I'd never give any information (personal, credit, or otherwise) to ANYONE who calls me. If my bank calls me and tells me there is a problem, I will tell them that in order to verify that this is a legitimate call, I will call the bank's customer service number, then ask for instructions on how to reach that person again. More than half the time, they just hang up.
Like I tell everyone in my family, never never never (did I say never?) NEVER give your information to anyone who calls you, especially if the caller ID says 'Unknown' or 'Private' or 'Blocked'.
Its also going to totally FUBAR the skill trees. 10 more talent points. My shaman is now a 37/0/24 build. An instacast heal or lightning every 3 minutes and a garunteed crit every 5. Yeah, thats not imbalanced. Being able to get a 31 point talent in 1 tree and a 21 pointer in a second is not good- the game wasn't balanced around it.
Balance isn't about the amount of power/skills you have. It's about making sure that everyone has the same amount of power/skills available to them. Would it imbalance the game if only half of the people got 10 more talents points? Yes. If you give everyone the same opportunity, then the balance usually remains about the same. Obviously there are exceptions, but generally if you extend something to all people involved, then it should still be balanced.
On the other hand, if these are considered Epic levels, they might not even offer more talent points, and everyone just keeps the 51 points they have now.
When I played Ultima Online way back, they handled expansions mostly by introducing new lands, which you had to get to via some type of portal. Those portals would only be active for those who purchased the expansion and upgraded their account (no extra charge) on the game website. Sometimes that included new artwork for the new expansion items, so the non-expansion players could still see them. (Usually when an expansion came out, there was a patch to the non-expansion clients with the artwork.) New creatures usually used old artwork until such a patch. For example, a unicorn (expansion creature, a new ridable mount) would appear like a horse, only as a color that no other normal horse in the game could be.
I'm curious to see how WoW handles it myself, although I'm sure I'll pick it up. Besides, I can't be the only one in my guild who doesn't have it!
Personally, I'm excited about that... I wasn't a fan of the endgame, and leveling was my source of fun. Once I reached the cap, I didn't care about getting uber gear or anything like that. Sure, I'll reach 70 eventually as well, but 10 more levels of content is exciting to me...
People will complain about anything, won't they? (Especially when it comes to MMORPG gamers)
I won't complain about being able to gain another 10 levels either. Besides, if they raise the limit by 10 now, then stands to reason that they will do it again in the future. What's special about the number 70? Its just 10 more than the current limit. One other thing they can do is reduce the max number of players in raids. For example, its 20 in Zul'Gurub right now, but when you have level 70 folks instead of 60, they might reduce the capacity to 15 to compensate, so they don't have to alter the raid instance. (Although I'd much rather them add new things to kill/do than that, but it is a viable scenario.)
Another 10 levels will also reduce my aggro radius even more while I'm harvesting herbs in those higher-level areas like the Burning Steppes.
Interesting to see how religion can overthrow the constitutional right to free speech, but I guess in a catholic school things are different. I wonder if www.popeblog.com is available...
My problem with that is that its not consistent. If they're going to enforce a rule about invalid names, then they need to do it 100% and not this spot-checking thing. I see tons of names that look like they don't belong, but I don't complain because I don't play on a RP server, where I hear that kind of thing is enforced a little more actively. It just annoys me when the enforcement of rules is relatively random. Taco didn't say anything about creating a ticket, but if thats the case, then I guess those with bad names know what to avoid. Otherwise it seems some GM was bored and just was browsing around for something to do. Who knows.
I think this is a testament to the folks at the JPL. Those rovers have lasted way longer than anyone expected, and probably hoped. In the early stages of the project, I heard a lot of criticism from the standard armchair astronauts saying about how they could get so much more done if they didn't go 'so damn slow' all the time. I've read about times where haste would have probably halted the program in its steps, like when there was concern about traversing the side wall of a crater, worried that the rover would tip. Its a testament to their planning, skill in design and execution of their plan, and of their patience in their procedures.
The one thing I can't get past in this, is why they "waited" (granted it was probably someone just scanning names one day and just happened to find that one) until level 45 to change it? Change my level 3's name and its not that big of a deal. I borrowed my character's name from an old fantasy novel, and it doesn't violate any of the ToS agreements, but I know I have made friends far and wide (I play a holy/disc priest, I get invites by the dozens daily) and I've even had experiences where someone I've never partied with has heard of me because their friend or guildmate partied with me weeks or months ago. Needless to say I'm always excited to hear that kind of thing, so I can see how a forced name change would be a really bad thing. All of a sudden my name wouldn't exist, and I would again be a stranger to all those people who have heard of me. How do you let those strangers know that you're not who you used to be? Run around Ironforge shouting about your name change?
Now on the flip side, I don't think that each name picked should have to be validated first, otherwise we couldn't make instant characters. I personally feel that Cmdr is hardly a designation of rank. Not to mention you can easily see rank (as its a separate word from your name.) If its in their policy, then I guess Taco is right, and they should have changed it, but I don't think GM WhatsHisFace really understands the impact of a namechange like that.
On a side note, I used to play SWG a while back, and there was a thread about stupidest names. Two that caught my eye were: Emperzizzle Palpazizzle, and one post that said 'I don't know about stupid names, but I just got my ass kicked by a wookie named Tony Danza'. I couldn't stop laughing out loud for at least 5 minutes. Taco, I think you could have done a lot worse than the guy who had all his characters named 'Steveswarrior, Stevespally, Stevesmage, Stevespriest'. (I think his real name was Chuck.)
Having worked in a university environment for 8 years, and now working in a private corporate environment, its staggering to see how often weak passwords are used in the educational areas. I had several roles that included support, which required me to work with users to solve their problems. Nine times out of ten, the password that the user chose was a dictionary word. The other 10% usually was some form of a dictionary word with a number at the end (usually 1). A small fraction of people (who had their lastname as their login) would make their password their first name. Some would keep them on post-it notes on their monitor, when they had no office door, and basically no physical security at all when they were away from their desk.
When I assumed the sysadmin role for a webserver, I changed the policy for that system, and manually assigned passwords that the users were not allowed to change. They were all passwords like (example) xj45Q!8p. People were upset, people were more often requesting password resets, but the number of instances of "I think someone accessed my account" dropped down to the single digits within the span of a year. Even those occurances were usually the user not remembering that they did something the day before.
The fact remains that too many people have weak passwords. I hardly ever use a password thats less than 15 characters, except when 15 is too long to be accepted. (On a side note, whats with having a MAX character length for a password? 4-8 characters? That's not enough for me.)
I think part of any company's "orientation" for new employees, or part of that form that some have to sign to get network/computer access should say something about passwords. Most users can't be trusted to create secure (or more secure) passwords on their own. Taking the word tomato and adding a 1 at the end, oooooh now they'll never figure that one out!
The idea of picking a good password in this day and age, needs to be escalated to a higher priority. I wonder how secure the president's email password is, if he even has one.
I don't really think that PHP should be put in the same base for comparison as Java, or more specifically, J2EE. PHP is a scripting language. Just about anyone with a moderate knowledge of programming concepts would probably be able to pick up a book and start writing scripts. From the simple "Hello World", to the full blown portal site, PHP is as complex as you want to make it. J2EE on the other hand, adds several layers of complexity from the very beginning. You need a webserver capable of processing PHP for those kind of scripts, but for J2EE you need the JRE, then (at least as far as my experience went) two installs of java, one for the base language, and another for the J2EE "engine" (for lack of a better word.) PHP doesn't require OOP knowledge, J2EE does.
People who just want to write a blog or some other relatively simple task online will use a relatively simple tool to do it. Why pull out the J2EE for something thats not an 'EE' (enterprise environment)? The ratio developers (professional and hobbyist) that I know that know PHP vs J2EE is staggering. Unless someone has a specific need that requires the use of J2EE, why learn the more complex one when the simpler one would suffice?
This sounds strikingly similar to what X10 has been doing for a long time. Using a special outlet plug-in, you can control various fixtures (lights, fans, etc) via a remote control, as well as using a timer and motion-detectors. A friend of mine has been using X10 motion sensors in his house for a while now, so that his kitchen light comes on whenever anyone enters, and turns off 2-3 minutes afterward.
I'm not up to par on the technology used in the X10 devices, but it can't be all that dissimilar to sending any kind of digital "internet" signal over the power lines as well. Actually I'm surprised it took this long to surface (granted I haven't been scouring the net looking for this information either.)
Being in the tech industry for a while, I've seen quite a few instances of the same reason why broadband might be lagging behind in the U.S. From my perspective (non-management) I've seen committee after committee of manager-type people arguing over how to handle this or that, never actually agreeing on anything. Most of this comes from a university setting, where the region to cover is rather spread out, with multiple units (colleges, etc) having to participate. Each person wants to do it their own way, and thinks that their way is best. The result is months and months of discussion/debate over which is better, and years later, we still do not have campus-wide wireless access to the students. What we do have is several buildings that are wireless (mostly because the people responsible for those buildings didn't feel like waiting for the debate to conclude, and just did it themselves) but several others that are not.
It doesn't help matters much in my opinion that this is a state (non-profit) institution, and money is sometimes limited.
Don't be surprised when Microsoft applies for a patent on 'Tabbed Browsing'. I would bet that its at least been discussed at some point somewhere at some large round conference table.
It's even worse. I work at a small law office, undergoing ECF (electronic case filing) training and conversion right now. The federal courts, you know the ones which convicted Microsoft of being a monopoly in the browser market, have issued system specs which require Internet Explorer. The mind reels.
This was exactly my point.
Luckily some browsers can spoof IE in their browser type settings, although I don't know how well it works since I've never tried it. I'm lucky enough to be in a position to not use sites that require IE for a browser. Instead what I like to do is click reload as many times as I can to try to get Firefox a couple more percentage points (or fractions of such) in their web stats. It might be a waste, but it makes me feel better, and thats enough for me.
I find it extremely interesting that the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software. Not to mention allowing ONLY their software, they are ensuring that any user who wants to visit their site also must "pay" Microsoft, thus even further contributing to the "monopoly".
I would have thought that if the government was under the impression that Microsoft was a monopoly (true or not), they would have taken steps to help prevent adding to that situation, and support a different browser for their site, or *gasp* don't require *ANY* browser, but rather just design it to be functionally usable by any W3C compliant browser. Add in the 508 compliance for web accessbility, and you can't go wrong.
I was referring to the concept of testing such applications BEFORE releasing them to the public. How many years have there been updates for Windows? If I remember correctly Windows 2000 went through 5 service packs, totalling hundreds of patches. (I should know, I had to download them constantly.)
As part of the software development lifecycle, there is a part normally called something like Testing/Debugging. I'm suggesting that maybe they should spend some more time in that stage, rather than using the majority of their paying users as beta testers. Most other companies release beta products for free, then charge for the actual "finished" product. Microsoft releases these applications/operating systems to the public (for a cost) and has them beta test.
Flamebait the original comment all you want, but the point still stands. Microsoft has repeatedly charged for a "new product" (new OS version) when it seems that if they did it right for once, they wouldn't need to come up with another version every 2-3 years, charging everyone each time. (And don't even get me started on the subject of not allowing an OS "upgrade" from a 'Full version' CD. I ran into this with Windows 98SE and ended up having to scrub my installation because my more expensive Full Version cd wouldn't upgrade my old Windows version.)
This article made me think back to the days where I played Ultima Online, and had a rather hilarious (at least I thought it was) meeting with a NPC.
There I was, riding my trusty steed through the wilderness, when I encountered a wandering healer by the name of Stella. (Her name was 'Stella the Wandering Healer') So naturally I dismounted, walked up to her, and I said:
"Stella!!!"
Her response:
"Ooooh, Colors!"
I played that game for over five years, and for some reason its one of the most prominent memories I have of the game. Offtopic or not, I wanted to share, because I still think its funny.:)
But it sounds like basically what he's saying is that he'd like to see more websites that don't suck, and less sites that do.
Brilliant!;)
(Un)Fortunately we have a little thing called free speech, which can be a double-edged sword (hence the 'Un'). I can find information 99.99% of the time that I'm looking for, but I also get shoved head-first sometimes into piles and piles of unwanted banners, popups, spam, spyware, etc.
More good, less suck. I think we should run with that!
Did I miss something? I RTFA twice, but I still fail to see why Microsoft gets the $7M. Were they the ones receiving the bulk of the spam? Did it occur at their offices? Other than becoming a "poster child" against spamming, what role did Microsoft actually play in this whole thing? Can Microsoft sue the person who keeps calling my house asking what my current mortgage rate is, even after I repeatedly tell him to take my number off his lists? If so, I'd like to point their attention to that and maybe get a small percentage (finder's fee?) for my own "troubles".
Slashdot Mirror
I'd never give any information (personal, credit, or otherwise) to ANYONE who calls me. If my bank calls me and tells me there is a problem, I will tell them that in order to verify that this is a legitimate call, I will call the bank's customer service number, then ask for instructions on how to reach that person again. More than half the time, they just hang up.
Like I tell everyone in my family, never never never (did I say never?) NEVER give your information to anyone who calls you, especially if the caller ID says 'Unknown' or 'Private' or 'Blocked'.
Its also going to totally FUBAR the skill trees. 10 more talent points. My shaman is now a 37/0/24 build. An instacast heal or lightning every 3 minutes and a garunteed crit every 5. Yeah, thats not imbalanced. Being able to get a 31 point talent in 1 tree and a 21 pointer in a second is not good- the game wasn't balanced around it.
Balance isn't about the amount of power/skills you have. It's about making sure that everyone has the same amount of power/skills available to them. Would it imbalance the game if only half of the people got 10 more talents points? Yes. If you give everyone the same opportunity, then the balance usually remains about the same. Obviously there are exceptions, but generally if you extend something to all people involved, then it should still be balanced.
On the other hand, if these are considered Epic levels, they might not even offer more talent points, and everyone just keeps the 51 points they have now.
When I played Ultima Online way back, they handled expansions mostly by introducing new lands, which you had to get to via some type of portal. Those portals would only be active for those who purchased the expansion and upgraded their account (no extra charge) on the game website. Sometimes that included new artwork for the new expansion items, so the non-expansion players could still see them. (Usually when an expansion came out, there was a patch to the non-expansion clients with the artwork.) New creatures usually used old artwork until such a patch. For example, a unicorn (expansion creature, a new ridable mount) would appear like a horse, only as a color that no other normal horse in the game could be.
I'm curious to see how WoW handles it myself, although I'm sure I'll pick it up. Besides, I can't be the only one in my guild who doesn't have it!
People are already complaining.
Mostly about the level cap being raised to 70.
Personally, I'm excited about that... I wasn't a fan of the endgame, and leveling was my source of fun. Once I reached the cap, I didn't care about getting uber gear or anything like that. Sure, I'll reach 70 eventually as well, but 10 more levels of content is exciting to me...
People will complain about anything, won't they? (Especially when it comes to MMORPG gamers)
I won't complain about being able to gain another 10 levels either. Besides, if they raise the limit by 10 now, then stands to reason that they will do it again in the future. What's special about the number 70? Its just 10 more than the current limit. One other thing they can do is reduce the max number of players in raids. For example, its 20 in Zul'Gurub right now, but when you have level 70 folks instead of 60, they might reduce the capacity to 15 to compensate, so they don't have to alter the raid instance. (Although I'd much rather them add new things to kill/do than that, but it is a viable scenario.)
Another 10 levels will also reduce my aggro radius even more while I'm harvesting herbs in those higher-level areas like the Burning Steppes.
Because as we all know, Blogs are the DEBIL!
Interesting to see how religion can overthrow the constitutional right to free speech, but I guess in a catholic school things are different. I wonder if www.popeblog.com is available...
My problem with that is that its not consistent. If they're going to enforce a rule about invalid names, then they need to do it 100% and not this spot-checking thing. I see tons of names that look like they don't belong, but I don't complain because I don't play on a RP server, where I hear that kind of thing is enforced a little more actively. It just annoys me when the enforcement of rules is relatively random. Taco didn't say anything about creating a ticket, but if thats the case, then I guess those with bad names know what to avoid. Otherwise it seems some GM was bored and just was browsing around for something to do. Who knows.
I think this is a testament to the folks at the JPL. Those rovers have lasted way longer than anyone expected, and probably hoped. In the early stages of the project, I heard a lot of criticism from the standard armchair astronauts saying about how they could get so much more done if they didn't go 'so damn slow' all the time. I've read about times where haste would have probably halted the program in its steps, like when there was concern about traversing the side wall of a crater, worried that the rover would tip. Its a testament to their planning, skill in design and execution of their plan, and of their patience in their procedures.
Good work JPL!
The one thing I can't get past in this, is why they "waited" (granted it was probably someone just scanning names one day and just happened to find that one) until level 45 to change it? Change my level 3's name and its not that big of a deal. I borrowed my character's name from an old fantasy novel, and it doesn't violate any of the ToS agreements, but I know I have made friends far and wide (I play a holy/disc priest, I get invites by the dozens daily) and I've even had experiences where someone I've never partied with has heard of me because their friend or guildmate partied with me weeks or months ago. Needless to say I'm always excited to hear that kind of thing, so I can see how a forced name change would be a really bad thing. All of a sudden my name wouldn't exist, and I would again be a stranger to all those people who have heard of me. How do you let those strangers know that you're not who you used to be? Run around Ironforge shouting about your name change?
Now on the flip side, I don't think that each name picked should have to be validated first, otherwise we couldn't make instant characters. I personally feel that Cmdr is hardly a designation of rank. Not to mention you can easily see rank (as its a separate word from your name.) If its in their policy, then I guess Taco is right, and they should have changed it, but I don't think GM WhatsHisFace really understands the impact of a namechange like that.
On a side note, I used to play SWG a while back, and there was a thread about stupidest names. Two that caught my eye were: Emperzizzle Palpazizzle, and one post that said 'I don't know about stupid names, but I just got my ass kicked by a wookie named Tony Danza'. I couldn't stop laughing out loud for at least 5 minutes. Taco, I think you could have done a lot worse than the guy who had all his characters named 'Steveswarrior, Stevespally, Stevesmage, Stevespriest'. (I think his real name was Chuck.)
Don't you think they'd just write that password down too? Especially if they can't remember it?
:)
Some did, but they would usually do it in a way that was relatively secure. Most had password-protected PDAs, and kept the passwords in there.
I think people just learned not to fuck with the BOFH.
BOFH I may have been, but I got the job done and decreased the frequency of security incidents.
Having worked in a university environment for 8 years, and now working in a private corporate environment, its staggering to see how often weak passwords are used in the educational areas. I had several roles that included support, which required me to work with users to solve their problems. Nine times out of ten, the password that the user chose was a dictionary word. The other 10% usually was some form of a dictionary word with a number at the end (usually 1). A small fraction of people (who had their lastname as their login) would make their password their first name. Some would keep them on post-it notes on their monitor, when they had no office door, and basically no physical security at all when they were away from their desk.
When I assumed the sysadmin role for a webserver, I changed the policy for that system, and manually assigned passwords that the users were not allowed to change. They were all passwords like (example) xj45Q!8p. People were upset, people were more often requesting password resets, but the number of instances of "I think someone accessed my account" dropped down to the single digits within the span of a year. Even those occurances were usually the user not remembering that they did something the day before.
The fact remains that too many people have weak passwords. I hardly ever use a password thats less than 15 characters, except when 15 is too long to be accepted. (On a side note, whats with having a MAX character length for a password? 4-8 characters? That's not enough for me.)
I think part of any company's "orientation" for new employees, or part of that form that some have to sign to get network/computer access should say something about passwords. Most users can't be trusted to create secure (or more secure) passwords on their own. Taking the word tomato and adding a 1 at the end, oooooh now they'll never figure that one out!
The idea of picking a good password in this day and age, needs to be escalated to a higher priority. I wonder how secure the president's email password is, if he even has one.
I don't really think that PHP should be put in the same base for comparison as Java, or more specifically, J2EE. PHP is a scripting language. Just about anyone with a moderate knowledge of programming concepts would probably be able to pick up a book and start writing scripts. From the simple "Hello World", to the full blown portal site, PHP is as complex as you want to make it. J2EE on the other hand, adds several layers of complexity from the very beginning. You need a webserver capable of processing PHP for those kind of scripts, but for J2EE you need the JRE, then (at least as far as my experience went) two installs of java, one for the base language, and another for the J2EE "engine" (for lack of a better word.) PHP doesn't require OOP knowledge, J2EE does.
People who just want to write a blog or some other relatively simple task online will use a relatively simple tool to do it. Why pull out the J2EE for something thats not an 'EE' (enterprise environment)? The ratio developers (professional and hobbyist) that I know that know PHP vs J2EE is staggering. Unless someone has a specific need that requires the use of J2EE, why learn the more complex one when the simpler one would suffice?
This sounds strikingly similar to what X10 has been doing for a long time. Using a special outlet plug-in, you can control various fixtures (lights, fans, etc) via a remote control, as well as using a timer and motion-detectors. A friend of mine has been using X10 motion sensors in his house for a while now, so that his kitchen light comes on whenever anyone enters, and turns off 2-3 minutes afterward.
I'm not up to par on the technology used in the X10 devices, but it can't be all that dissimilar to sending any kind of digital "internet" signal over the power lines as well. Actually I'm surprised it took this long to surface (granted I haven't been scouring the net looking for this information either.)
I must admit when I first read this headline, I thought it said:
Watch Like Device for At-Risk Patents
My first thought was "You mean Microsoft can't patent the act of breathing? Maybe they'll try to patent this patent-watching device..."
Big difference than the actual headline, so I thought I'd post.
Being in the tech industry for a while, I've seen quite a few instances of the same reason why broadband might be lagging behind in the U.S. From my perspective (non-management) I've seen committee after committee of manager-type people arguing over how to handle this or that, never actually agreeing on anything. Most of this comes from a university setting, where the region to cover is rather spread out, with multiple units (colleges, etc) having to participate. Each person wants to do it their own way, and thinks that their way is best. The result is months and months of discussion/debate over which is better, and years later, we still do not have campus-wide wireless access to the students. What we do have is several buildings that are wireless (mostly because the people responsible for those buildings didn't feel like waiting for the debate to conclude, and just did it themselves) but several others that are not.
It doesn't help matters much in my opinion that this is a state (non-profit) institution, and money is sometimes limited.
I've got a video of how they did this already with pork. Its called
Muppets from Space!
Space pork: The other other white meat from a galaxy far far away.
Don't be surprised when Microsoft applies for a patent on 'Tabbed Browsing'. I would bet that its at least been discussed at some point somewhere at some large round conference table.
It's even worse. I work at a small law office, undergoing ECF (electronic case filing) training and conversion right now. The federal courts, you know the ones which convicted Microsoft of being a monopoly in the browser market, have issued system specs which require Internet Explorer. The mind reels.
This was exactly my point.
Luckily some browsers can spoof IE in their browser type settings, although I don't know how well it works since I've never tried it. I'm lucky enough to be in a position to not use sites that require IE for a browser. Instead what I like to do is click reload as many times as I can to try to get Firefox a couple more percentage points (or fractions of such) in their web stats. It might be a waste, but it makes me feel better, and thats enough for me.
I find it extremely interesting that the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software. Not to mention allowing ONLY their software, they are ensuring that any user who wants to visit their site also must "pay" Microsoft, thus even further contributing to the "monopoly".
I would have thought that if the government was under the impression that Microsoft was a monopoly (true or not), they would have taken steps to help prevent adding to that situation, and support a different browser for their site, or *gasp* don't require *ANY* browser, but rather just design it to be functionally usable by any W3C compliant browser. Add in the 508 compliance for web accessbility, and you can't go wrong.
Government, make up your mind.
Yeah, I was kidding. I guess that wasn't very clear. ;)
I wonder if they plan to incorporate this technology into their design at all.
Perhaps its still too new, but you'd think they would be looking to the future for ideas...
I was referring to the concept of testing such applications BEFORE releasing them to the public. How many years have there been updates for Windows? If I remember correctly Windows 2000 went through 5 service packs, totalling hundreds of patches. (I should know, I had to download them constantly.)
As part of the software development lifecycle, there is a part normally called something like Testing/Debugging. I'm suggesting that maybe they should spend some more time in that stage, rather than using the majority of their paying users as beta testers. Most other companies release beta products for free, then charge for the actual "finished" product. Microsoft releases these applications/operating systems to the public (for a cost) and has them beta test.
Flamebait the original comment all you want, but the point still stands. Microsoft has repeatedly charged for a "new product" (new OS version) when it seems that if they did it right for once, they wouldn't need to come up with another version every 2-3 years, charging everyone each time. (And don't even get me started on the subject of not allowing an OS "upgrade" from a 'Full version' CD. I ran into this with Windows 98SE and ended up having to scrub my installation because my more expensive Full Version cd wouldn't upgrade my old Windows version.)
You mean to say that *gasp* a Microsoft product has a vulnerability? I refuse to believe it!
Perhaps they should start with the assumption that their applications are vulnerable, and work from there, instead of the other way around!
This article made me think back to the days where I played Ultima Online, and had a rather hilarious (at least I thought it was) meeting with a NPC.
:)
There I was, riding my trusty steed through the wilderness, when I encountered a wandering healer by the name of Stella. (Her name was 'Stella the Wandering Healer') So naturally I dismounted, walked up to her, and I said:
"Stella!!!"
Her response:
"Ooooh, Colors!"
I played that game for over five years, and for some reason its one of the most prominent memories I have of the game. Offtopic or not, I wanted to share, because I still think its funny.
But it sounds like basically what he's saying is that he'd like to see more websites that don't suck, and less sites that do.
;)
Brilliant!
(Un)Fortunately we have a little thing called free speech, which can be a double-edged sword (hence the 'Un'). I can find information 99.99% of the time that I'm looking for, but I also get shoved head-first sometimes into piles and piles of unwanted banners, popups, spam, spyware, etc.
More good, less suck. I think we should run with that!
Did I miss something? I RTFA twice, but I still fail to see why Microsoft gets the $7M. Were they the ones receiving the bulk of the spam? Did it occur at their offices? Other than becoming a "poster child" against spamming, what role did Microsoft actually play in this whole thing? Can Microsoft sue the person who keeps calling my house asking what my current mortgage rate is, even after I repeatedly tell him to take my number off his lists? If so, I'd like to point their attention to that and maybe get a small percentage (finder's fee?) for my own "troubles".