Arcanaville

Relativity forbids objects with mass moving at the speed of light in a vacuum (the laws of physics also forbit all massless objects from moving at anything other than the speed of light in a vacuum).

The mass-energy equations of special relativity suggest that any attempt to try to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light would require unbounded (infinite) energy.

The equations of physics generate ill-defined results for mass objects moving at *higher* than the speed of light which is often a sign that those equations are incomplete.

How exactly does a gravitational wave "collapse?"

The problem with this form of propulsion is not that it requires energy to keep moving: my understanding is you only need enough energy to set the wave in motion. The problem is I don't know if anyone has determined a method for exiting the bubble once it starts moving from the inside.

That's like saying there was room for bugs of different degrees.

The data showed there were two kinds of ATs. Controllers, Defenders, Scrappers, Brutes, Tankers, Stalkers, Corruptors, Masterminds, Peacebringers, Warshades, Soldiers, Widows, and Dominators were the first type. They all had relatively comparable average reward earning rates, leveling rates, solo and teaming performance, when averaged across the entire playerbase.

The second type was composed of Blasters. If Blasters were at one end of a continuous range of performance, that theory might at least have some basis in fact. But in fact, every archetype had powerset combinations that in general clustered around the average while blasters uniquely had all of its powerset combinations clustering far away from the average. The reasons for that are complex, but also completely irrelevant.

Given Matt's view on the subject, probably not.

These are people on the internet Sam, you have to temper your expectations.

You have to be a little careful about playing very old demos with very new clients because sometimes the animation names change, and then the entities don't do anything. Or sometimes they join the Ice Capades:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGTRMYw3TXk

That is being played back with the camera repositioned, by the way.


Indeed.

One thing internet denizens in general tend to lack is any sense of irony.

Holy **** that actually works in beta.

Holy **** it works on older demorecords.

You didn't think it would take me that long to figure out F2.

I'm going to assume that's a rhetorical question with extremely poor aim.

There's a story about the populace of Athens voting to having someone executed in defiance of the law, and after they were put to death when it was determined the evidence against them was false, they decided to rectify that by voting to have the people who originally accused the person executed, again in defiance of the law.

You couldn't have found a less palatable bunch of poster boys for democracy than the Athenians back in the day if you hired the same ad agency responsible for all those "The King" Burger King commercials.

Bet someone a lot of money they can't tell you how many superhero-based MMOs there are, and tell them you'll settle up with them on December 1.

The American founding fathers took significant inspiration from Sparta, but only broadly. Sparta wasn't just kind of like an oligarchy, it was a genuine oligarchy with almost no democratic aspects at all. It wasn't just politically non-democratic, it wasn't even socially democratic.

Bus Control was too interruptible.


Yeah, I went there.

I think you need to realize that decision was made in August. Anything that might be happening right now involves reversing that decision, not preventing it. Everything that happens from September 1 to November 30 will happen because the decision has been *made* to shut the game down. That's not theoretical, that's history.

Seeing the process of disconnecting and deleting aspects of City of Heroes should not in any way alter anyone enthusiasm or hope that the game can be changed, since the single largest event short of server shutdown has already happened: (essentially) all the Paragon Studios employees were terminated. I don't know why anyone would be thinking to themselves "I know it was bad when they fired all the developers and shut down the studio, but now that I see them remove us from the website I know its really over."

I couldn't wait to roll that Plant tanker, even with all the rooting.

Its kind of hard to forget the part where Spock's father yanks off his own head.

That's actually true. But of course, many people do care about performance to some degree, which is what makes performance balancing important. Just not preeminent.

You were doing well up to this point:

As even Matt explicitly states in the text you quote, the United States is not a literal democracy, but a republic. In fact, many of the founding fathers explicitly distrusted direct democracies, equating them to mob rule.

It is nevertheless true that long-term stable democracies of any kind are historically rare, and ones that are used as role models for emulation even rarer. In fact, if you scratch all the current stable democracies that derive from British colonies or are explicit emulations of British parliamentary rule, you're left with a very sparce remainder, none of which are used as models for other democracies that I'm aware of (at least, not yet). Matt's statement is highly parochial, but there is a kernel of truth to it.


True stable democracies are mostly an 18th and 19th century invention for all but certain limited cases, and successful ones that maintain their integrity outside of isolation are almost entirely a 19th and 20th century invention. Even Athens was not an entirely stable democracy historically. Its more precise to call it an experimental democracy, and one that was not considered an especially good role model for other countries to follow precisely because of its experimental and shifting nature (among other reasons).


I would say there has only been one actual stable really successful long-term democratic system, and that's the British Parliamentary system. Its been long-lived, it has served as the model for a large number of other democratic systems, and its most radical inspirational departure is probably the United States itself which is also a successful long term democracy. You'd be hard-pressed to name another system that is reasonably democratic, stable, long-lived, and successful in terms of both maintaining its integrity outside of isolation and replicating any significant part of itself outside its own origin.

Switzerland is certainly both stable and approaching the two century mark in longevity; maybe in another century or two it might become the model for other democracies, although I'm skeptical at the moment. Switzerland seems to be one of those exceptional exceptions throughout history.

I suppose everything is quantifiable if in no other sense than the amount of FTEs it took to implement or the number of options the game presents of that category. But what I meant was that the enjoyment of customization itself wasn't quantifiable, contrasting the poster in question who was arguing that enjoying performance is quantifiable by using the performance numbers themselves as a proxy for quantifying enjoyment. That, I believe, is nonsensical.

When someone is dying you focus on saving their life first, not dwelling on the medical bills and recuperative therapy. There will be plenty of time to give thought to what happens after the game is saved, if its saved.

If you want people to think realistically, then realistically the odds of the game being saved in any manner whatsoever are pretty low. But then again, the odds of actually saving someone's life through CPR are pretty low also.

I thought the "who cares what others think" thing was an internet people thing.