I think you'll find that most of the cost of a coffee goes to the land owner for rent, and most of the rest is staff wages; there's not much profit to be made in selling coffee (or else you'd see people undercutting each other for a few cents till the price was as low as you suspect the cost is).
most (well IIRC) german hotels have signs in the bathroom requesting that men pee sitting down, to avoid this problem. This used to bug me, until I actually switched to doing that - sure it's more work, but it pretty much eliminates drips on the seat, floor, etc.; if the extra seconds this takes is really of major concern, maybe a toilet isn't what you need, and you should be looking at catheters instead.
I'm with Zen too; they've been providing me with a great service - I don't mind paying extra if I exceed the cap, which I've not done yet.
I moved from ukonline; they had an unlimited service, but what's the point when it's all traffic shaped? (Didn't help that their customer service was absolutely abysmal either; no company I've ever had to deal with before has made me so angry and frustrated so many times)
given the free accounts easily available, and the ease of creating a new character with a random name and then automatically sending a message to pretty much everyone logged on, the only way that worked for me was white-listing. Something like WRUGS (which is what I used before I stopped playing WoW) - basically if the person messaging you isn't on the white list (or in group/guild/raid) then the text of the message is ignored, and the sender is sent a message explaining about the white list and how to get on it; no gold spammer is ever on long enough to read the auto-replies anyway, and anyone else can choose to bypass it or not as they prefer. The system also has the advantage that it pretty much stops all messages from the beggers too.
there's a number on the bills you receive. Call it. Tell them you don't have a TV (or don't watch TV or whatever - I, truthfully, told them I have a TV but only use it for DVDs). No more bills. Apparently they might send someone round to look one day, though that's never happened to me. I've not had a bill or reminder for going on 2 years now.
I've not used PL/SQL Developer on *nix, so I have no idea about the "insanely slow X windows forwarding", however it runs fine on windows, and your comments make it sound like you've not tried it yet; I have no interest in persuading you to do so, but I think you should at least consider that your position is slightly irrational.
Personally I have to dissagree with your assessment of the interface; I find it quite clean and friendly; TOAD, for example, is extermely cluttered and the sea of options hinder rather than help.
I have no idea as to Oracle's motives in developing it, however if you'd spent any time on the beta boards it was pretty clear that the team doing the work wanted to make the best tool they could; I didn't always agree with their choices, but it doesn't mean they were wrong.
My main issues with it in general are the speed of its development and release; this can be seen in the minor bugs and useability issues that you don't see in a more mature product (though I've not used the offical production release yet, maybe they had a good run of minor bug fixes:p). I still use TOAD for a lot of my work, but I'm looking forward to when we move to SQL/Developer, as it is far better suited to my own needs, which are more development rather than DBA oriented.
In the UK at least, smokers pay significanly more in taxes than it costs the health system to look after them while they die; IIRC the figure is around an order of magnitude difference. Smokers tend to die earlier than non smokers too, which means they're less of a burden in old age.
Of course, non of this changes the fact that it's a disgusting habit, imposed on others in the form of passive smoking, and leaves clothes and hair stinking, and any rooms/furnishings stinking forever after.
Personally I loath smoking, and would support any taxes or bans imposed on it; morally I think people have a right to kill themselves however they want to - but please do it in your own homes.
yes, 999, or 112 - 112 is the EU emergency number, and in theory should work in most or all of the EU (unlike 999 it will also ignore the keyboard lock of GSM mobile phones)
Given the quantity of food destroyed by the western world in the past, it would seem as though you need more than just food to deal with starvation.
Hippies, economists, politicians, charities, rebels, lowlives looking for a fast buck (to name just a few) - they all have a part to play. Focussing on any one over the others is as sure a way of failing as ignoring the problem altogether.
You only have to look at the result of the huge influx of material foreign aid after the tsunami this year to know that you can't solve everything by pilling produce on people's heads.
I found both to be pretty readable and a good introduction to the theory.
Once you've got the basics down, there's lots of further stuff you can try, from the obvious books by Codd and Date, to the more esoteric and weird.
I would suggest, however, that you don't stress the "platform independance" of databases; you can do it, but it's not going to be pretty - most of them have their own syntax, additions, quirks and foibles, and that's just in the SQL; it gets worse when you actually try and design code stuff; for example if you program your application to work with Oracle for locking, and then switch to, for example, SQL Server, you're going to have to redesign the way it works, since they have completely different strategies (or at least they did - been a while since I've done any SQL Server).
If you try for DB independance, you'll also end up coding to the lowest common denominator (no sequences for example... 'cause they all have their own standard...), which kinda takes the fun out of anything.
For Oracle, Tom Kyte is probably a good bet - Expert One-on-One Oracle is very good, IMO, well worth the asking price; I can't really recommend anything for non-oracle though, maybe someone else can help out; O'Reilly are bound to have something for pretty much everything and everyone.
An awful lot of the pleasure in this world is virtual or at least ephemeral. You can also look around and see that there are a large number of people who enjoy doing things that you wouldn't do if they paid you to - the point being, just because you think it's a waste of money doesn't make it so, and it doesn't make those people who enjoy that sort of things idiots.
I fail to see how paying to watch a movie is different to paying for a new sword in your favourite MMORPG; you haven't bought anything real. (Leaving aside that the assertion that the only things worth purchasing are things you can hold in your hands - a very materialistic point of view:p)
Falling for one of these "scams" is no different to someone who pays a couple hundred pounds to watch a live football match instead of watching it on TV, or who goes on a beach holiday - it's all just memories in the end; do you enjoy either of those things? I don't, and I wouldn't pay for them either.
As for your point about duplication, Sony can't do that unless they want to kill the goose; if they ever do that once, then they will loose whatever trust they have. Hackers could do that, but if you've been playing any of these sorts of games you'll have an idea of how hard these companies come down on people exploiting duplication bugs or similar activities.
On the subject of the main story, I don't think that anyone who has followed EQ over the years will be very surprised at this; First came character transfers between servers, then transfers with items, then buying longer subscriptions to gain powers for your charactesr (and how is that different to buying a sword?) - then the move to EQ2 where they change from 8 characters per server to 4 characters total... 8 if you buy the premium service... I'm sure others can add to this list: I'm only surprised that it took so long.
As has been mentioned above, the people who play EQ like this level up and burn out, usually pretty quickly, most of them quit, and some wander around with a vague sense of unease, seeing everyone else around them content and wondering what they're missing.
The ones I've known like that tend to then think that getting the next level or the next advancement point or the next peice of loot will make them happy again, which it does, breifly, but the joy quickly fades of course - but to say that most people who play the game are like this, or that they play simple for the endorphin release (or whatever) of the next "ding" is, IMO, purely an outsider looking in and being unable to match any of the player's values with their own.
That simply means that you value what the CEO values more than you value what an MMORPG player values. Why should everyone just lust after wealth and/or power?
Essentially you're wasting your talent on activities that don't earn you anything except some vague emotional reward
All many people want out of life is "some vague emotional reward" - one could argue that this is exactly what love is, or the thrill of winning a sporting event (along with the adulation that comes with it - something else that has no more benefit to you than emotional), or the excitement of a corporate takeover, or whatever.
physical, logistical, and even financial support that such groups provide in times of need...but in my experience, most online "friends" aren't going come over and help you move furniture:)
some people manage to play a game like EQ for 4 or 5 years and never make a good friendship with anyone - the same could be said of many people in the workplace - on the other hand, many also come away with valuable friendships that last long past the enjoyment in the game. They may not be able to help you move furniture (though I wouldn't bet on it), but they certainly can provide you with emotional support, advice and companionship. You will also find that any medium or large guild (say between 100 and 200 people) won't hold together long if there aren't people in it willing to listen to other people's problems and offer whatever support they can - though you are right in that most of this won't be financial.
For myself I value tremendously the friends I've made in the 4 years I've been playing MMORPGS, I've met many, talked (on the phone) to more, and spent many hours helping and being helped by them for "nothing more than some vague emotional reward". Maybe you wouldn't value these friendships, but I do.
I think you'll find that the previous poster was saying that they were not able to perform the service of declaring whether or not the process has been fixed, which seems a reasonable thing to say, not that they had any control over the elections.
WRT the reassurance or doubt that might be brought on the elections, it seems that this is very good incentive to get it right this time.
When I first bought a PC (a 486DX33) it came with some no-name mouse that broke within 2 weeks. I went to the shops and bought a new no-name (different make) mouse. This broke the same day (playing x-wing IIRC).
Fed up with this, I turned over the mouse on my Archimedies, at the time over a year old with never a glitch, and saw the name Logitech. I bought a Logitch mouse that could well still be working, it certainly was 4 years later when I gave it away with a different computer.
The Logitech mice in the shops are 3 to 4 times more expensive than the cheap ones but are vastly superior in just about every way, IMO.
I would suggest finding a friend with a more expensive mouse and giving it a go - same argument as a good keyboard and good screen; you'll be using it all the time, why get a sub-standard one?
I don't plan on buying any other mouse than a logitech one, but some people seem to prefer MS mice, so I guess try both. I currently have an MX700, well worth every cent of the 80Euro ish price.
I'll add my vote to the "what short battery life?" crowd; I use my MX700 continuosly for very long periods and have never noticed any battery problem. This includes carelessly seating it in the cradle overnight so the laser flickers on and off continuously for 8 hours trying to find a surface, and still being usable all the next day.
I love it, best mouse ever.
This would be more believable if it were the operators that make the handsets. This is not usually the case (at least in Europe, where the handsets are similarly priced).
I know you go on to say that it should be available online, however I would much prefer that the default option be to receive an abbreviated bill, and be forced to pay for a full itemised bill in the mail. Purely because people are lazy, and would never change their default options.
Before I got abbreviated bills from my provider, it used to run into 5 or 6 pages - this is especially true with the increasing use of brief services (e.g. SMS or Push-to-talk) that use many short calls, and the prevailence of free-minutes and similar services, all of which require their own billing section. Multiply this by, say, 20 million subs (for a largish provider), and we're running into 100 million pages every month, and I would wager that 90% of people look at the number at the end and ignore the rest.
For PSTN networks, my understanding is that the cost of itemising local calls (this is Europe) is getting to the point of costing more than the revenue it generates - with all these free call options going around, I bet than this is getting to be the case for mobile networks too.
Other things worth mentioning are, for example - when Planes of Power was released, one of the bosses you had to kill for progression was unkillable (with sony "retuning" it every now and then, presumably to try and make people believe it was actually doable) until they finished the content in the next zone, fixed the blocking encounter, and suddenly 4 or 5 guilds were past it within a couple of days.
Similarly in this expanion GoD (Gates of Discord), the zone Uqua was pretty much impossible for a long time, again raising speculation that the following zones were unfinished.
Recent problems that have been touched on elsewhere in this thread, are the constant graphics problems introduced by moving to DX9; monsters sinking into the floor, players being unable to move because they got stuck on a small pebble they can't see, monsters being pushed through walls where they can hit players but not be hit back, monsters "warping" all over the map because they too got stuck on pebbles.
The new engine also seems to be quite unstable when zoning (moving between different areas of the game), causing many crashes, or being dropped from group or raids.
From a hard-core raider's point of view, there was also so many stupid changes in GoD, that drove people away in droves:
To get to the raiding content you had to run through several zones, filled with very hard wandering monsters, many of which would see invisible characters, that could run faster than players, cast nasty spells, and generally hit harder than "boss" mobs from the previous expansions. This is particularly important for clerics, for example, who find themselves in the unenviable situation of having to navigate these zones naked, to resurrect their group after everyone dies...
Stupid itemisation - weapons and shields that are far better than anything previously available drop commonly for a few classes - these items are now rotting (everyone that can use the items already has one) while other classes have yet to see an item they can use. Raids that take 3 or more hours ending up dropping "augmentations" that are wanted by no one (assuming the raid isn't bugged and impossible of course)
Marginalisation of classes - the insane difficulty of some of the monsters meant that you had to have particular classes (especially when you were limited to just 6 players, for example) and other classes became superfluous - leading to the poor few who were useful having to do the same content again and again to help everyone else through.
General difficulty of movement through the zones - it's not uncommon for 10 or more people to die on the way to the meeting points, and require help from others to retreive their corpses, many more will get stuck in walls or ceilings and be unable to move, or go link-dead and have their character "1018" for 15 mins or more (1018 is the error you get when EQ still thinks your character is online, despite having gone LD, which stops you from logging back in).
My guild has gone from regularly having 70+ people on to struggling to field 30. Most people are pretty demoralised, and there doesn't seem to be any light in sight - e.g. the last patch "fixed" collisions, and we're now back to watching Gods in phase 4 of time (for example) falling through to phase 5... Getting stuck in walls and becoming un-hittable (though of course they can still kill you)... hitting walls and warping to random places in the zone where they they run to the raid, bringing all their friends too...
My first PC had some cheap no-name mouse on it: that lasted 2 days... went to the shops and bought a new no-name one that lasted 3 hours... Went home and turned over the mouse on my Archimedies - was a year old and had never given me a single problem. It was a Logitech mouse. Every mouse I've bought since has been made by Logitech, and not one has failed or ever given me problems - I don't plan on buying any other brand:)
I'm currently using a MX700 and love it!
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I think you'll find that most of the cost of a coffee goes to the land owner for rent, and most of the rest is staff wages; there's not much profit to be made in selling coffee (or else you'd see people undercutting each other for a few cents till the price was as low as you suspect the cost is).
most (well IIRC) german hotels have signs in the bathroom requesting that men pee sitting down, to avoid this problem. This used to bug me, until I actually switched to doing that - sure it's more work, but it pretty much eliminates drips on the seat, floor, etc.; if the extra seconds this takes is really of major concern, maybe a toilet isn't what you need, and you should be looking at catheters instead.
I moved from ukonline; they had an unlimited service, but what's the point when it's all traffic shaped? (Didn't help that their customer service was absolutely abysmal either; no company I've ever had to deal with before has made me so angry and frustrated so many times)
given the free accounts easily available, and the ease of creating a new character with a random name and then automatically sending a message to pretty much everyone logged on, the only way that worked for me was white-listing. Something like WRUGS (which is what I used before I stopped playing WoW) - basically if the person messaging you isn't on the white list (or in group/guild/raid) then the text of the message is ignored, and the sender is sent a message explaining about the white list and how to get on it; no gold spammer is ever on long enough to read the auto-replies anyway, and anyone else can choose to bypass it or not as they prefer. The system also has the advantage that it pretty much stops all messages from the beggers too.
there's a number on the bills you receive. Call it. Tell them you don't have a TV (or don't watch TV or whatever - I, truthfully, told them I have a TV but only use it for DVDs). No more bills. Apparently they might send someone round to look one day, though that's never happened to me. I've not had a bill or reminder for going on 2 years now.
John Shea, very good Lex, shame they wasted him in just one season ( we won't mention his appearances in later seasons...
Personally I have to dissagree with your assessment of the interface; I find it quite clean and friendly; TOAD, for example, is extermely cluttered and the sea of options hinder rather than help.
I have no idea as to Oracle's motives in developing it, however if you'd spent any time on the beta boards it was pretty clear that the team doing the work wanted to make the best tool they could; I didn't always agree with their choices, but it doesn't mean they were wrong.
My main issues with it in general are the speed of its development and release; this can be seen in the minor bugs and useability issues that you don't see in a more mature product (though I've not used the offical production release yet, maybe they had a good run of minor bug fixes :p). I still use TOAD for a lot of my work, but I'm looking forward to when we move to SQL/Developer, as it is far better suited to my own needs, which are more development rather than DBA oriented.
Of course, non of this changes the fact that it's a disgusting habit, imposed on others in the form of passive smoking, and leaves clothes and hair stinking, and any rooms/furnishings stinking forever after.
Personally I loath smoking, and would support any taxes or bans imposed on it; morally I think people have a right to kill themselves however they want to - but please do it in your own homes.
Flaimbait? WTH.
yes, 999, or 112 - 112 is the EU emergency number, and in theory should work in most or all of the EU (unlike 999 it will also ignore the keyboard lock of GSM mobile phones)
give trolls and flaimbait a +modifier; makes for a much more interesting site
Hippies, economists, politicians, charities, rebels, lowlives looking for a fast buck (to name just a few) - they all have a part to play. Focussing on any one over the others is as sure a way of failing as ignoring the problem altogether.
You only have to look at the result of the huge influx of material foreign aid after the tsunami this year to know that you can't solve everything by pilling produce on people's heads.
Blame the translator :p
I know it says access on the cover, but Steve Roman's book Access Database Design & Programming is pretty good as a starting point, IMO.
You could also try Michael Hernandez's Database design for mere mortals
I found both to be pretty readable and a good introduction to the theory.
Once you've got the basics down, there's lots of further stuff you can try, from the obvious books by Codd and Date, to the more esoteric and weird.
I would suggest, however, that you don't stress the "platform independance" of databases; you can do it, but it's not going to be pretty - most of them have their own syntax, additions, quirks and foibles, and that's just in the SQL; it gets worse when you actually try and design code stuff; for example if you program your application to work with Oracle for locking, and then switch to, for example, SQL Server, you're going to have to redesign the way it works, since they have completely different strategies (or at least they did - been a while since I've done any SQL Server).
If you try for DB independance, you'll also end up coding to the lowest common denominator (no sequences for example... 'cause they all have their own standard...), which kinda takes the fun out of anything.
For Oracle, Tom Kyte is probably a good bet - Expert One-on-One Oracle is very good, IMO, well worth the asking price; I can't really recommend anything for non-oracle though, maybe someone else can help out; O'Reilly are bound to have something for pretty much everything and everyone.
I fail to see how paying to watch a movie is different to paying for a new sword in your favourite MMORPG; you haven't bought anything real. (Leaving aside that the assertion that the only things worth purchasing are things you can hold in your hands - a very materialistic point of view :p)
Falling for one of these "scams" is no different to someone who pays a couple hundred pounds to watch a live football match instead of watching it on TV, or who goes on a beach holiday - it's all just memories in the end; do you enjoy either of those things? I don't, and I wouldn't pay for them either.
As for your point about duplication, Sony can't do that unless they want to kill the goose; if they ever do that once, then they will loose whatever trust they have. Hackers could do that, but if you've been playing any of these sorts of games you'll have an idea of how hard these companies come down on people exploiting duplication bugs or similar activities.
On the subject of the main story, I don't think that anyone who has followed EQ over the years will be very surprised at this; First came character transfers between servers, then transfers with items, then buying longer subscriptions to gain powers for your charactesr (and how is that different to buying a sword?) - then the move to EQ2 where they change from 8 characters per server to 4 characters total... 8 if you buy the premium service... I'm sure others can add to this list: I'm only surprised that it took so long.
As has been mentioned above, the people who play EQ like this level up and burn out, usually pretty quickly, most of them quit, and some wander around with a vague sense of unease, seeing everyone else around them content and wondering what they're missing.
The ones I've known like that tend to then think that getting the next level or the next advancement point or the next peice of loot will make them happy again, which it does, breifly, but the joy quickly fades of course - but to say that most people who play the game are like this, or that they play simple for the endorphin release (or whatever) of the next "ding" is, IMO, purely an outsider looking in and being unable to match any of the player's values with their own.
That simply means that you value what the CEO values more than you value what an MMORPG player values. Why should everyone just lust after wealth and/or power?
All many people want out of life is "some vague emotional reward" - one could argue that this is exactly what love is, or the thrill of winning a sporting event (along with the adulation that comes with it - something else that has no more benefit to you than emotional), or the excitement of a corporate takeover, or whatever.
some people manage to play a game like EQ for 4 or 5 years and never make a good friendship with anyone - the same could be said of many people in the workplace - on the other hand, many also come away with valuable friendships that last long past the enjoyment in the game. They may not be able to help you move furniture (though I wouldn't bet on it), but they certainly can provide you with emotional support, advice and companionship. You will also find that any medium or large guild (say between 100 and 200 people) won't hold together long if there aren't people in it willing to listen to other people's problems and offer whatever support they can - though you are right in that most of this won't be financial.
For myself I value tremendously the friends I've made in the 4 years I've been playing MMORPGS, I've met many, talked (on the phone) to more, and spent many hours helping and being helped by them for "nothing more than some vague emotional reward". Maybe you wouldn't value these friendships, but I do.
I think you'll find that the previous poster was saying that they were not able to perform the service of declaring whether or not the process has been fixed, which seems a reasonable thing to say, not that they had any control over the elections. WRT the reassurance or doubt that might be brought on the elections, it seems that this is very good incentive to get it right this time.
When I first bought a PC (a 486DX33) it came with some no-name mouse that broke within 2 weeks. I went to the shops and bought a new no-name (different make) mouse. This broke the same day (playing x-wing IIRC).
Fed up with this, I turned over the mouse on my Archimedies, at the time over a year old with never a glitch, and saw the name Logitech. I bought a Logitch mouse that could well still be working, it certainly was 4 years later when I gave it away with a different computer.
The Logitech mice in the shops are 3 to 4 times more expensive than the cheap ones but are vastly superior in just about every way, IMO.
I would suggest finding a friend with a more expensive mouse and giving it a go - same argument as a good keyboard and good screen; you'll be using it all the time, why get a sub-standard one?
I don't plan on buying any other mouse than a logitech one, but some people seem to prefer MS mice, so I guess try both. I currently have an MX700, well worth every cent of the 80Euro ish price.
I'll add my vote to the "what short battery life?" crowd; I use my MX700 continuosly for very long periods and have never noticed any battery problem. This includes carelessly seating it in the cradle overnight so the laser flickers on and off continuously for 8 hours trying to find a surface, and still being usable all the next day. I love it, best mouse ever.
This would be more believable if it were the operators that make the handsets. This is not usually the case (at least in Europe, where the handsets are similarly priced).
>>Printing a few pages doesn't cost a whole lot.
I know you go on to say that it should be available online, however I would much prefer that the default option be to receive an abbreviated bill, and be forced to pay for a full itemised bill in the mail. Purely because people are lazy, and would never change their default options.
Before I got abbreviated bills from my provider, it used to run into 5 or 6 pages - this is especially true with the increasing use of brief services (e.g. SMS or Push-to-talk) that use many short calls, and the prevailence of free-minutes and similar services, all of which require their own billing section. Multiply this by, say, 20 million subs (for a largish provider), and we're running into 100 million pages every month, and I would wager that 90% of people look at the number at the end and ignore the rest.
For PSTN networks, my understanding is that the cost of itemising local calls (this is Europe) is getting to the point of costing more than the revenue it generates - with all these free call options going around, I bet than this is getting to be the case for mobile networks too.
Other things worth mentioning are, for example - when Planes of Power was released, one of the bosses you had to kill for progression was unkillable (with sony "retuning" it every now and then, presumably to try and make people believe it was actually doable) until they finished the content in the next zone, fixed the blocking encounter, and suddenly 4 or 5 guilds were past it within a couple of days.
Similarly in this expanion GoD (Gates of Discord), the zone Uqua was pretty much impossible for a long time, again raising speculation that the following zones were unfinished. Recent problems that have been touched on elsewhere in this thread, are the constant graphics problems introduced by moving to DX9; monsters sinking into the floor, players being unable to move because they got stuck on a small pebble they can't see, monsters being pushed through walls where they can hit players but not be hit back, monsters "warping" all over the map because they too got stuck on pebbles.
The new engine also seems to be quite unstable when zoning (moving between different areas of the game), causing many crashes, or being dropped from group or raids.
From a hard-core raider's point of view, there was also so many stupid changes in GoD, that drove people away in droves:
To get to the raiding content you had to run through several zones, filled with very hard wandering monsters, many of which would see invisible characters, that could run faster than players, cast nasty spells, and generally hit harder than "boss" mobs from the previous expansions. This is particularly important for clerics, for example, who find themselves in the unenviable situation of having to navigate these zones naked, to resurrect their group after everyone dies...
Stupid itemisation - weapons and shields that are far better than anything previously available drop commonly for a few classes - these items are now rotting (everyone that can use the items already has one) while other classes have yet to see an item they can use. Raids that take 3 or more hours ending up dropping "augmentations" that are wanted by no one (assuming the raid isn't bugged and impossible of course)
Marginalisation of classes - the insane difficulty of some of the monsters meant that you had to have particular classes (especially when you were limited to just 6 players, for example) and other classes became superfluous - leading to the poor few who were useful having to do the same content again and again to help everyone else through.
General difficulty of movement through the zones - it's not uncommon for 10 or more people to die on the way to the meeting points, and require help from others to retreive their corpses, many more will get stuck in walls or ceilings and be unable to move, or go link-dead and have their character "1018" for 15 mins or more (1018 is the error you get when EQ still thinks your character is online, despite having gone LD, which stops you from logging back in).
My guild has gone from regularly having 70+ people on to struggling to field 30. Most people are pretty demoralised, and there doesn't seem to be any light in sight - e.g. the last patch "fixed" collisions, and we're now back to watching Gods in phase 4 of time (for example) falling through to phase 5... Getting stuck in walls and becoming un-hittable (though of course they can still kill you)... hitting walls and warping to random places in the zone where they they run to the raid, bringing all their friends too...
My first PC had some cheap no-name mouse on it: that lasted 2 days... went to the shops and bought a new no-name one that lasted 3 hours... Went home and turned over the mouse on my Archimedies - was a year old and had never given me a single problem. It was a Logitech mouse. Every mouse I've bought since has been made by Logitech, and not one has failed or ever given me problems - I don't plan on buying any other brand :)
I'm currently using a MX700 and love it!
Any serious runner will be replacing their shoes every few hundred miles or so; unless they want to become serious hobblers later in life.