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User Journal

Journal Journal: Blizzcon

I'm not sure I'll have time for Diablo 3. I will definitely buy it (for use on patch tuesdays).

I wish I could be at Blizzcon. I'm currently in the WotLK beta and sadly haven't had much time to play it because I'm levelling up my rogue now that mutie rogues are OP and I like the idea of being OP (as my main is a pve/pvp lock lol ie: t6 or 550 resil atm, take your pick lol).

I played the beta for a very short period, and when I did, I realized two major things:

1) I don't have enough gold for the expansion on my live account, because I'll need loads of gold in order to buy all the stuff I'll need on both my toons.

2) Inscriptions sell for a boatload of money, with very high gross margin so that said -- you will need to have one toon that can do them or you're at the mercy of the free market (ouch, bad idea).

I've flown all over the beta, and each area looks very straight forward enough.

The focus then shifts towards getting my characters ready for what is to come.

I don't know how long this kind of insane pricing will last on the live realms for inscriptions, but I decided to get my alt ready to be my inscriptions toon, so I dropped enchanting and picked up herbalism which is now 375. I have an empty profession ready to go for when inscriptions become live.

Role Playing (Games)

Journal Journal: WotLK Beta

Hai. Finally got in the WotLK beta. Learning the quests to 80 and roughly how to play a lvl 80 warlock will maximize my time. DK is going to be lvl'd after I hit 80.

So far it's pretty amazing. It's really wierd seeing my character getting xp points. Man it's been so long since lvling to 70... I forget how much fun it was. The advance of stable questing mods since BC has also made things much easier.

Northrend looks great, but I sadly have not had much time to play. Some of the mods work and there is a list of them that doesn't take long to find through Google. I have a bar mod, xperl and some other less important ones.

Well off to Toronto for a weekend of partying and D&D!

Security

Journal Journal: Anti-Keylogger Reviews? 3

I am an avid World of Warcraft player, and I've been looking for some time at getting good Anti-Keylogging software. Right now I have what I consider to be a good setup to protect against security, but I'd like to tighten the noose a little. Does anyone have some good suggestions as to a software package that not only keeps people from hijacking my account, but also doesn't hurt my system performance while raiding the new content?

User Journal

Journal Journal: My platform

I'll add to this as ideas come to me.

There shall be a right to trial by jury in all cases.

Abolish sovereign immunity.

Restitution must be made to innocent people falsely accused, if no charges are filed, or if a person is found innocent the state must bear their legal fees, lost wages, etc. Similarly, those who sue and lose should bear the costs to the defendent.

The punishment for legal negligence should be equivalent to the potential damage caused by the negligence. If a prosecutor neglects to produce exculpatory evidence during discovery, then he should get the same penalty that the defendant would have gotten.

There should be something akin to habeas corpus for evidence.

The president gets 2 weeks vacation per year, as do congressmen.

Congressmen must show up for work, i.e. they must be present to vote unless they're on vacation.

Congressmen must read and understand every bill they vote for. Perhaps bills should be read aloud before a vote, or maybe there should be a quiz.

Probable cause should be just that, probable. If any judge issues warrants, or officer makes arrests, and these warrants or arrests lead to convictions in less than 50% of cases they must lose their authority to issue warrants or make arrests.

Given the widespread practice of 'testilying', it shall be presumed reasonable to doubt any testimony given by a police officer. Everything an officer does while on duty must be recorded.

All jurors should be informed of their responsibility to nullify unjust laws.

Passing a law that is found unconstitutional will result in impeachment.

No corporate personhood.

No victim, no crime. If there is no actual, specific, individual victim, no crime has occurred.

User Journal

Journal Journal: memory

For my future reference:
http://lwn.net/Articles/259710/

Books

Journal Journal: In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...

I'm currently reading In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...When It Counts as one of the first main books in my new O'Reilly Safari library account.

What an amazing book! Such insight! Such intrigue! I am going to make a zillion dollars with this secret knowledge of how to handle accusations from unruly people. I am certain that God himself would have wanted a copy of this to field all of Satan's accusations. Satan would have wanted a copy of it as well.

Spam

Journal Journal: Spammer Got Me! What Will they Think of Next? 6

Today I received a seemingly innocuous email from a complete stranger, regarding PHP. That did not strike me as odd at all because I am somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The message was a typical plea for help and it started off claiming to have seen me posting on the newsgroups and forums, which was possible but unlikely, as I haven't posted on the PHP newsgroup in months, so I was immediately suspicious of the email.

The sender claimed they had a couple questions and then asked me to answer them for them and that they would like to hire me to do more consulting if they liked my response.

I responded as I always do to such requests, with a link to rentacoder.com and I asked the sender to let me know what their username was so that we could begin a business relationship together. I figure that if I am going to be spending any time helping a stranger, I might as well get paid for it, or I will be the one choosing who and when to help!

The person or bot on the other end of the discussion responded with a strange comment that seemed unrelated. I quickly fired back that they need to do what was asked before I answered any of their questions and that I would not discuss business over email because it has proven to be less than fruitful (and it really has).

The person quickly fired back an angry response so I told them to piss off and that I knew their trick was to get free writing samples from me.

Amateurs!!! :-) I get paid if I have to write anything (except this journal)!!!

So beware of this trick and don't fall for it. If you don't know them, give them a challenge question.

User Journal

Journal Journal: JR Passengers to Generate Electricity

According to Orgismo.com, JR East Japan will generate electricity in stations from people walking through ticket gates by installing piezo elements in the floors. They are currently testing the system in the offices in Shibuya Station. If successful, this seems to have the potential to generate quite a bit of electricity; perhaps nowhere near enough to run the trains, but enough to run the ticket machines, ticket gates, networking, and perhaps even the lights in JR stations.

According to Wikipedia, about 3.4 million people pass through Shinjuku Station everyday. That is only one stop on the very busy Yamanote Line, which also has Shibuya Station (2.4 million passengers per day), Tokyo Station, and several other busy stations. Over 12 million people live in the 23 wards of Tokyo, and over 30 million people live in the greater Tokyo area, the majority of whom commute into and out of Tokyo by train.

By installing these in the ticket gates, there is the potential to generate a lot of power from relatively few generators, and it doesn't just have to be at train stations. Anywhere a large number of people is funneled through a small space will do nicely: ticket queues and gates at stadiums, amusement parks, airports, etc.

Of course, one thing that I am curious about is the durability of these generators. For example, JR Shibuya Station has somewhere in the neigborhood of 30 ticket gates spread over 4 exits. 2.4 million people walking through 30 gates everyday probably means a lot of wear and tear. How long do these generators last? How much to they cost to maintain?

Still, it seems like a brilliant way to generate an alternative source of electricity and perhaps take a large part of the load off of main power.

Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Discussion2 Beta Thoughts 1

Can I just say... it's about time! Oh it's sooooo nice!!!

AJAX and CSS perform wonderfully. There are still lots of little bugs but I think when they are ironed out it will be a pretty amazing experience. I'm quite pleased that Slashdot is evolving and you can really get a sense of how it will be so much better in the future.

User Journal

Journal Journal: d i v ... o r c .... e 8

Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's for the best. Not really sure but it's happening now. *sigh*

(any cute nerdy chicks in my fanlist? send pix hehe j/k)

Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Standardized Dupe Notice

New dupe notice:

I am afraid to comment on this duped Slashdot story due to Hindsight Bias.[1][2][3] (where each number is linked to the dupes available)

Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Getting to the Front Page 7

The new article stubs on the front page really work for me, but I'd like to see each new story remain a stub until enough 5-Insightful/Interesting/Informative comments become visible. In other words; everything starts sectional and earns the right to be on the front page based on quality -- not quantity (as others have suggested).

We should also have a new mod category: "Flag".

The Flag mod will indicate that an admin should read the comment because it's important. Typos, spelling, dupe notices etc can all fall under this category, and editors could re-thread the site to see these types of comments first. Reward moderators who correctly flag comments as a system notice with extra mod points. Keep the Flag comments collapsed for regular users, so the meat and potatoes comments all frequent higher.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Projects 2

Working on some new projects... a set of sales tools that might be picked up by a big corporation. Very cool stuff, yet no linkage yet. Does anyone know anything about interpersonal sales tools for retail? I've been studying up on it for this project, which I am in charge of, and it's fascinating me. PK is getting pretty damn spiffy when a n00b can go from being hired to appearing like an expert almost immediately... although there is a level of intelligence for using this kind of tool. Just working out UI issues now, and coming up with ideas.

From the customer perspective, what would you want to be able to do with a salesperson say for COMPUTER SALES, in order to make your sales experience better?

Anyway, hope all is well with you guys and let me know what's going on in your lives! ;-)

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