I know exactly how the guy feels. I went to an accredited trade school to learn computer hardware and networking. When I graduated I didn't get a degree, but they did offer further courses to obtain the degree. The length was ok, it was just another six months of classes but it was all Gen-Ed. Literature.. Art.. Biology. Courses that I already took in high school. Now granted they aren't "college" level classes in high school but still, I had to pay more money to take classes I did not want, that would not help the subject my career was going to be in? No. I just said no. I barely afforded tuition for what I had already passed, not only could I no longer afford further classes (nor get more loans) but how was dissecting a frog or learning more in depth insight of Plato's works was going to help me fix a networking issue for a computer? It wasn't. So to this day I still do not have a degree, even I could afford the classes by saving up some now I still don't want nor see why they are necessary. Are they going to compensate me for the waste of time? I may not be able to get the best of jobs without a degree but which seems better, wasting all that time and paying to do it or continuing to work making money and not wasting time? (yes, spare me the "well if you do it now in the future you'll make more money so its not a waste" arguments).

Degrees are nothing but a racket created by what passes for an educational system in America. Life isn't about what you know or how good you do something but how many fancy pieces of paper with your name on them you grinded out. It's like an MMORPG.. but with paper. Spend X years getting Degree Y, earn awesome Reward Z ...

It does not matter. Terms of Service. Trust me I'm a customer of an ISP just like the next joe schmoe, and sure a cap can suck. But ya know what? I got myself into this. Every ISP, cell phone company, land line phone company, etc etc etc all has a Terms of Service, and one of the key things in pretty much every ToS is that the ToS can change at any time to reflect any changes the company wants, and you agree that it is ok with you that they do this and that you agree they are allowed to do this. Do caps suck? Yes. Does having sporadic speeds at times not reflect the advertised speeds suck? Yes. You however are the consumer. It is your responsibility to decide, if the service sucks do I continue to use it or do I move on to another ISP? Complaining to the ISP will not solve anything. Canceling service, and telling them this is exactly why you are canceling service, will not solve anything. For every one customer that cancels, AT&T and other large ISPs have dozens and dozens of brand new customers signing up. It would take mass droves of people leaving which, simply will not happen. Your options are as follows; Deal with whatever terms the ISP hands out. Discontinue service with that ISP and find service with another ISP. Most ISPs are going to have the same terms if not similar terms. And sadly some people WILL live in areas of the country where you may only have one choice of an ISP due to location and services offered in that area. That sucks and I can understand the hassle but unless you are willing to move, you can't really complain too much about having just one ISP in some out of the way boonies rural area, if it bothered you THAT much, you'd relocate. Do I think things should be better? Yes, they should. But this is the country we live in. You make due with what you've got.

I for one welcome our Apple over... OOOOOOH it has Angry Birds!

I know technology changes all the time, old stuff becomes obsolete, I work in IT in a minor way so I'm not a complete tech idiot. With that said however, Blu Ray is simply too expensive. You figure that if you really want to use it to it's potential, you need an HDTV. Yes they are much more common these days and cheaper than they have been in the past but considering how you'd really need two major pieces of equipment (an HDTV and a Blu Ray player) to really truly use Blu Ray, that's a hefty investment upfront. The real kicker after the fact is Blu Ray movies and tv shows cost a good bit more than DVD. Again prices have lowered some over the years but when a Blu Ray new release movie is $30 and the DVD of the same movie is $14-16? Yea it becomes expensive to buy them.

I also have a Naga and I love it. The 12 buttons on the right thumb side are a good size, so even fat fingers like mine and press them. It definitely has a very nice natural ergonomic feel to it and the rubber top and in-groove left/right click make it a dream to handle. A fully remappable 17 keys, was worth the price.

hail our new submarine octopus overlords

Boxer is friggin epic. I've never even come close to a competitive level in Starcraft but he truly is the Terran Emperor is there ever was one. The strats he came up with weren't just game shattering they were revolutionary.

No one feels alienated.

Um, I do? The one reason I don't use facebook or myspace etc is both A) I can count the number of friends I have on one hand (none of them use these either) and B) I know no one who uses these. There is no purpose for me to use it. I'm a nerd, a geek, a social outcast. I do not fit in with the normal crowd of people who use these. I work a full time job and when I'm at home I'm usually playing mmorpgs while watching reruns of some science fiction tv show on tv, eating ramen noodles or a hotpocket. Not everyone, fits in. Not everyone wants to fit in. Facebook and Myspace are not "for" everyone.

People who dislike open pvp are why most MMORPG's these days are carebear funfests of total safezones and little to no pvp which you usually have to flag for.

What you consider a "griefing fucktard" we consider part of the game. If the game allows us to kill someone, guess what, we may make use of that ability. This is why I do not play WoW. I did for a while, but not being able to kill people in my same "faction" was a deal breaker. If someone was annoying you, what could you do? /ignore their username? What if they physically followed you around? It's a perpetual world so you couldn't just change instances (unless you went into an actual dungeon/raid without the person). So THEY could theoretically grief you. Sure, you can report them and maybe, maybe, a GM might give them a warning or whatever. Seriously though, the ability to kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason, is what attracts a lot of us to MMORPG's.

There are a few games that cater to this. Eve Online isn't half bad and Darkfall is decent. I personally loved UO and Shadowbane simply for the open pvp. I loved Shadowbane for it's player politically run servers. There was no real PvE content, you killed mobs en mass to level and you pvp till you were exhausted. The servers were ran by players, we decided who controlled what territory, who had rights to what resources. We chose our own paths in the game.

Then you log into game's like WoW where you can only fight persons X, Y, and Z and only in locations A, B, or C. It's so carebear it might as well be Hello Kitty Online with Orcs and Humans. We rofl at people who QQ over being killed in pvp. It's hilarious to watch people break down in a nerdrage of delicious tears over precious pixels they might lose on a digital screen. You would be shocked at grown men weeping over binary 1's and 0's which compose their +5 Sword Mastery gloves they suddenly dropped because they weren't keeping an eye on their surroundings and got wtfganked.

Yes, casual gamers and non-pvp fans make up the majority of mmo games. Sad as it may be. But there IS a market for these games. Darkfall, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth, Neocron, Shadowbane, UO, Eve Online, and more and more and more. There ARE games for the die hardcore pvpers.

As Shadowbane taught us, play to crush. If your ego can't check being killed, you need to go install Runescape or MS Hearts.

I work tech support for a phone company who shall remain unnamed. The primary "software" we use is all web apps that are run on their local intranet.

And the worst part being, all these web apps were written for IE6. Some will function in Firefox/Chrome/Opera/etc but the primary ones we use the most every day, don't.

AND, they will never update it. Why? The hired a third party programmer to write the primary web app we use, and it was basically contract work. He wrote it, gave X amount of troubleshooting help with it, and that was it. If we need major fixes to it or additions to it, we can't. And if this software goes down, which it does on a weekly basis, we end up having to schedule a ton of call backs with customers we're speaking with on the phone since we can't help them without this piece of software generally.

Now, we all have personal directories on a virtual server we can use for storage of work related files (guides for routers, phone manuals, etc) and most people do in fact install Portable FireFox here and use it for their casual browsing of the internet between calls. Even our supervisors and managers do this as well as us peons. BUT, it is technically against company policy to install outside software of any kind and use it.. even if it is by far more secure and easier to use than what they offer. No one has gotten fired for it but my point being that there was grounds for it, compared to using the shitacular IE6. And trust me, you should see the spyware scan logs of the massive network of user pc's we have.. It just amazes me a company is so cheap it won't pay to have its software updated to accomodate security. It'd hate to be in the actual IT department at this place, their entire day must be spyware/virus removal.

Thats a first for me then.. most games tend to have an NDA, I figured the juggernaut that is Blizzard certainly would.

Sorry I don't mean to be a dick, mod me down if you absolutely must but.. the Lego MMORPG was announced a while back, complete with a very awesome trailer for it. I love /. but in some cases the news on some things trickles in so slow other sites have reported it long before there is an article here.

um.. if you're in closed beta, and you're releasing all this beta information, aren't your breaking the NDA you signed when you got accepted into closed beta?

As I posted on the WoW forums;

I will NOT pay for an authenticator because OTHER people cannot keep their shit protected. Use Firefox, use a firewall, don't download suspicious files, don't visit suspicious websites and use a decent anti virus.

If Blizzard decides to make us ALL pay for the mistakes of a FEW, then when they try to charge me $5 or 6 or whatever, they can cancel my account to at that point.

I can afford the $6.50, it's a matter of principle and integrity at this point, we shouldn't be punished for the actions of others.

You'd think they want a broad audience.. I've been really interested in trying out Entropy, but they don't support Vista O_O