Isn't this more a case of:

1) unknown 4-letter username + unknown 16 character password

2) known 4-letter username + unknown 16 character password

There's no reason why you should make the password on an unknown username less secure and no reason to leave a username like root or administrator for the botnets to take cracks at.

That's a slightly different problem. A quick google search for "Malwarebytes" shows legitimate results for at least the first 3 pages (I can't even find download links on any of those pages for scam products... though adblock plus may be interferring slightly). The problem I've seen with quite a few of the recent virii is that they redirect all the pages you can download malwarebytes from (and other legitimate anti-virus product pages) to fake pages offering an anti-virus scam. I can't really blame somebody for being fooled by that despite the URL change and the fact that the page is for a completely different product than the link, but that is still less than the average user will recognize. Regardless, if the malwarebytes pages are showing scam products it probably means the computer is already compromised.

The online gaming community definitely needs an overhaul as far as maturity is concerned. But yeah, at this point I coordinate game purchases with the few friends I play online with just so we can have a more friendly laid back match on occasion or some mode where we can screw around. Even then its hard to find times especially with differences in time zones. The single player does at least a little preparation for online play and the games that include the ability to play bots definitely helps, but none of that truly prepares people for playing against other people.

Matchmaking is a valid complaint as there isn't really any good way to rank players, especially when somebody gets good say with a shotgun and switches to learn a sniper rifle or switching factions in an RTS. Clans are supposed to help deal with that by helping introduce new players to the game and help them learn, but they usually require too much of a time commitment for the casual player. And there are smaller servers to join for PC gamers, I guess it is pretty hard to find a group of just average players to play unless you organize the group yourself.

I guess I do fit the single guy comment (hey, this is slashdot after all) and I can still find a saturday afternoon every now and then to devote 6-8 hours to learning to play at a competitive level, or maybe I just used to play enough similar games that I can catch on pretty quick, but I've never had to much of a problem learning to play at an average level. (The 6-8 hours seems to be needed for the small intricacies of learning nuances of the game or memorizing map layouts required to compete at a really high level). But it really doesn't seem that bad of a time commitment when compared playing basketball for a few hours or having a few people over for a 3 hour game of monopoly or risk or my new favorite addiction settler's of catan or even going to watch football or baseball game or movie. Though its definitely true that all of the time that list of stuff is a lot higher on the list of things to do than spend an hour learning how to rocket jump switch to a shock rifle and kill somebody with a plasma combo while still airborne.

Guess I find myself rambling again, but I guess it might just be because I'm really competitive that getting killed repeatedly without firing a shot just makes me try to figure out what I'm doing wrong than want to give up. I'm actually more likely to continue playing a game where everyone online destroys me than one where I win easily, just cause I don't want to give up till I can do better. meh.

This.

In any game there will be people of varying skill levels and for the most part those with more skills and practice will win. If you don't want to play with people that are competitive and a lot better than you, you have to set up your own game or server to play with your friends and experiment at an easier level.

There seems to be a disconnect between video games and any other kind of game. With the exception of games that are pretty much all luck (monopoly and yahtzee I'm looking at you), I'd imagine the people that complain about losing horribly on an FPS or RTS game will likely hate a majority of games they initially lose at. Sure if you play with your friends they can go easy on you, but you can't exactly jump into a pickup basketball game and do well. Or join a chess or bowling league and not lose. Or instantly be able to play card games like pinochle, hearts, bridge, poker instantly. Or be able win a trivia football game against people that have played fantasy football for years.

Any time you play a game against other people and there is skill involved the new and worse players will lose the majority of the time. By its very nature playing against other people is a competition. The idea that people should be able to do well without being competitive in something that is by its very nature competitive astounds me. Video games are the only thing I have ever come across where people assume they should be able to routinely beat others better than them without trying their hardest to win. Nobody expects to pick up any sport and beat somebody who has played competitively or instantly be able to beat anyone at a game of stratego or khet. But put a controller/keyboard/mouse and put a video on the screen and everyone assumes they can join the largest group of players around and not lose.

And people need to realize that joining largest most populated server around is the equivalent to entering a giant open to anyone tournament. You will get beaten down pretty quick when you don't know what you are doing. If you want the slow introduction to anything you play against your friends who can go easy on you or are learning it like you or have somebody help train you - which is what a lot of clans in various games do for new players.

And sure there are a few games out there designed to be pick up and play. A lot of them are really fun to. Go get a wii and some of nintendo's games. Because if you want to relax an do well playing against somebody instantly FPS and RTS games are NOT what you are looking for.

I think most of the people (myself included) that think the games are getting easier are those that can play through the hardest difficulty settings without too much difficulty. I don't think anyone is arguing that there shouldn't be an easier mode for people to play through otherwise goldeneye levels wouldn't be referenced so often. Agent on goldeneye could make you feel invincible after playing 00 agent.

Levels used to require multiple tries and prior planning because sometimes you had to think how to deal with what's ahead of you. I've played through all the halo games on legendary and never once felt I couldn't get by just winging it (granted I haven't finished the halo 3 campaign yet as I've only spent about 2 hours on it so far). Playing through COD4 on the hardest difficulty I beat it in less than a day and only died on a few parts. The only level that really felt like a challenge was the bonus plane level at the end. Goldeneye made me thing about which enemies to take down in what order, what cover to hide behind and whether I'm better off charging forward or advancing slowly. Halo I can just charge forward and if it ever gets too tough I can just duck behind whatever is close.

Maybe it's also because I'm not that much of a halo fan, but the skulls for me never felt like they were part of the game, but instead just cheats that make things more difficult. Skulls are something that requires you hunt down and find them before you can use them. It just doesn't occur to me that I should play through on, well I guess you'd consider it an easier difficulty, just to hunt down objects in obscure locations so I could play back through the same thing with a challenge. That and even since goldeneye games had things to make the game harder that you could turn on, but weren't considered part of the difficulty of the game. Saying play legendary with all skulls on just sounds like playing goldeneye with enemy rockets turned on. Sure, it gives more of a challenge (00-agent train level is impossible (well unless you are this guy) but people don't usually consider this part of the difficulty of the game

Easy difficulties are good so that everyone can play through the game, but on the hardest difficulty there is nothing wrong with making it so hard that people get frustrated and have to get up and leave before they try again. Sure, some of the audience might get frustrated and give up, but some of us liked trying to overcome levels that seemed impossible like keeping Natalya alive or the water level in teenage mutant ninja turtles or pretty much all of ninja gaiden, because as angry as it makes everyone to actually fail to beat it, it feels that much greater when you do. There is nothing wrong with having levels that 90% of gamers can't beat on the hardest difficulty. That's why its the hardest difficulty.

I haven't really played in awhile, but last I had played the "play offline" feature didn't actually allow you to play offline unless you already connect to the blizzard server, and restarting the application removes the offline feature till you connect again. Emailing blizzard support just got me a response saying offline play was not implemented in the game despite the "play offline" message. That and even things like playing games against the AI requires a connection to be able to pull up the map list to play a map you haven't played yet.

I can't imagine people being banned for using the cheats in single player even had much of a desire to be connected to blizzards servers to play in the first place. Blizzard is forcing people to be connected to their servers and seems surprised somehow that people would want to play in ways blizzard didn't intend.

Funny you should mention that as Nintendo did sue them and lost. If anything goes right, maybe this lawsuit will turn out the same way.

There is now a handy little executable called killnotes.exe floating around IBM (not sure if it's official), but it is unofficially standard for IBM employees on their computers. It just kills all notes processes so that it can start back up again. (after crashing notes would leave processes still open which is the reason for not being able to start back up. or at least its that way now - versions 7 and 8).
Problems with notes are the bane of my workday

Oddly enough just after reading I stumbled upon this article: Driving a Real World Car like a Video Game Car.

I'm not really sure when google first added this feature, but you have been able to add a background picture for awhile now. I'm just not sure if that feature was introduced before or after bing. However, up until today you had to be signed into google to see the background picture and had to find the options and customize your google homepage before.
In fact the customized google homepage can add a lot of the different things you see on the yahoo homepage like news and weather, but with customization as to what you do and don't see. This seemed more like an attempt to promote an already existing feature of personalized google search. Though it is probably not a well liked feature, i would imagine. I stay away from it myself.

Most places I've been will accept $100 bills for even smaller payments of $10-$20. The one place I've found that won't is the DMV. Why a government office is the one place that won't accept $100 bills is beyond me.

That would require Gamestop to actually know whether or not the code for it had already been used. While, unlikely there is a possibility that the original owner never used the code for dlc in which case the packaging would be correct. It can't be expect for gamestop to know whether the code had been redeemed or not. This is also why I've seen a lot of used game stores not carry PC games because they have no way of knowing whether a cd key in a used game is still valid.

and now I feel like an idiot. My post links to a page saying that my original article was a fake.

I wonder why you would find suck a law hideously broken. There was a story in montana of an 11 year old girl who shot and killed 2 intruders in her home. She didn't even know it at the time, but one was armed with a handgun and the two had stabbed a guy to death in a previous break-in. The fact that they probably would have killed her has nothing to do with the fact that hadn't threatened her with a weapon and I doubt you'd suggest we put an 11 year old girl in court and executed for murder charges for that.