Blizzard does keep backups of characters, to a certain extent, so hopefully the dead Hardcore characters can be resurrected, but that's not the biggest problem. Blizzard cannot (they say) and more importantly will not restore items, ever.
This is largely because they are a small company, and if every half-brained lamer on bnet went whining to them every time they lost something, they would never have time to do anything else.
Log files are all very well and good, but there are problems. There are two pieces of information that the servers receive which could be used to identify a person. These are the CD key and the IP address. Dynamic IP addresses make the latter pretty useless, and CD keys can be stolen/faked, and they may not even be logged like that (I've heard it suggested that they aren't, for security reasons, which I consider to be a really bad idea)
The worst part is, it's a really stupid bug, and it's INCREDIBLY easy to exploit it - you can use the regular D2 client. (No, I won't explain how it works) Suffice it to say that somebody must have made a really gross mistake in one of the recent server patches.
(I am in no way affliated with Blizzard, I won't give you free stuff, and if you're korean and loud and run into me in the game, you're toast)
You have to agree not to do any of these kind of things, for one. It explicitly says in the TOS, "No attempts to hack realms or cheat" (don't quote me on that), so I guess this is kind of violation of contract. Certainly Blizzard can place total bans on the offenders, but it's hard to make them stick - too many people have dynamic IP, and there is no other way to identify people on bnet.
At present, Linux relies too much on a Monte Carlo shotgun approach to software engineering (thousands of folks randomly hammering on software to shake the bugs out).
Funny, I though that "shotgun" approach was what made Linux, and the whole Open-Source movement, so reliable and powerful.
http://www.tuxedo.org/, and read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", if you haven't already.
Take 2 identical twins. One spends a lifetime on the internet, the other in a library. The second will have little grasp of reality, having only ever heard about it, and will not be able to put any of this knowledge into practice. The first will have had an opportunity to interact and actually try some of it out. There's a lot more to the internet than hypertext, you know.
Indeed, it is easier to absorb academic knowledge from a book than it is from words on a screen. Ever hear of printers? They're a device for type casting to hard-copy.
It is also easier to find specific and accurate information in a library, as much time has been spent cataloging and sorting it's content. That doesn't affect the quality of the content. Nor does it stop a person from finding the information if it's not sorted.
Or a cut down version, anyway. They hacked out some unnecessary stuff to keep the files more manageable.
For the desperately curios, details are on Dr. Steffen van Bakes's website at http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~svb
But what about all the people who bought Windows because it came packaged, and they didn't know about other options? They weren't asked, and they didn't know they had a choice.
The trouble is, even with a homogenous Microsoft-only environment, the system is not necessarily that stable. This is partly due to inadequate testing. Under Linux or OS/2, while a sufficiently carefully coded program can break the system, by exploiting bugs or security holes, it is difficult to crash a machine by accident. Unlike under Windows. If you don't believe me, write 256 bytes of 0's to location 0000:0000 from a DOS prompt. You can even use DEBUG. Windows will almost always crash. Then try it with Linux on a PC. No crash. And this is a remarkably simple error to make. I've done it. Then I switched to Linux for development.
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This is largely because they are a small company, and if every half-brained lamer on bnet went whining to them every time they lost something, they would never have time to do anything else.
Log files are all very well and good, but there are problems. There are two pieces of information that the servers receive which could be used to identify a person. These are the CD key and the IP address. Dynamic IP addresses make the latter pretty useless, and CD keys can be stolen/faked, and they may not even be logged like that (I've heard it suggested that they aren't, for security reasons, which I consider to be a really bad idea)
The worst part is, it's a really stupid bug, and it's INCREDIBLY easy to exploit it - you can use the regular D2 client. (No, I won't explain how it works) Suffice it to say that somebody must have made a really gross mistake in one of the recent server patches.
(I am in no way affliated with Blizzard, I won't give you free stuff, and if you're korean and loud and run into me in the game, you're toast)
You have to agree not to do any of these kind of things, for one. It explicitly says in the TOS, "No attempts to hack realms or cheat" (don't quote me on that), so I guess this is kind of violation of contract. Certainly Blizzard can place total bans on the offenders, but it's hard to make them stick - too many people have dynamic IP, and there is no other way to identify people on bnet.
Funny, I though that "shotgun" approach was what made Linux, and the whole Open-Source movement, so reliable and powerful.
http://www.tuxedo.org/, and read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", if you haven't already.
I recall something like this in one of JonKatz's Hellmouth series. Go figure.
Take 2 identical twins. One spends a lifetime on the internet, the other in a library. The second will have little grasp of reality, having only ever heard about it, and will not be able to put any of this knowledge into practice. The first will have had an opportunity to interact and actually try some of it out. There's a lot more to the internet than hypertext, you know. Indeed, it is easier to absorb academic knowledge from a book than it is from words on a screen. Ever hear of printers? They're a device for type casting to hard-copy. It is also easier to find specific and accurate information in a library, as much time has been spent cataloging and sorting it's content. That doesn't affect the quality of the content. Nor does it stop a person from finding the information if it's not sorted.
Or a cut down version, anyway. They hacked out some unnecessary stuff to keep the files more manageable. For the desperately curios, details are on Dr. Steffen van Bakes's website at http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~svb
But what about all the people who bought Windows because it came packaged, and they didn't know about other options? They weren't asked, and they didn't know they had a choice.
As I understand it, the EULA obliges the retailer to refund the money, not Microsoft. And they can insist that you return the complete system.
The trouble is, even with a homogenous Microsoft-only environment, the system is not necessarily that stable. This is partly due to inadequate testing. Under Linux or OS/2, while a sufficiently carefully coded program can break the system, by exploiting bugs or security holes, it is difficult to crash a machine by accident. Unlike under Windows. If you don't believe me, write 256 bytes of 0's to location 0000:0000 from a DOS prompt. You can even use DEBUG. Windows will almost always crash. Then try it with Linux on a PC. No crash. And this is a remarkably simple error to make. I've done it. Then I switched to Linux for development.