Well, that and the fact that this way I only have to wait for one page to load, rather than waiting for the results to load and then the Wikipedia page. I'm impatient.
Bah. Their plans have always been vague, until right before they come out with them. They've been burned before by promising things prematurely that didn't work out (like the "Super Secret Out of Combat Skill System"), so now they try to say little but give more.
When Statesman stepped down as lead dev and Positron stepped in, there was a sea change in the amount of information we received, and the amount of stuff that was promised. For one thing, the planned upcoming paid expansion pack was cancelled, and its improvements rolled into the free issues instead. We're already seeing a bunch of new stuff coming out, like the information the veteran rewards powers coming with Issue 8, or the new prestige powers in the Good vs. Evil pack. I think City of Heroes will still be supported for a good long while.
You have an interesting definition of "dead." City of Heroes has about 160,000-170,000 subscribers, as of their last monthly report. That's quite respectable for an MMO that's not World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lineage, etc. MMOGchart.comsays that "City of Heroes is proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the currently very competitive climate." If you assume each of those subscriptions counts for $10 a month of revenue to CoH (considering their multimonth discount subscriptions and the game card sales of which they only see a portion), that's still over $1.5 million of revenue every month, about $20 million per year. Think they're gonna want to throw that away?
Odds are it was leaked by someone who bought, was given a review or other promo copy of, or otherwise got their hands on the CD (which had the video on it I believe) in advance of its street date. Disappointing, but in the absence of Harry Potter-like enforcement of street date, it was bound to happen.
Speaking of "Weird Al" videos, here's a hilarious one that sets machinema footage from World of Warcraft to "Hardware Store."
The problem is that contract lock-in is de rigeur in the cellular industry these days. It could very well cost as much or more to get out of your contract as to get a repeater.
The thing that gets me about this is that the versions of the original trilogy on this new set are literally no better than the bootleg versions that have been available for years...because Lucas is doing the exact same thing as the pirates--digitizing 'em from laserdisc.
I used to work for a small webhost, and in the last couple of months I was with them, our mail servers got blocked by Comcast a couple of times also, and it was sheer heck to get them to take the block back off again. It's not just big companies' mailservers that have this kind of problem.
One funny thing I found out is that a lot of less adroit mail forwarding clients actually report their own forwarding mailboxes as spammers, due to reporting forwarded spam via spam-reporting systems that then assume the forwarding account was in on the spamming.
Really, there's just no point in using your ISP's mail drop as your permanent mailbox anymore. It's just one more point of forwarding failure, and one more thing to make it harder for you to switch ISPs if your current one screws up badly enough. Use an independent email provider instead. Gmail is an excellent independent mailbox solution--or if you have privacy concerns, get a webhosting account somewhere cheap and reliable (these days it might cost you all of a couple of bucks a month) and get your email sent there.
I think the ring actually was meant to be a sphere, it's just that we could only see the edges because the expanding gases were too thin to be seen except where they were thickest from our point of view.
I sure wish that employers were so beating down my door that I could afford to make Internet access a criterion in my decision on whether to accept a job.
If we'd had iPods in World War II...
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
Writely's real-time collaboration, in my opinion, leaves something to be desired.
I'm used to using MoonEdit, which, while only a text editor, is a fully collaborative one. You see the letters appear the instant they are typed, unlike with Writely which seems to update chunks of paragraph every thirty seconds or so.
And MoonEdit puts each contributor's typing in a different color, so you can easily tell at a glance what's yours and what's theirs.
As a group of con attendees I was with headed over to the nearby Ram brewpub for dinner, we were mildly startled to see that Privateer Press had redone the front page of their menu for them.
Tarrasque burgers. Yummy.
I was mainly there for the Robotech panels, having to do with the upcoming Shadow Chronicles movie. Had a hell of a time, wrote about it here.
I'm also going to GenCon for the first time this year (I can actually afford to thanks to getting in for free due to a friend who's doing a presentation there, and staying with my brother who lives 8 miles from the convention center), and it's interesting to read these things.
One thing that he didn't mention in the article: take extraordinary precautions with your wallet. Big gatherings like fairs, festivals, conventions, and so on draw the criminal element, and that wallet poking out of your back pocket makes a convenient target. Me, I'm going to stick my credit cards, driver's license, and some cash in my PDA wallet which I always keep in a front pocket, and leave my wallet at my bro's house.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just not let my sperm use the phone.
Huh. I always thought it was "I can call you daddy."
I saw a quote in a signature file or blog entry or something that went something like:
"If someone had told you in 1984 that in 2006 Michael Jackson = flameout and Weird Al = still relevant, you would have laughed your head off."
It's just so true.
Well, that and the fact that this way I only have to wait for one page to load, rather than waiting for the results to load and then the Wikipedia page. I'm impatient.
I type 115 words per minute, so typing out the search phrase is, for me, faster than lifting my hands from the keyboard to hit the control chords. :)
I'll actually often just type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/name_of_thing_I'm_loo king_for as it's faster than searching Google or Wikipedia. :)
Plus, every so often they put their whoppers on sale for a dollar. Not a bad burger if you can get them to make it fresh for you.
Of course, there's a local bar and grill that puts their burgers on sale for $2 each on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a much better deal in every way...
Bah. Their plans have always been vague, until right before they come out with them. They've been burned before by promising things prematurely that didn't work out (like the "Super Secret Out of Combat Skill System"), so now they try to say little but give more.
When Statesman stepped down as lead dev and Positron stepped in, there was a sea change in the amount of information we received, and the amount of stuff that was promised. For one thing, the planned upcoming paid expansion pack was cancelled, and its improvements rolled into the free issues instead. We're already seeing a bunch of new stuff coming out, like the information the veteran rewards powers coming with Issue 8, or the new prestige powers in the Good vs. Evil pack. I think City of Heroes will still be supported for a good long while.
You have an interesting definition of "dead." City of Heroes has about 160,000-170,000 subscribers, as of their last monthly report. That's quite respectable for an MMO that's not World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lineage, etc. MMOGchart.com says that "City of Heroes is proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the currently very competitive climate." If you assume each of those subscriptions counts for $10 a month of revenue to CoH (considering their multimonth discount subscriptions and the game card sales of which they only see a portion), that's still over $1.5 million of revenue every month, about $20 million per year. Think they're gonna want to throw that away?
Odds are it was leaked by someone who bought, was given a review or other promo copy of, or otherwise got their hands on the CD (which had the video on it I believe) in advance of its street date. Disappointing, but in the absence of Harry Potter-like enforcement of street date, it was bound to happen.
Speaking of "Weird Al" videos, here's a hilarious one that sets machinema footage from World of Warcraft to "Hardware Store."
The problem is that contract lock-in is de rigeur in the cellular industry these days. It could very well cost as much or more to get out of your contract as to get a repeater.
The thing that gets me about this is that the versions of the original trilogy on this new set are literally no better than the bootleg versions that have been available for years...because Lucas is doing the exact same thing as the pirates--digitizing 'em from laserdisc.
Way to go, George.
I'm hot-blooded.
Check it and see.
I got a fever of a hundred and three.
Come on, baby, do you do more than dance...
Oh, wait.
I used to work for a small webhost, and in the last couple of months I was with them, our mail servers got blocked by Comcast a couple of times also, and it was sheer heck to get them to take the block back off again. It's not just big companies' mailservers that have this kind of problem.
One funny thing I found out is that a lot of less adroit mail forwarding clients actually report their own forwarding mailboxes as spammers, due to reporting forwarded spam via spam-reporting systems that then assume the forwarding account was in on the spamming.
Really, there's just no point in using your ISP's mail drop as your permanent mailbox anymore. It's just one more point of forwarding failure, and one more thing to make it harder for you to switch ISPs if your current one screws up badly enough. Use an independent email provider instead. Gmail is an excellent independent mailbox solution--or if you have privacy concerns, get a webhosting account somewhere cheap and reliable (these days it might cost you all of a couple of bucks a month) and get your email sent there.
...or does this sound a lot like the premise behind the TV show Red Dwarf ?
I think the ring actually was meant to be a sphere, it's just that we could only see the edges because the expanding gases were too thin to be seen except where they were thickest from our point of view.
I sure wish that employers were so beating down my door that I could afford to make Internet access a criterion in my decision on whether to accept a job.
...Tokyo Rose would have been a podcaster.
Imagine being willing to be shot up with a dead form of the AIDS virus. Which, for all you know, might well end up giving you AIDS.
For the equivalent of $250.
Damn.
Writely's real-time collaboration, in my opinion, leaves something to be desired.
I'm used to using MoonEdit, which, while only a text editor, is a fully collaborative one. You see the letters appear the instant they are typed, unlike with Writely which seems to update chunks of paragraph every thirty seconds or so.
And MoonEdit puts each contributor's typing in a different color, so you can easily tell at a glance what's yours and what's theirs.
As a group of con attendees I was with headed over to the nearby Ram brewpub for dinner, we were mildly startled to see that Privateer Press had redone the front page of their menu for them.
Tarrasque burgers. Yummy.
I was mainly there for the Robotech panels, having to do with the upcoming Shadow Chronicles movie. Had a hell of a time, wrote about it here.
It's a starship.
No, really. (Ignore the SQL error, click the art galleries.)
I'm also going to GenCon for the first time this year (I can actually afford to thanks to getting in for free due to a friend who's doing a presentation there, and staying with my brother who lives 8 miles from the convention center), and it's interesting to read these things.
One thing that he didn't mention in the article: take extraordinary precautions with your wallet. Big gatherings like fairs, festivals, conventions, and so on draw the criminal element, and that wallet poking out of your back pocket makes a convenient target. Me, I'm going to stick my credit cards, driver's license, and some cash in my PDA wallet which I always keep in a front pocket, and leave my wallet at my bro's house.
Tell that to the kids who're using it to let their cellphones ring in class without the teacher hearing.
Maybe the moderators were trying for +5 funny moderations on their moderations.