My issue specifically here is they are trying to punish the hacker for something that he isn't responsible for. The security holes were already there. They were made obvious by his exploiting them and publishing them. The exploiting and publishing of the exploit are what should be punished. Whether or not anyone ever exploited those holes and published their existence they should have been fixed. The hacker should not bear the burden for that.
I can't remember the quote but it basically says that locks are for keeping honest people honest, locks don't prevent criminals from getting through in most cases.
I'm tempted to install bolt locks on the doors at my house but there are too many large windows and a huge patio door that a thief could easily break. Adding bolt locks wouldn't actually add to security.
But he isn't responsible for the security holes that existed. He might have made them more widely known but he did not create them. He should be punished for the act of illegaly hacking federal computer systems, but the flaws are not his responsibility unless he created them himself.
I don't remember it ever being possible to 40 man those instances in release, it was possible in closed beta though when they first instituted raid groups. People would 40 man WC just to clear out the quests. I was aware that you weren't always able to complete the quests in a raid group but I don't remember ever seeing where it was an exploit to 15 man strat or scholo. I don't even remember having to form the raid outside of the instance. I did do Scholo in a five man before the nerf to five man only. It was rather difficult and several of the characters were geared well beyond it and were just helping a friend through.
Anyways all of this is a long ways back in my memory so I could be mistaken.
Probably because he is representative of the vast majority of the paying customers. Remember that label on the game box and splash screen that says something along the lines "game experience may change"
For me the problem with outdoor PvP or RvR in WAR was the often incredibly long ways you had to run back after you lost a fight. Granted that's part of the death penalty and whatnot but it was too annoying when I could que up for scenarios and be assured of getting into some good action and not have to run or ride back to the fight for five minutes if I died.
I think a major problem with PvP in all of these games is that they are rewarded with items. So you end up with a lot of people just doing it for the item rewards. Which leads to people looking for every shorcut they can to farm the points or whatever for that equipment. I think the best system would be to simply keep a record of whom killed whom, how many times, level differences, etc. Let the record be the reward it's self. By encouraging it with gear, exp, coin or whatever you just encourage the behaviour that the pvp crowd always complains about.
When are you talking about that Strath was impossible? For a long time it was a 10 or 15 man instance just like Scholomance. Eventually they limited it to five man only status and it was difficult for a little while until they rebalanced it to be played through by just five. It might have been difficult then but it wasn't that ridiculously hard. The toughest part was finding a warlock or mage so that you could do the AoE parts.
S/He isn't complaining that other people can do something he can't. He's complaining that very large parts of the game are inaccessable without an unnacceptably large, to him anyways, investment of time. This is a common issue where everyone considers anyone that plays more than them Hardcore and anyone that plays less Casual.
In your example you pick a game that you have to play against another player. Not a game that is played against an automated and scripted opponent. And chess is not a hard game in and of it's selt. It's the skill of your chosen opponent that makes it more or less of a challenge. I could slaughter my nephews at chess all day and be bored by it. They would likely be frustrated and give up on it completely.
Other than the lame arguements involving waving epeen's around there isn't a good reason to not institute varying levels of difficulty within any game and even between servers. Diablo2 has Hardcore mode, which is pretty popular and represents much more skill and determination to reach max level on than anything WoW has to offer.
In EQ I remember a friend that played a Warrior taking some minor peice of loot as an upgrade. This cause a double take because he was well into his 50's and the item he wanted was considered trash by most players. Turned out he was wearing some generic bit of armor dropped by a mid 30's mob that was normally sold to a vendor.
In WoW I had a Warrior that I played as DPS mainly. In Vanilla WoW he cleared AQ20, MC, Onyxia and ZG. Most of those many times. When TBC was released I was very happy to find an upgrade for my green shoulder armor that I had worn for the last year. They were basic turtle shell looking +13 str +13 agi, sadly they were better than any other plate shoulders I had seen drop. I almost took the leather shoulders from UBRS when no rogue wanted them but I couldn't make myself use leather armor as a warrior.
You are correct on all accounts there. The thing is though that rarely has Blizzard reduced the challenges so hugely that the same rewards are now worth a lot less. And in any MMO almost every bit of gear really just represents an investment of time played working specifically toward that goal. So naturally those that obtain that item earlier worked harder for it, or atleast devoted a higher percentage of play time towards it. If Vanilla WoW had stayed vanilla forever eventually almost everyone would have all the best gear. The hardcore would then have nothing to brag on but the fact that they had it earlier or can do it faster. Moving the Carrot lets the Hardcore always have something they can readily brag about.
By reducing the overall difficulty the hardcores' time frame for bragging is just reduced. And that's what the hardcore players are really upset about.
I don't know that succeding in vanilla WoW required a fail in Real Life. But it did require either a ton of time, or slightly less time but at very inconvient times of the day alwasy combined with being lucky enough to make it into a large group of folks that could do the same. I managed to finish Molten Core, Onyxia, Zul Gurub and parts of AQ20 on two of my characters before The Burning Crusade was released. It took a lot of weekend late nights in raids because I couldn't afford to stay up past midnight on worknights. And my characters were always prepared for raids because I spent my other play time specifically preparing for them, I did very little leeching for equipment in raids.
All that said I didn't really come anywhere close to reaching the end game in WoW. And as a person that played probably close to 40 hours a week I don't know that that's a good business plan. The hardcore raiders were and are still the vocal minority. Making the end game encounters more readily available and playable might upset that minority but it's good business sense. Blizzard does not exist to take the money of the masses and produce a challenge so difficult that only the elite few will be able to feel like they "won" in any sense of the word.
I stopped playing before the last expansion came out and I doubt I'll go back to it. I'd rather spend the subscription money on lunch with my friends. I've been playing Diablo2 again a lot recently and the challenge of playing new builds is very entertaining even when the content is always exactly the same.
I'm not sure that mining a landfill would be easier than scooping plastic out of the ocean. Not to mention that while some landfills are not contained and are polluting the environment, the mess in the pacific is truely astounding in size and environmental implications.
Isn't turning the waste plastic into useable fuel recycling? There are many types of plastic and a number of them apparently aren't worth recycling into other plastic products. We might as well reduce the volume of that waste and get some fuel out of it. And as another poster mentioned this would be a great thing to implement on a fleet of large ships in the pacific gyre. That would benefit us by generating fuel, cleaning up a huge area of pollution and saving an immense amount of animal and plant life in that region.
I like this idea though it would take more than just a fishing net. A lot of the plastic in the patch has broken into much finer particulates than you could catch in simple fishing net.
Anyways the idea has a lot of merit in my opinion. Where I live, Montgomery Alabama, they have actually just decided to stop picking up recyclables because it's cutting into the budget too much. If this technology works out we could possibly see cities collecting recyclables, processing it themselves, and then using the fuel to help defray or eliminate their fuel costs. Heck they might even produce enough to sell it at a profit.
I can't vouch for the mass produced vs. individually crafted bit. But I played the violin for eight years when I was in grade school. I had three different violins in that time and I can testify to the varying quality of sound that each put out. The one I liked best seemed to be older than the others. It had a label inside it that I believe claimed it was made in 1879 or something. Anyways my point is that even an amateur can tell the difference in quality of many violins. I don't know that I could detect the differences in very high quality violins but I don't see why anyone let alone a professional couldn't.
I think Subaru actually has made the code for all their ECU's public. Or at least the code for my friends WRX was available. He wanted to tune his car via modification of the ECU's programing but all the shops that could do it would charge obscenely for it. So he wrote his own software to allow his laptop to read from the ECU in real time and reprogram it using another piece of free software.
The odometer could be used for most of the intended purpose. But using GPS would allow for more granularity in the taxing according to what roads you use. And it could also be used to help the gubmint more accurately prioritize road projects depending on their usage. The odometer is also a fairly simple device to tamper with when compared to a GPS. Although a GPS could easily be made completely inoperable by shielding it's antenna.
The benefit of all this though has to be weighed as you stated against the potential and almost assured abuses that it will be subject to. With the advent of camera devices being used to enforce traffic laws and video camera's being used almost everywhere you go the potential to be tracked every moment of your day is already there. Personally I think it's inevitable and I hope that we as a society ensure that it is abused as little as possible.
Haha you should give the song Rev 22:20 by Puscifer featuring Maynard James Keenan and Danny Lohner a listen, I definitely wouldn't play it around any religous friends though.
Well I remember a garter snake biting my older brother a couple of times on the hand. But he probably didn't get a bite like a small animal might as the snakes mouth was rather small.
I keep the lid down because my wife likes to keep things on the back of the toilet and it's also immediately next to the sink. I have no desire to fish anything out of the toilet. Anything that ends up in it had better be leaving via the sewage pipes.
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My issue specifically here is they are trying to punish the hacker for something that he isn't responsible for. The security holes were already there. They were made obvious by his exploiting them and publishing them. The exploiting and publishing of the exploit are what should be punished. Whether or not anyone ever exploited those holes and published their existence they should have been fixed. The hacker should not bear the burden for that.
I lol'd
I'd rather see them stoned with The Washington Monument.
I can't remember the quote but it basically says that locks are for keeping honest people honest, locks don't prevent criminals from getting through in most cases.
I'm tempted to install bolt locks on the doors at my house but there are too many large windows and a huge patio door that a thief could easily break. Adding bolt locks wouldn't actually add to security.
But he isn't responsible for the security holes that existed. He might have made them more widely known but he did not create them. He should be punished for the act of illegaly hacking federal computer systems, but the flaws are not his responsibility unless he created them himself.
I wouldn't report any kind of crime or safety hazard if this becomes a regular tactic.
I don't remember it ever being possible to 40 man those instances in release, it was possible in closed beta though when they first instituted raid groups. People would 40 man WC just to clear out the quests. I was aware that you weren't always able to complete the quests in a raid group but I don't remember ever seeing where it was an exploit to 15 man strat or scholo. I don't even remember having to form the raid outside of the instance. I did do Scholo in a five man before the nerf to five man only. It was rather difficult and several of the characters were geared well beyond it and were just helping a friend through.
Anyways all of this is a long ways back in my memory so I could be mistaken.
Probably because he is representative of the vast majority of the paying customers. Remember that label on the game box and splash screen that says something along the lines "game experience may change"
For me the problem with outdoor PvP or RvR in WAR was the often incredibly long ways you had to run back after you lost a fight. Granted that's part of the death penalty and whatnot but it was too annoying when I could que up for scenarios and be assured of getting into some good action and not have to run or ride back to the fight for five minutes if I died.
I think a major problem with PvP in all of these games is that they are rewarded with items. So you end up with a lot of people just doing it for the item rewards. Which leads to people looking for every shorcut they can to farm the points or whatever for that equipment. I think the best system would be to simply keep a record of whom killed whom, how many times, level differences, etc. Let the record be the reward it's self. By encouraging it with gear, exp, coin or whatever you just encourage the behaviour that the pvp crowd always complains about.
When are you talking about that Strath was impossible? For a long time it was a 10 or 15 man instance just like Scholomance. Eventually they limited it to five man only status and it was difficult for a little while until they rebalanced it to be played through by just five. It might have been difficult then but it wasn't that ridiculously hard. The toughest part was finding a warlock or mage so that you could do the AoE parts.
S/He isn't complaining that other people can do something he can't. He's complaining that very large parts of the game are inaccessable without an unnacceptably large, to him anyways, investment of time. This is a common issue where everyone considers anyone that plays more than them Hardcore and anyone that plays less Casual.
In your example you pick a game that you have to play against another player. Not a game that is played against an automated and scripted opponent. And chess is not a hard game in and of it's selt. It's the skill of your chosen opponent that makes it more or less of a challenge. I could slaughter my nephews at chess all day and be bored by it. They would likely be frustrated and give up on it completely.
Other than the lame arguements involving waving epeen's around there isn't a good reason to not institute varying levels of difficulty within any game and even between servers. Diablo2 has Hardcore mode, which is pretty popular and represents much more skill and determination to reach max level on than anything WoW has to offer.
In EQ I remember a friend that played a Warrior taking some minor peice of loot as an upgrade. This cause a double take because he was well into his 50's and the item he wanted was considered trash by most players. Turned out he was wearing some generic bit of armor dropped by a mid 30's mob that was normally sold to a vendor.
In WoW I had a Warrior that I played as DPS mainly. In Vanilla WoW he cleared AQ20, MC, Onyxia and ZG. Most of those many times. When TBC was released I was very happy to find an upgrade for my green shoulder armor that I had worn for the last year. They were basic turtle shell looking +13 str +13 agi, sadly they were better than any other plate shoulders I had seen drop. I almost took the leather shoulders from UBRS when no rogue wanted them but I couldn't make myself use leather armor as a warrior.
You are correct on all accounts there. The thing is though that rarely has Blizzard reduced the challenges so hugely that the same rewards are now worth a lot less. And in any MMO almost every bit of gear really just represents an investment of time played working specifically toward that goal. So naturally those that obtain that item earlier worked harder for it, or atleast devoted a higher percentage of play time towards it. If Vanilla WoW had stayed vanilla forever eventually almost everyone would have all the best gear. The hardcore would then have nothing to brag on but the fact that they had it earlier or can do it faster. Moving the Carrot lets the Hardcore always have something they can readily brag about.
By reducing the overall difficulty the hardcores' time frame for bragging is just reduced. And that's what the hardcore players are really upset about.
I don't know that succeding in vanilla WoW required a fail in Real Life. But it did require either a ton of time, or slightly less time but at very inconvient times of the day alwasy combined with being lucky enough to make it into a large group of folks that could do the same. I managed to finish Molten Core, Onyxia, Zul Gurub and parts of AQ20 on two of my characters before The Burning Crusade was released. It took a lot of weekend late nights in raids because I couldn't afford to stay up past midnight on worknights. And my characters were always prepared for raids because I spent my other play time specifically preparing for them, I did very little leeching for equipment in raids.
All that said I didn't really come anywhere close to reaching the end game in WoW. And as a person that played probably close to 40 hours a week I don't know that that's a good business plan. The hardcore raiders were and are still the vocal minority. Making the end game encounters more readily available and playable might upset that minority but it's good business sense. Blizzard does not exist to take the money of the masses and produce a challenge so difficult that only the elite few will be able to feel like they "won" in any sense of the word.
I stopped playing before the last expansion came out and I doubt I'll go back to it. I'd rather spend the subscription money on lunch with my friends. I've been playing Diablo2 again a lot recently and the challenge of playing new builds is very entertaining even when the content is always exactly the same.
I'm not sure that mining a landfill would be easier than scooping plastic out of the ocean. Not to mention that while some landfills are not contained and are polluting the environment, the mess in the pacific is truely astounding in size and environmental implications.
Isn't turning the waste plastic into useable fuel recycling? There are many types of plastic and a number of them apparently aren't worth recycling into other plastic products. We might as well reduce the volume of that waste and get some fuel out of it. And as another poster mentioned this would be a great thing to implement on a fleet of large ships in the pacific gyre. That would benefit us by generating fuel, cleaning up a huge area of pollution and saving an immense amount of animal and plant life in that region.
Actually I thought of Evian.
I like this idea though it would take more than just a fishing net. A lot of the plastic in the patch has broken into much finer particulates than you could catch in simple fishing net.
Anyways the idea has a lot of merit in my opinion. Where I live, Montgomery Alabama, they have actually just decided to stop picking up recyclables because it's cutting into the budget too much. If this technology works out we could possibly see cities collecting recyclables, processing it themselves, and then using the fuel to help defray or eliminate their fuel costs. Heck they might even produce enough to sell it at a profit.
I can't vouch for the mass produced vs. individually crafted bit. But I played the violin for eight years when I was in grade school. I had three different violins in that time and I can testify to the varying quality of sound that each put out. The one I liked best seemed to be older than the others. It had a label inside it that I believe claimed it was made in 1879 or something. Anyways my point is that even an amateur can tell the difference in quality of many violins. I don't know that I could detect the differences in very high quality violins but I don't see why anyone let alone a professional couldn't.
I think Subaru actually has made the code for all their ECU's public. Or at least the code for my friends WRX was available. He wanted to tune his car via modification of the ECU's programing but all the shops that could do it would charge obscenely for it. So he wrote his own software to allow his laptop to read from the ECU in real time and reprogram it using another piece of free software.
The odometer could be used for most of the intended purpose. But using GPS would allow for more granularity in the taxing according to what roads you use. And it could also be used to help the gubmint more accurately prioritize road projects depending on their usage. The odometer is also a fairly simple device to tamper with when compared to a GPS. Although a GPS could easily be made completely inoperable by shielding it's antenna.
The benefit of all this though has to be weighed as you stated against the potential and almost assured abuses that it will be subject to. With the advent of camera devices being used to enforce traffic laws and video camera's being used almost everywhere you go the potential to be tracked every moment of your day is already there. Personally I think it's inevitable and I hope that we as a society ensure that it is abused as little as possible.
Haha you should give the song Rev 22:20 by Puscifer featuring Maynard James Keenan and Danny Lohner a listen, I definitely wouldn't play it around any religous friends though.
Actually I was expecting it to say "We apologise for the inconvenience."
Well I remember a garter snake biting my older brother a couple of times on the hand. But he probably didn't get a bite like a small animal might as the snakes mouth was rather small.
I keep the lid down because my wife likes to keep things on the back of the toilet and it's also immediately next to the sink. I have no desire to fish anything out of the toilet. Anything that ends up in it had better be leaving via the sewage pipes.