No book can teach you because the bad don't read
on
Essential PHP Security
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Two students developed a new website for a volunteer organisation as part of their education. Something like an internship, anyway for them it was a temp job. They didn't finish it and since I volunteerd in the past for doing work for them I am now putting the finisching touches on it.
Yuck.
To look at the code I am once again reminded why I always feel sick when someone tells me that I am going to have to work together with a person with a degree. As far as I know they passed with this project yet it is totally and utterly crap. Oh of course it does not work cross-browser. Yes it has many bits of codes wich don't actually doesn't do shit. A 100 line switch statement that always does the same thing for instance but that ain't the worst of it.
The worst of it is that security is non-existent. They use the old '?page=page1' in the url to switch content. I like this approach in itself as it leaves you with only 1 code file wich is accessible from the outside. I also like to make fucking sure that 'page' is filled only with values that I expect. They just insert it in an sql statement and execute it.
Shudder.
Could a book teach guys like this about security? NO.
It is not the first time I see shit like this. To many IT students just are to young and naive to think about security. Or rather to not think about security but just do it. Nobody had to teach me that trusting userinput is bad. I know it is. How?
Well, I don't know I just do. Perhaps it is all the years of low level cracking of games where you alter a string somewhere to give you more health/money whatever. Perhaps it is just being a suspicious bastard.
Security is not a set of easy to follow rules, security is not trusting people.
PHP is a usefull enough language that unfortunally in its basic install comes with some features that can really bite you in the ass. I always disable them on any server I control and then have to spend a lot of time correcting everyone elses code to work on a secured server. Oh and if I see one more person use PHP native sessions I am going to kill that motherfucker. Especially when it is used to store 1 value. Just use a fucking cookie instead of glogging the HD in resource eating insecure way.
ANyway, the review of the book? Well it covers the very basics. If you still need to be told this, just stay away from the web. This is akin to a cooking book telling you not to have a boiling pot of water on the first burners of your stove when a little kid is around. What I read of it all falls into the 'duh' category.
Perhaps I should have explained, it ain't my con. I am sharing it with another tenant and he barely uses it. In fact he thinks that it is normal for adsl to behave like this.
Not my choice until I get a house of my own again.
Not my choice but that is live. Anyway I went from xs4all.nl to tiscali.nl Now those who are dutch might already know what is going to come next but for the 99% of/. readers who aren't let me explain. xs4all is a bit crap, they are expensive, their helpdesk is always busy and they have network problems from time to time. In short, they are the best.
Odd conclusion? Well no. They are expensive but that is because they do not actually have a datalimit, or rather you have one 100gb on my account but they don't actually measure your data throughput. Tiscali does and the limit is 1gb for half the price. Mmmm. 40 bucks for 1gb or 80 for unlimited.
Next is that their helpdesk is always busy, this is nasty but at least the helpdesk fucking knows their business AND is available in the weekend. Oh and their online help is good enough that the only thing I ever needed from them is password resets.
So who cares about this? Is this on topic? Well no but I am getting there. Next is reliability. I said xs4all sucks? Well it does, it always managed to drop my connection at least once per month. Fucking annoying.
Offcourse that was until I moved house and now am on tiscali. Wich drops the con every 10 minutes. Suddenly the internet is totally different. Even simple browsing becomes a pain when every 4th click results in a minute long wait for the modem to reconnect.
Why is it crap? Oh who knows. I actually have worked for tiscali (then worldonline) in the distant past and they never struck me as the brightest bulb (they hired me after all) but perhaps it is just the phone line.
But it really doesn't matter. On my old con it was already troublesome that a couple of times per year I could not google or whatever but with this ISP can you imagine using web apps? It would be like trying to do work on windows 95 adware edition.
And that is my fundemental, and I think everyone elses, problem with the whole idea of webapps. Very nice until your connection drops out.
As long as we got joke ISP's with idiotic data limits web apps are never going to take off. Think of it like this. Who here does not have some kind of emergency equipment like a flashlight for when the elec drops out or camping gas stove for when the gas drops out? And that is (at least in holland) extremely reliable stuff. Trusting my internet connection to determine wether I can work or not does not sound very smart to me.
Oh and as far as mobile computing is concerned. Those who can afford mobile connection costs don't need it, they got secretaries and those who need it can't afford it.
You can forget the net 2.0 the same problem that killed the 'bubble' ideas of the net are killing any new ideas. The ISP's simply ain't up to the task of providing reliable constant connections. Oh the better ones come close but xs4all in holland is tiny. The best and reviewed that way by consumer organisations but still tiny.
So who's really at fault here? The students? The hospital for not securing their computers and network? Or the adware companies for providing the incentive?
Note that what follows below is only based on RTFA wich as usuall when dealing with mainstream press reporting on tech may be wrong or inaccurate or indeed made up on the spot. Nonetheless based on this I conclude the following.
That the student used zombie computers to install adware software that would then generate 'hits' for the students account so that he would be paid. He was using computers he did not own to defraud adware companies by generating false ad hits. This is a wellknown fraud dealing mostly with pay-per-click style ad schemes.
So who takes blaim here and for what? Funny enough that the 'question' left out the first and most obvious cullprit.
Microsoft for creating an OS that never bothered with security. How do I know it was windows that was hacked? Because everyone know just how many ad programs there are that run on that various unix like OS'es out there.
The hospital for not buying proper software, anything not made by MS, and not properly securing their infrastructure. Yes criminals are to blaim for breaking in but you should still lock your house.
The adware companies really ain't to blaim that much. They are the victims here. The only blaim they share is like with the hospital in that they do not properly secure their operations to guard against fraud. But since they are the ones who lost money by paying for fake advertising they are the victim.
And finally the student. Well it is clear he is a criminal, he took computers that did not belong to him and used them to defraud a third party (the ad companies) for his own personal gain. He is not just some hacker who got caught playing around, he was doing it for the money. I doubt very much he is in fact a hacker, more likely he just used readily available tools to do the work for him. This makes him a simple criminal.
I am amazed that MS was not mentioned as one of the cullprits. How often does their software got to lead to crap like this before people will finally ban it for any serious use. Would we accept a hospital that used say oxygen bottles filled by the local scuba diver club? Use alcohol produced in someone's bathtub?
I would very much like to hear that the person responsible for that hospitals computer systems is fired and never allowed to work again. Yes the student is the criminal here who deserves jail time but a sysadmin who installs windows deserves the chair. And yes I would be happy to throw the switch. Hell I would be happy to peddle on a bike to generate the electricity.
If I sound a bit biased against MS it is because I have once again been drafted in working on some piece of crap MS setup because some MSCE idiot made a nice sales pitch. Why don't you just put a sign on your server "Own me!" and be done with it.
What is fundemantally wrong with a lot of MMORPG games is that people seem to be fixated with getting levels. They are willing to spend hours of absolute boredom to get just that next level taking them one step closer to being... well high level. And then what? Oh but the high level content is so much better.
Right, sure. Lets take the MMO out of the MMORPG for a moment. Would you think say a game like Baldur's Gate was as much fun if you first had to grind you way to level 20 before getting on with the game proper? No.
In single player land we want the game to be fun regardless what our level. Levelling up is just a way to give you a few new toys to play with. Just because the level 18 spells are really neat doesn't mean it is excusible that the level 1-17 spells suck donkey balls.
In short I think MMORPG's should be fun to play regardless your level. Removing levels completly is not going to be acceptable but I think they should be far less important. If the casual player who after a year is still a low level can have as much fun as the power grinder (or perhaps even MORE fun) then you got a game that people will not cancel because they find themselves all alone unable to find a party. Current games suffer to much from the fact that a new player is in a world with everyone else at high level being bored.
But frankly I think it is impossible to achieve this. The only way I can think of doing it is to make combat far far more complex. Stop it with the simple D&D crap and get some real strategy and tactics in there. Perhaps where the difference between a low level and a high level isn't just special moves but plain experience. Then adding difficulty would be easy. Just increase the number of attackers. With real AI and real combat you could then easily have mixed level groups. Imagine this scenario. High level fighter keeps the center position, a low level fighter stand by his side attacking only one enemy being protected from being overrun by the high level who can fend off multiple attackers.
Current combat ALWAYS runs like this. EVERYONE attack the biggest threat and then work their way through the mob. This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies.
Yeah yeah, I am rambling. I just think that a game that I am expected to play for years should be more challenging then a single player game I finish in a week. For me the problem with all the MMO's I have played is that I grow fed up with the combat wich is boring and repetetive. Change this. Make it so a cellar filled with rats is fun. Scale the dungeon for total group level. So 1 level 1 player gets 1 rat. 2 level 2 players get 2 rats. But a 2 level 1 and a level 10 get 12 rats. Now they have to work as a team, perhaps with the level 10 just concentrating on keeping the enemies at bay and the low levels picking them off one by one.
Tada! Fun for everyone. Sadly it ain't going to happen, the current move is to arcade like combat with it becoming more about twitchy turning games then cool strategy and hot tactics. MMO the world of lag and everyone is going for combat that requires instant reaction.
DDO is particulary bad, you got to block manually. Oh sure, that is fun. For the first day. But after you played a year and blocked a million times it might get a bit repetitive.
Sadly I am in a minority, I actually prefer it if my avatar is not under direct control but rather takes instructions and carries them out.
Oh sure there are the obvious bugs that everyone agrees on. The old vehicle repair bug where your costly repair disappeared between vehicle calls affected all players.
But the so called unbalanced proffesions problem is impossible to fix. Why?
Because nobody can agree on what it should be like instead.
Believe it or not but some players actually like the NGE. They hate the fact it is bugged but they like the basic idea. How can Sony possibly hope to satisfy these players while also keeping the fans of the old system happy. Let alone satisfying those players that want a different system all together?
SWG biggest failure is that it never really dared to say, we are X take it or leave it. Imagine if you tried to make a FPS sim and tried to satisfy all at once both the hardcore Operation Flashpoint players and say the Unreal Tournament players. Could it be done? No.
SWG was a 'complex' game. Well to some, personally I think that any person that considered SWG complex is the kind of person who needs a tutorial on lightswitches but that is just me. SWG was a game that might require you to read. Yeah, shocking isn't it?
Now apparently it is 'simpler'. The reason seems simple, they hope to appeal to that mythical gaming group called the casual player. The problem is that this group does not actually exist outside focus groups. Oh, NGE was tested ONLY on focus groups, with no existing players involved.
I could start a long rant about the idiocy of focus groups (first off, what kind of losers possibly have time to be in one?) but lets not. Lets just say that focus groups never ever work.
They didn't work for NGE. By trying to appeal to a gaming group that does exist SOE only managed to split the existing user group in to two camps. The first want the old system back and are upset to be forced onto a bugged system they don't want. The second group kinda likes the new system but is upset about the huge number of bugs.
Halfing your audience (making the totally wild speculation that it is a 50/50 distribution) is not a good move.
SWG NGE is currently a desperate move to copy WoW's success without actually doing any real development. The current system is just ewh. It reminds me of those over ambitious mods that try to take an existing engine were it was never meant to go.
The combat now tries to be a FPS but lacks collision detection and you can only shoot when you have the mouse over the target. Yeah, unlike EVERY FPS out there where you can shoot when you want. This makes melee totally unfun. If you think it is like Jedi Academy think again.
The proffesions now take a bit after Everquests rigid role model but with crafting being a seperate job. So is entertainer. Before you could mix match those jobs with other roles. Now your an entertainer/crafter and that is it. Nothing to do but dance dance dance baby. Oh yeah. In fact both proffesions are now next to useless.
SOE seems determined to take its games into the direction of the simple slash and hack korean games but getting it completly wrong. EQ2 too has had simplifications that ruin it. No more spirit shard and your character running insanely fast ruined it for me.
Personally I am on the look out for a MMORPG like game that dares to be complex. That dares the most daring of all moves and not try to be another FPS shooter because those sell so well.
I am 35, I got money to burn but I no longer like being in twitch games that require me to constantly be twirling around trying to keep a polygon under my mouse cursor.
DDO was a nasty shock. It feels more like playing some console fighter then playing D&D. Just having a die on the screen does not make it D&D.
Oh well, that is what you get for being a minority gamer.
If someone claims to know a dozen languages, stay away. Why? Well it is easy to claim that. I am one of those PHP only coders but could easily claim to have coded in a dozen. Why? Well because I have. I started with C and later C++ in school with a dose of pascal wich later let to some delphi. One company I worked for was a Progress (a 4gl/database enviroment) house so I learned that and worked with it. I used to have a Commodore as a kid so I know some basic and that helped with doing some visual basic. Then I moved to the wonderfull world of the web and the company that hired me used PHP so I picked that up. Over the last few years I developed mostly in PHP but had to deal with ASP systems as well (either for interfacing or replacing). Of course I also had to learn about the various unix like operating systems and theyre various languages like bash, perl even python.
Now there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who would PUT every language they ever touched on their CV and those that only list the ones they worked with recently and got a lot of experience with. I am in the last group. It is a bit like my language skills. I learned Dutch, German and English in school. Should I list them all as langauges I know? Well my Dutch is good as it is my first language. English, well the spelling is pisspoor but it is passable. My German however SUCKS. Oh I passed with a highscore but I haven't really used it in years. Decades even. Oh I can understand the TV news in german but life experience thought me that TV german is nothing like the german spoken by germans.
So I would only list Dutch and English on my CV. Another person, probably the above poster would list Dutch English German AND Spanish because he knows how to order a beer while on holiday in spain.
What am I trying to say? That when somebody claims to know a long list of skills you got to ask yourselve how recent is his experience. Remember Jack of all trades, master of none.
If you see two CV's and one has a far shorter skill list then the other stop for a moment to think wich one is being honest about their skills.
Oh and a final note about the "quality" of people who know C\C++ what the above poster seems to think is a real language vs PHP wich is not. There really is not that much difference. If the above poster was any good he would know one thing. A truly good coder doesn't know any language. He knows how to code. The language is just a tool. It is like say being a photographer. A true genius can take good shots with any camera. Only amateurs will claims you need camera X to take good pictures.
Claiming that C\C++ is somewhow a more important language marks the above poster as an idiot. Language is a tool and you select the tool that is best for the current job and learn it. A really good coder should be able to pick it up in a few weeks. It is called being flexible. New job, new toolset.
A lot of people defend blizzard saying it is a business just looking out for its bottom line.
Right okay, so would it be acceptable if say a sports club banned people who are open about their non hetero sexualtiy?
What is canada like on this subject anyway? Is it closer to america on these issues or closer to mainland europe (legal gay marriages).
The basic idea that people should not come out with their X because it may cause others to start hating is truly evil. What next, you can say your black, a jew, a vegitarian? All because someone else might start to spout hatred?
Have we achieved nothing in the last century? I thought the days when people had to stay in the closet and try to blend into white christian hetero society were over. Guess not.
Next on WoW, women advised not to advocate their sex because it might cause others to harass them. Everyone can play WoW, just as long as they pretend to be a teenage white male hetero christian.
I wonder if blizzard hasn't just opened itself up for a couple of big law cases. No not lawsuits. Real law cases where the state steps in to ban those companies practicing discrimination.
No real life company would be allowed to get away with this in any civilized country.
That is the difference between then and now. Nothing stopped compaq from doing what it did. The DMCA will prevent anyone from doing something similar.
Second is that the market has changed. Compaq launched there clone as a cheap alternative to the expensive IBM machines. But current PC's are already as cheap as they can be. Who can afford to undercut Dell? It is easy to overthrow an immature market, next to impossibl to overthrow a mature one. Especially one semi controlled by monopolists or virtual monopolists. Intel and AMD between them OWN the desktop. If both of them think DRM is the future who is going to create an alternative?
The compaq happened because it made economic sense. A non-drm PC would be far harder especially if a large portion of buyers want a drm machine because they need it to get their drm content.
People wanted and needed cheap clone PC's. Is there a similar market for non-drm hardware? Outside/.? I doubt it.
There used to be a lot of talk before WoW about the MMO market and how it was saturated and any new game could only get subsribers by poaching them from existing ones. The argument seemed to be that to many games were fighting over to few gamers.
Then WoW launched and showed everyone wrong. There was a market out there, just that no-one had managed to tap it.
I think the same is true for the entire game industry. The market isn't saturerated what is saturated is peoples taste for mediocre games that just don't deliver. SOE has had to realize that EQ and EQ2 and SWG and Planetside can't blame their low populations on lack of interest in MMORPG games. This left only the shocking possibility that the games were to hard (the real reason was that to many people just didn't want to deal with endless bugs and boring grinds).
Same is true for the entire industry. Do I really want another dumb FPS with lousy AI scriptkiddy multiplay and ever shorter clichec story line?
No.
The last few years just have been poor for gaming. Yet the few noteworthy titles did still sell and break records. It is just that the endless drivel of mediocre games are selling less and less. There are to many of them and we got other things to spend our money on.
Game industry, focus on quality not quantity. Oh and stop it with the clones.
Recently I was a bit shocked to find a comment in another story about how there would be 200 releases this year for the old x-box. I was about to comment how stupid a mistake this was as they probably meant that the 200th title would be released. I was wrong. 200 x-box titles this year alone. More then 700 already launched. Can you say saturation?
I am not sure this is true but I have had the idea in the past that there were more PC game releases then Hollywood movie releases. Certainly if I read a mag like PC gamer I got far more reviews in the olden days then movie reviews.
There are just to many games being launched that just aren't worth it. Scrap half your titles in developement and concentrate on making the rest fun games that are worth buying.
2005 was a lousy year. I blame it on the quality of the games.
The biggest difference between Linus Torvald and Richard Stallman is that Linus is an optomist and Richard is a pessimist.
Linus seems to walk in world all his own. Somehow he seems to think that we can vote with our dollars to force the hardware makers to cater for our non-drm needs. Right.
Has he got some other figures on linux use? It is already hard enough to get hardware makers to support linux besides closed source software like windows. But for hardware makers to develop non-drm hardware for just the linux market is insane. Linux is Linux because it runs on cheap easily available hardware. Specialist hardware or worse having to make you own would kill Linux fast.
What he maybe doesn't get that DRM isn't a analog state. It is binary. You either have it or you don't. Oh, and at the moment, we don't. We got a sorta DRM0.1 at the moment. FULL DRM will be a beast few can imagine. Certainly Linus doesn't seem capable. Stallman is capable.
FULL DRM means that ALL hardware and ALL software in your entire computer will be DRM aware. Hardware DRM will not work with NON-DRM software and/or NON-DRM hardware.
For DRM to realize its full potential EVERY piece of your computer must be DRMed. The motherboard, the CPU, the memory, the buses, the cables, the monitor, the speaker, etc etc. It cannot have a single open piece of hardware because the moment you have that the entire DRM chain becomes useless. It is the old argument against DRM that you will always still be capable of capturing the out put of any DRM device. As long as you can hear/see it you can recapture data no matter how it was protected before.
Que the old story of Vista requiring DRM monitors. if you don't then you could simply hookup a DVI cable to the output and put in a video capture device and instantly avoid any DRM measure.
Will Vista really do this? probably not, as I said before we don't have full DRM yet. We probably won't have it in Vista either. But it is coming unless we stop it now.
It is difficult to constantly be paranoid and think that behind every wintel move there must be an evil scheme but can we afford to be wrong?
Then there is Linus defence of DRM namely signing RPM packages. Well yeah, signing them makes it secure but what is that saying again? He who trades his freedom for security soon will have neither? Something like this.
We could have the security of knowing who wrote the software we run OR we can have the freedom to write and run our own software. Not both. Your choice.
Ah yes, the days of the BBS. For you younger people who might have heard of the internet bubble, the BBS was sorta what was before. It was an internet where you had to dial in to a website rather then all the websites being together on one big net. Oh it was more complex then that but I don't want to give you nightmares.
One thing however that was the same was that I saw countless articles and tv shows about how companies needed a BBS to stay in business. Just like every company needed a website. Or a fax.
It really isn't that complex, any new tech needs to be sold so marketting comes up with reasons and sales people tell them to managers and managers lap it up. Or something.
This "social" thing ain't new. It just used to be your personal homespace on geocities but that failed so now it is your blog on myspace because that is better.
Just like BBS sorta changed to websites, personal homepages changed to blogs. And just like some people have always shared their bookmarks this site is just a bit like it.
Will it chance things? Well is slashdot a "social" way to share your links to intresting sites?
It just doesn't sell headlines when you tell the truth and go "sorta new site does something that someone else already does but does it slightly better according to some but with half the uptime".
Doesn't fit and people get bored. Better to claim the revolution is here! (Down nintendo fans)
Perhaps that is one of the reasons practical knowledge is decreasing. To much protection. Summertime we played in the local "river" all the time. Kids where I live now? There is a fence around the pond(?) because some kid might fall in.
A nice dose of 220 through your hand will teach you more about electricity then any classroom lecture.
As for wiring a fuse with say a screwdriver. Sometimes you just got to do stuff that is unsafe. If we only did was what safe we would still be up a tree somewhere in africa. (or for the religious people, inside the garden of eden)
There was a time when being a geek involved certain duties as well as privileges. The privileges were to be allowed to play computer games and not get much physical excersise. The duty was to remain pure until 40 or something.
But something changed. Somehow games got to be desirable to the kids who already were getting sex. While games are still considered geeky the people who play games are not longer true to the code of being a geek.
Or put another way, the "cool" kids are on the web as well and taking over. Just look at the number of blogs. You don't think a real geek would be seen dead on myspace and such do you?
It used to be so that someone who was into computers was a geek and usually had a reasonbly intelligence. Now computers are just a toy. Just as it is no longer the case that someone who owns a car is a gearhead someone who owns a computer no longer has to be a geek.
Thanks to MS computing has now become as easy as owning a car. Is it bad?/me checks for the latest webcam captures.
Take a record player. You can see how it works. You can pull tricks with it. I remember long before you had those little computer chip greeting cards with a speaker you had small record players with a pin attached to a bit of plastic and you turned the record by hand and you got a sound. Sorta. Anyway you could actually see the science in action. Good luck doing that with a CD player. It is a black box.
Same with a lot of other stuff. I could help out with fixing the car. Well stand by but you could actually see stuff and the adults could actually do things themselves. Todays cars? Black boxes.
I learned a lot about electricity helping out with a model railroad. Pokemon is a nice game but it is played on another black box.
But lets face it, the rot started without especially your generation. YOU are the one raising these 11 year olds and we just don't have the need to get down and dirty anymore.
Odd thing about the sexual revolution? Rather then men learning how to cook as well now nobody learns how to cook. Freaky.
As our tech increases we need less and less knowledge about it. My mom knew how to wire a fuse. I know how to screw in one. My kid knows how to throw a circuit breaker. Wich one of us would be more likely to be able to get a car moving when there is no replacement fuse available?
Maybe parents need to get more involved with their kids. Nah.
Nothing says that girls can't be afraid of girls as well. This is not just joking, lots of women prefer the company of male friends over female friends. Especially gay men or nerds who they need not constantly fend off.
In real live women who are socially inept are just shy. A female virgin of 24 is just waiting for the right man. A male virgin of 24 is a loser.
It is just easier to make fun of male geeks because we know what we are.
The very fact that people feel a need for a Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans(gender/sexual) friendly guild in World of Warcraft (just so the people confused with acronyms know what this is all about) says enough about blizzard.
It is not a very "mature" place resulting in a very intollerant atmosphere. Not just of GLBT people either. WoW is more or less anonymous and this allows people to behave in ways that in real life would earn them a few broken teeth. Rather then do something about this Blizzard instead asks there the victims of the online bullies to keep quiet and not attract attention.
Nice move. Good to see the last 100 years of liberation of the individual was all for nothing. It is still only acceptable to be a while male protestant and everyone else should just be quiet.
What next Blizzard? Women who play your game and are harrased should not tell people they are really female?
People who claim that Blizzard owns WoW and can therefore do what it wants are living in a fantasy world. A MMO is closer to a social club and the law requires clubs to be open to anyone regardless of sex/religion/race/color/sexual orientation. A club that rejects women because they claim that they want to protect the women from being harrassed by their male members would find very little sympathy from the law.
This woman (presumable lesbian) wanted to create a guild that was friendly to people of a different sexuality then heterosexual. From other comments here it is pretty clear that WoW as a whole is not very friendly to that group. She did NOT want to make a guild for GLBT people only! She did not exclude hetero's.
It is sad that this is still needed in 2006. Very sad in fact that even in a place like Amsterdam wich used to be a really open place it is again becoming necessary to make sure GLBT people can feel safe.
Rather then dealing with the haters among its subscribers Blizzard seems to prefer the "don't rock the boat" attitude that made Amsterdam into the city it is today. And paris france. Don't speak out, keep quiet and hopefully the haters will go away. They never do.
I hope canadian lawmakers are watching this and taking the legal steps to get Blizzard in court and punished to hell and back.
Just what is canadian law on this subject? I would imagine that the sport of hockey has a large proportion of homophobic fans, how is this dealt with? Can a gay player be part of a team or is he hooted of the ice?
Ofcourse the slashdot audience consisting mostly of white hetero male christians is not exactly best fit to understand why there would be a need for a special guild for people who do not fit the so-called norm.
Because this is exactly what it is about. Reminds me of real world situations where people of background X are told not to go into certain areas or not dress in certain ways. Going to have to invoke godwin here but is there that much difference between forcing someone to wear a yellow star vs them not wearing their own clothing? What is the difference between making homo sexuality illegal vs making it illegal to express your sexuality?
Blizzard made a really bad decission with this and I hope they get taken to court for this. I don't know the law in canada but in most civilised countries a move like this would be HIGHLY illegal. Imagine a bar banning a gay couple sitting hand in hand. I thought those days were behind us.
You put very clearly what this is really about, good job.
Sure you can be a jew, just don't look like one okay. Because if you do well it is going to be trouble. Don't dress like muslim either. We can't be held responsible if you get lynched and you catholics better keep that cross under your clothing.
Oh and gays, no walking hand in hand, that might upset people. White and blacks kissing in public, no sorry, could lead to scenes.
What you suggest is a very slippery slope. You are giving in to the haters. How far are you prepared to give in? What race/religion/orientation can be told to keep quit before you will say enough? Or will you only cry out when it is you who is being told to behave.
No this stuff makes me sick. People like you in my eyes are worse then the open haters, I rather deal with ten neo-nazi's then with one person who says to not upset them.
Simple answer. No. Games like you describe don't exist. Oh there are some MO games out there that come close but true Massive MO games that can be played in 30 minutes. Nope.
Why not? Simple. Getting a group of people together at say 20:00 will mean half turn up at 20:30 demanding we get started because they only got 10 minutes time.
You should just be able to get a deathmatch game going in 30 minutes. A group adventure. Good luck.
So none of the classic MMO games meet your needs. The closest are the Korean games wich can for a large part be played solo especially early on. Just go in, slaughter stuff and then quit. The moment a game requires a group and some planning 30 minutes is the absolute minimum. 10 minutes for everyone to show up, 2x5 minutes for badroom breaks (a bathroom break never is a signal for everyone to take a leak) and another 10 minutes because one person needs to get Potion/Trained/Weapon/etc.
A really together group can be underway in less time but it will take months of carefull training. Oddly enough in virtual worlds it is usually women who are the most organized and likely to be ready to go at the agreed time.
When you ask a question STOP. Think for a few seconds. Think about one tiny little thing. How many times has the question you are about to ask been asked before.
The problem isn't explaining what PK means. The problem is that by the Xth time you have to explain it to some idiot to lazy to google you are running out of patience.
Yes there are somethings you will have to ask to find out. There is nothing shamefull about that. Just realize that you may be the 100th person asking it today and even the most helpfull of people can have a bad day.
The most difficult thing. Other players are not there to help you. So when somebody helps you say "thank you". Everytime. You would be suprised how many people can't be arsed. Doesn't matter if you are the nicest person on the planet if a helpfull player has just dealt with an asshole you could catch the flak. Live sucks but thats the way it is.
Before you ask a question A: make sure you read the docs. Read that manual during the install. Questions that are in the manual really are irritiating to answer.
B: Do not ask, "my I ask a question". That is irritating. Just state the question already.
C: Do not spam. If nobody is replying then accept it and come back later. If chat is busy do not spam your question 3 times in row to make sure people see it. It is a good way to find yourselve quickly playing a very solo MMO game.
D: Use proper and full english. Nothing more annoying then having to decipher a bunch of engrish.
E: Be polite. You catch more more flies with honey or something. Say thank you. Yeah you got what you want but you might need some help in the future and some people/addignore those who do not say thank you.
F: Be patient. A helpfull player may be in the middle of a battle and cannot instantly answer your every message.
G: But the most important, learn to google. 99% of the MMORPG questions are repeats and someone somewhere will already have answered it complete with pictures on the web.
In the end there are such a thing as stupid questions. Do not expect others to fall over themselves to help you avoid reading manuals or doing your own websearches.
Oh of course some call my attitude elite. Like that is an insult. Yet I have noticed one thing. All those people who always complain they cannot not get help NEVER help others themselves. The people that demand the most are the ones who give back the least. odd eh?
Call people with a brain elite all you want, it is still not going to make them hold your hand because you can't be bother to RTFM.
Most people are perfectly willing to help but when you see the same question pass by for the hundreth time your patience will run out.
Not that this book will help. Noobs never read anything. Those who do read the official manual and still need help with somethings get all the help they need in game. The book just isn't needed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yuck.
To look at the code I am once again reminded why I always feel sick when someone tells me that I am going to have to work together with a person with a degree. As far as I know they passed with this project yet it is totally and utterly crap. Oh of course it does not work cross-browser. Yes it has many bits of codes wich don't actually doesn't do shit. A 100 line switch statement that always does the same thing for instance but that ain't the worst of it.
The worst of it is that security is non-existent. They use the old '?page=page1' in the url to switch content. I like this approach in itself as it leaves you with only 1 code file wich is accessible from the outside. I also like to make fucking sure that 'page' is filled only with values that I expect. They just insert it in an sql statement and execute it.
Shudder.
Could a book teach guys like this about security? NO.
It is not the first time I see shit like this. To many IT students just are to young and naive to think about security. Or rather to not think about security but just do it. Nobody had to teach me that trusting userinput is bad. I know it is. How?
Well, I don't know I just do. Perhaps it is all the years of low level cracking of games where you alter a string somewhere to give you more health/money whatever. Perhaps it is just being a suspicious bastard.
Security is not a set of easy to follow rules, security is not trusting people.
PHP is a usefull enough language that unfortunally in its basic install comes with some features that can really bite you in the ass. I always disable them on any server I control and then have to spend a lot of time correcting everyone elses code to work on a secured server. Oh and if I see one more person use PHP native sessions I am going to kill that motherfucker. Especially when it is used to store 1 value. Just use a fucking cookie instead of glogging the HD in resource eating insecure way.
ANyway, the review of the book? Well it covers the very basics. If you still need to be told this, just stay away from the web. This is akin to a cooking book telling you not to have a boiling pot of water on the first burners of your stove when a little kid is around. What I read of it all falls into the 'duh' category.
Not my choice until I get a house of my own again.
Odd conclusion? Well no. They are expensive but that is because they do not actually have a datalimit, or rather you have one 100gb on my account but they don't actually measure your data throughput. Tiscali does and the limit is 1gb for half the price. Mmmm. 40 bucks for 1gb or 80 for unlimited.
Next is that their helpdesk is always busy, this is nasty but at least the helpdesk fucking knows their business AND is available in the weekend. Oh and their online help is good enough that the only thing I ever needed from them is password resets.
So who cares about this? Is this on topic? Well no but I am getting there. Next is reliability. I said xs4all sucks? Well it does, it always managed to drop my connection at least once per month. Fucking annoying.
Offcourse that was until I moved house and now am on tiscali. Wich drops the con every 10 minutes. Suddenly the internet is totally different. Even simple browsing becomes a pain when every 4th click results in a minute long wait for the modem to reconnect.
Why is it crap? Oh who knows. I actually have worked for tiscali (then worldonline) in the distant past and they never struck me as the brightest bulb (they hired me after all) but perhaps it is just the phone line.
But it really doesn't matter. On my old con it was already troublesome that a couple of times per year I could not google or whatever but with this ISP can you imagine using web apps? It would be like trying to do work on windows 95 adware edition.
And that is my fundemental, and I think everyone elses, problem with the whole idea of webapps. Very nice until your connection drops out.
As long as we got joke ISP's with idiotic data limits web apps are never going to take off. Think of it like this. Who here does not have some kind of emergency equipment like a flashlight for when the elec drops out or camping gas stove for when the gas drops out? And that is (at least in holland) extremely reliable stuff. Trusting my internet connection to determine wether I can work or not does not sound very smart to me.
Oh and as far as mobile computing is concerned. Those who can afford mobile connection costs don't need it, they got secretaries and those who need it can't afford it.
You can forget the net 2.0 the same problem that killed the 'bubble' ideas of the net are killing any new ideas. The ISP's simply ain't up to the task of providing reliable constant connections. Oh the better ones come close but xs4all in holland is tiny. The best and reviewed that way by consumer organisations but still tiny.
Note that what follows below is only based on RTFA wich as usuall when dealing with mainstream press reporting on tech may be wrong or inaccurate or indeed made up on the spot. Nonetheless based on this I conclude the following.
That the student used zombie computers to install adware software that would then generate 'hits' for the students account so that he would be paid. He was using computers he did not own to defraud adware companies by generating false ad hits. This is a wellknown fraud dealing mostly with pay-per-click style ad schemes.
So who takes blaim here and for what? Funny enough that the 'question' left out the first and most obvious cullprit.
I am amazed that MS was not mentioned as one of the cullprits. How often does their software got to lead to crap like this before people will finally ban it for any serious use. Would we accept a hospital that used say oxygen bottles filled by the local scuba diver club? Use alcohol produced in someone's bathtub?
I would very much like to hear that the person responsible for that hospitals computer systems is fired and never allowed to work again. Yes the student is the criminal here who deserves jail time but a sysadmin who installs windows deserves the chair. And yes I would be happy to throw the switch. Hell I would be happy to peddle on a bike to generate the electricity.
If I sound a bit biased against MS it is because I have once again been drafted in working on some piece of crap MS setup because some MSCE idiot made a nice sales pitch. Why don't you just put a sign on your server "Own me!" and be done with it.
Laugh it is funny
Levelling up was never my goal in all the black isle games. I was playing it for the story. Silly me I guess.
Right, sure. Lets take the MMO out of the MMORPG for a moment. Would you think say a game like Baldur's Gate was as much fun if you first had to grind you way to level 20 before getting on with the game proper? No.
In single player land we want the game to be fun regardless what our level. Levelling up is just a way to give you a few new toys to play with. Just because the level 18 spells are really neat doesn't mean it is excusible that the level 1-17 spells suck donkey balls.
In short I think MMORPG's should be fun to play regardless your level. Removing levels completly is not going to be acceptable but I think they should be far less important. If the casual player who after a year is still a low level can have as much fun as the power grinder (or perhaps even MORE fun) then you got a game that people will not cancel because they find themselves all alone unable to find a party. Current games suffer to much from the fact that a new player is in a world with everyone else at high level being bored.
But frankly I think it is impossible to achieve this. The only way I can think of doing it is to make combat far far more complex. Stop it with the simple D&D crap and get some real strategy and tactics in there. Perhaps where the difference between a low level and a high level isn't just special moves but plain experience. Then adding difficulty would be easy. Just increase the number of attackers. With real AI and real combat you could then easily have mixed level groups. Imagine this scenario. High level fighter keeps the center position, a low level fighter stand by his side attacking only one enemy being protected from being overrun by the high level who can fend off multiple attackers.
Current combat ALWAYS runs like this. EVERYONE attack the biggest threat and then work their way through the mob. This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies.
Yeah yeah, I am rambling. I just think that a game that I am expected to play for years should be more challenging then a single player game I finish in a week. For me the problem with all the MMO's I have played is that I grow fed up with the combat wich is boring and repetetive. Change this. Make it so a cellar filled with rats is fun. Scale the dungeon for total group level. So 1 level 1 player gets 1 rat. 2 level 2 players get 2 rats. But a 2 level 1 and a level 10 get 12 rats. Now they have to work as a team, perhaps with the level 10 just concentrating on keeping the enemies at bay and the low levels picking them off one by one.
Tada! Fun for everyone. Sadly it ain't going to happen, the current move is to arcade like combat with it becoming more about twitchy turning games then cool strategy and hot tactics. MMO the world of lag and everyone is going for combat that requires instant reaction.
DDO is particulary bad, you got to block manually. Oh sure, that is fun. For the first day. But after you played a year and blocked a million times it might get a bit repetitive.
Sadly I am in a minority, I actually prefer it if my avatar is not under direct control but rather takes instructions and carries them out.
But the so called unbalanced proffesions problem is impossible to fix. Why?
Because nobody can agree on what it should be like instead.
Believe it or not but some players actually like the NGE. They hate the fact it is bugged but they like the basic idea. How can Sony possibly hope to satisfy these players while also keeping the fans of the old system happy. Let alone satisfying those players that want a different system all together?
SWG biggest failure is that it never really dared to say, we are X take it or leave it. Imagine if you tried to make a FPS sim and tried to satisfy all at once both the hardcore Operation Flashpoint players and say the Unreal Tournament players. Could it be done? No.
SWG was a 'complex' game. Well to some, personally I think that any person that considered SWG complex is the kind of person who needs a tutorial on lightswitches but that is just me. SWG was a game that might require you to read. Yeah, shocking isn't it?
Now apparently it is 'simpler'. The reason seems simple, they hope to appeal to that mythical gaming group called the casual player. The problem is that this group does not actually exist outside focus groups. Oh, NGE was tested ONLY on focus groups, with no existing players involved.
I could start a long rant about the idiocy of focus groups (first off, what kind of losers possibly have time to be in one?) but lets not. Lets just say that focus groups never ever work.
They didn't work for NGE. By trying to appeal to a gaming group that does exist SOE only managed to split the existing user group in to two camps. The first want the old system back and are upset to be forced onto a bugged system they don't want. The second group kinda likes the new system but is upset about the huge number of bugs.
Halfing your audience (making the totally wild speculation that it is a 50/50 distribution) is not a good move.
SWG NGE is currently a desperate move to copy WoW's success without actually doing any real development. The current system is just ewh. It reminds me of those over ambitious mods that try to take an existing engine were it was never meant to go.
The combat now tries to be a FPS but lacks collision detection and you can only shoot when you have the mouse over the target. Yeah, unlike EVERY FPS out there where you can shoot when you want. This makes melee totally unfun. If you think it is like Jedi Academy think again.
The proffesions now take a bit after Everquests rigid role model but with crafting being a seperate job. So is entertainer. Before you could mix match those jobs with other roles. Now your an entertainer/crafter and that is it. Nothing to do but dance dance dance baby. Oh yeah. In fact both proffesions are now next to useless.
SOE seems determined to take its games into the direction of the simple slash and hack korean games but getting it completly wrong. EQ2 too has had simplifications that ruin it. No more spirit shard and your character running insanely fast ruined it for me.
Personally I am on the look out for a MMORPG like game that dares to be complex. That dares the most daring of all moves and not try to be another FPS shooter because those sell so well.
I am 35, I got money to burn but I no longer like being in twitch games that require me to constantly be twirling around trying to keep a polygon under my mouse cursor.
DDO was a nasty shock. It feels more like playing some console fighter then playing D&D. Just having a die on the screen does not make it D&D.
Oh well, that is what you get for being a minority gamer.
Now there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who would PUT every language they ever touched on their CV and those that only list the ones they worked with recently and got a lot of experience with. I am in the last group. It is a bit like my language skills. I learned Dutch, German and English in school. Should I list them all as langauges I know? Well my Dutch is good as it is my first language. English, well the spelling is pisspoor but it is passable. My German however SUCKS. Oh I passed with a highscore but I haven't really used it in years. Decades even. Oh I can understand the TV news in german but life experience thought me that TV german is nothing like the german spoken by germans.
So I would only list Dutch and English on my CV. Another person, probably the above poster would list Dutch English German AND Spanish because he knows how to order a beer while on holiday in spain.
What am I trying to say? That when somebody claims to know a long list of skills you got to ask yourselve how recent is his experience. Remember Jack of all trades, master of none.
If you see two CV's and one has a far shorter skill list then the other stop for a moment to think wich one is being honest about their skills.
Oh and a final note about the "quality" of people who know C\C++ what the above poster seems to think is a real language vs PHP wich is not. There really is not that much difference. If the above poster was any good he would know one thing. A truly good coder doesn't know any language. He knows how to code. The language is just a tool. It is like say being a photographer. A true genius can take good shots with any camera. Only amateurs will claims you need camera X to take good pictures.
Claiming that C\C++ is somewhow a more important language marks the above poster as an idiot. Language is a tool and you select the tool that is best for the current job and learn it. A really good coder should be able to pick it up in a few weeks. It is called being flexible. New job, new toolset.
Right okay, so would it be acceptable if say a sports club banned people who are open about their non hetero sexualtiy?
What is canada like on this subject anyway? Is it closer to america on these issues or closer to mainland europe (legal gay marriages).
The basic idea that people should not come out with their X because it may cause others to start hating is truly evil. What next, you can say your black, a jew, a vegitarian? All because someone else might start to spout hatred?
Have we achieved nothing in the last century? I thought the days when people had to stay in the closet and try to blend into white christian hetero society were over. Guess not.
Next on WoW, women advised not to advocate their sex because it might cause others to harass them. Everyone can play WoW, just as long as they pretend to be a teenage white male hetero christian.
I wonder if blizzard hasn't just opened itself up for a couple of big law cases. No not lawsuits. Real law cases where the state steps in to ban those companies practicing discrimination.
No real life company would be allowed to get away with this in any civilized country.
So your club would never take off. We needs to raid a stupid dungeon when you can raid the world!
Second is that the market has changed. Compaq launched there clone as a cheap alternative to the expensive IBM machines. But current PC's are already as cheap as they can be. Who can afford to undercut Dell? It is easy to overthrow an immature market, next to impossibl to overthrow a mature one. Especially one semi controlled by monopolists or virtual monopolists. Intel and AMD between them OWN the desktop. If both of them think DRM is the future who is going to create an alternative?
The compaq happened because it made economic sense. A non-drm PC would be far harder especially if a large portion of buyers want a drm machine because they need it to get their drm content.
People wanted and needed cheap clone PC's. Is there a similar market for non-drm hardware? Outside /.? I doubt it.
Then WoW launched and showed everyone wrong. There was a market out there, just that no-one had managed to tap it.
I think the same is true for the entire game industry. The market isn't saturerated what is saturated is peoples taste for mediocre games that just don't deliver. SOE has had to realize that EQ and EQ2 and SWG and Planetside can't blame their low populations on lack of interest in MMORPG games. This left only the shocking possibility that the games were to hard (the real reason was that to many people just didn't want to deal with endless bugs and boring grinds).
Same is true for the entire industry. Do I really want another dumb FPS with lousy AI scriptkiddy multiplay and ever shorter clichec story line?
No.
The last few years just have been poor for gaming. Yet the few noteworthy titles did still sell and break records. It is just that the endless drivel of mediocre games are selling less and less. There are to many of them and we got other things to spend our money on.
Game industry, focus on quality not quantity. Oh and stop it with the clones.
Recently I was a bit shocked to find a comment in another story about how there would be 200 releases this year for the old x-box. I was about to comment how stupid a mistake this was as they probably meant that the 200th title would be released. I was wrong. 200 x-box titles this year alone. More then 700 already launched. Can you say saturation?
I am not sure this is true but I have had the idea in the past that there were more PC game releases then Hollywood movie releases. Certainly if I read a mag like PC gamer I got far more reviews in the olden days then movie reviews.
There are just to many games being launched that just aren't worth it. Scrap half your titles in developement and concentrate on making the rest fun games that are worth buying.
2005 was a lousy year. I blame it on the quality of the games.
Linus seems to walk in world all his own. Somehow he seems to think that we can vote with our dollars to force the hardware makers to cater for our non-drm needs. Right.
Has he got some other figures on linux use? It is already hard enough to get hardware makers to support linux besides closed source software like windows. But for hardware makers to develop non-drm hardware for just the linux market is insane. Linux is Linux because it runs on cheap easily available hardware. Specialist hardware or worse having to make you own would kill Linux fast.
What he maybe doesn't get that DRM isn't a analog state. It is binary. You either have it or you don't. Oh, and at the moment, we don't. We got a sorta DRM0.1 at the moment. FULL DRM will be a beast few can imagine. Certainly Linus doesn't seem capable. Stallman is capable.
FULL DRM means that ALL hardware and ALL software in your entire computer will be DRM aware. Hardware DRM will not work with NON-DRM software and/or NON-DRM hardware.
For DRM to realize its full potential EVERY piece of your computer must be DRMed. The motherboard, the CPU, the memory, the buses, the cables, the monitor, the speaker, etc etc. It cannot have a single open piece of hardware because the moment you have that the entire DRM chain becomes useless. It is the old argument against DRM that you will always still be capable of capturing the out put of any DRM device. As long as you can hear/see it you can recapture data no matter how it was protected before.
Que the old story of Vista requiring DRM monitors. if you don't then you could simply hookup a DVI cable to the output and put in a video capture device and instantly avoid any DRM measure.
Will Vista really do this? probably not, as I said before we don't have full DRM yet. We probably won't have it in Vista either. But it is coming unless we stop it now.
It is difficult to constantly be paranoid and think that behind every wintel move there must be an evil scheme but can we afford to be wrong?
Then there is Linus defence of DRM namely signing RPM packages. Well yeah, signing them makes it secure but what is that saying again? He who trades his freedom for security soon will have neither? Something like this.
We could have the security of knowing who wrote the software we run OR we can have the freedom to write and run our own software. Not both. Your choice.
Ah yes, the days of the BBS. For you younger people who might have heard of the internet bubble, the BBS was sorta what was before. It was an internet where you had to dial in to a website rather then all the websites being together on one big net. Oh it was more complex then that but I don't want to give you nightmares.
One thing however that was the same was that I saw countless articles and tv shows about how companies needed a BBS to stay in business. Just like every company needed a website. Or a fax.
It really isn't that complex, any new tech needs to be sold so marketting comes up with reasons and sales people tell them to managers and managers lap it up. Or something.
This "social" thing ain't new. It just used to be your personal homespace on geocities but that failed so now it is your blog on myspace because that is better.
Just like BBS sorta changed to websites, personal homepages changed to blogs. And just like some people have always shared their bookmarks this site is just a bit like it.
Will it chance things? Well is slashdot a "social" way to share your links to intresting sites?
It just doesn't sell headlines when you tell the truth and go "sorta new site does something that someone else already does but does it slightly better according to some but with half the uptime".
Doesn't fit and people get bored. Better to claim the revolution is here! (Down nintendo fans)
A nice dose of 220 through your hand will teach you more about electricity then any classroom lecture.
As for wiring a fuse with say a screwdriver. Sometimes you just got to do stuff that is unsafe. If we only did was what safe we would still be up a tree somewhere in africa. (or for the religious people, inside the garden of eden)
But something changed. Somehow games got to be desirable to the kids who already were getting sex. While games are still considered geeky the people who play games are not longer true to the code of being a geek.
Or put another way, the "cool" kids are on the web as well and taking over. Just look at the number of blogs. You don't think a real geek would be seen dead on myspace and such do you?
It used to be so that someone who was into computers was a geek and usually had a reasonbly intelligence. Now computers are just a toy. Just as it is no longer the case that someone who owns a car is a gearhead someone who owns a computer no longer has to be a geek.
Thanks to MS computing has now become as easy as owning a car. Is it bad? /me checks for the latest webcam captures.
No.
Same with a lot of other stuff. I could help out with fixing the car. Well stand by but you could actually see stuff and the adults could actually do things themselves. Todays cars? Black boxes.
I learned a lot about electricity helping out with a model railroad. Pokemon is a nice game but it is played on another black box.
But lets face it, the rot started without especially your generation. YOU are the one raising these 11 year olds and we just don't have the need to get down and dirty anymore.
Odd thing about the sexual revolution? Rather then men learning how to cook as well now nobody learns how to cook. Freaky.
As our tech increases we need less and less knowledge about it. My mom knew how to wire a fuse. I know how to screw in one. My kid knows how to throw a circuit breaker. Wich one of us would be more likely to be able to get a car moving when there is no replacement fuse available?
Maybe parents need to get more involved with their kids. Nah.
In real live women who are socially inept are just shy. A female virgin of 24 is just waiting for the right man. A male virgin of 24 is a loser.
It is just easier to make fun of male geeks because we know what we are.
The very fact that people feel a need for a Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans(gender/sexual) friendly guild in World of Warcraft (just so the people confused with acronyms know what this is all about) says enough about blizzard.
It is not a very "mature" place resulting in a very intollerant atmosphere. Not just of GLBT people either. WoW is more or less anonymous and this allows people to behave in ways that in real life would earn them a few broken teeth. Rather then do something about this Blizzard instead asks there the victims of the online bullies to keep quiet and not attract attention.
Nice move. Good to see the last 100 years of liberation of the individual was all for nothing. It is still only acceptable to be a while male protestant and everyone else should just be quiet.
What next Blizzard? Women who play your game and are harrased should not tell people they are really female?
People who claim that Blizzard owns WoW and can therefore do what it wants are living in a fantasy world. A MMO is closer to a social club and the law requires clubs to be open to anyone regardless of sex/religion/race/color/sexual orientation. A club that rejects women because they claim that they want to protect the women from being harrassed by their male members would find very little sympathy from the law.
This woman (presumable lesbian) wanted to create a guild that was friendly to people of a different sexuality then heterosexual. From other comments here it is pretty clear that WoW as a whole is not very friendly to that group. She did NOT want to make a guild for GLBT people only! She did not exclude hetero's.
It is sad that this is still needed in 2006. Very sad in fact that even in a place like Amsterdam wich used to be a really open place it is again becoming necessary to make sure GLBT people can feel safe.
Rather then dealing with the haters among its subscribers Blizzard seems to prefer the "don't rock the boat" attitude that made Amsterdam into the city it is today. And paris france. Don't speak out, keep quiet and hopefully the haters will go away. They never do.
I hope canadian lawmakers are watching this and taking the legal steps to get Blizzard in court and punished to hell and back.
Just what is canadian law on this subject? I would imagine that the sport of hockey has a large proportion of homophobic fans, how is this dealt with? Can a gay player be part of a team or is he hooted of the ice?
Ofcourse the slashdot audience consisting mostly of white hetero male christians is not exactly best fit to understand why there would be a need for a special guild for people who do not fit the so-called norm.
Blizzard made a really bad decission with this and I hope they get taken to court for this. I don't know the law in canada but in most civilised countries a move like this would be HIGHLY illegal. Imagine a bar banning a gay couple sitting hand in hand. I thought those days were behind us.
You put very clearly what this is really about, good job.
Oh and gays, no walking hand in hand, that might upset people. White and blacks kissing in public, no sorry, could lead to scenes.
What you suggest is a very slippery slope. You are giving in to the haters. How far are you prepared to give in? What race/religion/orientation can be told to keep quit before you will say enough? Or will you only cry out when it is you who is being told to behave.
No this stuff makes me sick. People like you in my eyes are worse then the open haters, I rather deal with ten neo-nazi's then with one person who says to not upset them.
Why not? Simple. Getting a group of people together at say 20:00 will mean half turn up at 20:30 demanding we get started because they only got 10 minutes time.
You should just be able to get a deathmatch game going in 30 minutes. A group adventure. Good luck.
So none of the classic MMO games meet your needs. The closest are the Korean games wich can for a large part be played solo especially early on. Just go in, slaughter stuff and then quit. The moment a game requires a group and some planning 30 minutes is the absolute minimum. 10 minutes for everyone to show up, 2x5 minutes for badroom breaks (a bathroom break never is a signal for everyone to take a leak) and another 10 minutes because one person needs to get Potion/Trained/Weapon/etc.
A really together group can be underway in less time but it will take months of carefull training. Oddly enough in virtual worlds it is usually women who are the most organized and likely to be ready to go at the agreed time.
The problem isn't explaining what PK means. The problem is that by the Xth time you have to explain it to some idiot to lazy to google you are running out of patience.
Yes there are somethings you will have to ask to find out. There is nothing shamefull about that. Just realize that you may be the 100th person asking it today and even the most helpfull of people can have a bad day.
The most difficult thing. Other players are not there to help you. So when somebody helps you say "thank you". Everytime. You would be suprised how many people can't be arsed. Doesn't matter if you are the nicest person on the planet if a helpfull player has just dealt with an asshole you could catch the flak. Live sucks but thats the way it is.
Before you ask a question A: make sure you read the docs. Read that manual during the install. Questions that are in the manual really are irritiating to answer.
B: Do not ask, "my I ask a question". That is irritating. Just state the question already.
C: Do not spam. If nobody is replying then accept it and come back later. If chat is busy do not spam your question 3 times in row to make sure people see it. It is a good way to find yourselve quickly playing a very solo MMO game.
D: Use proper and full english. Nothing more annoying then having to decipher a bunch of engrish.
E: Be polite. You catch more more flies with honey or something. Say thank you. Yeah you got what you want but you might need some help in the future and some people /addignore those who do not say thank you.
F: Be patient. A helpfull player may be in the middle of a battle and cannot instantly answer your every message.
G: But the most important, learn to google. 99% of the MMORPG questions are repeats and someone somewhere will already have answered it complete with pictures on the web.
In the end there are such a thing as stupid questions. Do not expect others to fall over themselves to help you avoid reading manuals or doing your own websearches.
Oh of course some call my attitude elite. Like that is an insult. Yet I have noticed one thing. All those people who always complain they cannot not get help NEVER help others themselves. The people that demand the most are the ones who give back the least. odd eh?
Most people are perfectly willing to help but when you see the same question pass by for the hundreth time your patience will run out.
Not that this book will help. Noobs never read anything. Those who do read the official manual and still need help with somethings get all the help they need in game. The book just isn't needed.