Simon

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

I'm curious about those much better ways to defend myself from attack.

 

Let's say that I were able to better control my hands and fingers than I can in reality.

 

I still have limited mobility and balance problems when I try to stand and walk.

 

I live a couple of miles away from a part of town where drugs are literally sold on every street corner by guys wearing gang colors. I've had people try to mug me while I'm just doing simple things like coming out of a bookstore.

 

Can you point out some of those much better ways to defend myself from attack? Because I have to be damned careful when I step outside my house and sometimes don't feel terribly secure inside my house and could use some pointers to pass along to the other people at the senior center.

First and foremost:  what Ternaugh said...x1000.  Too many people think that "defending" starts when you're under active attack -- it's too late then.  At that point, you're hoping that you're better than your attacker.  There's no magic, no mystery -- you are either better than your attacker or you're willing and able to take things further than your attacker is willing to go (e.g. your attacker is just in it as a "simple" bar fight...and you're taking it to the gouging of eyes, stabbing, imminent death level -- that's a whole 'nother fight that they're likely not in for).

Before talking defenses (beyond what Ternaugh hit upon), let's talk about guns...since there's a LOT of misinformation and misconception about them.  A gun is pretty danged effective as an offensive weapon...from about 8 feet on.  Inside of 8 feet, it's non-ideal.  If you don't have the weapon drawn and your attacker is 8 feet away, forget about it.  We would routinely train police in exactly that point -- having a beginning student with a pool noodle run across the entire dojang floor and whap them over the head with it while they were fumbling for their sidearm (airsoft, in those cases).  All they had to do was move, but they were fixated on their gun.

Inside of 6 feet and it doesn't matter if you have the gun drawn -- they're too close.  IF you have it trained on them and they're inside of 6 feet, maybe you stand a chance...but again, you're back to are you better than they are....and are they not fully committed to the attack. If you're trying to draw or raise your weapon and someone is inside of 6 feet, you're more likely to have it used against you than you are to actually bring it into play against your attacker.

So...guns: great at distance, horrible close up.   

Keep in mind what Ternaugh posted -- if you're unaware of your situation to the point that you get attacked (maybe they were actively in hiding -- this isn't a knock on the person attacked), then you're dealing with an attacker that is well within that 6 foot radius.  You're in HTH range and need to handle it as such.  And by "handle it" I'm not referring to taking the fight to them...that just goes back to who's better trained and more committed to the fight.  De-escalating and avoiding a fight entirely should be your goal...and it's really not that hard (hint: a gun ALWAYS escalates, that's it's main purpose -- showing that one side is willing to take the fight to the lethal level).  A common/believable situation we often used to highlight de-escalating:

You're in a bar hanging out with friends, beer in hand.  The bar's pretty crowded...a big guy is walking by and bumps into you, causing you to spill your beer.  Gets mainly on you, but a little splashes on him.  He loses it and starts berating you, clearly angling for a fight.  You've done nothing wrong...you can yell back (escalating things) and hope that he backs down (he's not willing to take it to a fight)...you can actively escalate it to the point of a fight (ala Joe Pesci)...or you can try to de-escalate -- calm him down.  "Whoa, I am so sorry....I didn't see you.  Let me get something at the bar to dry you off.  What are you drinking?  I'll get your next round."  You've gone from your night being over (should a fight have broken out) and likely having some rather expensive medical bills (even if you won) to being out $6 and most likely not even that once the guy calms down...and they almost always do.  

You can apply similar in most situations.  Being mugged?  Unless you have thousands on you, give them what they're after -- you're already at a disadvantage (you didn't see them until it was too late) and you're likely going to get injured in a fight, even if you win and keep your stuff.  The cost of those injuries is going to vastly outweigh whatever it is that you're carrying in most cases.  

Too often we're more concerned with what's "fair" or "right" and end up escalating things needlessly.

I think that throughout our society there is a general use of guns as defensive weapons that is both pervasive and misleading.  They are not good at self defense -- there are much better ways to defend oneself from an attack.  The presentation of guns as defensive is extremely pervasive throughout our society and a large part of the reason (IMO) that we can't get past the 2A (and we really only pay attention to the second half of it) to actually address the problem that the US has with firearms.

36 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

IMO, this is splitting hairs. There are no "defensive" or "offensive" weapons. They are all just weapons. If you use them when you're trying to prevent someone from harming you, then you're committing assault or homicide with the mitigating factor of the action being required for self defense. In this case, you're making an affirmative defense. This means you're admitting to inflicting harm on someone else, but are arguing that self defense exemptions in your local use of force laws will mean  you don't get charged or will be acquitted if you go to trial. An affirmative defense shifts burden of proof onto the defendant.

 

As an RPGer if nothing else you know better than that.

A shield is a primarily defensive weapon. It has some offensive capabilities, but it is designed first and foremost as a defense.

A gun is a near-exclusively offensive weapon. It has no defensive capabilities (apart from a very poorly-advised potential to be used as a shield/blocking device).

I keep seeing folks refer to guns as defensive weapons.  I'm curious where you come up with this definition. 

Guns are one of the most singularly offensive weapons you can attain (as a civilian). Their sole use as defense is a deterrent -- raising your offense capabilities to what you hope is further than your opponent is willing to go.  That's not a defensive weapon - that's a highly offensive weapon.

Note:  offensive here as in "offense vs. defense"/attacking not annoyance.

Nope...so long as you avoid the uncompressed class file/directory issue mentioned above.

Why in the world would you think something like that was a bug?

If you're interested in the latest and greatest, you can always copy them out of the current HD6.jar file (it will open with any zip/compression software) -- just make sure that you don't have the uncompressed contents sitting in the same directory as HD6.jar when you try to run HD (classpaths can be fun)

As stated on the product page, HD requires Java (full version) -- your tablet does not have that (nor can you install it -- it's not available).

It's something I've seen in recent versions of Java -- getting confused with multiple modal dialogs (one modal dialog opening another). Try a triple-click when opening the secondary dialog -- that seems to pull it to the foreground.

If that doesn't work, delete your appPrefs.xml file before starting HD -- it's possible that the dialog is being positioned off-screen if you copied that file over from a different system.

Part of it is that it's those that are most in need that are not being taken care of (often).  As you say, if you're insured and in generally good health, there's little issue (though out of pocket can still be pretty high...and insurance costs, even when half is footed by the employer, are VERY high compared to other countries).  It's when you're in need that things change (for the worse).  A friend of mine had been fighting cancer for years...very expensive treatments.  His insurer decided to cut him off/decline coverage.  The insurer's gamble was sound -- it would cost a large chunk of money for my friend to go after them in court and make them pay...and the insurer's legal fees were already covered by the lawyers they kept on retainer.  So they could cut him off and worst-case (for them) be forced to pay out after a lengthy court battle.

The flip side to this (and part of the reason for doctors' reluctance to take Medicare patients) is that we're a VERY litigious society. This drives up rates across the board, doctors paying higher malpractice insurance, insurers having higher rates due to payouts and legal, etc.  This is why it's not an easy solution -- any change in coverage (single payer, etc.) needs to be matched with protections for doctors (and, in turn, the insurers) from litigation. Not immunity, but protection.

Back now.  New update posted that might fix the issue.

Rather than saying that all I've done is the minor little fiddly change shown above, I'll say that I've done strange and mysterious things that are not for the uninitiated (or the faint of heart).

If that does what I expect, then you'll still have the problem and I'll have to keep digging...

To keep yourself entertained while I go out and have a beer (before digging back into the code), try setting HD up on a completely separate system and see if the problem occurs there.  That will tell us if it's you and your emergent powers (more or less useless, but still emergent) or just something with your system.

For entertainment value, I'm looking at the following source as the only point that the error could be occurring:

public void setSelectedOption(Adder option) {
		if (option != null) {
			long id = option.getID();
			option = (Adder) option.clone();
			option.setID(id);
		}
		Adder oldOption = selectedOption;
		selectedOption = option;
		if (oldOption != null && selectedOption != null
				&& oldOption.getXMLID().equals(selectedOption.getXMLID())
				&& !oldOption.isFixedValue()) {
			selectedOption.setBaseCost(oldOption.getBaseCost());
		}
		if (options != null && option != null) {
			for (Adder o : options) {
				if (o.getXMLID().equals(option.getXMLID())) {
					o.setSelected(true);
				} else {
					o.setSelected(false);
				}
			}
		}
		if (option == null) {
			return;
		}

Looking to change that to pull the null check up a bit (even though it's replicated in each of the if blocks beforehand)....

public void setSelectedOption(Adder option) {
		if (option != null) {
			long id = option.getID();
			option = (Adder) option.clone();
			option.setID(id);
		}
		Adder oldOption = selectedOption;
		selectedOption = option;

		if (option == null) {
			return;
		}
		
		if (oldOption != null && selectedOption != null
				&& oldOption.getXMLID().equals(selectedOption.getXMLID())
				&& !oldOption.isFixedValue()) {
			selectedOption.setBaseCost(oldOption.getBaseCost());
		}
		if (options != null && option != null) {
			for (Adder o : options) {
				if (o.getXMLID().equals(option.getXMLID())) {
					o.setSelected(true);
				} else {
					o.setSelected(false);
				}
			}
		}

I'm all in for burgers...but the only train near me is freight only BNSF....

I'm digging through the code to see if there's any possibility of a race condition, but it appears to be too predictable an occurrence on your system for that...

Not a bad idea...attached below:

test.hdc

Good news/bad news.

Good news: there are errors in your trace.log files that are occurring during the opening of the ACV dialog.  So no one can use this as proof that you are, in fact, crazy.

Bad news: I cannot replicate the error, nor can I see where it would be occurring in the code (i.e. the code looks right).

The main difference that I can see in how our copies would be running is that you have some prefabs loaded (and prefabs do the darndest things).  Try the following:

1. Unload all prefabs and see if the problem persists.  Alternately, delete the appPrefs.xml file before starting HD (which will reset everything).

2. Either post or send me the prefab files so that I can attempt to replicate the issue on my side.

Yeah...other than some general issues Java has had of late (under MacOS) with modal dialogs initially displaying beneath others (they come to the foreground with a click...so it's a triple-click on the Modifier in this case), I'm not showing any issues.

Can you post the trace.log file after the issue occurs for you?

Though I should mention that posts to simply pad your count will be summarily deleted.

Stick around for a bit, post about 7 more times...

Maybe search less often until you become a full member?

Then it's either the directory that you're running HD from or the directory that you're saving the PDFs to -- you/HD do not have proper access to them, generating an error at the system level when Java tries to create the requisite files.

First determine if it's something in the character file (not indicated by the trace.log, but worth checking):  start a new character (empty) and try the Print to PDF to the same location you were trying with the full character.

The trace.log is doing little to pull me away from the "you don't have adequate permissions to the directory that you're running HD from or the directory that you're saving the PDF to" determination.

Without further details on the issue (trace.log file, a character file, etc.), the only answer I can give is that you're running into permissions issues with either the drive you're running HD from or the directory you're saving the PDF to.

1. Print to PDF is only for characters (and only for characters using the built-in templates -- custom characteristics will throw the process off).
 

2. If you are receiving the error on a character, you'll want to ensure that you have full permissions to the directory that you're running HD from. Under Windows, this is not always obvious (due to UAC).