The essence of these MOBA games is that they're a top down version of Doom-with-towers. 2 teams of 5 players each play a different hero, typically in 3 lanes. The heroes scale dramatically with XP and gold, both of which come from killing.
They are much more of a team-dependent game than BF 3 or similar. Teams typically have: 1. An initiator. Somebody who jumps in and hopefully temporarily disables the opposing team. 2. A carry. This is the guy who farms all game so he can one shot everybody by the end. 3. A support. Creeps and towers give vision, but since the game is so dependent on killing each other (ganking), support buy temporary vision items called wards and then go around the map placing them. Support heroes often have healing powers. 4 & 5 are more variable. You can have pushers (who try to take down towers), stunners, gankers and even old fashioned tanks.
The games are seriously competitive, and that's before the $1m prizes come in.
The graphics are quite good in both HoN and DotA2. The debates rage on as to whether DotA2 is better than HoN. I personally prefer HoN. Unlike DotA2, it has a player-friendly F2P model and can be downloaded here.
iPad and iPhone with margins of 200+% (ie 3x more expensive). I suspect iPod is probably lower (75-100%).
I'm excluding development costs, obviously, which dwindle to nothing when you're selling hundreds of millions of units. I'm also excluding travel costs, retailer's cut. Notably, Jobs moved manufacturing from US to China.
The new Google Nexus is supposed to cost a 1/3 of an iPhone 4S even after the retailer's cut. I'm not sure if it has fewer features, but it isn't locked down.
I haven't followed the tablet market as I find them somewhat useless.
There's nothing efficient about not being able to do what you need to do because the functionality isn't there. Malware isn't a problem on any phone or smartphone. Apple wanted to lock it down so they could charge developers money. It's all about the money to Apple. MS are locking down their tablet because it's sold at-cost and they don't want people running Linux or Android on it.
What Apple did was exercise their massive marketing muscle and bring MP3 players into the mainstream. They added a phone to it, made a tablet version, charged people 3x what they cost and made a fortune. Can't fault their business savvy but it's a poor choice for anyone who wants to do anything other than browse the internet, take photos, play music, make music, play games..
Apple is dumbed down, locked down, limited computing and massively overpriced. Android is slow, locked down, spyware that is a pale imitation of Linux.
I think it obviously would be a contender. If you can get millions of sales whilst trying to kill it, you might get 10 million by actively promoting it. Small numbers compared to A & A but a lot better than going out of business as they are now.
The N9 seems to have sold through its visual appeal. If lack of apps ever became an issue, Nokia could have bunged either ACL or Alien Dalvik on it (charged existing users). The N950 would have been released simultaneously filling a massive gap left by Blackberry all this time. This year would have seen a refresh of hardware, notably faster processors, maybe an 8" slate to compete with tablets.
The N900 has a lot of apps. Not everything, but a lot. Development has slowed down a ton though someone just ported Homeworld.;)
N9 development seems to be mostly porting from N900. It seems that Harmattan is going to be finished (a 4th service pack).
I read a theory from an 'insider' that Elop was brought in by a few big stockholders to wind down the company while they got out...
Just bring out a decent product. Nokia's N9 with zero marketing, blocked in all major markets and Nokia's own CEO briefing against it still managed to sell millions of units.
Because it's a superb smartphone with a superb OS.
RIM will bounce back if BB10 is as good as it's supposed to be, on decent hardware, in multiple form-factors.
On a controversial page where there are few experts.
It is hard work being an editor. Expect to put many hours in trying to make changes which will be constantly reverted and argued against by multiple people on talk pages. Experts probably have better things to do. If you're not available at the right time, all your work can can be removed in days.
Add to that, the massive learning curve for Wikipedia: people who are contracted by the majority of scientific papers can impose their bias on a page simply because they understand the edit system better than you do. And where they can't, they might just make the environment so unpleasant that you don't want to hang around.
One of the rules is consensus. If you are the only NPOV editor vs 2 or more people with an agenda, forget about it. They override facts presented in scientific papers in terms of things how much of the article can be devoted to it. Even if it's just one person with 2 accounts.
However, 6 months later, another expert might come along and go through the same bullshit you just went through. So unless you're there to back them up knowing the edit system inside out, your fellow expert will probably never come back.
And even if you manage to get the article more or less NPOV, don't expect it to last. Sooner or later, those with an agenda will make an attempt to impose their bias again and if you're not there to defend it, they will succeed.
In my experience, such POV pushing editors edit several Wikipedia pages full-time. Whether they are bored students/office workers/unemployed, I don't know.
I scanned through the paper and didn't find it illuminated much. Notably, they didn't look at talk page activity vs views of the main page.
To echo some of what the other guy said, you've been through a truly horrible experience and I'm genuinely sorry about that. You probably feel responsible even though anyone would do the same in your position.
It's not wrong to mostly trust people you know. This kind of thing happens rarely.
With the right kind of help, you can end some of these symptoms. I'd treat you and your wife for free if you're able to get to England.
You can't get rid of emotions that way. You're undoubtedly suppressing them, which isn't as bad as it sounds.
What I'm saying (as a psychotherapist of 16 years) is that you have the opportunity to learn to feel them again as well as resolve and thereby 'delete' the negative ones.
EMDR has already shown efficacy for PTSD and at least one study has strongly implied EFT works too.
A colleague of mine, Andrew Austin, teaches an expanded model of EMDR called IEFT. He found something very interesting: that flashbacks were not to moments where eg the sufferer saw their friend die but rather to a moment where they felt responsible, where they wish they'd made a different choice. Typically, this was on an irrational basis where the eg a different choice would probably have made no difference, or relied upon non-existent prior knowledge.
Also worth pointing out that the so-called creator of EMDR stole it from John Grinder and never credits him.
It's possible that forgetting the trauma as suggested by the submission might make it worse. As a psychotherapist, I've treated people with repressed abuse and it can come out in the form of weird nightmares and disturbing emotional reactions in daily life.
A proper, unlocked Linux. Probably still as slow as Dalvik but with enough horsepower to be a worthy upgrade to my N900. And hey, maybe someone will port Qt.
When they're doing the distance shots of the planet, the 3D was apparent to you? It didn't become clearly apparent to me until the first engineers appeared.
Yes, it was a lush looking film -- at least until they got inside the temple. The contrast in atmosphere was from glorious to dank. I believe films are there to entertain (at least I rarely learn anything from them) and so I would have preferred Scott to focus more on the faces of the characters. Break it to the audience a bit more gently.;)
And this of course is yet more evidence that the 2D films and 3D films need to be shot differently.
I do wonder if the general population will learn to appreciate this generation of 3D as much as we do.
Slashdot Mirror
Creep denying is an extra level of skill that sorts the men from the boys.
It's been well over a year since I played LoL -- maybe it's become more balanced.
A lot faster than LoL, vastly better graphics, more indepth laning (creep denies), no pay-for-power..
The essence of these MOBA games is that they're a top down version of Doom-with-towers. 2 teams of 5 players each play a different hero, typically in 3 lanes. The heroes scale dramatically with XP and gold, both of which come from killing.
They are much more of a team-dependent game than BF 3 or similar. Teams typically have:
1. An initiator. Somebody who jumps in and hopefully temporarily disables the opposing team.
2. A carry. This is the guy who farms all game so he can one shot everybody by the end.
3. A support. Creeps and towers give vision, but since the game is so dependent on killing each other (ganking), support buy temporary vision items called wards and then go around the map placing them. Support heroes often have healing powers.
4 & 5 are more variable. You can have pushers (who try to take down towers), stunners, gankers and even old fashioned tanks.
The games are seriously competitive, and that's before the $1m prizes come in.
The graphics are quite good in both HoN and DotA2. The debates rage on as to whether DotA2 is better than HoN. I personally prefer HoN. Unlike DotA2, it has a player-friendly F2P model and can be downloaded here.
You also want to read this guide before playing.
On the other hand, the placebo effect of believing in the health benefits of moderate coffee consumption are likely to far exceed the actual ones.
Epic troll attempt. But failed.
lolumad?
iPad and iPhone with margins of 200+% (ie 3x more expensive). I suspect iPod is probably lower (75-100%).
I'm excluding development costs, obviously, which dwindle to nothing when you're selling hundreds of millions of units. I'm also excluding travel costs, retailer's cut.
Notably, Jobs moved manufacturing from US to China.
The new Google Nexus is supposed to cost a 1/3 of an iPhone 4S even after the retailer's cut. I'm not sure if it has fewer features, but it isn't locked down.
I haven't followed the tablet market as I find them somewhat useless.
In addition to what h4rr4r wrote...
There's nothing efficient about not being able to do what you need to do because the functionality isn't there.
Malware isn't a problem on any phone or smartphone. Apple wanted to lock it down so they could charge developers money. It's all about the money to Apple.
MS are locking down their tablet because it's sold at-cost and they don't want people running Linux or Android on it.
What Apple did was exercise their massive marketing muscle and bring MP3 players into the mainstream. They added a phone to it, made a tablet version, charged people 3x what they cost and made a fortune. Can't fault their business savvy but it's a poor choice for anyone who wants to do anything other than browse the internet, take photos, play music, make music, play games..
Apple and Android are both tolerable tho I'm sticking with my N900 for now.
But Windows on my phone? I'd rather run Symbian.
Compared to native code, obviously.
It's easier to polish an OS which does a quarter as much.
If the N9 is so irrelevant, how did it sell millions in spite of being suppressed by Elop?
When Nokia made them, people weren't stupid enough to want tablets. Especially when they cost $500+.
Apple is dumbed down, locked down, limited computing and massively overpriced.
Android is slow, locked down, spyware that is a pale imitation of Linux.
Who doesn't want an alternative?
I think a lot of N900 developers would shun Android simply because Qt is much nicer to develop for.
I think it obviously would be a contender. If you can get millions of sales whilst trying to kill it, you might get 10 million by actively promoting it. Small numbers compared to A & A but a lot better than going out of business as they are now.
The N9 seems to have sold through its visual appeal. If lack of apps ever became an issue, Nokia could have bunged either ACL or Alien Dalvik on it (charged existing users). The N950 would have been released simultaneously filling a massive gap left by Blackberry all this time.
This year would have seen a refresh of hardware, notably faster processors, maybe an 8" slate to compete with tablets.
The N900 has a lot of apps. Not everything, but a lot. Development has slowed down a ton though someone just ported Homeworld. ;)
N9 development seems to be mostly porting from N900. It seems that Harmattan is going to be finished (a 4th service pack).
I read a theory from an 'insider' that Elop was brought in by a few big stockholders to wind down the company while they got out...
Exactly. And the tablet with a budget model.
Just bring out a decent product. Nokia's N9 with zero marketing, blocked in all major markets and Nokia's own CEO briefing against it still managed to sell millions of units.
Because it's a superb smartphone with a superb OS.
RIM will bounce back if BB10 is as good as it's supposed to be, on decent hardware, in multiple form-factors.
On a controversial page where there are few experts.
It is hard work being an editor. Expect to put many hours in trying to make changes which will be constantly reverted and argued against by multiple people on talk pages. Experts probably have better things to do. If you're not available at the right time, all your work can can be removed in days.
Add to that, the massive learning curve for Wikipedia: people who are contracted by the majority of scientific papers can impose their bias on a page simply because they understand the edit system better than you do. And where they can't, they might just make the environment so unpleasant that you don't want to hang around.
One of the rules is consensus. If you are the only NPOV editor vs 2 or more people with an agenda, forget about it. They override facts presented in scientific papers in terms of things how much of the article can be devoted to it. Even if it's just one person with 2 accounts.
However, 6 months later, another expert might come along and go through the same bullshit you just went through. So unless you're there to back them up knowing the edit system inside out, your fellow expert will probably never come back.
And even if you manage to get the article more or less NPOV, don't expect it to last. Sooner or later, those with an agenda will make an attempt to impose their bias again and if you're not there to defend it, they will succeed.
In my experience, such POV pushing editors edit several Wikipedia pages full-time. Whether they are bored students/office workers/unemployed, I don't know.
I scanned through the paper and didn't find it illuminated much. Notably, they didn't look at talk page activity vs views of the main page.
To echo some of what the other guy said, you've been through a truly horrible experience and I'm genuinely sorry about that. You probably feel responsible even though anyone would do the same in your position.
It's not wrong to mostly trust people you know. This kind of thing happens rarely.
With the right kind of help, you can end some of these symptoms. I'd treat you and your wife for free if you're able to get to England.
Congratulations for putting them behind bars.
You can't get rid of emotions that way. You're undoubtedly suppressing them, which isn't as bad as it sounds.
What I'm saying (as a psychotherapist of 16 years) is that you have the opportunity to learn to feel them again as well as resolve and thereby 'delete' the negative ones.
Just an option. And yeah, school sucks.
EMDR has already shown efficacy for PTSD and at least one study has strongly implied EFT works too.
A colleague of mine, Andrew Austin, teaches an expanded model of EMDR called IEFT. He found something very interesting: that flashbacks were not to moments where eg the sufferer saw their friend die but rather to a moment where they felt responsible, where they wish they'd made a different choice. Typically, this was on an irrational basis where the eg a different choice would probably have made no difference, or relied upon non-existent prior knowledge.
Also worth pointing out that the so-called creator of EMDR stole it from John Grinder and never credits him.
It's possible that forgetting the trauma as suggested by the submission might make it worse. As a psychotherapist, I've treated people with repressed abuse and it can come out in the form of weird nightmares and disturbing emotional reactions in daily life.
I must be high. I'm hallucinating you can download the whole codebase here:
https://source.tizen.org/
A proper, unlocked Linux. Probably still as slow as Dalvik but with enough horsepower to be a worthy upgrade to my N900. And hey, maybe someone will port Qt.
They've demoed Tizen running Android software.
http://tablet-news.com/2012/05/13/first-tizen-tablet-runs-android-apps/
15 year since Psion 5 was released. I imagine it's up by now. Amazed no-one bought it from Psion 10 years ago.
Still, people want the screen on the outside now tho I see MS is back to the laptop with detachable keyboard idea.
When they're doing the distance shots of the planet, the 3D was apparent to you? It didn't become clearly apparent to me until the first engineers appeared.
Yes, it was a lush looking film -- at least until they got inside the temple. The contrast in atmosphere was from glorious to dank. I believe films are there to entertain (at least I rarely learn anything from them) and so I would have preferred Scott to focus more on the faces of the characters. Break it to the audience a bit more gently. ;)
And this of course is yet more evidence that the 2D films and 3D films need to be shot differently.
I do wonder if the general population will learn to appreciate this generation of 3D as much as we do.
Saw Hugo in 2D sadly.