DO NOT use SL to buy anything using your bank account, mine got cleared out

Yes I know about freecreditreport.com being a paid service. I actually do pay the monthly fee because I'm working on improving my credit up to an excellent rating (it's good now, but it could go higher) so that I can get a low rate on a house in 2 years. I've actually had some surprising things pop up; one of the 3 credit rating companies suddenly listed me as having $3302 in credit card debt, when it's actually $0. It's nice to have a service that checks this stuff for me daily, and alerts me if it finds any changes.

my password is a secret.

Standard consumer machines can test hundreds of thousands of passwords per second, and programs like the ones listed here ( http://www.schneier.com/essay-148.html ) use some pretty smart and well-proven methods to achieve better efficiency even on commodity hardware.

For example, that page mentions just one of the ways that password-cracking programs achieve better success rates : "AccessData's secret sauce is the order in which it runs the various root and appendage dictionary combinations. The company's research indicates that the password sweet spot is a seven- to nine-character root plus a common appendage, and that it's much more likely for someone to choose a hard-to-guess root than an uncommon appendage."

Rather than computing power, the biggest limiting factor is probably the time it takes for each test confirmation over the wire to the LL servers, and makes me wonder (since I don't remember hearing about it) if Linden Lab tracks failed logins or has any sort of detection method in place for such things.

[EDIT] I should point out that I doubt his password was cracked, I'd be willing to bet my entire L$ balance that the true explanation is far simpler and more mundane


.

'a secret'?

/me goes and shoves that into the SL login

It's a very good question, and one that can be tested easily enough.

Heh... With an alt, maybe And even then, I'd have to make sure that I don't get myself banned by IP address. On the other hand, I'd sure love to know the answer.....


.

You are not getting it. I am talking about entire generations of young people all around the world- west and east---not just your local chapter of AA. Game addiction is barely recognized as an addiction. Therapists can't bill insurance for it. Who is going to pay for helping them? This is more then just an addiction it's a change of socieity to on online matrix.

If you total up the numbers of people heavily involved in online gaming between ages of 14---28, the numbers are staggering. The economic impact of this will be staggering as well. people foregoing high school and college and careers to play games 6, 10, 12 and more hours a day. The best and brightest (ratio around 80:20 male to female in games like warcraft), are playing the MMO games for inordinant numbers of hours each day to the exclusion of real life. It's way past simple addiction theory. It's becoming a replacement for real life. In the next few years there is going to be the repercussions as these gamer generations have to face reality.

Perhaps some future generations seeing their brothers and sister losers, will reject these games entirely. They can use the rehabilitated strung out gamers as their janitors and field workers.

In China they passed laws limiting game play to 3 hours a day.

read this:

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4183340.stm[/url]


Is this what you want in the Western countries as well? This issue is not going to go away, so unless we want entire generations of homeless, unemployed people, then employment in a secure, virtual reality is preferable to unemployment.

There is also much positive potential with virtual reality as a platform where people from around the world can have a virtual United Nations to solve real problems or in education for schools etc.

....but in the meantime we have innane pastimes such as forums or chat rooms, full of people pandering to each other's innanities in roleplaying fantasy games.

Now you wouldn't know about pandering...or any such thing would you Trout?

Total fiddling while Rome burns.


.... Generation of Online gamers can make a society sitting ducks?

They are sitting there with headphones on, 12 hours a day--they can't hear the symbolic deadbolt on their front door, being jimmied open by the real life horde.

It's called Darwinism, sweetheart. If our species can't survive its own short comings, it will die out. If it's because all the kids out there can't get lives/jobs/sexorz, well, so be it.

Christ on a bike, Rebecca, you really get a thrill from all this cod-psychology, don't you?

Do you think that if you keep drenching us with your shrill, bizarre evangelism, we poor, brainwashed and deluded no-hopers (oh, I almost forgot: perverts and deviants) are going to suddenly stop enjoying SL for the myriad reasons we do, and march to your narrow-minded tune like Hamlyn's rats behind your clearly barking mad Pied Piper?

It would be highly amusing were you not taking yourself so ultra seriously.

Everything I am saying is true. It's neither far fetched nor barking mad. It's not me, that is playing the pied piper tune or serving the kool-aid.

I have a feeling you've been drinking quite a lot of it.

So why don't you leave us deluded mortals be? It's fair getting on my tits, quite frankly.

I don't need some two-bit social commentator telling me what I can and can't enjoy.

The basic facts may be true, but your take on them is rather bizarre.

"Spending so much time on online games is bad but, since people are going to do it anyway, let's think of ways to encourage and reward them so they spend even MORE time online!"

Game "addiction" is caused by two things; weakness of character and lack of pr0nz. I can't fix the former, but I can solve the latter for all of you easily. Just let me delve into my hard drive for a moment.

I can help too if ya run out, Conan.

The world can never have too many pr0nz.

Neither can my hard drives.

thus sayeth the oblivious gamer.......


....even working in a virtual reality is too much for them?

No this is just expedient since it's not about to change.

hahaha. Risible.

Can someone explain this sentence to me? I didn't know the word expedient, so checked dictionary.com, and am still unsure what this sentence means.

Gaming addicts would only find something else to keep them in their parent's basement. If it weren't WoW it would be D&D or paedophilia or neo nazism. Or they'd become real life furries. The kind of people this happens to were never going to be useful to society anyway.

She's saying that since they're addicts, might as well keep them addicts and have them work online, since they won't change anyway. Oh, and also she's probably saying something about society as a whole not changing any time soon.

Rebecca is trying to defend her suggestion that gaming addicts should be encouraged and helped to waste their miserable and worthless lives even more by suggesting that they are going to anyway and that it is convenient for the rest of us if they can generate some wealth on their way down into the pit. Ofcourse, she misses the point that their "work" can never be constructive or generate wealth. Of course, they might just make enough money to keep them in Pocky and Ramen.

Pedophilia and neo nazism are games?

Wow, you must throw some wild parties.. goatse, lemonparties, pedos, neo nazis, furries.. now THAT is an orgy.

Except wouldn't the nazi's be a bit uncomfy?

Nazis are some of the nicest people you could meet. Hitler was very kind to animals, for example. Infact, he was the first emo furry.

I love emo hitler pictures..I really do.