To save bandwidth, you could do an HTTP HEAD request and find out the length of the file (say 32514 bytes) then issue a GET request asking to resume from 32510, thus saving the advertisers. This would not only register as a completed image view or page view, but would save the advertisers bandwidth as well.
Re:It's only strange to the Slashdot crowd...
on
Given Up to Spyware?
·
· Score: 1
I work in a call centre for a natural gas utility, and you'd be amazed at the number of people who call in saying 'yeah, I've been smelling gas in my furnace room for a few weeks, so I thought I'd call, so just send someone out whenever'.
Or consider the number of people with a carbon monoxide detector that goes off at night, so they unplug it so they can sleep.
It's not just spyware, people put their lives on the line because they are stupid idiots that just don't think about the consequences of their actions. Spyware I could almost understand, but I sometimes feel like saying to these people 'How would you feel if you woke up this morning and your family was dead because you unplugged your detector? Next time, call us immediately.'
Perhaps the shock treatment will do some good. Next time you clear someone's PC from spyware that they just didn't care about, ask them what the limit is on their credit cards, and then ask them if they could afford it if they were all maxed out. If they were $50k (more) in debt at 29% interest, they would realize their folly.
Re:But for the Grace of Gabe... there go ye?
on
Given Up to Spyware?
·
· Score: 1
It reduces sofware piracy (online check and all)...
Without saying too much, let me assure you that this absolutely, positively is NOT the case. Trust me. In fact, my copy is a Steam rip, and while others were having trouble getting their copies working, I was flinging explosive barrels around with the best of them.
Here's a rule of thumb: if anything seems like it might reduce or even slow piracy, it doesn't.
Is this slideshow from expert mode? It seems to me that, while easier to use for the average linux guru, this installation doesn't seem the least bit regular-user friendly. Even having used Debian for years myself, I'd really rather not have to go through this installation, from what I've seen. I'd rather have it pick some sensible defaults, ask me some natural-language questions, and just go about its buisiness.
I have a few basic passwords I use for most services - from 'basic' to 'advanced' - and I change them all around occasionally.
The problem I have is websites with stupid restrictions - e.g. 'your password must be between 6-8 characters' (none of my passwords are), or 'your password must contain at least one capital letter and one number' (my 'secure-by-virtue-of-being-almost-never-used password does not), and so on.
Forcing people to change passwords every e.g. 60 days is also a terrible idea, because people will soon run out of easy-to-remember-yet-secure passwords and will just start incrementing numbers, as some of my coworkers do, which makes things trivial.
While this is certainly a neat feature of Gentoo, I found it more of a pain than it was worth. The benefits of Gentoo, I have to admit, are notable, but the fact that the install process is basically copying and pasting from the on-line manual to the command line, hoping you didn't miss a step along the way, is pretty sad. If it's just a basic 'run all these commands' installation, why couldn't it do it on its own? Download a file with the commands and just run them. The installation would have taken less than half of the time with this simple step.
I will admit, I downloaded the game off the internet. Here are a few things I noticed as a result:
1. The game itself runs amazingly well on my system - the recommended settings not only look better, but also play much smoother, than Halo PC on minimum detail at 640x480. I never would have purchased the game because of the assumption that my system would almost, but not quite, be able to handle it. Now I am thinking otherwise.
2. The physics engine is amazing. If this engine will run on my friends' PCs, and if Counterstrike: Source is as open an environment as Half-Life 2 is, then we will definitely all buy a license to it for use as our latest LAN game. I never would have considered this without playing it first.
3. The gameplay is very well done, except for the three hours I spent in that goddamn airboat thing. It's freaky.
4. Before playing the game, I was very doubtful, even after all the good things I'd heard. Now, I am raving about all the cool things to my friends, who DO want to buy the game. I've probably made a few sales already, and will likely add myself to the list.
Finally, here are my specs:
Dell Inspiron 5150 Laptop P4 2.8HT 512 MB / 60G 5200RPM HD Nvidia GeForce Go FX5200 64mb
As I said, this system will not run Halo smoothly (I blame Halo - everything else runs fine), but Half-Life 2 was not only smooth, but beautiful as well. I can't imagine what it would look like at full detail at 60fps. Because it is capable of this, I will likely buy a copy soon, if only to show my support for a game so well-coded.
So I hopped back to Slashdot after my break at work came around, hoping to enjoy some well-worded commentary from my favourite webcomic authors. I had already glanced at the first few questions, so I grabbed for my beverage and began reading.
I had managed to take a whole mouthful of apple juice when I got to the 'sawbots' comment, and as a result spent the next ten minutes in a coughing fit that I'm sure the majority of my (call-centre) coworkers appreciated to no end.
So for drawing undue attention to my breaktime reading, and for making those around me think I should be restricted to a sippy cup until I get the hang of this whole beverage thing, thanks! I appreciate it.:(
The issue I see is that these interfaces don't need to be 3D accelerated - because they're not 3D. Why couldn't 2D acceleration accomplish the same thing? Store the windows in memory as textures and move them around in hardware. This doesn't require 3D itself, it just requires hardware compositing and alpha-blending, hardware accelerated windowing, offscreen rendering, z-buffering, scaling & rotation, and so on.
That being said, 3D provides a lot more possibilities - you could make windows be actual objects that could be moved forward or backwards, stacked up, leaned against each other, and so on. Implement HAVOC physics so I can grab an icon and smash it into my other icons and watch them scatter all over my desktop, or throw it and watch it bounce off the edge of the screen and land in my network drive.
Eventually, all we'll need to do to solve the spyware problem is to use a wallhack and noclip and go bounce that crap to the curb. Sure, we'll have to endure the cries of spyware makers shouting 'lamer!' or 'wallhack' or 'aimbot', but we can just kick them off the network if it comes to that, or/ignore them.
The ESRB also, I just remembered, has their own method of dishing out fines as well, though in their case, it's to publishers who misuse the ESRB rating system. As a few examples:
If a publisher advertises a T, M, or AO game to another market - i.e. if they show GTA as composed mainly of crackers and sunshine, where you can drive around a lush city environment and interact with many diverse persons, as a wonderful learning experience for kids, it's a $10,000 fine every time. If it is shown they WILLFULLY do so (i.e. if they should have obviously known they were violating the rule), it's ANOTHER $10,000. That being said, this fine would encompass the entire marketing campaign, not every individual ad. Fair enough.
Less-major-but-major infractions include not displaying a rating icon, displaying a rating icon that has not been officially assigned, failing to disclose content ('thanks for the T rating, but I forgot to mention our game has graphic nudity') face corrective action on the first infraction within a 12-month period (starting on the date of the first infraction), then a $5000 fine, then a $10,000 fine.
So for anyone who is going to say 'yeah, but who says publishers are going to follow the ESRB guidelines?' or 'but what if they lie?' - penalties can be had. Eventually, they could face a situation where the ESRB refuses to rate their games.
Either way, if a game's packaging violated the ESRB guidelines (if it lied, was incorrect, or was missing the rating, for example), and judging from the other issues that arose at EB, I would imagine most retailers wouldn't display or sell the product until they got replacement product or packaging. It's big stuff.
The article mentions that the government put an 'R' rating on Manhunt. Why? The ESRB ratings, which every video game publisher adheres to, provide strict outlines on what content deserves what rating. It also defines not one, but TWO ratings that kids should not purchase - 'M - Mature (17+)' and 'AO - Adult Only (18+)'. Why not just require that any Mature- or Adult-rated games require ID?
Most major retailers (Wal-Mart and EB Games for example) have this policy in place (whether the slack-jawed register biscuits at Wal-Mart follow it or not I'm not sure) - I know when I worked at EB, that was one of the first things I was told - don't sell GTA to anyone under 18 unless a parent is there - and if the parent is there, make sure that they are aware what is in the game ('Is it really that bad?' 'Well, it's as bad as you want to be. If you want to follow traffic laws, then you can. If you want to pick up hookers, have sex to regain your health, and then beat them to death with a baseball bat, take your money back, and run over their corpse, you can do that too.').
Now, I'll agree that not all M-rated games are that closely watched - Halo 1 & 2 for example are mature, but aren't that shocking. Manhunt, GTA, etc., however, are watched pretty well. I'll admit, I've sold a few games to people under 18, usually after working 9 hours at my other job then coming to EB to work a 5 hour shift (or after waking up a half hour before my shift starts and coming to work asleep) - but the reality is, this is already pretty well enforced at any good EB. Just make it law that the retailers follow the ESRB warnings, put a sensible penalty for non-compliance (the same as letting a kid buy an R-Rated movie), and off you go.
The government requiring retailers to follow ratings: A+. The government re-rating games: D-. Hooray Ontario.
WOTC has a picture of the chimera as well, for those who are interested.
A few basic statistics:
The chimera have hit die of 9d10+27, which is quite formidable, considering your average scientist doesn't really have much CON or DEX and prefers to focus instead on INT and WIS. This creates dangerous situations when chimera are spooked. In addition, they have an AC of 19; in comparison, a scientist's base attack bonus, even at level 10, is still only +6/+1, and their class bonus to defence is only +4, so this can be very intimidating for the scientists working on such projects.
On top of all this, Chimera make use of a breath weapon (!!), have the Multiattack feat, have Darkvision and low-light vision, threaten a 10 foot radius, have 19 STR (granting a +4 bonus to damage), and can take a full attack round to Bite Bite Gore at +12, then claw claw at +10, and of course, are usually chaotic evil, which ruins anyone's day.
When you consider this information carefully, it explains the sudden increase in the hiring (and burying) of adventurers in the Washington area. If you see one of these, I hope you have a high AC (preferably high DEX and Uncanny Dodge) and a fast base speed (30 feet for humans is respectable). Good luck!
I picked up my collector's edition today (knowing the guys at EB pays off - I got a cancelled preorder). Now the debate becomes 'do I sell it or keep it?' - as much as I'd like to have it, it seems like I could make some good cash selling it off... I mean, it only cost me $90 or so for something very rare, but opportunity cost dictates that if I can sell it for $200, then keeping it costs me $200, and I don't think it's worth that much to me.
Sigh. The tragic life of a geek.
Still, judging from the absurd lag and inability for the servers to keep up, it gives a chance to find out - I don't want to try it now anyway, it'd be too much of a pain.
Weird... I bought my PC from Dell and it came with WinXP preinstalled as well... but I got a real Windows CD.
If you have your XP license key (should be on the side of your desktop or bottom of your laptop), then just burn a copy of someone else's Home or Pro CD (depending on which version the key is for). It's legal, because you have a license.
I suppose you could sell your character at IGE and then use that money to buy money in WoW to start yourself off with. I'm seriously considering selling my FF character - at current rates, I could clear a few hundred dollars US, which is more than I paid for the game and the subscription to date.
I hopped into the open beta a few days before they stopped taking applications and played my little heart out for near a week. I had a few days I couldn't play at all, but I had one day I played for 12 hours straight so it kind of balances out. Here's what really struck me about the game. I'm not going to mention what everyone else has already said (i.e. you can quest for xp), but I'll stick to what leapt out at me.
Technical The game was fairly smooth but somewhat choppy so I had the detail turned down for most of the test. Come to find out that I can turn the detail settings all the way up in every aspect except for draw distance and get remarkable framerates. My system is no slouch (P4/2.8HT, 512MB, GeForce Go FX5200), but it's still good to know.
I ran WoW in a window the entire time I played it. It was remarkably smooth, and tabbing in and out of the game never had a problem. Blizzard also thoughtfully coded the game so that when it is not focused, clicking in the window gives the window focus, but the click DOES NOT go to the UI. Thus, you won't try to click a Start Menu entry that disappears out from under you, resulting in you attacking a herd of 840 ravenous orcs just begging for a reason to stomp you like yesterday's grapes.
One feature that cannot be emphasized enough is the customizability of the UI using XML. The regular interface is surprisingly bland and you'll run out of clickbar space in your first ten levels (probably your first four if you're a mage). Instead, you can grab an alternate UI (I suggest Cosmos) which is simple to install (unzip the Interface directory to the Addons directory), then restart the game. This adds hordes (hehe) of customization options to the interface, as well as useful features you will wonder how people do without.
Gameplay You can jump. I know this doesn't really seem like much, but it's so fun. It feels like I'm playing Jak 2 or something, jumping through the treetops of Teldrassil like a Bawlz addict on E, marvelling at the amazing colours and visual textures. I myself took great pride in being able to leap from the top of the great tree Aldrassil to the ground, bounding from branch to rooftop on the way down, to land safe and healthy among the 'jumpers' (corpses of those that fell to their deaths). This serves no practical purpose, but it's a lot more fun than walking everywhere.
Getting around is easy, and you actually get experience for finding new-to-you places. It's not much, but it's free. You can travel by walking, you can fly by griffon, hippogryph, wyvern, or something else, you can have a mage teleport you if you ask really nicely, you can take an underground rail, a ship, or even a zeppelin. It's fun to explore, sneak around, find new monsters, and kill them.
You can have up to ten characters per server, and I think you can be on 5 different servers (don't quote me on this). Suffice to say, you'll have more characters than you'll need, unless you're some kind of sick weirdo (or you are actually unwell and spend a lot of time in bed).
The game is very social, but differently so than Final Fantasy XI, which is also very social. While FFXI is social by forcing grouping, WoW is social despite not forcing grouping. I only grouped once, and that because some guy thought I was a chick and I wanted to use him as bait to finish a quest. That being said, every area has various chat channels (i.e. Teldrassil General, Darnassus General, Darnassus Defence, etc) so you can talk to those around you who don't mind random chat, but if you don't like it, you can leave the channel (I guess). Thus, even though I am wandering around on my own, I can still chat with people around me, ask questions, answer them, ask if anyone wants to group for a quest, etc. I can pop in for 30 minutes, chat and kill, and leave. Easy.
PvP I have no idea. I guess you can kill other people. They say it's fun.
I was talking to my friends at the local EB Games on Thursday about the WoW collector's edition. While they did show it off to me (yes, they've had it in the stockroom for almost a week), they told me I wouldn't be getting one unless someone cancelled their preorder - the Collector's Edition has been sold out Canada-wide since (I believe) the 2nd of November.
Those of us who didn't hop on the bandwidth missed a big opportunity too - the collector's edition sells for $79.99 in Canada, while in the US it sells for... $79.99. Or $89. Or even $99. If I had known this situation would happen, I would have had twenty copies preordered and up for auction on eBay.
I still have hope however. Until all the WoW CE copies are picked up from my local EB Games outlets, I won't be buying WoW. The question is, should I keep it if I do get it? I could probably get a few hundred dollars for it on eBay, and that could pay for a few years of WoW... but I really do want the extras.
The people in the IT industry are the ones that are going to be cleaning up after the people who DO use IE. That's why it's important to be aware of these issues.
Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?
Why not use code that produces decent HTML, instead of something that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike HTML 3.2?
I don't think a fork to replace slashdot is necessarily the best method, because slashdot has too much in the way of readership and is too well-known. How about making a different site where people can post all the stupid shit they post here? Tech support questions, Ask Slashdot, book reviews, things like that? I like reading the discussions about this stuff, but it's not news, none of it. If slashdot were just news and all that other stuff went to another domain, then maybe it would filter it out better for those who don't want to see it.
Still, when I have 8 hours at work with no correspondance to do and a call every 2 hours, I'm glad for everything that gets posted, relevant or not.
In addition to all of the other reasons why this is stupid
Don't forget that if you build up a resistance to coke, you have to do more and more until it wrecks both your financial life and your physical self.
Compare with pornography, which is pretty much free if you know where to look, and you can only really take one hit every so often (depending on your age/health/virility) - and if you overdo it, the only physical detriment is callouses, which go away fairly fast.
I dunno, I don't think I'll be switching to cocaine any time soon.
The US historically has not 'paid for the lion's share of its operation'. They are supposed to, but they rarely did and never on time.
In fact, the UN Accounting department in 1998 held that the UN was suffering in terms of what it is able to do, in large part because a large number of members, most notably the US, do not pay their dues on time and in full. Since 1983, the US only paid in October, even though dues are due January 1st, and since 1986, it withheld part of those dues until certain conditions were met.
The report issued by Accounting 'also notes that of the countries in considerable arrears to the U.N., "according to a State Department official, only the United States has not paid its arrears because of policy reasons."'
What it comes down to is that the UN has been incapable of doing 'the lion's share of its operation' because of the US's inability or unwillingness to pay its dues when it is supposed to. In 1998, it was in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly because of its arrears. As of 1998, the US owed $1.8 billion in back dues.
Now, bear in mind the US has actually started to pay its dues, perhaps because of the possibility of losing its influence (though it is obvious now that they don't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks anyway), but I don't see that lasting. Abandon the world and the way the world works and see how pleasant it is to live without any friends. Unless things change with the way the US does buisiness, it's going to find itself alone when bad things start to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
To save bandwidth, you could do an HTTP HEAD request and find out the length of the file (say 32514 bytes) then issue a GET request asking to resume from 32510, thus saving the advertisers. This would not only register as a completed image view or page view, but would save the advertisers bandwidth as well.
I work in a call centre for a natural gas utility, and you'd be amazed at the number of people who call in saying 'yeah, I've been smelling gas in my furnace room for a few weeks, so I thought I'd call, so just send someone out whenever'.
Or consider the number of people with a carbon monoxide detector that goes off at night, so they unplug it so they can sleep.
It's not just spyware, people put their lives on the line because they are stupid idiots that just don't think about the consequences of their actions. Spyware I could almost understand, but I sometimes feel like saying to these people 'How would you feel if you woke up this morning and your family was dead because you unplugged your detector? Next time, call us immediately.'
Perhaps the shock treatment will do some good. Next time you clear someone's PC from spyware that they just didn't care about, ask them what the limit is on their credit cards, and then ask them if they could afford it if they were all maxed out. If they were $50k (more) in debt at 29% interest, they would realize their folly.
It reduces sofware piracy (online check and all)...
Without saying too much, let me assure you that this absolutely, positively is NOT the case. Trust me. In fact, my copy is a Steam rip, and while others were having trouble getting their copies working, I was flinging explosive barrels around with the best of them.
Here's a rule of thumb: if anything seems like it might reduce or even slow piracy, it doesn't.
Why not link to the news post so that people can actually read their review. kthx bye.
Is this slideshow from expert mode? It seems to me that, while easier to use for the average linux guru, this installation doesn't seem the least bit regular-user friendly. Even having used Debian for years myself, I'd really rather not have to go through this installation, from what I've seen. I'd rather have it pick some sensible defaults, ask me some natural-language questions, and just go about its buisiness.
Oh well. One day.
PLEASE people, mark these links with 'NSFW' so that I don't get canned when I click a seemingly innocuous link.
I have a few basic passwords I use for most services - from 'basic' to 'advanced' - and I change them all around occasionally.
The problem I have is websites with stupid restrictions - e.g. 'your password must be between 6-8 characters' (none of my passwords are), or 'your password must contain at least one capital letter and one number' (my 'secure-by-virtue-of-being-almost-never-used password does not), and so on.
Forcing people to change passwords every e.g. 60 days is also a terrible idea, because people will soon run out of easy-to-remember-yet-secure passwords and will just start incrementing numbers, as some of my coworkers do, which makes things trivial.
While this is certainly a neat feature of Gentoo, I found it more of a pain than it was worth. The benefits of Gentoo, I have to admit, are notable, but the fact that the install process is basically copying and pasting from the on-line manual to the command line, hoping you didn't miss a step along the way, is pretty sad. If it's just a basic 'run all these commands' installation, why couldn't it do it on its own? Download a file with the commands and just run them. The installation would have taken less than half of the time with this simple step.
I will admit, I downloaded the game off the internet. Here are a few things I noticed as a result:
1. The game itself runs amazingly well on my system - the recommended settings not only look better, but also play much smoother, than Halo PC on minimum detail at 640x480. I never would have purchased the game because of the assumption that my system would almost, but not quite, be able to handle it. Now I am thinking otherwise.
2. The physics engine is amazing. If this engine will run on my friends' PCs, and if Counterstrike: Source is as open an environment as Half-Life 2 is, then we will definitely all buy a license to it for use as our latest LAN game. I never would have considered this without playing it first.
3. The gameplay is very well done, except for the three hours I spent in that goddamn airboat thing. It's freaky.
4. Before playing the game, I was very doubtful, even after all the good things I'd heard. Now, I am raving about all the cool things to my friends, who DO want to buy the game. I've probably made a few sales already, and will likely add myself to the list.
Finally, here are my specs:
Dell Inspiron 5150 Laptop
P4 2.8HT
512 MB / 60G 5200RPM HD
Nvidia GeForce Go FX5200 64mb
As I said, this system will not run Halo smoothly (I blame Halo - everything else runs fine), but Half-Life 2 was not only smooth, but beautiful as well. I can't imagine what it would look like at full detail at 60fps. Because it is capable of this, I will likely buy a copy soon, if only to show my support for a game so well-coded.
So I hopped back to Slashdot after my break at work came around, hoping to enjoy some well-worded commentary from my favourite webcomic authors. I had already glanced at the first few questions, so I grabbed for my beverage and began reading.
:(
I had managed to take a whole mouthful of apple juice when I got to the 'sawbots' comment, and as a result spent the next ten minutes in a coughing fit that I'm sure the majority of my (call-centre) coworkers appreciated to no end.
So for drawing undue attention to my breaktime reading, and for making those around me think I should be restricted to a sippy cup until I get the hang of this whole beverage thing, thanks! I appreciate it.
The issue I see is that these interfaces don't need to be 3D accelerated - because they're not 3D. Why couldn't 2D acceleration accomplish the same thing? Store the windows in memory as textures and move them around in hardware. This doesn't require 3D itself, it just requires hardware compositing and alpha-blending, hardware accelerated windowing, offscreen rendering, z-buffering, scaling & rotation, and so on.
/ignore them.
That being said, 3D provides a lot more possibilities - you could make windows be actual objects that could be moved forward or backwards, stacked up, leaned against each other, and so on. Implement HAVOC physics so I can grab an icon and smash it into my other icons and watch them scatter all over my desktop, or throw it and watch it bounce off the edge of the screen and land in my network drive.
Eventually, all we'll need to do to solve the spyware problem is to use a wallhack and noclip and go bounce that crap to the curb. Sure, we'll have to endure the cries of spyware makers shouting 'lamer!' or 'wallhack' or 'aimbot', but we can just kick them off the network if it comes to that, or
The ESRB also, I just remembered, has their own method of dishing out fines as well, though in their case, it's to publishers who misuse the ESRB rating system. As a few examples:
If a publisher advertises a T, M, or AO game to another market - i.e. if they show GTA as composed mainly of crackers and sunshine, where you can drive around a lush city environment and interact with many diverse persons, as a wonderful learning experience for kids, it's a $10,000 fine every time. If it is shown they WILLFULLY do so (i.e. if they should have obviously known they were violating the rule), it's ANOTHER $10,000. That being said, this fine would encompass the entire marketing campaign, not every individual ad. Fair enough.
Less-major-but-major infractions include not displaying a rating icon, displaying a rating icon that has not been officially assigned, failing to disclose content ('thanks for the T rating, but I forgot to mention our game has graphic nudity') face corrective action on the first infraction within a 12-month period (starting on the date of the first infraction), then a $5000 fine, then a $10,000 fine.
So for anyone who is going to say 'yeah, but who says publishers are going to follow the ESRB guidelines?' or 'but what if they lie?' - penalties can be had. Eventually, they could face a situation where the ESRB refuses to rate their games.
Either way, if a game's packaging violated the ESRB guidelines (if it lied, was incorrect, or was missing the rating, for example), and judging from the other issues that arose at EB, I would imagine most retailers wouldn't display or sell the product until they got replacement product or packaging. It's big stuff.
The article mentions that the government put an 'R' rating on Manhunt. Why? The ESRB ratings, which every video game publisher adheres to, provide strict outlines on what content deserves what rating. It also defines not one, but TWO ratings that kids should not purchase - 'M - Mature (17+)' and 'AO - Adult Only (18+)'. Why not just require that any Mature- or Adult-rated games require ID?
Most major retailers (Wal-Mart and EB Games for example) have this policy in place (whether the slack-jawed register biscuits at Wal-Mart follow it or not I'm not sure) - I know when I worked at EB, that was one of the first things I was told - don't sell GTA to anyone under 18 unless a parent is there - and if the parent is there, make sure that they are aware what is in the game ('Is it really that bad?' 'Well, it's as bad as you want to be. If you want to follow traffic laws, then you can. If you want to pick up hookers, have sex to regain your health, and then beat them to death with a baseball bat, take your money back, and run over their corpse, you can do that too.').
Now, I'll agree that not all M-rated games are that closely watched - Halo 1 & 2 for example are mature, but aren't that shocking. Manhunt, GTA, etc., however, are watched pretty well. I'll admit, I've sold a few games to people under 18, usually after working 9 hours at my other job then coming to EB to work a 5 hour shift (or after waking up a half hour before my shift starts and coming to work asleep) - but the reality is, this is already pretty well enforced at any good EB. Just make it law that the retailers follow the ESRB warnings, put a sensible penalty for non-compliance (the same as letting a kid buy an R-Rated movie), and off you go.
The government requiring retailers to follow ratings: A+. The government re-rating games: D-. Hooray Ontario.
WOTC has a picture of the chimera as well, for those who are interested.
A few basic statistics:
The chimera have hit die of 9d10+27, which is quite formidable, considering your average scientist doesn't really have much CON or DEX and prefers to focus instead on INT and WIS. This creates dangerous situations when chimera are spooked. In addition, they have an AC of 19; in comparison, a scientist's base attack bonus, even at level 10, is still only +6/+1, and their class bonus to defence is only +4, so this can be very intimidating for the scientists working on such projects.
On top of all this, Chimera make use of a breath weapon (!!), have the Multiattack feat, have Darkvision and low-light vision, threaten a 10 foot radius, have 19 STR (granting a +4 bonus to damage), and can take a full attack round to Bite Bite Gore at +12, then claw claw at +10, and of course, are usually chaotic evil, which ruins anyone's day.
When you consider this information carefully, it explains the sudden increase in the hiring (and burying) of adventurers in the Washington area. If you see one of these, I hope you have a high AC (preferably high DEX and Uncanny Dodge) and a fast base speed (30 feet for humans is respectable). Good luck!
I picked up my collector's edition today (knowing the guys at EB pays off - I got a cancelled preorder). Now the debate becomes 'do I sell it or keep it?' - as much as I'd like to have it, it seems like I could make some good cash selling it off... I mean, it only cost me $90 or so for something very rare, but opportunity cost dictates that if I can sell it for $200, then keeping it costs me $200, and I don't think it's worth that much to me.
Sigh. The tragic life of a geek.
Still, judging from the absurd lag and inability for the servers to keep up, it gives a chance to find out - I don't want to try it now anyway, it'd be too much of a pain.
Weird... I bought my PC from Dell and it came with WinXP preinstalled as well... but I got a real Windows CD.
If you have your XP license key (should be on the side of your desktop or bottom of your laptop), then just burn a copy of someone else's Home or Pro CD (depending on which version the key is for). It's legal, because you have a license.
I suppose you could sell your character at IGE and then use that money to buy money in WoW to start yourself off with. I'm seriously considering selling my FF character - at current rates, I could clear a few hundred dollars US, which is more than I paid for the game and the subscription to date.
I hopped into the open beta a few days before they stopped taking applications and played my little heart out for near a week. I had a few days I couldn't play at all, but I had one day I played for 12 hours straight so it kind of balances out. Here's what really struck me about the game. I'm not going to mention what everyone else has already said (i.e. you can quest for xp), but I'll stick to what leapt out at me.
Technical
The game was fairly smooth but somewhat choppy so I had the detail turned down for most of the test. Come to find out that I can turn the detail settings all the way up in every aspect except for draw distance and get remarkable framerates. My system is no slouch (P4/2.8HT, 512MB, GeForce Go FX5200), but it's still good to know.
I ran WoW in a window the entire time I played it. It was remarkably smooth, and tabbing in and out of the game never had a problem. Blizzard also thoughtfully coded the game so that when it is not focused, clicking in the window gives the window focus, but the click DOES NOT go to the UI. Thus, you won't try to click a Start Menu entry that disappears out from under you, resulting in you attacking a herd of 840 ravenous orcs just begging for a reason to stomp you like yesterday's grapes.
One feature that cannot be emphasized enough is the customizability of the UI using XML. The regular interface is surprisingly bland and you'll run out of clickbar space in your first ten levels (probably your first four if you're a mage). Instead, you can grab an alternate UI (I suggest Cosmos) which is simple to install (unzip the Interface directory to the Addons directory), then restart the game. This adds hordes (hehe) of customization options to the interface, as well as useful features you will wonder how people do without.
Gameplay
You can jump. I know this doesn't really seem like much, but it's so fun. It feels like I'm playing Jak 2 or something, jumping through the treetops of Teldrassil like a Bawlz addict on E, marvelling at the amazing colours and visual textures. I myself took great pride in being able to leap from the top of the great tree Aldrassil to the ground, bounding from branch to rooftop on the way down, to land safe and healthy among the 'jumpers' (corpses of those that fell to their deaths). This serves no practical purpose, but it's a lot more fun than walking everywhere.
Getting around is easy, and you actually get experience for finding new-to-you places. It's not much, but it's free. You can travel by walking, you can fly by griffon, hippogryph, wyvern, or something else, you can have a mage teleport you if you ask really nicely, you can take an underground rail, a ship, or even a zeppelin. It's fun to explore, sneak around, find new monsters, and kill them.
You can have up to ten characters per server, and I think you can be on 5 different servers (don't quote me on this). Suffice to say, you'll have more characters than you'll need, unless you're some kind of sick weirdo (or you are actually unwell and spend a lot of time in bed).
The game is very social, but differently so than Final Fantasy XI, which is also very social. While FFXI is social by forcing grouping, WoW is social despite not forcing grouping. I only grouped once, and that because some guy thought I was a chick and I wanted to use him as bait to finish a quest. That being said, every area has various chat channels (i.e. Teldrassil General, Darnassus General, Darnassus Defence, etc) so you can talk to those around you who don't mind random chat, but if you don't like it, you can leave the channel (I guess). Thus, even though I am wandering around on my own, I can still chat with people around me, ask questions, answer them, ask if anyone wants to group for a quest, etc. I can pop in for 30 minutes, chat and kill, and leave. Easy.
PvP
I have no idea. I guess you can kill other people. They say it's fun.
Classes
The classes are varied, and t
I was talking to my friends at the local EB Games on Thursday about the WoW collector's edition. While they did show it off to me (yes, they've had it in the stockroom for almost a week), they told me I wouldn't be getting one unless someone cancelled their preorder - the Collector's Edition has been sold out Canada-wide since (I believe) the 2nd of November.
Those of us who didn't hop on the bandwidth missed a big opportunity too - the collector's edition sells for $79.99 in Canada, while in the US it sells for... $79.99. Or $89. Or even $99. If I had known this situation would happen, I would have had twenty copies preordered and up for auction on eBay.
I still have hope however. Until all the WoW CE copies are picked up from my local EB Games outlets, I won't be buying WoW. The question is, should I keep it if I do get it? I could probably get a few hundred dollars for it on eBay, and that could pay for a few years of WoW... but I really do want the extras.
Le sigh. Maybe I'll get lucky and buy two.
The people in the IT industry are the ones that are going to be cleaning up after the people who DO use IE. That's why it's important to be aware of these issues.
Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?
Why not use code that produces decent HTML, instead of something that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike HTML 3.2?
I don't think a fork to replace slashdot is necessarily the best method, because slashdot has too much in the way of readership and is too well-known. How about making a different site where people can post all the stupid shit they post here? Tech support questions, Ask Slashdot, book reviews, things like that? I like reading the discussions about this stuff, but it's not news, none of it. If slashdot were just news and all that other stuff went to another domain, then maybe it would filter it out better for those who don't want to see it.
Still, when I have 8 hours at work with no correspondance to do and a call every 2 hours, I'm glad for everything that gets posted, relevant or not.
I usually get flamed for this, but I just do NOT do family tech support any more.
Penny Arcade said it best.
obligatory spamusement link.
Oh, and for those who don't know, spamusement is 'poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines'. Go see.
In addition to all of the other reasons why this is stupid
Don't forget that if you build up a resistance to coke, you have to do more and more until it wrecks both your financial life and your physical self.
Compare with pornography, which is pretty much free if you know where to look, and you can only really take one hit every so often (depending on your age/health/virility) - and if you overdo it, the only physical detriment is callouses, which go away fairly fast.
I dunno, I don't think I'll be switching to cocaine any time soon.
The US historically has not 'paid for the lion's share of its operation'. They are supposed to, but they rarely did and never on time.
In fact, the UN Accounting department in 1998 held that the UN was suffering in terms of what it is able to do, in large part because a large number of members, most notably the US, do not pay their dues on time and in full. Since 1983, the US only paid in October, even though dues are due January 1st, and since 1986, it withheld part of those dues until certain conditions were met.
The report issued by Accounting 'also notes that of the countries in considerable arrears to the U.N., "according to a State Department official, only the United States has not paid its arrears because of policy reasons."'
What it comes down to is that the UN has been incapable of doing 'the lion's share of its operation' because of the US's inability or unwillingness to pay its dues when it is supposed to. In 1998, it was in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly because of its arrears. As of 1998, the US owed $1.8 billion in back dues.
Now, bear in mind the US has actually started to pay its dues, perhaps because of the possibility of losing its influence (though it is obvious now that they don't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks anyway), but I don't see that lasting. Abandon the world and the way the world works and see how pleasant it is to live without any friends. Unless things change with the way the US does buisiness, it's going to find itself alone when bad things start to happen.