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[JoshuaFH]

Woot.  I've gotten yet another reason to hate on micro-transactions in games.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/01/24/popcap-killing-off-baking-life-not-offering-refunds-or-exchanges-for-customers-money/

I have a hard generating sympathy for people who spent real cash to buy virtual cupcake pans. For making virtual cupcakes. The same way that if I bought some TF2 hats, and Valve one day shuts down TF2, I'm not going to expect a refund. That's just asinine.

Its not just that though, its like you buying a $50 dollar steam gift card for TF2, and after spending $20 of it, steam says, "Oh well, its no longer valid, sucks to be you, and no, you don't get your remaining credit back or get to spend it on any other games".

But seriously, 100,000 players daily MAKING CUPCAKES?

I'd like to jump into this discussion, something I'm not normally apt to do, to say that I play MTG:O. That is, Magic the Gathering: Online. It's a digital card game, one that is completely separate from it's physical counterpart, but has a following that is just as devoted.

I make no joke when I say that some users on MTG:O have spent thousands of dollars on their digital cards. If Wizards of the Coast, it's hosting company, ever decided to simply discontinue this service, I would fear for Wizards' continued presence as a company.

It's certainly not the first time that the validity of digital goods have come into question:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/consumer-issues/docs/c/10-1125-consumer-rights-in-digital-products

This is an extremely harsh business decision by Popcap, one that will undoubtedly damage it's customer's confidence in them, and sets a terrible precedent for similar operations. It's certainly not asinine!

I remember reading an article, but I just can't for the life of me find it anywhere, that details how I believe it was either South Korea or some other Asian country that made laws that legally recognized the validity and ownership of digital goods.

[Siquo]

BAM. Applying is hard, but I done it.

[Duke 2.0]

 I'm officially dropping my classes for this semester tonight. Going to be taking the spring off because my whole family agrees that I'm not really into classes this year. No point in going if I'm just gonna fall apart a month or two from now. Plans are had for helping my sister up in New York for most of the time, so my computer access is gonna be limited. Still, first chance to spend months away from home. Longest I spent previously was last summer when I went to Europe for a month.

[ToonyMan]

I'm officially dropping my classes for this semester tonight. Going to be taking the spring off because my whole family agrees that I'm not really into classes this year. No point in going if I'm just gonna fall apart a month or two from now. Plans are had for helping my sister up in New York for most of the time, so my computer access is gonna be limited. Still, first chance to spend months away from home. Longest I spent previously was last summer when I went to Europe for a month.

Have fun or else.  You'll become an alchemist eventually.

[Aqizzar]

I'm officially dropping my classes for this semester tonight. Going to be taking the spring off because my whole family agrees that I'm not really into classes this year. No point in going if I'm just gonna fall apart a month or two from now. Plans are had for helping my sister up in New York for most of the time, so my computer access is gonna be limited. Still, first chance to spend months away from home. Longest I spent previously was last summer when I went to Europe for a month.

That's a big damn step my man.  I've seen it go badly for a lot of people, but they never had a real plan for what they were going to do instead.  You seem to.  Good luck, and stay in touch.

[Aklyon]

I have all the confusion. But this made me amazed, so it more of less fits here.

[Urist Imiknorris]

the many subsequent brainfuck interpreters and compilers have come to use slightly different dialects of brainfuck.

Indeed.

[Phantom of The Library]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BEHOLD WHAT YOU WILL SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY ON FOR THE NEXT EVER
Both Gandalf and Gimli are awesome.  Imagine what Saruman will look like.

Curse you for showing this to me!  Now I'll be spending perfectly good money on Lego's again, and I had just managed to stop!

[Heron TSG]

I've been putting together a presentation for the local school board meeting about their rampant abuse of Websense to censor the internet at the high school beyond the requirements and constraints of the law. It's going pretty well, I'm even bringing in Supreme Court decisions and WACs. Should be an interesting meeting, what with the group of people going there to protest their illegal secret meetings they have after the normal meetings. Also, I hope someone tries to punch out the superintendent for being a total dick again. (Always fun to watch.)

It happens a lot.

[Reudh]

With a concerted effort of newbie VCE IT students, at my high school we figured out an exploit to bypass every restriction on the network.



Although I discovered the exploit, one of my friends popularised it, and even today 'Adam's Trick' is still used on the computers today.

[Heron TSG]

There are two ways of avoiding the filter:

1. Use a proxy. This will get the IT department yelling at you, and then you'll be threatened with suspension if you don; stop. I'm not sure if this is legal, because nobody has ignored their request yet.

2. Ha, there is no other way.

Websense filters in a peculiar way: everything on the school router has to be sent to the IT department's server (with Websense) before requests can be made to the wider network. If my push to revoke the censorship is turned aside, I plan on popularizing ways to get around it. I think a peer-to-peer system can be set up to ignore the server, but it would be tricky. Or, more simply, I could find ways to tunnel around the damn thing.

I'm not trying to allow people to watch porn or play games at school, not at all. I'm trying to allow people to look up information on the Armenian and Kurd genocides, to allow people to look at the ACLU website, and to allow people to read pages about Islam or Wicca without the message 'Blocked for: Alternative Religions and Lifestyles' popping up. I want people to be able to look up websites that are pro-choice, and not just websites that are pro-life.

The worst part is that the bill that allows them to have such censorship requires that the policy...

1.  prevents access to visual depictions that are obscene; and
2.  prevents access to child pornography;
For minors under the age of 17,
3.  visual depictions that are harmful to minors must also be blocked.

Because the text-based Human Rights Watch website is so harmful to minors.

[Reudh]

I remember at our school at one stage all search engines were blocked under 'Pornography' and the only one available to us was the horribly inefficient Department of Education search engine which had an index of 8000 sites compared to Google's 10,000,000,000+ and often ignored search terms...

And it applied boolean logic to the search term, but then used the boolean logic as a string so if you searched for The Second World War it'd come up with 'Your search term The And Second And World And War had no results.'

[Itnetlolor]

Finished my job with flying colors and an immediate hire for the next task with the same client. This time, a familiar project I previously did last year for them, except a little snazzier for the collector's edition. Should pay more than the last one, depending on what they want me to do this time.

I've also realized, with the recent Castlevania completion being one item of note; I just restarted my game of STALKER: Clear Sky from the beginning since I realized a couple things I did wrong. I did in one session what took me about a week. Might be able to bring things down in that game like the walls of Jericho; and while at it, might take on a handful of games I kinda left hanging while I have such momentum.

I actually like the fact I achieved a good balance between work and play to be able to get a whole lot done in a day without burning myself out. Next challenge will be juggling a social life once that gets started. This ought to make my new year interesting. Actually, this has been a rather good start to the new year overall.

[Nadaka]

Soakin' my beans! Going to make black beans and rice with sausage tomorrow and I need to soak them for many hours.

[Heron TSG]

Naxza, that is the bestest. In 9th grade I got to play Jazz Baritone Horn because of how few trombones were available. Pretty great, but then they wanted me to switch to a 'real' jazz instrument like Trombone the next year. Ha!