I've posted far more than 3 replies in this thread; when you posted this I was over half a dozen.
I'm sorry that my comments were not as clear to you as they seemed to me.
Do I support the use of a DDoS in some cases? Yes, I certainly do. I've opted in/out/up/down/left/right on certain spam lists; I still receive a large portion of spam from them. Bayesian filtering and auto deletes have taken care of that issue; it doesn't stop the fact that it's all pointless drag.
Lastly, since when does eliminating one option as a potential solution mean that you must eliminate all options?
If you'd read my comment thoroughly, then you'd have realized that wasn't quite what I said.
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
As a simple copy/paste shows, I stated that any method of intervention can be used for heavy handed use by gov't and corporations; using that as a reason for not pursuing the use of anything is tantamount to saying no to all of them.
My point is that to a determined spammer, opt-in won't help. Double opt-in, which I know as confirmed opt-in, won't help either. Either of them, however, will help with a large majority of cases. As for the rest of them left after both of those methods fail, I say to hell with em and nuke their servers, via DDoS, DNS blacklists, or some other method which would be appropriate to the situation at hand.
I wasn't trying to "blow your statement out of porportion". I was trying to show the absurdity of that type of arguement by showing a more extreme example. Note that I never said that you believe that pickpockets should be tortured to death; I merely offered it as an example of the "you either agree with me or you must be on their side" type of statement.
Which as I thought I made clear in my response, I can't stand. I've found very few cases where there is a clear cut example of this is absolutely good or absolutely bad.
I believe that there are situations where taking a spammer's mail server offline by any means necesary is a good thing. I beleive that there are situations where extreme measures are entirely unwarranted. To try and show it in clearcut black and white as you are is, IMO, completely and totally irresponsible.
That's one knot that I think would be best left untied. It may start out as an anti-spam tool, but it'll only be a matter of time before all manner of other uses are okayed. How long before the RIAA gets permission to DDoS file-sharers, or entire P2P networks? How long before Microsoft gets permission to DDoS servers hosting cracks for their software?
Legalized DDoS attacks as a tool for fighting spam just reeks of a Pandora's Box solution to the problem. Once we make it an acceptable method for netcrime fighting in one instance, it's only a matter of time before all manner of major corporations and organizations tug the leash they have around US lawmaker's necks and get the right to DDoS anything they don't like.
That's your original reply, where you condemened this because eventually this *could* be used for DDoSing anything they don't like.
I've never said that ALL DDoS attacks by entities, corporate or gov't should be sanctioned. I've never said that they should be completely allowed. You're still twisting my words, and you're still ignoring your own statements in a very convenient manner to your own arguments.
So, as you said:
...Stop twisting other people's statements. That "do as I say, not as I do" shit ain't gonna float.
For someone who has continually missed my points, I still find that you aren't reading everything I've had to say on this topic. DDoSing your neighbor, as I said, isn't acceptable. However, letting spammers get away with this isn't either.
There is a point where it stops being acceptable to DDoS and otherwise bring down servers. I've said that repeatably. When are you going to realize that I have?
The account I list on/. is there for nothing other than giving people a method of direct contact to me; It's bayesian filtered, along with the other accounts I have on that IP. My primary account is through Gmail, also Bayesian filtered by google.
I've written letters to my congress critters, and the few replies I've received indicate to me that they're in agreement on the fact that spam is an issue, that the CANSPAM act is completely and totally worthless, and that they were opposed to the changes made to the original bill that was passed through the senate, and lost all of its' teeth in the house.
As for my OS, I'm primarily on windows, but I've done everything I can to secure it. I'm well aware of all the issues inherent in running that.
Getting back to the topic at hand, I hate to say this, but as has been mentioned elsewhere, the precedent for 'legal' DDoS attacks has already been set. %AA style organizations have already successfully DDoS'd several irc servers, torrent sites, etc, bringing them down rather permanently. Those that are still around have started enforcing very strict 'no warez' policies.
W/r to your first statement, I'm getting quite sick and tired of people taking my statements and either blowing them out of proportion, as you have done, or twisting them away from what I said. I have no issues with using analogies; however you seem to have issues with using them to draw a parallel. Capitol punishment for a misdemeanor is not the same as preventing someone from breaking federal law which carries heavy punishments.
If the spammer is low enough to do something like that, then opt-out isn't going to slow them down; nor is double opt-in. Or did you not think of it in that sense?
I never said that it was a valid solution to all problems; portraying my statement as such is irresponsible and to me, quite offensive. Yes, as with every form of legal punishment in the world, there is a time and a place for proper application. The situations you and others have described certainly fit the 'do not do this' mantra, which leads to situations where direct dealing with the hosting ISP is a more desireable situation.
Saying that we shouldn't do this at all for fear of any collateral damage is ridiculous, for all the reasons I've already mentioned.
Originally, CANSPAM was can't spam, then all the spam lobbyists stood up and shouted to have it changed. Thus, CANSPAM instead of CAN'T-SPAM.
Ultimately, opt-in of any form will go a long way to helping, but that won't solve all of it. There will always be those who mass-mail regardless of opt-ins or opt-out lists, etc.
I've already rebutted the legalized DDoS issue, but you do raise an interesting point on ISP backbones, however bringing a node to it's knees takes a lot of work. Taking out enough for an end user to notice takes that much more.
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
While it's certainly true that DDoS attacks are illegal, and that there is a precedence that sets these types of things firmly in the illegal category, I personally think that we should reexamine them. Set a statute that allows DDoS attacks against known spam hosts and the like.
Ultimately, all this soft CANSPAM style BS needs to stop, and tougher measures need to be brought up to speed.
Actually, I did read the entire article; You yourself posted it. You were the one who mentioned better use of USB key functionality, in the form of keys.
4.) More use of the USB storage keys -- If you're like me, then you game on your PC. A lot. And also like me, you must absolutely despise having to keep the damn game disk within the drive all day long. Well, grief no more because I have a handy dandy solution that would not only please you and me but also the game corporations and that idea is: Keep all necessary verification data on a single USB storage key! Simple, right!? Of course it is! Game publishers can each make available a custom "Game Key" that would hold the same information that a CD/DVD of the game would hold for simple "ownership verification." It would kill the need for no-cd patches and be an absolute hit for any avid gamer. Think of it, you could have a custom "EA" USB key that holds verification data on every single current EA game out there and you could "unlock" a game on the key by simply running a registration program or during the initial installation.
Genius, isn't it? I know. It simply baffles me as to why game developers and publishers would skip an idea such as this. I'm sure some people would say that this would simply be unsafe and lead to easier access for pirates to do their thang' but in all actuality, it's just as safe, if not safer than using disk verification. Also, if you don't want to buy or have a separate USB key for each game publisher, then I propose one company which would collectively hold an agreement with game makers, to sell and manage this entire system. Gamespy is one company that certainly comes to mind. As for production fees, it really isn't too expensive to make an 8MB-32MB USB memory key anymore, in fact, I see them being given away by software companies looking to spread their product. It's no excuse.
Look familiar? It should.
As for increases in case functionality, such as beverage dispensers/bottle openers and other ridiculous ideas, again that was all you.
2.) Cases with more functionality -- Haven't you even dreamt of having your case double as a food/drink dispenser as well? Of course you have! Wouldn't it just be oh-so cool to have a bottle opener or a soda dispenser built into the case without having to do tedious and sometimes ridiculous amounts of modifications? I mean, the possibilities are quite endless really when it comes to being a dispenser and it wouldn't necessarily be all that hard.
It doesn't have to stop at food either, I mean how many of you have or use the phone near your computer? Well, why not combine the two!? Wouldn't it just be so cool to have a fully functional phone right there on your case? There would be no need to get up ever again except for bathroom breaks but they have bags and jugs for that anyways, right?
That should look familiar as well.
As for that load of BS about me paying you to do proper research, which doesn't take a week; I could research and write an article better than that drivel while doing laundry. Oh, and if you need a link to what YOU posted to remind you have how absolutely shitty that so-called article you wrote was, here it is:
Insofar as me wasting my genius on being offensive, I think you should consider that 'people in glass houses should not throw stones' You've spent a goodly portion of your time in this thread flaming people for pointing out your own fallacies.
In short, you shouldn't need some sum of money to take a few hours to do some actual, proper research before writing a tech opinion piece and submitting it to slashdot; AFAIC it's part of *gasp* good journalism.
So, until you can do that, do all of us here a favor. STFU and GTFO. While you're doing that, start running your posts through a spellcheck, or at least preview them and proof for errors. Or would I need to pay you for that too?
Anyone who wrote an article on tech improvements could have done better with a modicum of research and thought involved. As it stands, what you wrote was nothing more than an uninformed bitchfest about everything you didn't like.
As it's been pointed out by at least a dozen others, there are quieter fans. There are smaller HDDs; however, they're not nearly as fast and don't have near the storage capacity of the larger drives. The case mods you're talking about are flat out retarded; buy a mini-fridge and stick it beside your PC or under your desk. Thinkgeek sells a really nice, small one, by the way. USB keys are out there, and then there's always CAC card access for logins. I use one of those at work and love it. As for Wireless everything, short of power, that's all out there too. I have wireless keyboards, mice, headphones, etc.
So, in short, the problem here is that you're a lazy moron who couldn't be bothered to take the time to do some research and do a proper write up on tech innovations that would be nice to see over the next 5 years. Now you're getting flamed for it, and rightfully so after that horrible flamebaiting troll of an article.
Actually, if you go to Kinko's, Office Depot, etc, you can copy pretty much any copyrighted work as long as you're using self-service machines; they have standard disclaimers regarding those.
Now, if you were to go in with a copyrighted work, you have to supply some sort of proof that you're allowed to copy it, be it something showing the material is being used for educational purposes, or evidence that you're the copyright holder.
In my admittedly limited experince observing the parents of friends, girlfriends, etc, I've found that most normal, functioning individuals have very little problem balancing giving their children sound advice that they really should follow, and letting them screw up enough to find out what they shouldn't do. Of those who weren't able to do that, I can't recall any who would attempt to force their children into military/civil service that were not both
1. abused by their parents and forced out at around 18
and
2. followed the same pattern of abuse as their parents did upon their children.
Now, IANAP, but to me, raising your children the way your parents did seems kinda crazy in cases like that. You obviously didn't like it, so why repeat it all? As for people who didn't have the same support that I did, I feel for them, but ultimately it's up to them to rectify the situation through the means they have at their disposal, which can include packing up and getting out if needed, as I mentioned previously.
This type of statement brings us back to the very circular arguement of good parenting vs bad parenting and personal responsibility for our actions. If my parents had said that to me, my first and only response would have been "See ya later, assholes". As it were, that's not the case; I have wonderful parents who have supported me in every decision I've ever made, although they've certainly questioned my motivation in the ones I didn't think all the way through.
As an aside, I did wind up joining the military, like my father, and grandfather, and even a great-aunt. However, I did it entirely of my own volition, with nothing but support from my parents; not them breathing down my neck.
One person not buying a GCN will not keep Nintendo from making new games featuring the likes of Mario, Link and Samus. I don't think that we'll ever see a Nintendo console without them, and I personally find that thought enjoyable.
I think at this point Nintendo has more than proven their ability to continuously produce quality, fun games that take what has come before and build on them with different features, if not different gameplay mechanics. Taking Metroid from the sidescroller of old to the FPS style adventure game was particularly well done, IMO. As been mentioned, moving Link to a 3D fighter in the form of Soul Calibur 2 is another way of keeping things interesting. As for Mario.. I think that adventure style games have been done enough that there's really not much you can do to enhance them at this point, and changing the characters involved just for the sake of new blood is pointless. However, this is not to be interpreted as my dislike of adventure games with new characters; I just don't think we should get rid of older characters because they've been around for a while.
MANDITORY CIVIL SERVICE - Immediatly after highschool and before college, EVERYONE goes into civil service. You can choose the military, reserves, fire department, police, border patroll, forrest service, help the IRS, help the homeless, help at hospitals, etc. (the full list can be decided later). Term is 2 years. There would obviously be exceptions for some (like those with schitzophrenia and other serious problems). The number of self centered brats comming out of highschools in the US frighents me (note: I'm 21, I have seen this first hand and continue to). Don't get me wrong, there are many good kids. But there are many who act like they are still 12.
I see this suggestion made more and more often of late. Before I get on with my disagreement concerning it, a disclaimer; I am currently serving as AD USAF.
While I think that the idea of Civil Service is a wonderful ideal, the thought of forcing it through a HS graduation draft is ridiculous. There are a lot of individuals who are simply not suited for civil service in any way, shape or form. Forcing them into it will lower the overall quality of the services provided by our Civil Servants.
Now, on the other hand, if you wanted to persue one of two courses out of HS, either Civil Service or College, as decided by the student, that would be another thing entirely to me. If the student elected college, you could possibly follow that on with a term as a GS employee, which is yet another form of civil service, but 9 times in 10 requires a degree of some sort.
I don't know how much space they take up on your system, but on mine it's not even 1meg combined. Hardly bloatware, by any definition. As for iTunes taking longer to load/being more system intensive than Winamp, I've found the only reasoning behind that on my system is that I use the Winamp Agent, so it stays loaded in memory. When I turn it off, it's about the same.
In games where all zones are isolated from each other, that would work. However, WoW zones are all interconnected, with the only 'zone' lines being instanced dungeons and between the continents. Because of that, there really is no way to isolate an area using any of the methods you give.
As for their testing methods, while they do have internal testing servers, and player testing servers, there really is no substitute for taking a change, and throwing it out on a live server for testing in that environment. I've seen several version upgrades that were fine in unit test, fine in integration test, made it through customer testing, but when they were pushed out to production flopped and went tits up. However, while incomplete zones are part of the client, they've always been part of the client.
Finally, calling Blizzard out for the way they're handling things with the obvious lack of knowledge you have regarding the way WoW is designed is just crap. As I mentioned, the way it's setup compared to other games makes obfuscation the only real way to keep people out, but even so, anyone who has played any amount of Blizzard games knows they put in all sorts of 'hidden' zones and easter eggs for their players to discover. Think Cow Level from Diablo 2, and the clicky comments from Warcraft and Starcraft. Building an MMO allows them so much more room to do that kind of thing, as well as give players on regular servers the chance to stumble across upcoming content is an excellent idea, IMO.
Ah, that part of Alabama. Max/Gunter are in Montgomery, but HQ OSSG on Gunter, and all the AU Schools on Maxwell have plenty of IT jobs, although I'm not sure how many GS/Contractor Sysadmin slots there are.
I don't have a single clue of what you're talking about saying Alabama has a lack of good paying IT jobs. Between Maxwell AFB and Gunter Annex, there's plenty of GS and contractor positions.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry that my comments were not as clear to you as they seemed to me.
Do I support the use of a DDoS in some cases? Yes, I certainly do. I've opted in/out/up/down/left/right on certain spam lists; I still receive a large portion of spam from them. Bayesian filtering and auto deletes have taken care of that issue; it doesn't stop the fact that it's all pointless drag.
If you'd read my comment thoroughly, then you'd have realized that wasn't quite what I said.
As a simple copy/paste shows, I stated that any method of intervention can be used for heavy handed use by gov't and corporations; using that as a reason for not pursuing the use of anything is tantamount to saying no to all of them.
My point is that to a determined spammer, opt-in won't help. Double opt-in, which I know as confirmed opt-in, won't help either. Either of them, however, will help with a large majority of cases. As for the rest of them left after both of those methods fail, I say to hell with em and nuke their servers, via DDoS, DNS blacklists, or some other method which would be appropriate to the situation at hand.
Which as I thought I made clear in my response, I can't stand. I've found very few cases where there is a clear cut example of this is absolutely good or absolutely bad.
I believe that there are situations where taking a spammer's mail server offline by any means necesary is a good thing. I beleive that there are situations where extreme measures are entirely unwarranted. To try and show it in clearcut black and white as you are is, IMO, completely and totally irresponsible.
That's your original reply, where you condemened this because eventually this *could* be used for DDoSing anything they don't like.
I've never said that ALL DDoS attacks by entities, corporate or gov't should be sanctioned. I've never said that they should be completely allowed. You're still twisting my words, and you're still ignoring your own statements in a very convenient manner to your own arguments.
So, as you said:
For someone who has continually missed my points, I still find that you aren't reading everything I've had to say on this topic. DDoSing your neighbor, as I said, isn't acceptable. However, letting spammers get away with this isn't either.
There is a point where it stops being acceptable to DDoS and otherwise bring down servers. I've said that repeatably. When are you going to realize that I have?
The account I list on /. is there for nothing other than giving people a method of direct contact to me; It's bayesian filtered, along with the other accounts I have on that IP. My primary account is through Gmail, also Bayesian filtered by google.
I've written letters to my congress critters, and the few replies I've received indicate to me that they're in agreement on the fact that spam is an issue, that the CANSPAM act is completely and totally worthless, and that they were opposed to the changes made to the original bill that was passed through the senate, and lost all of its' teeth in the house.
As for my OS, I'm primarily on windows, but I've done everything I can to secure it. I'm well aware of all the issues inherent in running that.
Getting back to the topic at hand, I hate to say this, but as has been mentioned elsewhere, the precedent for 'legal' DDoS attacks has already been set. %AA style organizations have already successfully DDoS'd several irc servers, torrent sites, etc, bringing them down rather permanently. Those that are still around have started enforcing very strict 'no warez' policies.
W/r to your first statement, I'm getting quite sick and tired of people taking my statements and either blowing them out of proportion, as you have done, or twisting them away from what I said. I have no issues with using analogies; however you seem to have issues with using them to draw a parallel. Capitol punishment for a misdemeanor is not the same as preventing someone from breaking federal law which carries heavy punishments.
If the spammer is low enough to do something like that, then opt-out isn't going to slow them down; nor is double opt-in. Or did you not think of it in that sense?
I never said that it was a valid solution to all problems; portraying my statement as such is irresponsible and to me, quite offensive. Yes, as with every form of legal punishment in the world, there is a time and a place for proper application. The situations you and others have described certainly fit the 'do not do this' mantra, which leads to situations where direct dealing with the hosting ISP is a more desireable situation.
Saying that we shouldn't do this at all for fear of any collateral damage is ridiculous, for all the reasons I've already mentioned.
Originally, CANSPAM was can't spam, then all the spam lobbyists stood up and shouted to have it changed. Thus, CANSPAM instead of CAN'T-SPAM.
Ultimately, opt-in of any form will go a long way to helping, but that won't solve all of it. There will always be those who mass-mail regardless of opt-ins or opt-out lists, etc.
I've already rebutted the legalized DDoS issue, but you do raise an interesting point on ISP backbones, however bringing a node to it's knees takes a lot of work. Taking out enough for an end user to notice takes that much more.
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
As has been posted in other replies, iPodovich would be the proper russian, seeing as it translates to 'Son of iPod'
While it's certainly true that DDoS attacks are illegal, and that there is a precedence that sets these types of things firmly in the illegal category, I personally think that we should reexamine them. Set a statute that allows DDoS attacks against known spam hosts and the like.
Ultimately, all this soft CANSPAM style BS needs to stop, and tougher measures need to be brought up to speed.
As for that load of BS about me paying you to do proper research, which doesn't take a week; I could research and write an article better than that drivel while doing laundry. Oh, and if you need a link to what YOU posted to remind you have how absolutely shitty that so-called article you wrote was, here it is:
Link
Insofar as me wasting my genius on being offensive, I think you should consider that 'people in glass houses should not throw stones' You've spent a goodly portion of your time in this thread flaming people for pointing out your own fallacies.
In short, you shouldn't need some sum of money to take a few hours to do some actual, proper research before writing a tech opinion piece and submitting it to slashdot; AFAIC it's part of *gasp* good journalism.
So, until you can do that, do all of us here a favor. STFU and GTFO. While you're doing that, start running your posts through a spellcheck, or at least preview them and proof for errors. Or would I need to pay you for that too?
Anyone who wrote an article on tech improvements could have done better with a modicum of research and thought involved. As it stands, what you wrote was nothing more than an uninformed bitchfest about everything you didn't like.
As it's been pointed out by at least a dozen others, there are quieter fans. There are smaller HDDs; however, they're not nearly as fast and don't have near the storage capacity of the larger drives. The case mods you're talking about are flat out retarded; buy a mini-fridge and stick it beside your PC or under your desk. Thinkgeek sells a really nice, small one, by the way. USB keys are out there, and then there's always CAC card access for logins. I use one of those at work and love it. As for Wireless everything, short of power, that's all out there too. I have wireless keyboards, mice, headphones, etc.
So, in short, the problem here is that you're a lazy moron who couldn't be bothered to take the time to do some research and do a proper write up on tech innovations that would be nice to see over the next 5 years. Now you're getting flamed for it, and rightfully so after that horrible flamebaiting troll of an article.
Cheers.
I suppose you got that from all the Valve Steam Bashing. My comment, from 'This is Otakudom', predates Steam by Valve.
Water + Heat = Steam.
The World Can Be Saved By Steam!
Actually, if you go to Kinko's, Office Depot, etc, you can copy pretty much any copyrighted work as long as you're using self-service machines; they have standard disclaimers regarding those.
Now, if you were to go in with a copyrighted work, you have to supply some sort of proof that you're allowed to copy it, be it something showing the material is being used for educational purposes, or evidence that you're the copyright holder.
1. abused by their parents and forced out at around 18
and
2. followed the same pattern of abuse as their parents did upon their children.
Now, IANAP, but to me, raising your children the way your parents did seems kinda crazy in cases like that. You obviously didn't like it, so why repeat it all? As for people who didn't have the same support that I did, I feel for them, but ultimately it's up to them to rectify the situation through the means they have at their disposal, which can include packing up and getting out if needed, as I mentioned previously.
As an aside, I did wind up joining the military, like my father, and grandfather, and even a great-aunt. However, I did it entirely of my own volition, with nothing but support from my parents; not them breathing down my neck.
I think at this point Nintendo has more than proven their ability to continuously produce quality, fun games that take what has come before and build on them with different features, if not different gameplay mechanics. Taking Metroid from the sidescroller of old to the FPS style adventure game was particularly well done, IMO. As been mentioned, moving Link to a 3D fighter in the form of Soul Calibur 2 is another way of keeping things interesting. As for Mario.. I think that adventure style games have been done enough that there's really not much you can do to enhance them at this point, and changing the characters involved just for the sake of new blood is pointless. However, this is not to be interpreted as my dislike of adventure games with new characters; I just don't think we should get rid of older characters because they've been around for a while.
While I think that the idea of Civil Service is a wonderful ideal, the thought of forcing it through a HS graduation draft is ridiculous. There are a lot of individuals who are simply not suited for civil service in any way, shape or form. Forcing them into it will lower the overall quality of the services provided by our Civil Servants.
Now, on the other hand, if you wanted to persue one of two courses out of HS, either Civil Service or College, as decided by the student, that would be another thing entirely to me. If the student elected college, you could possibly follow that on with a term as a GS employee, which is yet another form of civil service, but 9 times in 10 requires a degree of some sort.
I don't know how much space they take up on your system, but on mine it's not even 1meg combined. Hardly bloatware, by any definition. As for iTunes taking longer to load/being more system intensive than Winamp, I've found the only reasoning behind that on my system is that I use the Winamp Agent, so it stays loaded in memory. When I turn it off, it's about the same.
As for their testing methods, while they do have internal testing servers, and player testing servers, there really is no substitute for taking a change, and throwing it out on a live server for testing in that environment. I've seen several version upgrades that were fine in unit test, fine in integration test, made it through customer testing, but when they were pushed out to production flopped and went tits up. However, while incomplete zones are part of the client, they've always been part of the client.
Finally, calling Blizzard out for the way they're handling things with the obvious lack of knowledge you have regarding the way WoW is designed is just crap. As I mentioned, the way it's setup compared to other games makes obfuscation the only real way to keep people out, but even so, anyone who has played any amount of Blizzard games knows they put in all sorts of 'hidden' zones and easter eggs for their players to discover. Think Cow Level from Diablo 2, and the clicky comments from Warcraft and Starcraft. Building an MMO allows them so much more room to do that kind of thing, as well as give players on regular servers the chance to stumble across upcoming content is an excellent idea, IMO.
Ah, that part of Alabama. Max/Gunter are in Montgomery, but HQ OSSG on Gunter, and all the AU Schools on Maxwell have plenty of IT jobs, although I'm not sure how many GS/Contractor Sysadmin slots there are.
I don't have a single clue of what you're talking about saying Alabama has a lack of good paying IT jobs. Between Maxwell AFB and Gunter Annex, there's plenty of GS and contractor positions.