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Comment Re:Can't see the point of playing a game open RMT (Score 1) 158

"Whaa, I don't have time to play this game, but I want to appear important and competent among my peers when playing the game, so I cheat"

You, dear sir, are a scumbag. Please find a hobby you have time for. Or try playing honestly for a change.

As for how WoW was when Tier 5 raid items were all the rage - Blizzard already nerfed it all to suit all the "I don't have time" guys. It is true that back when SSC and TK were new, you *had* to farm consumables for 4-5 hours a week to have the necessary items for proper raiding. You no longer need to do that. There is no need to farm consumables or just about anything for that matter. It's all casuali-zed by now. Heck, for the first three raid instances you do not need flasks, food buffs or mana potions at all - just drool and bash your head at the keyboard, then loot purple items.

Comment Re:Consumers want to cheat (Score 2, Insightful) 158

Not really.

In WoW the gold has been non-issue since.. at least an year ago. The only situation where it matters any more is when you buy BOE epics or extremely rare drops from AH (which have highly inflated prices due to the ease of obtaining gold). And with these, the more you buy gold, the higher these prices inflate to - and they are all luxury items for scrubs that don't have the necessary social skills to raid. All gear that you actually want to wear, assuming you have a choice, is Bind on Pickup anyway - you have to kill the boss to loot the item, can't just buy it.

As for all other use of gold in WoW - item repairs, consumables, crafting... it is insignificant compared to the amount you get from just playing the game. There is NO NEED to farm gold in WoW any more. Period. Only players in my large WoW guild who are commonly broke are the PvP idiots who do nothing but arena all day long - unsurprisingly that doesn't reward them with gold while they keep spending gold to enchant and gem their shiny PvP epics. So you have to go do some PvE from time to time to fund your PvP activities? Oh. My. God.

As for the leveling... it's a major piece of the content of the game. Sure, people gripe that their alt number four or five is a pain to level as you have already done all the content a couple of times, but do you really need that alt number four or five? And if you think you do, why do you think you are entitled to cheat (by using a powerleveling service)?

Comment Consumers want to cheat (Score 3, Insightful) 158

There is "consumer demand" because lazy bum players who "can't be assed" to play the game want to cheat by buying ingame assets and currency with real money.

Once it becomes okay to cheat, only the cheaters will stay around. It's fine to cheat in single player games - all you are really doing is cheating yourself out of the proper experience. Cheating in multiplayer games (especially persistent multiplayer games) you'll just participate in destroying the game you are playing.

The only reason game companies are even looking at this is because enforcing the rules is expensive. Too many lazy bums around that need the banstick. Plus they look at how Asian companies rake in the money from idiots out there who all like to play "whoever has the most disposable income wins"-style game. SOE already tried this with EQ2 and it really didn't work - cheaters kept cheating on the regular servers and the gameplay and community on the "enabled" servers was a cesspit of teenagers trying to convert excess free time into dollars and lazy idiots feeding the teenagers with too much disposable income. Professional farmers stayed on the normal servers as black market prices were always higher and the "consumer demand" was higher on the servers where you could actually buy an advantage.

Cheating with real money is an advantage only when it is cheating. When everyone is doing it, it's just a stupid way to milk more money from all the people who bother to play the "game".

Moon

Geminid Explosions On Moon Visible To Amateurs 28

saskboy writes "The ET scanning project SETI@Home was wildly popular, and the mock project Yeti@Home much less so, but soon there will be a chance for the enthusiastic amateur astronomer to combine those two scanning techniques and spot explosions on the moon with simple telescope and camera equipment at home." From the article: "'On Dec. 14, 2006, we observed at least five Geminid meteors hitting the Moon,' reports Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. Each impact caused an explosion ranging in power from 50 to 125 lbs of TNT and a flash of light as bright as a 7th-to-9th magnitude star... 'The amazing thing is,' says Cooke, 'we've [caught explosions] using a pair of ordinary backyard telescopes, 14-inch, and off-the-shelf CCD cameras. Amateur astronomers could be recording these explosions, too.'... [NASA will] soon release data reduction software developed specifically for amateur and professional astronomers wishing to do this type of work. The software runs on an ordinary PC equipped with a digital video card. 'If you have caught a lunar meteor on tape, this program can find it.'"
Space

Brightest Supernova Discovered 63

Maggie McKee writes "Astronomers have spotted the brightest supernova ever seen — it is intrinsically two to three times brighter than any previously recorded. It has many characteristics of a type Ia explosion, but has hydrogen in its spectrum, unlike other type Ia's. That suggests that this supernova resulted from the collision of two stars — most likely a white dwarf and a red giant — rather than from an exploding white dwarf. If so, it might affect the interpretation of previous cosmological studies that depend on type Ia 'standard candle' observations, like dark energy. But other astronomers say merger-triggered explosions are probably rare and therefore won't throw a wrench in the works."
Music

Submission + - RIAA Admits 70-cents price is "in the range

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In its professed battle to protect the "confidentiality" of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by defendant is "in the range".(pdf)(Pages 6 & 7). Are they really concerned about the confidentiality of this exceedingly well known fact, or are they just trying to keep the cost of defending their lawsuits high?"
United States

U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines 123

joshdick writes to point out a NYTimes story on the decertification of Ciber Inc. from testing electronic voting systems. It will come as a surprise to no-one here on Slashdot that experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use. From the article: "A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests... The federal Election Assistance Commission made this decision last summer, but the problem was not disclosed then... Ciber... says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon."

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