I concede that it was not ironic at all.

So can I infer that all my calls are going through an HBGary trunk? Interesting...

I was sitting in our office when all of a sudden all the phones in the office rang at the same time. The number that came up was 800.555.1212, or 800-Directory Assistance. Since there are only a handful of us in the office today, it was ironic that only a few of us experienced it. According to our phone clocks, this happened about 2:55PM EDT. That's a little off from the article report time of attack but is it merely a coincidence? I'm curious if any other Slashdotters out there experienced this same phenomenon today.

One time I was riding with my brother down a familiar stretch of busy road. All of a sudden we saw a burst of smoke and someone tumbled out of the car in front of us. After dodging her we realized that there was no one driving the car anymore and it was approaching a busy intersection. We looked at each other, nodded, and I proceeded to pull alongside it. He jumped from his door into the car and attempted to regain control, while I sped ahead to get in front of the car with my own, just in case he couldn't. As he regained control of the car I let it run into the back of mine while flashing my lights. He pulled the car over after the intersection and we proceeded to look for the previous occupant. A state trooper then arrived on-scene. Apparently the driver thought her car was going to explode so she jumped from it. She had some cuts and a little road rash but was no worse for wear. The state trooper told my brother he was a hero, to which he nonchalantly responded "I was just doing what was right." Just another day.

Do polls work so well because the people voting in the earlier polls influence the later polls?

If the predictions were shared in real-time with the people they were to predict upon, would they still have the same accuracy?

It seems to me that predicting is only useful when its use is unknown to those it's used on.

Tabloid?

I'm from NH and I can tell you that my fondest memories of my grandfather are traveling into the White Mountains and partaking of all the views, the most spectacular of which was The Old Man of the Mountain. Just staring up at the rocks while my grandfather drove I-93 and watching as they changed from rocks to a discernible profile remains a very good memory. It's sad that no new kids will experience this again.

As for replacing it, I disagree with anything that has to do with replacing on the mountain face The Old Man; I don't think it's worth the resources. IMO the best idea is to take the pieces that fell and construct a scale model with similar attributes and set it next to the lake below where the original stood.

Does this give Oracle the ability to offer total package "solutions" to their customers? Do they no longer need to go into a meeting with a potential or existing customer with a preferred hardware vendor at their side to make a co-deal? IMO this gives a lot of power to Oracle and sets up against each other two massive players in the development market.

I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't bid on Sun. I would speculate that they would want Sun for the MySql and Java markets. Had they bid and won they would control a vast proportion of the development market, from Database through to front-end, and over the next release or two of Visual Studio could unify Java and C#. As for the hardware, they could have spun it off to an interested party at an attractive price. IMO since Bill Gates left there's been a vision vacuum and the company is scrambling to find it's path through brute force instead of innovation and this is why they didn't entertain an offer.

Perhaps some of the things Blizzard are considering are how to maintain existing players while bringing in new ones.

I think there is an obvious advantage to experienced players because there are nuances they can take advantage of the newer players might not yet know. What happens when an experienced player grows up, gets a 9-5 job, starts a family? They evolve from hard-core gamer to casual gamer.

Adding variable difficulty dungeons raises the competitive player vs. game challenge value. Adding achievements raises the competitive passive player vs. player challenge value. Adding the ability to dual-spec allows users to become more versatile within the game with a single character instead of making multiple characters for different uses. Adding more quests creates a longer story. Adding more races allows new story perspectives.

I have never raided a dungeon before so there's still content that I've never experienced. Being a casual gamer I can't commit more than a couple of hours per gaming session, maybe once or twice a week. When I have kids this will become less but as long as the stories are interesting and entertaining I'll continue playing. I believe this same technique is used in TV shows?

One question to those people who state "If Blizzard continues with this crap I'll be leaving WoW:" Where will you go?