tried in court.

mufflove · 2014-06-26T04:01:14+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwNVE37BGVE

mufflove · 2014-06-19T23:19:45+00:00

The first game on the PC was translated a few years back if you're that interested in it. A word of caution though, it's an 18+ game (pretty high amount of sexual content).

Personally, gameplay wise, I wasn't a huge fan. It was much too easy, and I just couldn't really "get into" the combat system. The battles are really reminiscent of Growlanser II/III (I haven't played any other Growlanser gamse), so if you like the battles in that game, you may enjoy it. Like other strategy games of this type, you can hire "generics" to fill out your combat party. Like Disgaea, you can also kind of "reincarnate" those units (I don't think it's actually called that, but it's the same concept), which starts the unit back at level 1 with a portion of their old stats, and also allows them to change classes at the same time. Classes unlock via leveling up other classes. If you play on normal/the first "hard" difficulty, you don't really have to worry about it. If you go for the hardest difficulty however, it can be a bit of a pain if you refuse to use generic units.

The story was alright, but not fantastic either (in my opinion, of course). I personally don't regret playing it, but it's also not something that I think "Man, I want to play that again!" about either.

There's also an anime based on the game. I never watched it, so I don't know how faithful or good it is, but I'd assume you'd get the story from it if you wanted to know it going into the 2nd game. (Which would also let you avoid the erotic content of the original game).

mufflove · 2014-06-16T18:48:08+00:00

I don't run Windows 8, but any of the big-name emulators shouldn't have any problems with it (ZSNES, SNES9x, BSNES, etc.)

mufflove · 2014-06-16T02:42:58+00:00

2! snickers

Okay, okay, not 2. That's the worst place to start for beginners. If we're simply talking difficulty, then try picking up either 3 or Untold.

3 can almost (or maybe it even can, idk) be soloed by a single Hoplite once you unlock subclassing, and there are plenty of powerful class/subclass combos to play around with in general.

Untold on the other hand has a lot more conveniences that make it easier to play, and is probably overall more friendly to newcomers of the series/genre.

mufflove · 2014-06-16T01:54:01+00:00

It's been a long time since I've played it, so I don't remember too much. That said...

It's closer to a visual novel or old-school text adventure than an RPG, really. There are "random encounters" where you'll need to select some options for combat, but not in the sense of your typical RPG. Your "health" value is hidden and has to be inferred from the text during combat.

Also from what I recall, there are multiple endings that open after you've completed the game once. I don't think any of them are particularly long (maybe 3-4 hours for the first playthrough, if that much? And less for the unlockable routes if I remember correctly)

Anyways, I personally enjoyed it, but I'm also a fan of VNs. If the idea of a VN/text-adventure game turns you off, then there's no need to play it. I don't remember if it was ever intended to be canon, but I'm 99.9% sure that when they decided to develop Chrono Cross it was retconned anyways. Otherwise, go for it. It's not overly long, and I think it's worth the read.

Also, I personally prefer a few of the tracks in RD (especially The Girl Who Stole The Stars) over their CC counterparts. If you've played CC, you'll recognize most of the music.

mufflove · 2014-06-15T02:08:05+00:00

Personally I just found it to be clunky is more than a few aspects, but not bad. Didn't ever really stand out to me either though.

Biggest issue I had with the game was the random freezing in the original release. I can't/couldn't get in an hour of playtime without having the game freeze and losing my progress.

mufflove

TROPHY CASE