Anyone else enjoying SWTOR as much as I am?

Sith Inquisitor, Sorcerer Heals... the whole game is just amazingly fun.

And no pandas to be seen, at least in the immediate future.

Rioters in England cause millions of dollars worth of damage in 2011. 3000 arrested.

Bankers in England cause billions of dollars worth of damage in 2008. Zero arrested.

This is what passes for justice these days.

"God Hates Fags" -- Protected Speech
"Bong Hits for Jesus" -- Not Protected Speech

What the fuck is wrong with this country?

EDIT: I accidentally submitted this journal entry as a story because of all the changes in the Slashdot UI. I assumed that Slashcode would be more intuitive than this. The following is my latest journal entry, now that I've figured out where it goes.

Hello folks, just touching base with my Slashdot journal. It's been a long time since I've written anything here and I'd like to start by saying I've made a lot of changes in my life since then.

I quit World of Warcraft, fully stocked my kitchen with fresh veggies and healthy food, joined a gym, started working with a trainer and I'm fucking happier than I've ever been! :)

My job is going well, I'm getting ready to buy a new 4wd SUV and I'm happy with my life again, thanks to my family and IRL friends. Any suggestions on fuel efficient vehicles that fit this description are welcome.

I missed Slashdot quite a bit since I was last here and just to let you know I've been over at Reddit, but that's kinda fun and stuff although it's not the same as the nerdy goodness of this fucking awesome website.

I wanna wish all you guys health, wealth and happiness.

It used to be that metamoderation was just that, moderation of moderation. I haven't metamoderated in a while, but something has gone horribly wrong. When I go to metamod today, none of the comments are moderated. All I see is "Score: 1". What use is it for me to judge whether a comment has been moderated appropriately , when there's no moderation applied?

Just another reason Slashdot 2.0 sucks.

I'm sorry to have been away for so long, but I have returned! Now that unpleasantness is over I can read over all my emails, and such. Hmmm. Nothing here? WHAT?

Nobody missed me, nobody cared. It was like a million voices continued on while I was away from Slashdot. I suppose being on a spec in the middle of a sandy beach of specs in the floating massiveness of universialitude, I could not be missed had I evaporated and rained all over the prairies. Alas, some things on Slashdot have changed.

What is all this Javascript? Looks good! Things appear to be much more interesting! Hey I've got achievements!!! LOL

A government exists to protect it's citizens. Any government that doesn't, doesn't deserve to exist. Let's look at the US government.

In 2004 crime in the US cost its victims almost 16 billion dollars. [cite(pdf, table 82)]

The criminals behind the current financial crisis have cost the US *trillions* of dollars. Clearly, theft, fraud, and all other property crimes are insignificant in the face of this disaster, and our government did nothing to stop it, and is holding no one accountable. They have utterly failed in their responsibility to protect us.

The WTC attacks on 9/11/01 killed nearly 3000 Americans and caused losses reaching 1.7 trillion dollars in the stock market. [cite]
In response, Bush went to war with Iraq. This war has killed over 4500 Americans and will cost over 3.5 trillion dollars. [cite(pdf, p.1)] Not only did the US government fail to protect us, they harmed us worse than Bin Laden did.

Let's keep going. In 2007, 775,138 people were arrested for marijuana possession. In contrast, 597,447 were arrested for *all violent crimes combined. [cite]. As you can see, the US government victimizes more of its citizens than it protects.

So what's left to justify the existence of this government? Majority rule perhaps? Well, Barack Obama got 62.98 million votes in 2008. The voting age population in 2008 was 230,117,876.[cite] That's 27% of our population that voted for this president. That can in no way be interpreted as a mandate to rule.

From all these facts and figures, one conclusion is clear. The US government has no claim to legitimacy whatsoever.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

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.

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.