Microsoft probably doesn't use a heuristic approach to detecting cheating. They probably got tools on the console that can detect if a person's profile was edited using 3rd party tools. Microsoft doesn't want to reveal this process because it would make it easier for cheaters to bypass the system. It would be foolhardy for Microsoft to rely on a system that just flagged people for being "too good." Not even Blizzard, the king of banning people, does this. Blizzard has tools (Warden Client) to detect cheating and flag the account for further review. For example, Blizzard just doesn't say "this guy farmed 100 herbs a minute, he must be cheating". Instead Blizzard says "a known cheating program was detected on the system" or "he was herbing from under the terrain and using a memory hack to teleport from one node to another instantly".

Microsoft probably flagged his account as cheater because the Xbox detected because a process on the Xbox 360 detected the cheating, not that he's "too good" to have collected so many achievement points.

I think the mother is just being a mother and defending her son.

I tried watching Avatar in 3D (I was forced to go with friends). Halfway thru the movie I had to take off the glasses and watch the movie 2D in a terrible-looking way because I couldn't stand trying to focus in on the background and it not focusing because it isn't a real 3D scene.

Lawyers are paid to represent their CLIENT's interests, not their own. This guy could have personally disagreed with the RIAA and the Supreme Court's ruling, but as an attorney you are obligated to represent your client in the best possible manner.

I'm pretty sure a defense lawyer for Jarad Loughner personally believes her client is guilty and should get the chair for his crimes, but she's still obligated to defend her client as best as possible.

Grats, you ran a story on government trying to save money.

How does this affect my "rights online"?

They removed OtherOS. If they would have left OtherOS intact, these groups would have had no reason to want to crack the PS3.

Sony did this to themselves.

Really?

The problem with getting rid of the "hate" crime category is that its a legal term. A person convicted of a hate crime has a more severe punishment then a non-hate crime offense.

Under the law, there is a difference between assaulting someone for some money and assaulting someone because their apart of a specific ethnic group.

An AI could do micromanagement way better then a human ever could. An AI isn't encumbered by physical limitations, only by the quality of the programming and the processing power behind the bot.

The reason why an AI isn't that great in SC2 is because Blizzard's intention wasn't to make the bot able to crush humans. I bet you they could make a bot that crushes human players without violating the rules of the game, but what purpose would that serve for them?

Exactly. An AI could win by exhibiting super-human micromanagement by engaging enemeies in several locations at once, diverting the attention of the human player. Unlike Chess, which is a turn-based game, Starcraft 2 is a real-time game. This gives people who can manage multiple conflicts at once while still pumping out units and maintaining their economy will prevail. An advanced AI would roflstomp a human. Blizzard's "Insane" AI for multiplayer still follows the rules of human skill. An AI bot designed to crush a human opponent would not limit itself like that.

It is called being in a guild that does heroic encounters.

4.0.1 was the largest patch they had ever created. Anyone who has worked 10 seconds in the software development business is that bugs are apart of life. World of Warcraft is the most bug-free MMO in existence. Blizzard does a really good job working as many bugs as they can out of the game, but bugs do creep in.

Plainsrunning was different then Running Wild.

Plainsrunning was "always on" and increased your movement speed while moving over time until you reached 100% (over 10 seconds). Once you stopped or entered combat, you'd go back to normal run speed. It was a completely different mechanic then a standard mount, and it was broken and hence removed.

Running Wild is basically a mount, but instead of a mount model your character just runs around really fast with a different animation. All the other rules of mounting apply, such as being unable to cast, having a cast time to mount, being unable to mount in combat, but remain mounted while in combat, etc.

Blizzard doesn't ban people for pointing out that type of stuff, they ban people for HOW they do it.

There is a difference between.....

"I believe my class does not do enough DPS and here is why... [insert evidence of your beliefs in a non-flambait manner]"

and...

"OMG PALLY HOJ ME FOR 5000000 DAMAGE TEY R OP PLZ NERF KTHXBAI"

The first example contributes to the conversation, whereas the second example does not.

I think it what it boils down to is Recount is an addon that is already freely avaliable to those who want to analyze their DPS. I'm pretty sure they feel that adding a built-in Recount would be a waste of time, when there is already something out there that already works. The built-in threat meter was a different story, as Blizzard's threat meter uses information straight from the servers, instead of having to guess at it based on damage done, buffs, etc. Just because something is an internal development tool, doesn't mean it would work well for players to use. By all rights their internal tools for analyzing DPS and healing are so complicated a normal player wouldn't be able to wrap their mind around it in a reasonable manner, or provide information to players they don't want players knowing.

Sad Mac is a failure on startup, and the Bomb was just scary. My mother saw the system error bomb once and thought the computer was going to explode.