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I'm not sure how much money you have, but this should be affordable enough for your typical 20-30 seat class.

Get Minecraft, pick out a custom launcher (I recommend Technic) and design your own modpack containing at the bare minimum the mod called OpenComputers: "turtles" programmable in Lua. You can try RedLogic for when simple redstone circuits aren't enough and MineFactory Reloaded if you want to try your hand at teaching them industrial automation with programmable circuits.

I'm not sure how much money you have, but this should be affordable enough for your typical 20-30 seat class.

Get Minecraft, pick out a custom launcher (I recommend Technic) and design your own modpack containing at the bare minimum the mod called OpenComputers: "turtles" programmable in Lua. You can try RedLogic for when simple redstone circuits aren't enough and MineFactory Reloaded if you want to try your hand at teaching them industrial automation with programmable circuits.

Launch three identical, reasonably sized chemically propulsed spacecrafts into 300km orbits in KSP. Launch them into orbital planes spaced 120 degrees apart. Your goal: dock all three together. Use mechjeb and dpai if you wish. It'll dispel any such myths in one evening.

Launch three identical, reasonably sized chemically propulsed spacecrafts into 300km orbits in KSP. Launch them into orbital planes spaced 120 degrees apart. Your goal: dock all three together. Use mechjeb and dpai if you wish. It'll dispel any such myths in one evening.

what do you think would happen if there was a way to infect machines running WoW by, say, slipping an infected version of a popular mod into one of the download areas?

Seriously - do you think people download and install WoW mods who wouldn't run executable code from the same source? For all I know, WoW mods *are* executable code... I know they're (usually) written in LUA, which I believe is a general purpose language, and I've no idea whether there's any kind of sandbox involved. And I've never installed one, but I'm going to guess they're at least sometimes distributed either as .exe files or as .msi files, both of which are executable or can trivially contain executable code. Here's an example of an apparently popular WoW mod whose installation instructions suggest the user runs a .bat file -- how many do you think read that file first?

The parent post makes a great point!

This has happened to me many a time as well. Its not just the gear score, its the achievement check that segregates people out of joining a raid.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/underachiever.aspx

you're welcome

As was pointed out above, it's also worth noting that the website was recently acquired by http://www.curse.com/. There is obviously a big difference in privately run fan site and a site owned by for-profit corporation like Curse. Naturally the agreements made with the previous owner do not hold after he sold the site to a corporation trying to make profit with it.

I believe it is possible that they have recently discovered that the site is now ran to make profit. While I certainly don't like corporations suing devoted fans, I can see why they are suing the new owner of that site. It's not owned by a devoted fan anymore, it's a corporate asset. It may still be a bad move PR-wise, but it's lot more understandable than "suing a devoted fan site", which most people here seem to think is the case.

At The Escapist, there was a summary of this year's gaming-related April Foolery. The article had one actually useful tidbit of information.

I now know a good acronym synonym for "gearscore", which is the current fetish on every WoW Looking-For-Group chat channel.

It's "Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number (EPEEN)"

Christ, I thought you were just big headed since I've never heard of your addon.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9896-QuestHelper.html 3,215,622 Downloads
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quest-helper.aspx 20,949,412 Downloads
http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=6145 49,914 Downloads

(balance this with Auctioneer, which has a paltry 12 million downloads..)

Exactly, Blizzard derives increased value from users taking the time to level a second character due to QuestHelper. Many users use Auctioneer. While those are free with exceptional support there are also many that are not free such as Zygors' Guides ($50), Carbonite ($2.50/mo), Brian Kopp's Guide/Addon ($59.99), Joanas' Levelling Guide ($77), and QuestUp ($47).

You'll note that the paid addons are for quest assistance.

You'll note that Brian Kopp (previously featured on slashdot) is now making cash by selling an ingame version of his guide, me thinks this is retribution.

Also, as an addon author myself I can only say "Go ahead, turn off all your API's, see how that works out. I can farm other games".

There is little to nothing you can do to convince clueless executives who can't see beyond J2EE. That is besides the point.

Also, a 1 year lead on something as new and fresh as RoR is huge, I mean, really friggin' huge. Fact is, it's taken about three years for Rail's hype to die down enough for people to realize that, just maybe it isn't "all that". It is at this point that development decisions become less starry-eyed and more pragmatic.

So perhaps that explains why Django is on the upswing now. That, and it's used for such excellent sites as:

Revver
Dpaste
curse.com
SuggestionBox
Lefora
Mixin

— all things that you can show a CEO/CIO to make clear that Django is a player. More are coming rapidly. As for business sites, there are a plethora of them that are beautiful and functional.