New efforts!

[Brigadine]

I can't quite justify putting all of my stuff on SSD, 4 and 6TB  external drives are just too cost effective and at USB3 or eSATA are plenty zippy** (I often get them at Costco when they go on sale for ridiculously low prices).  But for the primary boot volume I think these days you'd have to be crazy to be running on spindles.  900+GB SSDs are under $300, and even 2TB SSDs are under $700.  I recently migrated to one of these: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B010QD6W9I, which basically means there's not many excuses left for people who need "large" primary volumes.  I know not long ago people complained about the headache splitting primary volumes between 250GB SSDs and large capacity spindles.  That's really not a problem anymore.



** Also, it is so much more convenient to upgrade and replace external hard drives***.  To prevent them from dying on me, I just keep buying new ones and transferring my data to larger ones at regular intervals of about a year or two.  I keep two copies of everything and leapfrog the drives.  I keep thinking about building a home NAS, but I'm lazy and this is easier.

*** In fact, I might experiment with actually *booting* from external SSD at some point in the near future using something like bootable eSATA.

Personally I have 1 500gb SSD with the OS and more demanding games and 1 tb HDD with multimedia(iTunes etc.) and less demanding games like CoX L2 etc. My rig can support up to 9 drives lol. HDDs are pretty stable now a days. They don't fail like they used to.

[MWRuger]

[snip]

Ya'know, I used to think you were funny but if you really believe all the things you post, you might need to seek help. I'm not sure why people keep responding to your posts about science and game design and the law and all the other crap you talk about, but I've had my fill of it. The last straw was the ridiculous post you made about gravity waves. So long Joshex, you will trouble me no more.

[JoshexProxy]

You have a "holiday calendar" which lists asian new year as a holiday.  I'm not even going to bother putting a question mark at the end of that, because I can't really even pretend to ask that question. 

Speaking as the current representative for all of the asian people (we used to elect the position but now we rotate the position by height) I'm authorized to inform you that there's no asian new year.  We only tell you people that so we can take the day after the Super Bowl off of work.  There is a Chinese New Year which lasts for one day like 'Merican New Year, although there are some festivities that can last for longer than that.  Japanese people don't celebrate Chinese New Year both because Japanese people celebrate the western new year, and also because they have determined they are not Chinese since at least 1873.  Koreans also do not celebrate Chinese New Year.  Although their lunar new year celebrations typically fall on or around the same day as Chinese lunar new year, their holiday only superficially looks like Chinese New Year, even less than Koreans superficially look like Chinese.  Koreans are a distinct people from Chinese people, having not only their own holidays but also an enhanced genetic predisposition to excelling at Starcraft. 

The Thai new year is in April, because it is too damn cold in Thailand in February.  The new year was outlawed in Nepal, probably until the Golden Child reinstated it in 1986.  Vietnamese new year, aka Tet, is Christmas, New Year, and the 4th of July all rolled into one, or so I've heard.  Asians were thinking about making that Asian New Year, until we realized it meant two less holidays.

I call it asian new year, because several asian countries celebrate it at the same time, though in different mannerisms. typically it is denoted by another name for each region, in china, it's Spring Festival literally translated, it is actually not a 'new year' celebration at all, it's a celebration of the coming of spring typically rooted to the planting calendar for farmers. it's basis on the lunar calendar is to that effect to determine the first planting day that typically does not have a frost which could kill the sprouts or germinating seeds.

these days it's treated as a first go at outside farming for the season, but for everyone else it's just a time to get off work and spend time with family for a few weeks. again the reason it's shared is because it is geared around an often celebrated event in many cultures; the coming of spring. Hooray we survived the winter and can plant stuff again!

[JoshexProxy]

Ya'know, I used to think you were funny but if you really believe all the things you post, you might need to seek help. I'm not sure why people keep responding to your posts about science and game design and the law and all the other crap you talk about, but I've had my fill of it. The last straw was the ridiculous post you made about gravity waves. So long Joshex, you will trouble me no more.

Most of what I say is a joke, some of it is trying to be as helpful as I can in the process, some of it is just plain Trollin, and on the odd occasion I'm serious. you have every right not to read what I post, and I'm sorry you feel that way.

Arcana took the serious points out of my gravity waves post for your information. the rest was a troll show. Arcana is actually rather good at figuring out which parts are serious and which parts are intended trolling, probably because she knows the topics so well.

as for legal stuff, usually it's me trying to push my own envelope, I have my own agendas.

game design stuff, that's serious stuff for me actually. it takes a lot of planning, and sometimes you hit questions that you can't answer yourself and could use another perspective or reference about the operation of a game that you are basing your game on (loosely).

this post is rather serious and has no trolling. the newyear post has no intended trolling, it's just trying to give an excuse for the wait on behalf of other people who are unable/unwilling to give an excuse, it is a rough calculation at best relying heavily on probability of events (which could turn out to be different than estimated).

I hope that clears things up for you and anyone else that feels the same.

[Solitaire]

Nearly a year to the day since Codewalker added the "Purchase Attempt" thread, how time flies when you have hope your city will return one day.

Fingers crossed all is going well behind the NDA  ;)

[Vee]

I call it asian new year, because several asian countries celebrate it at the same time, though in different mannerisms.

That is one terrific auto-correct (i assume?).

[darkgob]

That is one terrific auto-correct (i assume?).

I don't think autocorrect is advanced enough yet to fix his errors...

[Biz]

Most of what I say is a joke, some of it is trying to be as helpful as I can in the process, some of it is just plain Trollin, and on the odd occasion I'm serious. you have every right not to read what I post, and I'm sorry you feel that way.

Arcana took the serious points out of my gravity waves post for your information. the rest was a troll show. Arcana is actually rather good at figuring out which parts are serious and which parts are intended trolling, probably because she knows the topics so well.

as for legal stuff, usually it's me trying to push my own envelope, I have my own agendas.

game design stuff, that's serious stuff for me actually. it takes a lot of planning, and sometimes you hit questions that you can't answer yourself and could use another perspective or reference about the operation of a game that you are basing your game on (loosely).

this post is rather serious and has no trolling. the newyear post has no intended trolling, it's just trying to give an excuse for the wait on behalf of other people who are unable/unwilling to give an excuse, it is a rough calculation at best relying heavily on probability of events (which could turn out to be different than estimated).

I hope that clears things up for you and anyone else that feels the same.

If you ever intend to actually be taken seriously, most of what you say probably should not be a joke or "just plain Trollin". Also, as far as I can tell, whenever Arcana, or anyone else, responds to you they seem to only question your sanity or flat out prove you are wrong/misinformed. It is nice that you say you are trying to help the situation. And attempting to carry out your personal agenda (what you're hoping to achieve by "pushing the envelope" with "legal stuff" in this thread is beyond me) is your prerogative.

But for the love of God, will you please just forget the media and post your theory of gravity and dark matter that will break physics and prove everyone wrong?! Stop teasing us already!

[Victoria Victrix]

Quite frankly, I lost any patience I ever had with Joshex when he posted some blatantly wrong nonsense about print/prose copyright which, if followed, could have gotten someone who did not deserve such grief into serious trouble with a couple of large media organizations.  I happen to know a very great deal about such things, since I am in the business.

[Baaleos]

Personally I have 1 500gb SSD with the OS and more demanding games and 1 tb HDD with multimedia(iTunes etc.) and less demanding games like CoX L2 etc. My rig can support up to 9 drives lol. HDDs are pretty stable now a days. They don't fail like they used to.

I made the mistake of getting 2 Samsung 840 Evo SSD harddrives.
Apparently due to manufacturing defect, these paperweights lose their data over time. They have released 2 firmware updates for the hdd's, created a tool to 'speed them up' which you need to run every few months etc.

Now I have my OS running on one of them, and occasionally get a Blue Screen of Death, when I try to work with files that range in the GB range.
Eg: Downloaded Lumberyard from AWS - which was 10GB.
When the file was assembled on my OS Drive, which was the Samsung SSD, blue screen of death.

SSD's are awesome when you have a reliable brand you can trust.
The Samsung ones I got just don't happen to be reliable, Im having to store most of my games and big downloads on a 2TB External Sata drive.

[Arcana]

HDDs are pretty stable now a days. They don't fail like they used to.

They don't fail as often as they used to, but they do fail.  Particularly in areas that are not climate controlled.  Also, hard drives used to crash.  Now, they just develop unreadable and sticky areas that don't cause you to lose all your data, but do make the use of the drive impractical, requiring you to replace them.  Enough to where I'd rather avoid the problem than spend time fixing the problem when it occurs.

[JoshexProxy]

If you ever intend to actually be taken seriously, most of what you say probably should not be a joke or "just plain Trollin". Also, as far as I can tell, whenever Arcana, or anyone else, responds to you they seem to only question your sanity or flat out prove you are wrong/misinformed. It is nice that you say you are trying to help the situation. And attempting to carry out your personal agenda (what you're hoping to achieve by "pushing the envelope" with "legal stuff" in this thread is beyond me) is your prerogative.

But for the love of God, will you please just forget the media and post your theory of gravity and dark matter that will break physics and prove everyone wrong?! Stop teasing us already!

I have a good feeling from the tone of this thread about me that this is sarcastic, but I'm going to reply as if it isn't.

I'm actually doing that. I'm going through the theory and figuring out which parts can be released on their own without giving the whole thing out or hinting to it, one of which I now have tested and formulated into an academic paper. It is a simple start but that's exactly how this needs to start. I just need to add graphics, an example outcome and some basic mundane references. To be honest it's really quite boring of a topic, but it should provide us with some tools to process 3D geometry with less memory and processor power and make some slight advances in engineering and physics (including game physics), heck it might even help rocket science a bit by the same means, but I wouldn't consider it to be a thrust into the space age.

[Arcana]

I made the mistake of getting 2 Samsung 840 Evo SSD harddrives.
Apparently due to manufacturing defect, these paperweights lose their data over time. They have released 2 firmware updates for the hdd's, created a tool to 'speed them up' which you need to run every few months etc.

Now I have my OS running on one of them, and occasionally get a Blue Screen of Death, when I try to work with files that range in the GB range.
Eg: Downloaded Lumberyard from AWS - which was 10GB.
When the file was assembled on my OS Drive, which was the Samsung SSD, blue screen of death.

SSD's are awesome when you have a reliable brand you can trust.
The Samsung ones I got just don't happen to be reliable, Im having to store most of my games and big downloads on a 2TB External Sata drive.

That's odd.  I'm unaware of any issue with the 840 EVOs that cause data loss.  I actually have a pair of 840 1TB EVOs in my work PC.  There was a firmware issue with them related to charge calibration which could cause data read speed to degrade on data that was written and then not read back for long periods of time.  Rewriting the data would refresh the charge in the cells and bypass the firmware error.  This did not, to the best of my knowledge, ever cause data loss.

The "speed up tool" for the EVOs actually just periodically reads and writes back data in the background, preventing the data from becoming stale.  Without that tool, frequently read and written data would still read back fast, but old data rarely used would, when you tried to eventually read it, suffer from repeated read-backs, effectively slowing down reads.

If you are actually losing data or having data corrupt on an 840 EVO within the warranty period, that's grounds to get them manufacturer replaced.

I have heard of a potential data loss issue certain Samsung (and other) drives related to how TRIM works.  Apparently the problem only turned up on certain Linux kernels that supported NCQ TRIM.  See: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-el-capitan-opens-door-to-trim-support-on-third-party-ssds-for-improved-performance.1891936/page-10#post-21469307 for more information on that.  But you should not run into that problem on Windows.  And I think this affected the 840 Pro, but not the 840 EVO.  I'm not 100% sure about that off the top of my head.

[Arcana]

I'm actually doing that. I'm going through the theory and figuring out which parts can be released on their own without giving the whole thing out or hinting to it, one of which I now have tested and formulated into an academic paper. It is a simple start but that's exactly how this needs to start. I just need to add graphics, an example outcome and some basic mundane references. To be honest it's really quite boring of a topic, but it should provide us with some tools to process 3D geometry with less memory and processor power and make some slight advances in engineering and physics (including game physics), heck it might even help rocket science a bit by the same means, but I wouldn't consider it to be a thrust into the space age.

arXiv or it didn't happen.

[Baaleos]

That's odd.  I'm unaware of any issue with the 840 EVOs that cause data loss.  I actually have a pair of 840 1TB EVOs in my work PC.  There was a firmware issue with them related to charge calibration which could cause data read speed to degrade on data that was written and then not read back for long periods of time.  Rewriting the data would refresh the charge in the cells and bypass the firmware error.  This did not, to the best of my knowledge, ever cause data loss.

The "speed up tool" for the EVOs actually just periodically reads and writes back data in the background, preventing the data from becoming stale.  Without that tool, frequently read and written data would still read back fast, but old data rarely used would, when you tried to eventually read it, suffer from repeated read-backs, effectively slowing down reads.

If you are actually losing data or having data corrupt on an 840 EVO within the warranty period, that's grounds to get them manufacturer replaced.

I have heard of a potential data loss issue certain Samsung (and other) drives related to how TRIM works.  Apparently the problem only turned up on certain Linux kernels that supported NCQ TRIM.  See: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-el-capitan-opens-door-to-trim-support-on-third-party-ssds-for-improved-performance.1891936/page-10#post-21469307 for more information on that.  But you should not run into that problem on Windows.  And I think this affected the 840 Pro, but not the 840 EVO.  I'm not 100% sure about that off the top of my head.

While I have not actually had data loss- I can only imagine that the poor performance and occasional stalls and blue screens of death are caused due to the already admittedly flawed design of the Samsung SSD's.

The fix is more of a workaround than a true solution to the problem with Samsung's 19nm TLC NAND used in the 840 EVO. As the drive has to re-write data to new cells every so often, the lifespan of the drive will be reduced slightly, though we don't imagine this will be a significant issue for most users.

Samsung have already admitted it is a manufacturing defect, and they can only mitigate it through patches, the only real fix is to get a new ssd.

[JoshexProxy]

arXiv or it didn't happen.

Ok, easy enough. I will be submitting the paper through the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) which doesn't appear to have it's on arXiv like USA unis do but I will put it up on arXiv somewhere after the fact or see if the uni can do that for me.

[Thunder Glove]

It's not like it would be hard to figure out if there was any news here.  Not only does the first page of this topic have all the news, Codewalker also has a locked thread specifically for that, and there would probably be countless "ITS FINALLY BACK" posts.

Therefore any time anyone asks for "news" it is met with "Stop asking. Be patient" because there are several outlets dedicated to just that.  And if they haven't been updated it's because there is no news, and therefore there is nothing to ask about.

This, exactly this.  It's not as if we're all sitting around, playing the Officially Re-opened City Of Heroes, snickering behind our hands and going "Okay, we won't tell (for example) zerohour anything until he specifically comes to the forum and asks.  Otherwise, don't post anything about the game being back, everyone."

Nor are the people doing the negotiating going "Okay, we have the game back up and running, but we won't announce it unless someone specifically goes to the Titan forums and asks." (or, on the other side of the coin, "Okay, the negotiations failed six months ago, but we won't announce it unless someone specifically goes to the Titan forums and asks.")

If and when the game is back (or, indeed, if and when there are any update announcements at all), you will know it.  You won't need to ask.  It will be all over this forum, all over other video game forums, all over social media, and all over video game news sites (especially Massively).

[Pyromantic]

A couple of questions came to mind today.  I think these are things that have been discussed before, but not for a long time as I recall.

1.  Suppose CoH came back and it was possible to give each new account a level 50 character.  Would you want them to do so, and if so what build would you choose?

I think I'd actually prefer this didn't happen as I like the idea of starting over.  But, if it did, I would definitely pick one that I'd levelled to 50 before, that I don't really feel the urge to go through the levelling process again, and one that would help get established.  So, probably an elec/shield scrapper.


2.  Suppose also that they could turn on any events, in particular double XP.  What would you want to happen here?

I always had mixed feelings about double XP weekends.  I tried levelling characters on them once or twice and actually felt that the levels came so fast that I didn't feel a real sense of accomplishment, and had no attachment to the character as a result.  After that I stuck with playing 50s on such weekends.  I realize a lot of people would probably like it to level up old characters again.  As for Summer Blockbuster, Valentine's, invasions and so on, I think it would be nice to see a rotation of them through the first little while.  I'd especially like to see Summer Blockbuster as I never had a chance to do it, and I have a character idea or two that would really benefit from access to the Overwhelming Force -kb IO.

[LaughingAlex]

Joshex, has anyone ever told you the other part of "keep an open mind"?  It's "Don't let your brains fall out".  As I posted some days ago, sometimes you need to cool it man.

We all have our faults around here,  I cannot say I am perfect(and many certainly know my flaws here).  But there is always a time when one needs to look at oneself and ask "maybe I should lay off on that topic".  Hell many people ask if you need actual help and even I agree with them on that.  Just, cool it once in a while.  Relax.

And don't go believing every single little paranoid rumor on the internet.  It's bad for your health, seriously.

[Codewalker]

If and when the game is back (or, indeed, if and when there are any update announcements at all), you will know it.  You won't need to ask.  It will be all over this forum, all over other video game forums, all over social media, and all over video game news sites (especially Massively).

While the locked thread was created just because I was sick of people incessantly asking for status updates (that nobody here is in a position to have) in this thread and others, I do intend to update it if anything substantive ever happens. So if you follow the instructions there and subscribe to the thread you'll even get an email notification.

This thread is allowed to remain and wander vastly off-topic because it acts as a magnet for meaningless chatter that would otherwise clog up the boards. So much so that the moderators don't even read everything that is posted here, relying on people using the report post feature to bring questionable posts to their attention.

As for the few posts that were actually deleted rather than just being moved, well, my general policy is not to comment on moderation action, especially since I typically don't get directly involved with it. However, both the name of the poster and the referenced content stuck in my mind enough that I'm pretty sure I vaguely remember the posts that were deleted, and that they were not as innocent of a discussion as is being claimed. If someone has an issue and thinks they were moderated unfairly, it should have been escalated to Tony, who is the final arbiter of whether or not the action taken was appropriate. Deleted posts are retained so they can be referenced later.

Seems pretty black and white to me.   Don't be pessimistic and don't demand information about something you aren't really entitled any information to.

Being pessimistic isn't against the rules. There are plenty of posts in this very thread expressing pessimism, uncertainty, doubt, etc. It's when it crosses the line and becomes actively destructive or detrimental to other people that it becomes an issue. And yes, it is very much a judgment call on the part of the moderators. Anyone who's ever run an internet forum knows what I'm talking about.

I don't think being entitled and whiny is against the rules either, but it is annoying and not likely to win many friends.