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Communications

Why Creators Should Never Read Their Forums 221

Posted by Soulskill from the lalala-i-can't-hear-you dept.
spidweb writes "One full-time Indie developer writes about why he never goes to online forums discussing his work and why he advises other creators to do the same. It's possible to learn valuable things, but the time and the stress just don't justify the effort. From the article, 'Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.'"
Role Playing (Games)

Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late 328

Posted by Soulskill from the i-find-your-lack-of-faith-disturbing dept.
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting: "While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
Image

IT Worker's Revenge Lands Her In Jail 347

Posted by samzenpus from the bad-idea dept.
aesoteric writes "A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking, and then locking, her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff."
Image

Debt Collectors Using Facebook To Embarrass Those Who Owe 266

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-up-or-be-unfriended dept.
Not even the tranquility of FarmVille can save you from the long arm of debt collectors. Melanie Beacham says that a collector from MarkOne Financial contacted her relatives about her past due car note via Facebook. She is filing suit alleging that the company is harassing her family. Tampa based consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan says, "Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it's not only family members, it's all of your associates. It's a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use."
PC Games (Games)

Valve Trademarks 'DOTA' 141

Posted by Soulskill from the vi-sitter-i-ventrilo dept.
An anonymous reader tips news that Valve Software has filed a trademark claim for the term "DOTA," fueling speculation that the company will soon reveal a new Defense of the Ancients game. Voice actor John St. John recently said he was recording for such a game in a post to Twitter. The tweet was subsequently deleted. Last year Valve hired 'Icefrog,' lead developer for the original DotA mod.
Space

Dwarf Planets Accumulate In Outer Solar System 93

Posted by kdawson from the potato-radius dept.
An anonymous reader tips a piece in Australian Geographic indicating that Pluto may be in for another demotion, as researchers work to define dwarf planets more exactly. "[Australian researchers] now argue that the radius which defines a dwarf planet should instead be from 200–300 km, depending on whether the object is made of ice or rock. They base their smaller radius on the limit at which objects naturally form a spherical rather than potato-like shape because of 'self-gravity.' Icy objects less than 200 km (or rocky objects less than 300 km) across are likely to be potato shapes, while objects larger than this are spherical. ... They call this limit the 'potato radius' ... [One researcher is quoted] 'I have no problem with there being hundreds of dwarf planets eventually.'"
Games

NYT's "Games To Avoid" an Ironic, Perfect Gamer Wish List 189

Posted by Soulskill from the more-or-less dept.
MojoKid writes "From October to December, the advertising departments of a thousand companies exhort children to beg, cajole, and guilt-trip their parents for all manner of inappropriate digital entertainment. As supposedly informed gatekeepers, we sadly earthbound Santas are reduced to scouring the back pages of gaming review sites and magazines, trying to evaluate whether the tot at home is ready for Big Bird's Egg Hunt or Bayonetta. Luckily, The New York Times is here to help. In a recent article provokingly titled 'Ten Games to Cross off Your Child's Gift List,' the NYT names its list of big bads — the video games so foul, so gruesome, so perverse that we'd recommend you buy them immediately — for yourself. Alternatively, if you need gift ideas for the surly, pale teenager in your home whose body contains more plastic then your average d20, this is the newspaper clipping to stuff in your pocket. In other words, if you need a list like this to understand what games to not stuff little Johnny's stocking with this holiday season, you've got larger issues you should concern yourself with. We'd suggest picking up an auto-shotty and taking a few rounds against the horde — it's a wonderful stress relief and you're probably going to need it."

Comment Too little too late (Score 1) 304

by Batou (#29685557) Attached to: Comcast's War On Infected PCs (Or All Customers)

"when we see computers on our network that are doing things that are known bot activities--say, a computer is spewing out thousands of spam e-mails,"

Yeah, well done chief. How about you take that menace down until the idiot behind the box fixes it? How about that? How on earth does verified network abuse not warrant an immediate disconnect?

As an email admin, this is welcome news, but it's yet again not enough. Keeping botnets in check is admittedly not the easiest thing in the world for an ISP to tackle, but for fuck's sake, direct to MX smtp traffic from residential IP space couldn't be simpler to capture and redirect prior to leaving their network cloud, and if the morons at Comcast et al would get their shit together and act responsibly for a change, they might actually be part of the solution to the spam problem as opposed to one of the biggest contributers to it.
Music

Brian Eno Releases Second iPhone App 196

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oblique-strategies-ftw dept.
Brian Eno, or as he is known to many in my office, "God," has released his second iPhone App. A followup to Bloom, this one is called Trope and supposedly creates darker music. You create music by drawing shapes on the iPhone's screen.

Comment Re:Vietnamese Agent Orange vs. Iranian Despot (Score 1) 838

by Batou (#28340091) Attached to: Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"

>> Not every muslim is an islamist.

Umm ... not to nitpick, but ... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muslim


Musâ...lim /ËmÊOEzlÉm, ËmÊSz-, ËmÊSs-/ Show Spelled [muhz-lim, mooz-, moos-] Show IPA adjective, noun, plural -lims, -lim.

â"adjective
1.of or pertaining to the religion, law, or civilization of Islam.
â"noun
2.an adherent of Islam.
3. Black Muslim.
Also, Moslem, Muslem (for defs. 1, 2).

Origin:
  Ar, lit., a person who submits. See Islam

I think what you meant to say is that not every Muslim is hell bent on shoving their superstitious bullshit down everyone else on the planet's throats on pain of death.

You know, like the Christians did until just a (very) few centuries ago.
Earth

Ancient Ecosystem Found In Ice Pocket 49

Posted by timothy from the so-it's-not-a-traditional-honeymoon-suite dept.
ApharmdB writes "Beneath a glacier in Antarctica, scientists have discovered a community of microbes growing in frigid pools of salty water. It's a particularly tough environment, with no light, no oxygen, and extremely cold temperatures. But the microbes appear to live — and thrive — off a combination of iron and sulfur, according to a new study. The result of that strange metabolism is a brilliant red streak of cascading ice called Blood Falls."

Comment As if the constant executions weren't enough ... (Score 1) 1306

by Batou (#27318019) Attached to: Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution

... now it's the creationists forcing their pseudo science into the minds of children not just at home, but now in the context of a science classroom.

As soon as I hear any single one of them clamoring for "alternates" to the theory of gravity, then I'll let this go, but until then, it's making a mockery of education and makes us the laughing stock of the world.

I've never been so ashamed to live in Texas.

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