"As for your nonsense about chemicals, what do you think are the "actual components for smells"? Here's a hint, they are chemicals. Everything you smell is a chemical. In the case of leather I'd even argue you're better of with a reproduced leather smell that the real thing. Do you have any idea of the shit they use for tanning?"
And you miss my point.
Neither you, nor I, have any idea what they actually use in these scents. They could be using anything, and the simple fact that I can smell it means I am being exposed to something I do not want to be exposed to--all in the name of advertising.
Fuck that.
Now, you might say something along the lines of "Then don't fucking shop there", and you would be quite right in saying so, because that was exactly my reaction. I don't go to the mall anymore.
As far as tanning leather goes, I lived a block away from a tannery in Santa Cruz, CA. that operated 7 days a week and never once did I experience headaches because of it.
I also didn't state it was one system piping out multiple smells. Each store selects their own scents that emanate from the store entrances--I assume to lead the customers to the store with specific smells. They are probably just as you say. A dispenser located near the entrance loaded up with a can of scent spray. That doesn't change the end result--a cloud of unknown chemicals wafting around the place.
"Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult."
Not at all. The big mall we have here in town manages numerous smells during all business hours. The clothing shops have leather scents wafting from them, the jewelry stores have rose scents and such, etc, etc. Every single store has SOME scent being pushed out the front door into the open areas of the mall. They simply have some periodic sprayer releasing canned scents into a fan duct above the doors. They've been doing it for at least the six years I've lived here.
It is also the reason I don't do ANY business there anymore.
I have a headache within 15 minutes of walking in the door of the mall. The problem is that they are not using actual components for smells, such as leather to produce the smell of leather, but rather some chemical composition that merely smells like leather. All of the smells are artificial and there is no regulation of the chemicals they are exposing all of the customers to. The companies that manufacture the scents are the only ones determining what is used and what isn't. Considering they do it for profit, I do not assume they are using known SAFE chemicals but rather chemicals that simply smell like what the customers want. I actually tried to find out what chemicals they use. The mall managers denied they used them at all, yet when I pointed out the clothing shop that smelled like leather but didn't sell a scrap of actual leather, I was told that the smells of the mall "mingle" and that it was probably from a different store.
Even the summary states he doesn't live in Bluff City, but rather Gray, TN.
The man had nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing what he did. If nothing else, first poster nailed it--use their own site to make his $90 bucks back.
As far as every other jurisdiction in the US, he did them a favor. I am sure pretty much every PD IT tech out there just checked their domain registrations.
Turns out it is NOT all of the content. You still have to pay for full stats and some of the actual content. Needless to say, I do not play DDO anymore. I was skeptical of the F2P thing at first as is, and that was the cork in that particular bottle. I guess I wasn't specific enough. Even with the monthly subscription, the DDO store still sells you content and items, including some that is accessible no other way.
I am willing to bet that current LotRO monthly subscribers will not lose access to anything available now, but that any future content will be through the new, shiny LOTROStore.
"I think the real deciding factor is, can the additional content be purchased for less than or equal to $15/month?"
I think you are missing my point. As a group, with the F2P system (where content is purchased incrementally), you have to constantly align your content with the content of the people you play with.
Bob has the "Nubsauce Caverns" Dungeon Pack that he paid for, but Mary has the "Invasion of the Muppets" Dungeon Pack. They still cannot play together until one, or the other, buys another Dungeon Pack. A $15 monthly fee ensures everyone has the same content. Try and imagine having to individually purchase all the instance/zone content of WoW beyond Elwynn Forest and The Barrens and then trying to form groups to run the content. That is essentially what DDO is like, and LotRO is soon to be.
Now whether or not the money spent gets you the same content, of course it doesn't. You spend nothing on a F2P game, but you get what you pay for--little social interaction of any import and repetitive game-play, but if you do spend any money, you also have to make sure the people you are playing with have the content as well. That is what I do not like about the model. It isn't an issue of value-per-buck.
Don't give them any ideas. They may not stop at jokes. They're all as crazy as shit-house rats. I couldn't even remember what the article was about by the time I got this far in the thread.
It sounded fine to me, giving DDO another try. It was free-to-play now, so what the hell.
I ended up with 7 old friends joining up to start playing DDO, reactivating our guild from when the game came out. The game was pretty limited when it first came out and we only played a couple of months the first time around.
About 3 weeks into it the content, several of us hit "The Wall"--the point at which you have completed most of the free content and have to pay for more or suffer the anguish of running the same instances over and over.
A few of us went ahead and did so only to realize that we had just made a distinction between us, and our friends--we can go here and you cannot. Unless you pay. It was not something we intended, merely a product of doing business with Turbine and opening up content, but unless all of your friends do so, you will be severing in-game ties with them at some point. Of the seven of us, 2 are still playing DDO F2P, one went back to LotRO, 3 went back to WoW and one gave up on gaming altogether.
As a player, THAT is the biggest drawback to the F2P model that I can see. My first experience with F2P, a group divided, was not a good one and for that sole reason. DDO as a game was fine, it is the pay model that created the problems.
LotRO had another problem. At almost precisely level 40, the game split up into 2 means of leveling. Running quests/instances and doing the mini-instances with AI minions. Some people chose one method, others choose...well the other method. So a divide was created in that sense, as well. There was also the issue of having to level not only your character, but multiple weapons and minions. The leveling of weapons was a real drag as you could not do so at the same rate you leveled your character--you had to stop and grind to get your weapons caught up with you. Something changed about the game at level 40...it quite suddenly went from cheerfully enjoying Tolkien's world to hard-core grind. The one really good thing I can say about LotRO is that is a beautifully rendered world and the engine is probably the most resource friendly I have seen in any MMO. I was able to run it at max graphics with only moderate hardware and it looked great. A P4 and a $99 dollar GPU gets you a solid 60FPS with all the eye-candy.
Combined with the pay "Wall" of DDO, I see a preponderance of Fail here, though. The "group-breaking" aspects of the F2P model was something that was simply insurmountable unless all you friends go into it assuming they will be paying anyways. And if that is the case, just give me all the content for $15. It has worked for me and my friends since 98' Ultima Online, why change it now?
If you're standing there, in the glass factory, and you've made 12 million glasses that need painted, do you even stop ask yourself if maybe the paint that you have, the stuff that was supposed to be shipped to the Dept. of Transportation for road-line painting, might not be a good choice for DRINKING glasses?
The fools that were charged with painting the glasses, regardless of where the glasses came from, were supposed to do so with drinking-glass COMPATIBLE paint. The law is quite clear on this subject, and for good reason. Its not too hard to figure out, man. Toxic Paint + Food-related product = BAD
What I would bet on is that this is simply another case of someone cutting corners/costs to pad their profits, at the expense of consumer safety.
"...and I regularly hear them talking about "pinging" cell phones..."
This. Bigtime.
I heard some of the same kind of chatter from the local state CAMPUS police a couple years ago on a friends scanner. If campus police can get this kind of data, on-the-fly, then pretty much anyone can. They funny(scary!) thing about the radio traffic was that the campus cops were using it to locate a keg-party. Real high priority (no pun intended).
That 20-second exchange, by what amounts to rent-a-cops, changed my whole perception of cell-phone security and I adjusted my use of cellphones accordingly.
"I'm an American living in the US, I vote Democrat (usually), and I drive a Chevy. So there."
In regards to parent post, your statement simply backs up his. General Motors, the maker of your Chevy, is also the company investigated in the documentary of which parent speaks.
The Saturn EV1 was created by General Motors in response to California's new requirement that a certain amount of new vehicles sold in the state be ELECTRIC vehicles. GM created the EV1 as a precursor for cars they intended to sell. But then GM realized that profits would be low and found it more profitable to simply lobby against the laws and have them changed. They did so...then crushed all the evidence of the technology they had produced(they literally crushed all the EV1s they had leased out)--technology that in today's market would have prevented them needing a bailout (the Saturn EV1 would have been selling like hotcakes a couple of years ago).
This a perfect example of the general stock-holder's preference of "This will be good for us in the long run..." taking the back-seat to "I want my money now!"--a mindset that has driven yet another company into the ground, not to mention completely subverting the lawful, good-intentioned, will of the people (less smog, less reliance on foreign oil, etc).
This sole fact, the entire Saturn EV1 charade, is the main reason I did NOT think GM deserved a bailout. They should have been marketing cars like the EV1 years ago(and NOW!), yet still cling to such over-priced, gimmick-infested cars like the Cobalt. STILL, even after we bailed them out.
"It took my parents years of coming around to this..."
This.
Don't try to force your hand in the matter. If the kid doesn't want to do it, so be it. A forced hobby is just another chore without allowance to look forward to.
As far as how to encourage it, and there is nothing wrong about that--just know when to lay off, I would recommend playing a game (TOGETHER!!) that allows for HEAVY mod application/usage. Even something as simple as writing LUA mods for WoW might get him/her interested in more complex stuff like full Counterstrike rewrites. Many games come with Construction sets and are excellent tools for learning the mechanics of a game engine.
Last bit of advice. Unless you plan on doing this yourself as well, don't expect your kidlet to pick it up.
Keep in mind that that account was probably being used by several people, 24/7. 10k gold is nothing to these guys. They can whip it up pretty quick, especially since they are using Bots. At that point, it is just a computer generating money. As long as the numbers balance to the black, all is good and it was worthwhile.
The IP is more then likely going through a controlled proxy, giving the appearance that the account is being accessed from the US.
We are talking US dollars in a Chinese economy, so your preconceptions about what is worth a dollar are probably a bit skewed compared to a Chinese person's perception of a buck.
I had no idea I was hacked until I spoke to Blizz reps. I tried to merge an old WoW account with a freshly created battle.net account(they didn't exist when I first played and were not required), and it simply wouldn't let me. Probably because it was already tied to another battle.net account.
I had no intention of going back to WoW when I quit, so why would I keep checking on the account? I stopped "prepping accounts for reactivation" when I quit playing Ultima Online (the last time, that is...).
My WoW account was inactive for a year and a half.
It was also hacked, months after I canceled my subscription. No idea how.
So, in short, they sit on the account info and wait until it is inactive. This way they are less likely to be noticed as they link the WoW account to a battle.net account that they control. They also PAY to have the stolen account reactivated and thus raise no flags with Blizzard. It looks like someone simply reactivated the account as far as Blizzard is concerned.
Once they have the account, and they are pretty sure nobody will be using it anytime soon (except them), they turn your best toon into a miner/herbalist and set it up to bot its way to mountains of ore/herbs. All the resources were simply mailed to another of my toons and auctioned or passed onto yet another toon on another account.
I choose to reactivate my account while the guy was full-steam-ahead. He had dropped my enchanting on my hunter (already had 375 herbs), paid for the WotLK expansion so he could get both herbalism and mining skills to 450. He didn't touch any of my other toons, except for a level 2 in Stormwind.
After Blizzard was done restoring my account they left the hunter with 450 Herbalism, reset the enchanting and replaced his items. He also had about 3k in gold more then he did when I canceled.
They joy was on the level 2. STACKS and STACKS of ore that the hacker mailed to another toon came back in the mail. This worked out great as I wanted to roll a new toon with engineering. All told, I logged back in about 6k richer, more then enough to get back into the swing of things.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I was always under the impression that one of the reasons that helium is preferred is because there is less "bleeding" of gas through the envelope material, as opposed to hydrogen.
For a long-term flight, this might be of crucial importance.
"How will Eircom legally differentiate between that content, and the content that some ragamuffin may be downloading illegally, without infringing privacy laws?"
Unless they can do this selectively, I'll pass. One gets to a certain age...well, the baggage seems to fade away yet the really good stuff remains clear.
I think this is a good thing, and in my opinion quite possibly a natural function of the human mind--a defense mechanism, perhaps.
"Don't get me wrong - I support TPB and I've got the t-shirt too - but there's a time & a place."
A time and place for what? To take your beliefs and hide them away like they are something to be ashamed of? To let peer pressure decide how, and when, you voice your opinion?
I think you are missing the main point of that T-shirt. It is to voice one's support of The Pirate Bay, and by extension, peer-to-peer networking, in spite of ambient opposition to the entire technology and the freedoms it enables. I get the impression that GP wears it for such reasons.
GP at least has a spine to support that shirt while he walks the walk. *tips hat*
"The OBD-II codes didn't tell me exactly what to fix/replace on any of those but it greatly reduced trouble shooting time."
THIS. Yes, IN CAPS.
Scanners and shop scopes are GREAT for locating problems, but they do NOT replace a well-trained mechanic. Above poster makes it sound simple, but he already had an understanding of automotive tech. For example, using out-of-spec MAF readings to diagnosis an intake leak is one thing, but those readings could also be caused by intake valve issues, worn piston rings or a plethora of other things including a bad MAF sensor.
My point is that an understanding of the underlying systems is still required.
Don't expect a scanner, or even the information provided by one, to "fix" your car. They simply point you in the right direction (sometimes) and also allow you to verify the repair worked as planned.
A side point. A cheap scanner will never have a "snap-shot" function, while a decent one will. This is CRUCIAL in diagnosing intermittent failures. Otherwise, you will be sitting there trying to make the problem occur while you have the scanner hooked up, often missing the 20ms failure. Blink and you miss it. A good scanner will store "frames" of info to go back and examine.
If you look closely, you can see a watermark-like image of a Volkswagen Beetle behind the models.
This made things much easier. I simply imagined trying some heavy-petting in the back seat with each model. That instantly ruled out the models with gigantism, the Ogres and left exactly one model with a snowballs chance in hell...and she still got a -1.
In all seriousness, the second time I tried it I got different results. I actually rated one of the models a +1 on the second time. Probably because she didn't look like she was on a diet of pure corn-syrup and might actually fit in the car.
And to make matters worse, they lied about it and mailed people back "replacement" MOBOs that were simply the broken ones other customers sent in for replacement, in order to buy time...until the warranties ran out. Then they simply claimed it wasn't covered as the warranty had lapsed.
I personally know two people that have had this exact scenario dealt to them for doing business with Acer.
Too many posts to check, but did it occur to anyone that the dude that wrote the crack with Myth might actually be an EMPLOYEE of Rockstar now, and fully endorsing the use of his own code?
Just a wild-ass guess...but in this day and age, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
"So what you do is weave it into a circle of mats- which are fed into an old-fashioned wringer-washer on the deck of a tanker- and deployed off starboard aft and recovered port aft....just sail it around in circles, using the friction of the wringers to reel in and redeploy the circle of matts.(sic)"
Combine this with a social network campaign to "Save the Coasts!" that collects human hair on a massive scale. Just think! It would be "cool" to be bald! A statement of commitment to the environment!...and it'd give millions of Twitter users something to actually tweet about.
Slashdot Mirror
"As for your nonsense about chemicals, what do you think are the "actual components for smells"? Here's a hint, they are chemicals. Everything you smell is a chemical. In the case of leather I'd even argue you're better of with a reproduced leather smell that the real thing. Do you have any idea of the shit they use for tanning?"
And you miss my point.
Neither you, nor I, have any idea what they actually use in these scents. They could be using anything, and the simple fact that I can smell it means I am being exposed to something I do not want to be exposed to--all in the name of advertising.
Fuck that.
Now, you might say something along the lines of "Then don't fucking shop there", and you would be quite right in saying so, because that was exactly my reaction. I don't go to the mall anymore.
As far as tanning leather goes, I lived a block away from a tannery in Santa Cruz, CA. that operated 7 days a week and never once did I experience headaches because of it.
I also didn't state it was one system piping out multiple smells. Each store selects their own scents that emanate from the store entrances--I assume to lead the customers to the store with specific smells. They are probably just as you say. A dispenser located near the entrance loaded up with a can of scent spray. That doesn't change the end result--a cloud of unknown chemicals wafting around the place.
"Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult."
Not at all. The big mall we have here in town manages numerous smells during all business hours. The clothing shops have leather scents wafting from them, the jewelry stores have rose scents and such, etc, etc. Every single store has SOME scent being pushed out the front door into the open areas of the mall. They simply have some periodic sprayer releasing canned scents into a fan duct above the doors. They've been doing it for at least the six years I've lived here.
It is also the reason I don't do ANY business there anymore.
I have a headache within 15 minutes of walking in the door of the mall. The problem is that they are not using actual components for smells, such as leather to produce the smell of leather, but rather some chemical composition that merely smells like leather. All of the smells are artificial and there is no regulation of the chemicals they are exposing all of the customers to. The companies that manufacture the scents are the only ones determining what is used and what isn't. Considering they do it for profit, I do not assume they are using known SAFE chemicals but rather chemicals that simply smell like what the customers want. I actually tried to find out what chemicals they use. The mall managers denied they used them at all, yet when I pointed out the clothing shop that smelled like leather but didn't sell a scrap of actual leather, I was told that the smells of the mall "mingle" and that it was probably from a different store.
Even the summary states he doesn't live in Bluff City, but rather Gray, TN.
The man had nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing what he did. If nothing else, first poster nailed it--use their own site to make his $90 bucks back.
As far as every other jurisdiction in the US, he did them a favor. I am sure pretty much every PD IT tech out there just checked their domain registrations.
I thought so.
I even paid for it.
Turns out it is NOT all of the content. You still have to pay for full stats and some of the actual content. Needless to say, I do not play DDO anymore. I was skeptical of the F2P thing at first as is, and that was the cork in that particular bottle. I guess I wasn't specific enough. Even with the monthly subscription, the DDO store still sells you content and items, including some that is accessible no other way.
I am willing to bet that current LotRO monthly subscribers will not lose access to anything available now, but that any future content will be through the new, shiny LOTROStore.
"I think the real deciding factor is, can the additional content be purchased for less than or equal to $15/month?"
I think you are missing my point. As a group, with the F2P system (where content is purchased incrementally), you have to constantly align your content with the content of the people you play with.
Bob has the "Nubsauce Caverns" Dungeon Pack that he paid for, but Mary has the "Invasion of the Muppets" Dungeon Pack. They still cannot play together until one, or the other, buys another Dungeon Pack. A $15 monthly fee ensures everyone has the same content. Try and imagine having to individually purchase all the instance/zone content of WoW beyond Elwynn Forest and The Barrens and then trying to form groups to run the content. That is essentially what DDO is like, and LotRO is soon to be.
Now whether or not the money spent gets you the same content, of course it doesn't. You spend nothing on a F2P game, but you get what you pay for--little social interaction of any import and repetitive game-play, but if you do spend any money, you also have to make sure the people you are playing with have the content as well. That is what I do not like about the model. It isn't an issue of value-per-buck.
"Well you've well and truly killed the joke!"
Shhhhh.
Don't give them any ideas. They may not stop at jokes. They're all as crazy as shit-house rats. I couldn't even remember what the article was about by the time I got this far in the thread.
It sounded fine to me, giving DDO another try. It was free-to-play now, so what the hell.
I ended up with 7 old friends joining up to start playing DDO, reactivating our guild from when the game came out. The game was pretty limited when it first came out and we only played a couple of months the first time around.
About 3 weeks into it the content, several of us hit "The Wall"--the point at which you have completed most of the free content and have to pay for more or suffer the anguish of running the same instances over and over.
A few of us went ahead and did so only to realize that we had just made a distinction between us, and our friends--we can go here and you cannot. Unless you pay. It was not something we intended, merely a product of doing business with Turbine and opening up content, but unless all of your friends do so, you will be severing in-game ties with them at some point. Of the seven of us, 2 are still playing DDO F2P, one went back to LotRO, 3 went back to WoW and one gave up on gaming altogether.
As a player, THAT is the biggest drawback to the F2P model that I can see. My first experience with F2P, a group divided, was not a good one and for that sole reason. DDO as a game was fine, it is the pay model that created the problems.
LotRO had another problem. At almost precisely level 40, the game split up into 2 means of leveling. Running quests/instances and doing the mini-instances with AI minions. Some people chose one method, others choose...well the other method. So a divide was created in that sense, as well. There was also the issue of having to level not only your character, but multiple weapons and minions. The leveling of weapons was a real drag as you could not do so at the same rate you leveled your character--you had to stop and grind to get your weapons caught up with you. Something changed about the game at level 40...it quite suddenly went from cheerfully enjoying Tolkien's world to hard-core grind. The one really good thing I can say about LotRO is that is a beautifully rendered world and the engine is probably the most resource friendly I have seen in any MMO. I was able to run it at max graphics with only moderate hardware and it looked great. A P4 and a $99 dollar GPU gets you a solid 60FPS with all the eye-candy.
Combined with the pay "Wall" of DDO, I see a preponderance of Fail here, though. The "group-breaking" aspects of the F2P model was something that was simply insurmountable unless all you friends go into it assuming they will be paying anyways. And if that is the case, just give me all the content for $15. It has worked for me and my friends since 98' Ultima Online, why change it now?
"But I wonder where the paint came from?"
It doesn't fucking matter.
If you're standing there, in the glass factory, and you've made 12 million glasses that need painted, do you even stop ask yourself if maybe the paint that you have, the stuff that was supposed to be shipped to the Dept. of Transportation for road-line painting, might not be a good choice for DRINKING glasses?
The fools that were charged with painting the glasses, regardless of where the glasses came from, were supposed to do so with drinking-glass COMPATIBLE paint. The law is quite clear on this subject, and for good reason. Its not too hard to figure out, man. Toxic Paint + Food-related product = BAD
What I would bet on is that this is simply another case of someone cutting corners/costs to pad their profits, at the expense of consumer safety.
"...and I regularly hear them talking about "pinging" cell phones..."
This. Bigtime.
I heard some of the same kind of chatter from the local state CAMPUS police a couple years ago on a friends scanner. If campus police can get this kind of data, on-the-fly, then pretty much anyone can. They funny(scary!) thing about the radio traffic was that the campus cops were using it to locate a keg-party. Real high priority (no pun intended).
That 20-second exchange, by what amounts to rent-a-cops, changed my whole perception of cell-phone security and I adjusted my use of cellphones accordingly.
I no longer have a cellphone.
"I'm an American living in the US, I vote Democrat (usually), and I drive a Chevy. So there."
In regards to parent post, your statement simply backs up his. General Motors, the maker of your Chevy, is also the company investigated in the documentary of which parent speaks.
The Saturn EV1 was created by General Motors in response to California's new requirement that a certain amount of new vehicles sold in the state be ELECTRIC vehicles. GM created the EV1 as a precursor for cars they intended to sell. But then GM realized that profits would be low and found it more profitable to simply lobby against the laws and have them changed. They did so...then crushed all the evidence of the technology they had produced(they literally crushed all the EV1s they had leased out)--technology that in today's market would have prevented them needing a bailout (the Saturn EV1 would have been selling like hotcakes a couple of years ago).
This a perfect example of the general stock-holder's preference of "This will be good for us in the long run..." taking the back-seat to "I want my money now!"--a mindset that has driven yet another company into the ground, not to mention completely subverting the lawful, good-intentioned, will of the people (less smog, less reliance on foreign oil, etc).
This sole fact, the entire Saturn EV1 charade, is the main reason I did NOT think GM deserved a bailout. They should have been marketing cars like the EV1 years ago(and NOW!), yet still cling to such over-priced, gimmick-infested cars like the Cobalt. STILL, even after we bailed them out.
Grrrr.
"It took my parents years of coming around to this ..."
This.
Don't try to force your hand in the matter. If the kid doesn't want to do it, so be it. A forced hobby is just another chore without allowance to look forward to.
As far as how to encourage it, and there is nothing wrong about that--just know when to lay off, I would recommend playing a game (TOGETHER!!) that allows for HEAVY mod application/usage. Even something as simple as writing LUA mods for WoW might get him/her interested in more complex stuff like full Counterstrike rewrites. Many games come with Construction sets and are excellent tools for learning the mechanics of a game engine.
Last bit of advice. Unless you plan on doing this yourself as well, don't expect your kidlet to pick it up.
"I wonder about this..."
Keep in mind that that account was probably being used by several people, 24/7. 10k gold is nothing to these guys. They can whip it up pretty quick, especially since they are using Bots. At that point, it is just a computer generating money. As long as the numbers balance to the black, all is good and it was worthwhile.
The IP is more then likely going through a controlled proxy, giving the appearance that the account is being accessed from the US.
We are talking US dollars in a Chinese economy, so your preconceptions about what is worth a dollar are probably a bit skewed compared to a Chinese person's perception of a buck.
I had no idea I was hacked until I spoke to Blizz reps. I tried to merge an old WoW account with a freshly created battle.net account(they didn't exist when I first played and were not required), and it simply wouldn't let me. Probably because it was already tied to another battle.net account.
I had no intention of going back to WoW when I quit, so why would I keep checking on the account? I stopped "prepping accounts for reactivation" when I quit playing Ultima Online (the last time, that is...).
My WoW account was inactive for a year and a half.
It was also hacked, months after I canceled my subscription. No idea how.
So, in short, they sit on the account info and wait until it is inactive. This way they are less likely to be noticed as they link the WoW account to a battle.net account that they control. They also PAY to have the stolen account reactivated and thus raise no flags with Blizzard. It looks like someone simply reactivated the account as far as Blizzard is concerned.
Once they have the account, and they are pretty sure nobody will be using it anytime soon (except them), they turn your best toon into a miner/herbalist and set it up to bot its way to mountains of ore/herbs. All the resources were simply mailed to another of my toons and auctioned or passed onto yet another toon on another account.
I choose to reactivate my account while the guy was full-steam-ahead. He had dropped my enchanting on my hunter (already had 375 herbs), paid for the WotLK expansion so he could get both herbalism and mining skills to 450. He didn't touch any of my other toons, except for a level 2 in Stormwind.
After Blizzard was done restoring my account they left the hunter with 450 Herbalism, reset the enchanting and replaced his items. He also had about 3k in gold more then he did when I canceled.
They joy was on the level 2. STACKS and STACKS of ore that the hacker mailed to another toon came back in the mail. This worked out great as I wanted to roll a new toon with engineering. All told, I logged back in about 6k richer, more then enough to get back into the swing of things.
At least that is what happened to my account.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I was always under the impression that one of the reasons that helium is preferred is because there is less "bleeding" of gas through the envelope material, as opposed to hydrogen.
For a long-term flight, this might be of crucial importance.
"How will Eircom legally differentiate between that content, and the content that some ragamuffin may be downloading illegally, without infringing privacy laws?"
In all sincerity, did you ask them?
I'd start here.
http://eircomconnect.eircom.net/Forum/default.aspx
The first time I read that headline, my brain completely omitted the word "data" without skipping a beat.
It sounded par for the course, I guess.
Some things are best left forgotten.
Unless they can do this selectively, I'll pass. One gets to a certain age...well, the baggage seems to fade away yet the really good stuff remains clear.
I think this is a good thing, and in my opinion quite possibly a natural function of the human mind--a defense mechanism, perhaps.
"There were seven and a hundred Trolls,
They were both ugly and grim,
A visit they would Justice make,
Both eat and drink with him.
Out then spake the tiniest Troll,
No bigger than an emmet was he,
Hither is come an honest man,
And manage him will I surelie..."
"Don't get me wrong - I support TPB and I've got the t-shirt too - but there's a time & a place."
A time and place for what? To take your beliefs and hide them away like they are something to be ashamed of? To let peer pressure decide how, and when, you voice your opinion?
I think you are missing the main point of that T-shirt. It is to voice one's support of The Pirate Bay, and by extension, peer-to-peer networking, in spite of ambient opposition to the entire technology and the freedoms it enables. I get the impression that GP wears it for such reasons.
GP at least has a spine to support that shirt while he walks the walk. *tips hat*
I bet he still has his job too.
"The OBD-II codes didn't tell me exactly what to fix/replace on any of those but it greatly reduced trouble shooting time."
THIS. Yes, IN CAPS.
Scanners and shop scopes are GREAT for locating problems, but they do NOT replace a well-trained mechanic. Above poster makes it sound simple, but he already had an understanding of automotive tech. For example, using out-of-spec MAF readings to diagnosis an intake leak is one thing, but those readings could also be caused by intake valve issues, worn piston rings or a plethora of other things including a bad MAF sensor.
My point is that an understanding of the underlying systems is still required.
Don't expect a scanner, or even the information provided by one, to "fix" your car. They simply point you in the right direction (sometimes) and also allow you to verify the repair worked as planned.
A side point. A cheap scanner will never have a "snap-shot" function, while a decent one will. This is CRUCIAL in diagnosing intermittent failures. Otherwise, you will be sitting there trying to make the problem occur while you have the scanner hooked up, often missing the 20ms failure. Blink and you miss it. A good scanner will store "frames" of info to go back and examine.
"I don't care if my neighbour(sic) has a manual for manufacturing anthrax, as long as he never tries."
You mean like this dude?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Sometimes you really do not want to know what the neighbors are up to, sometimes EVERYONE should know.
Bah. You all got it wrong.
If you look closely, you can see a watermark-like image of a Volkswagen Beetle behind the models.
This made things much easier. I simply imagined trying some heavy-petting in the back seat with each model. That instantly ruled out the models with gigantism, the Ogres and left exactly one model with a snowballs chance in hell...and she still got a -1.
In all seriousness, the second time I tried it I got different results. I actually rated one of the models a +1 on the second time. Probably because she didn't look like she was on a diet of pure corn-syrup and might actually fit in the car.
Too bad Acer has HORRIBLE hardware Quality Control/Customer Service.
http://www.google.com/search?q=acer+mobo+failure
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=acer+no+keyboard
And for those that want a citation of a sort...the numbers speak for themselves:
http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/Acer+Computers
And to make matters worse, they lied about it and mailed people back "replacement" MOBOs that were simply the broken ones other customers sent in for replacement, in order to buy time...until the warranties ran out. Then they simply claimed it wasn't covered as the warranty had lapsed.
I personally know two people that have had this exact scenario dealt to them for doing business with Acer.
The OS is a moot point if the hardware is shit.
Too many posts to check, but did it occur to anyone that the dude that wrote the crack with Myth might actually be an EMPLOYEE of Rockstar now, and fully endorsing the use of his own code?
Just a wild-ass guess...but in this day and age, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
"So what you do is weave it into a circle of mats- which are fed into an old-fashioned wringer-washer on the deck of a tanker- and deployed off starboard aft and recovered port aft....just sail it around in circles, using the friction of the wringers to reel in and redeploy the circle of matts.(sic)"
Combine this with a social network campaign to "Save the Coasts!" that collects human hair on a massive scale. Just think! It would be "cool" to be bald! A statement of commitment to the environment! ...and it'd give millions of Twitter users something to actually tweet about.
Well...maybe not.