spice_weasel
-
Posts
266 -
Joined
-
Just a shout out and farewell to a great bunch of folks, many of which probably moved on a long time ago.
If you ever recall teaming, or fighting, (mainly)E-Razor or Cherry Nobyl. Hats off and a salute to you. It was a great ride from i3 through to i20, with a ton of great memories surrounding the original incarnation of Fight club. Too many names forgotten along the way sadly, too many fallen...
/Happy trails folks o7 -
I'd played City of Heroes from 2005 and i3 up through to i21 chiefly as E-Razor and Cherry Nobyl out on Virtue. It's sad to see the game shuffle off now with so many great memories of players and teams in both pve, and for a time there, some really great pvp moments and opponents.
Hats off and a salute to all I knew, all who knew me, and everyone who contributed to the whole, especially the developers who worked extremely hard to bring us this product.
/fare thee well folks. o7 -
in a case of 'do as i say, not as i do'.......
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/a.../10/c9214.html
"EMI Music Canada Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have reached an agreement to pay songwriters and music publishers for outstanding "pending list" claims and to resolve a proposed class action lawsuit."
the tidbits = The CRIA members were hit with the lawsuit in October 2008, after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement (I am adviser to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which is co-counsel, but have had no involvement in the case). The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.
Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5563/125/
and, just to add, the 'settlement' had been sitting in a desk drawer collecting interest on the funds the entire time they were waiting for the 'artists' to call them and collect. the group can then be said to have made a profit from non payment.
ForbinProject said - "Funny thing about this issue is that every single person arguing they should be allowed to download stuff for free would be screaming bloody murder if they were the writer who wasn't getting paid for the stuff they wrote/created."
apparently they did. and apparently the DISTRIBUTION companies are the ones at fault here. i'd also be willing to bet various required body parts that the situation has not, and will not, change on the part of distribution companies pulling the dollar out for every penny passed on. every arguement i see on this topic ends up boiling down to 'save the artists' and you know what i AGREE. save the artists, and shoot the distributors.
oh, and just to add distribution infringement = 167$ per track in this cased. current law allows up to 20,000$ per track. that's less than 1% of the available penalty per track. -
corporate media jr: sir, we have ants approaching the pikinik table.
corporate media sr: crush them all, and then send them the bill for the service.
ants: hey, there's food. let's go! foot incoming! crap, we lost mikey! but there's an invoice here?!
the neglected portion of game theory/pirates: not all the pirates are rational, they are pirates (killing/theft/etc is standard practice), and they all have cutlasses. to assume that the pirates at the top are rational beings and all others are not, or to assume that the pirates at the top have any interest in maintaining a stable crew is likely to cause a complete loss further down the chain as one's life is now in jeopardy, not the paycheck.
to assume the pirates at the bottom are not rational and all other are, or to assume that crew has any interest in maintaining a stable command, is likely to cause a complete loss of the command crew as their lives are now in jeopardy, not just the profits.
a failure to recognize a threat to one's life as opposed to a temporary threat of one's paycheck/profit will cause one to lose one's life.
a failure on the part of the 'command' crew will cause them to lose the crew, on a regular basis, unless the pool is large enough to consistently replenish the crew. at that point, giving them anything becomes a losing strategy for the 'command' crew as regular crew is essentially free. then all the 'command' crew pirates on all the other boats start to do the same thing, and reach a point where a starved crew decides all the command staff needs to take a long walk off a short board.
a failure on the part of the crew will likely cause them to lose the ship, and everyone/thing on board as well.
until a reasonable equilibrium exists between give and take of the entire crew, then the ship, or it's ability to operate, will be lost. regardless of any attempt to ensure the crew is kept in check by hook or by crook, history has been sensitive to excess on either side.
/yes, it's early here, maybe too much metaphor...and on a personal note, i download tv shows regularly, the occasional song and movie, and rarely a game. the game is generally used as a temp demo, and if i like it enough for repeat play, i'll buy it. ditto for a/v media. i will not, however, hand over cash for every bit of shiny being rammed down my throat, which is why i d/l tv especially, the lack of advertisements, and support good shows with dollars by buying the seasons. r.i.p. 'the middleman'. -
Quote:can we imagine a set of circumstances and directions that would allow such an act or series of acts to be justified?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That's not possible,, because what Tyrant is doing is totally evil - there's no justification for what he's doing and planning to do.
he's goign to murder millions and millions of people on Primal Earth, and brainwash the rest to add to his empire - that can't be viewed as anything except evil.
for instance: IF praetoria could be considered as not only an alternate earth, but a slightly 'ahead' universe, then the hamitorian 'could' still occur in primal earth. IF the hamitorian occurred in primal earth then what would be the effect? billions dead and/or hunted by devouring earth?
in consideration of such suffering could tyrant be justified in attempting to rein in the undisciplined masses of meta and non meta humans using his own, personal example of the effects of such an incident and attendant cascading? is tyrant really so immune to calamity that it has zero emotional bearing on his 'big picture'?
strictly questioning, not stating one way or the other.
/personally, i still feel the hamitorian was actually a made tool of cole's to bring about such control, but we'll find out in an eventual way. -
looks interesting. first thing that abruptly comes to mind is the war of the worlds tv show later in the series.
anyone know whatever happened to the other attack of the aliens tv show (los angeles, apartment complex, 'brought you all together for a reason...') i can't recall the name of around the time of the v renewal? iirc was supposed to be 12 eps, then cut to minseries, and now ..... -
i enjoyed the hell out of it. the visuals were fantastic, daft punk is quite masterful (although i wonder if they contributed more than just the electronica to composed orchestrals), and i felt there was more being discussed in the movie than what was being said in a line.
my favourite bits were the isomatrices sprung from a soup of information in a tidal pool on the edge of a vast ocean. digital jazz between the notes of the orchestra.
/perhaps i wax.
-
Quote:i hate to poke your bubble with a dead cat, but the evolving egyptian theocracies might have beat them too it around 3k-5k bc. cults of personality leaning towards authoritarianism were long earlier than that. loose gangs with strict regard toward ostracism as a death sentence also enforced a particular regime of 'security' to ensure certain minimum standards are met.Originally Posted by Venture
Actually they are relatively old. Civilizations had to build up to a significant size before relative anarchy stopped working.
The earliest society I know that I would call "totalitarian" would be the Chinese Legalists, c. 400 CE (IIRC). That would put them at about the halfway point in recorded history.
i imagine no one wants to be on the other side of the sonic fence. -
Quote:perusing previous entries in mallozzi's blog, i'm getting a touch of the sour grapes feeling over what appears to be an end, or at least a significant stalemate, to long term contract work.Originally Posted by Dr_Mayhem
it saddens me a bit to see the 'it's the filthy, one legged, parrot guano bearing, pirates' line being used over and over again, but there is at least a nod towards scheduling issues.
one thing i do find at least moderately interesting is that syfystula is the only network named as bearing responsibility. does the show not air in the u.k. or europe? does the world begin and end with less than 5% of the population? taking a quick gander at http://stargate.mgm.com/ under recent additions led me to the q&a section. i'd suggest less than 10% of the questions were u.s. viewer based, with a good majority being euro based. maybe the better airing/production partner would be skyone? they seem to have a good run of it for the last while, certainly better than dizzy feet. -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Fs29vfuDc#t=0m49s
had to be done.
/in a related note. i'm really enjoying the clone wars. just a thought, but i always considered the death of ashoka to be the death of the jedi that's shown with the execution of order 66, where the stormtroopers line up behind her. sorry, no video clip for effect. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Noble Savage
Just you wait. Our FX team is stronger now than it's ever been, and there's some truly awesome stuff coming soon...skittles has now become a cosponsor. taste the rainbow.Quote:Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
Weather. You guys are doing weather for the zones, aren't you?
-
Quote:happy holidays everyoneOriginally Posted by Positron
Hey guys,
We generally do a "state of the game" address around the anniversary mark for the game (April 28th), and I like to call the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas the "dead time" of communication because everyone is trying to cram 5 weeks of work into 3.
Yes, we have all been incredibly busy working on I20 and beyond. Those in the I20 Pre-Beta have seen more of us in their private area of the forums than the rest of the forums have, and that's been noted by you guys (as evidenced by this thread). In 2011 we'll try to do a better job in posting outside of the "private" areas as we want to remain visible and communicative.
That said, the studio is off next week (well, there will still be board moderation), so there won't be much posting ANYWHERE from the devs for a week or so.
Have a great holiday!
thank you for the post. i know everyone is diligently applying their expertise to getting a raise next year, and providing the community with a wide variety of sugary baked goods.
the original post wasn't intended to doom, and definitely was not related to obligated posting, etc. there was generally far more information in the type of postings that castle and babs tended to leave making it worth the effort to seek out, that's all. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Durakken
I know that...
Imagine a TV service that you can search through via tags, genres, and titles thus letting you get what you want and then for commercial they'd just have to sell based on tags/genres demographics... this would allow for better marketing which is what commercials want while the demographics get to be informed about things they may want to be informed about. We also get to watch what we want when we want and we get accurate ratings.
And most people really don't mind commercials that are related to what they want and are unobtrusive... so... I don't see any problem with keeping things the same length with the same amount of commercials.
Pretty much the perfect compromise but won't happen for a while even though it can be done right now, but whatever...
have you seen jtv.com? nowhere near perfect, by any stretch, but it is interesting to see the experiment.
hulu, netflix, and co are definitely outside the status quo business model. an unfortunate albatross however is the global licensing and related issues preventing anyone outside specific territories from participating. if sgu were looked at from a more global perspective perhaps it might have made the difference, assuming this could somehow be calculated into a $ value around advertising/subscription/?.
this might end up biting scyfyllus, and it's hopeful veiwers, in the a$$ in the longer term though. who here would give them another chance to cancel a show after half a season and a 9 month break between airings? how can they hope to gain any momentum and/or critical appeal if they've basically flashed us while jogging past? on the other hand, the property rights holders/parent corporations are not completely silent in these matters. i find it unlikely that bscicycle decided entirely on their own to cancel the show without some input from interested parties.
/coming soon: sesame st offramp: stargate edition; meet a 9 foot tall post-teradactyl, his invisible commando friend, a baked goods fiend, and an exoskeleton wearing agoraphobe traveling the local galactic neighborhood . with a special guest star every week. next: lou gosset jr.
-
Quote:and had it been spelled 'wherefore', you would be correct. instead, i tried to get a sense of place out of it, while also appealing to the shakespearean line and its' intended purpose within the play.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Your thread title means "why are you posting, devs?"
/
-
Quote:i'd agree with you, if the digest sans castle/babs were showing more than 3-5 postings a week for the last year, minus a very few multiple posting days mainly centered around 'art'.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
Keep in mind it is the holidays and they are probably busy on the next big thing.
must simply be nostalgia then. -
all the best Sir Castle.
it's been a pleasure.
have a fish on the way out, and merry christmas.
-
with the last, apparently, communicative dev now leaving the dev digest has the appearance of a wasteland.
even a state of the game type address? anything? is this thing on?
i find myself concerned about the distinct lack of very nearly any dev posting for a very long time now and wonder what happened. was it specific people who chose to be a voice? are there rules in place now that has caused this change in what used to be a much more open environment to communicate in?
am i just having a moment of nostalgia for a level of recalled qualitative communication rather than a general blank wall of silence that appears to have descended across the boards? -
Quote:just a fantastic episode. between family guy and robot chicken on the star wars front, it's robot chicken, hands down. go prune face.Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
Bravissimo!
As ever, for these Star Wars specials, my expectations were ludicrously high. As ever Robot Chicken exceeded them.
I do have one question for anyone that saw it. The beginning with Palpatine was spoofing a movie I couldn't remember, I think it was recent. It had "Baba O'Reilly" playing in the background. What movie was that from?
the opening has been bugging me too. still nothing on the searches, and i really want to say 'breakfast club', or 'st elmo's fire'. something 80's, early 90's and john hughes ish. a fan made compilation used the who's baba o'riley in a great memorial montage, but nothing else is coming even close. there's a reference to a 2002 movie called 'slackers', that doesn't fit however.
a thread at ask meta http://ask.metafilter.com/173686/Wha...II-referencing is still looking as well and references american beauty. i almost thought it might have been american psycho, and while the feeling was there, the direct reference really wasn't.
agh, the search continues....
-
Quote:it's too bad too. as a fight it takes less than 3 mins most times with a reasonable team vs the 'respec 'team, and as elite bosses the drop schedule is far far higher for everyone concerned whether it be shards or recipes.Originally Posted by Shadow State
The thing I find saddest about STF speed runs is that I've never gotten to see the villains doing a treespec during the tree mission, always just get teleported to the end.
why skip an obvious gain?
if i'm not leading the team, then i'll go out of my way to remind the leader/tp'r about that room, and that it is just down the hall from the tree. -
....as it turns out.....
eli was just having a bad dream based on cheetos, an mmo, and stress.
*poof*
wakes up with keyboard face.
might as well wind up bad writing with a crappy trope. sgu, you won't be missed, and perhaps next time when writers place a group in exceptional intentional jeopardy, you don't handle it like a 1930's radio serial show. -
Quote:as one would likely fall in this category (without the hard headed refusal) it can be a touch intimidating when attempting to enter these discussions, but i always enjoy seeing them.Originally Posted by UberGuy
........
Note that I never fault people for a lack of knowledge, unless I know for sure they've been around long enough to know better but are making a truly boneheaded assertion. But even for vets, it sometimes depends on what they're asserting - CoH is a pretty simple game compared to some, but the math behind how it works can get quite dense if you drill down into it. I think it's fair for people who aren't interested in getting their arms dirty in that math to have misunderstandings, to a point.
No, the only thing I fault people for is a hard-headed refusal to listen to how things work when what they're bring told is something we think isn't actually controversial any more. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to point them to the community's large repository of game information, which usually contains the more non-controversial game mechanics in multiple places.
.........
i've played the game for a long time on and off, but never peered into the math much until recently, with um, mixed results. search engines are great things, when the search terms match what it is you're actually looking for rather than vague or generalized terms, so if there is a centralized equations place i'd love to see it. i can work a calculator as well as the next mostly bald monkey. perhaps some people would just like a good place to start with.
-
expected for next patch: the voltron maneuver.
a team of 5 or more will join together into slightly larger hero that combines all the attributes of the team into it.
the caveat: control is given to a single teamate in random 30 sec increments.
teams with even numbers may have a slightly deformed hero, with a longer arm or leg on one side.
the patch is intended to address the suggestion that super heroes seem to be shrinking into semi heroes.
/ymmv
-
more good things from stem cells.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_796521.html
as related to this
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrar...10-09-309591v1
potential cure for h.i.v. resulting from leukemia treatment with stem cells? interesting to say the least.
but such things will almost always result in a scam, just in case you were thinking a supercell medical tour might be something worth looking into.
http://www.stemcellcommunity.org/met...inter_friendly
in a related note, i'll just leave this here
http://www.moviesbox.us/limitless.html
look forward to seeing more of this, and will keep an eye out for the book it was based on. -
i would not like to see something like this in game for the multitude of reasons already mentioned.
i would like to see a tool that could calculate dps based on a mid's build however. if such a tool were incorporated into mid's (and matched ingame experience) i would be quite content.
-
this thread is relevant to my interests. any news?
does this jitter affect the dps of a powerset like claws due to the larger number of interactions with the server in a situation such as a pylon test (over a broadsword player clicking less for instance)?
a recent excursion into recharge times, arcanatimes, and dps has me quite confused as to why the paper and pixels exhibit a significant difference in a recent claw/sr build and i'd like to learn why.
/thanks in advance.