"Are you refering to the canadians burning the white house? Isnt that pretty hotly contested? Canadians love to claim they burned the whitehouse down but I think the brits actually did it?"
We *were* Brits at that point so its a moot point. We were a colony of the British Empire until 1867 and 1947(?) in the case of the province of Newfoundland). We are still a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and we have many examples of our British heritage. The Queen of England is still our Queen for instance (when I swore my oath upon joining the Canadian Forces in '86, it was to "The Queen and all her heirs and successors in perpetuity" for instance. In reality she has no effective political power at all, but we send her a beaver pelt every year).
So when Canadians say we burnt the Whitehouse, it was in fact British Troops, but they had come south from Canada. We were all British back then, so we can claim it as part of our heritage. Besides you guys got a snazzy white paint job out of the deal and it probablly looks better as a result. Now if you could only convince Big Business to put a better choice in the Oval Office...:)
I have a partition on my HD, its the same size as as a CDROM. I keep all my relevant documents and information on that partition. Its very easy to simply burn a copy of the partition to CD periodically. Restoring it from CD is also just as simple. Thats only good for personal documents mind you.
However, the same thing could be applied to using a DvD for applications software. Make a partition the size of a DvD (4.7Gb or whatever) and copy all the driver files, application files etc that can easily take from CD, leaving only the major applications on physical CDs. Burn a copy of the partition to a DvD and get rid of the excess CDs. I don't currently do this myself, although I do have a partition that contains all my archives and could easily do so (and might just do it now that I think of it).
Again restoring this or moving to another HD is a piece of cake, one burn to backup and one read to install after recreating the partition. A DvD will as people pointed out, hold a *lot* of drivers and applications.
I have a problem with my sight: my eyes don't line up and point at the same spot exactly - its unfixable by surgery (well it might work or might blind me and they say the odds are bad). As a result I am Right-Eye dominant, my left eye produces only peripheral vision.
Does this new technology mean that I am going to be unable to view movies at all in the future because I am effectively only using one eye? Those 3D glasses things never did a thing for me except annoy me. I can't see how this technology is going to change things in any way.
As well, does this mean that watching the movie on DvD we would need the special glasses, or would this be a theatre only thing? Just curious. If its theatre only I can blithely ignore it...
"Superman: You have to have Christopher Reeves play him again. First, because he knows the part, and secondly, who says superman can't be disabled? What are you, prejudiced?"
So being *dead* now just counts as a disability? I didn't realize that. Admittedly they can do a lot with computer graphics these days to make a dead actor appear in a movie, but then I think the actor's familiarity with the part is much less of a factor...
I tried posting some results from netstat but/.'s FUCKING REDICULOUS limits on poster comments prevent me from posting the lines in question. Perhaps I can squeak in just one fucking line without it coughing all over me.
If I see a line that reads:
TCP herne:4994 CPE0030ab1f1542-CM000f9fad23c4.cpe.net.cable.roger s.com:9371 ESTABLISHED 1704
Does that indicate that someone at the Rogers Cable address (presumably a home address?) has established a connection to my computer using port 4494? a TCP connection? If so that is a concern.
"How about all of your clients sending you documents from a newer version of a monopolist's office suite that no longer recognizes Visual Basic for Applications? If you stick with old Microsoft Office, you keep VBA, but you can't open new documents. If you upgrade to new Microsoft Office, you can open new documents, but you lose VBA."
Which will be one of Micro$oft'$ main reasons for abandoning VB6. They are still the monopoly in many ways, and they can still leverage their existing products to force consumers to buy the newer versions. Its usually easier to just upgrade and pay the outrageous cost of buying new MS software than it is to explore the other possibilities - and of course many corporate types only understand MS products.
One of the companies I worked at in the past basically had MS Exchange server rammed down our throats by the newly hired CIO, because he knew it better and because he knew the brass would love the meeting scheduling software in Exchange. Never mind the fact that we had a perfectly usable linux-based email server that had served the company for years (and was replaced by 3 new expensive servers and 2 tapebackup units to support Exchange at the same performance level). He cost the company well over $80,000 by the time he was done making changes and the end result was only marginally better and much harder to maintain. It looked better and was flashier to the top people though and thus they were easily convinced, but I really think the company could have been better served by avoiding those changes.
Exchange Server/Outlook, Powerpoint, Word and Excel are so highly entrenched in most businesses that I think MS will be able to leverage them to control things for years to come, whatever Open Source can offer. As long as MS controls the compatibility of these products, they control business software to a great degree. Sure there are other products and other companies, but I never receive a business document crafted in Word Perfect or in any other editor. They are all generated in some copy of MS Word - even when the contents are a few paragraphs that could have been cut and pasted into the email I received.
So each department keeps one system running MS Windows and MS Office somewhere in a cornerr, hooked up on the network but turned off. If you really need to convert a document to a suitable format because MS has changed the format to encourage more (pointless) MS Office sales, you use that one computer to translate the document into some older and supported format, then save it onto the Samba file server, and go back to your Linux Desktop running OO.o and open it up. It won't happen that often I am sure.
Or go purchase a MacMini + MS Office for the Mac if you need to, and use that instead to translate troublesome documents.
I have 2 swappable HDs and a HD bay on my computer here. When I want to work under Linux, in goes drive A and I can do some serious computing. When I want to fuck around playing Windows games, I put in drive B and I can play City of Heroes.
Its superior to dual booting to my mind, each OS is completely separate and cannot possibly affect the other one, and its relatively painless to switch them around. At the same time while I am in Linux, I am not tempted to fire up a game as a distraction:P
Its not that simple. One of those US Companies has been hired to manage all the medical records for the Province of British Columbia (where I live). That means that all my medical records and all of those belonging to any other citizen living in BC, are directly accessible to the FBI, in complete contravention of Canadian Privacy Laws. I have no choice but to deal with this US Company, since we have a great national health care system and I have no choice if I visit a doctor. They are all tied into that system along with all the pharmacies etc. The only weak link is the government of BC, the moronic majority in the province voted in the Liberal Party and since they are about as Liberal as the Republicans in the US, they privatized the record keeping for medical records, or are about to.
Precisely. I expected to see that listed as the first language on the page, although arguably it may not have been responsible for inspiring any of the later languages.
While there is no doubt that lots of problems can occur in these games, and that Customer Service tends to lack in its quality in most if not all of them - particularly on response times for instance, its also true that the players of many of these games seem to have unreal expectations concerning them.
These are the most complex computer games currently being devised. Balancing all the issues and features involved to try to produce something that feels fair to all players has got to rank up there with some of the more complex projects ever undertaken in programming. Players blame the developers when they can't resolve a balance issue, but they never take into account the complexity of those issues (because they lack the knowledge to undrestand them no doubt), nor the fact that for every single developer involved there may be 20,000 players out there generating problems or uncovering bugs while they play.
As well, these are now the crucibles for the new type of social interaction that is possible online - and many people elect not to act in a socially friendly manner but instead in a socially offensive manner due to their internet anonymity. As a result many of the complaints sent to Customer Service are in fact complaints concerning the actions of other players, not problems with the game. The games need to punish anti-social behaviour in the same manner that society does I think, and its going to take a while to develop models that let that happen. Most people are not into open PvP, or permanent death for characters although those features would resolve many problems if combined in a game:)
"But the type of missions that you go on gets to be a bit of a treadmill (kill x y's, Stop x from destroying y before timer z runs out, Click x buttons before y timer runs out). And as you get into the higher levels the amount of time required to change the dynamic of the game (gain an ability or attack) grows."
How does this differ from any other MMORPG? They all generally boil down to Kill X, kill Y number of X's, or take this item to NPC A etc. WOW is certainly no different, although its questing system is superb, and they have tried to maximize the variety I admit.
I do think that the new skills arriving further and further apart at higher levels is a bit of a weakness because players see those skills as mini-goals. In the intervening levels you do get to add slots to your current skills, so its not like you don't gain anything, but fewer people are probably excited about that I admit. It undoubtedly seems like much less of a reward. Now admittedly, on some of my characters I find I am waiting for the slots not the next skill, because I am highly aware of where I can improve things.
"Also in the end, the city setting was nothing more than pretty graphics. There was little interaction with the world, and the story line quests and arcs were nice, but the game got old after a while."
I personally think the city setting is pretty well done, but I can see how it might seem like a lack of variety. I agree that it would be great if we could interact with the local environment a bit more - and they have talked of making improvements along those lines I believe.
As for the game getting old, that is a matter of personal experience of course. I admit that when WOW was released, I was overjoyed to switch from COH to WOW. A new game is always exciting, but I found the experience of playing WOW was less than stellar for me. It does everything very well, but its just a highly polished version of what I have done before in previous games. COH is much more dynamic and fast-paced, and its combat system puts all other current games to shame. Collision detection makes a massive difference.
"I got to around lvl 35 before I quit to play WOW. And the main reason I did this was that I wanted a change in the game dynamics. Had they introduced new concepts, or given me places to explore (the indoor maps were just tile based) I would have stayed around. But as it was, it had turned into a treadmill, more work than fun."
Ah, I have Dewclaw - alevel 39 Claws/Invulnerability Scrapper, Doctor Tomorrow - a level 25 ForceField/Energy Blast Defender, Silver Spirit - a level 22 Illusion/Radiation Controller, Master Li - level 20 Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper, Captain Canuck - a level 18 Ice/Ice blaster (whom I may reroll to Ice/Energy), and Odin All-Father - a 14 Invulnerability/BattleAxe Tanker. When I get bored or frustrated with a character, I load up an alt and play the same game from a different perspective, which can help a lot.
In the end it boils down to personal preference of course. Play what you enjoy playing. I am enjoying COH immensely, and while I may renew my WOW again, I am not sure I am going to do so. City of Heroes is a very strong, and well designed game and I think that Cryptic has a bunch of very clever developers and programmers. As such I think we can continue to look forward to new and innovative game design from them.
I gotta echo the above comments. COH is a fantastic game, very well designed, very stable and (sadly) largely ignored.
I have stopped playing WOW and went back to COH. WOW was a fanstastically well designed and polished game, but it is far too solo-focused, and while almost anyone *can* solo in COH, it is a much better game for group-play. I play with a stable group of RL friends as my guild. As a result the quality of my grouping is undoubtedly far superior to that of most pickup groups and that is an advantage that not everyone can enjoy I admit, but I think the strengths of COH make it outweigh the strengths of WOW for my particular preferences.
Both are excellent games, but MMO players who haven't checked out City of Heroes really should give it a shot. It is a truely innovative game, and really pushed the genre and the industry.
I expect that all future games will end up adopting the COH Sidekicking/Exemplaring system (allows players of different levels to play with each other as if they were similiar levels - so a level 13 and a level 45 can go do a mission belonging to either player and still gain experience (well the 45 would work of exp debt when doing the 13 mission). The complete lack of any economy (effectively no drops), money (influence is similar but not quite the same), and crafting is quite refreshing. While fun, all of those things served as time-sinks, and COH is relatively free of timesinks.
You can jump into the game and accomplish something worthwhile in 30 mins, and as such its is very casual friendly. Its only major weakness is that the leveling curve is rather steep at higher levels. I expect that to change in the future - and the new difficulty slider for missions may have in fact changed it.
We use Oxygen - a java based XML editor that is fairly easy to learn how to use and quite effective. Since its platform agnostic our various Windows, Linux and Mac folks can all use it.
Oh thats great fun. I calculated the results for a 1320m asteriod made of dense rock arriving at 17m/s on a 45 degree angle and impacting on land for someone standing 100km (62.5 miles) away:
---- Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km = 62.10 miles
Projectile Diameter: 1320.00 m = 4329.60 ft = 0.82 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.22 x 1020 Joules = 1.25 x 105 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 9.2 x 105years
Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
Crater Dimensions:
What does this mean?
Transient Crater Diameter: 13.1 km = 8.12 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 4.63 km = 2.87 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 18.4 km = 11.4 miles
Final Crater Depth: 0.711 km = 0.441 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 3.22 km3 = 0.772 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 24 meters = 78.6 feet
Thermal Radiation:
What does this mean?
Time for maximum radiation: 0.95 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 15.2 km = 9.45 miles
The fireball appears 34.6 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 2.29 x 106 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 20.8 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 110
Effects of Thermal Radiation:
Much of the body suffers second degree burns
Deciduous trees ignite
Seismic Effects:
What does this mean?
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 20 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.0
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 100 km:
VII. Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken.
VIII. Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned.
Ejecta:
What does this mean?
The ejecta will arrive approximately 144 seconds after the impact.
Average Ejecta Thickness: 26.1 cm = 10.3 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 11.8 cm = 4.65 inches
Air Blast:
What does this mean?
The air blast will arrive at approximately 303 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 157000 Pa = 1.57 bars = 22.3 psi
Max wind velocity: 242 m/s = 540 mph
Sound Intensity: 104 dB (May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:
Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.
"It's one thing to be low-budget in production (the original Star Trek was about as low budget as Sci Fi comes), but they could at least make an attempt to get decent writers."
Actually, you are wrong completely here. The original Star Trek series was one of, if not *the* highest budgeted TV shows per episode for its time. If I recall correctly it cost roughly $180k per episode which was a huge amount of money at the time. They also had scripts written by some well known SF authors of the time - Theodore Sturgeoon comes to mind.
The reason that the show looks like it was low budget is simply that the special effects industry of the time was primitive by modern standards. For its time Star Trek was revolutionary and very cutting edge, hard as that may be to believe now, and as hokey as the episodes can look by modern standards.
If you want to know more about it, look for a book called "The Making of Star Trek" by Stephen Whitfield (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345315545/qid=1103221545/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-8858713 -8243237)
Note that you are only exempt from overtime pay if you are receiving $44.63 Cdn and hour though. At 40 hour work weeks thats about 85k a year minimum which is not a bad wage from where I am sitting (over in Victoria BC and earning a lot less than that, although I only work the 40 hrs/week). If they are not paying overtime one assumes they are paying at least the same rate for further hours.
And if its a salaried position then they would appear to be in violation of the code since it stipulates you must be receiving an hourly wage of that amount to qualify for the exemption, or did I misread something?
Do you have any plans for development of another MMORPG - possibly Fantasy or SF based - using the City of Heroes game engine?
This subject just came up today as a discussion on one of the gaming boards in fact. Many current players of City of Heroes who posted there seemed to think they would be very interested in the possibility of a Fantasy-based MMORPG using the same game engine. Obviously, when adapting it to a new genre many changes would be required.
Cryptic has shown they can think outside the box and push the envelope in MMO design, it would be very interesting to see what they could do with the more traditional MMORPG genres if they put their mind to it.
I would love to see a 3 realms at war style game a la Dark Age of Camelot based on the COH design and interface...
But that is true of many other MMORPGs too that lack an "Endgame". From what I can tell Dark Age of Camelot seems to have introduced the concept of an "Endgame" that is different from the regular gameplay, and now people seem to expect it, but its not the norm.
What if anything is the "Endgame" for Everquest? Surely once you have all the stuff and you have all the levels thats pretty much it no?
Arguably the Endgame for City of Heroes will come about with the City of Villains expansion which will introduce PvP play into City of Heroes. It will be a standalone expansion from what I hear, but both games are going to have to have some changes made to allow PvP.
I am playing COH right now, with no PvP, no End game and I am perfectly happy with it. When my main character (currently level 37) reaches 50, they will retire until PvP is implemented. Not everyone anticipates an Endgame as much as some I guess, you see *I ENJOY THE GAME AS IT IS* not for some nebulous endgame concept that has still to be developed, or I wouldn't bother playing it.
I don't think the average person really knows what Science is, let alone thinks they can understand it. At the most they want a flashy "look what those wacky nerds have thought up now" type show, that reassures them they are not too smart - since in many ways our society teaches us that being too smart is bad for you.
Science shows with any serious information in them are of necessity confined to that miniscule percentage of the population that has a clear conception of what Science really is, and doesn't just think of it as some type of advanced magic.
Besides most people seem to watch TV as some form of mindless soporiphic, not as a tool to educate them. Look at the rise of so-called Reality TV (which is of course only real in the sense that its less scripted/more adlib and has lower production values), does that bode well for a Science channel? As society evolves, we just keep getting stupider and we are learning to accept that as okay.
Its not perfect by any stretch, but COH had the smoothest release and has the least problems of any of the MMO products I have tried.
Its a fun PvE game, the AI on the mobs is quite good - again far better than any other MMORPG game I have tried - and the developers seem to have a handle on what the game needs. They listen and respond to public feedback.
Currently its a bit content light, but they are adding new content and new features quarterly at the moment, and the first (and only) patch was pretty problem free.
I went to DAOC from EQ because Mythic looked like they were doing things right and addressing the aspects of EQ that really bothered me, and the whole RvR thing looked neat. I played it since release until the release of City of Heroes, and was a pretty big DAOC fan. I don't think I could return now, COH has spoiled me. It is lightyears ahead of the competition in my opinion, and while its early still, being only 3 months old, I think it has a very bright future.
Its well worth checking out City of Heroes if you are looking for a new game.
I thought I recalled reading in the article that some had been encrypted using a one-time pad. How exactly did a pair of reporters manage to crack a one-time pad? Its considered one of the hardest types of encryption to crack is it not?
Slashdot Mirror
"Are you refering to the canadians burning the white house? Isnt that pretty hotly contested? Canadians love to claim they burned the whitehouse down but I think the brits actually did it?"
:)
We *were* Brits at that point so its a moot point. We were a colony of the British Empire until 1867 and 1947(?) in the case of the province of Newfoundland). We are still a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and we have many examples of our British heritage. The Queen of England is still our Queen for instance (when I swore my oath upon joining the Canadian Forces in '86, it was to "The Queen and all her heirs and successors in perpetuity" for instance. In reality she has no effective political power at all, but we send her a beaver pelt every year).
So when Canadians say we burnt the Whitehouse, it was in fact British Troops, but they had come south from Canada. We were all British back then, so we can claim it as part of our heritage. Besides you guys got a snazzy white paint job out of the deal and it probablly looks better as a result. Now if you could only convince Big Business to put a better choice in the Oval Office...
I have a partition on my HD, its the same size as as a CDROM. I keep all my relevant documents and information on that partition. Its very easy to simply burn a copy of the partition to CD periodically. Restoring it from CD is also just as simple. Thats only good for personal documents mind you.
However, the same thing could be applied to using a DvD for applications software. Make a partition the size of a DvD (4.7Gb or whatever) and copy all the driver files, application files etc that can easily take from CD, leaving only the major applications on physical CDs. Burn a copy of the partition to a DvD and get rid of the excess CDs. I don't currently do this myself, although I do have a partition that contains all my archives and could easily do so (and might just do it now that I think of it).
Again restoring this or moving to another HD is a piece of cake, one burn to backup and one read to install after recreating the partition. A DvD will as people pointed out, hold a *lot* of drivers and applications.
I have a problem with my sight: my eyes don't line up and point at the same spot exactly - its unfixable by surgery (well it might work or might blind me and they say the odds are bad). As a result I am Right-Eye dominant, my left eye produces only peripheral vision.
Does this new technology mean that I am going to be unable to view movies at all in the future because I am effectively only using one eye? Those 3D glasses things never did a thing for me except annoy me. I can't see how this technology is going to change things in any way.
As well, does this mean that watching the movie on DvD we would need the special glasses, or would this be a theatre only thing? Just curious. If its theatre only I can blithely ignore it...
"Superman: You have to have Christopher Reeves play him again. First, because he knows the part, and secondly, who says superman can't be disabled? What are you, prejudiced?"
So being *dead* now just counts as a disability? I didn't realize that. Admittedly they can do a lot with computer graphics these days to make a dead actor appear in a movie, but then I think the actor's familiarity with the part is much less of a factor...
I tried posting some results from netstat but /.'s FUCKING REDICULOUS limits on poster comments prevent me from posting the lines in question. Perhaps I can squeak in just one fucking line without it coughing all over me.
r s.com:9371 ESTABLISHED 1704
If I see a line that reads:
TCP herne:4994 CPE0030ab1f1542-CM000f9fad23c4.cpe.net.cable.roge
Does that indicate that someone at the Rogers Cable address (presumably a home address?) has established a connection to my computer using port 4494? a TCP connection? If so that is a concern.
Herne is the name of my computer.
"How about all of your clients sending you documents from a newer version of a monopolist's office suite that no longer recognizes Visual Basic for Applications? If you stick with old Microsoft Office, you keep VBA, but you can't open new documents. If you upgrade to new Microsoft Office, you can open new documents, but you lose VBA."
Which will be one of Micro$oft'$ main reasons for abandoning VB6. They are still the monopoly in many ways, and they can still leverage their existing products to force consumers to buy the newer versions. Its usually easier to just upgrade and pay the outrageous cost of buying new MS software than it is to explore the other possibilities - and of course many corporate types only understand MS products.
One of the companies I worked at in the past basically had MS Exchange server rammed down our throats by the newly hired CIO, because he knew it better and because he knew the brass would love the meeting scheduling software in Exchange. Never mind the fact that we had a perfectly usable linux-based email server that had served the company for years (and was replaced by 3 new expensive servers and 2 tapebackup units to support Exchange at the same performance level). He cost the company well over $80,000 by the time he was done making changes and the end result was only marginally better and much harder to maintain. It looked better and was flashier to the top people though and thus they were easily convinced, but I really think the company could have been better served by avoiding those changes.
Exchange Server/Outlook, Powerpoint, Word and Excel are so highly entrenched in most businesses that I think MS will be able to leverage them to control things for years to come, whatever Open Source can offer. As long as MS controls the compatibility of these products, they control business software to a great degree. Sure there are other products and other companies, but I never receive a business document crafted in Word Perfect or in any other editor. They are all generated in some copy of MS Word - even when the contents are a few paragraphs that could have been cut and pasted into the email I received.
So each department keeps one system running MS Windows and MS Office somewhere in a cornerr, hooked up on the network but turned off. If you really need to convert a document to a suitable format because MS has changed the format to encourage more (pointless) MS Office sales, you use that one computer to translate the document into some older and supported format, then save it onto the Samba file server, and go back to your Linux Desktop running OO.o and open it up. It won't happen that often I am sure.
Or go purchase a MacMini + MS Office for the Mac if you need to, and use that instead to translate troublesome documents.
I have 2 swappable HDs and a HD bay on my computer here. When I want to work under Linux, in goes drive A and I can do some serious computing. When I want to fuck around playing Windows games, I put in drive B and I can play City of Heroes.
:P
Its superior to dual booting to my mind, each OS is completely separate and cannot possibly affect the other one, and its relatively painless to switch them around. At the same time while I am in Linux, I am not tempted to fire up a game as a distraction
"Then just don't do business with those firms."
Its not that simple. One of those US Companies has been hired to manage all the medical records for the Province of British Columbia (where I live). That means that all my medical records and all of those belonging to any other citizen living in BC, are directly accessible to the FBI, in complete contravention of Canadian Privacy Laws. I have no choice but to deal with this US Company, since we have a great national health care system and I have no choice if I visit a doctor. They are all tied into that system along with all the pharmacies etc. The only weak link is the government of BC, the moronic majority in the province voted in the Liberal Party and since they are about as Liberal as the Republicans in the US, they privatized the record keeping for medical records, or are about to.
Precisely. I expected to see that listed as the first language on the page, although arguably it may not have been responsible for inspiring any of the later languages.
While there is no doubt that lots of problems can occur in these games, and that Customer Service tends to lack in its quality in most if not all of them - particularly on response times for instance, its also true that the players of many of these games seem to have unreal expectations concerning them.
:)
These are the most complex computer games currently being devised. Balancing all the issues and features involved to try to produce something that feels fair to all players has got to rank up there with some of the more complex projects ever undertaken in programming. Players blame the developers when they can't resolve a balance issue, but they never take into account the complexity of those issues (because they lack the knowledge to undrestand them no doubt), nor the fact that for every single developer involved there may be 20,000 players out there generating problems or uncovering bugs while they play.
As well, these are now the crucibles for the new type of social interaction that is possible online - and many people elect not to act in a socially friendly manner but instead in a socially offensive manner due to their internet anonymity. As a result many of the complaints sent to Customer Service are in fact complaints concerning the actions of other players, not problems with the game. The games need to punish anti-social behaviour in the same manner that society does I think, and its going to take a while to develop models that let that happen. Most people are not into open PvP, or permanent death for characters although those features would resolve many problems if combined in a game
"But the type of missions that you go on gets to be a bit of a treadmill (kill x y's, Stop x from destroying y before timer z runs out, Click x buttons before y timer runs out). And as you get into the higher levels the amount of time required to change the dynamic of the game (gain an ability or attack) grows."
How does this differ from any other MMORPG? They all generally boil down to Kill X, kill Y number of X's, or take this item to NPC A etc. WOW is certainly no different, although its questing system is superb, and they have tried to maximize the variety I admit.
I do think that the new skills arriving further and further apart at higher levels is a bit of a weakness because players see those skills as mini-goals. In the intervening levels you do get to add slots to your current skills, so its not like you don't gain anything, but fewer people are probably excited about that I admit. It undoubtedly seems like much less of a reward. Now admittedly, on some of my characters I find I am waiting for the slots not the next skill, because I am highly aware of where I can improve things.
"Also in the end, the city setting was nothing more than pretty graphics. There was little interaction with the world, and the story line quests and arcs were nice, but the game got old after a while."
I personally think the city setting is pretty well done, but I can see how it might seem like a lack of variety. I agree that it would be great if we could interact with the local environment a bit more - and they have talked of making improvements along those lines I believe.
As for the game getting old, that is a matter of personal experience of course. I admit that when WOW was released, I was overjoyed to switch from COH to WOW. A new game is always exciting, but I found the experience of playing WOW was less than stellar for me. It does everything very well, but its just a highly polished version of what I have done before in previous games. COH is much more dynamic and fast-paced, and its combat system puts all other current games to shame. Collision detection makes a massive difference.
"I got to around lvl 35 before I quit to play WOW. And the main reason I did this was that I wanted a change in the game dynamics. Had they introduced new concepts, or given me places to explore (the indoor maps were just tile based) I would have stayed around. But as it was, it had turned into a treadmill, more work than fun."
Ah, I have Dewclaw - alevel 39 Claws/Invulnerability Scrapper, Doctor Tomorrow - a level 25 ForceField/Energy Blast Defender, Silver Spirit - a level 22 Illusion/Radiation Controller, Master Li - level 20 Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper, Captain Canuck - a level 18 Ice/Ice blaster (whom I may reroll to Ice/Energy),
and Odin All-Father - a 14 Invulnerability/BattleAxe Tanker. When I get bored or frustrated with a character, I load up an alt and play the same game from a different perspective, which can help a lot.
In the end it boils down to personal preference of course. Play what you enjoy playing. I am enjoying COH immensely, and while I may renew my WOW again, I am not sure I am going to do so. City of Heroes is a very strong, and well designed game and I think that Cryptic has a bunch of very clever developers and programmers. As such I think we can continue to look forward to new and innovative game design from them.
I gotta echo the above comments. COH is a fantastic game, very well designed, very stable and (sadly) largely ignored.
I have stopped playing WOW and went back to COH. WOW was a fanstastically well designed and polished game, but it is far too solo-focused, and while almost anyone *can* solo in COH, it is a much better game for group-play. I play with a stable group of RL friends as my guild. As a result the quality of my grouping is undoubtedly far superior to that of most pickup groups and that is an advantage that not everyone can enjoy I admit, but I think the strengths of COH make it outweigh the strengths of WOW for my particular preferences.
Both are excellent games, but MMO players who haven't checked out City of Heroes really should give it a shot. It is a truely innovative game, and really pushed the genre and the industry.
I expect that all future games will end up adopting the COH Sidekicking/Exemplaring system (allows players of different levels to play with each other as if they were similiar levels - so a level 13 and a level 45 can go do a mission belonging to either player and still gain experience (well the 45 would work of exp debt when doing the 13 mission). The complete lack of any economy (effectively no drops), money (influence is similar but not quite the same), and crafting is quite refreshing. While fun, all of those things served as time-sinks, and COH is relatively free of timesinks.
You can jump into the game and accomplish something worthwhile in 30 mins, and as such its is very casual friendly. Its only major weakness is that the leveling curve is rather steep at higher levels. I expect that to change in the future - and the new difficulty slider for missions may have in fact changed it.
We use Oxygen - a java based XML editor that is fairly easy to learn how to use and quite effective. Since its platform agnostic our various Windows, Linux and Mac folks can all use it.
http://www.oxygenxml.com
Oh thats great fun. I calculated the results for a 1320m asteriod made of dense rock arriving at 17m/s on a 45 degree angle and impacting on land for someone standing 100km (62.5 miles) away:
----
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km = 62.10 miles
Projectile Diameter: 1320.00 m = 4329.60 ft = 0.82 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.22 x 1020 Joules = 1.25 x 105 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 9.2 x 105years
Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
Crater Dimensions:
What does this mean?
Transient Crater Diameter: 13.1 km = 8.12 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 4.63 km = 2.87 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 18.4 km = 11.4 miles
Final Crater Depth: 0.711 km = 0.441 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 3.22 km3 = 0.772 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 24 meters = 78.6 feet
Thermal Radiation:
What does this mean?
Time for maximum radiation: 0.95 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 15.2 km = 9.45 miles
The fireball appears 34.6 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 2.29 x 106 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 20.8 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 110
Effects of Thermal Radiation:
Much of the body suffers second degree burns
Deciduous trees ignite
Seismic Effects:
What does this mean?
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 20 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.0
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 100 km:
VII. Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken.
VIII. Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned.
Ejecta:
What does this mean?
The ejecta will arrive approximately 144 seconds after the impact.
Average Ejecta Thickness: 26.1 cm = 10.3 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 11.8 cm = 4.65 inches
Air Blast:
What does this mean?
The air blast will arrive at approximately 303 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 157000 Pa = 1.57 bars = 22.3 psi
Max wind velocity: 242 m/s = 540 mph
Sound Intensity: 104 dB (May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:
Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.
One of the cleverest plays on words I ever heard was in regards to DeBeers during the Apartheid years in SA:
"You bring DeBeers, and lets have Apartheid!"
Wish I could remember who originated it...
I know a company named NanoTech but who is this NanoThech referred to in the title?
You didn't include Firefly in your list of great series? I think its extremely well done, and sadly got canned after its first season. :(
"It's one thing to be low-budget in production (the original Star Trek was about as low budget as Sci Fi comes), but they could at least make an attempt to get decent writers."
5 /qid=1103221545/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-8858713 -8243237)
Actually, you are wrong completely here. The original Star Trek series was one of, if not *the* highest budgeted TV shows per episode for its time. If I recall correctly it cost roughly $180k per episode which was a huge amount of money at the time. They also had scripts written by some well known SF authors of the time - Theodore Sturgeoon comes to mind.
The reason that the show looks like it was low budget is simply that the special effects industry of the time was primitive by modern standards. For its time Star Trek was revolutionary and very cutting edge, hard as that may be to believe now, and as hokey as the episodes can look by modern standards.
If you want to know more about it, look for a book called "The Making of Star Trek" by Stephen Whitfield (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034531554
Note that you are only exempt from overtime pay if you are receiving $44.63 Cdn and hour though. At 40 hour work weeks thats about 85k a year minimum which is not a bad wage from where I am sitting (over in Victoria BC and earning a lot less than that, although I only work the 40 hrs/week). If they are not paying overtime one assumes they are paying at least the same rate for further hours.
And if its a salaried position then they would appear to be in violation of the code since it stipulates you must be receiving an hourly wage of that amount to qualify for the exemption, or did I misread something?
Do you have any plans for development of another MMORPG - possibly Fantasy or SF based - using the City of Heroes game engine?
This subject just came up today as a discussion on one of the gaming boards in fact. Many current players of City of Heroes who posted there seemed to think they would be very interested in the possibility of a Fantasy-based MMORPG using the same game engine. Obviously, when adapting it to a new genre many changes would be required.
Cryptic has shown they can think outside the box and push the envelope in MMO design, it would be very interesting to see what they could do with the more traditional MMORPG genres if they put their mind to it.
I would love to see a 3 realms at war style game a la Dark Age of Camelot based on the COH design and interface...
But that is true of many other MMORPGs too that lack an "Endgame". From what I can tell Dark Age of Camelot seems to have introduced the concept of an "Endgame" that is different from the regular gameplay, and now people seem to expect it, but its not the norm.
What if anything is the "Endgame" for Everquest? Surely once you have all the stuff and you have all the levels thats pretty much it no?
Arguably the Endgame for City of Heroes will come about with the City of Villains expansion which will introduce PvP play into City of Heroes. It will be a standalone expansion from what I hear, but both games are going to have to have some changes made to allow PvP.
I am playing COH right now, with no PvP, no End game and I am perfectly happy with it. When my main character (currently level 37) reaches 50, they will retire until PvP is implemented. Not everyone anticipates an Endgame as much as some I guess, you see *I ENJOY THE GAME AS IT IS* not for some nebulous endgame concept that has still to be developed, or I wouldn't bother playing it.
I don't think the average person really knows what Science is, let alone thinks they can understand it. At the most they want a flashy "look what those wacky nerds have thought up now" type show, that reassures them they are not too smart - since in many ways our society teaches us that being too smart is bad for you.
Science shows with any serious information in them are of necessity confined to that miniscule percentage of the population that has a clear conception of what Science really is, and doesn't just think of it as some type of advanced magic.
Besides most people seem to watch TV as some form of mindless soporiphic, not as a tool to educate them. Look at the rise of so-called Reality TV (which is of course only real in the sense that its less scripted/more adlib and has lower production values), does that bode well for a Science channel? As society evolves, we just keep getting stupider and we are learning to accept that as okay.
Its not perfect by any stretch, but COH had the smoothest release and has the least problems of any of the MMO products I have tried.
Its a fun PvE game, the AI on the mobs is quite good - again far better than any other MMORPG game I have tried - and the developers seem to have a handle on what the game needs. They listen and respond to public feedback.
Currently its a bit content light, but they are adding new content and new features quarterly at the moment, and the first (and only) patch was pretty problem free.
I went to DAOC from EQ because Mythic looked like they were doing things right and addressing the aspects of EQ that really bothered me, and the whole RvR thing looked neat. I played it since release until the release of City of Heroes, and was a pretty big DAOC fan. I don't think I could return now, COH has spoiled me. It is lightyears ahead of the competition in my opinion, and while its early still, being only 3 months old, I think it has a very bright future.
Its well worth checking out City of Heroes if you are looking for a new game.
I thought I recalled reading in the article that some had been encrypted using a one-time pad. How exactly did a pair of reporters manage to crack a one-time pad? Its considered one of the hardest types of encryption to crack is it not?