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description=AKA Rho Alpha Delta, an EVE Online corporation, established June 4, YC110. Libera te tutemet ex inferes ;

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ls were no match for the guns and drones syria planum could bring to bear and again after passing through the acceleration gate erbo emerged too late to fire on the three traveling sanshas though this time he d been able to identify one of them gamat hakoot a notorious wanted criminal relatively high in the sansha hierarchy and his computer had pegged hostakoh system as their most likely destination a stern chase is a long chase mused erbo as he set the course upon arriving in hostakoh it was more of the same except this time the guardians included four centii loyal butchers though the other five defenders including their true sansha commander fell quickly the butchers proved troublesome as erbo s standard tactics weren t breaking their tanks they were no longer capable of breaking his but a classic minmatar standoff thought erbo time to change the game he concentrated his drones and cannons on one butcher at a time adjusting his orbital plane to maximize the effectiveness of the railguns this tactic proved successful as one by stubborn one the butchers exploded quickly syria planum followed the acceleration gate again hakoot slipped the leash but this time his escorts didn t bursting in showers of sparks grimly erbo set course once more this time for elmed in pursuit of hakoot by now he was halfway convinced that there was an incursion being planned somewhere nearby and that this was his one chance to stop it in its tracks before it started and the sanshas must be stopped more sansha vessels awaited him at the rendezvous spot though thankfully no loyalists as at hostakoh as he wiped out first one group then another he spotted hakoot s ship seemingly tired of running and spoiling for a fight erbo directed the valkyrie ii drones towards the sansha overseer and opened fire with all guns between the two it was a matter of mere minutes before hakoot s ship detonated in one final explosion erbo sighed with relief as he recalled the drones and secured all weapons the sanshas were cunning enemies but they would not get the upper hand here today and perhaps new eden was just a teeny fraction safer leave a comment the reimagined ralphas posted in expansions general meta on january 20 2011 by erbo what with the new character editor having been released just yesterday the core members of the ralpha dogs have gotten back in to redesign their character portraits using the new system since many of us are experienced at avatar design from second life and elsewhere we were anxious to try out the new carbon based editor and see what it presages for incarna first your humble narrator old on left new on right many people who knew me from sl thought my original avatar image looked too much like my sl avatar the new avatar looks more like the kind of guy who should be second in command of a corporation like the ralpha dogs sadly ccp s clothing options don t include the equivalent of the ralpha dogs uniform the description taken straight out of jeff s book but that was as close as i could get his full costume looks vaguely han solo ish imho but selena didn t think so and speaking of selena here s the lady herself with the new avatar it s like she s gotten a facelift or maybe a rollback she plans on fixing the portrait a bit to better center her face she may look cuter now than in her previous guise but if you plan on trying anything with her remember ph33r t3h cute on3s and now our glorious leader lexxeva she too seems to have reversed the aging process slightly and anyone who knows her in sl where she has many names knows that lexxi loves the red hair all three of these are gallenteans here to counterbalance those is the amarrian zephira najam she s taken on a more haughty aristocratic air in her new ice queen image it s the kind of image that says i could order your death in an instant and none would challenge me we are the chosen ones amarr victor and to counterpoint her we have fanchon sihu a member of the seven tribes of minmatar action girl all the way fanchon has become slightly more sophisticated in the new picture but it still says i could kick your ass and not even smear my eyeliner bring it on bitch all in all i m reasonably impressed the visuals certainly knock anything linden lab has ever done into a cocked hat now if only ccp will eventually let people design their own clothes leave a comment see i told you so posted in general on august 10 2010 by erbo seems that one aystra of boae inc was not reading the blog entry i posted on the changes to plex which included some tips for moving them safely look among the destroyed items seventy four plex worth 22 4 giga isk or about us 1 300 in real money and this guy was hauling them through jita in a kestrel unescorted what was he thinking was he thinking remember kids treat plex the same as any other small valuable object you don t want to lose especially if you re hauling them in quantity stupidity is the only universal capital crime the sentence is death there is no appeal and execution is carried out swiftly and without pity robert a heinlein leave a comment governance thrash redux posted in eve blog banter on july 20 2010 by erbo welcome to the nineteenth installment of the eve blog banter the monthly eve online blogging extravaganza created by crazykinux the eve blog banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers a common topic within the realm of eve online and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic the resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive either funny or dead serious but are always a great fun to read any questions about the eve blog banter should be directed to crazykinux gmail com check out other eve blog banter articles at the bottom of this post this month s topic comes to us from evepress and he asks the csm ccp s meta game the csm an eve players voice to ccp right in the grand scheme of things yes the players bring up issues and the csm presents them to ccp but in its current iteration the csm was supposed to be given small authority to assign ccp assets toprojects that the csm thought needed work on as it has not come outthis was not the case so fellow bloggers is the csm worth it has the csm improved the game in any way or is it just a well thought out scamby ccp to give us players a false sense of input in the game what s your take erbo evans speaking for the ralpha dogs many capsuleers have had high expectations for the council of stellar management csm a group of players elected by their peers to essentially represent the player base to ccp ccp s own overview page refers to them as a democratically elected representative council manned by players elected by players the implementation of social ideas in eve and the strengthening of the social structure unfortunately sometimes expectations clash with reality the fifth csm in particular seems to have come up against the wall dividing expectations from reality in particularly short order mynxee chairperson of the council sums it up in a brutally honest graphic that is not to be missed and in her words players are a brute force rock of expectations driving csm face first into the hard place that is ccp decision makers who hold all the cards and decide which balls ccp devs will be juggling at any given time there ain t much wiggle room in that hardscrabble zone for csm it s a damned if we do damned if we don t job her words are even more true than perhaps she herself recognizes because this has happened before in what seems now like the elder days of the internet in 1996 howard rheingold veteran of the well conferencing system and author of the influential book the virtual community sought to put his ideas about online community into practice by creating electric minds a new community focused on innovative content and discussions for the growing online population the following year it began to run into financial trouble and rheingold sought potential buyers but he pledged to the community that one of the conditions for the sale was that the community had to be self governing the eventual buyer durand communications of santa barbara ca agreed to this condition and in the main stayed clear of the governance issue in the interests of full disclosure i was an employee of durand communications at the time of the electric minds acquisition and afterward following durand s own acquisition by online system services later webb interactive services of denver co so what happened i ll let nancy white virtual community expert with full circle associates and a participant in what was later termed the governance thrash explain we thought we knew what we were designing but in hindsight i m not sure that we really did we were essentially designing a process for a roll your own owned by the members governance modeled on the river and other communities we were not designing for a community whose infrastructure was owned and controlled by a company i believe this was one of our first missteps when you roll your own there are a host of administrative and financial issues which suggest specific governance structures related to financial accountability and to assignment of tangible responsibilities when infrastructure is not a priority the driving set of needs is more related to the social structure the operating norms rules of the road and policies relating to membership but before the sale to durand it seemed like fiscal responsibility was about to necessitate more formality so we may have started with that assumption to compound our confusion we were also dealing with emerging factions within the group some aligned with individuals and some aligned on certain principals the words democracy free speech and power took on some loaded but little examined connotations setting up waves of argument and misunderstanding rather than dialog and alignment compromise was not the theme of the day there seemed to be the need for each of us in our own way to be right the result the thrash did not kill eminds but it set the tone for it s second phase july 1997 july 1998 electric minds was small and in some ways self limiting by it s recoil from the thrash there was some difficulty dealing with members who consistently crossed outside of the informal norms of the community eminders were hesitant to make changes for fear of being perceived as power mongers they wanted to tread lightly not too deep into problems or innovation and play it safe and ultimately the user base of eminds was unable to prevent durand communications from making changes to the underlying conferencing system that alienated the members nor was it able to prevent webb interactive from discarding the community entirely in 2000 though some of its members kept it alive for some years thereafter in a different form full disclosure again i was one of those people now see how what ms white says in that last quote resonates with this one from mynxee again if we have certain expectations about being able to influence eve s development if we push too hard on ccp for not giving csm issues priority if we call ccp out on bigger picture issues that seem to be involved in the problems related to eve then we re just a bunch of egotistical overzealous players on a power trip if we don t raise the right issues don t push ccp hard enough for results don t document every detail of every controversial event for public purview refuse to share nda protected information don t conduct ourselves like paid professional advisors 100 of the time and worst of all possible sins can t actually make ccp implement the changes we ask for then we re nothing but elitist pigs who are just in it for the free trips to iceland or so some recent blog posts and forum flames would have you believe ccp s intentions are good just as durand s were but governance even the sort of limited governance over game issues as the csm is intended to have is not easy in some ways the csm has it worse than the participants in the governance thrash eve s player base is many times what eminds user base ever was and even more fragmented by opinion though the process by which the csm was elected was democratic and ccp did their best to help match candidates with the views of the electorate ultimately these sort of online elections always come down to a popularity contest no flame against the csm who have demonstrated exceptional competence thusfar that s just how it is and popularity contests always involve a certain degree of resentment among those who weren t chosen or whose favorites weren t chosen so yes the csm is already fighting with one foot in a bucket and then it comes up against ccp whose intentions may be good as evidenced by the fact that they created the csm in the first place as a feedback mechanism but which is ultimately a business that is responsible to its investors and shareholders first and foremost jamie zawinski formerly of netscape communications has observed some will tell you that an organization is the people who make it up but that s not the case at all the whole is larger and completely different from the sum of its parts the system that we as a society have invented to run our world is a simple one it s a game with a small number of rules you put the pieces on the board wind it up and let it go the thing is the rules involved are all about money the underlying theory is that you motivate people to provide value to society by making it be in their best interest to do so but that s the intent the mechanism is much less vague the mechanism is money corporations are not evil that kind of anthropomorphism is inappropriate corporations are too stupid to be evil only people can be that corporations are mechanisms people can influence them but by and large corporations just follow the rules bear in mind that for a publicly traded company if a ceo makes a decision because it s the right thing rather than because it s the most profitable thing for the shareholders he will lose his job and possibly be sued into oblivion that s the way the rules work and more to the point if ccp doesn t make money it goes bankrupt and eve online goes down with it and that means that if ccp feels that incarna and dust 514 are more critical to their future ability to make money than the bugfixes and polish demanded by the csm then they are duty bound to expend resources on those and the csm be damned sorry i don t make the rules i just report on them and yes it s entirely possible that ccp could be wrong game companies have been wrong before most of them ended up going under as a result or provoked such a backlash that they were forced to back down and lose face but while the csm may be stakeholders they are not shareholders so what of the attempt at governance that is the csm nancy white has a few suggestions for emerging design patterns for online community governance and make no mistake eve is as much an online community as eminds ever was it just has fancier toys to play with which may be useful ...