There's No Fish Left !

New Bell Canada scandal looms


New Bell Canada scandal looms

p2pnet news | P2P:- Canada’s largest ISP, Bell Canada, is powering ahead with its traffic shaping ‘traffic management’ plan.

I remember long ago on TV, newfoundland residents were protesting restrictions on fishing, and one old coot went up to the member of parliment and demanded he be allowed to fish any time he liked, his family had been there for generations etc etc. The MP responded "There's No Fish Left ! I can't put the fish back ! What do you want me to do ? There's no fish !" Which got him attacked by the old coot who was uncerimoniously dragged off by security.

30 gigabytes , or more, a month, is a *HUGE* amount of data. You can play online games and watch youtube.com and leave it playing all day and all night and you still won't touch 30 gigs. (30 gigs is the current cap bell is imposing in this news article by the way).

The only people affected by this limit are the people moving DVD's over the internet. A dvd is like 6 gigs of space, you can therefore do 5 of them in a month. If you're illicitly trading DVD's , this is a major restriction on your activities, and I can see how you'd be upset. But I cannot sympathize with you , I think you got caught and it looks good on you ! :) And 40% of all internet traffic currently is DVD's being traded ? You guys are ratcheting up my bill ! I just went from being indifferent to your cause , to now being hostile to it.

You're costing me money !

There's only so much bandwidth to go around people.

There's No Fish Left ! I can't put the fish back ! What do you want me to do ? There's no fish !

Foreclosures Fairs

Desperate turn to foreclosures fairs


The fair kicked off a series of events planned in March, or what local politicians have dubbed "Foreclosure Prevention Month," around the northern San Joaquin Valley as well as cities from Florida to Chicago and places west. The world's most fertile farm region, the San Joaquin Valley includes three metro areas -- Stockton, Modesto and Merced -- with some of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.


Isn't that nice, these people are gonna get help with their morgages.


More and more family friendly foreclosure fairs, where mortgage lenders and counselors offer advice to desperate homeowners, ...


I've been to a bank workshop with my girlfriend who was facing bankruptcy, which is just like a forclosure fair. Do you know what they told her ? They told her cut back on her expenses, borrow from her friends and boyfriends (me ! ) work a few extra shifts and pay back her loans. Pay THEM back first , and all the other people she owes money to some time later. The whole thing was little more than a "pay US and TO HECK WITH EVERYONE ELSE mind job."


In San Francisco recently, fairgoers and officials complained that lenders have, for the most part, rejected pleas to help negotiate loans or forestall foreclosure with a payment agreement.

Yep. Come to our fair so we can tell you to PONY UP THE CASH YOU DEAD BEAT BUMS !!!!


One couple said the same broker who had written their loan in 2005 promising he would help them refinance it to a 30-year fixed rate when the teaser rate of two percent expired refused to take their calls. Their mortgage on a $300,000 house mushroomed from about $900 to over $2,000.

DO YOU HEAR US CARING ? HEAR THAT SILENCE ? THATS US CARING ..PAY UP !!!

Lemme give you home owners a piece of advice.
Declare bankruptcy, don't give these dogs a dime, and walk away.
They robbed you. they made this mess, now they're trying to make you clean it up. They're trying to brutally squeeze you for money you don't have. 2000$ a month ? Kiss it goodbye.

Random Iraqi Road Traffic Fatalities

FBI: Bodies of kidnapped U.S. contractors found


Of the 4,000 U.S. military personnel killed in the war, 3,263 have died in attacks and fighting and 737 in nonhostile incidents, such as traffic accidents and suicides. Eight of those killed were civilians working for the Pentagon. The numbers are based on Pentagon data counted by CNN.


32 hundred in combat, 7 hundred in traffic accidents. Hmmm... so the enemey battle toll is only 3 and a half times as large as the toll from random traffic accidents in Bagdad ?

4000 casualties in 7 years = 571 , divide by 150 000 troops at any one time ... casualty rate of one third of one percent per year. Oops, they're only there for 6 months , so half that. One sixth.

If you are an american soldier in Iraq on a 6 month tour, you have 1 chance in 600 of dying. And 18% of those casualties are traffic accidents not enemey activity.

Hang your head in shame , Al Queda !!! You're just not trying !

lol ... This isn't a war , its a quiet walk to the zoo and having to cross a couple of busy streets along the way. No more dangerous than that.

This is the boogie man of our times.

Boo !

Frightenned yet ?

Bin Laden: Pope Helps Anti-Islam Crusade

article


CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Osama bin Laden accused Pope Benedict XVI of helping in a "new Crusade" against Islam and warned of a "severe" reaction to European publications of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that insulted many Muslims.


Not seeing too many dead muslims here, except those killed by other muslims of course. and the two conquered muslim nations (Iraq, Afghanistan) remain firmly muslim , no attempt to convert them to christianity is occuring.

IE: you lied. Oh , and it's your own people murdering your muslim civilians. Chalk up murder to the list of your crimes too. Murderer of the Muslim People.


"You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe."


There is no "etiquette" of dispute. You think everyone in the world is subject to muslim law and you're going to try and kill those who break it. There is no "discussion" or "dispute" in your eyes. There is only murder and assassination.

Good luck finding a doctor , old man. I know from personal experiance how old folks like us tend to get sick easy and must live their life around how close you are to the hospital. Even if the americans never find you , you're not going to make it.

China's premier blames Dalai Lama 'clique' for violence in Tibet

Article


BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday blamed supporters of the Dalai Lama for recent violence in Tibet, and said Chinese forces exercised restraint in confronting unrest there.

Translation: The Leader of a Communistic Dictatorship reports that the people he's crushing are responsible for the violence in that state. And that they have exercised restraint, as demonstrated by the fact that there's still a few Tibetians left alive.


"There are 13 common people who died in the beating, burning and smashing in the riots," said Champa Phuntsok, the head of Tibet's regional government.


The only tibetians who died died at the hands of their own people. We are totally innocent of any Tiamen style massacures. PS. Tiamen never happened, that's a western lie.


In a news conference in Beijing on Monday, Champa Phuntsok blamed the violence on "a small group of separatists and criminals" who take their lead from exiled followers of Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

On Sunday, the exiled Dalai Lama condemned China's action in his homeland, accusing Beijing of "cultural genocide."


...reports the occupying chinese govener of a conquered and ruthlessly surpressed nation.


Spence Palermo, a American who was filming a documentary at the monastery, said Chinese officials banned his crew from returning to the monastery Friday. They were suddenly rushed from their hotel Saturday as a "seemingly endless convoy" of Chinese troops headed toward the monastery, he said.


"We'll let you know whatever we think you need to know." said the chinese official , kicking out all westerners. "And stop talking about that fictional Tiamenn square event ... it never happened !"

I'll have a bit of Wine with my Linux , please.

The living room computer is a Linux machine. It works well , it doesn't catch virii or trojens, it's very low maintenance. Doesn't run windows programs at all , which I don't miss. Except for games. Which I do miss.

How can you miss microsofts 600$ office suite when Linux gives you a free one that does all the basic tasks. True , it's not too hot onthe advanced stuff, but for just basic pounding out memo's and working on your novel and a simple address book it's great. And the spreadsheet is far more capable than most people suspect. Well..most spread sheets are, most people only know the command to add up a column of figures and don't really know it can do more than that.

My sister has some kind of custom program that needs windows xp , and I know Wine will run xp programs, I've read about it , so I installed Wine on my computer today.

Wine is a Linux "Emulator", that is to say , it lies to the program thats running and says "You're on a windows machine ! Trust me ! Would I lie to you ?"

Locate an old game cd...hmmm... Warcraft II , BNE (battle net edition). Throw the cd in. Use the Winebrowser to find the setup program on the disk (called, creatively enough, setup.exe) double click on it.

The screen flickers. The speakers blast game music. The standard windows install screen apears before me. Wow. Press install. And it goes through it , thinking it's on a windows machine and it's happy as a clam.

Acid test time. Do you want to start Warcraft ? You bet your Bill Gates Stocks I do ! Click yes, and teh screen goes dark. The intro movie plays. Ok, the movie player doesn't know its under Linux thats nice. The screen goes dark. The game music plays. The screen stays dark.

I begin to swear.

Then the screen lights up. The beginning screen of the game. There it is ... it was just a little slow. Emulators are notorious for that , I should have more patience. Start a game. Pick human side. Play the game all the way through , and save it , and close the program gracefully.

Wow , did I used to be addicted to this ? How many years ago ?

It ran without problems.

I was unable to make a short cut on the linux desk top to just click and start, but you can use the winebrowser to find the start program and play it that way, tried it and it started up again.

Conclusions :

I can run windows programs under linux. The average user cannot. There is no ease of use. Not until I figure out how to get linux short cuts going. If I can do that and render it to the point where a user can just click and the program goes, then it's for the average user. Otherwise, some technical ability (the ability to browse to the directory and find the start program for that application ) is required.

Phone Woes II

There's a dollar store where I work. they sell tonnes of junk, and some of it , is real *JUNK* . But there were these wooden boxes, perfect for stashing papers in , and they were only a buck for one of them. Bought it a while back , stuck all my phone papers and rent receipts in it.

My phone wont' charge, and I have fridays off of work (but I have to work saturday). Located the box, got the recipte for the phone , took it out and stuffed it in my pocket. Wasn't just the receipt, was teh whole contract and the girls business card who sold me the phone and everything. Got the damaged phone that won't charge , and hopped on a bus and went to St. Laurent where I bought the phone, not too far from home.

It's probably the charger, I told her. The head phones were working fine, I played tunes until teh battery died, and there's a sort of universal jack that the head phones and the power charger plug into. Figured if the head phoens worked it was likely the charger , probably nothing wrong with the jack.

They get another charger off the wall , apparently they have tonnes in stock. Try it out. No dice. Phone doesn't lite up. Oopsie...guess it is the handset after all.

They play on the computer , takes two of them one to tell the other what to do (he's just learning) and one to teach. Sounds like a labor of herculese just to put in a simple repair request and hook up a loaner phone.

Loaner phone is in the bedroom charging as we speak. 4 - 6 weeks before I get my real phone back.

Eh. I have an mp3 player that does a better job than the phone ever did. And 37$ + tax a month isn't that bad. When my real phone eventually bites the dust and insurance decides it doesn't like me anymore , I'll probably just go out and get the cheapest scuzziest phone I can find and put it on the line to replace it.

My advice ?

This adventure in expensive phones has done little but waste my time and money. You want an mp3 player ? go get one. Don't get a music phone. You want a PDA ? Get a stand alone pda , don't get a phone PDA. Blow the money bribing some high school student or craftsman to craft you a custom leather case to carry them both (or all) at once, rather than seek an all in one device. The all in one device only barely functions , just enough to say IT'S A MUSIC PHONE ! BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME YOU'LL LOVE IT !" No you wont.

like dealing with a shady business man , they technically fulfill the contract , but only in the most irritating and minimal manner possible.

It's Just Business as Usual , in the USA

White House Offers Plan to Ward Off Credit Crises


The plan, which relies primarily on state regulators and private industry to tighten their oversight of financial markets, calls on states to issue nationwide licensing standards for mortgage brokers.


Yeah , we took those suckers for a ride, didn't we , and let me tell you how we did it too , it was so easy it was criminal !

We're morgage brokers ! What does that mean ? Broker = salesman. But we aint selling our product. We're selling someone elses, we're the broker not the producer.

In this case we're lending SOMEONE ELSES money to you, and the more we lend , the bigger the cut we get. And you know , those paper pushing managers only get to keep their jobs for a year or two, one bad downturn and they're out , and they know it. So when we tell them "if you loosen the rules just a bit we could sell more morgages, and bigger ones and no one will ever catch us until two years later ..." they jump at the opportunity ! 'Cause in two years they won't be there anymore , they'll have moved on and someone else will take the heat for the fall.

And so , we lend SOMEONE ELSES MONEY to you , with outrages terms, but terms that don't kick in for two years, your protected for the first two years , and we make a killing on commisions. And the managers who went along with the gag , got to look good for their quarterly reports , which are issued every three months, so they got several good quarterly reports out of us , got a raise and a promotion and everything !

And then it fell apart, because the moment the "protection" clauses fell away and the consumer (that would be YOU ! by the way) had to pay the going rates, it was far too expensive, and so you defaulted on your homes.

But we morgage brokers kept our commisions.
And those managers that went along with the gag kept their promotions and their new jobs.
And those brand new wet behind the ears managers got the shaft nicely left for them by the previous crop of managers.


At the news conference, Mr. Paulson said growing market problems were caused by a series of factors, including mortgage brokers who pushed risky loans on homeowners, conflicts of interest at credit-rating agencies, bond underwriters that loosened standards, and financial institutions that failed to adequately grasp the riskiness of the instruments they were buying and selling.


Conflict of interests ..heh heh heh ..guess who was collecting from both sides ...


On Thursday, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the two Democratic lawmakers who head Congressional committees that oversee markets, announced plans to provide billions of dollars to states to buy homes in foreclosure and encourage mortgage lenders to write down the value of mortgages in troubled areas.


And the government steps in to keep those loans from defaulting anyways. So we milk the govenrment instead of the the consumer. But since the government gets most of it's money from the consumer anyways ... we're just milking the consumer through a different path.

I love it ! Lets wait five years and do it again !

Phone Woes

Article = none, personal experiance

My phone is toast.
Won't charge. Dead battery. It's got some kind of propriatory universal jack that the headphone OR the charger OR the usb to my computer plugs into. And the headphones were working just fine before the battery died. And when I plugged it into the computer it rang it's little bell for the 10 or so seconds when the phone cranked up and shut down again , so it's being detected.

I think the charger is just toast, not the phone itself.

That kind of propriatory nonsense, and leaving me wondering just how much am I going to be paying for a crappy pair of headphones when these old ones die, is one of my complaints against the phone. The other being their refusal to shut off the internet or the XMS radio. Sometimes I feel like the phone is a pocket salesman , their salesman , in my pocket, to bleed money from me to them.

Oh , and they say if it's the phone they ship it away for 3-5 weeks , fix it ,and it comes back ,and by the way you're still on the hook for the monthly fees. I'm still on the hook, that is. For a phone I bought off them failing, I gotta pay for a month of service that I aint gonna get. "But it's your phone..." the guy told me. "I bought it off of you." yeah yeah .

But it's not my phone if I want to end the contract early. They want the difference between what I paid up front and the box price, they want 250$ if I end the contract early.

It's not my phone when I want to turn the internet off. "Our system can't handle that ! And it's 50$ a megabyte if you accidently activate the browser on your phone or somone gets a hold it ! You better buy our internet plan or you'll get in deep trouble !"

Ditto it's not my phone when I want this XMS radio thingy turned off. Don't know what thats gonna cost but I suspect it will be bad too.

It only seems to be my phone when it comes time to pay the bills. Not when it comes time to decide it shouldn't be *YOUR* salesman sitting in *MY* pocket.

Paying the $250 and getting out is looking real tempting. Maybe I should go back to a go phone.

(edit)
Attempts to look up the price of this xms radio , called Sirius radio, run into the simple problem that the FAQ's are not designed to answer your questions, they're designed to sell you junk. They're worthless for anything else.

It's 'buyer beware' going to Mexico

Article

Ms. Martin, 51, is a victim of a medieval judicial system, bureaucratic indifference and political lethargy. She has been in jail awaiting trial for two years and two months in Guadalajara -- for the first 18 months without any official contact from anyone at Canada's consulate in the city.

Her "crime" was that she worked as a chef for a convicted fraudster, Alyn Waage, who bilked investors worldwide out of about $60-million. He bribed his way out of Mexico


Hey ! I get calls like him all the time. Isn't he the guy that sends you an unsigned check that says "You have won 7,500$ call this number to collect" and then the fine print reads "$5.45US per minute", and when you call the guy doesn't speak english and keeps putting you on hold and drags it out forever until you hang up ?

How can you not know you're working for a fraudster ?


and is currently serving a 10-year sentence in an American prison. While in Waage's employ, Ms. Martin argued with her former boss and was given a one-year severance
package of $28,000. After re-investing this sum, she was charged by the Mexican authorities with money-laundering


Yep. That would be money laundering. In a country where 200$ is a months salary , how did you earn 28 thousand dollar without being in on it ?



and being part of a criminal conspiracy -- even though Waage has provided a sworn affidavit saying she is innocent.


"I swear ! She's totally innocent ! I gave my secratary the equivilant of 10 years pay ......hmmm... because I was BOFFING her ! Yes ..that was why ... now let her go !"

Umm... she's 51 , not 21. Not a credible story.
Severence pay is two weeks salary , even in the USA. Are you saying she was earning
728 000 a year ? In mexico ? You can find some mexican chick and boff her for a lot cheaper than that.

Your story holds no water. Too much money floating around and no good reason.
Yah both need to rot in jail for a good long time, if yah want my opinion.

Analysis: seminary attack highlights Jerusalem's vulnerability

Article


After weeks of empty rhetoric and very little active diplomacy, America’s peace efforts in the Middle East have now come to a crossroads.


There is no crossroads. This started in 1948 , and hasn't stopped. And isn't going to stop. After 60 years of "...come to a crossroads" , and "... this could be a new beginning..." and "... could this be the end of all the killing ?" , I'm just tired of the empty rhetoric.

Are these reporters reporting the news in a neutril fashion ? Or are they trying to shape the news ? The truth is the fighting has dragged on for 60 years and theres no sign of it stopping. Thats the truth.

And thats not what the news article says.
It's not what any of them have said for the last sixty years, as a matter of fact. But here we are , sixty years later.

Canada stuck in slow lane on ISP traffic shaping debate

Article


Last fall, The Associated Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States, was interfering with network traffic by engaging in traffic shaping. The practice -- largely undisclosed by the company -- resulted in reduced bandwidth for peer-to-peer file-sharing applications and delayed the delivery of some Internet content.


So. What is Traffic Shaping ?

Thats where Rogers Cable Internet , which rents space on the Yahoo mail servers rather than provide it's own mail servers, gives you really good speed to Yahoo , but really sucky speed to MSN.

Thats where Sympatico , a division of Bell Canada, whic rents space on the MSN network for it's mail servers rather than provide it's own , gives you really good speed to the MSN servers but really sucky speeds to Yahoo.

And so you decide , I'm gonna use Yahoo , because MSN is always so slow , it's rediculous ! Or I'm gonna use MSN , because Yahoo is so slow all the time , what a crappy search engine !

Oh , and they don't tell you they're doing this. They just let the competiter take the hit in public opinion for something they did. In other words, we get to back stab the competition , and blame it on the competition at the same time ! Wahoo ! Bonus !

And you the consumer, wind up in a little world of Rogers permitted only web sites, or Sympatico Permitted only web sites, and are denied access to everything else. And they don't tell you. You think you have access to all the world, but really. You don't.

Thats what Internet Traffic Shaping Is.

The Dungeon Master has Died.

Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons creator, dies


MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.


Rest in piece , Gary. You will be missed.

Iranian Leader, Visiting Iraq, Assails Bush

Article



BAGHDAD — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, arriving Sunday in Baghdad to begin what he declared a “new chapter” in relations between his country and Iraq, warned President Bush that America’s problems in the Middle East would worsen as long as he continued to accuse Iran of interfering in Iraq.


As opposed to the old chapter , where the Iranians and the American backed Saddam Hussain (heh heh heh ...I love how the old dicator was an american pawn) were openly at war trying to kill each other.


“I think that the level of trust is very high,” Mr. Maliki said. “And I say frankly that the position Iran has taken recently was very helpful in bringing back security and stability.”


Yes, and we won't discuss the part where the Iranians are sending in road side bombs that kill hundreds of Iraqi civilians ... or the part where the Iraqi President has survived numerous assassination attempts by fanatics whipped up by Iran , and equipped by them.


Mr. Ahmadinejad responded: “You can tell Mr. Bush that making accusations about others will increase the Americans’ problems in the region. They will have to accept the facts in the area. The Iraqi people do not like the Americans.”


Said the unelected dictator of a country where elections are an alien concept , who doesn't know , or care, about the opinions of his own people , let alone those of another nation , because he just shoots anyone who disagree's with him.

Palestinians Suspend Peace Talks With Israel Over Gaza Bloodshed

Article



The Palestinians have suspended peace negotiations with Israel in response to a deadly incursion into the Gaza Strip. More than 100 Palestinians, including many civilians, have been killed during the past two days.


Yeah , we don't want to talk about peace with those jews no more because they got ticked at us for constantly throwing rockets at them and killing their civilians ? So they came here and killed more than of our soldiers (some of them might have been civilians) , so we're not gonna talk peace with them no more.


We believe that the international community must help us in acquiring and getting a cessation of hostilities immediately," said Saeb Erekat.


We believe you gotta help convince the jews to stop attacking us. But we're going to keep on attacking them by the way , don't even think about trying to convince us to stop the rocket attacks on our hated enemey, thats just not a happening thing.


Palestinians called for revenge...


How dare those EVIL JEWS attempt to defend themselves ! How dare they !!! Thats despicable !!!!


U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives here later this week and will try to get the peace process back on track.


There is no peace process. There's a bunch of gangsters dressed up like Imans (priests) trying to use it to hide their crimes. And all the honest Imans got run out of town long , long ago.

Thousands of Jordanians hold anti-Israel march

Article

Ok. My sister read my articles on City of Heros, and reports she hates them and doesn't care about "Stupid Games".

All right...back to commentary on regular news articles.


AMMAN, March 2 (Reuters) - Crying for revenge with suicide attacks, thousands of Jordanians marched in the capital of the pro-U.S. kingdom on Sunday to protest against Israel's Gaza offensive that had killed more than 100 Palestinians.


We're really upset that these jews don't like us killing them off. So ... we think we should continue killing them off.

Ummm...yeah ... makes a lot of sense.


Defying government curbs on street marches, thousands have taken to the streets inside many of Jordan's squalid camps and poor districts of the capital under the watchful eyes of the authorities to show solidarity with their brethren.


Defying government curbs on street marches , in a country where they pick you up and execute you just for the fun of it, or you didn't pay enough bribes to the police or what not... can you say "government backed demonstration" ?


"Shame on you, Shame on you rulers. You have betrayed your people ... Open the borders and let us fight the Jews," youths chanted.


Umm...yes. Let us ten thousand unarmed youths go charge an army of machine gun weilding Israeli's ...yeah , what a wonderful idea ! Great population control method , I must admit. Not too effective militarily, but then most middle eastern governments consider their own population little more than chattle to be rounded up and executed any time they can gain advantage from it.

City of Hero's : Report On Stealth

Ok, I broke my rule about not taking non combat powers until 14th...I took stealth at 6th , just to try it out.

What does stealth do ?

You can get MUCH closer to a mob before it sees you.

but , once they spot you , you stay spotted. Shooting one , running around a corner, and stealthing ? No dice. They chase you until the elevator or the entrance.

It says it offers a slight increase in defence.

Yeah , very slight. five percent when you're not in combat, and the moment you throw an attack it's cut in half to two point five percent. Waste of time.

What *CAN* you do with stealth.

Walk around the corner and almost bump into a mob, and not get spotted.

Survey the area and see where the mobs are and plan out how you're gonna do this.

Decide you don't like this side of the room, the mobs are all piled at the door you're gonna enter. Run past them (while stealthed) to the other side of the room , and now you have some room to work with. And they problaby didn't see you go by , so you still get to decide who to shoot first.

Stealth isn't the be all to end all , but the ability to survey the situation and plan it out , rather than suddenly there's a mob pounding on you , is a worthwhile thing to have.

Though maybe 6th level is a little too early for it.

City of Hero's : General Tactics

Ok , I bought the game City of Heros / City of Villians for my computer. It's an online game with like thousands of players all in the same game world, running into each other , yelling and screaming at each other ...great fun.

This is my general guide , for those that are thinking of picking it up.

Defence 1 : Attack

When you get your charactar , you get like one attack. You attack. You wait. You wait. You wait. You think..jeesh , how long does it take for this to recharge ? And then you attack again. If you had a second attack ... you could probably attack a second time while the first one was recharging...

Exactly. You want to get to three or four attacks reasonably quickly. You also want some defence , so I hesitate to say take four attacks right away ... but you want them right quick. How many ? Three or four ? Well... if after three attacks you still feel you have time to sneak in a fourth while the other three are recharging, then get a fourth. If there's little or no down time between attacks..leave it at three.

Defence 2 : Temporary Defences.

Temporary defences , you turn them on , you forget about them, they stay on forever. Why are they called temporary ?

Because if you get stunned or put to sleep , even for a few seconds, all your temporary powers turn off. And if you forget to turn them back on ...you're dog meat. Hot key those temporary defences so you can turn them on quick, and keep an eye on them , especially when you get stunned / slept.

The Level 8 Dilema :

Somewhere around 7 or 8 , the baddies start using fire and ice and lightning and what not on you. You'll notice most of your defences say they're good against "Lethal" or "Smashing" (bullets and clubs) , and say nothing about fire. And that guy throwing fire at you seems to be handing you your butt quite efficiently.

Need to pick up some elemental defence.

Why is this obvious statement a problem ? Because around level 6 , certain secondary powers, like hovering , or stealth , or what not , apear for you to choose from. And so you can "waste" a power on something non combat , or even two powers (the one at 6th , and the one at 8th ..you get a power every even level). At which point.. .you didn't buy up your elemental defences ! And your charactar dead ends and you discover you can't fight your way out of a paper bag.

yeah , don't do that. No "travel" powers or other stuff until 14ish ..or even later.

The Elevator Trick.

Hostages you rescue will follow you through an elevator. Thugs and villians will not. And this includes the entrance to the "mission" in the first place. Feel free to run for the door and step outside for some fresh air ! The tactic of running in , offing one of them (you can't say Kill , you're a super hero , you're jsut arresting them) and then fleeing to rest up and do it again, actually works very well.

Clear the bottom area first.

How many times did I run up to the main boss of the mish , and he knockes me over the railing and down to the lower floor. Right into the middle of a second mob of thugs. And then he jumps down and follows me , and now I'm injured and fighting two mobs instead of just one ? I'm toast !

Yeah ... if an area has several levels, clear the bottom ones out first ,just in case you get knocked down there. That way you only face the one mob , that will chase you donw there, and you don't wind up doubling your problems.

Read the Paper.

If you type /e newspaper in the chat window, your charactar will pull out a newspaper and start reading it. It looks cool. And if you're down to half health and less endurance , you dont want to go picking a fight with the next mob. You want to wait a few moments while you recover. Not charge into the next battle ! So if you're low on health ... read the paper. Relax. Take it easy a few minutes.

Don't build a stupid Charactar !

It seems obvious, but I've seen people do it. They build some cool looking charactar (the system for making costumes is awsome in this game by the way, you should try it out) and then at level one they assign him web grenade (to hold an apponent still) and some kind of life drain , which heals you while doing no damage to the enemey.

Thats right. They build a charactar with *NO* attack powers. How did you plan on fighting crime again ? Politely asking them to surrender ? Pretty please ?

The system will let you build a stupid charactar that can't fight his way out of a paper bag. Amusing as a joke, but you only get experiance for defeating your foes. That charactars going no where.

I need one more attack / def but there's none in my pool at my level !

The combat pool . You can take a kick or a punch as soon as you hit 6th.
And the defence ? An extra attack means your enemey goes down a little quicker, means he has a little less time to throw damage at you. So an extra attack *IS* an extra defence.

Minions and Lieutenants
When you go on a mission , all the enemies are about your level. No matter what level you are. But they are broken into two kinds. Minions (very weak) and Lieutenants.

Minions and Lieutenants put out about the same amount of damage. Even worse, the Lieutenant usually has some kind of power that helps the minions do more damage to you. Minions can be beaten in one or two rounds of combat. Lieutenants take much longer. 5-8 is pretty common.

Always kill the minions first. The lieutenant does about as much as the minion and takes a lot longer to get rid of. Take the minion down first , and thats less damage being thrown at you very quickly. The overall damage you take in the life time of a fight drops like a rock if you take out the minions first, rather than let them live a long , long time while you do the lieutenant first and then go chasing them.