All it is is an additional (and completely useless) distraction when you don't need to have additional distractions. No matter how good a driver you reckon you are, distractions will have some effect on you. It may only be a small increase of the probability of having an accident, but it is an increase nevertheless, and with no good excuse for it.
To be honest I hope IBM counter-sues and sues Microsoft for being a party to this lawsuit by their blatant money-injection. That must be illegal in some way.
Additionally, I must repeat what has been said before.. "I won't at all feel sorry for SCO when they get completely trashed in court." Also I think this whole case shows how desperate Microsoft has really become to try to spread FUD about linux, to resort to such crude and ineffective methods.
The worst in europe is the way some networks message you to let you know that you're going through one network or another (as they all interoperate). So you're driving on the highway at 120+km/h, and you suddenly get your phone beeping to let you know... that you're welcome to SFR/Orange/Vodafone/etc. They should be sued because that is probably a cause for accidents.
This is not promoting any of the systems you mentioned. It's promoting a nameless system where the rich rob poor people blind, so that they get richer while the poor get poorer. That's what capitalism tends towards when it goes unchecked, and the same is true for natural evolution which it was derived from. Fortunately (?) in evolution we have major catastrophes that get rid of... erm... 'monopolies', periodically. No dinosaurs like the record companies can survive a good meteorite.
I was more talking about each application server (which works on several machines/OS'es) being identical on all of them, and the code running fine. So if you ported from BEA on Linux to BEA on windows and then to BEA on Unix, you wouldn't have to do anything to make it work. Of course, trying to switch the actual app server soft is a bit more of an endeavour...
I disagree 100%. What's very important is to make absolutely certain that a player who's careful and quick enough can avoid being pk'ed - that there are no ways that you can be pk'ed without any warning. Ie, give every player a fair chance of getting out of it alive no matter how good the pk'er is.
However, making the pk onerous is a requirement for there to be pk's at all! For instance, in Diablo 2 (not hardcore mode though) there is no pkilling. It's all a joke, because you don't lose anything except a little bit of xp and some gold, so no one really cares about being pk'ed. On this mud I used to play, though, where you lost everything you were carrying, not to mention 1/3 of a level of xp (and there were only 30 levels overall, so that was a lot), and with the possiblity of losing stats points if you lost a level, dying *really* mattered. That gave you a very good motivation to:
1) Form groups of trusted players that you knew weren't going to pk you.
2) Be very aware of what other groups/clans/lone assholes were known to pk randomly so that you could get away quickly if you met them.
3) Never leave your character sitting on his ass in the wilderness - only do that in 'safe rooms' like the inn and the guilds and such, cause otherwise even a clueless newbie could kill you.
4) Always carry the essential stuff to get away from anywhere quick (ie several scrolls of recall, and wear a lucky charm to prevent other people from summoning you).
These all made the game much more fun, because there was an element of risk. I never saw a single person complain that this mud was not balanced pk-wise, though at some points in the faraway past (before I started playing it) it had some unbalances such as a clan taking over the fountain of a major city and charging coins to allow people to fill their waterskins, on penalty of death. Even that was referred to by all with some fondness though.
Even when I got pk'ed, I could always point the finger to one point where I panicked and didn't do the right thing or didn't know the right thing, and fucked up. I had the means to avoid pk. That's how it should be balanced.
He's probably got more interesting stuff to do these days. Can't blame him for not investing 5 hours a day playing utterly pointless (if fun) computer games...
Actually, the J2EE platform is extremely portable. We're talking about websites that can be moved from a windows i386 server to a unix mainframe without a glitch. Obviously "ANY" OS/Hardware combo is exaggerated, but there is a wide range of supported hardware and the web application servers are rigorously identical on all those machines and OSes. The only difference there might be is in threading specifics, but so long as you designed with that in mind it shouldn't be a problem.
JBuilder has support for Struts. 8 even has rudimentary support for 1.1. 9 has full support as far as I'm aware. Eclipse can also use plugins to have that support, but I haven't used them personally. I don't see what there is to complain about in J2EE development environments...
I started using a keyboard when I was 8-ish, and am now 23, and the only times when I ever have a problem with keyboards is if I'm playing an fps game and I haven't set up the keys properly and have to twist my hand to press several keys at the same time. Otherwise, I use computers all day long and never get any wrist problems.
I never said I was representative. What I'm implying is that the "bad" people who need to be controlled are not "the people who use maphack", but "the people who use other cheat programs". So banning people who use maphack is stupid.
When will you get it through your thick little skull that I don't use duped items or shit like that? Do you have enough grey matter inside that skull to understand that there can be maphack users that don't fit into your personal definition of what maphack users should look and act like?
And where have you seen Diablo 2 Competitions with cash prizes? Or people whose job it is to play Diablo 2?
The point of Diablo 2 is enjoyment by playing the game. Do you get mad at backyard body-builders who use steroids? The only thing to be mad at there is that the stupid buggers are destroying their bodies in the process. In the case of maphack, there's no permanent damage that I'm aware of:-)
The problem is that SCO's allegations are damaging to Linux's public image, and SCO has nothing to lose (they've already forfeited their reputation). It's kind of like a swan song for them, except it's a very fucking nasty and twisted song in this case, and someone should get a stick and kill the swan already with a good blow to the head.
I don't like rushing either except under certain circumstances. Unless I'm making a character for a very specific purpose (for instance right now I'm making a nova-sorc for the specffic purpose of rushing other people because my other sorc just doesn't cut it), I try to at least play through the normal difficulty without rushing, because that's what's fun about diablo 2. So far, out of 4 characters in this latest round of diablo-2 playing (having lost the account I used a few months ago, as I can't remember the account name:-P), I got the first character, a sorc, rushed, because I wanted to acquire some decent equipment to be able to enjoy the game. Then I went through normal and the beginning of nightmare normally with my javazon, and then got myself rushed to hell cows cause I couldn't be arsed anymore. The other two chars are the (atm) lvl 6 nova-sorc who still needs to be rushed through hell, and a druid who will go through all the levels normally, as he has all the equipment he needs.
I definitely see what you mean about rushing - it spoils the game. Sometimes, though, you want to take a shortcut for a specific purpose. I don't see why that's a problem to anyone else though.
What a lot of drivel. Maphack's primary use is inventory-sniffing, that's why people get so attached to it. Rare are the BNet players who bother venturing into areas such as the Spider Forests where one actually NEEDS a map after they've gotten to the other side of them. The vast majority of players simply hang around open areas like Act 5 or do boss runs, and the only reason they use Maphack is so they can immediately quit if anyone with hacked / super equipment hostiles them.
While I can't argue about inventory-sniffing, which is a feature I don't use and I wish they left out of maphack, I think you need to broaden your perspective a bit. I'm not talking about going *back* to areas which are hard to find your way around, but about going there in the first place. I've gone there zillions of times in the past before I had maphack, with all the characters I've had back then, and now I don't want to do that anymore because I don't find it fun. At all.
Anyway, how the fuck would you know what people use maphack for when you've already admitted to never having used it? Sounds like a load of hot air to me.
Mate, I saw every chunk of each tileset when Diablo 2 came out and I played it plenty for several months first in single and then in multi-player, until I had seen so much of each tileset that I could still see it when I blinked. I've probably seen more of each tileset than you have.
As for ebay, I don't sell shit and, like you, I think people who do (and especially people who buy diablo 2 equipment on ebay) are cunts (the sellers) and idiots (the buyers). I have 4 characters in one account, and none of them is a mule. I never pkill, I just don't find it fun or even challenging, after having played MUDs where pkilling was far more thrilling than "oh, I have to find another game to do a bloody foothills run now cause this spoilsport came to kill us, what a bastard". It was more like "shit, I got killed, I lost a lot of hard-gained xp, and if I lost a level I probably lost a constitution point as well, and maybe other stats, not to mention all my (truly rare and hard to find, because limited in overall number) equipment". That was thrilling, especially since there was no warning whatsoever - but even then I only did it very sparingly. Pkilling on diablo 2 is for lamers - except maybe in Hardcore, but as I don't play hardcore I wouldn't know.
I play in the spirit of the game when I feel like it. My javazon went through normal and part of nightmare with no help from higher level (except for A3, which is just a pain in the ass, let's be honest). After that I got someone to help me through nightmare and hell, and now I'm enjoying lightning-furying cows in the cow level. Why is that a problem to you?
Finally, good item drops are not that rare, so long as you have enough magic-find equipment on. I only have a 4-topaz armour on my ama and I find about one unique item every two or three cow levels.
And I use maphack. Boohoo. Let me use maphack and don't use it if you don't want to. Who are you to dictate the way I should enjoy my games?
It's not very hard to go into a game and ask someone to get you the waypoints you need. Hell, in rushes you go through the entire game, in all three difficulty modes, without getting a single waypoint.
See, you and me have a completely different way of playing the game. I used to do the same as you, but then I got bored of it. Now I got a bit quicker, skipping the parts which I know I don't like to spend more of my precious time on the parts which I know I like. I obviously am not hurting you since you weren't even aware of how I could do what I do. So what harm am I to you?
Not really hype. XML is extremely useful to exchange information between programs (eg on networks) without having to reinvent the wheel all the time. Personally, that's what I use it for. The fact that you can use it for config files and such is just a nice bonus.
As for editing XML, I find that most of the time I'm manipulating XML programmatically, using JDOM, or using other libraries that manipulate XML themselves - I have yet to need to do serious hand-editing in XML. And even for that, I would think vi or jEdit are perfectly adequate tools.
1) Maphack has nothing to do with PKing (not in my experience anyway), everything to do with getting maps (duh).
2) No one is forcing you to play until lvl 99. Some people enjoy it. What kind of spoilsport are you to tell them they're wrong? Are they harming you? No.
If Blizzard goes after cheats who use tradehacks and other evil things to rob people blind of their hard-earned equipment, GOOD. These people get their enjoyment out of hurting other people.
If Blizzard goes after people who use D2hackit to make bots that gather equipment 24/7 and thus wreck the economy of scarcity, sort of ok. These people don't hurt others directly but they decrease the fun of finding great equipment because there's just no way you can compete with them.
If Blizzard goes after people who have moved on from being all excited about discovering a map, not OK. These people aren't hurting anyone, in any way. They don't force anyone else to do like them. They don't rob people of their fun. They just go through the acts a bit quicker than the rest.
And believe me, they are at least 1/2 of all players. You may not know it, because you're probably still stuck in normal or nightmare difficulty, but there's large numbers of people who play with maphack and thoroughly enjoy it. About 4/5ths of all Hell difficulty games are cow runs - and all those who do cow runs are power players, who will definitely be using maphack.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been steadily increasing for the past few months, didn't you notice?
Daniel
All it is is an additional (and completely useless) distraction when you don't need to have additional distractions. No matter how good a driver you reckon you are, distractions will have some effect on you. It may only be a small increase of the probability of having an accident, but it is an increase nevertheless, and with no good excuse for it.
Daniel
All it takes is for one honest man to step forward...
:-P
And where would you find that rare item? Working for Microsoft? Yeah right
Daniel
To be honest I hope IBM counter-sues and sues Microsoft for being a party to this lawsuit by their blatant money-injection. That must be illegal in some way.
Additionally, I must repeat what has been said before.. "I won't at all feel sorry for SCO when they get completely trashed in court." Also I think this whole case shows how desperate Microsoft has really become to try to spread FUD about linux, to resort to such crude and ineffective methods.
Daniel
The worst in europe is the way some networks message you to let you know that you're going through one network or another (as they all interoperate). So you're driving on the highway at 120+km/h, and you suddenly get your phone beeping to let you know... that you're welcome to SFR/Orange/Vodafone/etc. They should be sued because that is probably a cause for accidents.
Daniel
Why did this get modded down? +1 funny I say :-P
Daniel
This is not promoting any of the systems you mentioned. It's promoting a nameless system where the rich rob poor people blind, so that they get richer while the poor get poorer. That's what capitalism tends towards when it goes unchecked, and the same is true for natural evolution which it was derived from. Fortunately (?) in evolution we have major catastrophes that get rid of ... erm... 'monopolies', periodically. No dinosaurs like the record companies can survive a good meteorite.
Daniel
I was more talking about each application server (which works on several machines/OS'es) being identical on all of them, and the code running fine. So if you ported from BEA on Linux to BEA on windows and then to BEA on Unix, you wouldn't have to do anything to make it work. Of course, trying to switch the actual app server soft is a bit more of an endeavour...
Daniel
I disagree 100%. What's very important is to make absolutely certain that a player who's careful and quick enough can avoid being pk'ed - that there are no ways that you can be pk'ed without any warning. Ie, give every player a fair chance of getting out of it alive no matter how good the pk'er is.
However, making the pk onerous is a requirement for there to be pk's at all! For instance, in Diablo 2 (not hardcore mode though) there is no pkilling. It's all a joke, because you don't lose anything except a little bit of xp and some gold, so no one really cares about being pk'ed. On this mud I used to play, though, where you lost everything you were carrying, not to mention 1/3 of a level of xp (and there were only 30 levels overall, so that was a lot), and with the possiblity of losing stats points if you lost a level, dying *really* mattered. That gave you a very good motivation to:
1) Form groups of trusted players that you knew weren't going to pk you.
2) Be very aware of what other groups/clans/lone assholes were known to pk randomly so that you could get away quickly if you met them.
3) Never leave your character sitting on his ass in the wilderness - only do that in 'safe rooms' like the inn and the guilds and such, cause otherwise even a clueless newbie could kill you.
4) Always carry the essential stuff to get away from anywhere quick (ie several scrolls of recall, and wear a lucky charm to prevent other people from summoning you).
These all made the game much more fun, because there was an element of risk. I never saw a single person complain that this mud was not balanced pk-wise, though at some points in the faraway past (before I started playing it) it had some unbalances such as a clan taking over the fountain of a major city and charging coins to allow people to fill their waterskins, on penalty of death. Even that was referred to by all with some fondness though.
Even when I got pk'ed, I could always point the finger to one point where I panicked and didn't do the right thing or didn't know the right thing, and fucked up. I had the means to avoid pk. That's how it should be balanced.
Daniel
He's probably got more interesting stuff to do these days. Can't blame him for not investing 5 hours a day playing utterly pointless (if fun) computer games...
Daniel
Actually, the J2EE platform is extremely portable. We're talking about websites that can be moved from a windows i386 server to a unix mainframe without a glitch. Obviously "ANY" OS/Hardware combo is exaggerated, but there is a wide range of supported hardware and the web application servers are rigorously identical on all those machines and OSes. The only difference there might be is in threading specifics, but so long as you designed with that in mind it shouldn't be a problem.
Daniel
JBuilder has support for Struts. 8 even has rudimentary support for 1.1. 9 has full support as far as I'm aware. Eclipse can also use plugins to have that support, but I haven't used them personally. I don't see what there is to complain about in J2EE development environments...
Daniel
I started using a keyboard when I was 8-ish, and am now 23, and the only times when I ever have a problem with keyboards is if I'm playing an fps game and I haven't set up the keys properly and have to twist my hand to press several keys at the same time. Otherwise, I use computers all day long and never get any wrist problems.
Daniel
Oh, I believe those who use other hacks as well as maphack will likely stop playing too if maphack gets removed.
Daniel
I never said I was representative. What I'm implying is that the "bad" people who need to be controlled are not "the people who use maphack", but "the people who use other cheat programs". So banning people who use maphack is stupid.
Daniel
When will you get it through your thick little skull that I don't use duped items or shit like that? Do you have enough grey matter inside that skull to understand that there can be maphack users that don't fit into your personal definition of what maphack users should look and act like?
Grow some brains, dude.
Daniel
And where have you seen Diablo 2 Competitions with cash prizes? Or people whose job it is to play Diablo 2?
:-)
The point of Diablo 2 is enjoyment by playing the game. Do you get mad at backyard body-builders who use steroids? The only thing to be mad at there is that the stupid buggers are destroying their bodies in the process. In the case of maphack, there's no permanent damage that I'm aware of
Daniel
The problem is that SCO's allegations are damaging to Linux's public image, and SCO has nothing to lose (they've already forfeited their reputation). It's kind of like a swan song for them, except it's a very fucking nasty and twisted song in this case, and someone should get a stick and kill the swan already with a good blow to the head.
Daniel
I don't like rushing either except under certain circumstances. Unless I'm making a character for a very specific purpose (for instance right now I'm making a nova-sorc for the specffic purpose of rushing other people because my other sorc just doesn't cut it), I try to at least play through the normal difficulty without rushing, because that's what's fun about diablo 2. So far, out of 4 characters in this latest round of diablo-2 playing (having lost the account I used a few months ago, as I can't remember the account name :-P), I got the first character, a sorc, rushed, because I wanted to acquire some decent equipment to be able to enjoy the game. Then I went through normal and the beginning of nightmare normally with my javazon, and then got myself rushed to hell cows cause I couldn't be arsed anymore. The other two chars are the (atm) lvl 6 nova-sorc who still needs to be rushed through hell, and a druid who will go through all the levels normally, as he has all the equipment he needs.
I definitely see what you mean about rushing - it spoils the game. Sometimes, though, you want to take a shortcut for a specific purpose. I don't see why that's a problem to anyone else though.
Daniel
What a lot of drivel. Maphack's primary use is inventory-sniffing, that's why people get so attached to it. Rare are the BNet players who bother venturing into areas such as the Spider Forests where one actually NEEDS a map after they've gotten to the other side of them. The vast majority of players simply hang around open areas like Act 5 or do boss runs, and the only reason they use Maphack is so they can immediately quit if anyone with hacked / super equipment hostiles them.
While I can't argue about inventory-sniffing, which is a feature I don't use and I wish they left out of maphack, I think you need to broaden your perspective a bit. I'm not talking about going *back* to areas which are hard to find your way around, but about going there in the first place. I've gone there zillions of times in the past before I had maphack, with all the characters I've had back then, and now I don't want to do that anymore because I don't find it fun. At all.
Anyway, how the fuck would you know what people use maphack for when you've already admitted to never having used it? Sounds like a load of hot air to me.
Daniel
Mate, I saw every chunk of each tileset when Diablo 2 came out and I played it plenty for several months first in single and then in multi-player, until I had seen so much of each tileset that I could still see it when I blinked. I've probably seen more of each tileset than you have.
As for ebay, I don't sell shit and, like you, I think people who do (and especially people who buy diablo 2 equipment on ebay) are cunts (the sellers) and idiots (the buyers). I have 4 characters in one account, and none of them is a mule. I never pkill, I just don't find it fun or even challenging, after having played MUDs where pkilling was far more thrilling than "oh, I have to find another game to do a bloody foothills run now cause this spoilsport came to kill us, what a bastard". It was more like "shit, I got killed, I lost a lot of hard-gained xp, and if I lost a level I probably lost a constitution point as well, and maybe other stats, not to mention all my (truly rare and hard to find, because limited in overall number) equipment". That was thrilling, especially since there was no warning whatsoever - but even then I only did it very sparingly. Pkilling on diablo 2 is for lamers - except maybe in Hardcore, but as I don't play hardcore I wouldn't know.
I play in the spirit of the game when I feel like it. My javazon went through normal and part of nightmare with no help from higher level (except for A3, which is just a pain in the ass, let's be honest). After that I got someone to help me through nightmare and hell, and now I'm enjoying lightning-furying cows in the cow level. Why is that a problem to you?
Finally, good item drops are not that rare, so long as you have enough magic-find equipment on. I only have a 4-topaz armour on my ama and I find about one unique item every two or three cow levels.
And I use maphack. Boohoo. Let me use maphack and don't use it if you don't want to. Who are you to dictate the way I should enjoy my games?
Daniel
Nah, I've seen the distraction thing in a number of online articles, so I'm afraid I can't take the credit for it.
Daniel
It's not very hard to go into a game and ask someone to get you the waypoints you need. Hell, in rushes you go through the entire game, in all three difficulty modes, without getting a single waypoint.
See, you and me have a completely different way of playing the game. I used to do the same as you, but then I got bored of it. Now I got a bit quicker, skipping the parts which I know I don't like to spend more of my precious time on the parts which I know I like. I obviously am not hurting you since you weren't even aware of how I could do what I do. So what harm am I to you?
Daniel
Not really hype. XML is extremely useful to exchange information between programs (eg on networks) without having to reinvent the wheel all the time. Personally, that's what I use it for. The fact that you can use it for config files and such is just a nice bonus.
As for editing XML, I find that most of the time I'm manipulating XML programmatically, using JDOM, or using other libraries that manipulate XML themselves - I have yet to need to do serious hand-editing in XML. And even for that, I would think vi or jEdit are perfectly adequate tools.
Daniel
1) Maphack has nothing to do with PKing (not in my experience anyway), everything to do with getting maps (duh).
2) No one is forcing you to play until lvl 99. Some people enjoy it. What kind of spoilsport are you to tell them they're wrong? Are they harming you? No.
If Blizzard goes after cheats who use tradehacks and other evil things to rob people blind of their hard-earned equipment, GOOD. These people get their enjoyment out of hurting other people.
If Blizzard goes after people who use D2hackit to make bots that gather equipment 24/7 and thus wreck the economy of scarcity, sort of ok. These people don't hurt others directly but they decrease the fun of finding great equipment because there's just no way you can compete with them.
If Blizzard goes after people who have moved on from being all excited about discovering a map, not OK. These people aren't hurting anyone, in any way. They don't force anyone else to do like them. They don't rob people of their fun. They just go through the acts a bit quicker than the rest.
And believe me, they are at least 1/2 of all players. You may not know it, because you're probably still stuck in normal or nightmare difficulty, but there's large numbers of people who play with maphack and thoroughly enjoy it. About 4/5ths of all Hell difficulty games are cow runs - and all those who do cow runs are power players, who will definitely be using maphack.
Daniel