"Meanwhile, Blizzard dealt with 350,000 of their own problem users on Battle.net, saying simply that they wouldn't tolerate cheating."
The b.net that I play on sure seems to tolerate cheating. Or at least it has for a LONG time.
Diablo 1 had Auto PK, Auto Revive (and then PK again of course), Town kill, dupes, and I believe there was even a god mode.
Diablo 2 had Way Point PK traps. Now it has Map Hack, dupes, auto aim, far cast, pick-it, chicken (auto exit), dupes, Town-Portal PK triggers, town kill, and more dupes! It's nearly impossible to play in a public environment on their public server. Most solo in passworded games, or perhaps with a friend or two... almost never with strangers.
I was one of a hand full of Diablo 2 players who were NOT included in this recent ban, and I must say that it was great to see it come. It was vindicating to see so many cheaters get what they deserved. It would be wonderful if they continued to enforce it (though they never have in the past after mass bannings, so I see no reason why this time will be different).
But for them to say that "they simply [do not] tolerate cheating." Well that's a bit of a stretch people! In fact, I thought it was convenient how the bannings came so near to the release of WotLK. Suddenly there was 350,000 gamers who needed a new staple to play.
-hps
It's not just the computers themselves that use all this power: the combined heat output of all these servers, hard drives and network gear is so large that massive air conditioning is required to keep it all from overheating. "Cooling is about 60 percent of the power costs in a data center because of inefficiency," said Hewlett Packard executive Paul Perez in Data Center News. "The way data centers are cooled today is like cutting butter with a chain saw." Cooling capacity is often the limiting factor of how big these systems can be — I've talked with more than one engineer whose data center facility sat half empty or more; even though there was plenty of room for more servers, the building's air conditioning was maxed out.
Filed under: Cellphones
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
It's been a tick since we've heard any news on the 3D drawing front, but a number of computer scientists from Brown University are putting the art back in the proverbial foreground with its Drawing on Air installation. Put simply, users can slip on a virtual reality mask, grab a stylus and tracking device, and go to town. The system uses "drawing guidelines, force feedback, and two-handed interaction" to assist artists in drawing more precisely, and once movements are made, the patterns are transferred to a computer for use in 3D modeling and design programs. Unfortunately, such a system can't currently be priced at points which John and / or Jane Doe would be happy with, but the researchers did state that commercialization wasn't "too far away" and that prices should decrease from "thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars in the next few years."Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
