As it turns out, Firefox does support MARQUEE - it's an XBL bound element. It makes for a good demo of XBL in HTML. Also shows off XBL inheritance.
Go ahead, take a look. Use the following URLs in Firefox to pull up the source:
resource://gre/res/html.css - do a search for "marquee" to find the CSS rules
chrome://xbl-marquee/content/xbl-marquee.xml - contains the actual XBL bindings that implements the marquee. (I'd suggest using View Source on that to maintain the formatting, otherwise it looks weird.)
I agree, but I think it would happen with adults too, depending on how they did the study. People follow authority figures all the time, assuming they know what's best.
So if the experimenters just told people to "do these steps" the people would most likely assume that each step had some point to the research, even if they can't understand it. After all, it's a scientist telling you to do these things. I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't know why they wanted all those steps to be completed. I'd assume there was a reason, though, and do them anyway.
If it wasn't made clear that the goal was to do whatever the goal was and not to do the process suggested, I'd bet most people would follow the steps given, assuming that the useless steps had some use to the researchers.
The Milgram experiment (or here, if you don't trust the Wikipedia) proved that people are very willing to do what an authority tells them to do, even if it's against their better judgement.
Yeah, so I just started up the PC version, and, um - that doesn't work. You have to press Enter every single step of the way.
I don't know when you get out the POL viewer and into FFXI itself if you can just hold enter, because the update process is also a giant hassle. You can't tell it to just keep trying, you have to press Enter every single time the update fails.
Not really true. If you bring up a Gnome file dialog and just start typing a file name Gnome will open a text box and allow you to enter the file name with tab completion.
Really? I just tried that, and indeed, a text box appeared out of nowhere that was WAY too narrow to hold a full path name. Then I tried to tab-complete my way to a file. Pressing Tab changed the focus to the next control, making the text box disappear.
I used to be a GNOME supporter. I really wanted GNOME to succeed. But it's CRAP like the new file selection dialog box that forces me to say that Linus Torvalds is absolutely correct: KDE is, simply, better. GNOME has been becoming less and less usable than KDE from my point of view.
My question is, once you've equipped your great new item, what are you going to do with it? Take a screenshot?
WoW has a PvP part - they'll use it to gain some small advantage in PvP. Or maybe some small advantage in PvE.
The items make your character more powerful, and in the end, that's really all there is to do in most MMORPGs. So people are willing to spend money to skip the "boring" time parts and just get the item so they can have more fun in some other section of the game.
Think of it this way: why do people by cheating devices for consoles? Some people would rather have the powerful item and could care less about playing the game to actually "earn" it.
Mac OS always used file extensions, they just called them something else. Technically, the original FAT system stored file names as an 8-byte name and a 3-byte extension. In exactly the same way, Mac OS saved the file name, a "file type" code (a four-byte extension) and a "creator" code.
So under DOS you might have "MYFILE.TXT", under Mac OS you'd have something more like "MyFile.TEXT.R*ch". It's still the same concept, just expressed a different way.
And to all the people saying that "BSD doesn't use file extensions:" Yes, you're technically correct. BSD, the kernel, doesn't use file extensions. However, every file system viewer I've used on a UNIX machine did. It's just metadata that happens to be stored as part of the file name. Yes, it would be really cool if we started using MIME types to move that metadata out of the file name. But that metadata should STILL be visible, so that someone call tell the difference between "CoolPic.jpg" and "CoolPic.exe" without having to open a metadata browser.
(Along those lines, it would be really cool if Windows Explorer started adding an icon to all executable files, sort of like it does for shortcut files. Something to mark a file as being "executable" even if it happens to use the same icon that JPEG files do.)
Windows NT/2000/XP already have this (sorta). You can set execute privileges on files, just like in UNIX.
However, a default Windows XP install will be set up to inherit all permissions from the root of the drive, and will have the Users group set to Read, Execute, and Traverse Directories. So everything you download is by default executable, and no program I know of ever bothers to unset that. (Actually, the latest version of IE will store some metadata with executable files downloaded through it that marks the file as being "untrusted," but I think that only Windows Explorer (basically, IE itself) actually respects that metadata.)
The other thing you need to understand is that, like UNIX, you can essentially exec (on Windows, ShellExecute) any file on the system. Unlike UNIX, though, the kernel won't actually try and interpret the file. Instead the Windows API (I think) will look up the file type and send the file off to the approriate handler. So when you call ShellExecute, you're essentially acting like the user clicked on the file in Windows Explorer. To most programs like AIM, there's no difference between executing another program and opening a file in its viewer. As far as I know, there's really no way of asking Windows "are you going to just look at that, or actually run that?"
The basic point here is that while Windows XP (and NTFS) do support an Executable flag, by default it's always on. Plus the "launch file" API will also run programs, and there's really no way to be certain that a file you're launching won't essentially be an executable.
Re:Can AJAX finally bring us "push technology"
on
Ajax in Action
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Nope. Push is dead, NAT killed it. (Well, a whole bunch of things killed it, but essentially you can't connect back to a client any more, and there are a whole host of reasons why you generally don't want to leave connections open.)
However, you can do what email clients have done for ages: poll. And that's what things that emulate what you're talking about essentially do.
Essentially, with AJAX, you'll have some JavaScript program that uses the good ol' window.setInterval to poll the server every five minutes or so. It gets back an XML document that contains a list of changes, if any, to the page you're looking at. If the data has changed, it then uses the DOM to alter the page to display the new information.
Effectively, though, it's just a page that refreshes automatically via JavaScript. Because it can pull back an XML document, it doesn't have to download ALL the HTML stuff to get the data. Because it's in the background, it doesn't have to "destroy" the page to load the new information, allowing it to be added to an existing page in a seamless manner.
It's really nothing new, exactly, it's just that the most popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari) all support XMLHttpRequest in some form now, making it feasible to use it without cutting out some section of your user base. It's just message passing in JavaScript.
I'd rather someone invent a "detect humor" device first, and mandate it's installation in anyone who fails a standardized humor test. Considering that now I've gotten two people to tell me to get a video recorder of some form, instead of realizing that I have no expectation of actually changing the air time, and was really just joking about how I haven't been able to catch the show for the past couple of months.
The simple reality is that I don't care enough about TV to actually bother recording shows, even shows I like to catch when I'm around. Back when I was actually at home when Mythbusters was on, I was spending the time playing World of Warcraft, with the TV on. I learned something about keeping beer cold in Molten Core, and something about turning people into Living Bombs, but that was about it.
So, no, I don't expect them to change the TV schedule over me. Especially because reruns of the show are on when I can actually watch them. Both questions are "a joke." Although I think it would be really funny if Slashdot actually asked them, both in a "why are you wasting their time with that?" sort of way, and a "I wonder if the editors got the joke?" sort of way.
But, hey, I've already gotten a question asked in one Slashdot interview that I had no intention of actually asking the guy, since it was really directed at Slashdot itself, so you never know...
They actually finish testing the myths. I think it's fairly clear that they don't read Slashdot. If they did, they'd just have a bunch of half-finished projects that never reached conclusion.:)
Well, actually, I already have a TV tuner card and it's hooked up, so it only involves effort, but the point still remains.
Brings to mind my question...
on
Ask The Mythbusters
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Given that you often refer to getting "lots of angry emails" based on the show, why would you agree to do an interview with one of the websites that's frequented by the type of people that generate most of that angry email? Are you hoping that they'll waste time posting comments and that you can let the moderators get rid of them as opposed to your staff?
Oh, and can you get Discovery to show the show at some time other than 9:00PM EST on Wednesdays? I have a commitment then and always have to miss it. (Silly family.)
Try playing Shadow of the Collossus. That game is art of art's sake, at the expense of gameplay in some ways. (Freaking camera.)
In the exact same way that TV shows are art and movies are art and plays are art, games are art. I think most people would agree that board games are a form of art, so it would follow that video games are art as well.
Besides, I'd have to question your statement that "art is for the sake of art." I'd say all art is for the sake of entertainment, at the core. The entire point of art is some form of entertainment, even if it is a more intellectual form of entertainment.
Short answer: No, it just assumes you're running as an administrator, which is generally true.
Much longer answer:
Windows XP comes from two roots: Windows as a DOS shell, and Windows NT. Both of these operating systems encouraged running as Administrator, for a variety of reasons.
Windows as a DOS shell is easy to explain, it was a single-user system, and therefore really had no security system in place at all. This single-user style persisted through to Windows ME, and is essentially "emulated" in Windows XP Home by having the users, by default, run as Administrators. (You can change them to regular users after creating new accounts, though.) By default, Windows XP Home doesn't require passwords on accounts - you just click on the user account you want to use, and you're logged in. So even making "less privileged" users isn't all that helpful. (I believe, by default, Windows XP Home DOES disable the built-in Administrator account, though.)
Anyway, Windows NT is another story. Technically, an "Administrator" account is just a normal user account that just happens to belong to the Administrators group. Because Windows NT's security model is much more complicated than the Unix security model (and I'd argue much more robust), essentially the Administrators group is a group with all permissions set to "allow." (There is a super-user under Windows NT. It's called "SYSTEM" and it's essentially identical to root under Unix.)
But anyway, Windows NT's security model is very complicated. Combined with no ability to "sudo" in Windows NT 4, most people who used NT just made themselves Administrators so that they didn't have to poke around the miriade of settings and ACLs to give them permissions to do whatever they needed to do.
Windows 2000 added "Run As" which allows you to essentially "su" and switch to another account when starting a program. This meant that it would in theory be possible to administer a system from a non-privileged account, much like Mac OS X does.
But the damage was already done. Most of the Windows software had been written for Windows 9x or assumed that you'd be an administrator under Windows NT. So attempting to run as a non-privileged account required constantly using the Run As feature to run the programs you needed to use as an administrator. (For a while, Winamp wouldn't run under a non-privileged account.) Of course, this meant that since most programs were running as administrator ANYWAY, you really weren't gaining much security.
Now, with Windows XP Pro, this is starting to change. Microsoft now requires user programs to run on non-privileged accounts. It's much clearer where user-specific information goes. But the damage has been done. Windows XP Home defaults to an administrator account for all new accounts. Most people are used to not having to enter a password to change their system settings and don't understand the concept of a non-privileged account.
So almost everyone using Windows is running as an administrator, and therefore there's no need to require a password to install a rootkit. They already have the permissions they require.
Re:Thats the whole point of the "puzzler"
on
Java Puzzlers
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· Score: 1
And this differentiates char from short how, exactly?
The answer? A short gets translated to an int using a signed cast, and a char gets translated to an int using an unsigned cast.
Beyond that, the two data types are identical.
In fact, that whole "always convert to integer" thing essentially makes the use of bytes and shorts completely worthless outside of arrays, since all math done using them is just integer math.
Re:master of the obvious
on
Java Puzzlers
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· Score: 1
Actually, the Java Language Specification is pretty clear that char is a number. From the spec:
The integral types are byte, short, int, and long, whose values are 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit signed two's-complement integers, respectively, and char, whose values are 16-bit unsigned integers representing Unicode characters.
char, being a number, is subject to integer math operations. Like someone posted, 'A' + 'B' comes up with the result 131 - as an int, at that, because all integer math on types smaller than an int are promoted to ints.
Re:Thats the whole point of the "puzzler"
on
Java Puzzlers
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· Score: 4, Informative
What's the difference between short and char in Java?
One is signed, the other is unsigned.
chars are treated just like numbers in Java. You can do numeric comparisons with them, you can add them, you can subtract them, they're just numbers.
By definition, a char in Java is a 16-bit unsigned value. It happens to represent a single UTF-16 sequence, although arguably you could have done that using a short.
Pointless random comment. I usually just call people using whatever gender their character is, unless they correct me. So I'm in a Valkrumm Dunes party, and I refer to our WHM Tarutaru as "he" and then get yelled at for not noticing that she was a she. I mean, how could I tell? It's a Tarutaru, they're practically genderless!
(And on that note, I also know a Mithra who's actually played by a girl. But I still find it hard to believe that any adult, anywhere, would be playing a Night Elf Rogue.:))
She's a female, NE rogue and has been in a guild for about four months now. They talk all the time and she's said many times that she's a woman and all that. Well recently, on their guild website they were posting pictures of themselves and people were shocked that she was actually a she.
I think that might have more to do with the stereotype of people who play female Night Elf rogues. I wouldn't have believed she was really a woman, either.:P
(I suppose maybe a 12-year-old girl, but an adult playing a Night Elf Rogue? That's unusual!)
There already are Blood Elves in the game, though, they're just not playable. And the vast majority of them are at war with the Horde. (Um...) So it's not like the artwork wasn't used in the original game despite being developed, it's just that it wasn't fully fleshed out into a full race.
So, with that out of the way, here are my thoughts on the expansion.
First off, Blood Elves as Horde members. Um. The Horde is now only 3/5ths Horde, and now 2/5ths "other." So, uh, yay Blizzard. Keep that Warcraft Horde feeling going!
The level 70 cap: HOW does that work? Are you going to be giving us more talent points, utterly destroying the current talent trees? (Dark Pact/Ruin, here I come!) Do you simply not receive any new talents for leveling up past 60, and only gain new abilities? (Fear my new Rank X+1 Spell, which looks identical to Rank X, but does 50 more damage! Magic in WoW looks lame.) Or is it just going to be more stats - yay?
Socketed items? Enough people were already calling this Diablo III. Blech. What do you think Enchanting is, then? Wasn't that essentially socketed items? I can see a way for it to work, assuming that sockets are filled via trade skills (please, please, PLEASE, make trade skills useful in the expansion), but socketed item?
I dunno, I'm just not that excited about this expansion. Outland might be cool.
Slashdot Mirror
As it turns out, Firefox does support MARQUEE - it's an XBL bound element. It makes for a good demo of XBL in HTML. Also shows off XBL inheritance.
Go ahead, take a look. Use the following URLs in Firefox to pull up the source:
Isn't XBL cool?
I agree, but I think it would happen with adults too, depending on how they did the study. People follow authority figures all the time, assuming they know what's best.
So if the experimenters just told people to "do these steps" the people would most likely assume that each step had some point to the research, even if they can't understand it. After all, it's a scientist telling you to do these things. I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't know why they wanted all those steps to be completed. I'd assume there was a reason, though, and do them anyway.
If it wasn't made clear that the goal was to do whatever the goal was and not to do the process suggested, I'd bet most people would follow the steps given, assuming that the useless steps had some use to the researchers.
The Milgram experiment (or here, if you don't trust the Wikipedia) proved that people are very willing to do what an authority tells them to do, even if it's against their better judgement.
Hey! It finally completely updated successfully!
And you can't hold down Enter to get into the game once in the actual game either. You actually have to press Enter every step of the way.
Yeah, so I just started up the PC version, and, um - that doesn't work. You have to press Enter every single step of the way.
I don't know when you get out the POL viewer and into FFXI itself if you can just hold enter, because the update process is also a giant hassle. You can't tell it to just keep trying, you have to press Enter every single time the update fails.
Really? I just tried that, and indeed, a text box appeared out of nowhere that was WAY too narrow to hold a full path name. Then I tried to tab-complete my way to a file. Pressing Tab changed the focus to the next control, making the text box disappear.
I used to be a GNOME supporter. I really wanted GNOME to succeed. But it's CRAP like the new file selection dialog box that forces me to say that Linus Torvalds is absolutely correct: KDE is, simply, better. GNOME has been becoming less and less usable than KDE from my point of view.
WoW has a PvP part - they'll use it to gain some small advantage in PvP. Or maybe some small advantage in PvE.
The items make your character more powerful, and in the end, that's really all there is to do in most MMORPGs. So people are willing to spend money to skip the "boring" time parts and just get the item so they can have more fun in some other section of the game.
Think of it this way: why do people by cheating devices for consoles? Some people would rather have the powerful item and could care less about playing the game to actually "earn" it.
Mac OS always used file extensions, they just called them something else. Technically, the original FAT system stored file names as an 8-byte name and a 3-byte extension. In exactly the same way, Mac OS saved the file name, a "file type" code (a four-byte extension) and a "creator" code.
So under DOS you might have "MYFILE.TXT", under Mac OS you'd have something more like "MyFile.TEXT.R*ch". It's still the same concept, just expressed a different way.
And to all the people saying that "BSD doesn't use file extensions:" Yes, you're technically correct. BSD, the kernel, doesn't use file extensions. However, every file system viewer I've used on a UNIX machine did. It's just metadata that happens to be stored as part of the file name. Yes, it would be really cool if we started using MIME types to move that metadata out of the file name. But that metadata should STILL be visible, so that someone call tell the difference between "CoolPic.jpg" and "CoolPic.exe" without having to open a metadata browser.
(Along those lines, it would be really cool if Windows Explorer started adding an icon to all executable files, sort of like it does for shortcut files. Something to mark a file as being "executable" even if it happens to use the same icon that JPEG files do.)
Windows NT/2000/XP already have this (sorta). You can set execute privileges on files, just like in UNIX.
However, a default Windows XP install will be set up to inherit all permissions from the root of the drive, and will have the Users group set to Read, Execute, and Traverse Directories. So everything you download is by default executable, and no program I know of ever bothers to unset that. (Actually, the latest version of IE will store some metadata with executable files downloaded through it that marks the file as being "untrusted," but I think that only Windows Explorer (basically, IE itself) actually respects that metadata.)
The other thing you need to understand is that, like UNIX, you can essentially exec (on Windows, ShellExecute ) any file on the system. Unlike UNIX, though, the kernel won't actually try and interpret the file. Instead the Windows API (I think) will look up the file type and send the file off to the approriate handler. So when you call ShellExecute, you're essentially acting like the user clicked on the file in Windows Explorer. To most programs like AIM, there's no difference between executing another program and opening a file in its viewer. As far as I know, there's really no way of asking Windows "are you going to just look at that, or actually run that?"
The basic point here is that while Windows XP (and NTFS) do support an Executable flag, by default it's always on. Plus the "launch file" API will also run programs, and there's really no way to be certain that a file you're launching won't essentially be an executable.
Nope. Push is dead, NAT killed it. (Well, a whole bunch of things killed it, but essentially you can't connect back to a client any more, and there are a whole host of reasons why you generally don't want to leave connections open.)
However, you can do what email clients have done for ages: poll. And that's what things that emulate what you're talking about essentially do.
Essentially, with AJAX, you'll have some JavaScript program that uses the good ol' window.setInterval to poll the server every five minutes or so. It gets back an XML document that contains a list of changes, if any, to the page you're looking at. If the data has changed, it then uses the DOM to alter the page to display the new information.
Effectively, though, it's just a page that refreshes automatically via JavaScript. Because it can pull back an XML document, it doesn't have to download ALL the HTML stuff to get the data. Because it's in the background, it doesn't have to "destroy" the page to load the new information, allowing it to be added to an existing page in a seamless manner.
It's really nothing new, exactly, it's just that the most popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari) all support XMLHttpRequest in some form now, making it feasible to use it without cutting out some section of your user base. It's just message passing in JavaScript.
I'd rather someone invent a "detect humor" device first, and mandate it's installation in anyone who fails a standardized humor test. Considering that now I've gotten two people to tell me to get a video recorder of some form, instead of realizing that I have no expectation of actually changing the air time, and was really just joking about how I haven't been able to catch the show for the past couple of months.
The simple reality is that I don't care enough about TV to actually bother recording shows, even shows I like to catch when I'm around. Back when I was actually at home when Mythbusters was on, I was spending the time playing World of Warcraft, with the TV on. I learned something about keeping beer cold in Molten Core, and something about turning people into Living Bombs, but that was about it.
So, no, I don't expect them to change the TV schedule over me. Especially because reruns of the show are on when I can actually watch them. Both questions are "a joke." Although I think it would be really funny if Slashdot actually asked them, both in a "why are you wasting their time with that?" sort of way, and a "I wonder if the editors got the joke?" sort of way.
But, hey, I've already gotten a question asked in one Slashdot interview that I had no intention of actually asking the guy, since it was really directed at Slashdot itself, so you never know...
They actually finish testing the myths. I think it's fairly clear that they don't read Slashdot. If they did, they'd just have a bunch of half-finished projects that never reached conclusion. :)
That involves effort and money.
Well, actually, I already have a TV tuner card and it's hooked up, so it only involves effort, but the point still remains.
Given that you often refer to getting "lots of angry emails" based on the show, why would you agree to do an interview with one of the websites that's frequented by the type of people that generate most of that angry email? Are you hoping that they'll waste time posting comments and that you can let the moderators get rid of them as opposed to your staff?
Oh, and can you get Discovery to show the show at some time other than 9:00PM EST on Wednesdays? I have a commitment then and always have to miss it. (Silly family.)
Google Talk is based on Jabber, and therefore already can be used by quite a few clients.
Don't know if that'll actually help Jabber get more users, but, well, it's something.
Gah, the slashes are BACKWARDS there! It's C:\DOS\RUN, not C:/DOS/RUN!
Worst tee-shirt joke ever!
(I wonder what it means that that's seriously the first thing I thought when I saw it...)
Try playing Shadow of the Collossus. That game is art of art's sake, at the expense of gameplay in some ways. (Freaking camera.)
In the exact same way that TV shows are art and movies are art and plays are art, games are art. I think most people would agree that board games are a form of art, so it would follow that video games are art as well.
Besides, I'd have to question your statement that "art is for the sake of art." I'd say all art is for the sake of entertainment, at the core. The entire point of art is some form of entertainment, even if it is a more intellectual form of entertainment.
Short answer: No, it just assumes you're running as an administrator, which is generally true.
Much longer answer:
Windows XP comes from two roots: Windows as a DOS shell, and Windows NT. Both of these operating systems encouraged running as Administrator, for a variety of reasons.
Windows as a DOS shell is easy to explain, it was a single-user system, and therefore really had no security system in place at all. This single-user style persisted through to Windows ME, and is essentially "emulated" in Windows XP Home by having the users, by default, run as Administrators. (You can change them to regular users after creating new accounts, though.) By default, Windows XP Home doesn't require passwords on accounts - you just click on the user account you want to use, and you're logged in. So even making "less privileged" users isn't all that helpful. (I believe, by default, Windows XP Home DOES disable the built-in Administrator account, though.)
Anyway, Windows NT is another story. Technically, an "Administrator" account is just a normal user account that just happens to belong to the Administrators group. Because Windows NT's security model is much more complicated than the Unix security model (and I'd argue much more robust), essentially the Administrators group is a group with all permissions set to "allow." (There is a super-user under Windows NT. It's called "SYSTEM" and it's essentially identical to root under Unix.)
But anyway, Windows NT's security model is very complicated. Combined with no ability to "sudo" in Windows NT 4, most people who used NT just made themselves Administrators so that they didn't have to poke around the miriade of settings and ACLs to give them permissions to do whatever they needed to do.
Windows 2000 added "Run As" which allows you to essentially "su" and switch to another account when starting a program. This meant that it would in theory be possible to administer a system from a non-privileged account, much like Mac OS X does.
But the damage was already done. Most of the Windows software had been written for Windows 9x or assumed that you'd be an administrator under Windows NT. So attempting to run as a non-privileged account required constantly using the Run As feature to run the programs you needed to use as an administrator. (For a while, Winamp wouldn't run under a non-privileged account.) Of course, this meant that since most programs were running as administrator ANYWAY, you really weren't gaining much security.
Now, with Windows XP Pro, this is starting to change. Microsoft now requires user programs to run on non-privileged accounts. It's much clearer where user-specific information goes. But the damage has been done. Windows XP Home defaults to an administrator account for all new accounts. Most people are used to not having to enter a password to change their system settings and don't understand the concept of a non-privileged account.
So almost everyone using Windows is running as an administrator, and therefore there's no need to require a password to install a rootkit. They already have the permissions they require.
And this differentiates char from short how, exactly?
The answer? A short gets translated to an int using a signed cast, and a char gets translated to an int using an unsigned cast.
Beyond that, the two data types are identical.
In fact, that whole "always convert to integer" thing essentially makes the use of bytes and shorts completely worthless outside of arrays, since all math done using them is just integer math.
Actually, the Java Language Specification is pretty clear that char is a number. From the spec:
char, being a number, is subject to integer math operations. Like someone posted, 'A' + 'B' comes up with the result 131 - as an int, at that, because all integer math on types smaller than an int are promoted to ints.
What's the difference between short and char in Java?
One is signed, the other is unsigned.
chars are treated just like numbers in Java. You can do numeric comparisons with them, you can add them, you can subtract them, they're just numbers.
By definition, a char in Java is a 16-bit unsigned value. It happens to represent a single UTF-16 sequence, although arguably you could have done that using a short.
But, here, check the language spec. A char is just an unsigned short. That's it.
Pointless random comment. I usually just call people using whatever gender their character is, unless they correct me. So I'm in a Valkrumm Dunes party, and I refer to our WHM Tarutaru as "he" and then get yelled at for not noticing that she was a she. I mean, how could I tell? It's a Tarutaru, they're practically genderless!
(And on that note, I also know a Mithra who's actually played by a girl. But I still find it hard to believe that any adult, anywhere, would be playing a Night Elf Rogue. :))
I think that might have more to do with the stereotype of people who play female Night Elf rogues. I wouldn't have believed she was really a woman, either. :P
(I suppose maybe a 12-year-old girl, but an adult playing a Night Elf Rogue? That's unusual!)
My computer has digital audio in. My Sony PlayStation 2 has digital audio out, and can play CDs. Hmmmm....
See, this concept scares me. So, Jewelcrafting is going to create jewels - let's call them enchantments - to place on items that use sockets.
So, uh, what's the point of enchanting, then?! It's way too easy to see Blizzard set this up in such a way that the two clash.
I dunno, I really need more details, but from what they've given us, the expansion sounds lame, outside of Outland.
There already are Blood Elves in the game, though, they're just not playable. And the vast majority of them are at war with the Horde. (Um...) So it's not like the artwork wasn't used in the original game despite being developed, it's just that it wasn't fully fleshed out into a full race.
So, with that out of the way, here are my thoughts on the expansion.
First off, Blood Elves as Horde members. Um. The Horde is now only 3/5ths Horde, and now 2/5ths "other." So, uh, yay Blizzard. Keep that Warcraft Horde feeling going!
The level 70 cap: HOW does that work? Are you going to be giving us more talent points, utterly destroying the current talent trees? (Dark Pact/Ruin, here I come!) Do you simply not receive any new talents for leveling up past 60, and only gain new abilities? (Fear my new Rank X+1 Spell, which looks identical to Rank X, but does 50 more damage! Magic in WoW looks lame.) Or is it just going to be more stats - yay?
Socketed items? Enough people were already calling this Diablo III. Blech. What do you think Enchanting is, then? Wasn't that essentially socketed items? I can see a way for it to work, assuming that sockets are filled via trade skills (please, please, PLEASE, make trade skills useful in the expansion), but socketed item?
I dunno, I'm just not that excited about this expansion. Outland might be cool.