Since I seem to be always discussing about what annoys me, it may be healthier for me to talk about what I like.
I like nothingness. I like a blank calender. I like the absence of alarms.
In short, I like it when there is no deadline for today, tomorrow, next week and next month.
It is hard to be insanely bored when you have the Internet, unlike in the past when you have nothing to do, you really have nothing to do.
One thing that can bring me closer to this dream is the grocery delivery service provided by some stores like Cold Storage. It is actually worth the $7 charged for delivery because it costs only about $2 less if I walk there and travel back by cab from the Holland V branch(which is the only choice when you're carrying 2-4 large bags of stuff).
The only reason I don't order online is because of the limited choices available. The most important thing that's missing from their online menu is parma ham. No parma ham, no talk.
If they had everything, I'd even consider setting a standing order for a fortnightly delivery. I pick fortnight instead of daily because I have to hit $60 to get the lower $7 delivery charge, or else it's $12.
When shit happens too often, sometimes it can mean that there is a reason behind it. Shit doesn't happen everyday or even every week. If it does, something may be horribly wrong somewhere.
Heroes of Newerth is 100X better than DotA because of the various asshole-proof mechanisms it employs. For example, in DotA there are occasional assholes who leave when the countdown begins after the host starts the game. In HoN, the timer stops when anyone disconnects.
Second, if anyone disconnects during the game, they can rejoin if they return within a few minutes (about 5, but I'm not sure).
Third, all players have some kind of skill rating. Newbies begin with 1500 and drops or rises according to each win/loss they accumulate. The lower their ratings, the less points they lose per loss and the more points they gain per victory. Working together with this rating is the autobalance function. When the host clicks on autobalance (aka "ab"), the game automatically shuffles the players so that both sides have approximately the same total ratings.
However, the host can also lock players so that they won't be shuffled when the game autobalances the teams.
Fourth, you cannot rage quit without consequences. When someone quits during a game, the game would announce "RAGE QUIT" and everyone would see who left. If I'm not wrong rage quits are recorded in the quitter's stats and may affect his rating. In addition, hosts can activate a "No Leavers" option for his game so that people who rage quit a lot cannot join it.
However, I still suck at the game. Several of the heroes feel pretty new to me, like Balphagore. This guy's abilities are all about slowing movement, which are kind of hard to master to me.
The film industry hires professionals to DDoS pirate sites. Wow.
So the difference between the usual Internet hackers and these guys is that they have the backing of wealthy guys. DDoS is a crime in many countries btw, not just in Australia. Therefore you can't say they have the law on their side.
Basically a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack is a major spam of certain data packets from multiple computers to overwhelm the websites' servers, causing them to crash. A DoS attack is the same except there is only 1 computer/server doing the spamming.
Unfortunately the average computer expert usually cannot find out the source(s) of a DoS attack, as far as I can tell. In fact, if you have the money it is actually possible to obtain a zombie botnet or part of one to DDoS for you. That is one reason why writing malicious softwares (aka viruses) is actually an established industry in certain Eastern European countries.
Reminds me of how our servers in Empires keep getting DDoSed because some guy wanted the players to go to his server to play with him. Yes he crashed all servers that have players to have people to play with.
According to the "experts" from our servers, the last DDoS attack peaked at 4Mbps on the largest server just before it crashed. The attack was formed by having more than 400 unique IPs sending 150 packets of 53kb each per second, with all IPs spoofed to make them untraceable by us non-professionals. Not even the server owners who rented them to the us have the expertise to do it.
We're currently helpless against this. There is no way at the moment to stop this asshole until the mod developers include an IP ban to remove that guy's server from the list permanently in the next version of the mod. Also, he is able to quickly get his server back up when a few of our players tried to DDoS it.
Actually, we're not even sure if this is a DDoS or a DoS because a single computer can have sufficient bandwidth and there are certainly tools available online to help him accomplish the attacks.
This looks like some kind of cyber gang wars, doesn't it?
For all the talk about how meritocracy reigns in Singapore, I think the only reason it's that way is because the government, which appears to support and promote this idea, is the most powerful entity here. If it wasn't, meritocracy would be just talk.
I don't know why, but this article about how the CWS isn't proactive enough just triggered this thought in my mind.
Everything we have in Singapore today depends on the power that the government wields. This power, I believe, is derived from its wealth and its control of ours. This, in turn, is due to its link to Temasek and GIC.
Most Singaporeans are aware of who the top people are in Temasek and probably GIC.
Therefore, I believe that PAP and the Lee family must stay in power if Singapore is to remain stable and wealthy. If anyone else controls the government while the top management of Temasek and GIC remain the same, the government and its sources of wealth will become controlled by separate factions.
From this point of view, we really have no choice in the elections.
Obviously when the above happens, Temasek and GIC will, together, wield the most power. After all, nobody with a sound mind can deny that money is power.
So what happens if commercial entities become more powerful than the local government? See: USA.
Am I talking nonsense? I probably am.
There's a Korean professional Starcraft II player called "a Fruit Dealer". Yes, a Fruit Dealer playing SC II. Haha. Big news. He's pretty good from what I've seen in today's match against NEXTaeja. Yes, this guy got beaten by a fruit dealer in SC II.
I like his style. Can tell that he thinks ahead all the time. For example, he plants Banelings in his retreat routes to kill land units that chase his attacking forces when they retreat. According to the casters they work the same way as Spider Mines from Terran Vultures, except they can be manually detonated to explode in the midst of the enemy forces.
It's also funny how the announcer uses his real name "Won Ki Kim" instead of saying "a Fruit Dealer!!" I wonder why :P
Another notable player who played today was MaruPrime, with "Prime" being his clan tag. He's a 13-year-old player who won his way into the Round of 32!
Too bad he lost at that point. Would have been interesting to see a little boy in the later stages.
Also my first time seeing a Photon Cannon rush, done by oGsInCa in the 2nd round of his match today. It was a little funny to see InCa's opponent so obviously panicking when he didn't know what to hit and just focused his fire on a not-very-useful Pylon instead of trying to go down to hit the Cannons that were warping in. There was no point in attacking the Pylons because there were 3 more nearby, 2 of which were blocking the ramp exit.
As for the stream, it has been surprisingly smooth. Not a single instance of choppy streaming or pauses at all. I see why they limit the number of connections now. Excellent work there.
Again according to casters, there are people from over 87 countries logging in to watch these games. How many countries are there with SC II players??
Watching these games may not be the best form of entertainment, but there are only so many episodes of House and CSI.
So I booked the tickets for RE 3D. I did not have any idea how fast tickets go for a 3D film, so I decided to watch the slots of various times for RE 3D for these few days. Missed the last two days but today at about 5-6pm I managed to catch the one at around 7pm, which I expect to be the more popular time because it's just after office hours. The back half of the room actually filled up quickly and suddenly by 6pm.
In addition, I didn't want to go there more than an hour before the show starts just to get the better seats, hence the online booking. Also threw in another $10.50 for the ice cream/popcorn combo. We're not going for a buffet after, so there's no harm getting something to eat before the dinner.
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