Sadly, Blizzard will probably bet away with this highhandedness because few WoW players are likely to stop playing over this in protest.
Most of the people I play WoW with hate cheating just as much as I do. So, sorry to break this to you, but most of us are cheering that Blizzard won.
Blizzard of all gaming companies ought to be respected here because their games aren't Microsoft Windows-only. And with WoW, they even worked with the Wine developers to ensure that the Warden would allow WoW to run under Wine.
It's been a while since I was a WoW player, but I recall a number of high-level fish that gave some serious bonuses when you used them in recipes.
That's one way of putting it. Basically everything that drops cookable meat/fish in Outlands cooks into food that does something very nice. Grilled Mudfish give a good agility bonus, Zangarian Sporefish regens mana. I forget what the fish counter part to Blackened Basilisk ("Seared to perfection!") is, but that gives a nice mana and spell casting bonus (my level 70s are Hunter and Rogue so I don't pay much attention...). All of those sell for good gold in the AH and make nice presents to give to guildies.
At the lower levels, Sagefish regens mana and Winter Squid gives the best Agility bonus at a low level.
So yes, if everyone were given top fishing skill, it would unbalance the game. It's certainly unfair to the folks like me who earned our title of Master Baiter the hard way.
I would use Glider if it were allowed or undetectable. And I would never use Glider in PvP or to farm mats, rep, or exp. It would be used to fishing and dual-boxing only
That's pathetic. I'll use fishing as an example. You can safely fish for Stonescale Eel off the pier in Tanaris at an extremely low level. That's a three-fer. You cook most of the fish you catch to level cooking. You put the Stonescale Eel in the AH, hello level 40 mount, and you get your Fishing to 300. You'll need a Big Iron pole (easy to farm) and stacks of +100 fishing lures, but those are easy to come by too.
At 300 you qualify for the daily fishing quest once you get to level 70 and skill it the rest of the way for free while you are doing the daily. Fishing in Nagrand (The One That Got Away) is kind of dicey, but you skill up so fast now anyway it doesn't matter much.
Blizzard has nerfed the skilling requirements for fishing at least twice since I've been playing. What's the point of playing a grinding game if you have a robot do all your work for you?... and Blizzard keeps making it easier any way?
If I "hook" the whole system with something (say a rootkit) and then launch WoW by it's "legal" means, am I in the clear or is that still a violation?
You and most of the people criticising this judgement fail to understand what is really going on here. World of Warcraft actively encourages people to write and use add-ons. The WoW UI is done in LUA, Blizzard has a forum http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11114&sid=1 documenting it. The spirit of the rules is that you can customize the game any way you want just so long as it does not take unfair advantage of other players. The concept behind Glider isn't new, see http://code.google.com/p/rogomatic/ but it certainly constitutes unfair advantage and thus is taboo.
I would guess that most players eventually end up using some sort of an add-on. I use the Cosmos UI and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the best ideas it has had end up being incorporated into the game. What is wrong is having a program play the game for you (Glider); that is cheating.
I am uncomfortable with the grounds Blizzard used in this case, but I certainly support what they are doing. It's yet another example of Blizzard taking care of us and helping to keep WoW a fair and fun playground. There's a reason why 10 million of us are playing now - Blizzard takes care of its customers.
Blizzard uses Torrent to distribute patches and they had a download available for TBC.
The download wasn't made available until about a month after the CDs were first sold in stores.
However, I will be lining up at midnight at our local gamestop to pickup my copy (several at that) of WotLK so that i can begine playing it at 12:15 , which is the time it takes me to get home from gamestop.
As will I and I suspect most of my fellow guild members.
Whenever they get around to releasing it is OK with me. Quality is the important thing and I am far from exploring all the currently available content as it is.
Named after a Southern California fertilizer company which used the radio and TV advertising slogan "Bandini is the name for steer manure" spoken in provocative tones by a female voice.
Buying Yahoo! doesn't equal to buying the user marketshare. If you buy Yahoo! a lot of users are going to go elsewhere.
I see this was moderated "-1 I don't like what you're saying". It doesn't make it any less true.
Indeed, Microsoft astroturfers have taken over slashdot.
I'm not a Microsoft "hater", I just don't care. I'm O/S agnostic only so far as if it was based on Ken Thompson's work in the 60's and 70's. Computer software and particularly web sites should work with any O/S + browser and when they don't, I give them the finger and go elsewhere. Sadly, Yahoo! has been going towards being a Microsoft-only oriented site for some time now. Whatever, they obviously don't care very much about us folk who prefer a Unix derivative solution.
Can you imagine if it only took one Senator to filibuster something, though?
He could have tried... It takes 60 Senators to stop a filibuster.
And to answer your question, "yes", and then I wake up and get depressed.
Absolutely nothing would ever get done.
Waaaaay too much bad legislation gets through and according to recent polls, it looks like I'm in the solid majority who believe the same thing.
Can you imagine a single digit approval rating for Congress? With a majority that's "expected" to gain seats in the next election? Amazing...
The finest years of the Presidency in the US going back to the late 80's were the months of "gridlock" prior to the OK City bombing. "Gridlock" Is Good.
Basically The Messiah had a golden opportunity to rise above the crowd of mediocre clowns who were running for President and blew it. Inexperience and he's just as much a typical politician as anyone else, plain and simple. This won't be the last time he does something like this either.
Dump Obama, vote Hillary! in Denver. At least she has experience.
History repeats itself. The Computer Decency Act, which most people considered unconstitutional was attached to the mid 90's Telecom bill. Asshole politicians, including my own rep, Andrea Seastrand voted for it anyway, saying the Telecom bill was too important to pass regardless of any other crap attached. Look where the Telecom bill led to...
By the way, The Messiah had promised to filibuster the bill until it was dropped. It only takes one Senator to do that. Obama is woefully inexperienced and it shows.
It's still not too late for the Dems to salvage the election, they can still vote for Hillary! in Denver.
So this brings me to a tech question! How is this different than a term I've been hearing around the office, "Bloatware". The context for bloatware is cleaning crap off of a computer it came installed with, that generally slows down the darn thing.
No. "Bloatware" would be like something written in Java or GNU/bin/true. The term you're looking for is "crapplet".
What does "pretexting" have to do with geek culture? You don't have to be a geek to use a chat programs or a web browser and I think very few of us ever engaged in such activity.
You use that word, but I don't think you know what it means.
Pretexting is derived from "pretext" not "texting".
It doesn't make them any less the ultimate authority on American English. "Misunderestimate" ought to be added as a word too if only to serve as a warning for future generations. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Canonical. The Merriam-Webster dictionary is American English the same way that the OED is British English. The person you are responding to is an illiterate savage.
I agree and I hope the idiot(s) who modded you "-1, I disagree with you" are metamodded into oblivion.
PS - Obama isn't going to win the election, even going up against an idiot like McCain. If ever there was a year for a strong third party candidate to come on the scene, this is the year.
The left has just as much opportunity to field its own talk shows with its own biases. And it has tried, several times. But (with a few notable exceptions in extremely liberal areas, such as KGO radio in San Francisco) their content has failed to attract enough of an audience to be profitable.
One of the exceptions is Tom Leykis and he's had the success he's had because he does things his way. I used to listen to his show when he had a local show on KFI. I also used to listen to Jeff Rense and Art Bell...
The "Fairness" Doctrine wasn't about fairness, it was about shutting people up. Radio became vastly more entertaining when it was stopped. And really, how would one present an opposite view to someone like Art Bell in a fashion anyone would want to listen to?
Every television and radio comes with a magical button called an "off switch". More Americans should learn how to use them instead of calling for things they don't like to be banned from broadcasting.
Maybe re-instating the doctrine isn't the right move, but getting rid of it was most certainly not the right move either.
Are you old enough to remember how the "Fairness" Doctrine was implemented? The "alternative" viewpoint was invariably scheduled for something like 4am-6am Sunday morning or some other equally lively time slot.
If you don't like what you're hearing on the radio or seeing on TV, don't listen to or watch it. Without an audience, the market place will take the content off all by itself. Simple, no?
I wouldn't go that far... Learning the Hiragana and Katakana is easy and once you've learned the Katakana you can order food and drink at most bars and restaurants. Kanji is hard, but don't bother learning how to handwrite it. Even the most educated Japanese have forgotten how to do it as it's much faster to type it into a computer/pda/cellphone.
Japanese is good for the mind because it's so alien compared to romantic languages, but common to other asian languages. I have an easier time dealing with my wife's native language (Visayan) because of the grounding I had in Japanese.
I could be a nit-pick and find one error (never end a sentence with a preposition
OB:
Freshman: "Can you tell me where the library is at?"
Senior: "At Harvard, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
Freshman: "O.K., can you tell me where the library is at, you asshole?"
As for a second language, try Japanese. The best Japanese technology never makes it out of Japan. I lived and worked there for almost 5 years and it was a most illuminating experience.
(Since this is slashdot) A guaranteed way to get to talk to a beautiful young woman in Japan is to stand near her somewhere in view of a subway map and then look confused. She'll stop and try to help you get to where ever it is you're going. Works every time...
Your name is essentially your very own brand; might as well try to paint it in a decent light.
Yes, but...
I have a relatively rare spelling of my last name. More typical is "Bauer". Before there was a Google, there were two other people with my name appearing in search results - an actor who appeared in a small role in Scarface and a Hockey playing goalie in Canada.
So which of us gets steven.baur.name or steven.baur (with the new TLDs) as a domain to protect "our good name"?
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, Blizzard will probably bet away with this highhandedness because few WoW players are likely to stop playing over this in protest.
Most of the people I play WoW with hate cheating just as much as I do. So, sorry to break this to you, but most of us are cheering that Blizzard won.
Blizzard of all gaming companies ought to be respected here because their games aren't Microsoft Windows-only. And with WoW, they even worked with the Wine developers to ensure that the Warden would allow WoW to run under Wine.
It's been a while since I was a WoW player, but I recall a number of high-level fish that gave some serious bonuses when you used them in recipes.
That's one way of putting it. Basically everything that drops cookable meat/fish in Outlands cooks into food that does something very nice. Grilled Mudfish give a good agility bonus, Zangarian Sporefish regens mana. I forget what the fish counter part to Blackened Basilisk ("Seared to perfection!") is, but that gives a nice mana and spell casting bonus (my level 70s are Hunter and Rogue so I don't pay much attention ...). All of those sell for good gold in the AH and make nice presents to give to guildies.
At the lower levels, Sagefish regens mana and Winter Squid gives the best Agility bonus at a low level.
So yes, if everyone were given top fishing skill, it would unbalance the game. It's certainly unfair to the folks like me who earned our title of Master Baiter the hard way.
I would use Glider if it were allowed or undetectable. And I would never use Glider in PvP or to farm mats, rep, or exp. It would be used to fishing and dual-boxing only
That's pathetic. I'll use fishing as an example. You can safely fish for Stonescale Eel off the pier in Tanaris at an extremely low level. That's a three-fer. You cook most of the fish you catch to level cooking. You put the Stonescale Eel in the AH, hello level 40 mount, and you get your Fishing to 300. You'll need a Big Iron pole (easy to farm) and stacks of +100 fishing lures, but those are easy to come by too.
At 300 you qualify for the daily fishing quest once you get to level 70 and skill it the rest of the way for free while you are doing the daily. Fishing in Nagrand (The One That Got Away) is kind of dicey, but you skill up so fast now anyway it doesn't matter much.
Blizzard has nerfed the skilling requirements for fishing at least twice since I've been playing. What's the point of playing a grinding game if you have a robot do all your work for you? ... and Blizzard keeps making it easier any way?
That's more or less how Glider works, sans the hardware part. It's not a new concept. Google Expect, Rogomatic, etc.
If I "hook" the whole system with something (say a rootkit) and then launch WoW by it's "legal" means, am I in the clear or is that still a violation?
You and most of the people criticising this judgement fail to understand what is really going on here. World of Warcraft actively encourages people to write and use add-ons. The WoW UI is done in LUA, Blizzard has a forum http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11114&sid=1 documenting it. The spirit of the rules is that you can customize the game any way you want just so long as it does not take unfair advantage of other players. The concept behind Glider isn't new, see http://code.google.com/p/rogomatic/ but it certainly constitutes unfair advantage and thus is taboo.
I would guess that most players eventually end up using some sort of an add-on. I use the Cosmos UI and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the best ideas it has had end up being incorporated into the game. What is wrong is having a program play the game for you (Glider); that is cheating.
I am uncomfortable with the grounds Blizzard used in this case, but I certainly support what they are doing. It's yet another example of Blizzard taking care of us and helping to keep WoW a fair and fun playground. There's a reason why 10 million of us are playing now - Blizzard takes care of its customers.
Blizzard uses Torrent to distribute patches and they had a download available for TBC.
The download wasn't made available until about a month after the CDs were first sold in stores.
However, I will be lining up at midnight at our local gamestop to pickup my copy (several at that) of WotLK so that i can begine playing it at 12:15 , which is the time it takes me to get home from gamestop.
As will I and I suspect most of my fellow guild members.
Whenever they get around to releasing it is OK with me. Quality is the important thing and I am far from exploring all the currently available content as it is.
It certainly doesn't look low to me, but I must be new here.
Named after a Southern California fertilizer company which used the radio and TV advertising slogan "Bandini is the name for steer manure" spoken in provocative tones by a female voice.
Unbelievable, but true. You didn't cite a reference, but ... http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingPage.aspx?type=glp&search=bandini%20is%20the%20name%20for%20steer%20manure&img=\\na0021\2876174\15005184_clean.html
my eyes aren't good enough to see the ad on the tiny image, but I presume some of you younger folk can spot it.
Buying Yahoo! doesn't equal to buying the user marketshare. If you buy Yahoo! a lot of users are going to go elsewhere.
I see this was moderated "-1 I don't like what you're saying". It doesn't make it any less true.
Indeed, Microsoft astroturfers have taken over slashdot.
I'm not a Microsoft "hater", I just don't care. I'm O/S agnostic only so far as if it was based on Ken Thompson's work in the 60's and 70's. Computer software and particularly web sites should work with any O/S + browser and when they don't, I give them the finger and go elsewhere. Sadly, Yahoo! has been going towards being a Microsoft-only oriented site for some time now. Whatever, they obviously don't care very much about us folk who prefer a Unix derivative solution.
Can you imagine if it only took one Senator to filibuster something, though?
He could have tried ... It takes 60 Senators to stop a filibuster.
And to answer your question, "yes", and then I wake up and get depressed.
Absolutely nothing would ever get done.
Waaaaay too much bad legislation gets through and according to recent polls, it looks like I'm in the solid majority who believe the same thing.
Can you imagine a single digit approval rating for Congress? With a majority that's "expected" to gain seats in the next election? Amazing ...
The finest years of the Presidency in the US going back to the late 80's were the months of "gridlock" prior to the OK City bombing. "Gridlock" Is Good.
Basically The Messiah had a golden opportunity to rise above the crowd of mediocre clowns who were running for President and blew it. Inexperience and he's just as much a typical politician as anyone else, plain and simple. This won't be the last time he does something like this either.
Dump Obama, vote Hillary! in Denver. At least she has experience.
It's GPL'ed, it doesn't need to be, nor should it be put in the public domain.
As a matter of fact though, someone recently got it to build with a modern toolchain so that it can be run under a current Linux kernel. See http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Dusting_Off_the_0.01_Kernel
Any way you look at it, Linux 0.01 is still alive and will be for as long as people care about it.
Why not vote against it?
Indeed.
History repeats itself. The Computer Decency Act, which most people considered unconstitutional was attached to the mid 90's Telecom bill. Asshole politicians, including my own rep, Andrea Seastrand voted for it anyway, saying the Telecom bill was too important to pass regardless of any other crap attached. Look where the Telecom bill led to ...
By the way, The Messiah had promised to filibuster the bill until it was dropped. It only takes one Senator to do that. Obama is woefully inexperienced and it shows.
It's still not too late for the Dems to salvage the election, they can still vote for Hillary! in Denver.
So this brings me to a tech question! How is this different than a term I've been hearing around the office, "Bloatware". The context for bloatware is cleaning crap off of a computer it came installed with, that generally slows down the darn thing.
No. "Bloatware" would be like something written in Java or GNU /bin/true. The term you're looking for is "crapplet".
What does "pretexting" have to do with geek culture? You don't have to be a geek to use a chat programs or a web browser and I think very few of us ever engaged in such activity.
You use that word, but I don't think you know what it means.
Pretexting is derived from "pretext" not "texting".
geeky terms just because he never watched pr0n before the internet.
There, fixed that for you. Is "pr0n" considered a geeky term?
It doesn't make them any less the ultimate authority on American English. "Misunderestimate" ought to be added as a word too if only to serve as a warning for future generations. Be afraid, be very afraid.
What do you mean by "authoritative"?
Canonical. The Merriam-Webster dictionary is American English the same way that the OED is British English. The person you are responding to is an illiterate savage.
I agree and I hope the idiot(s) who modded you "-1, I disagree with you" are metamodded into oblivion.
PS - Obama isn't going to win the election, even going up against an idiot like McCain. If ever there was a year for a strong third party candidate to come on the scene, this is the year.
The left has just as much opportunity to field its own talk shows with its own biases. And it has tried, several times. But (with a few notable exceptions in extremely liberal areas, such as KGO radio in San Francisco) their content has failed to attract enough of an audience to be profitable.
One of the exceptions is Tom Leykis and he's had the success he's had because he does things his way. I used to listen to his show when he had a local show on KFI. I also used to listen to Jeff Rense and Art Bell ...
The "Fairness" Doctrine wasn't about fairness, it was about shutting people up. Radio became vastly more entertaining when it was stopped. And really, how would one present an opposite view to someone like Art Bell in a fashion anyone would want to listen to?
Every television and radio comes with a magical button called an "off switch". More Americans should learn how to use them instead of calling for things they don't like to be banned from broadcasting.
so you get handgun bands too.
You mean like the Sex Pistols or Guns and Roses? Now I understand ...
Maybe re-instating the doctrine isn't the right move, but getting rid of it was most certainly not the right move either.
Are you old enough to remember how the "Fairness" Doctrine was implemented? The "alternative" viewpoint was invariably scheduled for something like 4am-6am Sunday morning or some other equally lively time slot.
If you don't like what you're hearing on the radio or seeing on TV, don't listen to or watch it. Without an audience, the market place will take the content off all by itself. Simple, no?
One of those is Mrs. Unelectable #1. Cynthia Mckinney is running for the Green Party.
their 3-way writing system is good for your mind.
I wouldn't go that far ... Learning the Hiragana and Katakana is easy and once you've learned the Katakana you can order food and drink at most bars and restaurants. Kanji is hard, but don't bother learning how to handwrite it. Even the most educated Japanese have forgotten how to do it as it's much faster to type it into a computer/pda/cellphone.
Japanese is good for the mind because it's so alien compared to romantic languages, but common to other asian languages. I have an easier time dealing with my wife's native language (Visayan) because of the grounding I had in Japanese.
I could be a nit-pick and find one error (never end a sentence with a preposition
OB:
Freshman: "Can you tell me where the library is at?"
Senior: "At Harvard, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
Freshman: "O.K., can you tell me where the library is at, you asshole?"
As for a second language, try Japanese. The best Japanese technology never makes it out of Japan. I lived and worked there for almost 5 years and it was a most illuminating experience.
(Since this is slashdot) A guaranteed way to get to talk to a beautiful young woman in Japan is to stand near her somewhere in view of a subway map and then look confused. She'll stop and try to help you get to where ever it is you're going. Works every time ...
Your name is essentially your very own brand; might as well try to paint it in a decent light.
Yes, but ...
I have a relatively rare spelling of my last name. More typical is "Bauer". Before there was a Google, there were two other people with my name appearing in search results - an actor who appeared in a small role in Scarface and a Hockey playing goalie in Canada.
So which of us gets steven.baur.name or steven.baur (with the new TLDs) as a domain to protect "our good name"?