Mastercard said in a statement it was "experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website - MasterCard.com - but this remains accessible...There is no impact whatsoever on MasterCard or Maestro cardholders' ability to use their cards for secure transactions."
Contrary to the above statement, www.mastercard.com was down. I know because I've tried. I don't think I need to show you a screenshot of my screen when I have this screenshot that I took:
Fortunately for many of us, it's already past 11pm on a Wednesday night, so there won't be many victims here.
12pm the next day now. The above report was replaced by the one linked below on the front page of Reuters sometime last night.
But it said the attack, mounted by hackers using simple tools posted on the Web, had extended beyond its website to payment processing technology, leaving some customers unable to make online payments using MasterCard software.
Another difference is that it does not mention the website of the group known as "AnonOps".
These days, it's just too easy to find tools to DoS with. All you need to do is go to /b/ in 4chan when there is a DDoS being organized/used/planned and there will be a lot of threads with the proper links. However I don't recommend joining the event if you're an amateur like me since we don't have the computer expertise to:
1) hide behind trusted proxies that can protect us from the FBI/CIA/whatever.
2) detect codes that may turn our PCs into zombie computers of any of the botnets out there without our consent.
I've said many times before that I don't like risks and I've not made an exception for this. Furthermore, this is just rash and ineffective. Right now all the attacks have accomplished is make a lot of noise, give Assange a little joy that he has lots of young supporters who probably don't fully understand the extent of the consequences of his actions, and made the perpetrators possible targets of the FBI/CIA/whatever.
Unless they can take down the payment servers for at least a day, the DDoS really doesn't have much of an effect on anyone.
MC showed everyone the power of psionic storms only 2 days ago and HongUn has obviously been practising with high templars ever since. The psionic storms in the first round were epic. The only thing I didn't understand was why when he sent the group of zealots and high templars, he pulled them back before he could wipe out the SCVs with storms.
On an unrelated note, Artosis was actually in the Ro64 in Season 1. Didn't know this because I missed most of the games in that part of the first season but the guy whose channel I was on mentioned that. Not mentioning names these days because the last time I did, he got into some kind of trouble with GOMtv. His friends who also streamed the games and recorded videos encountered the same problems later.
Anyway the last round was madness. Why didn't HongUn retreat when he saw the 10+ SCVs arrive to repair the bunker? He practically lost the game right there when he refused to pull back despite the fact that the bunker remained in green health after the first few seconds of the attack. That was pure stupid madness.
HongUnPrime.WE, known for his skilful micromanagement of individual units and their activated abilities, lost to TSL_Rain in a futile attack against an indestructible bunker.
So in British English, it's spelt "skilful" with a single "l". Kept getting an error above for spelling it as "skillful".
Finally there's a report from a more serious news source discussing the impact of Anonymous on the Internet. After all the DDoS attacks they have done over the years, they're now getting the attention they've been seeking all along.
In spite of the name and the perceived organzation behind them, Anonymous doesn't seem to have any specific long-term members and "core" other than those who frequent /b/ in 4chan.
"This whole... episode is causing a snowball effect," said Noa Bar Yosef, senior security strategist from Imperva. "The more attention it is receiving, the more people who are joining the voluntary botnet to cause the DDoS."
That's exactly how they roll. The more attention it gets, the more people download their softwares to join in the DDoS attacks. 4chan mods have evidently been trying to stop threads about DDoS from popping up but to no avail. Which means if you want to see Anonymous in action, all you need to do is to go to /b/ the moment you see any name containing "Anon" involved in anything online.
Of course they can be tracked and arrested, but the number of people involved and the effort it requires will probably stop the police from doing so.
I should reassess my opinion of Two Worlds 2 now that I've completed the game in Single Player.
Graphics are pretty good. Nothing outstanding enough mention. Same with the music.
Voice-acting, now that's another story. It sucks. Totally.
Cassara doesn't follow her script, as shown by the very different subtitles. Not that it's really a bad thing, but what she says doesn't always connect to the lines of the protagonist, making the dialogue very disjointed at times.
The protagonist himself only mumbles. No emotions, not even when he was saying how his sister was being imprisoned by some mage and he was going to do all he could to save her. Was he losing his voice or something?
I wish they would take lessons from Japanese voice actors. Or at least watch some animes just to listen to how it should be done.
The main problem with games and cartoons is that the animated faces alone cannot express the emotions as well as real human faces can. Therefore emotions in the voices need to be exaggerated to compensate. That is exactly why Japanese dialogues in animes sound much better, to the point where most non-Japanese fans would rather listen to it and read English subtitles simultaneously than listen to inferior English voice dubs.
Heroes in games need to learn to shout.
Plot was good in the beginning but became terrible in the end. Anyway, before I go on, I should interrupt this with the necessary warning.
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Spoiler Alert!
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Warning: The following text contains spoilers. A spoiler is a literary device whose intended design function is to 'spoil' unfavourable air movement across a body of a text in motion by disrupting airflow passing over and around it. This diffusion is accomplished by increasing amounts of turbulence flowing over the shape, "spoiling" the laminar flow and providing a cushion for the laminar boundary layer.
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Spoiler Alert!
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Maybe I missed something, but I don't remember them ever explaining why the god of fire needs to be in her body.
Sordahon was another mystery to me. Why was he special in any way? All he did in this game was suck and die, twice if you don't count the time he sucked in the intro cinematics. Was he supposed to be strong at all??
Another strange thing is how Dar Pha just appeared in the castle in the end and seemed to be an expected guest.
Most importantly, the switch of the role of the main villain from Gandohar to Cassara was way too abrupt. I fought all the way to the final part of the final dungeon expecting to fight a powerful mage and suddenly...
GANDOHARISGOODCASSARAISBAD
and I was like," What?"
Then the game threw me into the final battle in which I couldn't save the game and there wasn't even a hint that I was supposed to hold the left mouse button to load the ballista. Embarrassingly, I died in my first attempt trying to shoot with them in rapid fire mode.
How did Dar Pha know Gandohar is good? Why did Gandohar go to such lengths to become the Emperor? Why would Aziraal favour the dragons? Why didn't the other orcs join in the fight? Why was an orc's blood needed? Why would Gandohar need the body of a queen to hold Aziraal when he could pick someone with like 6-7 siblings and a humongous extended family?
As far as I can tell, the orcs in this game merely served as the deus ex machina. Other than that, they just gave me a few quests and spent the rest of the days standing around looking cool.
Oh right, and I've almost completely forgotten about an earlier incident.
WHERE WERE THE CRYSTAL GOLEMS?!?!?
Seriously, wtf?
It's like they started out by making the crust for a meat pie and in the end I got egg tarts. What's going on? Did I miss something here too?
From all these, I can deduce that they had a great plan in the beginning but lost steam halfway through development. By the time they worked on the ending, they were like, "Screw it. Just get it over with."
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End of spoilers.
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So now I'm going to work on Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. This game looks better now, probably because I'm comparing it with Two Worlds 2 instead of Mass Effect 2. I'm not sure if it's about the standard of the game or just the settings and controls.
Finally found the latest entrance used by the ants in my bathroom. Noticed a whole trail of them last night going from beneath a horizontal sewage pipe to my shower drain. Now I have no idea why bugs like the drain, but that's where the flies congregate at night. I make sure it's clean all the time, so don't ask me what they're doing there.
Since flies go there, I was not surprised when the ants joined them. Maybe they were feeding on the dead flies that were stuck in some crevice inside after I sprayed the drain with insecticide the night before.
Anyway I covered the entire trail and the surrounding area with generous doses of Baygon. Spent a little more time holding the button down with the spray aimed at the tiny hole under the pipe. The pipe connects the basin in the other bathroom to the main sewage pipe in my bathroom, so I assume the crack must lead to the bathroom and the kitchen.
That would explain the larger size of the ants. Ants in my kitchen are larger, probably different species that recently migrated from somewhere outside, or maybe they're just better fed.
After the Baygon treatment I rinsed everything with my shower. Then more Baygon into the crack.
If I see the ants coming from it again, I'm going to use a straw like the last time. Not doing it now because I'm reluctant to get direct skin contact with the insecticide that would inevitably stream down the straw.
My Steam account got disabled. I have no idea why. Since it's not a VAC ban, it means it was not for hacking like the bullshit FoM ban. However, this means my account may be suspected for fraud and such, which makes just as little sense since I only have two games that were bought by me and my bro in that account - Half Life 1 and 2.
Ticket was sent this morning but because of the timezone differences, I have no idea when I will get an answer. So for now, no more Empires. Not that I'll be missing much but it just sucks that I'm not allowed access to two games that were legitimately bought.
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