‘Assassin’s Creed 2′ DRM will hurt sales. Ubisoft will undoubtedly blame pirates.
The article says you can't even start the game without Internet, as you will be greeted by an error message. Making matters even worse, you are still kicked back to the main menu if the game loses connection to the "Ubisoft Master servers," which may not even be your fault.
Sprint international text charges on Samsung Moment
This is just a journal of my issues with Sprint charging international text charges when none of our contacts / texts / anything are outside of the USA.
This is a posted rough draft, that I will beautify later.
I have two lines, both sharing one plan. an exert of the bill (with personal information removed) is below.
HP total fail.
Last year my wife and I purchased two HP Pavilions (DV 9830-US). Fine laptops, aside from my ram being bad, her hard drive's death, and, one month out of warranty, the video chip on mine decided it had enough of the poor cooling and took a permanent break. This model of laptop was a portable furnace. This was a known issue, but this specific model wasn't in the class action lawsuit... lucky me. They refused to replace it. Rather than argue any more through a language barrier made of water and sand, I purchased a new model that boasted it ran cool. It did.
A fix needs to be published, in English.
Windows 7 users:
ACPI\ENE0100\3&33FD14CA&0 == IR receiver.
Open device manager, show hidden devices, select above, and select update driver, "browse my computer". Point to the folder created when extracting this archive. Do not run the EXEs contained within the archive.
Ony is dead.
Back in the day I was a addicted to World of Warcraft. I played not for end-game, but for the members of my guild (was 100+ strong at one point) and the fun we had together. I was alliance (not my fault, my (now) wife was alliance, and drug me in kicking and screaming), and a mage. Those are two horrid strikes against any wow player, but I had fun.
I was a nogg-aholic and my interest in the game started to diminish shortly after wall-walking was patched. I still explored, but with clipped wings. I never used any glitches to gain an advantage over others, and avoided battle-grounds like the plague, as did most nogg-aholics.
All that interested me in World of Warcraft is now dead. Exploration is all but moot in the expansions, and the new content (much of B.C. was released with 1.0, but not implemented until the first expansion) of Northend further destroys the continuity of World of Warcraft.
When I started, there were memories made in the following order.
- The boy king of Stormwind
- The Defias
- Van Cleef
- The missing diplomat
- Lady Prestor
- Onyxia attunement
- Onyxia
That sums up WoW 1.0's story in a nutshell... it all intertwined into a beautiful cliffhanger with an epic ending...
oh, by the way.. 1 4 5 and 6 were removed in the latest patch.
Skype 4.0 sucks
Boobs were all that made this new window style slightly tolerable.
I use Skype for secure text communications while I work.
Granted there are alternatives, there are none as simple. Install, login, go. Anything more complicated and the cattle would become confused and scatter. Hell, some have issues with just the above steps.
Skype recently updated their software with an "improved" user interface. While this is nice for the "aol age", it is absolute ass for those that work.
- The screen real estate has been wasted with tons of white space.
- The nick-list is now a horizontal bar along the top.
- The left side of a chat box is reserved for nicks alone.
- The right side of the chat box is reserved for time stamps.
- Icons are huge.
- There is no real compact view.
- There is no color customization like there was in 3.x.
- You can no longer decide what "tabs" to display.
- Tabs are gone. Everything (except history) is in the main window.
- File transfers are now inline (does not have a separate window) , and have less information.
- There is a constant advertisement at the top of the main window (this has been the case, but not for the "business" version).
- Will not allow DX9 full screen applications to launch.
- "Not Available" mode is gone.
- "Send Contacts" is removed.
- Will not allow my laptop to wake from suspended mode.
- "SkypeMe" mode is gone.
DRM does not work.
DRM SUX and EA SUX
- EA is now laying 1k+ people off. (source)
- Technology is one of the least hit by the current recession. (source)
- SPORE was the most pirated game in 2008. (source)
- Spore had the most controversial DRM in 2008.
- EA denies piracy is linked to their DRM. (source)
Coincidence?
I told you so.
Hard drive is filling up.
I have cacti running to monitor over nine thousand systems for some company.
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.
...and it does so damn well.
[12/19/2008 12:31:06 AM] syn says: [link to server monitor graph removed, you would not be able to access it.]
That... may be a problem.
[12/19/2008 12:34:40 AM] unbeliever says: y?
[12/19/2008 12:35:06 AM] syn says: it'll be a problem in.. about a month or two.
[12/19/2008 12:35:18 AM] unbeliever says: last guy said 4 weeks
[12/19/2008 12:35:19 AM] unbeliever says: 2 weeks ago
[12/19/2008 12:37:14 AM] syn says: ok...
No one listens, and so it became a problem today... imagine that.
My wife comes running downstairs: We have a problem, some server is full and we can't do our job. She was able to portray the severity of the situation. No one she manages could work. I find it cute when she tries to talk technical.
- Jobs restored: 30 minutes.
- Full resolution: 50 minutes.
- Total cost to the company: $15.
I hate myself.
Ya, screw that. I'm billing for the total time of my script to run. I'm am monitoring it... for the past seven hours (and counting).
Also, a shoutout to The Guy for assisting in password management and providing a file destination.
Valid XHTML?
I WRIET HTML!1!!!1!1 LOL
Why write valid (x)html / css?
DA IMPORTANC3 OF PROP3R (X)HTML SI COMONLEY SEN AS A COMODITY BY W3B PAEG DESIGNERS
THIS!!!!11 OMG LOL SI FAR FROM TEH TRUTH
FALEURA!!11! 2 PROPARLEY D3SIGN A PAEG ONLEY SHOWS UR IGNORANC3 2 DA LANGUAEG U CLAME 2 KNOW
WHIEL!!1!1 OMG LOL UR PAEG MAY MAEK SINCE 2 U IT MAY NOT 2 OTHERS DUE 2 DIF3R3NT DEVIECS BROWSERS OR SCREN SIEZ
A!!!!!1!! OMG PROPERLEY FORMATAD WEB PAEG WIL DISPLAY PROPERLEY ON A TABLET PC OF ANY SIEZ ON A WIED-SCREN LAP2P OR AV3N ON A MOBIEL PHONA!111111 WTF
If you understand the above and fail to see the analogy, go back to AOL in your IE based browser and sit in the cesspool that is your filtered Internet. Your stupidity is not welcome here.
Magic
From Wikipedia:
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Tomas Edison: inventor of the dark magic known as incandescent light bulbs.
This is true. Sadly the same laws of magic are applied. When you know how magic is preformed, it no longer is magic.
It becomes a "trick".
People love magic, but hate being tricked. The psychology of this is could be argued for days, and I'm sure I'll eventually get to it.
I recently billed myself at $200 to accomplish a job. A job that I was confident that no one else at a company I am contracted for could preform. This is where the magic is. I have an uncanny ability to resolve network issues.
I was scoffed at for expecting so much for my magic. It was "unreasonable". Instead said company decided to pay two people (at an hourly rate) over $200 collectively to fail at accomplishing the task. I looked upon them with a large ego and even greater smile. Last night, they use my wife to get the answer. I demand $200, same as prior. I then provided resolution with in ten minutes of my wife messaging me.
Now I look like an ass. Why? Because I demanded $200 for five minutes of labor. They choose to disregard the fact that the resolution was solid, and that they had already wasted more than a week's time and $200 to fail miserably at the task.
I'm upset. Not because they were too proud to realize that they needed assistance until pushed to realization by their own incompetence, but because they used my own wife as bait. I have provided a service that is obviously worth $200, as it was paid to others to not complete the task in a weeks time. I accept that even I have flaws, and expressed that I do not expect payment if my submission does not resolve the issue.
... yet I'm the bad guy.
The conflict this caused between my wife and I is a post in its own.