Anyone else curious about the current state of the old Paragon Studios building? Has the space been rented out to someone else? Is it just sitting there, all that precious CoH stuff just hanging around?
Just curious, not advocating anyone break in or anything, just curious about what the site looks like now.
Quote from: Lightslinger on January 09, 2013, 12:49:44 PM
Anyone else curious about the current state of the old Paragon Studios building? Has the space been rented out to someone else? Is it just sitting there, all that precious CoH stuff just hanging around?
Just curious, not advocating anyone break in or anything, just curious about what the site looks like now.
Well, I'm pretty sure they were packing everything up and breaking down the cubes during Hit Streak's live streams, so I doubt the stuff is there.
I don't suppose anyone tried any dumpster diving while they were tearing down? ;)
Yeah, it was Melissa who described in detail how it really hit her when she and the team watched people tearing down posters, breaking down cubes, and carrying out all the machines. So if it hasn't been rented out, it's likely entirely vacant save for a few cables here and there.
I wonder if they found all of Zombie Man's bugs and cameras...
:'(
Quote from: CG on January 09, 2013, 04:37:24 PM
I don't suppose anyone tried any dumpster diving while they were tearing down? ;)
I heard on pretty good authority that NCsoft actually hired a rent-a-cop to guard the physical premises against people trying to haul stuff away without proper authority.
Quote from: TonyV on January 11, 2013, 07:55:11 AM
I heard on pretty good authority that NCsoft actually hired a rent-a-cop to guard the physical premises against people trying to haul stuff away without proper authority.
Makes sense, it
is their stuff.
I worked for a major retail store years ago and the rule was that if they wanted things thrown out that we were to toss them even if they could be useful or donated. Then they went a step further when they discovered people dumpster diving for good items and deemed it necessary that we destroy things completely before tossing them out. Their view was "just because we don't want it does not mean we want you to have it" Now doesn't that sound a lot like NCSoft.
Yeah, corporations don't know the meaning of charity.
Although noone will ever admit to it (for good reason), I am sure that more than a few non-BitLockered NexStars or equivalent left the building with all sorts of game builds and tools code.
Test tools and builds like loopback clients and selfhostable client+server builds were obviously commonplace in their shop (like any software house). A lot of people worked from home over the years on enlistments that were on laptops or home machines. Standalone build trees are commonplace.
And if anyone thinks I'm nuts, then you have never worked for a software company, not to mention one that upset its devs - you know, like when you close the entire company despite making money. Even without a grudge some people do the above simply from a historical desire to remember their years of effort.
Not that I am speaking from experience or anything ... just idle speculation ...
So relish in the thought that somewhere, sometime in a secure location, an ex-pat is playing their local selfhost build of CoH for their own personal nostalgia. I guarantee you that in 2013, a real but private Atlas Park zone has seen someone fly overhead.
Quote from: Angelus Animi on January 11, 2013, 08:12:43 AM
I worked for a major retail store years ago and the rule was that if they wanted things thrown out that we were to toss them even if they could be useful or donated. Then they went a step further when they discovered people dumpster diving for good items and deemed it necessary that we destroy things completely before tossing them out. Their view was "just because we don't want it does not mean we want you to have it" Now doesn't that sound a lot like NCSoft.
My brother worked on a movie theather. There are a lot of contractual obligations in place in this case, but due to dumpster diving it was common to simply pile everything up in a storage room that only a manager had access to, and once every month or so toss everything into a pile and burn it.
Mind you, as I said, there are contractual obligations. Once in a while the posters, cuttouts and other marketting materials have watermarks or serial numbers that can be used to track down what theather it was sent to, and enact fines accordingly if those marketing products (or worse: film) leaked out.
Quote from: Angelus Animi on January 11, 2013, 08:12:43 AM
I worked for a major retail store years ago and the rule was that if they wanted things thrown out that we were to toss them even if they could be useful or donated. Then they went a step further when they discovered people dumpster diving for good items and deemed it necessary that we destroy things completely before tossing them out. Their view was "just because we don't want it does not mean we want you to have it" Now doesn't that sound a lot like NCSoft.
sounds like a buisness. The army and other services do the same thing with much of the office stuff. Classified stuff is destroyed and have "special" disposal procedures. Computers hard drives are always removed and disposed off in a "special" manner. Same wit hospital equipment, and machinery like choppers, planes, humvees etc. But office stuff and other mundane stuff they just throw out in the designated installation dump.
If a person is caught in the Army dump taking things they can and have been charged with "theft of government property" which is a Federal offense if civilian and serious offense under the UCMJ, even though it was considered trash and thrown out. And I know a couple of people in federal prison for taking stuff (old office desks in this case) that the army threw in the dump. Each got 5 years.
Quote from: JaguarX on January 11, 2013, 06:39:14 PM
If a person is caught in the Army dump taking things they can and have been charged with "theft of government property" which is a Federal offense if civilian and serious offense under the UCMJ, even though it was considered trash and thrown out. And I know a couple of people in federal prison for taking stuff (old office desks in this case) that the army threw in the dump. Each got 5 years.
To be clear, part of the reasoning behind that logic was the abuse of the system by people in the supply chain.
"that zodiac raft? It's... umm... damaged. Can't be patched. really. I noted it in the books as a full loss.
Now, can you help me toss it in the back of my truck? I'm going fishing next month and..."
Quote from: chasearcanum on January 11, 2013, 06:51:32 PM
To be clear, part of the reasoning behind that logic was the abuse of the system by people in the supply chain.
"that zodiac raft? It's... umm... damaged. Can't be patched. really. I noted it in the books as a full loss.
Now, can you help me toss it in the back of my truck? I'm going fishing next month and..."
Yup.
Quote from: JaguarX on January 11, 2013, 06:39:14 PM
sounds like a buisness. The army and other services do the same thing with much of the office stuff. Classified stuff is destroyed and have "special" disposal procedures. Computers hard drives are always removed and disposed off in a "special" manner. Same wit hospital equipment, and machinery like choppers, planes, humvees etc. But office stuff and other mundane stuff they just throw out in the designated installation dump.
If a person is caught in the Army dump taking things they can and have been charged with "theft of government property" which is a Federal offense if civilian and serious offense under the UCMJ, even though it was considered trash and thrown out. And I know a couple of people in federal prison for taking stuff (old office desks in this case) that the army threw in the dump. Each got 5 years.
I want to be clear here. The employee's were not dumpster diving or damaging products so they could have them. The homeless in the area were looking for things like clothes.
Well, apparently Black Pebble rescued... the Flowbee.
He sent it via snailmail to Positron, lol.
(there was a facebook exchange between them about it)
Haha... Posi has placed it on ebay!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Flowbee-from-CoH-Player-Summit-/330856863752?
Quote from: Electric-Knight on January 11, 2013, 10:06:56 PM
Well, apparently Black Pebble rescued... the Flowbee.
He sent it via snailmail to Positron, lol.
(there was a facebook exchange between them about it)
The what? ???
Quote from: Electric-Knight on January 11, 2013, 10:06:56 PM
Well, apparently Black Pebble rescued... the Flowbee.
He sent it via snailmail to Positron, lol.
(there was a facebook exchange between them about it)
Haha... Posi has placed it on ebay!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Flowbee-from-CoH-Player-Summit-/330856863752?
HAHAHAHAHA. The picture of the ingame Positron with the flowbee!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Quote from: Electric-Knight on January 11, 2013, 10:06:56 PM
Well, apparently Black Pebble rescued... the Flowbee.
He sent it via snailmail to Positron, lol.
(there was a facebook exchange between them about it)
Haha... Posi has placed it on ebay!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Flowbee-from-CoH-Player-Summit-/330856863752?
ok, so do we need a "call to action" for a bidding war here, or do you guys know what needs to be done?
Quote from: Starsman on January 11, 2013, 10:10:25 PM
The what? ???
Flowbee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowbee). A silly hair cutting tool that was once offered only in TV commercials as a simple way to do haircuts at home without leaving a mess since it attaches to your home vacuum cleaner.
Posi auctioned off, IIRC, the right to cut his hair with one at a herocon.
Quote from: FatherXmas on January 11, 2013, 11:06:32 PM
Flowbee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowbee). A silly hair cutting tool that was once offered only in TV commercials as a simple way to do haircuts at home without leaving a mess since it attaches to your home vacuum cleaner.
Posi auctioned off, IIRC, the right to cut his hair with one at a herocon.
It was an auction to get THEIR hair cut with a Flowbee BY Positron. But the winner was a cueball, so they improvised.
Quote from: redgian on January 11, 2013, 11:01:22 AMAlthough noone will ever admit to it (for good reason), I am sure that more than a few non-BitLockered NexStars or equivalent left the building with all sorts of game builds and tools code.
Test tools and builds like loopback clients and selfhostable client+server builds were obviously commonplace in their shop (like any software house). A lot of people worked from home over the years on enlistments that were on laptops or home machines. Standalone build trees are commonplace.
I don't expect that anyone would have had a 'spare' set of server backups at the time of the shutdown, but I would be willing to bet that there is at
least one full set of client and server sources (production, beta, and internal) and server databases that was deliberately maintained as an offsite backup by the devs, plus any number of development environments on various computers that survived the purge. And I wouldn't put it past one of the 'surviving' admins to have made an extra set of server backups either as of 9/1/12, or shortly before shutdown, and smuggled them offsite -- but I'm not certain enough of it to bet on it.
What surviving admins? There were two people at the studio in California for the last several weeks, the community dude (forgot his handle) and the security guard who shadowed his every move. Most everyone else was given the boot the day the shutdown was announced months beforehand. There were people from NC corporate going from desk to desk taking things like computer hard drives, flash drives, etc., while the Paragon staff was in a meeting being told what was happening.
Plus, you know, the actual database and game servers were in Texas or something.
Nice to wish but extremely unlikely.
Quote from: mikoroshi on January 14, 2013, 07:06:39 AM
What surviving admins? There were two people at the studio in California for the last several weeks, the community dude (forgot his handle) and the security guard who shadowed his every move. Most everyone else was given the boot the day the shutdown was announced months beforehand. There were people from NC corporate going from desk to desk taking things like computer hard drives, flash drives, etc., while the Paragon staff was in a meeting being told what was happening.
Plus, you know, the actual database and game servers were in Texas or something.
Nice to wish but extremely unlikely.
Someone could've had a couple drives in their pocket during the meeting or laying around at home and some of the staff learned of the closure a day before the meeting and announcement, its possible they rescued some information.
Most software development build environments are file system enlistments on disk, checked in/out from a central repository. You build and test from them, all day, every day. That's what a dev works on all the time. PVCS, Subversion, Perforce/SourceDepot (Microsoft uses), VSTS all act like this.
There's nothing to smuggle anywhere really; just keep whatever disk enlistments you already had on a home machine, external drive or laptop. You could already build whatever you liked, from cityofheroes.exe to the server executables and libraries.
I'd be shocked if there aren't quite a few folks who could build the client or server on a whim right now. But again, you will never know of them because its a no-no to admit to it.
Quote from: redgian on January 14, 2013, 08:09:24 AM
Most software development build environments are file system enlistments on disk, checked in/out from a central repository. You build and test from them, all day, every day. That's what a dev works on all the time. PVCS, Subversion, Perforce/SourceDepot (Microsoft uses), VSTS all act like this.
There's nothing to smuggle anywhere really; just keep whatever disk enlistments you already had on a home machine, external drive or laptop. You could already build whatever you liked, from cityofheroes.exe to the server executables and libraries.
I'd be shocked if there aren't quite a few folks who could build the client or server on a whim right now. But again, you will never know of them because its a no-no to admit to it.
You are not always permitted by the company you are working for to keep the source code on an unauthorized machine. It may cost you your job if you fail to comply and you can even face some legal charges if appropriate clause was part of your employment contract.
"Not permitted" doesn't always stop people.
Quote from: JaguarX on January 11, 2013, 06:39:14 PMIf a person is caught in the Army dump taking things they can and have been charged with "theft of government property" which is a Federal offense if civilian and serious offense under the UCMJ, even though it was considered trash and thrown out. And I know a couple of people in federal prison for taking stuff (old office desks in this case) that the army threw in the dump. Each got 5 years.
Sad.. really sad. The most they should be able to convict you of is trespassing. You throw something out, it's not yours anymore. Just imagine how much chaos we could have in the long run with something remaining property even after disposed of. Potential lawsuits coming up 10 years later after somebody stumbles on something sticking out of a landfill? Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
Quote from: Xieveral on January 14, 2013, 09:28:08 AM
"Not permitted" doesn't always stop people.
No, of course not. But it is quite effective in professional environments. After all how are you going to convince your potential future employer that it is a good idea to hire you even after you've been caught breaching your contract while at your previous position?
Quote from: TimtheEnchanter on January 14, 2013, 09:55:58 AM
Sad.. really sad. The most they should be able to convict you of is trespassing. You throw something out, it's not yours anymore. Just imagine how much chaos we could have in the long run with something remaining property even after disposed of. Potential lawsuits coming up 10 years later after somebody stumbles on something sticking out of a landfill? Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
tell me about it.
Quote from: Aggelakis on January 11, 2013, 11:50:27 PM
It was an auction to get THEIR hair cut with a Flowbee BY Positron. But the winner was a cueball, so they improvised.
Actually it wasn't an auction at all. It was a character creator contest. The winner got a trip to the Pummit, 5 years of gametime, and their hair cut by Positron. But when it turned out he was bald, that's when the hair cut got switched around.
All this talk of a hypothetical, anonymous rogue dev, aka The Greatest Hero, leaking a copy of the CoH code reminded me of something.
When WebOS failed HP eventually made it open source. I'm positive HP pumped much, much, much more money into WebOS than was ever spent on CoH yet they still released it.
Imagine if NCsoft was 1/2 that generous...wow.