There actually were in the early days. Before the simplification. I played a mage and there were a lot of different builds you could play, and none of them were "the best". There were 3 talent trees, arcane, fire, and ice. Couldn't play fire in some raids, because bosses were fire immune...but not all of them. Some people played an "elemental" build where they went half way down fire and ice trees and had amazing control and still some good firepower. Some went full ice and got major control in pvp. Some went a mix of arcane and fire...some more fire, some more arcane. Mages back in TBC had _so many_ good builds and strange tricks that it was amazing. But the developers said that it was "too hard to keep up with" and they couldn't "anticipate all the builds" and there were times where things got quirky and a strange build popped up that was absolutely killer. His statements aren't opposed to each other at all. There were complex systems in place, and no -- it wasn't balanced. It was a rock-paper-scissors type game at the time. Mage destroyed warrior. Rogue destroyed mage. Warrior destroyed Rogue. You relied on having friends around you to keep you safe.

Basically all the single-button-click group matchmaking, and cross realms created an atmosphere where there was no sense of community anymore. There were no reputations to be worried about. There's way less of the "Multiplayer" in WoW as an MMO now. Yes...there are loads of other players. But they've taken away soooo much of the incentive to actually interact with those other players, that you might as well be playing a single player game with bots now.

I not only agree, but this is what has kept me away from so many other MMOs. They focus so heavily on graphics, and making things "look real" that they hit uncanny valley with their animation. The fact that WoW has the "cartoon" look, and a wide range of body heights keeps things very interesting without making your brain shout at you that something isn't quite right.

The thing that has killed WoW for me, however, has been the lack of danger. The shoving everyone into battlegrounds. Virtually no world PVP anymore. Auto-matchups for group runs have killed much social behavior that existed prior. Yes, waiting around town spamming trade for hours at a time wasn't very fun. But in a way, it forced socialization, it forced people to remember "ok, this guy is a pretty damn good tank, I'm going to put him on my friends list and we'll blast through shit together"...now, it's just click a button, and wait. Once you're done, likelihood of you ever talking to anyone from that group ever again is practically nil.

I played MMOs not for the grind. Not for the waste of time. I _DID_ do end-game. I did spend time at the hardest possible points in the game, because I wanted a challenge. I wanted friends who wanted a challenge. But now, no way. VERY few people want that challenge anymore, because the game is catered to people who want a grind. They want a game that's on a set of rails, that slowly has everything around you nerfed until you can defeat it with a set of monkies pounding at the keyboard.

Take away flying. Take away the simplicity of just BYPASSING EVERYTHING. Make it so if you travel the wrong direction, you risk getting caught in a pack of something. If someone is higher level than you, and you run into them...don't make it so you can just fly away or hover mid air completely untouchable. It gets rid of any sense of danger. Some of the most memorable moments in WoW were when I was scared shitless of some massively overgeared character finding me, but still being able to _defend_ myself by casting snares, running away, or getting to safety at a town. Constantly having to watch out for a same-level character who wanted a fight when I was in the middle of an existing fight was also very fun. Frustrating at times, but massively fun.

It's not an MMO if you don't have to deal with other players. If you can successfully gear up, without ever having to chat, the MMO has failed. Right now, in WoW, you can successfully gear up without having any real interaction with players at all, and that sucks.

I can void my warranty on multiple pieces of hardware in my computer simply by overclocking. There are now hardware-level fuses that can't be reset on video cards, cpus, etc. I think that counts.

The things that 3D printers excel at are really anything close to Robotics. There's the OpenRC project which is a fully open source RC car, there's the InMoov which is a full upper torso of a humanoid robot (http://inmoov.blogspot.com/). They have a fully articulated GLaDoS ceiling robot. Tons of stuff like this. Also, almost anything you can do with a hobby laser cutter, you can extrude out to act like a laser cut piece of acrylic at whatever thickness you want and have it snap together just like something laser cut.

This is like people charging $100 for a porn movie. There will always be someone willing to provide it for free. It is a serious overstatement that advertising provides "free content" - the content will be there with or without advertisers because people enjoy the things they enjoy, and like to share it with others.

The same thing goes for smoke shops. Go in there and mention pot/weed/etc in any shape, fashion or form, and they'll kick you out right on the spot because the feds have pulled this trick on them quite often. His mistake was in not immediately stopping and ejecting the guy from his lessons.

Ever happen to be looking for a street in an unknown area, and you end up turning down your radio? This actually increases your visual acuity slightly even though many may question your sanity when doing it. Many blind people have increased auditory capacity, and this has been known for a very long time. It doesn't seem all that far fetched that one (or more) of those senses could override the other. Maybe that meal that you hate tastes absolutely amazing...but looks so terrible that you taste it differently.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

" A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization. "

Yes, he is a factual shill...by definition.

He didn't publicly announce it. It was found out after years of him hiding it due to the lawsuit between Oracle and Google.

Nobody really cites him anymore as a legitimate resource ever since he was outed as an Oracle paid shill. His focus isn't so much on praising Apple as much as it is shining negative light on Google. Seeing as this has basically nothing to do with Google, he likely simply didn't have anything to say, because he's not getting paid to say it.

District 10.

That's because Microsoft is the one pushing this "antitrust" bit, hoping that it'll stick. They've been doing it for the past 2 years.

Just a heads up, if you buy that much lube, they don't arrive like the lube you'd buy in a tube. They come as a dry powder with mixing instructions....