As the folks here who frequent TVTropes already know, over the last few months a system has been put in place that allows the use of separate pages for basic description, Crowning Moments, Characters, etc. for a series and conveniently ties them all together as a set of buttons across the top of any of the pages.  I've decided it'd be a good idea to try to do that for Undocumented Features, but I wanted to solicit a little help from anyone who'd like to give it -- suggestions for Crowning Moments of Awesome, Funny and Heartwarming, minibios of characters, stuff like that.  Anyone care to contribute?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

And I mean forever.

On Tuesday, Blizzard announced that it will begin forcing
participants in its game discussion forums–where players go to gab about
World of Warcraft and other games–to post comments using their real
first and last names. The change will go into effect mid-July on forums
for Starcraft II, an upcoming online game, and follow after that for
World of Warcraft discussion forums.

In a post
on its discussion forums, Blizzard said its forums have “earned a
reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other
unpleasantness run wild.” (A “troll” is Internet slang for a discussion
group provocateur who likes to rile up other chatters with nasty or
off-topic posts.) That’s largely because Blizzard has allowed its
discussion forum participants to identify themselves by their in-game
character names.
When asked if there was any way to opt out of this 'service', players were told, "Don't post on the forums."
In Blizzard’s discussion forums, game
players said the policy would lead to everything from identity theft to
spam to stalking by “Internet crazies.” One poster said he was worried
that a new girlfriend will could discover his “closet-gamer habit” by
Googling his real name.
And all of these people are being told, in effect, if you don't feel comfortable
posting on our spiffy new troll-free forums, then... go away.
So let me get this straight -
If I want to play your game, that means that AUTOMATICALLY my user info will be shared with facebook? My REAL name? Potentially my address? Where I work?
FUCK. YOU. NO!!!
This all may seem alarmist, but... when one of the Customer Service reps posted HIS name, within 5 minutes the results were in. Someone with his name, living in the same state, had their FULL information posted, their Facebook page slammed, their phone ringing off the hook. A player posted their name as a demonstration, and within 20 minutes, another player unknown to them was calling their work telephone and reciting facts about their house, their car, their pet, and their recent vacation.
What about people who are in actual DANGER if their personal information gets out? Like women? How about LGBT?:

Quote:I’ll just put in my two cents as one of many of the 15 million
(according to CBC article) players worldwide. As a member of the LGBTIS
community posting my real name ona forum with a reputation like World
of Warcraft’s is a very real personal danger for people like us. If you
don’t believe that, just use Google to search for “Transexual hate
crime” and see what comes up.

Quote:As a female player who’s been harassed several times, I can say that
this is going to be a horrible change. I absolutely refuse to post on
the forums under these conditions. If I have a tech problem I’ll just
have to use the in-game feature to report it now, rather than going to
the forums. This may mean a longer wait, but why would I want 11+
million other people to view my name? I did research and only 5 other
people have my first and last name in the U.S. There needs to be
stronger laws against this.

Quote:After 5 years with Blizzard, ACTI stock,
14 accounts including my own, wife, children, and other family member
accounts, as well as every game they’ve ever published I’m finally
pulling the plug and calling it quits with this company. Enough is
enough and I refuse to spend another dollar on a game that i’m paying
for only to have my real name plastered all over the internet due to
this idea of “social gaming”. Now you’ll be able to log-in to play a
game but leave that game with real life people looking up your
information or possibly even stalking you just because you play?

I didn’t sign up for Facebook due to privacy issues and had I known
that the Activision/Blizzard merger would lead to this I would have
never invested my money, time, or personal information to this company.
It’s a sad day when you see a company that used to love it’s customers
start to love the money more to the point that it will be it’s downfall.

Quote:Rule one on the internet has always been to keep one’s personal
information private. There are employers who may reject applicants who
are found posting on World of Warcraft boards. There are people who
play WoW who have ex-spouses or ex-lovers who might do them harm. There
are people who play WoW who are in professions and jobs that discourage
having their real names on the internet. At a minimum, this will put
women and people with non-white sounding names off of the forums, since
there’s a very high probability that their posts will be met with
ridicule and harassment.

Hello, computer-almost-illiterate asking for help here.
Recently, as in roughly a week now, I've been having serious problems with something called Data Execution Prevention.  Basically, it's causing me real headaches when I try to navigate certain sites -- including this one.  The problem is particularly noticeable over at OneManga.com, where I can no longer use the handy drop-down menus to get from one page to another, non-consecutive page in a chapter, or to another chapter entirely.  When I try to do so, the computer gives me an error message that D.E.P. has closed Internet Explorer to protect my computer.  Then either the tab recovers to the page I was on, so I've accomplished nothing but waste time, or it asks me if I want to recover to that page, wasting even more time.  The only way to get from page 13 to page 7, or to page 27, is one page at a time.  To get to another chapter, say to confirm that the monster we see in chapter 222 is the same we saw in chapter 171, we have to go all the way out to the big chapter list first.
The definitions given for D.E.P., both in Windows Help and on Wikipedia, suggest it might be something that could be good to have -- except that it's screwing up my computer experience and on the way to giving me ulcers from sheer rage.  There's supposed to be a way I can adjust it to allow the functions I want, but I can't figure out, from the instructions provided, how to make it allow drop-down menus.  And as I said at the start, they were working fine until just a week or so ago.
Incidentally, this is my second try at posting this, because my first time, I decided to change the sig and D.E.P. promptly closed the draft post with the words:

Quote:A malfunctioning or malicious add-on has caused Internet Explorer to close this webpage.

...the one in which one of Balalaika's henchgoons is murdered in Gotham City, precipitating some nasty confrontations.
I'm sure it was recced here, but can't find it in the archives...
--Sam
"That cow's tasted human blood!"

So I'm wandering around the Amazon store when I go ahead and type in 'Seraphic Fearther' into the search box. And they have volumes 7, 8, and 9 in stock. In French. A little bit of reading later and I find that volume 9 was released 2003 in Japan (2005 for the French edition). Heck, event the German editions are up to vol.9.

And a bit later I see pre-release info for volumes 10 and 11 in Japanese for November and March next year respectively.

OK, so I can understand the author getting tired of it or getting involved with other projects and such. But why the heck has Dark Horse not released them in English? Have they lost the licence since 2006 when they released vol.6 (Which was 3 years after vol.5, itself 2 years after vol.4), or what?

Oh, and I bought the French editions. Need to brush up on my atrophied French.

They've been obliquely referenced for far too long! Here's their wiki article. Still working on personality workups for the cast, so if you have suggestions/comments/flan sing out --Mal

Fanfiction.net seems to be down for me. Or at least the local mirror server for my part of the net is down (Bethesda, MD. USA). Haven't been able to access it since ~7:30AM. All I'm getting is connection timeouts...
Ok problem is either with one of fanfiction.net servers or with verizon FIOS as I can access using http://anonymouse.org/ as a proxy...
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."

Like most things in Emperor Cole's capitol city, the museum was impressive. Hundreds of cultural artifacts from around the world were here, rescued from the all-consuming Devouring Earth. Karen Castle peered with interest at one of the displays celebrating Old Nihon.
While she was more familiar with the martial items on display from several of the news reports concerning the fights against the Empire's enemies and the heroes who fought in them, the more mystical side of things fascinated her. How wonderful Emperor Cole was, to inspire the heroes to fight for all of us! The bronze mirror and jewel before her had been rumored to belong to one of the great ninja princesses whose true name had been lost to the mists of time, but her reputation as the Fox of the Shadows had lived on.
Her ruminations were cut short as the wall burst in and she came face to face with the ruthless terrorists that called themselves the Resistance being pursued by the helpful and friendly Praetorian Clockwork. A stray blast from one of the combatants shattered the case holding the artifacts, and sent them flying into her chest.
She blinked, as suddenly she felt as if she'd walked from a loud cafeteria and into a hushed library. Which was odd, because the sounds of the battle were louder than almost anything she'd experienced in her life.
Ara, a voice seemed to whisper in her ear. Sono ningyo ga omoshiroi de gozaimasu ne?
She almost wanted to laugh at the fact she was going crazy, when the Clockwork finished the battle and turned on her...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Maybe not yet, but I think it has potential.  (^_^)http://thespecialistscomic.com/

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/06/ff_cockpits/