Because Roland is a nasty spammer whose "blog" rips of other people's work. It should be clear that Roland's end goal is not to share information, but to PLAGIARISE information from other sources, then pretend it's his own and lure people to his weblog just to generate a constant stream of visitors to rack up the money he makes in advertising. Roland is almost on the same level of annoyingness as e-mail spammers.
At least the repost will btie into his advertisement scheme. Free info for us, no money for that greedy cheating bastard.
Think of "The Sims". Someone needs to combine "The Sims" with a random RTS or maybe even space based RTS ( a la Homeworld ). Think about it, some random person build a nice house, a few more random people build more nice houses, make up for a pretty and lively neighborhood with people chatting, working and having fun. Then you can start an orbital bombardment on that neighborhood starting with a few salvos from your heavy cruisers, followed by several waves of plasma bombers...
Or, more seriously, something like "Sim City" and "The Sims". One person develops a town, other people build houses, businesses, etcetera. Random people would be able to "host" towns and players who build houses would log in as clients. Town can then cough up their own authentication systems ( ie, pay up, restricted access, something else... ) and be linked to other towns. Maybe it's an idea, maybe not. Sure as hell would be interesting to me, as long as people don't slap monthly subscriptions on it and make offline use possible...
Was messing around with my new wireless router yesterday. The thing has the ability to use WEP, which is decent enough to stop el-random-fuckwad from screwing up my network and abuse my internet connection. Anyways, I decide to check it out and I try to set up a random WEP keyphrase.
Turns out I need to cough up a random 10 character hex number. And remember it, too. Then I looked at 128bit WEP ecryption which required a 26 character hex number. I can't use my normal ( secure ) password because it contains non-hex characters and well... That's it, really. I could only enter hex characters which makes for a LOUSY key to remember. I then went "Fuck it." and used MAC adress whitelisting. Much more effective, too, even though it will require some work once/if I get people over here with wireless equipment...
Mind you, I'm not unfamiliar with computers. Random people would go "WEP? You mean the world wide web?" if you mention WEP. They just expect things to "work".
Check the CAN-SPAM law/act/whatever it is. If you're in the US, chances are it applies to you, your friend, his boss AND the client. Have your friend nail both his boss and the client by reporting this to whoever's in charge of the whole CAN-SPAM ordeal.
Alternatively, have your friend make the spam so damned obvious that each and every spamfilter will tag it as spam and delete it. Go poke around the spamassassin source code and think up a spam that will maximize the chance it will get marked as spam and deleted. Don't forget to include actual data on your company, your boss, the client and the client's company.
Also, post the data here in Slashdot. If we know where your friend works, admins that visit Slashdot can block your mailservers in advance. Even better if you could give the mail servers to be used for the spam run in advance. Have your friend on the lookout for a new job and then have him report his own company at blacklists, etc.
There are rumors out there of a planet that consists for 70% out of water. It's crust is broken up, creating a geologically interesting system. Due to a high-density atmosphere, it has severe variations in temperature... The farther away from the equater, the colder it becomes. However, the same atmosphere retains heat and causes the dark side of the planet to remain nearly the same temperature. The largest bodies of water on the planet are alive, with massive slow moving currents miles underneath the surface and magnetic activity in the atmosphere causese electrical discharges more powerful then mankind has ever been able to create. The core of this planet is made up out of molten metals and projects a gigantic magnetic field around the planet... Etcetera.
Of course, I'm talking about Terra. Sol 3. Our Earth. Just a friendly reminder that practically ANY planet is, in it's own way, amazing.:)
Not only that, but it's far, FAR more lucrative. First of all, the subscriptions. Instead of paying EUR 49,95 for a game, you'll end up paying 19,95 or 29,95 or so per month, BESIDES the 49,95. Because of the many "First month free" offers and offers like that, I will ignore the first month for simplicity's sake. Also, there are players who really enjoy the game and will stay longer then three months, say... A year. Other players will go even further and might stay up to two years. Let's assume 10% of the former and 5% of the latter. I'm going to ignore the hardcore addicts ( a la Everquest ) because I'm lazy. ( Hey, at least I'm honest... )
For 10.000 units sold: MMO: 10.000 x 49,95 = 499.500 8.500 x 19,95 = 169.575 x 3 = 508.725 1.000 x 19,95 = 19.950 x 12 = 239.400 500 x 19,95 = 9.975 x 24 = 239.400 Total MMO: EUR 1.487.025
Offline game: 10.000 x 49.95 = 499.500 Total offline game: EUR 499.500
For a second, imagine it's laid out properly and not screwed up because of Slashdot being a mediocre product, at best.
I'd assume that they'd check things out first. Besides, spamvertised websites are rather easy to recognize: I think 95% of all *.biz and *.info sites are spamvertised sites. There's also this whole thing about using fake names, no contact information, companies based in countries where the law isn't taken very seriously or where the law allows spamming, etc.
Slashdot editors/admin allow, condone AND encourage link spammers/whores. ( Lo Roland, I mean you. )
Journalistic value of Slashdot is close to 0. ( Plainly ripping of crap from other sites; What's the last time we saw something original? )
Editorial blunders abound. ( Hello dupes, triples and sometimes quads... And think of the percentages in this (pdf) in the 4th paragraph )
Based on a broken moderation system. ( Over/Underrated, the funny mod, worthless distribution of mod rights. )
Developer/admin arrogance and incompetence. ( Regarding several long-standing bugs, errors, etc. )
Backed by worthless company that promotes outsourcing. ( Slashdot -> OSDN/OSTG -> Sourceforge )
Compete ignorance of what their customers actually want ( No more IT section which makes our eyes bleed. )
In contrast, slashdot is...
... Free! ( I pity the sucker who SUBSCRIBE for this though... I think you'd be better of burning your money, that would at least give you some warmth... )
... Fun! ( 100k people, there's bound to be a few with my sense of humour about! )
... Actual!... Mostly... ( Ripping news from other sites makes sure the pathetic Slashdot editorial staff doesn't fuck those up, at least. )
Final Fantasy XI (if you've read my posts elsewhere, you'll already know I love this game) has exactly the right kind of franchise. "Final Fantasy" is difficult to pin down; each of the games has its own characters, worlds, plot and game mechanics. The only commonalities between the games are a few core gameplay concepts, the names of a couple of characters and a few world-elements, such as airships and chocobos. Within those very, very few constraints, the developers were free to create whatever world they wanted. The result was a world which looked and felt like a Final Fantasy world, but which had been carefully balanced to work as a MMORPG. Sure, a lot of newbies wanted to be a summoner, because summons have been one of the cooler things about recent FF games, but there's no fundamental requirement of the game universe that Summoners be uber-characters (in fact, unless the player is willing to put a *lot* of time and effort into developing it, the Summoner's generally felt to be a weak class in most areas). For the most part, people accept this.
I don't know wether one should think of FF XI as a franchised product. The entire Final Fantasy series is stuffed with differences between all the installments; it can hardly be considered a single defined franchise. Summoners as a special character-bound class, for example, haven't been around since FF4, only to be re-used in some of the more recent FFs. The only things that all Final Fantasy games share are the chocobos, those fuzzy white dipshits and the mandatory stolen airship. I mean, a game can be built on a franchise based on a single FF installment. For example, one could make a game where you have a purple haired woman flying around naked in 16 bit glory ( FF6 ), a game where you have to stab girls with unwieldy long swords ( FF7 ) or maybe even a game where you can lead your own band of socially-inept elite mercenaries ( FF8 ). But a single "Final Fantasy" franchise would be hard, simply because there are so few consistent FF things one can use.
Of course, SquareEnix used some magic again and got away by using common elements from the latest batch of FFs, slapping it together under a FF (x+1) name and thus effectively breaking or ignoring all rules about franchising. Instead they delivered an unrelated product based largely on a franchised trademark.
I wonder, would you say the same thing if YOUR heart was failing leaving you only a couple of days? Let's assume there would be only one heart available in time and the other patient is a mega-wealthy celebrity who can easily live for years on a weakened heart. Then how would you look at someone's family selling a heart to the celeb just because the celeb would pay more then you can?
Some people just aren't very good at creating 3D graphics. Instead of realizing things like this, most people yell and blame the tool, not their own inability. It's just like some people don't have any talent for drawing or are just poor drivers. Cooking would be a good example, too. Last time I tried to cook something I got yelled at by the FEMA.:(
Then again, some books don't need reading in order to judge the contents. ( Referring to Ann Coulter's books, not Katie.com ) Besides, I saw most of the reviews and most mentioned the fact that the publisher was trying to strongarm Katie Jones into giving up her domain name, with the occasional cry for a boycott on Penguin (something). Nothing much about the book itself, just the publisher.
What's the use, really? Other then the geeky "Oooh, ahhh!" value of the screenshots and juicy technical details? I mean, how often a day do you need an extensive database with all the 3d-engine available, along with their pricing? I mean, nearly all good 3D engine simply cost bucket loads of green, not something ye olde random hobbyist isn't willing to spend. That, and if there's a large and serious 3D game project, the owners of the engines themselves will show up and show their products, thus pretty much negating the use of the database for professional use as well.
I patented the "Bullshit" gene. Therefore, all lawyers, politicians, CEOs and feminists aren't allowed to do anything at all unless they pay me substantial amounts of money for using my gene. US elections are coming and this patent is going to make me fuckin' RICH!
Also, feel free to mod me down, but only after a 250k Euro deposit to my Swiss bank account as pre-emptive settlement for patent violation.:)
I would have bought Lineage II if it wasn't a MMORPG. Good graphics, the best elements of both japanese and european/american RPGs, along with rather nice character generation. Shame really, that it became a MMORPG. No real story, monthly subscriptions and worst of all, other people, really ruin any RPG for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Roland is a nasty spammer whose "blog" rips of other people's work. It should be clear that Roland's end goal is not to share information, but to PLAGIARISE information from other sources, then pretend it's his own and lure people to his weblog just to generate a constant stream of visitors to rack up the money he makes in advertising. Roland is almost on the same level of annoyingness as e-mail spammers.
At least the repost will btie into his advertisement scheme. Free info for us, no money for that greedy cheating bastard.
Most Roland Piqesomething spams are posted by Michael.
Solve the problem by ignoring all articles posted by Michael. I already have any of Hemos' crap on ignore and it improved Slashdot!
Then again, if I were to ignore all incompetent Slashdot admins/editors, I'd be looking at the wquivalent of this...
Think of "The Sims". Someone needs to combine "The Sims" with a random RTS or maybe even space based RTS ( a la Homeworld ). Think about it, some random person build a nice house, a few more random people build more nice houses, make up for a pretty and lively neighborhood with people chatting, working and having fun. Then you can start an orbital bombardment on that neighborhood starting with a few salvos from your heavy cruisers, followed by several waves of plasma bombers...
Or, more seriously, something like "Sim City" and "The Sims". One person develops a town, other people build houses, businesses, etcetera. Random people would be able to "host" towns and players who build houses would log in as clients. Town can then cough up their own authentication systems ( ie, pay up, restricted access, something else... ) and be linked to other towns. Maybe it's an idea, maybe not. Sure as hell would be interesting to me, as long as people don't slap monthly subscriptions on it and make offline use possible...
Was messing around with my new wireless router yesterday. The thing has the ability to use WEP, which is decent enough to stop el-random-fuckwad from screwing up my network and abuse my internet connection. Anyways, I decide to check it out and I try to set up a random WEP keyphrase.
Turns out I need to cough up a random 10 character hex number. And remember it, too. Then I looked at 128bit WEP ecryption which required a 26 character hex number. I can't use my normal ( secure ) password because it contains non-hex characters and well... That's it, really. I could only enter hex characters which makes for a LOUSY key to remember. I then went "Fuck it." and used MAC adress whitelisting. Much more effective, too, even though it will require some work once/if I get people over here with wireless equipment...
Mind you, I'm not unfamiliar with computers. Random people would go "WEP? You mean the world wide web?" if you mention WEP. They just expect things to "work".
Check the CAN-SPAM law/act/whatever it is. If you're in the US, chances are it applies to you, your friend, his boss AND the client. Have your friend nail both his boss and the client by reporting this to whoever's in charge of the whole CAN-SPAM ordeal.
Alternatively, have your friend make the spam so damned obvious that each and every spamfilter will tag it as spam and delete it. Go poke around the spamassassin source code and think up a spam that will maximize the chance it will get marked as spam and deleted. Don't forget to include actual data on your company, your boss, the client and the client's company.
Also, post the data here in Slashdot. If we know where your friend works, admins that visit Slashdot can block your mailservers in advance. Even better if you could give the mail servers to be used for the spam run in advance. Have your friend on the lookout for a new job and then have him report his own company at blacklists, etc.
There are rumors out there of a planet that consists for 70% out of water. It's crust is broken up, creating a geologically interesting system. Due to a high-density atmosphere, it has severe variations in temperature... The farther away from the equater, the colder it becomes. However, the same atmosphere retains heat and causes the dark side of the planet to remain nearly the same temperature. The largest bodies of water on the planet are alive, with massive slow moving currents miles underneath the surface and magnetic activity in the atmosphere causese electrical discharges more powerful then mankind has ever been able to create. The core of this planet is made up out of molten metals and projects a gigantic magnetic field around the planet... Etcetera.
Of course, I'm talking about Terra. Sol 3. Our Earth. Just a friendly reminder that practically ANY planet is, in it's own way, amazing. :)
Not only that, but it's far, FAR more lucrative. First of all, the subscriptions. Instead of paying EUR 49,95 for a game, you'll end up paying 19,95 or 29,95 or so per month, BESIDES the 49,95. Because of the many "First month free" offers and offers like that, I will ignore the first month for simplicity's sake. Also, there are players who really enjoy the game and will stay longer then three months, say... A year. Other players will go even further and might stay up to two years. Let's assume 10% of the former and 5% of the latter. I'm going to ignore the hardcore addicts ( a la Everquest ) because I'm lazy. ( Hey, at least I'm honest... )
For a second, imagine it's laid out properly and not screwed up because of Slashdot being a mediocre product, at best.
I'd assume that they'd check things out first. Besides, spamvertised websites are rather easy to recognize: I think 95% of all *.biz and *.info sites are spamvertised sites. There's also this whole thing about using fake names, no contact information, companies based in countries where the law isn't taken very seriously or where the law allows spamming, etc.
Yes, it is.
What scares me more is that she's an engineer... One would assume "Common Sense" would be pretty much standard with engineers... :(
Let's put this into perspective:
In contrast, slashdot is...
Wake me up when these babies are actually being sold. 100 TB in theory is still nothing.
I don't know wether one should think of FF XI as a franchised product. The entire Final Fantasy series is stuffed with differences between all the installments; it can hardly be considered a single defined franchise. Summoners as a special character-bound class, for example, haven't been around since FF4, only to be re-used in some of the more recent FFs. The only things that all Final Fantasy games share are the chocobos, those fuzzy white dipshits and the mandatory stolen airship. I mean, a game can be built on a franchise based on a single FF installment. For example, one could make a game where you have a purple haired woman flying around naked in 16 bit glory ( FF6 ), a game where you have to stab girls with unwieldy long swords ( FF7 ) or maybe even a game where you can lead your own band of socially-inept elite mercenaries ( FF8 ). But a single "Final Fantasy" franchise would be hard, simply because there are so few consistent FF things one can use.
Of course, SquareEnix used some magic again and got away by using common elements from the latest batch of FFs, slapping it together under a FF (x+1) name and thus effectively breaking or ignoring all rules about franchising. Instead they delivered an unrelated product based largely on a franchised trademark.
I wonder, would you say the same thing if YOUR heart was failing leaving you only a couple of days? Let's assume there would be only one heart available in time and the other patient is a mega-wealthy celebrity who can easily live for years on a weakened heart. Then how would you look at someone's family selling a heart to the celeb just because the celeb would pay more then you can?
Before you whack 'er, wrap your pecker! ( Kudos to whoever knows where I ripped that from... )
My bullshit detector just went through a Paradigm Shift.
- Seth
Let's see... At my college, in all ICT classes there are 7 women. That is 7 out of 419, roughly 1,67%
That's a random dutch college, we're talking about.
No no no, ZDnet is apparently not owned by Ziff/Davis anymore.
eWeek, is though.
Jeroen
Some people just aren't very good at creating 3D graphics. Instead of realizing things like this, most people yell and blame the tool, not their own inability. It's just like some people don't have any talent for drawing or are just poor drivers. Cooking would be a good example, too. Last time I tried to cook something I got yelled at by the FEMA. :(
Then again, some books don't need reading in order to judge the contents. ( Referring to Ann Coulter's books, not Katie.com ) Besides, I saw most of the reviews and most mentioned the fact that the publisher was trying to strongarm Katie Jones into giving up her domain name, with the occasional cry for a boycott on Penguin (something). Nothing much about the book itself, just the publisher.
What's the use, really? Other then the geeky "Oooh, ahhh!" value of the screenshots and juicy technical details? I mean, how often a day do you need an extensive database with all the 3d-engine available, along with their pricing? I mean, nearly all good 3D engine simply cost bucket loads of green, not something ye olde random hobbyist isn't willing to spend. That, and if there's a large and serious 3D game project, the owners of the engines themselves will show up and show their products, thus pretty much negating the use of the database for professional use as well.
I think you violated my patent when you hit the "Submit" button.
That would be 250k euro, please.
I patented the "Bullshit" gene. Therefore, all lawyers, politicians, CEOs and feminists aren't allowed to do anything at all unless they pay me substantial amounts of money for using my gene. US elections are coming and this patent is going to make me fuckin' RICH!
Also, feel free to mod me down, but only after a 250k Euro deposit to my Swiss bank account as pre-emptive settlement for patent violation. :)
I would have bought Lineage II if it wasn't a MMORPG. Good graphics, the best elements of both japanese and european/american RPGs, along with rather nice character generation. Shame really, that it became a MMORPG. No real story, monthly subscriptions and worst of all, other people, really ruin any RPG for me.