The Register: They say piracy killed the Amiga. Know what else it's killing? Malware sales. Awww, diddums

tl;dr: People sell software designed to make breaking the law easier, and they're surprised when their clients break the law.

Well, duh. The malware writers knew their clients break the law. What did they expect - honor among thieves?

New thread is new.

Old thread is still useful.

If anyone is currently trying to log onto Homecoming and are getting launcher errors try using this manifest in Teq

http://patch2.homecomingservers.com/manifest.xml

its a backup when the primairy homecoming manifest is down due to outages.

I thought I might give it another go with a slightly stronger computer than last time, in hopes of being built up enough to get into most of the goodies by the time the January ten year anniversary rolls around with whatever events they roll out for it.

I'm already using "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)" by Megadeth... but what other songs might be worth trying to snap the leash holding Moaning Myrtle to her bathroom?

Just re-read the first half (or so) of "A Fanfic Writer's Guide To Writing (or, How To Be In The Ten Percent)" since I saw it was linked from the new ATT page about verb tenses. And, as usual, I found myself making comments of varying degrees of usefulness.

Quote:I. GENERAL GUIDELINES
...
2. Acquire writers' references, and consult them as needed.

Quote:4. Get into the *habit* of writing.
...
And it can be heartbreaking to sit
there for hours and look at a blank sheet of paper or an
empty document file, and have *nothing* happen.

Quote:6. Proofread and preread.

Do it yourself, or recruit a friend.

Quote:7. Pick prereaders carefully.
...
self-
nominated prereaders run the risk of being (or turning into)
"yes men" who always respond "it's great!" to any new
material. While good for the ego, this can make it hard for
an author to grow in his skills, or to evaluate his growth.

Quote:9. Don't be wedded to your text.

Quote:12. Know your source material.
...
But almost
everything is on DVD these days, and the subtitles are just a
button-press away on your remote.

Quote:I swear I will hunt down and kill the next
person I find misspelling "Dolores Umbridge" as "Dolorous" or
"Delores".

Quote:II. STUPID WRITER TRICKS
...
xx. Eggcorns and Mondegreens
...
* "For all intensive purposes"

Quote:xx. Overusing Favorite Words
...
((Which author always used "sandalwood" for Ukyou's eye color?
Dreiser, among others. Need to doublecheck. Gregg Sharp?

Quote:xref "Bathos"
...
A "Love Hina" fic I have been reading at the time I write this
suffers greatly from this -- the narrative voice frequently (read
"excessively to the point of monotony") calls Kitsune "the foxy
lady",

Quote:xx. Chapter Size

Despite what Dan Brown does in "The Da Vinci Code" and his other
works, ten paragraphs do *not* a chapter make.

Quote:xx. The Eternal Now
...
((case in point: the cell phone era makes it almost impossible
to put characters in serious jeopardy -- unless the author goes
through hoops to take their cell phones away or strand them far
away from a cell tower.

Quote:xx. The "Burly Detective" Syndrome
...
Using "the red-haired
> girl" when it should be obvious to the reader that the person speaking is
> girl-type Ranma is so very annoying.

Quote:xx. Special Advice for "Ranma" fiction:
...

* And while we're on the topic: Despite nearly a generation of
fanon, Nerima is *not* a haven of weirdness, known throughout
Tokyo as an open-air lunatic asylum, a mere visit to which is
tantamount to a legal declaration of suicidal intent. Nerima
is in fact a very sedate middle-class area, which Takahashi
(and other mangaka) use as a *contrasting* background for all
the bizarre happenings in their stories.

Quote:III. CRAFTING FICTION

Why?  because I've been watching AMV's based on Bonny Tylers "Holding out for a Hero" and both wanting to make my own, based on my CoH Star Ranger saving, and alternatly... well, won't say saving, but at least pushing back the threats to our tanks (Mags, Terr and Silicon Sabre) using something that looks similar to (CoH:homecoming) in game footage...

But I don't have the mad skillz to do it.

*sigh*

From the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49221936

But even during these things, people rise to the call: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man...g-n1039011

My condolences to the families of the victims.

Yeah, I didn't know about it, either. But apparently it's been a thing since 2008.

The Register: It's Friday lunchtime on International Beer Day. Bitter hop to it, boss'll be none the weiser

Let's see, in this article, we have scientists using a procedure to turn normal photons into Ridburg polaritons, which then condense into quantum entangled photonic molecules... then in the links to other articles offered below, there's twisted light gaining angular momentum through self-torque, nanophotonic structures that enable artificial vision, and a hyperbolic lattice forming an a coplanar waveguide array! Behold the wonders that SCIENCE has wrought!