Neat. Where can I read a bit more about this?

TIA

I made my personal business cards using moo (http://us.moo.com). With the design I wanted, putting in my linkedin profile wasn't impossible: it was cut off due to width.

Therefore I used a Tinyurl, worked like a charm, and now that you can use a sort of alias for them, next time I will use a tinyurl which actually has my name in it.

Personally I found the Lists (in Sharepoint) frustrating to work with: they make easy things easy, and moderately complex things impossible (or much harder than they should be, anyway).

The Lookup() function is laughable and won't work nice with the idea of deploying anything as part of a Solution.

Modeling complex documents in Alfresco seemed better, imho. I agree that in terms of UI and "customization" Sharepoint is much better (in fact, we used Liferay as a front-end to Alfresco)
but IMHO Sharepoint is showing signs of a kitchen-sink approach and I would be wary to use it in a CMS role, unless your documents are always single Office files, and there is no idea of aggregates of disparate documents.

You want to use Sharepoint for CMS???

I'd go Alfresco, personally.

(And yes, I used both, on comparable-sized projects: 3k users corporate intranets).

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1299961&cid=28668819

I agree with all you posted. I suspect (but not having really tried, it's pure speculation on my part) that having a complete combat simulator in software and then adding an "editorial console" on top to allow the DM to cheat would be very complex in terms of usability and would disrupt the game flow (even if the actual touching up of the results would be relatively rare).

What I think is that sometimes fudging rolls and changing things on the fly is almost automatic for a good DM, while having to change the results and propagate the effects back would be a bit cumbersome.

Example: an NPC Magic User casts some area effect spell (which I suppose would be shown to players, either with cool digital effects on the table, or at least with some text message).
Now, if one of the PCs fails save and takes too much damage, do you ask the DM if he is ok with this before showing the results? How much of the "prerolled past" is the DM allowed to change?

Would this be a "change the rolled damage till the Ranger is safe"? And if this is the case what about NPCs and even opponents caught in the blast? Would they get back to life, too? What if you showed them getting burn to a crisp with an animation?

What if the only way to change the outcome requires the MU to fail the casting for some random motive?

Basically I see the tension between "let the system take care of the rolls" and "what if I want a different outcome for this specific result?" as something difficult to properly implement (the MS table thing is not the problem here, it's a conundrum for any computerized combat simulator, I am afraid) because a detailed combat turn in a RPG has lots of things happening, and changing the result would clash with lots of things the simulator has updated in its internal state, and makes things hard to properly edit.

Yes, sorry, I was a bit in a hurry and didn't add enough disclaimers to my post. I am answering to you but this goes for at least another couple of people who replied to my message.

Please understand that - of course - what I think is the "proper" way to play a RPG is just a matter of opinion and personal preference.

And when I say I "discussed it with people" I don't mean that everybody agreed, or that I managed to convince them of "the error of their ways", either.

I do take exception at considering RPGs in general games where you can "win" and therefore strict adherence to rules is not the proper way to go for me. But, obviously, it's my own opinion. Apologies if I didn't stress this enough in my post.
The recent editions of D&D are very "tactical", I understand, so among the various different RPGs it may be the most suited for this kind of treatment, but I (personally, IMHO etc.) wouldn't find this kind of technology appealing for playing RPGs.

Actually, I don't find the technology very suitable for D&D and other role playing games (while it would be perfect for chess).

I have discussed this for ages with friends and strangers in forums. What people seem to miss is that a Role Playing Game is not a Wargame. It may have simulation elements, but it's - at its roots - a narrative game.

This means that at some point the Referee (or DM or whatever you call him/her) will want to "cheat", hopefully in favour of the players, or more specifically "in favour of a good story". Automated systems - especially combat automators - will therefore either have to be sidestepped or manually updated on the fly - especially to edit out irreversible results like a deadly wound for someone in the party, or killing a valuable NPC and so on.

A table automator makes things even worse: this kind of "cheating" would be even more blatant, and damage the game atmosphere.

So, to sum it up: if you want to automate tabletop games with rigid rules and heavy bookeeping, like wargames, it's probably great (apart from the fact it does not alleviate some specific problems like being able to see the other's player pieces, how to simulate fog-of-war and so on, unless you force players to take turns at the table).

If you want to participate in a shared narrative game (like I would say any RPG is, even those heavily influenced by wargames, like D&D) it's probably better to have a lighter set of rules, and allow the referee to edit things on the fly without having the players to necessarily spot any inconsistencies.

Amazon got the name from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

Interesting. Based on average pay for your country? Or your own income/salary? Or what?

I.e. how do you define "it takes X seconds to make a dollar"?

While you are assigning quotas, don't forget the "less characterization than a box of cereals".

I think s/he is pointing at this: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/kit-pedler/mutant-59.htm

Can you spell "bad precedent"? I knew you could...

You have pipl.com for that...