mdisraeli

In the PvP areas you could effectively run a toll bridge by laying out a road block, and fight those who tried to just push past.

A major difference with later MMOs was that (originally) when you died, your possessions stayed on your corpse. You would have to wander off as a ghost to get resurrected, then somehow get back to your body to get your kit back - a tall order in the middle of a dungeon!

Without any form of global chat, the best you could manage was party / guild chat, but often this wasn't enough to get the help you needed. It became commonplace amongst the community to build a metagame community - you might not be in the same guild in game, but you were friends in the forum or in real life, or perhaps you met eachother in game and wanted a means to stay in touch. This posed a problem - no player-to-player system was really in place, and generally minor roleplaying was common - exchanging email addresses felt wrong and out of character. Thus the "pigeon number" was born - ICQ was the staple communication tool. When gAIM, the open source AOL/ICQ messenger (and others), renamed to pidgin, I can't help but think this was deliberate.... ;)

The huge downside to these interesting mechanics and heavy freedom was the opportunity to grief. Kill someone, loot their stuff, ransom it back. Let monsters kill someone, loot their stuff, ransom it back. Tell a ghost you'll only resurrect at their corpse and... you get the idea ;) I always was a big fan of some of the griefer stories, even if I didn't agree with their ethics - Belan being a prime example http://www.askcorran.com/belan/episodes.html

Ultima Online was classless - you developed skills through their use. This also lead to some of us who roleplayed beggars trying to build the ultimate in useless characters - every single skill point up to the cap spent on skills that offered in total no benefit in terms of gameplay mechanic. Begging in UO was a real artform, and there was so much fun to be had roleplaying a widow and seeing what people would offer you.

And finally, these mechanics that few other MMOs have ever implemented? Ultima Online inspired two UK students to build their own version, which became Runescape. Runescape inspired Wurm Online. And one of the Wurm developers, was Notch of Minecraft fame. For all UO's faults, it is truly an important piece of gaming history

In a strange way, the community that formed around Ultima Online saved my life in more ways than one.

As a hacker, there's a lot we can learn from UO's ups and downs, and especially how much emergent gameplay appeared, and how the developers reacted. Clean Up Britannia being a great case in point, along with Trammel.

And from a pure tech point of view... what the hell was with the low latency of the old 2D client? For some reason it always offered a better connection than any of the multiple attempts to re-write it. That in turn resulted in the community sticking to said 2D client, and the developers cancelling the first '3D' client (still fixed isometric, just 3D rendered). What's fascinating is some of the directions it didn't go in - back before the Kingdom Reborn client was developed, there apparently was a Warcraft 3 style engine under development.

When it comes to game design, Raph Koster is one of the people who literally wrote the (a) book on the subject, having started out in MUDs and then being hired for UO. His blog is extremely worth reading, and if you have any interest into the history of UO's game design, check it out: http://www.raphkoster.com/tag/ultima-online/

Also from a hacker point of view, let's not forget psychology. Nick Yee studied the minds of players of many of these 'first gen' MMOs, and I strongly recommend his Daedalus Project site - http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

If you're working on any form of workflow supporting software, make sure that email integration is at the heart. Like it or not, your biggest competitor within Enterprises is often not Excel documents, but Exchange.

It is not uncommon for such information exchanges and warnings to actually be readiness tests. Except you don't know it's intended as a test of your resources / ability to handle such an attack.

Once area the article doesn't discuss at all is how middle east and Indian cultures understand time. Can anyone offer any commentary on this?

As a member of a minority group, this statement is sadly something we hear all the time if we object to people asking what should rationally otherwise be considered highly inappropriate questions. For example, just because someone is highly open about their sex life doesn't make asking a lesbian completely out of context how she has sex any more appropriate.

"Well, I would find it useful and be thankful"

Anyone who is a wheelchair user or has friends and family who are will probably know this one. People (strangers) have a habit of pushing wheelchairs around without asking the person within the chair first. Just because a currently abled body person might find the idea of someone helping them personally by pushing their chair if they used one, doesn't make it any more acceptable to completely ignore the wishes of a wheelchair user they don't know.

[1] As an out and proud queer, I'd rather someone be honest than obviously skirt around issues without addressing them. At least then we know were we stand

But strict levels/classes on a system that is supposed to give players design freedom? Probably not a wise restriction, especially not if they want to use their old fan base - which is desperately looking for newer games!

Grey shards were the name given to player-run servers running re-implementations of Ultima Online, to which the official clients could be hacked to connect to. Some of these got extremely successful, and I'm fairly sure many of the developers now work in the game industry. Some were simply opportunities to remove changes they didn't like (like removing the no-PvP lands). Others were completely new worlds. And some had dedicated teams who ran plot and tried to make the worlds seem alive.

Of course, over its years, Ultima Online did go through a number of these changes naturally in one form or another. PvP only servers were launched, and at various times they recruited players to run events and story arcs.

But what kept Ultima Online going wasn't just the old guard PvPers and the addicts to the original 2D low-res client. There had always been a very strong player community on some shards, with NPC towns used as a basis for player plot and story telling.

he tools UO offered were fairly unique as far as this went. You could build your own house, and eventually not only decorate it but design the layout from scratch all by yourself. The player NPC vendor system that allowed people to run shops was clunky, but still very impressive in terms of how creative people got and how many players simply role-played tradespeople and didn't really do the whole PvP/PvM thing. You could place objects on the floor, some of which would even block movement - emphasis added for anyone who hasn't tried any of the popular MMOs to make clear that this still is a rare feature. The crafting system again was very in depth, too.

And then there's fishing. A skill that tbh was pretty boring to use, but combine that with trade and you could enjoy yourself out on the oceans in your boat. Treasure hunting was another path you could dedicate your characters to, which included figuring out where in the world a map was showing, and needed skills in lockpicking and dealing with monsters.

The skill system was again something we don't see a lot of. Mostly this is because it is fairly complex and dull to level up at the same time. Any character could train in any skill, if they had the room to grow or were willing to give up another skill. You could really twink out with complementary fighting skills, be a tradesperson who gathered their own resources, or you could build a completely and utterly useless character, grandmaster at everything that by themselves were useless, and together only had value for roleplay purposes.

And we did just that! Ultima Online had a skill called "Begging", used to get small quantities of money off NPCs. The higher the skill, the slightly more you'd get. Some of us would roleplay beggars, avoiding all skills that we roleplayed as being "evil". We would come up with character backstories, and try to earn money off other players by any lawful means that wasn't using an 'evil' skill or against your personal ethics.

Speaking of that, the things the rules used to let you do against other players, and the fun you could have in the PvP areas... Originally, when you died your kit stayed on the corpse, and in PvP areas anyone could loot it ;)

And if it were not for Ultima Online, we wouldn't have the games we now have. Not only was it the first proper MMORPG (or second if you count Meridian 59), but it also inspired many other games. Jagex, one of the UK's most successful MMO developers was founded by a team recreating UO in java - the game that became Runescape! That game inspired another open-world java game, Wurm Online, which Notch worked on. Notch, of course, later developed Minecraft, and you might be able to see the similarities ;)

Finally, If you're into game design theory, one of the original development team of UO is now a key player in that area of academia, having published A Theory Of Fun - http://www.raphkoster.com/.

[1] Old UO player? Europa? Stratics bod from 2002-2007? get in touch! :D

Edit: And how could I have forgotten to mention the amazing bit of work that was Nick Yee's Daedalus project! http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

I've been learning bass for the last month and a bit, and it has made a big difference to how I feel about myself and my confidence that I can pick up an entirely new skill from scratch, and that I can make music.

With things like LMMS and Hydrogen available, and lots of royalty-free free sample packs available, it is entirely possible to write and perform music on the cheap.

And if you're still not convinced? The tech industry seems to want us to be 'rockstar' developers, devops, admins, growth hackers, etc... so why not literally become one too? ;)

Possible reasons for the valuation:

1. Sony's announcement. It really wasn't a big surprise, but I can imagine this spooked some people involved with Oculus

2. Production delays or other unexpected development issues - but what could they have been?

3. Oculus has always seemed more of a PC product, so perhaps there are factors in the PC market we are unaware of that they know better?

4. Valve. I'm not sure how they factor into this, but there are a number of possibilities. Oculus team not liking them? Valve working on a competitor? Facebook trying to position themselves as a buyer?

What are your thoughts?

CDC tracks hospitalisation based on lab reports, GFT tracks search terms

The assumption, which admittedly Google is making, is that these two are correlated by the same amount each year. However, in periods of economic downturn without free health care, people are going to search more and seek actual medial assistance less. Given the global economy has been shot for the last six years....

I am not a lawyer, and I'm not the one making the call for my clients on any potentially legal matters. Would appreciate to hear the thoughts of those with experience in this area.

My gut feeling is that, although users may have signed T&Cs allowing this, UK/EU courts would hold that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy around the mailbox, and so the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) would apply [2]. This means that such a host couldn't go digging themselves into the email.

However, a potential route in could be via getting the source to make a subject access request under the Data Protection Act 2000 (DPA) into the organisation, supplying their external email address, in response to which there would be a very tenuous grounds to release the mail. However: 1. I'm fairly sure that this would be considered a misreading of the DPA, and hosted mail would be considered information held by the client, rather than the host 2. There's such an obvious claim here that all of this would have happened under duress, and that's a huge can of worms....

So in conclusion, I suspect the only way to legally get at such an email within the UK/EU would be via working with law enforcement, or via one of the two parties to the discussion providing it.

[1] Most of the relevant acts of UK law are descended from common EU legislation, and apply broadly across the EU, hence the repeated use of UK/EU here

[2] Unless you're working in certain very strict offices with clear Security Operating Procedures (SyOPS) and regular training, UK/EU courts are likely rule that even corporate email systems can be considered to hold personal communications protected under RIPA

In this case there still is an issue that should really be addressed, but that will be why it probably isn't ranked high on the to-address list

The above will manually clear out the windows DNS cache. Note this doesn't block it, but rather simply limits what it can find out. I'm not sure it would be possible to block this functionality entirely without also breaking DNS, or otherwise causing the Anti-cheat tool to detect something odd.

By default, the Windows DNS cache doesn't flush itself, with entries lasting for 24 hours or so. As stated in the post, you can view currently cached domain names by entering

ipconfig /displaydns

Strangely, this doesn't seem to list some of the sites I've visited this morning within firefox

The worst part of all this? First thing I did was check the author's gender and skin colour. And then I read the article. I normally work hard to be free of the prejudice of this society we are forced to live in, and yet I realised I took this article more seriously because it was by a white male :(

That is why it is vital to understand privilege, and that we live in a society that is constantly pushing its values that we cannot help but to make such mistakes. That it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, how much of a meritocracy you think your community has, but if it isn't free from the constant pressure of our base society (ie, realistically impossible), you'll end reading something like this and trying to excuse away those thoughts I just admitted.

I see were you are coming from, and for sake of intellectual discussion of speculative fiction even up-voted. But I think there's a whole load of possibilities you've missed.

The most basic one is simply that you're attributing human values to something decidedly not human. That learning from each mistaken life is actually a desirable feature. Perhaps only the aggregate matters. Perhaps, in fact, that which is being studied is so alien to us that we can't see how they are in fact learning through the process. Perhaps the point of existence is experience itself, rather than to be able to make decisions based on that experience. Perhaps we do learn from what we don't directly remember - that glass of warm water still effects the finger we dip in ;)

Then there's the passage of time and characters. Let's pretend for the sake of being able to follow an argument that concepts of "before" and "after" can be applied at all. Perhaps all those minds which we consider horrendous are the earlier ones, and those which come after are increasingly better? Perhaps it is the complete opposite, as we all have the wrong idea as to the way around things should be!

And, of course, we should be careful when interpreting "With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect". After all, we are assuming it is the experiences and learnings of the life which give those results, rather than the process itself. Perhaps it is not that at all, but rather those are simply a bi-product of whatever is really going on. The foetus requires stimulation and its nascent mind simply occupying whilst it grows and matures, and the nature of that stimulation has no effect what so ever.

I must admit, though, I have a fondness for your lovecraftian horror twist interpretation ;)

1. The only thing which clearly marks this as an ad is the comment just above it in the HTML. Which is strange for two reasons...

2. The lack of nofollow strongly suggests this isn't just an affiliate link, but a 'paid link exchange'. Of course, you could just be profiting from the affiliation alone, but I'm sure you are aware as an experience web designer that most search engines tend to frown on this sort of thing.

3. By not clearly marking the element as an advert, you are effectively using one of the same tactics that the "most aggressive and horrible ads" use. Yes, plain text is small font is utter love, thank you for that, but given you've just written a blog post about ad blockers, I'm guessing you must have also carefully considered this

4. You outright talk about "dark interaction patterns" - not labelling adverts clearly is one of them ;)

5. A core theme in your post is "think about what appears on your page and how it affects your design". I see no obvious topical connection, and if anything, essay writing services exist for quite the opposite reason typically.

Yes, I'm over-analysing this, and yes, I fully support your attempts to gain a little more income. To be honest, the biggest issue I have is the nature of the link - having many friends working in academia, and being white hat typically myself, I have serious ethical issues with essay writing services, and I do think the juxtaposition of that link with your article is rather strange.

In the meantime...

Firstly, let's put our journalism 101 hat on. The article name "Is There a Cyber War on Women?" is precisely what it is so as to lead you into thinking "no". It's a classic newspaper trick - ask a question because the article doesn't give a conclusive answer. And indeed it can't, as Cathy is forced to admit that there is real abuse happening against women online. The original Pacific Standard article was careful to never call it a "war against women". The NY Times article only used that phase in the title, and otherwise refers more correctly to a "culture-war".In my skim of the NYT article, actually, I was quite impressed with what seemed to be a well-thought-out article.

"A man who gets into a fight with a woman risks being seen as a bully if he wins, a weakling if he loses. Women in the public eye may experience more hate, but they may also benefit from chivalry"

The quote pretty much sums up everything that is wrong about the article, precisely because she is right, but for all the wrong reasons:

1. If a man wins a fight against a woman, he is a "bully" precisely because women giving in to men is seen as normal, not something one has to fight for.

2. If a man is beaten by a woman in a fight, he is a weakling precisely because women are viewed societally as being weak

3. The existence of 'chivalry' in no means corrects for measurably greater hate. Even if they were somehow of equal level, in general the effects of suffering are not countered by good experiences - they still cause damage.

4. Sorry men, you're in an absolute double-bind here, and it is shit for those of you who are genuinely good people :(. This is because no interpretation of chivalry is without critique. Help men and women equally, and our society will view consider you to have given women the greater amount of time. Help women only, and either you are saying men and women need different levels of help and both men and women in our society are worse for this. Or, much less positively, it's 'white knighting' and an attempt to get in someone's pants.

I'll leave as an exercise to the reader extending the concepts here into why abuse against males (online or otherwise) isn't talked about more or treated seriously.

As a final aside, it is also worth noting that there is plenty of evidence that, in a mixed group of equal gender counts, women need only take up significantly less than half the discussion time to already be considered to be dominating the discussion (see also society's belief in 'meek'/'quiet'/'shy' as desirable properties in women). This automatically polarises any attempts to report in a balanced nature on the subject even further