UberGuy

"Issue twenty three is peeeeeeeeoplllllllllle!"

Indeed. Galactus is given none of the other trappings of a god in a magical context. He isn't normally shown with worshipers. Heroes seem to most often interact with him and his powers using machines. He often tools around on a big sled that looks pretty technological.

It would be easy to depict him in a way that is more traditionally associated with a more fantasy style god, even just some of the time, and to refer to him specifically as having a magical nature. But they don't normally do that.

There's nothing that's completely made up that both couldn't apply to. It's all in how you present their origin (with a small "o"). Is it created by electronic projectors fueled by a nuclear reaction? Science/Tech. Is it created through the will of a person who learned how to do it reading musty tomes and consulting extradimensional intelligences? Magic. Could the nuclear power source instead be magical gemstones? Could the musty tomes be literature on physics? Yes. But unless the writer makes that point, context tells us it's one or the other.

There's a fine line in what's magic, what's natural but alien to humans (and perhaps godlike if it's a being), and what's superscience. If there are naturally occurring godlike beings, one could potentially emulate them with super science. If there are natural godlike beings, maybe they're the source of what people call "magic".

I'm making a broad generalization about fiction there, not specific to CoH. In CoH's fiction, I get the idea that while you can use magic and super science to achieve the same things, they aren't ever actually the same thing. Even the most advanced tech or science would only look like magic - actual magic would work differently.

God, the fail in this reply is beyond epic. I have a coffee mug on my desk that would have parsed my post better than you did here. I'm not even going to explain how you failed here. It's not worth it.

I wouldn't be so sure.

For it to be Benny Hill, it's about as likely for that to be me or Darth.

Like I said, if your grasp of this stops here, this is why you think these interfaces are fine. Yes, an interface is always a way to get a computer to do something. Content consumers have very limited needs in terms of what they need ask a computer to do. That makes a simplistic interface practical for them. If you need to interface with a system to ask it to do highly arbitrary (not related to just viewing movies or reading facebook) or highly specialized things that are not covered by simple interfaces, then simple interfaces get in the way.

And those criteria about highly arbitrary or highly specialized activities both commonly hold true of many content creators, developers, and software/hardware admins.

I am both an admin and a developer, and a lot of the code I write is intended to modify the system itself. Often no user interface exists for what I want to do.

The first five pages or so cover it pretty well.

No, it's not. A system admin or programmer is interacting with the computer itself. An end user is interacting with the computer to get at something else. End users don't care that the computer is a computer. An admin or good developer cares about the computer's own nature. (A lot of developers try to ignore the nature of the system on which their program will run. This leads to a lot of very poor software if it has to support any scale.)

If you don't understand the difference, it's part of why you think these kinds of interfaces are better.

Those of us using the forums here are acting as consumers of content. We aren't an example of what I'm talking about, in this context.

"Faster" is context sensitive, but "more precise" is absolutely untrue. For gesturing this doesn't matter. For selection of distinct things, it absolutely does. There is a reason that tablet and phone interfaces are uncluttered and composed of large interface widgets. It's because your fingertip is a rather blunt instrument for "point" selection.

That's why when you need a touch-driven interface combined with careful selection of widgets on screen (or careful tracking of movement, such as free-hand tracing), you end up with a stylus.

True, but they're related because of how they're presented. Its a combination of "hey, you're the one that achieved this" and "hey, you just figured out a new piece of the lore". Its a story about the specific character you're driving, and it so happens that your character is also piecing together the backstory of the game in a level-dependent way as they go through the content. Those two combine to create a sort of reality bubble around your character - it's a story just for them, including the "sense" of elapsed time as you level.

Do you actually visit the internet much? Because I find it hard to believe you actually think you could achieve that.

Then report him. Either he broke the rules or he didn't. By not reporting him you're showing that you don't actually care if he broke them or not. That's just a means to an end in your attempt to force his hand.

Then report him, because you know nothing he can say will actually make you believe that. Stop pretending that's actually important.



Again, the legitimacy of his argument and whether he is posting it in a way that break the forum rules are not coupled. If this or other threads break the rules, then the extra ones will be deleted. One will remain and the legitimate concerns could be argued in that thread.

Do I really need to answer that for you? It seems you know the answer.

Apology accepted. I was talking about me, not you. I was not, for example, attacking you instead of your argument in this thread. I was attacking your behavior even though I agree (broadly) with your position about Scrappers.

And you are making that demand by threatening that, if he cannot produce evidence to an astounding standard of proof (a standard you clearly know he cannot meet even if he tried), that you will attempt to wage war on his posts using the forum rules as a blunt instrument. That combination is what I am claiming is childish behavior on your part - impossible standards of proof no one will ever meet with a threat of punitive action.

You feel obligated to threaten others conditionally? I don't think so. If you feel that EG is violating the rules, then report him, period. Don't make that conditional on his success at defending an argument. Otherwise you're being hypocritical - "I'll let you apparently break the rules if I agree with your argument."

See above. Breaking the rules and righteous causes have nothing to do one another. If you break the rules under the auspices of a righteous cause, you still broke the rules.

Calling your behavior childish was my argument. Ad hominem is attacking you in an effort to deflect attention from your argument. I agree with your argument in the context of this thread.

You know, people keep saying this, but every comprehensive list posted directly contradicts it.

I'm starting to get the idea that people are mixing up a possible plater bias towards magic characters with the devs having one for magic content. Because I do not see that bias by the devs, at all.

If you're insulted by my being blunt, I'm not sorry. Threatening to engage in warfare against another poster using the forum rules as your sword is childish, full stop, even if there's justification. When there's justification, what you do is you go report the post. You don't threaten to report it unless the other poster does something.

You're hardly a paragon of avoiding saying things people might find insulting, despite your announced effort to turn over a new leaf in how you post. The difference is one of intent. I'm actually on the same side of the debate in this thread that you are. I'm not using some sort of ad homenim tactic to try and attack you instead of your argument. I'm pointing out that I think that your approach to our side of the argument involves sucky behavior. If you don't like me telling you that, I really don't care.

Until computers can read my mind, typing is going to be vastly superior for actual text input. At least, assuming correct written input, like what I use on these forums. Getting a voice input system to correctly format text is excruciating. If you want all your text input to look like stereotypical SMS text messages, then sure. That's not how I like to write things.

And I can sure as hell hit control-s or whatever faster than I can say use my voice to tell the computer to do the equivalent with my voice. Especially given that most computer voice-to-action interfaces require a command prefix, to make sure you aren't talking to someone else. ("Computer, save file.")

The notion that a pointing interface is better than a mouse for a lot of computer work is ludicrous. It takes far more body motion to move our hand, arm and finger where we want to go than it does to move a mouse. Yes, a mouse has limitations, but for a lot of what technical people who use computers use them for, it is the most efficient thing we have for indicating what we want to act on.

What touch and camera interfaces are great for is what most people who aren't dedicated computer users actually use computers for. Most of them are computer users as a means to an end. Their goal is to use the computer to get at something, like photos, movies, messaging, etc. For these people, learning to use a computer is a barrier to what they really want. "Natural motion", voice activation and so forth is easier to implement for tasks they want a computing device to do, because those tasks often have a very limited scope in context. A photo or movie browsing interface needs a lot less input variation than, say, Photoshop or Eclipse. There's a huge market for this kind of interface out there - after all, most people are simply media and content consumers, so building interfaces that make them happy is good business. But someone out there still needs to be creating the content they are consuming. For those content creators, the content consumer interface is crap for getting the job done.

Using touch, voice or motion interfaces to develop code, do precision graphics or art work, or actually manage computing technology itself is a serious pain that almost always ends up limiting what you can achieve. It can be very handy as as supplement, but as the only interface, it sucks.

Yeah, that's completely awesome for about 10 levels, that last like an hour for an experienced player. I contend that inexperienced players aren't likely to benefit from its true awesomeness. (For reasons mentioned a couple of posts up.)

Ghost Rider. The Hand in Elektra.

And video games? You're going to claim that video games don't have a staggering representation of things magical? The 800 pound gorilla of MMOs and nearly every MMO predating this one would like to have a word with you.

Sounds like selection bias to me.