Killjoy76 - Slashdot User

Maryland Police Put Activists' Names On Terror List 426

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @05:46PM from the bad-incentive-to-remain-peaceful dept.

aaandre writes with word of a Washington Post story which begins: "The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday. The police also entered the activists' names into the federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, which tracks suspected terrorists. One well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a 'primary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-government' and a 'secondary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-war protesters.'" According to the article, "Both [former state police superintendent Thomas] Hutchins and [Maryland Police Superintendent Terrence] Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries." Reader kcurtis adds "The State Police say they are purging the data, but this is one more example (on top of yesterday's news that datamining for terrorists is not feasible due to false positives) of just how badly the use of these lists can be abused."

Age of Conan Dev Talks Problems, Future Plans 83

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @03:56PM from the polishing-is-an-endless-task dept.

Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom's product director, recently spoke about some of the problems with Age of Conan and how they are planning to make the game better. "I think it's okay to say that we simply didn't deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features." He goes on to talk about how they're working on improvements to the PvP system, tradeskills, and class balance. Tharaldsen also spoke with Strategy Informer about the development of the Xbox 360 version of the game, which he said was "not our key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game, and we rightly have the focus on them."

Asteroid Explodes Over Sudan 114

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @02:34PM from the did-it-make-a-noise dept.

radioweather writes "A recently discovered Apollo Asteroid, 2008 TC3, exploded over Sudan at about 1046 EDT on October 7, 2008, according to astronomer Tim Spahr of Harvard University 2008 TC3 was discovered on Monday by an observer at the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. 2008 TC3 is notable in that it is the first Asteroid of its size that was identified before impact and tracking it put the entire Spaceguard tracking system to an extreme test. TC3 is estimated to be only two to five meters in diameter but exploded with the force of a one kiloton of explosive power." We mentioned the asteroid last on Monday, when it was only at a 99.8 percent chance of colliding with Earth.

Comment Problems with MMO games in general (Score 2, Interesting) 307

by Killjoy76 on Thursday September 26, 2002 @11:55PM (#4341793) Attached to: Dell Partners with Square

I have a problem with all Massively Multiplayer Online Only games... and I think a lot of other people have the same problem with them... monthly fees! I don't want any game where I HAVE to have an Internet connection (broadband preferably) and also HAVE to pay a monthly fee just to play a game. You may also even be required to pay for the game up front too. This just doesn't seem like something that the general consumer wants to bear. I like gaming a lot, and I like playing my games online... but I only play the ones that are free to play online (Unreal Tournament, Medal of Honor, Warcraft 3, etc.). I have played Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, and EverQuest but it turned out that I had a lot more fun playing those types of games (RPGs) by myself. Also, a huge problem with MMO games, is their longevity. Think about it, if you have your NES, Sega, TurboGrafix, NeoGeo, etc. games still and the consoles, you can still play them now. This will probably (95% sure) not be the case with all your MMO games. How many of those will still be around and playable 5-10 years from now. My guess, not many. There goes your time and money investment.

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