Amusing, and most of it is crap.
First off, the EU's anti American stance, actually probably very true, only problem with applying it on this case is virtually all major partys involved in both sides of the case are American. Which actually makes the EU impartial by default as it "likes" neither of them (though some could argue a slant in favor of MS as they provide more EU jobs than any of the others)
Then lets take the EET article, especially the bit where MS accuse Professor Neil Barrett of not being impartial and lets backtrack a bit, who recommended Barrett in the first place to the court? Oh yeah...Microsoft (seems they forgot to make sure he was dishonest before putting his name on the list of potential Trustee's)
Sure he talked to the other side, just as he talked to MS, it is afterall his job.
Really what the EU has demanded of MS is not OTT nor to hard to deliver and no they did not ask for all the source code no matter what the MS marketing machine claims, rather they demanded that the equivalent of the API's be released so 3rd partys could operate/integrate with MS software,
This is in the markets interest, other companies interest, the consumers interest and even potentially MS's interest because the more 3rd party apps that can integrate and integrate well with MS products the more reason there is to use a MS product at the core of the setup.
But MS does not want this because they are stuck in the mindset of "lock everyone else out except those we pick to make the most money from additional/complimentary software"
I fly internationally about 4 times a year (US-UK routes) and i still agree with that statement.
Some security is common sence, like locked cockpit doors and no obvious wep's (inconceivable for anyone in Europe that these were not enforced in the US before 9/11) but there is a huge difference between common sence security and what pass's for "security" these days, especially as all these extra measures don't really add any extra security, just a load of aggrovation for 10's of millions of people
"The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief Thomas Barnett cited recent foreign proposals to impose restrictions on Apple's iTunes service as an example of strict regulation which could discourage innovation and hurt consumers."
America will be able to say this, without the rest of the world laughing their ass's off when/if they overhaul the US patent system
you cannot be afraid of getting dirty, because you opponents will not be
Google has a lot of political battles on the horizon, net neutrality, gov demanding their records so forth. Best way to win is to have as many politicians as you can in your pocket
Most likely they have learned, don't sit and wait till they come after you, rather head them off at the pass
- Borrowing money or commiting long term to certain financial obliegations (eg: rent payments) - Certain "sensitive" employment positions, aka financial institutions/companies where you will in a postion to steal large amounts of money or government/public sector positions where it might be of interest for people to bribe you
For anything else it should not be allowed by law
And a non existant credit rating for anyone over a certain age (say 21 to 25) should be considered good (where at the moment is it considered bad) because it basiclly means that person has never overextended themselves to the point that they need to go into debt
Trust me, court costs would be well over a million.
You don't hire just "one lawer" to fight against the army of them that the FTC would toss at you, you would have to hire a army yourself, prefurably a better one too
This is the problem with the western legal system, unless the case is a slam dunk one way or the other even before it hits the court in the majority of cases it does not come done to guilt or innocence but rather who has the better or more (or both) lawyer(s)
Case like this would have cost them 10's of millions to fight, if neither side decided to appeal once first verdict came in, if they did sky would be the limit.
The genre to which WoW belongs, subcription, internet based, graphical, massive multiplayer , persistant world game was not started by EverQuest (March 99), nor by Ultima Online (Sept 97) but rather by Meridian 59 at the end of 1996.
To the poster above who refuses to play subcription based games, best get ready to quit gaming, many of the gaming companies were looking at the model before WoW, now that they have seen how much the buisness is worth they have all gone into overdrive to start developing their own subcription based service (imo the next big leap will be doing one that works well with consoles as well as pc's), many people are predicting that sooner rather than later all games will be subcription based, even non MMO's, not only because the profits can be greater, but because by keeping a lot of the game content on servers they totally eliminate pirateing and in the long term the studios will also be able to cut out the middle man, the distributers
US Government demanded information from Google, government had no legal right/autority to such information
Here the brazilian courts demanded the information, they have the legal right and powers to demand such information in persuit of information in regards to a ongoing case. Google had no choice but to hand over the information or close up shop in Brazil and warn all it's employee's never to go there again(or to any country that might extridite them there), even for a vacation
If the US courts had demanded that information from google it would have had no choice but to hand it over (once they had used up all other legal alternatives, aka appeals/supreme court) if they had not they would have faced doing the same they would have faced in Brazil for non compliance
Refusing to comply with the demands of a countrys bureaucracy is one thing, refusing to comply with the demands of a countrys judiciary is something else altogether, first can cause you some difficulties (lost contracts, audits from hell so forth) latter lands you in jail.
It's a pretty straight forward situation
There is a "skills shortage" because the paymasters want local people at offshore rates while we (The people in the IT industry) want pre 2000 rates.
Until the two meet in the middle people will continue leaving the industry and paymasters will continue to cry "skills shortage"
Though also paymasters have to become more realistic, just because the last person they had 8 years of X, 4 years of Y, 6 years of Z.2 does not mean they need that for their replacement...and just because the offshore company claims its people do have this, it is not likely to be the actual truth.
WoW also has a macro and scripting ability (and a very nice ability to mod the client)
One thing though, the scripting ability does not have the ability to do things that that could be used to "automate" gameplay and while not looked at EQ in years i think on further investigation you will find they have the same restrictions.
No more a case of "that people who appear to be performing repetative, scripted actions in non-standard game environments" with raise a flag with our detection software. If on attempt to contact them in game (using a clearly identifiable official ID) while they performing these actions they fail to respond we will rather safely assume they are unattended macroing (aka botting) and ban them from the game."
If you read though the emails he was first suspeded pending investigation into 3rd party software.
As you cannot "bot" just using the wow client and the built in macro engine it's is reasonably safe assumption to assume that when a game character is doing something in game (that cannot be automated), and the player does not respond to a Game master, that the character has been somehow automated and the player is not there. Hence investigation into the 3rd party software
He then quite nicely helpfully confirmed to them that he had automated his gameplay to a degree beyond what is built into the client (legal or illegal is imaterial) thus confirming for them quite nicely that he was botting to to a degree if not totally.
Result Banned
This has little to do with the tools directly but how one probably flagged him for further investigation (WINE) and how the other was used to "bot" (the keyboard).
If he had been using the keyboard and WINE combo and actually playing the game rather watching movies this thread would not exist.
Actually, thinking about it even with what happened i still don't know why this thread exists, another cheater got banned so what?
*looks at link to other article by CmdrTaco and suddenly understands*
Taco if you had read the nameing rules and looked at all the examples you would have known your name was invalid under not one but two different regulations (the title and having an non pronouncable abriviation of it). That you have been using that nick for years on boards and chat rooms is imaterial, Bliz's game, their rules, they did not create the rule just to ban you, they were put in place before the game went live (back in beta). If they set a rule that you must be naked except for a pink frilly dress while playing you get a choice, follow the rules or don't play. So suck it up and move on and stop posting drivel like this
Main question here is, did the reporters illegally access the restricted access parts of the website?, key words being "illegally access" because as far as i can see they are not actually deneying they accessed the site, rather they are saying they were given the ability and thus permission by the coroner
As the reporters are not deneying accessing the website, why does anyone need to examine the hard drive? Only reason i can think of is either that they are looking for evidence of hacking tools or evidence that the coroner gave them permission electronically (email)
So either the judge does not understand what is what here and has given permission for this when there was no reason to or full facts of the case are not being reported by the reporters, either is equally possible.
As to the "freedom of the press" and confindentality questions, those are not relevant here as neither were created to provide "cover" for reporters themselves commiting crimes
Blocking every bit of advertising is not good for the net.
Let say someone tomorrow came out with an addblock tomorrow that out of the box (thus no config from dumb users needed) blocked 95% of ad's on the net.
What would result be? Majority of sites either closeing down or having to move majority of their content to premium pay to access areas.
To host and maintain a website costs time and money, popular sites even more so, cut off or lessen their revenue sources (and the spread of ad blockers is turning a lot of advertisers off the net) and they have to find new ones.
Taking this into consideration i only block ad's when they are:
Pop up's
Bandwidth intensive flash animations
Obstructive/in the way of the content (hate how some sites make the content one narrow column of text broken every two paragraphs with ad's)
Or if the site is overloaded with them (more than banner at top/bottom and maybe small side panel)
And if a site is really good and i visit a lot i make sure every now and then to click the odd ad if it has remote interest to me.
"Uh, last time I checked, the Big Bang IS just a theory, just as black holes are. They may be credible theories, theories with a lot of evidence, but are still just theories. There is nothing wrong with not proclaiming a theory to be fact."
If he had just been acting as an "editor", correcting articles to be more factual and accurate, I doubt anyone would have had a single issue
But if you look at his actual emails on the subject and his previous history, it is very clear he had an alternative agenda, that of trying to reduce Big Bang theory to the same level of Intelligent Design, a religious fantasy with no evidence to back it up.
For that alone he should have been fired, before we even got to his CV. A spokesman for science should never be trying to put forth an agenda and definatly not a religious one.
Sure it's a theory and if he was objecting to that being left out on logical and/or scientific grounds there would be no objection.
Problem is he is not, he was insisting on it being added to keep open the avenues for the religious types (who vote Bush) who follow the fantasy called "Intelligent Design"
Big Bang/Evolution is based on observation and logic and drawing up a theory, could it be wrong? Sure but it is the best so far that human kind has come up with
Intelligent design is based on a belief, that god exists and then trying to get the facts to fit that belief while ignoreing everything that does not fit.
Actually if you consider that form of thinking, you can understand why ID appeals so much to Bush, it's how he lives his life (and not refering to the god part)
"The proper thing to do is to judge each case on its own merit. Some people the RIAA have sued have been caught red-handed. In other cases, there was a mistake. Again: judge each case on its own merit. This is how you would want to be treated if you were brought into court for anything, isn't it?"
Except thats just what the RIAA don't want. If they actually had to fight all these cases in court not only would probably bankrupt the music industry and also cause the collapse of the court system.
All these cases are little more than highway robbery, with the courts and the costs of lawyers being the weapon of choice. Guilt or innocence has little to do with it
As to this woman, it was probably "her isp" that screwed up, aka accepted a stolen credit card or fake name
Something pretty simerlar has been/currently is being tried in the UK.
About 3 years most of the major ISP's who are also telco's put bandwidth limits on all their customers (without reducing the price) . Some other ISP's followed suit (mainly where they were operating on a minimal margin already and used those telco's for their network)
Result? Mass exodus (even by people who never hit those limits) to the ISP's that were not restricting bandwidth
Now most of them had to change the limited bandwidth to low cost options (anything up to half normal price) and reinstate unlimited (or with limits so high you would have to be a MASSIVE p2p user to hit them)
Things like this don't work if just one telco breaks rank and with the profits to be made break ranks they will...sucks for those with only one isp/telco in their area though
What the numbers really mean
* 22% chose creationism
* 17% opted for intelligent design
* 48% selected evolution theory
* and the rest did not know.
Of the 17%, half those thought the "designers" were from Mars.
In reference to the 22%, those performing the poll did it on a sunday morning and did not realise there was a church at the end of the street.
In 10 years living in the UK i have met one person that would be likely to pick creationism, rest would go for evolution or "who knows?Who cares?"
True, but when start seeing record rainfall here, record heatwave there, coldest winter over there, record amount of hurricanes elsewhere not stop you cannot help but to start to see patterns and draw some conculsions
The problem with TV is most channels have have shifted from being primeraly entertainment providers funded by advertising to advertising providers that use entertainment as a wrapper for the adverts.
This leads them generate more and more programing of the type you just mentioned, programming where you don't have to think, don't have to pay attention. More brain dead you are the better because then you will pay even less attention to the adverts on an active level while absorbing the ad's "message" on a more subconscious level, plus your annoyance factor on how annoying the constant interuptions for add breaks are will be a lot lower.
Thus thought/emotion provoking programming is generally unwelcome (unless it turns into a massive overnight hit... enableing the channel to charge more for ad's)
And for this reason sci-fi is generally "mistreated" by the networks, because usually these types of programming are both thought and emotion provocing for those who like them. So even if a series does well enough to warrant new seasons if they were not sci-fi, if they sci-fi are they get dropped unless they do 10 times better.
And until tv-on-demand (of whatever flavor) becomes a lot bigger and more widespread, this will not change.
So expect many more years for series like firefly getting dropped.
You are comparing an orange to a 12 course chinese banquet
For one average player blizzard need to track the following constantly changing data: world position, stats (aprox 10 different ones), status (in combat, out of combat who in combat with), repution, equipment...(and this is most likely only a few of the things) all in real time (something no web site has to do)
None of this can be stored on the client as would be hackable
Average player in wow probably generates per minute 100 times more database hits (and this is where most of the slowdown and crash's occure with wow, the databases) than average web site user generates in an hour.
While blizz could deal better with some situations (new caracter creation on that server should have been turned off days ago for accounts that do not already have one there, they have the code for that already and have implimented it for other reasons elsewhere)the overall situation currently has no solution and this is why, without exception, every other MMO that experiences these kinds of loads have the exact same problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Amusing, and most of it is crap. First off, the EU's anti American stance, actually probably very true, only problem with applying it on this case is virtually all major partys involved in both sides of the case are American. Which actually makes the EU impartial by default as it "likes" neither of them (though some could argue a slant in favor of MS as they provide more EU jobs than any of the others) Then lets take the EET article, especially the bit where MS accuse Professor Neil Barrett of not being impartial and lets backtrack a bit, who recommended Barrett in the first place to the court? Oh yeah ...Microsoft (seems they forgot to make sure he was dishonest before putting his name on the list of potential Trustee's)
Sure he talked to the other side, just as he talked to MS, it is afterall his job.
Really what the EU has demanded of MS is not OTT nor to hard to deliver and no they did not ask for all the source code no matter what the MS marketing machine claims, rather they demanded that the equivalent of the API's be released so 3rd partys could operate/integrate with MS software,
This is in the markets interest, other companies interest, the consumers interest and even potentially MS's interest because the more 3rd party apps that can integrate and integrate well with MS products the more reason there is to use a MS product at the core of the setup.
But MS does not want this because they are stuck in the mindset of "lock everyone else out except those we pick to make the most money from additional/complimentary software"
I fly internationally about 4 times a year (US-UK routes) and i still agree with that statement. Some security is common sence, like locked cockpit doors and no obvious wep's (inconceivable for anyone in Europe that these were not enforced in the US before 9/11) but there is a huge difference between common sence security and what pass's for "security" these days, especially as all these extra measures don't really add any extra security, just a load of aggrovation for 10's of millions of people
"The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief Thomas Barnett cited recent foreign proposals to impose restrictions on Apple's iTunes service as an example of strict regulation which could discourage innovation and hurt consumers." America will be able to say this, without the rest of the world laughing their ass's off when/if they overhaul the US patent system
you cannot be afraid of getting dirty, because you opponents will not be Google has a lot of political battles on the horizon, net neutrality, gov demanding their records so forth. Best way to win is to have as many politicians as you can in your pocket Most likely they have learned, don't sit and wait till they come after you, rather head them off at the pass
- Borrowing money or commiting long term to certain financial obliegations (eg: rent payments)
- Certain "sensitive" employment positions, aka financial institutions/companies where you will in a postion to steal large amounts of money or government/public sector positions where it might be of interest for people to bribe you
For anything else it should not be allowed by law
And a non existant credit rating for anyone over a certain age (say 21 to 25) should be considered good (where at the moment is it considered bad) because it basiclly means that person has never overextended themselves to the point that they need to go into debt
Trust me, court costs would be well over a million. You don't hire just "one lawer" to fight against the army of them that the FTC would toss at you, you would have to hire a army yourself, prefurably a better one too This is the problem with the western legal system, unless the case is a slam dunk one way or the other even before it hits the court in the majority of cases it does not come done to guilt or innocence but rather who has the better or more (or both) lawyer(s) Case like this would have cost them 10's of millions to fight, if neither side decided to appeal once first verdict came in, if they did sky would be the limit.
Could anyone imagine growing up with the name "Window", what were the parents thinking?
The genre to which WoW belongs, subcription, internet based, graphical, massive multiplayer , persistant world game was not started by EverQuest (March 99), nor by Ultima Online (Sept 97) but rather by Meridian 59 at the end of 1996.
To the poster above who refuses to play subcription based games, best get ready to quit gaming, many of the gaming companies were looking at the model before WoW, now that they have seen how much the buisness is worth they have all gone into overdrive to start developing their own subcription based service (imo the next big leap will be doing one that works well with consoles as well as pc's), many people are predicting that sooner rather than later all games will be subcription based, even non MMO's, not only because the profits can be greater, but because by keeping a lot of the game content on servers they totally eliminate pirateing and in the long term the studios will also be able to cut out the middle man, the distributers
US Government demanded information from Google, government had no legal right/autority to such information
Here the brazilian courts demanded the information, they have the legal right and powers to demand such information in persuit of information in regards to a ongoing case. Google had no choice but to hand over the information or close up shop in Brazil and warn all it's employee's never to go there again(or to any country that might extridite them there), even for a vacation
If the US courts had demanded that information from google it would have had no choice but to hand it over (once they had used up all other legal alternatives, aka appeals/supreme court) if they had not they would have faced doing the same they would have faced in Brazil for non compliance
Refusing to comply with the demands of a countrys bureaucracy is one thing, refusing to comply with the demands of a countrys judiciary is something else altogether, first can cause you some difficulties (lost contracts, audits from hell so forth) latter lands you in jail.
It's a pretty straight forward situation There is a "skills shortage" because the paymasters want local people at offshore rates while we (The people in the IT industry) want pre 2000 rates. Until the two meet in the middle people will continue leaving the industry and paymasters will continue to cry "skills shortage" Though also paymasters have to become more realistic, just because the last person they had 8 years of X, 4 years of Y, 6 years of Z.2 does not mean they need that for their replacement...and just because the offshore company claims its people do have this, it is not likely to be the actual truth.
WoW also has a macro and scripting ability (and a very nice ability to mod the client)
One thing though, the scripting ability does not have the ability to do things that that could be used to "automate" gameplay and while not looked at EQ in years i think on further investigation you will find they have the same restrictions.
No more a case of "that people who appear to be performing repetative, scripted actions in non-standard game environments" with raise a flag with our detection software. If on attempt to contact them in game (using a clearly identifiable official ID) while they performing these actions they fail to respond we will rather safely assume they are unattended macroing (aka botting) and ban them from the game."
If you read though the emails he was first suspeded pending investigation into 3rd party software.
As you cannot "bot" just using the wow client and the built in macro engine it's is reasonably safe assumption to assume that when a game character is doing something in game (that cannot be automated), and the player does not respond to a Game master, that the character has been somehow automated and the player is not there. Hence investigation into the 3rd party software
He then quite nicely helpfully confirmed to them that he had automated his gameplay to a degree beyond what is built into the client (legal or illegal is imaterial) thus confirming for them quite nicely that he was botting to to a degree if not totally.
Result Banned
This has little to do with the tools directly but how one probably flagged him for further investigation (WINE) and how the other was used to "bot" (the keyboard).
If he had been using the keyboard and WINE combo and actually playing the game rather watching movies this thread would not exist.
Actually, thinking about it even with what happened i still don't know why this thread exists, another cheater got banned so what?
*looks at link to other article by CmdrTaco and suddenly understands*
Taco if you had read the nameing rules and looked at all the examples you would have known your name was invalid under not one but two different regulations (the title and having an non pronouncable abriviation of it). That you have been using that nick for years on boards and chat rooms is imaterial, Bliz's game, their rules, they did not create the rule just to ban you, they were put in place before the game went live (back in beta). If they set a rule that you must be naked except for a pink frilly dress while playing you get a choice, follow the rules or don't play. So suck it up and move on and stop posting drivel like this
Main question here is, did the reporters illegally access the restricted access parts of the website?, key words being "illegally access" because as far as i can see they are not actually deneying they accessed the site, rather they are saying they were given the ability and thus permission by the coroner
As the reporters are not deneying accessing the website, why does anyone need to examine the hard drive? Only reason i can think of is either that they are looking for evidence of hacking tools or evidence that the coroner gave them permission electronically (email)
So either the judge does not understand what is what here and has given permission for this when there was no reason to or full facts of the case are not being reported by the reporters, either is equally possible.
As to the "freedom of the press" and confindentality questions, those are not relevant here as neither were created to provide "cover" for reporters themselves commiting crimes
Blocking every bit of advertising is not good for the net. Let say someone tomorrow came out with an addblock tomorrow that out of the box (thus no config from dumb users needed) blocked 95% of ad's on the net. What would result be? Majority of sites either closeing down or having to move majority of their content to premium pay to access areas. To host and maintain a website costs time and money, popular sites even more so, cut off or lessen their revenue sources (and the spread of ad blockers is turning a lot of advertisers off the net) and they have to find new ones. Taking this into consideration i only block ad's when they are: Pop up's Bandwidth intensive flash animations Obstructive/in the way of the content (hate how some sites make the content one narrow column of text broken every two paragraphs with ad's) Or if the site is overloaded with them (more than banner at top/bottom and maybe small side panel) And if a site is really good and i visit a lot i make sure every now and then to click the odd ad if it has remote interest to me.
"Uh, last time I checked, the Big Bang IS just a theory, just as black holes are. They may be credible theories, theories with a lot of evidence, but are still just theories. There is nothing wrong with not proclaiming a theory to be fact."
If he had just been acting as an "editor", correcting articles to be more factual and accurate, I doubt anyone would have had a single issue
But if you look at his actual emails on the subject and his previous history, it is very clear he had an alternative agenda, that of trying to reduce Big Bang theory to the same level of Intelligent Design, a religious fantasy with no evidence to back it up.
For that alone he should have been fired, before we even got to his CV. A spokesman for science should never be trying to put forth an agenda and definatly not a religious one.
Sure it's a theory and if he was objecting to that being left out on logical and/or scientific grounds there would be no objection.
Problem is he is not, he was insisting on it being added to keep open the avenues for the religious types (who vote Bush) who follow the fantasy called "Intelligent Design"
Big Bang/Evolution is based on observation and logic and drawing up a theory, could it be wrong? Sure but it is the best so far that human kind has come up with
Intelligent design is based on a belief, that god exists and then trying to get the facts to fit that belief while ignoreing everything that does not fit.
Actually if you consider that form of thinking, you can understand why ID appeals so much to Bush, it's how he lives his life (and not refering to the god part)
"The proper thing to do is to judge each case on its own merit. Some people the RIAA have sued have been caught red-handed. In other cases, there was a mistake. Again: judge each case on its own merit. This is how you would want to be treated if you were brought into court for anything, isn't it?" Except thats just what the RIAA don't want. If they actually had to fight all these cases in court not only would probably bankrupt the music industry and also cause the collapse of the court system. All these cases are little more than highway robbery, with the courts and the costs of lawyers being the weapon of choice. Guilt or innocence has little to do with it As to this woman, it was probably "her isp" that screwed up, aka accepted a stolen credit card or fake name
Something pretty simerlar has been/currently is being tried in the UK. About 3 years most of the major ISP's who are also telco's put bandwidth limits on all their customers (without reducing the price) . Some other ISP's followed suit (mainly where they were operating on a minimal margin already and used those telco's for their network) Result? Mass exodus (even by people who never hit those limits) to the ISP's that were not restricting bandwidth Now most of them had to change the limited bandwidth to low cost options (anything up to half normal price) and reinstate unlimited (or with limits so high you would have to be a MASSIVE p2p user to hit them) Things like this don't work if just one telco breaks rank and with the profits to be made break ranks they will...sucks for those with only one isp/telco in their area though
What the numbers really mean * 22% chose creationism * 17% opted for intelligent design * 48% selected evolution theory * and the rest did not know. Of the 17%, half those thought the "designers" were from Mars. In reference to the 22%, those performing the poll did it on a sunday morning and did not realise there was a church at the end of the street. In 10 years living in the UK i have met one person that would be likely to pick creationism, rest would go for evolution or "who knows?Who cares?"
True, but when start seeing record rainfall here, record heatwave there, coldest winter over there, record amount of hurricanes elsewhere not stop you cannot help but to start to see patterns and draw some conculsions
The problem with TV is most channels have have shifted from being primeraly entertainment providers funded by advertising to advertising providers that use entertainment as a wrapper for the adverts.
This leads them generate more and more programing of the type you just mentioned, programming where you don't have to think, don't have to pay attention. More brain dead you are the better because then you will pay even less attention to the adverts on an active level while absorbing the ad's "message" on a more subconscious level, plus your annoyance factor on how annoying the constant interuptions for add breaks are will be a lot lower.
Thus thought/emotion provoking programming is generally unwelcome (unless it turns into a massive overnight hit... enableing the channel to charge more for ad's)
And for this reason sci-fi is generally "mistreated" by the networks, because usually these types of programming are both thought and emotion provocing for those who like them. So even if a series does well enough to warrant new seasons if they were not sci-fi, if they sci-fi are they get dropped unless they do 10 times better.
And until tv-on-demand (of whatever flavor) becomes a lot bigger and more widespread, this will not change.
So expect many more years for series like firefly getting dropped.
You are comparing an orange to a 12 course chinese banquet For one average player blizzard need to track the following constantly changing data: world position, stats (aprox 10 different ones), status (in combat, out of combat who in combat with), repution, equipment...(and this is most likely only a few of the things) all in real time (something no web site has to do) None of this can be stored on the client as would be hackable Average player in wow probably generates per minute 100 times more database hits (and this is where most of the slowdown and crash's occure with wow, the databases) than average web site user generates in an hour. While blizz could deal better with some situations (new caracter creation on that server should have been turned off days ago for accounts that do not already have one there, they have the code for that already and have implimented it for other reasons elsewhere)the overall situation currently has no solution and this is why, without exception, every other MMO that experiences these kinds of loads have the exact same problems.