Who can forget shit like running into someone between towns, paralyzing them, surrounding them with walls, and casting an elemental inside the death-box you created. Or going into the mining area where the RPers hang out, working on their blacksmithing. Casting an energy field on the exit of the mines and telling a group of 9 of them that you're going to murder them all. Watching as they scramble to exit the mine, only to see it sealed off as you go to town on them. For good measure you kill their pack animals too. Having huge battles in front of rival guild houses, the moment a guy drops everyone swarming the corpse and completely looting it of all its items. Taking down a guy with a tame White Wyrm walking around outside town, thinking he's hot shit. As the Wyrm is slowly killed he pleads with his attackers to stop and constantly spams "a follow" to get the creature into town and safety. Watching him whine and put up a fight out of anger for losing his prized possession, only to be cut down. And finally, kicking someone's ass so bad, making him lose such good items/so many reagents that the guy in his vitriol follows you around as a ghost just spamming your screen with lines and lines of OoooOoOOOOooo because he has no other recourse. Or even better, up and quitting the game because his loss was so devastating.
That's real PVP.
Wow that sounds totally awesome!! And maybe I'm crazy but I'd rather have a root canal than suffer through that crap. I play WoW on a RP-PVP server, and my guild practices world PvP - if I were to describe our policies, it'd boil down to Wil Wheaton's "Don't Be A Dick". We let our opponents corpse run, regroup, and then we have at each other. Why do all that sportsmanship stuff? Cause it's to further world PvP. To get the opponents to come out and play.
I realize I'm weird, but I'd rather fight in such a way that I have MORE opponents, not less. Our guild doesn't (generally) secretly attack WoW zones... We post on the blizzard forms that we'll be in Halaa on Thursday night at 8 PM. Because making somebody quit a game isn't as good as making him play it.
Unless you make it clear that you're not going to a competitor, there's no reason for them to give access back. Document the things you need to, working with other IT people at their stations. Pay attention to whatever "right to work" laws your state has as failing to show up for work can mean that you have voluntarily resigned your position in some states. Bring the paper everyday, put a few novels in your office, etc.
As an option, this still sucks - I can't wait to be in Alterac Valley and have my game suddenly minimize due to their "phone home" program crashing. Or better yet it makes me much happier I picked up an Xbox360 a year or so ago.
We operate with a model of a free public record for legal documents. In Texas, there was a brief move to scrub SSNs from legal documents prior to "publishing" them. Most law offices promptly informed the legislature that their law couldn't work, because you can change your name, you can pretty much change everything but your SSN.
Add to that the problem of Public Records - if you charge to access them (presumably to limit access), they're no longer public. Public Records also have all the other problems you find in "human based documents" - misspellings, typos, gramatical mistakes, etc. Public Records are one of those things that remind me of Winston Churchill's comment about Democracy - "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Well this looks like a great little deal, but what I really want to know is 'Will it play World of Warcrack' on the Linux desktop? What does it's graphic drivers function like gamewise?
I think you have the wrong Dexter - obviously Dextre will function perfectly fine until some artist develops the DeeDee Robot and sends it into space as 'performance art'. Although it will speak with a cheesy German accent.
It always amazes me how applicable math becomes hundreds of years after it's written. Think if Maxwell's equations, Newton's equations, Einstein's equations. (snip) Where the math goes, human technology will probably soon follow.
That's the most interesting definition of 'Soon' I've seen.
This brings up an interesting question: What do you qualify as a robot? What's the difference between a guidance system and a robot?
I don't see the 'arms race' happening in the way the US-Soviet one did. A Katyusha (sp?) has been the same damn thing since WW2, and doesn't require a guidance system. Why spend $250 per rocket to make it a true missle, when your miliary objective isn't to hit TARGET X but to hit something semi-randomly. That's why the Katyushas worked during the most recent skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah - the randomness is part of the appeal of the weapon.
As someone who's been diagnosed with Clinical Depression, I looked at the article and went Huh?
Here's where I'm confused - the original studies showed a difference between placebo or they wouldn't have been approved in the first place by USDA. Now somebody's coming and 'meta-analyzing' and saying "Nope, there's no difference between placebo and the anti-depressant in moderate cases". I might buy that anti-depressants are over prescribed, but not this guy's analysis of these studies.
My own personal experience is that depression is best explained as a SINE wave with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being happiness. Let's say most normal people average out at zero happiness (a neutral state) with an upper max of three and a lower minimum of negative three. My own personal 'zero line' is probably negative four without medical intervention. With medication, my 'zero line' is artificially raised to roughly negative one. With medication the lows are 'higher' and the highs are 'lower'
My own depression started with my divorce but there has been a family history of it, specifically a sibling. I worked through the divorce and moved on with my life both professionally and personally. And I've had a few times where a drug interaction has turned my medication off. So I've discovered I can't go off my meds or I'll return to full clinical depression as opposed to being on 'maintenance'.
I don't buy this guy's meta-analysis - I don't see the FDA approving a drug that's a placebo. I think he's padding his language with phrases like "most severe" cases - but then again, it's not like we can point to depression or measure it on a scale. (ZOMG, this one goes to ELEVEN!)
There's some interesting comments I've read regarding the change to fourth edition. As a GM of long experience, I'm very curious to see where they'll go with the rules. The decision to model talent trees or ability trees, similar to both WoW and FFX I'm guessing, is one based on expedience - one problem with the feat system was that Joe the player could pick and choose, either going for the min/max/munchkin status, or making some really really bad choices (You want +4 to your SCULPTING skill?). The 'tree' system allows an entire tree of abilities to be balanced as opposed to a "gravel quarry" of abilities. I see the logic here, I really do. I'll just have to see how the things work out.
Now to you silly people who think pallys are 'sub-par' - it's all in how you play the game isn't it? Most Paladins are going to have high levels of charisma, somewhere on a level with social rogues or bards. Of course that bonus will get added into saving throws, blah blah blah. If you're in a game where saving throws are REALLY important, then play a guy that has ten first level classes. Paladins are holy knights - taking ten levels of cleric may be awesome from a rules mechanic viewpoint, but your church, your god, and possibly your country know what a lvl 15 Pally looks like - and what a lvl 5 pal/lvl 10 cleric look like. A level 15 paladin has a lot of things going for him - he hasn't fallen and that demands some respect - he's probably known to the local rulers and kings on a first name basis. I've played a couple of paladins in 3.0 and 3.5 - in one campaign, the pc pally needed a big S on his chest as he was everything you expect out of Superman. In the other campaign, the pc pally was part of a religion that believed in working hard and playing hard, so his entry into the campaign was interesting - the pc pally was 'entertaining' a lady of the evening at the time (Viking Paladins ftw - it was a very NSFW campaign).
Like all characters in D&D 3.0-3.5, it's all about the combination of game mechanics and NPC/PC interaction. Your game mechanics can let you kill a monster - your PC/NPC interactions can raise armies, rule a kingdom, or anything else.
I live in the city where a judge ordered that sex offenders put signs in their yards. It should also be said that we elect our judges.
It surprised a lot of local people when there was criticism from both the political right and the left over the issue.
From the left (which I'm a member), we basically have the argument that if a convicts sentence is 20 years, and he serves that time, then the punishment required by the courts has been met - why continue to punish making the man (usually the case but not always) a target? Further, why punish the people who live in the house with the ex-con? After all, they didn't actual commit a crime.
The other side of the aisle's argument basically went something like this: The government released him - are you saying the ex-convict is in fact still dangerous? If he's still dangerous, why release him in the first place? And what about the neighbors? You're going to see a primary investment (a house) devalued because a judge said "put a sign up to keep people 'safe'"
It was surprising to see the bipartisanship spontaneously form and school the judge about what's appropriate and what's not. We don't have those signs in our city anymore.
According to the article, the scientists involved are saying the moon was formed in two phases and that the second phase had the moon pull in ring material and add it on top of the first phase.
While it's general scientific consensus that the rings of saturn were probably caused by a moon breaking up, the use of 'probably' is important. We're still looking for that kernel of truth that will prove decisively one theory over another.
This isn't a case of the whole evolution vs creationism debacle - there's more than one view on the creation of the rings of Saturn. It should tell you something that NASA doesn't mention the method of ring creation on their 'rings of saturn' page: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn&Display=Rings
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was in college, I got a chance to join and play with an anime club. I still have the marks - anyway... I helped out with a fan sub, we had a library that people checked out tapes from, and had six hour drives to the regional all weekend long copy sessions. The way we'd copy them was to chain a whole bunch of VCRs together and have somebody play a master tape. Whoever went to the copy session would then drive the six hours back and enter the tapes into our library. The new tapes were hoarded until the weekly session and then we'd watch the shows.
I suspect that the amount of work required to bring new content to the US was very large compared to the level of profit (or lack thereof) for the effort to be worthwhile. With the advent of bittorrent being used to distribute fan subs, it's a heck of a lot easier to distribute and you get (in theory anyway) a higher quality of goods, with a much wider distribution network.
As a hardcore RPG player, I'm dismayed by the amount of space manga has eaten up in your average bookstore, but it's the same thing that's driving this move to lockdown fan-subbing - there's a market now and the company wants you to pay for it in money. You used to have to pay for it in effort.
You can thank my bad memory for all the oil we have now - I kept forgetting where I buried the bodies. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!!
Dere was dis one time mon, dat I was out huntin' da stoof dat I always hunt. And dere was a big light dat was really - uh - glowy! Yeah dat's da word, glowy. An' dis giant came oot and he 'ad a doggie head instead o' sumt'in' normal, like a face. I t'ought it was some kinda doggie I nevah seen befo' so I sneaksy ups on it an' it thwacked me good. An' da moral o' dis story is don' trus' anybody dats gotta doggie head.
Sorry, that was the best trollish rp I could do this early.
Oh darn, you meant a different kinda troll. My bad.
Well, if it's used as a chemical weapon, then that's against the law. Using it in Army Training is educational, in theory. The law is the point. In our system of government, the military works for the civilians. In theory, if the Congress passed a law and the President signed it - and this law required soldiers to wear tutus as part of the standard uniform, they'd pretty much have to do it. Granted, the military would probably make it an armor plated tutu.
The date of the law (1974) shows that Ford was president and he's generally not widely regarded as a liberal. The CS gas exposure given to recruits is brief and contained. When you turn something into a weapon, you change the rate of exposure to our own troops.
I have no experience with either, but allowing access to both cities is a great move. Forgiving debts, giving away points, etc not so much. Smart players will exploit this and just run up debts. Dumb players won't, either because of misplaced ethics or because they don't know how to read.
Maybe it's not the same, but in the games I play online, I hate to see this kind of virtual pandering.
Taking a different tack here - the entire point of COH and COV is ethics - it's a superhero universe. You can have great, fantastic ethical issues that come up - for example Watchmen (spoilers) deals with a superhero who fakes an alien invasion of New York City, kills about a third of the state, but actually brings about world peace. The other main characters have to make a choice, to cover up and keep world peace, or to reveal the truth and have the people who died die for naught. While you don't get that BIG a problem in COH, you also have "Stop the mugger!" content, with fairly black and white choices (help someone or not).
I realize I may be crazy, but I was a beta tester with COH, and it holds a near and dear place in my heart. I raid in WoW for the same reason I play COH - Give me a windmill and I will tilt at it. Yeah, I'd be the level 40 killing (arresting) level 5 muggers. If you're going to fight crime, are you really going to let some 90 year old get robbed?
Cause face it, after seeing Superman Returns, who didn't want to be Superman.
"Vigilantism is a horrible, frightening thing, and you have to ask yourself if you want to live in that kind of world. But, there comes a point, when someone has been abused enough, that vigilantism is the lesser of the evils.
We must have a way to tell people to stop that will make them stop."
Well, there's justifable homicide, battered wife 'syndrome', etc, but nothing quite where Spammer=justifiable killing. Hypothetical situations aside, I don't see this as vigilantism in action.
I mean how many divorce attorneys would we lose... Um, you know forget I said anything.
Unfortunately, what was most memorable to me about the opening of BioShock was that, as soon as you gain control of the player, the water splashing up in your face as you swim in the sea leaves drips on the screen, as if it were hitting the glass lens of a camera. There's my sense of immersion destroyed in the first few seconds! Of course, those of us with glasses find this completely immersive.:)
Gotta agree with Chub on this one - our government derives its power from the will of the governed. Government lawyers have different codes of conduct regarding confidentiality than corporate lawyers, which is why the distinction "White House Lawyers" and "The President's private attorney" are distinct and important, for example.
It may not seem like a big deal in the corporate world, and it isn't in the corporate world. We're talking government. You realize the CIA has more people capable of speaking on record now than the NHTSA?
I'm not a right winger by any stretch, but the government has the unique responsiblity of Law & Order. If a co-worker shoots me in the head, the government will hopefully find, try, and punish them. If a government shoots me in the head, where is the issue of justice handled?
To use an old and well worn cliche, "Who watches the Watchmen?" That's the crux of this issue.
How many people do NOT have IF as their recall point?
I dunno mon, da las' time I was in Ironforgey, all dem damn stunties kept tryin' ta kill me! An' when I got to da innkeepah, he tried ta kill me too!
In answer to your rhetorical question, I'm guessing most of the horde doesn't have their Hearthstones set to Ironforge. Shattrath? That's another thing entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow that sounds totally awesome!! And maybe I'm crazy but I'd rather have a root canal than suffer through that crap. I play WoW on a RP-PVP server, and my guild practices world PvP - if I were to describe our policies, it'd boil down to Wil Wheaton's "Don't Be A Dick". We let our opponents corpse run, regroup, and then we have at each other. Why do all that sportsmanship stuff? Cause it's to further world PvP. To get the opponents to come out and play.
I realize I'm weird, but I'd rather fight in such a way that I have MORE opponents, not less. Our guild doesn't (generally) secretly attack WoW zones... We post on the blizzard forms that we'll be in Halaa on Thursday night at 8 PM. Because making somebody quit a game isn't as good as making him play it.
Unless you make it clear that you're not going to a competitor, there's no reason for them to give access back. Document the things you need to, working with other IT people at their stations. Pay attention to whatever "right to work" laws your state has as failing to show up for work can mean that you have voluntarily resigned your position in some states. Bring the paper everyday, put a few novels in your office, etc.
As an option, this still sucks - I can't wait to be in Alterac Valley and have my game suddenly minimize due to their "phone home" program crashing. Or better yet it makes me much happier I picked up an Xbox360 a year or so ago.
Add to that the problem of Public Records - if you charge to access them (presumably to limit access), they're no longer public. Public Records also have all the other problems you find in "human based documents" - misspellings, typos, gramatical mistakes, etc. Public Records are one of those things that remind me of Winston Churchill's comment about Democracy - "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Exactly - you've got to get the executor of the estate involved, who should have full legal authority to allow you access.
Well this looks like a great little deal, but what I really want to know is 'Will it play World of Warcrack' on the Linux desktop? What does it's graphic drivers function like gamewise?
I think you have the wrong Dexter - obviously Dextre will function perfectly fine until some artist develops the DeeDee Robot and sends it into space as 'performance art'. Although it will speak with a cheesy German accent.
That's the most interesting definition of 'Soon' I've seen.
This brings up an interesting question: What do you qualify as a robot? What's the difference between a guidance system and a robot?
I don't see the 'arms race' happening in the way the US-Soviet one did. A Katyusha (sp?) has been the same damn thing since WW2, and doesn't require a guidance system. Why spend $250 per rocket to make it a true missle, when your miliary objective isn't to hit TARGET X but to hit something semi-randomly. That's why the Katyushas worked during the most recent skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah - the randomness is part of the appeal of the weapon.
Here's where I'm confused - the original studies showed a difference between placebo or they wouldn't have been approved in the first place by USDA. Now somebody's coming and 'meta-analyzing' and saying "Nope, there's no difference between placebo and the anti-depressant in moderate cases". I might buy that anti-depressants are over prescribed, but not this guy's analysis of these studies.
My own personal experience is that depression is best explained as a SINE wave with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being happiness. Let's say most normal people average out at zero happiness (a neutral state) with an upper max of three and a lower minimum of negative three. My own personal 'zero line' is probably negative four without medical intervention. With medication, my 'zero line' is artificially raised to roughly negative one. With medication the lows are 'higher' and the highs are 'lower'
My own depression started with my divorce but there has been a family history of it, specifically a sibling. I worked through the divorce and moved on with my life both professionally and personally. And I've had a few times where a drug interaction has turned my medication off. So I've discovered I can't go off my meds or I'll return to full clinical depression as opposed to being on 'maintenance'.
I don't buy this guy's meta-analysis - I don't see the FDA approving a drug that's a placebo. I think he's padding his language with phrases like "most severe" cases - but then again, it's not like we can point to depression or measure it on a scale. (ZOMG, this one goes to ELEVEN!)
In Soviet Russia, Devil Toad fossilizes YOU!
There's some interesting comments I've read regarding the change to fourth edition. As a GM of long experience, I'm very curious to see where they'll go with the rules. The decision to model talent trees or ability trees, similar to both WoW and FFX I'm guessing, is one based on expedience - one problem with the feat system was that Joe the player could pick and choose, either going for the min/max/munchkin status, or making some really really bad choices (You want +4 to your SCULPTING skill?). The 'tree' system allows an entire tree of abilities to be balanced as opposed to a "gravel quarry" of abilities. I see the logic here, I really do. I'll just have to see how the things work out.
Now to you silly people who think pallys are 'sub-par' - it's all in how you play the game isn't it? Most Paladins are going to have high levels of charisma, somewhere on a level with social rogues or bards. Of course that bonus will get added into saving throws, blah blah blah. If you're in a game where saving throws are REALLY important, then play a guy that has ten first level classes. Paladins are holy knights - taking ten levels of cleric may be awesome from a rules mechanic viewpoint, but your church, your god, and possibly your country know what a lvl 15 Pally looks like - and what a lvl 5 pal/lvl 10 cleric look like. A level 15 paladin has a lot of things going for him - he hasn't fallen and that demands some respect - he's probably known to the local rulers and kings on a first name basis. I've played a couple of paladins in 3.0 and 3.5 - in one campaign, the pc pally needed a big S on his chest as he was everything you expect out of Superman. In the other campaign, the pc pally was part of a religion that believed in working hard and playing hard, so his entry into the campaign was interesting - the pc pally was 'entertaining' a lady of the evening at the time (Viking Paladins ftw - it was a very NSFW campaign).
Like all characters in D&D 3.0-3.5, it's all about the combination of game mechanics and NPC/PC interaction. Your game mechanics can let you kill a monster - your PC/NPC interactions can raise armies, rule a kingdom, or anything else.
I live in the city where a judge ordered that sex offenders put signs in their yards. It should also be said that we elect our judges.
It surprised a lot of local people when there was criticism from both the political right and the left over the issue.
From the left (which I'm a member), we basically have the argument that if a convicts sentence is 20 years, and he serves that time, then the punishment required by the courts has been met - why continue to punish making the man (usually the case but not always) a target? Further, why punish the people who live in the house with the ex-con? After all, they didn't actual commit a crime.
The other side of the aisle's argument basically went something like this: The government released him - are you saying the ex-convict is in fact still dangerous? If he's still dangerous, why release him in the first place? And what about the neighbors? You're going to see a primary investment (a house) devalued because a judge said "put a sign up to keep people 'safe'"
It was surprising to see the bipartisanship spontaneously form and school the judge about what's appropriate and what's not. We don't have those signs in our city anymore.
According to the article, the scientists involved are saying the moon was formed in two phases and that the second phase had the moon pull in ring material and add it on top of the first phase. While it's general scientific consensus that the rings of saturn were probably caused by a moon breaking up, the use of 'probably' is important. We're still looking for that kernel of truth that will prove decisively one theory over another. This isn't a case of the whole evolution vs creationism debacle - there's more than one view on the creation of the rings of Saturn. It should tell you something that NASA doesn't mention the method of ring creation on their 'rings of saturn' page: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn&Display=Rings
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was in college, I got a chance to join and play with an anime club. I still have the marks - anyway... I helped out with a fan sub, we had a library that people checked out tapes from, and had six hour drives to the regional all weekend long copy sessions. The way we'd copy them was to chain a whole bunch of VCRs together and have somebody play a master tape. Whoever went to the copy session would then drive the six hours back and enter the tapes into our library. The new tapes were hoarded until the weekly session and then we'd watch the shows.
I suspect that the amount of work required to bring new content to the US was very large compared to the level of profit (or lack thereof) for the effort to be worthwhile. With the advent of bittorrent being used to distribute fan subs, it's a heck of a lot easier to distribute and you get (in theory anyway) a higher quality of goods, with a much wider distribution network.
As a hardcore RPG player, I'm dismayed by the amount of space manga has eaten up in your average bookstore, but it's the same thing that's driving this move to lockdown fan-subbing - there's a market now and the company wants you to pay for it in money. You used to have to pay for it in effort.
You can thank my bad memory for all the oil we have now - I kept forgetting where I buried the bodies. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!!
Dere was dis one time mon, dat I was out huntin' da stoof dat I always hunt. And dere was a big light dat was really - uh - glowy! Yeah dat's da word, glowy. An' dis giant came oot and he 'ad a doggie head instead o' sumt'in' normal, like a face. I t'ought it was some kinda doggie I nevah seen befo' so I sneaksy ups on it an' it thwacked me good. An' da moral o' dis story is don' trus' anybody dats gotta doggie head.
Sorry, that was the best trollish rp I could do this early.
Oh darn, you meant a different kinda troll. My bad.
Well, if it's used as a chemical weapon, then that's against the law. Using it in Army Training is educational, in theory. The law is the point. In our system of government, the military works for the civilians. In theory, if the Congress passed a law and the President signed it - and this law required soldiers to wear tutus as part of the standard uniform, they'd pretty much have to do it. Granted, the military would probably make it an armor plated tutu.
The date of the law (1974) shows that Ford was president and he's generally not widely regarded as a liberal. The CS gas exposure given to recruits is brief and contained. When you turn something into a weapon, you change the rate of exposure to our own troops.
Taking a different tack here - the entire point of COH and COV is ethics - it's a superhero universe. You can have great, fantastic ethical issues that come up - for example Watchmen (spoilers) deals with a superhero who fakes an alien invasion of New York City, kills about a third of the state, but actually brings about world peace. The other main characters have to make a choice, to cover up and keep world peace, or to reveal the truth and have the people who died die for naught. While you don't get that BIG a problem in COH, you also have "Stop the mugger!" content, with fairly black and white choices (help someone or not).
I realize I may be crazy, but I was a beta tester with COH, and it holds a near and dear place in my heart. I raid in WoW for the same reason I play COH - Give me a windmill and I will tilt at it. Yeah, I'd be the level 40 killing (arresting) level 5 muggers. If you're going to fight crime, are you really going to let some 90 year old get robbed?
Cause face it, after seeing Superman Returns, who didn't want to be Superman.
Oh man! Your sarcasm got all over my keyboard. :( Now it's going to be snarky all day.
Well, there's justifable homicide, battered wife 'syndrome', etc, but nothing quite where Spammer=justifiable killing. Hypothetical situations aside, I don't see this as vigilantism in action.
I mean how many divorce attorneys would we lose... Um, you know forget I said anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_rpgTraveller is still the only rpg that I know of where your character can die during character creation.
Achilles....
From the Illiad...
READ A BOOK DAMNIT!
Gotta agree with Chub on this one - our government derives its power from the will of the governed. Government lawyers have different codes of conduct regarding confidentiality than corporate lawyers, which is why the distinction "White House Lawyers" and "The President's private attorney" are distinct and important, for example.
It may not seem like a big deal in the corporate world, and it isn't in the corporate world. We're talking government. You realize the CIA has more people capable of speaking on record now than the NHTSA?
I'm not a right winger by any stretch, but the government has the unique responsiblity of Law & Order. If a co-worker shoots me in the head, the government will hopefully find, try, and punish them. If a government shoots me in the head, where is the issue of justice handled?
To use an old and well worn cliche, "Who watches the Watchmen?" That's the crux of this issue.
I dunno mon, da las' time I was in Ironforgey, all dem damn stunties kept tryin' ta kill me! An' when I got to da innkeepah, he tried ta kill me too!
In answer to your rhetorical question, I'm guessing most of the horde doesn't have their Hearthstones set to Ironforge. Shattrath? That's another thing entirely.