If this data goes public I am going to email every single effected
user on Plentyoffish your phone number, email address and picture.
And tell them you hacked into their accounts.
Then i'm going to sue you In Canada, US and UK and argintina. I am
going to completely destroy your life, no one is ever going to hire
you for anything again, this isn't piratebay and we definately aren't
fooling around.
Tried Plenty of Fish for a shortwhile - as a default, the service will mail 'new matches' to the email account you registered with every few days. These emails contain a a plain-text version of your password (which essentially reads as "Remember, your password is:XXXX123").
It's not entirely surprising that the site had its security compromised.
The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."
People got killed because they stood up to a corrupt government, after being made aware of widespread electoral manipulation? And you hold this against Assange like it's a bad thing?
Halfway through yesterday my Skype stopped working, just like everybody else's.
It then tried to reconnect, and out of the blue gave me a pop-up saying "Skypenames2.exe wants to use Skype" with the options "Allow access" or "Deny access."
This naturally set off a few alarm bells, but as it turns out it isn't malware or a virus, just a poorly named Skype component. It allows you to click telephone links in IE or a Mozilla-based browser and make direct phone calls using Skype. Personally I don't want or need that kind of integration, so I declined.
I was told to think about my next words very carefully before giving my final answer. Honestly, I felt this was a test to see how well I would hold up to pressure later when we had to "hold the lie" (the similarity to "hold the line" isn't on accident), so I held firm and said I really wanted to, but needed to have it reviewed...
oh fuck...
Faster than I can even remember (literally... I don't remember) I was knocked out of my chair by I *think* of all people Tim Sweeney (it was a wooden kitchen chair) and was pinned on the ground by Mike Wilson and Cliffy B (he's so much stronger than I ever expected). George walks over to my chair and fucking stomps the shit out of it until the legs are broken off. He casually picks up one of the legs that had split into a shit your pants style point and starts tossing it up and down. Scott and Mark Rein alternate on and off saying that I apparently wasn't aware how *real* business is done and that if I didn't want to find out why those two companies had maintained such a strong position in the industry dating back to the shareware days (when it seems people didn't ask nearly as many questions about why developers appeared, made a game, and then disappeared without a trace)... I had better reconsider my answer.
I do remember the next part very very well though... I will never forget it and I have to admit that I have dreams about it pretty frequently.
Cliffy and Mike pulled me up and shoved my face about 6 inches from the point of the chair leg. I was drenched in sweat (the trailers didn't have decent AC so it was already hot as hell in there)... and if they had let go of me I would not have been able to stand on my own.
George looked me in the eyes and asked me one more time what I was going to do... so at that point I did what anyone would do...
I mean, this guy actually did work at 3DRealms and this is his blog, but seriously, CliffyB and Marc Rein threatening developers with broken chairs? Tim Sweeny tackling people and holding them down for gang beatings?
The GP poster (rude though he was) wasn't saying important, he was saying leading. You want the most qualified person possible doing the write-up on these things, so if it's a new field of research, there could very well be one person more qualified to write about things that only they have done so far. They shouldn't be excluded from contributing their knowledge just because they're the best at what they do.
"At 3:00 P.M. today, Curfman and two other editors released an editorial on The New England Journal's Web site entitled "Expression of Concern," which calls on the VIGOR authors to submit a correction of the 2000 manuscript. "Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data on adverse cardiovascular events in this article," it read. "
The editorial, however, is also strangely missing. In its place was a message: "Silly Scientists - morality is for kids! Love, Merck."
However, look at those same comic books: It's not just the physique of the women, the men are impossibly huge. They have muscles in places where ordinary people don't even have places. Most are taller than any man could ever be, but even the short ones are so muscular that they must be body builders. Heck, go to the men's underwear section of your local department store, and look at the models on the packaging - they're certainly not the "typical" sort of person wearing that brand of boxers.
And in games at least, that makes sense.
If you were playing a game called "Virtual Accountant" or perhaps "Home Maker Simulator" then yes, it's fine to have your player model have a pot belly, flabby thighs and skinny, stick-like arms. However, most video games have the player controlling a person who is constantly running, dodging, fighting, jumping... it makes sense, and indeed, even makes it more fun, if they're in shape.
Amazing - Forbes, which caters to the very rich, is shocked and appalled that suddenly people who aren't rich are getting heard. And these giant, billion dollar companies just can't seem to figure out who to crush, or how to lock them out of the media. Hopefully once the internet becomes even better equipped for creating many-to-many streams of information (blogs are taking on newspapers, podcasts are taking on radio... soon it might even be... television?), we'll at least get to a point where the select few have aclimatized to the fact that there oligopolies are gone.
Which is kind of an odd conflict of interest, seeing as Fox Interactive has a games division.
As soon as the big media companies start buying out gaming sites, and gaming developers (I'm looking at you, Rockstar) - do you think we're still going to see all this BS reporting on the news about how "dangerous" videogames are hurting America? I somehow think there's going to be a whole lot of back-scratching going on, with games based on Fox's IP licenses getting good reviews, and games produced by Fox getting positive attention in the media. And so the circle of shit is complete.
Why, back in my day when I was a youngster, many many years ago, I was given two shillings per month allowance for feeding the Gobblins, before they became turkeys - we had to change the name because of the War. You always had to wear an onion on your belt, as was the style at the time.
Our town had two video game shoppes on either end, Hanzel's Interactive Inn, and Paul's Pixel Purchasorium on the north end of town, but that was for high-class folk, what with their fammycoms.
I myself was an Amiga boy, I got my joystick from my pappy, who got his from his grandpappy, who had to fight them Injuns for his. The joystick was about 10 cubits high and weighed about 40 stone, and we had to wake EARLY in the morning to make the walk to the games shoppe if we wanted to be there before it closed... 15 leagues to be exact.
When you got to the store you'd stand in line, and ask the developer to compile you up some code, yessir! And he would sit down, and COBOL you up some fine bits, and this was before that newfangled removable storage... you was just told a bunch of 1s and 0s, and had to remember what order they came in on the way back home.
You'd come back, chop some trees, feed 'em into the old generator, and play your game in front of the stove fire. Oh, those were simple days, better days. Back when 8 whole bits was more than the King of England himself could afford.
Hmph, and you try and tell this to those punk kids today, and they say you're making it all up. Bunch of no-good whippersnappers.
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment).
However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status.
The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment).
However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status.
The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
... when Britney Spears appeared in those television ads telling me how wrong piracy was, and how it was stealing from artists like her.
I mean:
"We hit a little bit of reality, hardcore, after the first three weeks. But we handled it fine, and now things are starting to go really smooth. Before we got married we were on tour, and we were just like kids, ordering room service, saying, 'Let's go out tonight. Then, all of a sudden, you have this home, you have the kids [Federline's children Kaleb and Kori], you have to get the diapers, get the dog to the vet. It's this reality. Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks."
Poor girl... thank god the RIAA kept after the pirates who tried to rob her of her livelihood.
Seriously though, good to hear that online music is working, but it still sucks that 60% of that goes to RIAA liscensing levies.
Sony Computer Entertainment, even with the translation gaffes and communication errors, seems to be one of the cockiest and unapologetic companies in the gaming business. The PSP alone has already generated a myriad of problems, all of which are dealt with from indiffference to outright hostility towards their customers:
Dead Pixels - Initial response: These are natural, and if you have them after dropping $250 on your PSP, well too fucking bad. Live with it.
Broken "Square/Circle/X/Triangle" buttons on the pad: It's the consumer's fault for buying our system. In fact, we designed it this way on purpose. So there.
Universal Media Disc: It's Universal and Propietary at the same time! So you can use them and buy them from any company you want, as long as that company is Sony and you only use them on the PSP.
Yes, the PSP is beautiful. Yes, it's sleek and sexy. But honestly, I swear Sony made it for themselves, with customer satisfaction as a distant afterthought.
So here's the skinny: we'll give $4,500 to applicants who successfully work with a
sponsoring organization or advisor to create innovative or useful open source software.
We'll also get you a t-shirt to go along with the cash.
Holy hell... a t-shirt? I mean the cash, well I know Google has a ton of that, but where on earth are they finding these T-shirts to spare!? I hope they technology behind these Tees is open sourced, and machine washable. Think of how much further I could take my undergrad degree if I had a free t-shirt...
Star Wars is the ultimate franchise because even as a film it's an amlagam of marketable genres.
The original trilogy alone features:
Lightsaber duels (swordfighting and swashbuckling)
Interspace Battles (WWII aerial & naval movies)
The Force (mystical fantasy magic)
Ground battles and cantina gun fights (general war movies and Westerns)
Exotic Space Aliens (Star Trek)
Speeder Bikes (Car chase movies)
Ewoks (Kinda like Care Bears, I guess. Overly Cute Buggers)
And of course, hot brother-on-sister Luke and Leia action. (Incest XXX websites)
With all of that thrown together... in space... there's a little something for every geek. And market after market after market that you can sell games, toys, lunch boxes, books, clothing, artwork, women's delicates and more to.
I really wish one of those researchers would spend some time responding to this guy, the owner of a website called Evolution, a Fairytale for Grownups! A lot of the features mentioned in the article come up on his site, although argued against in an un-proffesional manner (for more adult discussion he also posts debates that he's won.
For all the evidence presented by popular media and through the education system, there seem to be a lot of people, including scientists, who can't accept evolutionary theory, and dismiss it as propaganda.
Considering the recent "Just a theory" textbook-sticker fiasco, there are a lot of big divides going on in America right now. Now, since this is Slashdot, the responses are going to be quite biased, but do you Americans find that a lot of friends, co-workers and family don't accept evolutionary theory?
This one is just nuts. Why on earth am I writing essays which are going to be marked automatically by a machine? It's bad enough that scantron cards have found their way into subjects where they're totally irrelevant (a multiple-choice test for a university level Shakespeare course?), this is just another reason why post-secondary education has become increasingly less complete.
If he's allowed to use a machine to save him the effort of reading an essay, I should be able to use a machine so I don't have to go through the effort of writing one. Trust me, as arduous as it is to read a 20 page essay on the relative merits of liquid rubber concrete compound fasteners, writing it takes a lot more effort, a lot more time, and it damn well deserves to be read by the professor who assigned it.
Seriously though, as long as they're able to avoid television commercial-like breaks in the gameplay, I have no problem with this. My biggest gripe with MMO gaming is having to a pay a monthly fee - so much so that I even gave Project Entropia a try (helpful hint: do not play Project Entropia). Since AO got some pretty good reviews, and since it's being offered for the low, low price of free, I'm certainly going to give this one a try.
Slashdot Mirror
If this data goes public I am going to email every single effected user on Plentyoffish your phone number, email address and picture. And tell them you hacked into their accounts.
Then i'm going to sue you In Canada, US and UK and argintina. I am going to completely destroy your life, no one is ever going to hire you for anything again, this isn't piratebay and we definately aren't fooling around.
Markus.
Tried Plenty of Fish for a shortwhile - as a default, the service will mail 'new matches' to the email account you registered with every few days. These emails contain a a plain-text version of your password (which essentially reads as "Remember, your password is :XXXX123").
It's not entirely surprising that the site had its security compromised.
http://www.spirov.com/albums/fun/stupida_mouse.jpg
People got killed because they stood up to a corrupt government, after being made aware of widespread electoral manipulation? And you hold this against Assange like it's a bad thing?
Halfway through yesterday my Skype stopped working, just like everybody else's.
It then tried to reconnect, and out of the blue gave me a pop-up saying "Skypenames2.exe wants to use Skype" with the options "Allow access" or "Deny access."
This naturally set off a few alarm bells, but as it turns out it isn't malware or a virus, just a poorly named Skype component. It allows you to click telephone links in IE or a Mozilla-based browser and make direct phone calls using Skype. Personally I don't want or need that kind of integration, so I declined.
Up until the 1820s, Fuck was apparently very much in vogue. Not until 1960s was this great word brought back into the lexicon of the common man.
This is the strangest read I've had in a while:
http://gamingisstupid.com/2009/05/06/the-chair-story-revival/
I was told to think about my next words very carefully before giving my final answer. Honestly, I felt this was a test to see how well I would hold up to pressure later when we had to "hold the lie" (the similarity to "hold the line" isn't on accident), so I held firm and said I really wanted to, but needed to have it reviewed...
oh fuck...
Faster than I can even remember (literally... I don't remember) I was knocked out of my chair by I *think* of all people Tim Sweeney (it was a wooden kitchen chair) and was pinned on the ground by Mike Wilson and Cliffy B (he's so much stronger than I ever expected). George walks over to my chair and fucking stomps the shit out of it until the legs are broken off. He casually picks up one of the legs that had split into a shit your pants style point and starts tossing it up and down. Scott and Mark Rein alternate on and off saying that I apparently wasn't aware how *real* business is done and that if I didn't want to find out why those two companies had maintained such a strong position in the industry dating back to the shareware days (when it seems people didn't ask nearly as many questions about why developers appeared, made a game, and then disappeared without a trace)... I had better reconsider my answer.
I do remember the next part very very well though... I will never forget it and I have to admit that I have dreams about it pretty frequently.
Cliffy and Mike pulled me up and shoved my face about 6 inches from the point of the chair leg. I was drenched in sweat (the trailers didn't have decent AC so it was already hot as hell in there)... and if they had let go of me I would not have been able to stand on my own.
George looked me in the eyes and asked me one more time what I was going to do... so at that point I did what anyone would do...
I mean, this guy actually did work at 3DRealms and this is his blog, but seriously, CliffyB and Marc Rein threatening developers with broken chairs? Tim Sweeny tackling people and holding them down for gang beatings?
He can only use the ring while chanting "DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS" however.
Is Linus or Steve the new Lex Luthor?
The GP poster (rude though he was) wasn't saying important, he was saying leading. You want the most qualified person possible doing the write-up on these things, so if it's a new field of research, there could very well be one person more qualified to write about things that only they have done so far. They shouldn't be excluded from contributing their knowledge just because they're the best at what they do.
"At 3:00 P.M. today, Curfman and two other editors released an editorial on The New England Journal's Web site entitled "Expression of Concern," which calls on the VIGOR authors to submit a correction of the 2000 manuscript. "Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data on adverse cardiovascular events in this article," it read. "
The editorial, however, is also strangely missing. In its place was a message: "Silly Scientists - morality is for kids! Love, Merck."
However, look at those same comic books: It's not just the physique of the women, the men are impossibly huge. They have muscles in places where ordinary people don't even have places. Most are taller than any man could ever be, but even the short ones are so muscular that they must be body builders. Heck, go to the men's underwear section of your local department store, and look at the models on the packaging - they're certainly not the "typical" sort of person wearing that brand of boxers.
And in games at least, that makes sense.
If you were playing a game called "Virtual Accountant" or perhaps "Home Maker Simulator" then yes, it's fine to have your player model have a pot belly, flabby thighs and skinny, stick-like arms. However, most video games have the player controlling a person who is constantly running, dodging, fighting, jumping... it makes sense, and indeed, even makes it more fun, if they're in shape.
Amazing - Forbes, which caters to the very rich, is shocked and appalled that suddenly people who aren't rich are getting heard. And these giant, billion dollar companies just can't seem to figure out who to crush, or how to lock them out of the media. Hopefully once the internet becomes even better equipped for creating many-to-many streams of information (blogs are taking on newspapers, podcasts are taking on radio... soon it might even be... television?), we'll at least get to a point where the select few have aclimatized to the fact that there oligopolies are gone.
Which is kind of an odd conflict of interest, seeing as Fox Interactive has a games division.
As soon as the big media companies start buying out gaming sites, and gaming developers (I'm looking at you, Rockstar) - do you think we're still going to see all this BS reporting on the news about how "dangerous" videogames are hurting America? I somehow think there's going to be a whole lot of back-scratching going on, with games based on Fox's IP licenses getting good reviews, and games produced by Fox getting positive attention in the media. And so the circle of shit is complete.
Why, back in my day when I was a youngster, many many years ago, I was given two shillings per month allowance for feeding the Gobblins, before they became turkeys - we had to change the name because of the War. You always had to wear an onion on your belt, as was the style at the time.
Our town had two video game shoppes on either end, Hanzel's Interactive Inn, and Paul's Pixel Purchasorium on the north end of town, but that was for high-class folk, what with their fammycoms.
I myself was an Amiga boy, I got my joystick from my pappy, who got his from his grandpappy, who had to fight them Injuns for his. The joystick was about 10 cubits high and weighed about 40 stone, and we had to wake EARLY in the morning to make the walk to the games shoppe if we wanted to be there before it closed... 15 leagues to be exact.
When you got to the store you'd stand in line, and ask the developer to compile you up some code, yessir! And he would sit down, and COBOL you up some fine bits, and this was before that newfangled removable storage... you was just told a bunch of 1s and 0s, and had to remember what order they came in on the way back home.
You'd come back, chop some trees, feed 'em into the old generator, and play your game in front of the stove fire. Oh, those were simple days, better days. Back when 8 whole bits was more than the King of England himself could afford.
Hmph, and you try and tell this to those punk kids today, and they say you're making it all up. Bunch of no-good whippersnappers.
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment).
However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status.
The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment). However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status. The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
... when Britney Spears appeared in those television ads telling me how wrong piracy was, and how it was stealing from artists like her.
I mean: "We hit a little bit of reality, hardcore, after the first three weeks. But we handled it fine, and now things are starting to go really smooth. Before we got married we were on tour, and we were just like kids, ordering room service, saying, 'Let's go out tonight. Then, all of a sudden, you have this home, you have the kids [Federline's children Kaleb and Kori], you have to get the diapers, get the dog to the vet. It's this reality. Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks."
Poor girl... thank god the RIAA kept after the pirates who tried to rob her of her livelihood.
Seriously though, good to hear that online music is working, but it still sucks that 60% of that goes to RIAA liscensing levies.
Sony Computer Entertainment, even with the translation gaffes and communication errors, seems to be one of the cockiest and unapologetic companies in the gaming business. The PSP alone has already generated a myriad of problems, all of which are dealt with from indiffference to outright hostility towards their customers:
Yes, the PSP is beautiful. Yes, it's sleek and sexy. But honestly, I swear Sony made it for themselves, with customer satisfaction as a distant afterthought.
Holy hell... a t-shirt? I mean the cash, well I know Google has a ton of that, but where on earth are they finding these T-shirts to spare!? I hope they technology behind these Tees is open sourced, and machine washable. Think of how much further I could take my undergrad degree if I had a free t-shirt...
Star Wars is the ultimate franchise because even as a film it's an amlagam of marketable genres.
The original trilogy alone features:With all of that thrown together... in space... there's a little something for every geek. And market after market after market that you can sell games, toys, lunch boxes, books, clothing, artwork, women's delicates and more to.
I really wish one of those researchers would spend some time responding to this guy, the owner of a website called Evolution, a Fairytale for Grownups! A lot of the features mentioned in the article come up on his site, although argued against in an un-proffesional manner (for more adult discussion he also posts debates that he's won.
For all the evidence presented by popular media and through the education system, there seem to be a lot of people, including scientists, who can't accept evolutionary theory, and dismiss it as propaganda.
Considering the recent "Just a theory" textbook-sticker fiasco, there are a lot of big divides going on in America right now. Now, since this is Slashdot, the responses are going to be quite biased, but do you Americans find that a lot of friends, co-workers and family don't accept evolutionary theory?
This one is just nuts. Why on earth am I writing essays which are going to be marked automatically by a machine? It's bad enough that scantron cards have found their way into subjects where they're totally irrelevant (a multiple-choice test for a university level Shakespeare course?), this is just another reason why post-secondary education has become increasingly less complete.
If he's allowed to use a machine to save him the effort of reading an essay, I should be able to use a machine so I don't have to go through the effort of writing one. Trust me, as arduous as it is to read a 20 page essay on the relative merits of liquid rubber concrete compound fasteners, writing it takes a lot more effort, a lot more time, and it damn well deserves to be read by the professor who assigned it.
I see the developers were reading up on their Penny Arcade.
Seriously though, as long as they're able to avoid television commercial-like breaks in the gameplay, I have no problem with this. My biggest gripe with MMO gaming is having to a pay a monthly fee - so much so that I even gave Project Entropia a try (helpful hint: do not play Project Entropia). Since AO got some pretty good reviews, and since it's being offered for the low, low price of free, I'm certainly going to give this one a try.
Sorry, keep forgetting... $300+ Canadian, $250 for most Americans