Forest for the trees...
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 1
Do I get a medal for reading that thing?
At any rate, railing against FTP is kinda quaint seeing as how there are lots and lots of other ways to intercept the data if you've been pwned.
If you've got a keylogger (or registry scraping malware in the case of Win), it doesn't matter if you're got some outlandish quantum encryption link between machines.
The real story here is:
- Wordpress is insecure, news at 11. Lots of injection attacks happen, interestingly they're disproportionately successful on newer versions of Wordpress. - Substitute "Wordpress" for your favorite off the shelf blog/forum/cms script. - If you're on a shared hosting plan and one box/instance/etc at the facility has been pwned, it's likely able to capture data going to other machines/VMs on the same subnet, particularly if you're using a ghetto-tastic shared Win server (there are no other kinds... all shared Win-based hosts suck ass on all fronts due to incompetent administration and terrible cpanels). - If your workstation has been pwned, your FTP passwords are the least of your concerns. Trust me.
I mean, it's nice that the author decided that the world needs a little bit of edumacation, but the big picture is more important than "FTP bad"
To clarify: I'm not talking about using a single sticker to activate a ton of PCs, which is certainly possible under the current OEM activation structure.
To be sure, I have had no moral issues whatsoever pirating Windows in the past, but I consider paying $129-ish per machine to keep version and config parity on my modest home office render farm a bargain in comparison to any alternative (apart from Linux, but we're talking Windows at the moment). I built the machines, and paid to get XP64 OEM for each of them (legitimately under the license terms). I'll be paying to install a Windows 7 OEM on those same Core i7 boxes later this year, and the day that Microsoft refuses activation of an OEM copy on an honest to God homebuild is the day that their platform gets abandoned entirely. An upgrade from XP64 or Vista 64 is most certainly not worth the price from a SOHO point of view when you're dealing with 5-6 machines.
I guess my primary point was that a full, non-upgrade, OEM copy of Windows is both cheaper and more convenient to own in the long run (and even the short term) than an "upgrade" retail box... and the upgrade boxes are retailing for pennies on the dollar less than a full install. There's no compelling reason whatsoever to pay for an "upgrade" box because it's incredibly inconvenient to have to reinstall from one in the long run.
There is no good reason to ever purchase an upgrade copy from Microsoft given pricing, convenience and licensing terms. If your personal moral code objects to sticking an OEM copy of Windows (or education copy for even cheaper) on a machine that isn't technically brand-spanking-new, then fine... but for God's sake don't buy the upgrade copy. Just spring for the full retail install.
You save about $20 off retail (which costs twice as much or more than OEM) to buy yourself about 3 additional hours on every reinstall, and that's the part that chafes me. Or you can buy the OEM copy that's far cheaper and is the exact same as the retail box, minus superfluous packaging and which serial number it accepts.
Until it's as convenient to be 100% EULA-compliant as it is to fudge a little on the OEM terms I'm gonna continue saving money at upgrade time and not lose any sleep over it.
So, Microsoft: make upgrade boxes less of a pain in the ass over the long term -- or make the price on par with the additional hassle -- and I'll consider doing things your way. I don't trust you, I don't respect you, but I'm stuck with you for certain apps. You'd do well to learn a little about customer loyalty from Apple.
But in reality, I buy an OEM copy of Windows Ultimate Whatever from Newegg for $129. I don't have to deal with the utterly retarded upgrade process every time I have to nuke & pave, and I've got an ugly little sticker to refer to when nuke & pave time rolls around.
You're assuming I give two shits about honoring the finer points of Microsoft's licensing, which I don't. Is MS going to come after me? Are they going to deactivate my Windows randomly? They deactivate retail copies randomly.
To be honest, It's more convenient for me to get a legit serial number that doesn't self-destruct than to deal with suspect WGA patches & cracks that work like an arms race and require constant vigilance.
As long as you don't reinstall more often than quarterly, activation goes through without the need for a dreaded phone call. In the case that it fails, I make the phone call and say (and I quote): "I had to replace the motherboard" and get an activation key in about five minutes. If you do this once a week, the phone drones sound vaguely annoyed with you, but you still end up with the number.
So, really, what's the downside here (apart from paying for it at all)? I'm curious.
In a nod to the global economic downturn, it is interesting to note that upgrade prices are still more expensive than a non-upgrade OEM copy with far more reinstallation hassles.
Also worth noting is that the last I checked, Andrew Stanton was attached to John Carter of Mars, however it wasn't confirmed that Pixar/Disney would be distributing. There has been conflicting info on the matter, and it's ambiguous at the moment.
Plus speculation in Variety from several days ago about Monsters, Inc 2 possibly being Docter's next film that has suffered a little in the blogspam reporting (ie accuracy), resulting in the OMG SEQUALZ?!? meme we're soaking in today...
Also speculation: various rumored Mater spin-off movies from Cars. Yes, Larry the Cable Guy might get his own... vehicle (ouch). God help us all, but it'd be a goldmine.
One more note, Netalyzer sees my upstream at 6.5 megabits and downstream at 15 megabits -- which means that Netalyzer's traffic is being shaped by Comcast to give better appearance than reality (same deal with almost all of the "speed test" sites out there).
I guarantee you in Jacksonville, FL that via FTP, SMTP, AFP, WebDAV or BitTorrent you will never see upstream speeds faster than 45k / second after an initial 3 to 5 second burst, no matter what you might think you're paying for.
They're not redirecting DNS in my area of North Florida, but
Apart from their God-awful downtime (about an hour a day at around 3am EST)......and 1-hour almost instant disconnect if you're participating in a torrent they've flagged as unacceptable......and terrible upstream speeds (about 45k / sec after the first 3 second burst)......and random massive latency......and questionable traffic shaping......and "not really" unlimited internet...
They're ok-ish. Apart from being FUCKING EVIL. That said, the local cartel apparently hasn't gotten the same memo that caused TFA's seizure.
Ok, they suck compared to, say, Speakeasy in the old days, but AT&T hasn't upgraded infrastructure in my neighborhood to support DSL, so Comcast is quite literally the only game in town. Yeah, I'm 5 miles outside of downtown and I can't get DSL here because up until a few years ago only poor folk lived in these old houses and it wasn't worth the time. Same reason there's no cable underground in Jacksonville's downtown... Cox cable (at the time) decided only poor folks lived there in the 70s when they last dug up the streets.
Anyhow, apart from blocking non-comcast SMTP, here's all Netalyzer anomalies:
Nothing I'd flag as unacceptable apart from the DNS latency. I learned to get my own SMTP host on an alternate port years ago as blocking port 25 is standard procedure on most ISPs.
If you don't want your kids playing GTA or playing pseudo-realistic war sims, don't buy 'em. Don't play 'em. But don't try and protect me from them either.
I never really understood, and I'm not sure I will ever understand, what makes some people take up a crusade expressly to abolish ideas that they find offensive that they could just avoid, in turn exposing themselves to a constant stream of something that they obviously can't stand.
Books, games, metal, hip-hop, homosexuality, religion, porn, weed... hell, even Macs. The list goes on and on. Almost all of of the hot buttons I can think of are often central to a person's identity.
Stop telling me how to live my life and get on with your own. I may not agree with how you choose to live your life, but I'll be damned if you make my moral choices for me.
Have your own kids, shield them if you must, and get back to me in 16 years with how well that turns out.
With the new regime at MS this last year or so came new advertising/marketing & PR partnerships. Aside from the occasional WTF (Seinfeld?), they've been doing a pretty good job as a whole.
As someone who was in the ad/pr industry for quite a long time I can tell you that:
1. The date has "leaked" reliably pretty much once a week on all the betas to date. Nothing's "leaking". They're disseminating the info virally to build buzz. It works, and that's ok.
2. Win 7 needs as much positive spin as it can get to offset the Vista catastrophe. The february beta was more stable and bug-free than Vista SP1... and to coin a phrase "it's Vista without the suck." They need to get the word out there, to as many folks as possible. For Windows, it's not bad at all, and it's a massive improvement over Vista even if they share 80% of their DNA. Well, aside from the start menu still requiring Vista's 50 clicks to get to the app you want due to the teeny-tiny scrolling programs folder list. I don't like some of the interface Nazi choices that they're making with no user overrides available (start menu, ribbon).
Look, I've tried the public beta back in Feb, and I'm looking forward to putting RC1 on a couple light use 3D workstations. There's nothing inherently wrong with the XP64 that's on 'em, excepting that fewer and fewer 64-bit apps... like say MacDrive... run against XP64 (just Vista.. which is a naggy, broken clusterfuck).
I'm happiest on my primary workstation (which is a Mac) and my laptop (also a Mac), but I've got memory & processor intensive CG apps I run that require Windows 64. Some require Linux 64. Diversity is good. Rendering throughput with Win7 beta (Maya/mental ray) was nearly 10% higher than XP64 and on par with Linux 64's render times... just easier to roll out and configure on a bunch of render slaves with random hardware profiles (ie whatever I've got on hand when I need the horsepower).
Anything that makes Windows suck less is fine by me, and getting a viable 64-bit Win OS in my hands before I'm unable to buy OEM XP64 copies anymore is a priority. Having RC1 not expire until mid 2010 is a bonus. That means I can use it in light production as a render box or secondary workstation now instead of a nuke-every-few-weeks sandbox.
There's a quest line in Icecrown that explicitly shows what lengths that the forces of Light will go to redeem the faithful, no matter the cost, and unlike most of WoW, it takes itself incredibly seriously.
I was halfway through that questline, and I began thinking to myself "going through so much effort to save one individual... this can't end well" -- and let's just say that I felt a bit guilty for my own cynicism at the end.
But what cost is there to tear apart the fabric of reality to save just one soul from damnation? It's certainly non-trivial based on the difficulty presented in the story.
After that point you start meeting the ghost child I've mentioned, and are given the opportunity to walk a few miles in someone else's shoes.
I know that WoW plays fast and loose with fantasy cliché, but that's a pretty difficult question to answer, and it's a lot more nuanced than I'm used to with the writing/plotting in general. I don't think they'd have put this much effort into the themes of remorse, redemption and falls from grace if we were just going to end up with the Lich King loot piñata at the end of it all. Particularly with the amount of development we've seen on both sides of the conflict this time.
I'm inclined to disagree here. I loved the entry quests, and the entire fact that some people are having trouble carrying out their orders and have such a strong aversion to what they're being asked to do means they're allowing themselves to become immersed in the world and/or character.
You're forced to do some very, very bad things in a semi-gleeful fashion until that prisoner execution quest -- and the designers just ratchet up the guilt at that point. You start to squirm when you're asked to do over-the-top stuff after that point. You WANT to be good. That's the idea.
I thought it was incredibly effective and well-done.
But, then again, I generally prefer anti-heroes (like Thrall), and I see the world in a few more shades of gray than a lot of folks. I've known quite a few who couldn't stomach the Death Knight starting story, but if you're involved enough to get squeamish or have a strong reaction one way or another, I'd argue that you're getting pretty good immersion there.
I've seen almost zero grind for anything this time out.
It's been a few weeks since launch, and I play casually (hate the casual = person who doesn't raid meme going around). Guild with myself and 3-4 real life friends who are almost never at the same level to run stuff together.
I've gotten exalted with all the factions whose loot I wanted, simply from questing and picking a tabard when I log in to run heroics.
Quest, run a few dungeons, get what you need.
Playing a few hours a few nights a week, I've gotten my engineering motorcycle, and filled half of my equipment slots with Naxx 10/Archavon 10/25/ and badge gear, rarely running the same content twice. To top it all off, this is a Pally tank that I've never raided with before (Warlock changes make them far less fun to play at the moment, so my lock is in retirement).
I've gotten together pickup groups for 10-man runs, and we've made our way through pretty successfully, Sapphiron & KelThuzad down in 2 runs with nobody who's run the stuff before.
Look, I raided in a hardcore fashion for months and months back in EQ and original WOW just to get a specific shoulder piece to drop from a boss. 40 men, guild and time commitment required. Repeat the same stuff over and over until you're burnt out.
There's none of that anymore, and I don't need a guild just to see all of the endgame content (which is all I really care about). Sure you can grind for that absolutely perfect piece of equipment, but there are statistically identical alternatives everywhere -- and the badge system means that you'll never run 100 runs in a row without several pieces of gear to show for it.
In my experience, great loot dropped quick and plentifully. Which just means I can see deeper content faster, and retire till the next content patch.
Had to clarify one bit... by Arthas, I mean Arthas Menethil, NOT The Lich King. Arthas is (debatibly) part of the psyche of the Lich King, and is his body.
Depending on how far you've gotten in Icecrown, you might have learned that they're not necessarily one and the same (from a little human ghost child that keeps randomly popping up, whose name is an anagram). They don't come out explicitly and say it, but I'm betting that they want the Arthas half of the Lich King to be sympathetic. Bad choices made with the best of intentions, up to a point. And they've succeeded. Won't go into any more detail as not to spoil those who are taking the content slowly (which I recommend).
Really interested to see where the storyline picks up once we're able to face the Lich King himself. Things might not work out quite how people have been assuming.
That's part of the overarching theme of the expansion.
Arthas' own personal road to hell was paved with the best of intentions, but he was only capable of seeing the world in stark black and white -- no middle ground. Blizzard wants you to squirm at some of the tasks you're set to carry out. They want you to disagree with (if not outright hate) your overzealous faction leaders (I'm looking at you Varian & Garrosh).
You get involved that way, and I've found it's been remarkably effective in making me feel like *I* accomplished (spoilers here). I was actually completely hooked with the forsaken, storm peaks and icecrown quest chains.
That's the beauty of the Alliance/Horde deal. There are no true "good guys" or "bad guys"... just shades of gray, and there's a slippery slope next to the moral high ground. Pretty sure that's the parallel to Arthas' fall that they're intending to make.
Yes, I think the writing and pacing were quite good this time out.:)
Part of that is evoking ANY kind of feeling when you're doing quests, even if it's reprehensible stuff. You connect that way.
For the record, his stance is pro- "safe nuclear power" -- the point being that the waste has to end up somewhere, from my understanding of the matter.
There are an awful lot of communities that don't want a dump in their backyard, and I can't say that I blame them. I'm a pretty darned pro-nuclear guy, but reactors (in their current 1970's form) create a mountain of radioactive waste that has to be dealt with. It's been a major issue, even with the comparatively small amount of reactors that we now have -- now ramp up mass production and disposal becomes a rather thorny issue, as do the logistics of fuel supply in our "omg terrorists with tacnukes?!?! nowai!" climate.
My belief is that it's a pragmatic approach, given there are cleaner nuclear alternatives not too far around the corner given some R&D investment.
...after reading through all three thousand plus posts on this topic, admittedly with a filter of +2, I feel compelled to come in and toss away all my mod points to say "thanks" to the/.'ers here and abroad for having actual, real, intelligent discourse about this. The signal to noise ratio was one of the best I've seen on a thread here in years.
I'd been firmly in the Obama camp since he came out against lobbyists in an incredibly direct zero-tolerance fashion (for Washington, at least). None in my ground crew, none in my cabinet, not a dime from them. So, that made the sale for me personally very early in the primary season. Voting for someone who's been a civil rights lawyer, and is incredibly well-spoken... well, that's just a bonus. How cool would it be to have a quotable president in your lifetime? All those speeches you memorize in school? What if you were there for a speech your kids memorize?
I'm not at all proud of what my government, and by association, my country has turned into in the last decade. And as cheesy as it might sound to some people, I really do think we need constructive, positive dialog to move forward. Race, international relations, financial markets... everything. We've gotten in the habit of painting the world in stark shades of idealogical black and white -- on both sides.
Growing up in the US, we're taught to believe in a very idealized, edited version of American history, and America as a symbol -- it's the history that we really wished could be. Down to the specifics of the Lincoln presidency and on, very complex issues are taught to us in a very binary, black and white fashion that loses nuance completely. But it's part of who we are. And for the most part, it's who we want to be. It might be borderline fiction, but it's a noble aspiration.
Something struck me during one of the debates. Obama said "We need to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable." -- which sounds juvenile on the surface, but is a consummate truth at its core and sums up a major issue with the "you're either with me or against me" macho cowboy politic crap we've had to endure.
We've been stuck in gridlock, incapable of positive change for so long that I think we've forgotten how to affect it.
I must say that if the John McCain who made the incredibly eloquent, heartfelt concession speech last night had been the same man who had been campaigning, I think things would have been a lot closer. Well, and ditched his trainwreck running mate, but I didn't log in to burn the neocons in effigy.
If Obama can achieve even a fraction of what he's set about, it'll be positive change for this country and world in my very honest opinion. It's arrogant as an American to believe that my vote affects the entire world, but looking over the last eight years in particular, it's incredibly naïve to believe it doesn't. We're a conflicted people.
McCain may very well have been capable of leading us out of this incredibly dark, deep hole that we're in, but the Republican party as a whole (down to my state and local levels -- I'm in North Florida) has lost any shred of credibility in regard to the term "conservative" where it applies to fiscal and legislative issues, and has taken the moral "conservative" tack -- ie, let's roll back the clock and stand in the way of social progress to regard to people who aren't just like us. You want polarization? Base your politics about making people scared of folks who aren't just like you, and spend your time telling other adults how to live their lives.
The world isn't like that, the country isn't like that... shit, my block isn't like that. So how did we get in this place?
The core of my personal moral compass is that there's nothing on this planet more offensive than a closed mind.
The more we talk, the more we begin to understand each other. And that's a start, isn't it?
A friend invited me to an indoor rock climbing gym a few years ago, and I found that I really enjoyed it. Between the climbing and cutting sugar out of my coffee (easy to do if you order fresh as-in-roasted-today coffee) I got my weight back down to between 160-170 depending on the month (I'm in Florida, and far less active in the summer because I sweat a LOT above 85 or so). For a 6' tall guy with broad shoulders, I'm pretty happy at this weight.
I must say that exercise for the sake of exercise just bores me to pieces.
Climbing is really a puzzle that you're solving with your body -- it keeps your mind occupied, unlike most other forms of exercise that I've tried. It also resulted in serious muscle tone on my arms and legs (very quickly), without building mass. Two hours, two days a week on easy to medium climbs (5.9 and under). And at the end of it all, we go have a few beers to help with the muscle soreness.
Anyway, a lot of climbing gyms have started installing what they refer to as "auto-belays" -- basically, you don't need a second person to hold the rope on some of the gym routes. Once you get a little more advanced, you'll want to find a climbing buddy though -- for encouragement, and also to belay you on the more difficult climbs, and if you get into it, you'll need a buddy or two for the occasional outdoor climb as well. Side benefit: you end up seeing places that you'd never see. Or you may end up just taking a pair of climbing shoes with you when you travel to do weird stuff like bouldering Rat Rock in Central Park, or climbing on all of the artificial rocks at Disney (I've done both).
You don't need any equipment to start out besides a ratty t-shirt and some cargo shorts. A chalk ball is handy ($2ish). You can rent shoes, a harness and a belay device at the gym for cheap ($6-7ish). Eventually you'll want your own, and you can pick up the whole set for about $100 -- about the price of a decent set of running shoes.
Another benefit:
I don't know about you, but in addition to not getting enough exercise, I also generally have a lot of "chatter" going on in my head. I can't stop thinking about random things, and at times it can be very difficult to concentrate well enough to code or focus on work.
Well, I'm here to tell you that the primal fear of falling will turn all of that chatter off instantly. I've never experienced anything like it, and when I lose focus I find myself heading into the gym for an hour or so.
For those on the Mac side, there's a theme for TextMate called Twilight, which I now use extensively.
For the rest of the question, here's my recipe:
- Cool gray wall behind my monitors... let's call it a 20-30%. - No light sources within angle of reflection. - Decent name brand LCD monitors (Apple and pro grade Viewsonics/Samsungs they're about $100 more for comparable size) - Proper color calibration. I'm a fan of the Mac's 1.8 gamma... again, lower contrast. I tend toward a slightly yellow (8200ish k) white balance. - The minimal amount of true black or true white on the screen at any given time. Take a look at professional color & video editing apps -- they've all got a gray on gray palette that's meant to reduce color perception influence from the GUI -- but the medium contrast of the 70ish% on 30%ish gray really helps prevent eyestrain while remaining legible enough that you're not straining to read. - No fluorescents anywhere within my field of vision or as ambient light. I can see the flicker from a mile away and it drives me utterly insane.
Just went over the rules today, and I like the whole package (more or less, but I'm the only guy left playing D&D that hates using minis for combat, and the treasure parcel rules are just ridiculously overpowered -- but that's what house rules are for).
Sure, there's a lot of simplification (mostly for the better), but some of the ideas people have gotten about some things like the spell system (for instance) are just plain wrong.
Spells (powers) are split up into at-will, per-encounter and daily use. It basically means that your level 5 Wizard might be able to cast one fireball (hard hitting) per encounter, and one flamestrike (boss fight) per day, but they'll always have the option to use a normal damage magic missle so that your paper-thin mage isn't hacking at stuff with his dagger, stocking up on 400 darts or twiddling his thumbs during a castle raid, waiting to take a nap to be useful again after he blows his wad.
Those examples, btw, are just made up, but the spell system works pretty much like that now. You save your über powers for boss fights, basically, and stuff like tongues or knock become rituals, so you don't have to take a nap to memorize them when the need arises. Good changes all around, as far as I'm concerned.
Might just be me, but I want my mage to feel like a mage the entire time I'm playing, and not have him blow his wad and have to sleep to regain all his spells after every encounter -- particularly at low levels.
Ditto for the Cleric/healing rules. Most of the stuff in 4E just makes sense and has been a long time coming (if you didn't house rule something similar already).
Anyhow, sit down with the new books and a latte at your local megachain and give them the once-over, you might like what you see. Might not be for everyone, but I haven't upgraded the games I run from 1E just because I'd like to do a chapter a session, not just 2 encounters and loot management.
I spent the day hashing over the 4E rules, and I must say that just about all the changes I see are very good from a real-world, let's get 5 people together and have fun for 3 hours kinda way.
One of the reasons that I've clung to my original 1E rules over the years (I've got the '70s version and an early '80s reprint of the 3 core books) is that 2E and 3E just seemed to needlessly complicate the hell out of everything. Instead of 15 minutes to fight a party of Orcs, the encounters started taking an hour or more -- OMG skill check, fortitude check, balance check, grapple check, sphincter check. Every single 2E or 3.xE game that I've participated in had house rules to bring combat closer to 1E just so your 3 hour gaming session had some actual progress instead of 2 encounters, loot, nite guys!
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really think the rules are a basic framework within which to enjoy making a story with friends. I've never really played D&D with any powergamer or rules lawyer types, and to be honest, I'm thankful.
If you want sim-style combat, and save/skill checks out the ass, make house rules. Just don't overcomplicate the core rulebooks!
To sum up: I'm very happy with almost everything I've seen in the 4E rules so far. They mean that I can get buddies and their wives together on short notice and have a game up and running in an hour. Character development is quite a bit more like CRPGs and WoW, which is fine by me! Most people who'd play at my table already understand spec/talent systems from WoW or wherever -- it just means there's less to explain, and it prompts characters to think about goals from the beginning (I love the destiny bit -- getting players to think about their character as part of an enormous story arc is great!).
I've heard a lot about the loss of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil, but they're honestly still there -- just called Good and Evil now. Part of me misses the old-style 9 grid alignment diagram, but I definitely won't miss having to explain those two apparent oxymorons to new players. I also *quite* like the new Unaligned (instead of true neutral) alignment -- far less restrictive than true neutral used to be. No druids in PHB1, alas, but I'm sure they'll be in PHB2. All of the starting classes are full-on archetypes, and there are none of what MMO types would call "hybrid classes".
The only things I truly dislike about the 4E rules so far is that it seems impossible to do combat without a minigrid. Again, I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always preferred more storytelling-style combat instead of sim/wargame style. It made gaming sessions move much more quickly. We'll see if I end up house-ruling over that after trying it out. I doubt seriously that I'd ever use the loot parcel rule. Magic items in my games are very few and very far between, mostly because the games are about the story, not lewts + power.
Anyhow, this is the first edition since the original that I think I'll adopt. I like the organization of the books, the playing advice/primers and even the DMing advice.
I'm sensing two people trying to keep a relationship hidden from a spouse. Whether it's physical, long-distance via AIM/email or whatever.
Huge paranoia probably due to the person you're afraid of intercepting something incriminating is still in the house?
If my theory isn't the case, tell your friend to get out. Go to family, a shelter, anything. Just get the F out. If there's nothing sinister under the surface here, that's not a healthy relationship. Get. Out. Of. It.
If my suspicions prove accurate, I can share this:
I've been on the moral low-ground of a similar situation in my (much) younger, (much) dumber days. The guilty have a tendency to get extremely paranoid about everything. That's not to say that a psychotic husband isn't standing in your bushes with a 9mm at this very moment looking through the window. It happened to me, and that's a point that I really feel the need to drive home. My sloth of a cat jumping when a twig snapped is probably the only reason I'm typing this right now.
I guess the point of all of this is: tread carefully. Don't be so naïve as to believe that things can't spiral out of control within a single heartbeat in ways that you never imagined. It doesn't even particularly matter if you truly care for the person or if you're just chasing tail. You cannot predict what another person, even one that you feel you know well, is capable of doing when blinded by rage. I've seen people turn homicidal, I've seen people turn self-destructive.
So the take-away is: watch your ass. If you truly care for this person and it's reciprocated, why haven't they left their spouse? Seems to me that you should be considering a plan for the future as opposed to hiding in the present. You're just delaying the inevitable.
These aren't clones. They're Hackintoshes done for you and then shipped out. The OS isn't legit, iLife isn't legit, and you're dumping entirely too much money on the hardware that they're shipping out as there's no software cost at all.
I've got to wonder why Software Update isn't working on them, even though they've admitted to using the EFI loader hack. In my experience, only OS updates (ie 10.5.1->10.5.2) are potentially dangerous anymore, and I managed to update from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 without issue on an oldish Shuttle AMD barebones box here after patching EFI/Vanilla kernel.
It's almost trivial to get a vanilla kernel up & running on an Intel hackintosh now, only slightly more difficult on an AMD box -- there are even several quite good pre-packaged installers now with 10.5.2 that do everything for you if you don't like to get your hands dirty.
All that said, it's going to be funny when all of the people duped into buying these can't update to 10.5.4 or whatever and end up with a bricked box. At least if you do it yourself, you develop the skillset to boot into single user mode, disable kexts, remove caches etc.
Maintaining a functioning, stable, up-to-date Hackintosh (with Quartz Extreme running properly etc) is a lot like keeping a '60s Volkswagen running. Not particularly difficult, but you build up the skills over time and it takes quite a bit of patience. I think there are going to be a lot of pissed off people once they realize what they've bought into.
Slashdot Mirror
Do I get a medal for reading that thing?
At any rate, railing against FTP is kinda quaint seeing as how there are lots and lots of other ways to intercept the data if you've been pwned.
If you've got a keylogger (or registry scraping malware in the case of Win), it doesn't matter if you're got some outlandish quantum encryption link between machines.
The real story here is:
- Wordpress is insecure, news at 11. Lots of injection attacks happen, interestingly they're disproportionately successful on newer versions of Wordpress.
- Substitute "Wordpress" for your favorite off the shelf blog/forum/cms script.
- If you're on a shared hosting plan and one box/instance/etc at the facility has been pwned, it's likely able to capture data going to other machines/VMs on the same subnet, particularly if you're using a ghetto-tastic shared Win server (there are no other kinds... all shared Win-based hosts suck ass on all fronts due to incompetent administration and terrible cpanels).
- If your workstation has been pwned, your FTP passwords are the least of your concerns. Trust me.
I mean, it's nice that the author decided that the world needs a little bit of edumacation, but the big picture is more important than "FTP bad"
To clarify: I'm not talking about using a single sticker to activate a ton of PCs, which is certainly possible under the current OEM activation structure.
To be sure, I have had no moral issues whatsoever pirating Windows in the past, but I consider paying $129-ish per machine to keep version and config parity on my modest home office render farm a bargain in comparison to any alternative (apart from Linux, but we're talking Windows at the moment). I built the machines, and paid to get XP64 OEM for each of them (legitimately under the license terms). I'll be paying to install a Windows 7 OEM on those same Core i7 boxes later this year, and the day that Microsoft refuses activation of an OEM copy on an honest to God homebuild is the day that their platform gets abandoned entirely. An upgrade from XP64 or Vista 64 is most certainly not worth the price from a SOHO point of view when you're dealing with 5-6 machines.
I guess my primary point was that a full, non-upgrade, OEM copy of Windows is both cheaper and more convenient to own in the long run (and even the short term) than an "upgrade" retail box... and the upgrade boxes are retailing for pennies on the dollar less than a full install. There's no compelling reason whatsoever to pay for an "upgrade" box because it's incredibly inconvenient to have to reinstall from one in the long run.
There is no good reason to ever purchase an upgrade copy from Microsoft given pricing, convenience and licensing terms. If your personal moral code objects to sticking an OEM copy of Windows (or education copy for even cheaper) on a machine that isn't technically brand-spanking-new, then fine... but for God's sake don't buy the upgrade copy. Just spring for the full retail install.
You save about $20 off retail (which costs twice as much or more than OEM) to buy yourself about 3 additional hours on every reinstall, and that's the part that chafes me. Or you can buy the OEM copy that's far cheaper and is the exact same as the retail box, minus superfluous packaging and which serial number it accepts.
Until it's as convenient to be 100% EULA-compliant as it is to fudge a little on the OEM terms I'm gonna continue saving money at upgrade time and not lose any sleep over it.
So, Microsoft: make upgrade boxes less of a pain in the ass over the long term -- or make the price on par with the additional hassle -- and I'll consider doing things your way. I don't trust you, I don't respect you, but I'm stuck with you for certain apps. You'd do well to learn a little about customer loyalty from Apple.
But in reality, I buy an OEM copy of Windows Ultimate Whatever from Newegg for $129. I don't have to deal with the utterly retarded upgrade process every time I have to nuke & pave, and I've got an ugly little sticker to refer to when nuke & pave time rolls around.
You're assuming I give two shits about honoring the finer points of Microsoft's licensing, which I don't. Is MS going to come after me? Are they going to deactivate my Windows randomly? They deactivate retail copies randomly.
To be honest, It's more convenient for me to get a legit serial number that doesn't self-destruct than to deal with suspect WGA patches & cracks that work like an arms race and require constant vigilance.
As long as you don't reinstall more often than quarterly, activation goes through without the need for a dreaded phone call. In the case that it fails, I make the phone call and say (and I quote): "I had to replace the motherboard" and get an activation key in about five minutes. If you do this once a week, the phone drones sound vaguely annoyed with you, but you still end up with the number.
So, really, what's the downside here (apart from paying for it at all)? I'm curious.
In a nod to the global economic downturn, it is interesting to note that upgrade prices are still more expensive than a non-upgrade OEM copy with far more reinstallation hassles.
Oy, I hit submit before I added all the confirmed films:
The Bear and the Bow (2011)
Newt (2012)
Also worth noting is that the last I checked, Andrew Stanton was attached to John Carter of Mars, however it wasn't confirmed that Pixar/Disney would be distributing. There has been conflicting info on the matter, and it's ambiguous at the moment.
Both incorrect itself (or couldn't even be bothered with IMDB) and its assumptions are misquoted blogspam.
So, let's see, confirmed on Pixar's future agenda (as we know now);
Toy Story 3 (2010)
John Carter of Mars (2012)
1906
Plus speculation in Variety from several days ago about Monsters, Inc 2 possibly being Docter's next film that has suffered a little in the blogspam reporting (ie accuracy), resulting in the OMG SEQUALZ?!? meme we're soaking in today...
Also speculation: various rumored Mater spin-off movies from Cars. Yes, Larry the Cable Guy might get his own... vehicle (ouch). God help us all, but it'd be a goldmine.
One more note, Netalyzer sees my upstream at 6.5 megabits and downstream at 15 megabits -- which means that Netalyzer's traffic is being shaped by Comcast to give better appearance than reality (same deal with almost all of the "speed test" sites out there).
I guarantee you in Jacksonville, FL that via FTP, SMTP, AFP, WebDAV or BitTorrent you will never see upstream speeds faster than 45k / second after an initial 3 to 5 second burst, no matter what you might think you're paying for.
They're not redirecting DNS in my area of North Florida, but
Apart from their God-awful downtime (about an hour a day at around 3am EST)... ...and 1-hour almost instant disconnect if you're participating in a torrent they've flagged as unacceptable... ...and terrible upstream speeds (about 45k / sec after the first 3 second burst)... ...and random massive latency... ...and questionable traffic shaping... ...and "not really" unlimited internet...
They're ok-ish. Apart from being FUCKING EVIL. That said, the local cartel apparently hasn't gotten the same memo that caused TFA's seizure.
Ok, they suck compared to, say, Speakeasy in the old days, but AT&T hasn't upgraded infrastructure in my neighborhood to support DSL, so Comcast is quite literally the only game in town. Yeah, I'm 5 miles outside of downtown and I can't get DSL here because up until a few years ago only poor folk lived in these old houses and it wasn't worth the time. Same reason there's no cable underground in Jacksonville's downtown... Cox cable (at the time) decided only poor folks lived there in the 70s when they last dug up the streets.
Anyhow, apart from blocking non-comcast SMTP, here's all Netalyzer anomalies:
RPC (Port 135) blocked
NetBIOS (Port 139) blocked
SMB (Port 445) blocked
DNS resolver (Comcast DNS): 1700ms (!!!)
Nothing I'd flag as unacceptable apart from the DNS latency. I learned to get my own SMTP host on an alternate port years ago as blocking port 25 is standard procedure on most ISPs.
Controversy is a matter of taste.
If you don't want your kids playing GTA or playing pseudo-realistic war sims, don't buy 'em. Don't play 'em. But don't try and protect me from them either.
I never really understood, and I'm not sure I will ever understand, what makes some people take up a crusade expressly to abolish ideas that they find offensive that they could just avoid, in turn exposing themselves to a constant stream of something that they obviously can't stand.
Books, games, metal, hip-hop, homosexuality, religion, porn, weed... hell, even Macs. The list goes on and on. Almost all of of the hot buttons I can think of are often central to a person's identity.
Stop telling me how to live my life and get on with your own. I may not agree with how you choose to live your life, but I'll be damned if you make my moral choices for me.
Have your own kids, shield them if you must, and get back to me in 16 years with how well that turns out.
Think of your own damned children.
With the new regime at MS this last year or so came new advertising/marketing & PR partnerships. Aside from the occasional WTF (Seinfeld?), they've been doing a pretty good job as a whole.
As someone who was in the ad/pr industry for quite a long time I can tell you that:
1. The date has "leaked" reliably pretty much once a week on all the betas to date. Nothing's "leaking". They're disseminating the info virally to build buzz. It works, and that's ok.
2. Win 7 needs as much positive spin as it can get to offset the Vista catastrophe. The february beta was more stable and bug-free than Vista SP1... and to coin a phrase "it's Vista without the suck." They need to get the word out there, to as many folks as possible. For Windows, it's not bad at all, and it's a massive improvement over Vista even if they share 80% of their DNA. Well, aside from the start menu still requiring Vista's 50 clicks to get to the app you want due to the teeny-tiny scrolling programs folder list. I don't like some of the interface Nazi choices that they're making with no user overrides available (start menu, ribbon).
Look, I've tried the public beta back in Feb, and I'm looking forward to putting RC1 on a couple light use 3D workstations. There's nothing inherently wrong with the XP64 that's on 'em, excepting that fewer and fewer 64-bit apps... like say MacDrive... run against XP64 (just Vista.. which is a naggy, broken clusterfuck).
I'm happiest on my primary workstation (which is a Mac) and my laptop (also a Mac), but I've got memory & processor intensive CG apps I run that require Windows 64. Some require Linux 64. Diversity is good. Rendering throughput with Win7 beta (Maya/mental ray) was nearly 10% higher than XP64 and on par with Linux 64's render times... just easier to roll out and configure on a bunch of render slaves with random hardware profiles (ie whatever I've got on hand when I need the horsepower).
Anything that makes Windows suck less is fine by me, and getting a viable 64-bit Win OS in my hands before I'm unable to buy OEM XP64 copies anymore is a priority. Having RC1 not expire until mid 2010 is a bonus. That means I can use it in light production as a render box or secondary workstation now instead of a nuke-every-few-weeks sandbox.
I think you're on to something there.
There's a quest line in Icecrown that explicitly shows what lengths that the forces of Light will go to redeem the faithful, no matter the cost, and unlike most of WoW, it takes itself incredibly seriously.
I was halfway through that questline, and I began thinking to myself "going through so much effort to save one individual... this can't end well" -- and let's just say that I felt a bit guilty for my own cynicism at the end.
But what cost is there to tear apart the fabric of reality to save just one soul from damnation? It's certainly non-trivial based on the difficulty presented in the story.
After that point you start meeting the ghost child I've mentioned, and are given the opportunity to walk a few miles in someone else's shoes.
I know that WoW plays fast and loose with fantasy cliché, but that's a pretty difficult question to answer, and it's a lot more nuanced than I'm used to with the writing/plotting in general. I don't think they'd have put this much effort into the themes of remorse, redemption and falls from grace if we were just going to end up with the Lich King loot piñata at the end of it all. Particularly with the amount of development we've seen on both sides of the conflict this time.
I'm inclined to disagree here. I loved the entry quests, and the entire fact that some people are having trouble carrying out their orders and have such a strong aversion to what they're being asked to do means they're allowing themselves to become immersed in the world and/or character.
You're forced to do some very, very bad things in a semi-gleeful fashion until that prisoner execution quest -- and the designers just ratchet up the guilt at that point. You start to squirm when you're asked to do over-the-top stuff after that point. You WANT to be good. That's the idea.
I thought it was incredibly effective and well-done.
But, then again, I generally prefer anti-heroes (like Thrall), and I see the world in a few more shades of gray than a lot of folks. I've known quite a few who couldn't stomach the Death Knight starting story, but if you're involved enough to get squeamish or have a strong reaction one way or another, I'd argue that you're getting pretty good immersion there.
I've seen almost zero grind for anything this time out.
It's been a few weeks since launch, and I play casually (hate the casual = person who doesn't raid meme going around). Guild with myself and 3-4 real life friends who are almost never at the same level to run stuff together.
I've gotten exalted with all the factions whose loot I wanted, simply from questing and picking a tabard when I log in to run heroics.
Quest, run a few dungeons, get what you need.
Playing a few hours a few nights a week, I've gotten my engineering motorcycle, and filled half of my equipment slots with Naxx 10/Archavon 10/25/ and badge gear, rarely running the same content twice. To top it all off, this is a Pally tank that I've never raided with before (Warlock changes make them far less fun to play at the moment, so my lock is in retirement).
I've gotten together pickup groups for 10-man runs, and we've made our way through pretty successfully, Sapphiron & KelThuzad down in 2 runs with nobody who's run the stuff before.
Look, I raided in a hardcore fashion for months and months back in EQ and original WOW just to get a specific shoulder piece to drop from a boss. 40 men, guild and time commitment required. Repeat the same stuff over and over until you're burnt out.
There's none of that anymore, and I don't need a guild just to see all of the endgame content (which is all I really care about). Sure you can grind for that absolutely perfect piece of equipment, but there are statistically identical alternatives everywhere -- and the badge system means that you'll never run 100 runs in a row without several pieces of gear to show for it.
In my experience, great loot dropped quick and plentifully. Which just means I can see deeper content faster, and retire till the next content patch.
Ew, replying to myself.
Had to clarify one bit... by Arthas, I mean Arthas Menethil, NOT The Lich King. Arthas is (debatibly) part of the psyche of the Lich King, and is his body.
Depending on how far you've gotten in Icecrown, you might have learned that they're not necessarily one and the same (from a little human ghost child that keeps randomly popping up, whose name is an anagram). They don't come out explicitly and say it, but I'm betting that they want the Arthas half of the Lich King to be sympathetic. Bad choices made with the best of intentions, up to a point. And they've succeeded. Won't go into any more detail as not to spoil those who are taking the content slowly (which I recommend).
Really interested to see where the storyline picks up once we're able to face the Lich King himself. Things might not work out quite how people have been assuming.
That's part of the overarching theme of the expansion.
Arthas' own personal road to hell was paved with the best of intentions, but he was only capable of seeing the world in stark black and white -- no middle ground. Blizzard wants you to squirm at some of the tasks you're set to carry out. They want you to disagree with (if not outright hate) your overzealous faction leaders (I'm looking at you Varian & Garrosh).
You get involved that way, and I've found it's been remarkably effective in making me feel like *I* accomplished (spoilers here). I was actually completely hooked with the forsaken, storm peaks and icecrown quest chains.
That's the beauty of the Alliance/Horde deal. There are no true "good guys" or "bad guys"... just shades of gray, and there's a slippery slope next to the moral high ground. Pretty sure that's the parallel to Arthas' fall that they're intending to make.
Yes, I think the writing and pacing were quite good this time out. :)
Part of that is evoking ANY kind of feeling when you're doing quests, even if it's reprehensible stuff. You connect that way.
For the record, his stance is pro- "safe nuclear power" -- the point being that the waste has to end up somewhere, from my understanding of the matter.
There are an awful lot of communities that don't want a dump in their backyard, and I can't say that I blame them. I'm a pretty darned pro-nuclear guy, but reactors (in their current 1970's form) create a mountain of radioactive waste that has to be dealt with. It's been a major issue, even with the comparatively small amount of reactors that we now have -- now ramp up mass production and disposal becomes a rather thorny issue, as do the logistics of fuel supply in our "omg terrorists with tacnukes?!?! nowai!" climate.
My belief is that it's a pragmatic approach, given there are cleaner nuclear alternatives not too far around the corner given some R&D investment.
...after reading through all three thousand plus posts on this topic, admittedly with a filter of +2, I feel compelled to come in and toss away all my mod points to say "thanks" to the /.'ers here and abroad for having actual, real, intelligent discourse about this. The signal to noise ratio was one of the best I've seen on a thread here in years.
I'd been firmly in the Obama camp since he came out against lobbyists in an incredibly direct zero-tolerance fashion (for Washington, at least). None in my ground crew, none in my cabinet, not a dime from them. So, that made the sale for me personally very early in the primary season. Voting for someone who's been a civil rights lawyer, and is incredibly well-spoken... well, that's just a bonus. How cool would it be to have a quotable president in your lifetime? All those speeches you memorize in school? What if you were there for a speech your kids memorize?
I'm not at all proud of what my government, and by association, my country has turned into in the last decade. And as cheesy as it might sound to some people, I really do think we need constructive, positive dialog to move forward. Race, international relations, financial markets... everything. We've gotten in the habit of painting the world in stark shades of idealogical black and white -- on both sides.
Growing up in the US, we're taught to believe in a very idealized, edited version of American history, and America as a symbol -- it's the history that we really wished could be. Down to the specifics of the Lincoln presidency and on, very complex issues are taught to us in a very binary, black and white fashion that loses nuance completely. But it's part of who we are. And for the most part, it's who we want to be. It might be borderline fiction, but it's a noble aspiration.
Something struck me during one of the debates. Obama said "We need to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable." -- which sounds juvenile on the surface, but is a consummate truth at its core and sums up a major issue with the "you're either with me or against me" macho cowboy politic crap we've had to endure.
We've been stuck in gridlock, incapable of positive change for so long that I think we've forgotten how to affect it.
I must say that if the John McCain who made the incredibly eloquent, heartfelt concession speech last night had been the same man who had been campaigning, I think things would have been a lot closer. Well, and ditched his trainwreck running mate, but I didn't log in to burn the neocons in effigy.
If Obama can achieve even a fraction of what he's set about, it'll be positive change for this country and world in my very honest opinion. It's arrogant as an American to believe that my vote affects the entire world, but looking over the last eight years in particular, it's incredibly naïve to believe it doesn't. We're a conflicted people.
McCain may very well have been capable of leading us out of this incredibly dark, deep hole that we're in, but the Republican party as a whole (down to my state and local levels -- I'm in North Florida) has lost any shred of credibility in regard to the term "conservative" where it applies to fiscal and legislative issues, and has taken the moral "conservative" tack -- ie, let's roll back the clock and stand in the way of social progress to regard to people who aren't just like us. You want polarization? Base your politics about making people scared of folks who aren't just like you, and spend your time telling other adults how to live their lives.
The world isn't like that, the country isn't like that... shit, my block isn't like that. So how did we get in this place?
The core of my personal moral compass is that there's nothing on this planet more offensive than a closed mind.
The more we talk, the more we begin to understand each other. And that's a start, isn't it?
A friend invited me to an indoor rock climbing gym a few years ago, and I found that I really enjoyed it. Between the climbing and cutting sugar out of my coffee (easy to do if you order fresh as-in-roasted-today coffee) I got my weight back down to between 160-170 depending on the month (I'm in Florida, and far less active in the summer because I sweat a LOT above 85 or so). For a 6' tall guy with broad shoulders, I'm pretty happy at this weight.
I must say that exercise for the sake of exercise just bores me to pieces.
Climbing is really a puzzle that you're solving with your body -- it keeps your mind occupied, unlike most other forms of exercise that I've tried. It also resulted in serious muscle tone on my arms and legs (very quickly), without building mass. Two hours, two days a week on easy to medium climbs (5.9 and under). And at the end of it all, we go have a few beers to help with the muscle soreness.
Anyway, a lot of climbing gyms have started installing what they refer to as "auto-belays" -- basically, you don't need a second person to hold the rope on some of the gym routes. Once you get a little more advanced, you'll want to find a climbing buddy though -- for encouragement, and also to belay you on the more difficult climbs, and if you get into it, you'll need a buddy or two for the occasional outdoor climb as well. Side benefit: you end up seeing places that you'd never see. Or you may end up just taking a pair of climbing shoes with you when you travel to do weird stuff like bouldering Rat Rock in Central Park, or climbing on all of the artificial rocks at Disney (I've done both).
You don't need any equipment to start out besides a ratty t-shirt and some cargo shorts. A chalk ball is handy ($2ish). You can rent shoes, a harness and a belay device at the gym for cheap ($6-7ish). Eventually you'll want your own, and you can pick up the whole set for about $100 -- about the price of a decent set of running shoes.
Another benefit:
I don't know about you, but in addition to not getting enough exercise, I also generally have a lot of "chatter" going on in my head. I can't stop thinking about random things, and at times it can be very difficult to concentrate well enough to code or focus on work.
Well, I'm here to tell you that the primal fear of falling will turn all of that chatter off instantly. I've never experienced anything like it, and when I lose focus I find myself heading into the gym for an hour or so.
For those on the Mac side, there's a theme for TextMate called Twilight, which I now use extensively.
For the rest of the question, here's my recipe:
- Cool gray wall behind my monitors... let's call it a 20-30%.
- No light sources within angle of reflection.
- Decent name brand LCD monitors (Apple and pro grade Viewsonics/Samsungs they're about $100 more for comparable size)
- Proper color calibration. I'm a fan of the Mac's 1.8 gamma... again, lower contrast. I tend toward a slightly yellow (8200ish k) white balance.
- The minimal amount of true black or true white on the screen at any given time. Take a look at professional color & video editing apps -- they've all got a gray on gray palette that's meant to reduce color perception influence from the GUI -- but the medium contrast of the 70ish% on 30%ish gray really helps prevent eyestrain while remaining legible enough that you're not straining to read.
- No fluorescents anywhere within my field of vision or as ambient light. I can see the flicker from a mile away and it drives me utterly insane.
No, the continuum is Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil and Chaotic Evil.
Basically, Good to Unaligned are the old Chaotic Good area, and Evil is the old Lawful Evil.
And yeah, I agree with you on your two examples. They fit into the continuum still -- it's just semantics.
I prefer my world with a little more gray as well.
Just went over the rules today, and I like the whole package (more or less, but I'm the only guy left playing D&D that hates using minis for combat, and the treasure parcel rules are just ridiculously overpowered -- but that's what house rules are for).
Sure, there's a lot of simplification (mostly for the better), but some of the ideas people have gotten about some things like the spell system (for instance) are just plain wrong.
Spells (powers) are split up into at-will, per-encounter and daily use. It basically means that your level 5 Wizard might be able to cast one fireball (hard hitting) per encounter, and one flamestrike (boss fight) per day, but they'll always have the option to use a normal damage magic missle so that your paper-thin mage isn't hacking at stuff with his dagger, stocking up on 400 darts or twiddling his thumbs during a castle raid, waiting to take a nap to be useful again after he blows his wad.
Those examples, btw, are just made up, but the spell system works pretty much like that now. You save your über powers for boss fights, basically, and stuff like tongues or knock become rituals, so you don't have to take a nap to memorize them when the need arises. Good changes all around, as far as I'm concerned.
Might just be me, but I want my mage to feel like a mage the entire time I'm playing, and not have him blow his wad and have to sleep to regain all his spells after every encounter -- particularly at low levels.
Ditto for the Cleric/healing rules. Most of the stuff in 4E just makes sense and has been a long time coming (if you didn't house rule something similar already).
Anyhow, sit down with the new books and a latte at your local megachain and give them the once-over, you might like what you see. Might not be for everyone, but I haven't upgraded the games I run from 1E just because I'd like to do a chapter a session, not just 2 encounters and loot management.
I spent the day hashing over the 4E rules, and I must say that just about all the changes I see are very good from a real-world, let's get 5 people together and have fun for 3 hours kinda way.
One of the reasons that I've clung to my original 1E rules over the years (I've got the '70s version and an early '80s reprint of the 3 core books) is that 2E and 3E just seemed to needlessly complicate the hell out of everything. Instead of 15 minutes to fight a party of Orcs, the encounters started taking an hour or more -- OMG skill check, fortitude check, balance check, grapple check, sphincter check. Every single 2E or 3.xE game that I've participated in had house rules to bring combat closer to 1E just so your 3 hour gaming session had some actual progress instead of 2 encounters, loot, nite guys!
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really think the rules are a basic framework within which to enjoy making a story with friends. I've never really played D&D with any powergamer or rules lawyer types, and to be honest, I'm thankful.
If you want sim-style combat, and save/skill checks out the ass, make house rules. Just don't overcomplicate the core rulebooks!
To sum up: I'm very happy with almost everything I've seen in the 4E rules so far. They mean that I can get buddies and their wives together on short notice and have a game up and running in an hour. Character development is quite a bit more like CRPGs and WoW, which is fine by me! Most people who'd play at my table already understand spec/talent systems from WoW or wherever -- it just means there's less to explain, and it prompts characters to think about goals from the beginning (I love the destiny bit -- getting players to think about their character as part of an enormous story arc is great!).
I've heard a lot about the loss of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil, but they're honestly still there -- just called Good and Evil now. Part of me misses the old-style 9 grid alignment diagram, but I definitely won't miss having to explain those two apparent oxymorons to new players. I also *quite* like the new Unaligned (instead of true neutral) alignment -- far less restrictive than true neutral used to be. No druids in PHB1, alas, but I'm sure they'll be in PHB2. All of the starting classes are full-on archetypes, and there are none of what MMO types would call "hybrid classes".
The only things I truly dislike about the 4E rules so far is that it seems impossible to do combat without a minigrid. Again, I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always preferred more storytelling-style combat instead of sim/wargame style. It made gaming sessions move much more quickly. We'll see if I end up house-ruling over that after trying it out. I doubt seriously that I'd ever use the loot parcel rule. Magic items in my games are very few and very far between, mostly because the games are about the story, not lewts + power.
Anyhow, this is the first edition since the original that I think I'll adopt. I like the organization of the books, the playing advice/primers and even the DMing advice.
TFA isn't a review: it's an expanded press release.
There's nothing about any of the mechanics of how the game plays, except that it's supposedly easier for newbs and balanced at all levels.
So in summary, there are...
1. New books!
2. New art!
3. Online tools!
I'm sensing two people trying to keep a relationship hidden from a spouse. Whether it's physical, long-distance via AIM/email or whatever.
Huge paranoia probably due to the person you're afraid of intercepting something incriminating is still in the house?
If my theory isn't the case, tell your friend to get out. Go to family, a shelter, anything. Just get the F out. If there's nothing sinister under the surface here, that's not a healthy relationship. Get. Out. Of. It.
If my suspicions prove accurate, I can share this:
I've been on the moral low-ground of a similar situation in my (much) younger, (much) dumber days. The guilty have a tendency to get extremely paranoid about everything. That's not to say that a psychotic husband isn't standing in your bushes with a 9mm at this very moment looking through the window. It happened to me, and that's a point that I really feel the need to drive home. My sloth of a cat jumping when a twig snapped is probably the only reason I'm typing this right now.
I guess the point of all of this is: tread carefully. Don't be so naïve as to believe that things can't spiral out of control within a single heartbeat in ways that you never imagined. It doesn't even particularly matter if you truly care for the person or if you're just chasing tail. You cannot predict what another person, even one that you feel you know well, is capable of doing when blinded by rage. I've seen people turn homicidal, I've seen people turn self-destructive.
So the take-away is: watch your ass. If you truly care for this person and it's reciprocated, why haven't they left their spouse? Seems to me that you should be considering a plan for the future as opposed to hiding in the present. You're just delaying the inevitable.
These aren't clones. They're Hackintoshes done for you and then shipped out. The OS isn't legit, iLife isn't legit, and you're dumping entirely too much money on the hardware that they're shipping out as there's no software cost at all.
I've got to wonder why Software Update isn't working on them, even though they've admitted to using the EFI loader hack. In my experience, only OS updates (ie 10.5.1->10.5.2) are potentially dangerous anymore, and I managed to update from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 without issue on an oldish Shuttle AMD barebones box here after patching EFI/Vanilla kernel.
It's almost trivial to get a vanilla kernel up & running on an Intel hackintosh now, only slightly more difficult on an AMD box -- there are even several quite good pre-packaged installers now with 10.5.2 that do everything for you if you don't like to get your hands dirty.
All that said, it's going to be funny when all of the people duped into buying these can't update to 10.5.4 or whatever and end up with a bricked box. At least if you do it yourself, you develop the skillset to boot into single user mode, disable kexts, remove caches etc.
Maintaining a functioning, stable, up-to-date Hackintosh (with Quartz Extreme running properly etc) is a lot like keeping a '60s Volkswagen running. Not particularly difficult, but you build up the skills over time and it takes quite a bit of patience. I think there are going to be a lot of pissed off people once they realize what they've bought into.