PlasmaWarrior

I KNEW IT!
EXERCISE WILL KILL YOU!




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25 year old man dies after playing Wii Fit

Collapsed "completely out of the blue"

By Mike Smith



Nintendo smash hit Wii Fit is usually associated with improved health, but for one fit and healthy British man, the opposite proved true, with tragic results.

Tim Eves, who was a keen fisherman, musician, and scout leader from the Norfolk area of eastern England, collapsed and died shortly after playing Wii Fit's jogging minigame -- and just moments after talking to his mother by telephone.

"We spoke to him on the phone when he was playing on the Wii machine. He told us he had just ordered himself a kebab and was sitting there with a glass of port. But a little while after he had put the phone down, he collapsed for no reason. It was completely out of the blue," Eves' mother told the Daily Telegraph.

A cause of death has not yet been established, but early reports suggest Eves may have been a victim of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, a condition whereby apparently fit and healthy adults can suffer cardiac arrests with no warning. There's no indication Wii Fit was to blame.

Hooray for YouTube, where you too can become a celebrity overnight if you're willing to do something completely and embarrassingly stupid.

HK woman's airport hysterics an online hit

Mon Feb 16, 4:34 am ET

HONG KONG (Reuters Life!) – A Chinese woman who freaked out at Hong Kong's international airport after missing her flight has hit the big time on YouTube after her hysterics were filmed and uploaded to the video sharing website.

The middle-aged woman was seen charging at a security guard at the departure gate, before screaming "aieyyahhhhh," at the top of her lungs in a rant that lasts about three minutes.

LINK!

The woman, sprawled on the ground, was seen wailing. An elderly man travelling with her tried to pull her to her feet but she shouted in Cantonese: "I want to go, I want to go."

Cathay Pacific said it had already closed the aircraft's doors and had offloaded the woman's baggage, and so was unable to allow her to board the flight to San Francisco.

"Don't be so upset, don't be so emotional," a male Cathay Pacific staff member is heard saying on the video.

Cathay Pacific said the incident occurred earlier this month, and the video appeared to have been loaded onto YouTube late last week. By Monday, the "woman going insane after missing her flight video" had over 400,000 hits.

In 2006, another sensational outburst by a stressed-out Hong Kong man captured the imagination of many people in this fast-paced, money-obsessed, Asian financial capital.

The middle-aged man, who chastised and swore at a youngster in a six-minute-long diatribe aboard a double decker bus, was dubbed "Bus-Uncle" and a video of the incident received close to two million hits.

His quote "I have pressure, you have pressure" became a catch-phrase and sparked navel-gazing at the pressure that many over-worked Hong Kong citizens suffer.

As for the woman at the airport, Cathay Pacific said it put her and her two travel companions on a later flight to Los Angeles, at no extra cost.

(Reporting by James Pomfret, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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Two-For-One!

University Opens Porn Course
A university in Taiwan has opened a course to teach students how to appreciate and analyze porn movies.

To pass the course, students must give a 15 minute presentation in which they analyze an audience's psychological reaction to a porn clip from an academic perspective.



Starcraft Course opened for College
Students in UC - Berkeley can take up StarCraft studies for college credits. Something we’ve never imagined would happen. I figure World of Warcraft would’ve been the first to be opened for classes but Starcraft did come out much earlier than WoW. Maybe another 2-3 years?

This is a gamers dream come true, something they’ve always fantasized about other than a porn course (which has came true as well). Some of the prerequisites for the course is that students “should be familiar with all units and some basic StarCraft strategy”. Anyone interested in the course needs to enter the class with “an open and analytic mind”. Oh, and you need to have StarCraft: Brood War, doh!

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Goddammit! Where were these courses when I was going to ASU?!

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14 Year old impersonates police officer.

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KSBY-TV
updated 10:29 a.m. PT, Tues., Jan. 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009

Reported by: Bethany Tucker

He had a police uniform, a radio, and a ticket book, and was ready for duty. Only, the so-called Chicago police officer was actually a 14-year-old boy.

Police say a teenager managed to spend five hours on the job with the Chicago Police Department before someone figured out he wasn't really a cop. He was even partnered with another officer and given an assignment.

It turns out the teen was a former Explorer, a part of the community policing program where young kids in the neighborhood interact with police.

"Our preliminary investigation indicates he had an honest desire to be a police officer in that there was no malice or ill-intent," said Deputy Superintendent Dan Dugan with the Chicago Police Department.

Police are trying to figure out how the 14-year-old got hold of an official uniform.

The teen is facing one count of impersonating a police officer.

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This just about meets up with the fictional Ralph Hardy, who inspired the only City of X character I currently play.



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And now for the part of the police ride-along that you've been waiting for... lock-up in county! Don't drop the soap!

A finite TV series, i.e. a series that has been envisioned from start to end before the series premieres episode one, tends to be much better than those that, like a Dickens novel, try in vain to extend themselves indefinitely. Series like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note (since I can't seem to think of any domestic live-action series) each lasted two seasons, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was completed in one season, but brought back for a second (see 2nd Gig) and, IMHO, each series accomplished their task in telling their stories beginning to end, tying up loose ends and answering most, if not all, lingering questions.

Other series that desperately try to cling to the airwaves for another season, those that seem to follow a more Western ideal of holding on as long as they can, often wind up beating a dead horse to the point that not only is its original audience tired of the show, but they become sickened about how the show they once loved has gone so far downhill. Some shows that we love are cancelled long before they were due to expire, like the original Star Trek, Firefly, Star Trek: Enterprise, and other non-sci-fi shows, I'm sure. They are cut to the quick, never allowed to adequately finish the stories they begin to tell... but others, many others, outlast the viability of their source material and are forced to endure on life support until they are mercifully allowed to naturally dwindle and die. When the writers start killing off major characters (I'm looking at you, DS9) or when stories just feel forced or overly formulaic (Simpsons, season 9-16ish), sometimes it's just better to disconnect them and let them find peace.

Every good thing must come to an end... it's inevitable. Why television writers don't seem to plan for that is beyond me.

*haxxorz the Prez's Blackberry*

*then haxxorz his pants*

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Well now ... not sure if I would be insulted by such a course beeing offered in my program or first in line to sign up ...

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Same here. That's one geek stereotype that I, sadly, fulfill completely. I am utterly terrible at flirting. I couldn't be more awkward if I tried.

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You're terrible at flirting, eh? Is that a fact?

Well, beautiful, meet me at the bar at seven. I'd be happy to show you a thing or two.

*wink*

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What is this "snow" you speak of? We have no such thing in North Carolina.

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Xmas in Phoenix
I'm not 100% positive, but I believe it was about 65 degrees when I took this photo. BRRRR!

But... I already have those days off work!

*pout*

Can't you extend it to Tuesday, too?

Iron Monkey's Donnie Yuen would win hands down!

Although, that freaky white-haired guy from Born Invincible *did* have arms that made the same sound as a tetherball pole when hit by swords... Hmmm...

Nah, totally Donnie Yuen.

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I'm sure some arrestin'll need to be done before this is all over.

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And tazin'. Don't forget the tazin'.

If speaking simply in terms of cinematography, artistic presentation, style, higher budget graphics, cleaner animation, bells and whistles-- then Legacy of Kain takes the cake.

But on the grand scale, in the over-arching context, a saga that spans decades of video games must weigh in much more so since each installment of Castlevania has followed its predecessor as a chronicle of the Belmont family and their battles against Dracula himself.

In light of this, there is no contest. It's all about Castlevania.

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Superhuman Registry? I don't think so

*Joins the Anti-Registration Act with Cap and the Runaways*

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You seem to forget, Tal, we've already registered in order to run around as superheroes/villains in the first place. Remember that whole ID form we had to fill out? The one that allows us access to certain hazard zones? Yup, it's too late. You're already in the system... and the Sentinels are on their way.


In the meantime:

Star Strider Forces Registry
Name: Plasma Warrior
Global Contact: @Plasma Warrior
Level of Classification: 50
Origin: Science
Super Rank & Super Group: Leader/Steward of the Golden Knights (come home safe and soon, Ra!)

Name: MiniMediBot
Global Contact: @Plasma Warrior 2
Level of Classification: 50
Origin: Technology
Super Rank & Super Group: Leader of the Justice Defense Corps

/e salute

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You guys realize WHY that had to happen right?

You got yourself a purped out toon, and than you use the dual build option.

Ta-da, you now have 2x those purples. Now just respec and ROLL IN THE DOUGH!

So yeah, you guys should have been expecting that. And its really not that big of a deal. I'll prob have SO's and cheap sets for PvE, and save the good stuff for PvP.

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Crafted enhancements give you no money when you respec.

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I'm pretty sure his point is to use the separate build as a means of doubling up on things like purples, LotGs and Numina's Uniques, respecking out of them and selling them on the market for tens of millions of inf. Frankly, I'm not sure how the devs plan to deal with this possibility. *shrug*

Maybe having that separate PvP build would require a second set of enhancements entirely... but that might prove to be an even bigger can of worms. Iunno. I'm just glad I won't have to mess with it much since I don't plan to have PvP builds with most of my characters.

YARR!

Avast me hearties and gaze ye at a pair of me actual characters that be sportin' pirate outfits!

Here be Eric the Dead, a cursed buccaneer who uses hellfire to reap the souls of the wicked to redeem his own evil deeds. He was already keelhauled by his crew after they discovered that he'd kept a particularly valuable jewel from the pool of looted booty, but little did he know that the jewel would curse him to walk the earth until he adequately repays the sins of his previous life, clensing evil with a blade of fire.

Eric on the lookout for beasties from the briny deep.
YARR! Battlestations!

This be a fantasy spin on a character from classic Japanese history. My character, based on the famous ronin Miyamoto Musashi, had an extra costume slot... so I thought to meself, what if Musashi had been a swashbuckler?

Behold, ye landlubbers: Ronin Musashi, the Pirate!

Ronin Musashi, stormin' the shore fer some rapin' an' pillagin'!
Arr, keep the sun at yer back, lad!
Yarr, splendid day to be a pirate.

Is I13 here yet?

QR

It's kinda hard to read through 70 pages of responses to a thread, so I'll just throw this out there...

Task Force Recipe Merits should be in addition to the original TF rewards as opposed to instead of them, shouldn't they? I mean, they're there to allow people who get crap recipes over and over again to actually get something *good* once in a friggin while. I know from personal experience that getting an onslaught of sleep, fear, snipe and immobilize recipes made me swear off TFs for at least a month just out of frustration. This should be a system to make sure that those who take the time and make the commitment to run these TFs get something for the time they invest, just like frequent shopper reward systems.

How many times have you been to a place, bought something and they give you a punch card to fill up on your next visits to get something free? Buy 5 more sandwiches and your 6th one is on us! That's the idea, not "Come to our store, pay for a sandwich, don't actually GET a sandwich, but instead receive this token which, if you are stupid enough to visit us again and again, will give you enough tokens so that you can get a really good sandwich a few days from now." Wha?

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Oh I got the point. I got it a long time ago. This is a great way for the devs to have the players create content for them so that they don't have to. We already provide free Q&A services when we Beta test the issues. Now they want us to be quasi-content creators. Then if were lucky enough to be sprinkled with the blessings of 'Devs Choice' then our mission will give rewards. Great.

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Frankly, I don't think the actual mission designers are necessarily thrilled about the player mission editor. First of all, its a player-requested feature, so its not a grand conspiracy to lower their workload.

Second, its extremely unlikely that the devs will reduce the amount of story-driven content in the game just because the players are making player-generated missions, and player-generated missions, being outside of canon, cannot progress the story of the game in any case; they will still have to crank out just as much mission content as before.

Third, if the player mission editor system is successful, its very likely to cause harsher criticism to be directed to the dev-generated mission content, since there will now be content to compare it to. There could be one thousand crap missions for every one good one, but the good one will be held up as an example for the devs to *beat* since it was, after all, a volunteer effort, while the devs get paid to do it.

There's thousands of players, and only a couple mission designers, but they will probably be getting "so why didn't you guys think to do this" complaints until the end of time.

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Well said, Arc... well said.

Do I expect this to open the floodgates on some truly horrendous missions? Sure. Not everyone knows how to actually design one, or tell a story, or of course, there are the odds that someone's going to create a farm mission (which will hopefully get the farmers out of the main broadcast and keep them in the mission and away from the rest of us).

Will there be awesome content, too? I certainly hope so - because I've seen characters in this game with some truly intriguing bios or stories or RP experiences (even in-game) that would make for a fantastic experience. Are the devs supposed to magically know every single backstory of every single character and mine those for ideas?

They've got more than enough stuff left that they can create. And I say (and YOMV), if us focusing on creating some content gives them the breathing space to overhaul tech-related stuff that the game needs (fixing things, etc), fine by me.

And as for everyone who yowls that us beta-testing is just us doing the devs' jobs, think again. We just find the mistakes. Whose job is it to actually FIX them? I can send them a list of bugs as long as the Mississippi, but other than that, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I can only tell the devs and have THEM fix it. (And please, let's not start the argument about what they do and don't fix. Yes, I know the Cathedral trial has been down since time began.)

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So uh...what happens when I log out from the secret lounge in Faultline? Is my day job an NCSoft programmer?

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More like part of the QA department where you are under appreciated, unloved, you work too many hours, you don't earn merits, you only get pizza once a week, but you DO have the ability to survive the new Controller primary "Producer" power called "Crunch" (it's a long term AoE power that slowly makes you Disoriented until it finally induces Sleep...)

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*laughing* How true, how true. If you want the Programmer job, you have to find that underground spot in Grandville, I think it is, where they have the NCSoft cubicle farm, and log out there.

***

Oh, yeah, one more thing (and again, YOMV) - since I've seen the accusation levelled at a few other folks on different threads that those who stick up for the devs are just [censored]-kissing... I say NCSoft creates a division for these people who think they can do a better job than the devs. Give them limited resources, personal lives, a half-dozen competitors' MMORPGs, a restricted budget, a public relations appearance schedule, and 100,000+ players holding their every word as sanctified gospel and breathing down their necks.

The devs are not perfect, guys. They're a bunch of folks doing the best they can with what they've got.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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I believe TheFrog put it best when he said, in another thread...
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Don't go bringing your silly logic into this! The internet has no place for it!

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Oh, and /signed.

I await with bated breath the "ZOMGWTHSERVERCAPS" thread to come with this Double XP weekend and the "cry moar nubs" responses to their complaints.

Let the games begin!

*sits back with a bowl of popcorn to watch the debacle*

I blame Malfius for not blaming SmokeSignal for not blaming Daikon for playing AOC in the first place, when he should be playing CoH.

FOR SHAME!!!

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Unfortunate about the death of villan pvp though.

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lol villains
lol pvp


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QFT

YAY DEVS! Keep the good stuff coming! WOO!

I see Issue 12 as being entirely full of win, and suddenly find the need to delete some of my characters to make room for the new ones I want to try out. Be that as it may, I'd still like to formally ask for the ability to either move slots from one server or another (yes, not just the character but the entire slot) or the ability to purchase more slots for a given server. Naturally, I would prefer the former, particularly if it's free, but I would settle for the latter just as well.

Furthermore, along a similar tone as the porting of powersets from one side to another, will enemy ATs be next? In all fairness, I love MMs to pieces, but I loathe playing villainside (lag, lack of teams, lag, vertical zone design, lag, the overall look and feel of the zones being bleak and depressing... oh, did I mention the lag?). I badly want an MM (or 3) to defect to the hero's side so I can tolerate playing them. I guess, for now, it'll just have to remain on my wishlist.

I can dream, can't I?

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The whole idea was stupid to begin with. IoPs are fine, but they need an alternative means of getting them, and base raids need to be removed. Instant raids are fine, since they have no consequences in the long term.

The IoP buffs, even in Issue 6, were lame for the most part. IO set bonuses trump them now. I'm going to risk my base and millions of prestige over a 3 % damage bonus? No thanks.

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I've been pondering just what a new IoP might offer that actually *would* be worth all the effort of making and maintaining a raid-worthy base, going through the CoP Trial (of which, I admit, I only had a fleeting glance) and fighting off the threat of invasion if someone should consider attacking your base to get it...

Cap has an excellent point, that set bonuses from IOs make the old concept of IoPs totally obsolete. It may be far-fetched, but something like the following options might make IoPs worthwhile:

- An IoP that increases the amount of Inf/Prestige earned by, say, 5% or more?
- An IoP that increases one's chances, even if only slightly, of getting more valuable drops when completing trials, etc. Posi recently posted raw data from the Pool C drops, proving that each recipe has exactly the same chance of dropping as every other recipe. Perhaps if the IoP in question made Numina Uniques, LotG 7.5%, and Miracle Uniques drop more frequently (changing their chance of dropping from 1:42 to 2:42)?
- An IoP that increases XP earned by a significant amount, say 10% or 20%.
- An IoP that removes travel power suppression. (I would TOTALLY go for this one!)
- An IoP that acts like an IO proc on a particular power type... without the IO being slotted. I love my Hold proc in my ranged attacks. Imagine if everyone in an SG had the same proc artificially applied to each of their ranged attacks without having to slot the corresponding IOs?

I don't know, I'm just throwing out random ideas here... but one thing's for sure. I don't expect any of these to be implemented in the game any time soon. In fact, the whole CoP/IoP thing has become synonymous with Duke Nukem Forever and Starcraft: Ghost. If you're holding your breath over them, you'll very likely pass out and die before you see any discernable progress made.

Nothing personal here, but it has to be said.

lol pvp

10 changes I'd like to see in PvP:

1. Balance, Balance, Balance. When I first made my main character in I3, there *was* no PvP. Furthermore, he's more of a concept build anyway. So because he isn't /EM, he doesn't have FoN or PFF and has the seemingly negligible ability to perceive anything, he's completely unviable as a PvP character.

2. Remove the badges from PvP, or make them obtainable by other means. I collect badges on my characters. I have been put off completely by PvP because I refuse to rework my concept-built character to conform to PvP survivability standards. But the draw of the badges themselves, regardless of the idiotic crap I have to go through to get them, is enough to make me risk being frustrated and annoyed to earn them. Lotsa tension between badgers and PvPers exists for a reason; fix *that*.

3. Risk vs. Reward. There's little to no reward for PvPing besides bragging rights over other people... in a rock/paper/scissors situation. That being the case, make the rewards more tangible. Siren's Call is a step in the right direction, but the Bounty system is easily broken by hospital campers or other such nonsense.

4. Base Raiding is broken, has been since its inception, and shows no sign of being fixed at any time in the near future. I've never been on a real base raid. I've heard they're fun... when they're not broken or otherwise screwed up. On that note...

5. CoP trial. You [censored] devs. You made it available for 2 days. Not 7, like you said you would. 2. My SG was gearing up to run it on day 3. We had collected Warburg Nukes, Shivans, the works. Hell, we even had coalitionmates switching to our SG for the day just to they could help us. It was *supposed* to be one of the most fun and interesting new experiences that would reward our SG with an IoP and the opportunity to earn a badge. But you [censored] devs yanked it the night before we were going to run it. Other SGs did it, got and enjoyed their IoPs, traded base raids for the badge... and we got left out. Can you tell I'm still pissed about it?

6. Gangrape squads. Not much the devs can do about this, I admit, but it's one of the things that absolutely turned me off from PvP. The devs make missions with extra little xp bonuses inside the PvP zones to draw me in, and in between missions, I get 8 [censored] jumping me from out of nowhere.

7. Ever get jumped by one of your own teammates in Warburg after he just spontaneously decides to quit team? Yeah, fix that [censored].

8. Recluse's Victory Heavies are so broken, it's not even funny. I used to go there to work on my pillbox badge on slow nights when very few people were in the zone. I made deals with other PvPers to trade pillbox captures to actually cooperate and, therefore, both of us would profit by the collaboration. It was kinda cool. Then you nerfed the ever-loving crap out of Heavies. My main and badge collector is a blaster. I have no armor. I have no teammate buffs. So instead of having the equivalent of a tank able to take the hits from the pillboxes while I assist and kill the turrets, I now have an overgrown Tonka toy that gets killed between the second and third turrets on the first pillbox. Meanwhile, I see tankers and brutes running in the zone all the time, still farming the hell out of the turrets for cash because they take the hits for their Heavies. You only discouraged anyone who didn't have armor from farming. Well done.

9. Since base raids don't friggin' work, how about giving us the option of making unraidable bases? Allow me to design and implement a base design on a special unraidable plot that would negate all the blocking issues that raidable base plots give me. "Can't block path to raidable item?" Since we're not going to raid any time in the immediate future, how's about letting me do what the hell I want to do with my base, eh?

10. Never, ever, EVER AGAIN make a change to the mechanics of a power, archetype, enhancement or inspiration with ONLY PvP in mind! If you change something to balance it for PvP, then make it applicable to PvP ONLY. If you nerf something that's perfectly viable in PvE for the sake of some aspect of PvP play, you're [censored] over the entire population of the game for the sake of a small percentage of players.

GL; HF. YMMV. GG. You know, all that crap.
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Plas