What an engineer could do

About 2 years ago, one of my engineer friends told me that been an engineer is useless in real life. A doctor, lawyer, car repairs man can all do something to help you in real life, while us software engineers are mostly useless out side of our work.

It is mostly true, and I agreed with him. I did wrote a WOW bot to help me and other grind, but that is not really the day to day life.

Last Sunday I finally found out the usefulness of us software engineers. My wife bought a Digital Arts & Crafts Studio (a kids drawing tool, which is a digital pen) from yard sale. After she got home, she found it needs special software. Without the software CD the tool is useless. She really wants to play with it and got a bit upset.

I figured that the tool must use the USB to transmit data, and most likely it is in a very simple format. So I go ahead and download the Microsoft drivers development kit, tweaked with USB drivers and then HID, and wrote my own program to read/write (yep, you can write to it to control the LEDs). What I did is I read the position of the pen, then move the computer's mouse accordingly, so she can use it like a mouse.

Problem solved, I am proud to be an engineer (however if I could pick my career again, I would like to be a doctor).

And a last note. The digital studio is kinda slow, it takes a while to respond to the pen movement. I am pretty sure it is their hardware instead of my software.

Almost ready to patent now

Yep. I spend 2 hours last night writing the patent application. It is much harder for me than developing the method, mostly because doing programming and research is much more fun than writing paper and describing it (and has to follow certain formats).

Apply myself will be cheap, if I need to hire a lawyer, it will cost thousands.

Update to my secret project

Last week I got feed up with the quality and performance of OpenOffice charts (it is for office charting and it slows horribly when there are a lot of data).

So I use a few hours (and that is spread to 2 days, for me that is a lot) and made a charting tool myself, with ability to scale and scroll, and can mouse over and show me details. Much better!! I was immediately able to figure out what I need to do, and I am so close to the finish line (means apply for a patent) now that I can tell you something related to what I am doing.

I don't want to tell before hand, because I don't want other engineers to say "That is doable? Let's do it". Because I don't have time, so I will definitely loss in that race. The stuff I am researching on is so common that many people must think of it already but then they will think it is either very difficult or impossible to do (something like give a scent to a computer and let the computer tell you what that is).

I had a break through!

Yep, I had a break through on my secret project. I haven't got much time on my project at all recently, as I don't have much spare time and I was addicted again to Starcraft and watching Korean Pro Games on Starcraft. But yesterday I got a tiny amount of time looking at the data I collected and all of a sudden something hit me and the data did give me something.

So I will try to squeeze time to finish up the project.

Too strong for me

Warning, the language used here is very strong and might disturb you greatly. Don't read if you can't handle it.

It is just unbelievable.

Full Link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8247084.stm

Quote:

He was hanged from a tree, his stomach was cut open, his genitals were severed and stuffed in his mouth

Silverlight 3 video

This is a video posted a long time ago (back in March) and I am posting it in case anyone is interested.

What's new in Silverlight 3

Who let the dogs out

I was reading Tom's hardware and read this topic:
Microsoft will give away windows 7 to selected people who host windows 7 party.

Anyway, I would imagine you need certain luck to win a spot. However a video in the above link really made me laugh, and it immediately remind me of a song (see this post's title)

Starcraft II Zeratul/Kerrigan Intro Cinematic

Nice one Blizzard! I always loved their CGI Movies.

This is posted by HDStarcraft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_0UdfQuSQQ

And a nice JD vs Fantasy fight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkOoe0KqAcs&feature=related

The Murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I was reading a complete different story, when a comment on Madalyn Murray O'Hair got my interest. It was the comment of her own son. And I want to see who this women is, and a google search turned out this interesting link. The story itself has so many turns, if William Shakespeare is alive he can probably make a great novel out of it.

If you are interested, see the link below:
The Murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair:
America's Most Hated Woman

Some cute stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysTmUTQ5wZE&NR=1

and this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3o1o3LFBY&NR=1

SC match, BoxeR vs Flash

BoxeR is the greatest Starcraft player ever, but post his prime. Flash is the current ruling Terran player. I missed this game but it is a great watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7ptEQZrDj4

Perfect Reaver Micro

Check out this youtube Starcraft match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rBqN33TVMs&NR=1

All commentary are in Korean, but I don't need to understand their comments either :-)

He is the Michael Whitman of South Korea.

My secret project has resumed.

Yep I have resumed my top secret project. Me and my wife thought about it back in the 2000s, but I only did partial test on how it could be implemented here and there. Then later on I started playing WOW and the bot project (zoloFighter/fisher) and most of my time got sucked into the bot project (and WOW).

I have restarted the project on Monday. I don't want to discuss it publicly till I had some lead on it (because it is complex and there is no guaranties that it could be done by me). The project has nothing to do with WOW or games in general.

I started to build testing modules on Monday, the project uses C++ and C#. The C++ part is for native interface and C# part is used for display. Today I got a small prototype that can be used to display test data. It needs to be refined to archive the desired tuning effects I needed for my research.

A sad story

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6677379.ece

I am not a big fan of the communist government. But sometimes a story does have 2 sides.

A correction to Starcraft installation

Well I found out I was wrong about the Starcraft installer. It does asking for a CD key.

Last week before I re-download the install client, I tried it again and it was prompting me for a CD key. I must have forgotten about it during the first install.

Anyway, so instead of re-download, the only thing needed is re-install if you forget which CD key you installed Starcraft under.

Problem of 2 copies of Starcraft

I bought my copy of Starcraft when it was first released 10 years ago. Recently I registered it (to get an extra chance to enter into the beta opt-in). Then I bought another digital copy of Starcraft, partly to get one more chance of opt-in, partly to allow friends of mine to come to my house and relax.

So I downloaded the new copy (or I thought so) and installed on one of my computers. Yesterday when I tried to logon to battle.net on both copies, I got the message that the CD key is been used. Turned out that I install the same copy on both computers.

I thought it will be a easy fix, just change the CD key right?

Well, I found it is impossible to find the CD key, either from the installed product nor the installation file. To solve that myself, means I need to uninstall both copies, re-download both copies (because I don't know which copy I downloaded), and re-install them (the downloaded digital copy don't ask for CD keys, it appears to be embedded in).

I have sent an support email to Blizzard. The best alternative I found on the internet is a CD key changer, but it is third party and I don't want to risk my CD keys.

Silverlight 3 is out!

Yes, it is finally out, and check out this great movie!

Of course I immediately went to check if Silverlight 3 can play videos taken by my HF200, no results yet. I will try to put as much time as possible into that, maybe up to 10 minutes a day lol.

Google's new OS?

Google is making a new OS for netbooks.

I have no interest in netbooks. If Google really want to destroy Microsoft, they should make a directx layer on Linux, so my games can run on linux.

I tried to move to linux several times before, I have everything I need on linux, some things are even better (i.e making CD/DVDs), but I can't port my games to linux so I gave up.

Pirate-Hungint Cruise

LOL, I can't stop laughing at this. Maybe I should feel sad. But it is definitely interesting. Some people with money to spend is so bored that they are Cruising in the most dangers waters and attacking pirates!

Here is their quote:

How can we make that guarantee? We operate at 5 knots just beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, thus in international waters where pirates have no rights whatever. In fact, we make three passes through the area's most treacherous waters to ensure maximum visibility by Somali "mother ships".

We will see if they are more effect than US navy.

Here is the link

10 good Korean Starcraft matches

Found this yesterday:
http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2009/02/18/10-crazy-korean-professional-starcraft-matches/

The unthinkable

I really don't want to write about this. Serves as a warning to all your parents with small kids.

This Tuesday, a family close to us lost their daughter. She drowned in a pool. There were 4 other kids and 4 adults present. She drowned while the babysitter went to get her cloth, only several minutes of time.

We all went to the hospital that night. And this sad feeling just keep growing on me. I guess if you loss a loved one, you will feel worse before feeling better.

I feel epically bad yesterday when i saw her parents. They are close friend of ours, and their daughter loved play with me. I used to do hide and seek with them and their screams usually made them mad.

We are going to make a power point slice about the little girl, good thing is I made many photos of her when she was at my home before.

So sad. Feels like my heart is been cut.

And my co-worker give me this,
Steven Curtis Chapman Cinderella Music Video & story, we both sobbed.

Instance soloing

Recently I have been doing some instance soloing with my Death Knight. The death knight has all blue gear crafted by my black smith (don't have time to get other gears).

So far, I have done SM, DM, BRD, UBRS, Stratholme, Scholomance.

Starts with SM, very easy, much easier than when I solo it with my l60 warrior. After that I got bold and went to BRD, Stratholme, Scholomance. Easy.

Dire Maul is very easy compare to when I tried it with my level 70 toon.

UBRS was a surprise. I saw a level?? fire boss, he was easy. However I died at the final boss once. Adding to the pain is I only have a short time every time I play, most of the time I have to leave my toon in the dungeon and abort. So after several days I tried again, this time I summoned a lot of ghouls and beat him with ease.

In UBRS, I wondered into another instance. That was a huge surprise. Mobs keep spawning and they overwhelmed me. I will try it again sometime later (and after some googling too).

Something interesting

The Mongolian Death Worm

Recent WOW activities

Even with a new baby I could still find some time to play. Most recently I got a new hunter pet (from SMV), and I visited DM and is currently trying to get the shadowforge key and solo BRD.

It is not difficult, with my level 80, the challenge is to find a block of time. Most of the time I was half way through and had to leave and the toon will timeout. Still it can be fine, almost feels like playing diablo.

I am in a lazy mode again

For the past week or two I was not in the mode to do anything, I thought of several projects I could done but have not start any of them. Played some StarCraft, but got tired and watched gomtv for other players play instead. Played some WOW, caught a new pet and went to DM. But non of those lasted more than 10 minutes and most time I send AFK flying.

I got a bunch of new ideas but no time to implement

With everything now cooling down (finally), I got 2 projects that I want to do (big thanks to Blizzard and my recent brain storming). One of it is change zoloFighter to a javascript engine (as of now php/perl all have standalone engines, but not javascript, which I think deserves a standalone engine so it can be more popular). There one one I will keep a secret for now.

Huge disappointment in the afternoon.

Yes at this point I am very disappointed. I finally remembered to bring my old geforce 7600 to my office in hope of making my office PC a dual monitor system. Till I open the case and tried to put it in. My PC is a Dell Optiplex 755, and the case is too small!!!! So basically Dell build a system that can not be upgraded in anyway.

Errrrr......

God and Evolution

Two days ago I had a lengthy discussion with one of my co-workers on Evolution. It stars with the Hornet vs Bee issue. He think it is evaluation and I think it is designed.

Neither of us are able to convince the other, with he firmly believe that evaluation is the answer of every thing, and I can't be convinced that something can evolved to an egg then chicken. I do believe that simple elements can evolve to DNA strings, and strings can form cells and complex organisms, but use that to explain Chicken/Egg is impossible.

I think I can find a compromise to this. We could say that during the evolution process, some intelligent beings come to existence and they in turn designed a lot of the stuff that can't be explained by evaluation, i.e chicken/egg thing. The leap there is just as great as the creation leap.

However, it still doesn't explain how intelligence is formed. I don't believe we can design artificial intelligence. All our random numbers in computers are fake, so there is actually no true randomness. But I think intelligence requires true randomness (Of course randomness doesn't explain feelings, but I will assume feelings can be emulated).

So my assumption is, there are a finite set of things in this universe that are truly random, and they tends to attach to living organisms. Those things are the origin of real intelligence.

The closest Starcraft game ever

My friend just forwarded this to me. I know, I am dead tired right now because the new baby, but still I can't help playing games or watch those.

Oragn vs BackHo

Swine Flu in WOW

I am not kidding, it exists in WOTLK!
See this on wowinsider

Funny.

Out rage of the day

Time Warner and Embarq trying to kill small competitions

Remember last week on Broken Toys when people were angry about Time Warner trying to make limits on how much people can use their boradband? I am actually a bit OK with that. But not when they are trying to kill competition.

A competitive free market is what make the US so great, it is not big companies use government power to help themselves nor politicians printing money to buy votes.

OMG

My daughter was born yesterday (2009-Apr-21) at 11:56 pm. It was a long process and I was there every step of the way. I have to say that the child birth process is, PG13. I think I finally know how the writers of some of the best SCIFI movies get their ideas, they just change the child birth process a little bit and used the same theme.

damn

Just found that I forget to remove the downloads from my OLD downloads section. That section is where I put the zoloFighter for old versions. I stumped there today and found the links are still working (and possibly the offsets are still working too). I will need to remember to remove them when I got home this noon, else the blizzard guys might think that I try to cheat them.

This is the problem when you have done something for over 2 years, you got stuff every where (kind of like when I do updates to offsets, keep forgetting to update some of them).

And another note, Pirate Bay went down. It is not good to pirate, but it will be bad to all of us too. Someone could post a pirate link as a comment on one of my old blog entries, I will never found that out and I could be fined!

The courts can be so confusing

That is why it is never a good idea to go to court.

I was doing some more readings on Blizzard vs MDY, and here is another case that almost contradicts MAI vs. Peak : Storage Technology Corp. v. Custom Hardware Eng’g & Consulting, Inc

I spend about 2 hours reading it since I can't figure out part of its logic, and I still don't quit understand it. The conclusion seems to be, even in the case the defendant win, if the copy right owner has made the license restrict enough, the defendant would have lost.

I also learned that my 1102 fair use defense won't work either, huge surprise.

And I don't want to spend another hour reading Blizzard's EULA. It is boring (unlike the case study), and in the most unlikely case that the EULA does has hole, I will still won't want to go to court.

P.S. This blog is now totally devoted to public education, I am sure the links used can be allowed under section 1102 fair use.

Lost all 3 passwords

A couple of days ago when I tried to upload a new version of fighter, I found the password was changed.

Then yesterday when I tried to post on my forum, I forget my password and have to reset it.

Later on when I tried to do a refund for donors for the past month, I found I lost my paypal password too.

Almost thought someone hacked in.

The End

I just got contacted by a lawyer from Blizzard. Not sure how but they got my contact info (I guess from DNS records) and called me at work.

At first I heard he say something like "I am a lawyer from Blue entertainment ...", and I thought "Oh another advertisement", then he asked about zoloFighter, and my thought was "WHAT?!!".

All conversions are confidential, so I can't disclose much. I just got home and have disabled the bot. It was fun while it lasted.

Every thing can go wrong on tax/patch day

It is already post patch day but it is still the tax day.

So whatever can go wrong did went wrong. The last thing I could think of is that I lost my forum admin password.... Now I can't login to post messages.

Anyway, all will be fixed.

I forget so many things

Usually I can't get up early, not even for work. But I woke up today and have to get this done.

Yep, for wow 3.1 update, I didn't provide a download link!

And this update also require a binary change, and I forget to force all users to download.

Anyway, the servers are down right now, I updated the changes and hopefully I didn't break anything.

EDIT: Just updated again to 0.8.6.10. It fixes the stupid "pre mob" bug.
And, DO NOT afk bot. there are so many offsets that I forget to update, the bot could break at any new events that I have not tested.

3.1 updated

0.8.6.8 released. You must download the new version to use.

I did some test and it looks like basic functions are working, however the bot tries to attack all mobs, include your npcs etc. It will be worked out this week, and now wife is really argoing and I gtg.

Good timing for overtime

The bad news is, I am stuck in office for some emergency fixing, while patch 3.1 is been released today.

The good news, is the patch got delayed again and again so I am not missing anything.

Silverlight 3 Beta 1

I don't know how I missed this, must be the stupid taxes (this falls perfectly with my previous post on Dr Rodger's report, if we spend more time on taxes, we will have less time doing research).

Silverlight 3 beta 1 has released. Here are the features.

Now I got one more thing to wait on besides Starcraft II

Boot your OS in 2 seconds

And Intel has done it with linux.

Shutdown the internet?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/obama-shut-down-internet-legislation,7478.html#xtor=RSS-181

I doubt this could ever happen. However even if this doesn't happen with Obama, it might happen to the next President. There might be an attack and he over think the risk and shutdown the internet.

I think cyber attacks are overly hyped.

I wish I am a lawyer

Just saw this, Intel is suing Nvidia and AMD for licensing issues

My thought is, the chipset agreement is pretty much useless, because such agreements will not hold in a court of law. As the case Lexmark Int’l v. Static Control Components and a trail of other case shows, not only the higher courts favor little guys, such licensing is totally unnecessary because according to my recent research on copyright law, what Nvidia does (making chipset) totally falls under section 1102f fair use rules.

Of course Intel has multi-million dollar lawyers, and I am just a dirt cheap engineer/part time freeware developer/part time bot writer.

Is open source software good for econmy?

I am not sure about it. It is certainly good for consumer.

Open source is good for consumer, because they don't come with so much hassle.
I have about 5 or 6 copies of windows XP (either come with a computer or bought separately) and only 3 computers at my home. Every time I reformat my computer, it is always a pain to get to Microsoft and do an activation (because I can't remember which XP is installed on with computer). My linux never had such problems.

But is open source good for the economy? I am not so sure. Every since I used Open Office, I never bought another copy of Microsoft Office again. I actually uninstalled MS Office from my computer. Consider Microsoft's Office give so many people jobs.

I guess for the long run, open source is good for the economy, since it makes people's life easier and a few dedicated people can free a lot of other people in a corporation to do other things, but in the short term it is not.

TV vs Computer

There is a great essay by Paul Graham about TV vs Computer

The same applies everywhere, from US/non-US automakers, to outsourcing of blue/white collar jobs. The world is changing, and we either change with it, or be buried by it.

Starcraft II release date

After study copyright law, I have learned to be fair use, don't quote the most juice part of the story. Just kidding, I can write it in my own words but I am too lazy.

See this link: http://www.futureshop.ca/marketing/starcraft2/default.asp?&logon=&langid=EN

More cases

I am in danger of turning this blog into a case study, but I can't help myself.
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Blizzard_v_bnetd/20050901_decision.pdf Blizzard vs Bnetd. After reading the ruling, it is clear that why the judge ruled against bnetd:

Unlike in Lexmark Int'l, Inc., Battle.net mode codes
were not accessible by simply purchasing a Blizzard game or logging onto Battle.net

Appellants's circumvention in this case constitutes infringement. As detailed
earlier, Blizzard's secret handshake between Blizzard games and Battle.net effectively
controlled access to Battle.net mode within its games. The purpose of the bnetd.org
project was to provide matchmaking services for users of Blizzard games who wanted
to play in a multi-player environment without using Battle.net. The bnetd.org
emulator enabled users of Blizzard games to access Battle.net mode features without
a valid or unique CD key to enter Battle.net. The bnetd.org emulator did not
determine whether the CD key was valid or currently in use by another player. As a
result, unauthorized copies of the Blizzard games were freely played on bnetd.org
servers.

This is rather exciting, because the previous case of Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components now also make sense. I was so confused about that one it is almost like sky is falling, but now it does make sense. The case of law is almost like programming, it can seem strange but when dig down it does make sense. Only if law suits can be slower like programming (you can think and think in programming, but for lawsuits, you must act fast), I would rather practice law.

All of us might have violated copyright law at some point

After wrote my previous blog, I did some thinking and found that all of us, who uses computers (especially wrote computer programs) might have violated copy right law at some moment.

According to US copy right law:

“Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

In this case, my wife might wrote a copy righted joke (short one, 1 or 2 sentences) on our computer, left notepad open and left. I switch account, turn on WOW and warden scans, copy the entire joke from RAM location A to location B and do his work. There is a copyright violation! My wife's exclusive right to make copy (under section 106) has just been violated.

And for that, even anti virus program are liable.

And for us programmers, sometimes we allocate memory in excess of what we need, and that excess un-initialized part of RAM might contain copyrighted material. And in C/C++, when you pass in an array by copy, that is a copy. And when a debugger is attached, you can see/communicate with that data.

Of course, in that case no one will sue you because it is hard to argue how they are harmed. But it is against the law in its current language anyway. (In the case of MAI vs Peak, Peak's IT person can't even boot MAI customer's machine.)

Glider case, zoloFighter and Warden law breaker

OK, here is what I got so far. Virtuallyblind has an excellent article analyzing this. Too bad I didn't notice that before.
http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/07/14/blizzard-wins-sj-mdy/

I checked out the 3 cases:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/991_F2d_511.htm MAI vs Peak
http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case567.cfm Ticket Master vs RMT
http://www.gehrkelaw.com/files/wall_data_inc.%20v.%20Los%20Angeles%20County%20Sheriff%27s%20Dep%27t.pdf Wall data vs police department

The worst one is MAI vs Peak (Edit: from the ruling, MAI sales licenses only), in which the judge basically says if you bought software, you are not the owner, and you can't debug that software if the vendor didn't want you to.
I was surprised by that, it is totally against the copyright law in my understanding (i.e. as long as you pay for the software and don't use multiple copies you are OK).
The ruling basically says that even if you bought the software, if the creator of that software don't want you to load it into your computer's RAM, you break the law if you do so.


The TicketMaster ruling makes more sense, because RMT didn't buy anything, they just use the website against rules.


Wall data vs police dept is more straight forward, police department made too many copies.

In all 3 cases, commercial interest seems to be the key issue. In MAI vs Peak, the judge most likely think that the former MAI employees holds trade secret and defected to Peak via commercial interest, so he made the ruling to protect MAI's interest.
The side effect of that is, software owners are no longer owners, they are leasers now. Any move the software maker don't like, and they can bar you from doing anything in the name of copy right.
It seems that with that ruling, section 117 is no longer in effect.

The only possible solution seems to be the fair use defense, which the police department used. However the judge in that case saw no such thing based on all 4 criteria of fair use.

One thing I want to add is, after reading the rulings, I think all those judges should be revered. I am not kidding. They display exemplar knowledge, quoting prior cases/research/publications at well, almost like a library.
I have no idea how they can do that, and I am rather worried that the entire legal system could collapse under its own weight when there are just too many prior cases for ordinary humans to handle.


From the rulings, the judges are clearly rule within the confinement of law, and they follow logic instead of common presumption. However within the confinement of law, they clearly can use their own judgments on grey area issues (i.e. what is fair use in Glider and Wall Data case).

It also come as a shock to me, that WOW's warden could be breaking the law by examining copy righted material on users' computer. Since copy to RAM is also a copy "When such a copy is made in excess of a license, the copier is liable for copyright infringement. Ticketmaster LLC v. RMG Techs., Inc., 507 F. Supp. 2d 1096, 1107".

So basically since judges are not allowed to break precedence, the only available defense is section 107, fair use:


This is a break down for zolo:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
non-commercial, and some educational.

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
entertainment. WOW also uses warden to scan users' system, which could mean it is a potential law breaker (i.e. copy copyrighted material to RAM).
the bot also act as a DMCA protection device.

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
not sure

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
since there is a default time limit, zolo users will be forced to stay near the computer and start the bot again and again.
This allows interaction with other users, and ensure blizzard's name and profitability.
I for one will give up WOW for its long hours, if not for the bot. And I remember there are other persons on my board states the same.

OMG StarCraft II demo!

Got the news from tomshardware.

Let's hope some of us get lucky!

Glider lawsuit

I found out that glider has stopped yesterday. Here is what I posted on zolo forum yesterday:

I just found out glider lost the suit (partially anyway, pending appeal).

I was shocked as why violating EULA became a violation of law issue. I was confident glider will win because they didn't do anything unlawful.

Spend an hour today reading copy right law and I thought they could use section 109 and 117 as defense. But after reading some of the court text, it appears that glider's lawyer already used such defenses. If a judge change the law, all following law suits must follow precedent.

I will have to take time to read through the entire context, but before that all donations will be suspended, no new keys will be issued. From the judge, seems to me that the commercial nature of glider is the main down fall (I can't figure out why section 117 is throw out, so that got be the reason). From the text, the judge seems to indicate that there is chance of appeal.

From the beginning, this bot is not meant to make money. If that is the case I will do more than $1 per charge because of the paypal overhead. My donations to charities for a single year is many times higher than all the donations combined. My initial goal is to share this tool with like minded people in similar situations, for it is man with wife/gf argos or students need focus on their homework. The donation, no matter how small, will enable blizzard's argument that I profited from this and such is guilty. So donation is taken out.

Those already donated, the key will keep working till expire.

I will find time to read the entire section of the verdict and the law.

So what I did yesterday is disable donation. I am sure that will 100% make zoloFighter covered under section 107, fair use law. Of course because I can't call a judge to confirm that, I have to do more digging myself.

Since then I have found several links and other people's discussions, I will post another blog today.

In love with Lambda expressions

I wanted to do this for a while now, never find the time. So it is a short one.

I wanted javascript for zoloFighter for one simple reason. At the time I love java, and this Paul Graham's essay prompted me to look into python/ruby/javascript.

It is excellent that most of zoloFighter users uses javascript to customize their bots, turning boring grinds into fun programming exercises, which is beneficial to them in the long run (and as paranoid as I am, which constantly worry about employer's ability to pay employee, or US run out of engineers, it is a good thing to do). One huge thing I like about javascript is attach of functions to anything, or anonymous functions (which java also have but c# 1.0 lacks).

How things has changed since c# introduced Lambda expressions. Now you can do anonymous functions and much more! I love the cleanness of those, they just looks beautiful and make our job much easier.

new great wow 3.1 features

I was reading wowinsider today and noticed the little title a couple of lines down, Wow Casually

Since I am a ultra casual player, that caught my eye and I was not disappointed!! Yep. Here is a summary:
1. 30 minutes hearth (combine with the recall scroll means you can hearth 3 times an hour).
2. ground mount can swim. Huge time saver. Now I will no longer afraid of swim.
3. queue BG anywhere and return to the same place when BG ends!! Finally. It is a pain to go to a capital city to play BG. Now only if they could do that for instances :-)

Anyway, I have guest coming from out of state this week, so I will only update stuff that I wanted.

Vacation

I will be on Vacation, so no more posting for a week.

Obama's speech and Republican's response

I tried hard to focus during Obama's speech and he did a good job with a speech that has almost no substance. Have no idea what his plans are.

On the other hand Bobby Jindal looks not as at ease as Obama, but I do agree with most of what he is talking about ("But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and not to just put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you, the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything." ... Bobby)

The only thing I don' agree with Bobby is on energy issues, I want the price of energy higher so the market can be pushed toward new energy sources instead of oil.

Stupidity overwhelming

The government will starting to taxing on us how much we drive. See this link.

It will make more sense if they just make higher taxes on energy, i.e gas and electric.

Anyway, the good part of this bill is, it will make my wife less likely to go out shopping :-)

Starcraft II will be 3 games

Yes, instead of warring about my job and this economy, I can't wait for Starcraft II to come out. And some googling later I got this link:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55267

Starcraft II will ship in 3 parts, 1 terran campaign and 2 expansion (zerg and toss).

Have to say I am a little bit disappointed, to save cash I will just buy the first one and wait till the other 2 drop in price.

How NOT to help your friends

You should never help your friends the way those people did.

See this link on yahoo.

Finally fixed the old glider profile

Old glider profiles has only x,y positions, and zolo Orbiter uses x,y,z positions to track where the toon is. The reason is at some point, I found a great spot under water for farming and it makes much more sense to not only move left/right but up/down as well.

OK, I think all old glider profiles broke on that one, and I always want to fix that because so many people keep telling me it is broken (usually new users).

The fix requires 2 steps. First I added z position check in my code.
And I added a fixer to the old profiles. Once the old profiles are converted, run it through the fixer, it will fix all irregularities in glider profiles, make it Orbiter compatible.

The funny thing is, I lost my original code for the converter, Glad minifss has included the converter in his download, so it is easy for me to decompile.

Blizzard is going to get us with 3.0.9

I know this day would come, but never thought so soon.

This morning I did a routine check on WOW, never thought there could be an update because 3.0.8 was just out last week (or something like that).

And there is a patch. Again was not patchable with guest account.
So I patched it on my other computer.

Before go to work I went to check the computer. There is the line about device driver installed reboot required!! What driver??!!

As many of you know, I pioneered the guest account mode to give zoloFighter the best security one can find. But now they have a device driver running in parallel, while WOW can't do anything, the driver are not restricted.

So unless the user know what to do (i.e. make sure he patch and play on different OS installation), he will be caught.

So I have no choice but to disable the bot for now, and confirm with users one by one to make sure they know what to do. I barely had enough time to disable bot, but have not update the website and remove the donation button yet.

Again, I am sure next time, blizzard will REQUIRE the "supervisor" driver to be running to run WOW. At that time we will be really messed :-(

Bad Sunday

Not a good day on Sunday.

First I got a headache.

Then after I come home I found my bot dead, only run for a couple of minutes (I was expecting it to level).

Since I don't have much time and have to leave for a party soon, I just kick start the bot.

Only come back and found the bot is dead there again.

Turned out there was a bug in my targeting system and 2 mobs on the map is spoofed.

Which forced me to fix the code while having an headache.
Let's hope the next Sunday I can relax.

The most dangerous (or stupid) doctrine in US history

I am talking about the fairness doctrine

Been busy lately

I feel very sorry for all my users. I have been busy recently (both from work and life) and was not able to do much to resolve your issues (usually problems relating to the profile packs).

This weekend I got some extra time, but I played with my guild instead. Sorry but I have to have some fun, else I might commit suicide.

Wife is unhappy again

I haven't played much recently. Yesterday I spend about 2 minutes to check my toon and wife got very upset. Yes she just come back from a business trip, but I already spent time with her in the airport and in the car. Maybe she started counting when I was changing cloth.

This is so sad. I have to work till 8 yesterday and can't spend 2 minutes just to res my toon?

last bug for 3.0.8 fixed

I read some post on my forum and realized that I forget to update the corpse location again...

anyway it is fixed now, even though I didn't have time to post replies.

still at work

I am still at work at this moment. Will try to test out the new patch once I got home. Please be patient.

server patch delayed

Yep, they extended the server up time to 1pm pst, which is way past my lunch threshold.

So I will wait till tonight to fix the offsets (and to break the non-US clients LOL).

3.0.8 out today

Just got word from wow insider that 3.0.8 will be out today. I will try to make a quick fix tonight. I think they might have a few glitches so that I won't be able to wait for realm to come back on this noon.

Our future lies here

Tiny electric cars

If the US government can drop all regulations on electric cars (i.e air bags, Air conditions), that could lead to a boom in small car manufacturers (Because they don't need to pay so much money to meet regulation). If that became true, it will meant so much for the US economy. I mean for a lot of people, driving 30 miles/hour on local roads without those additions won't be a bad idea.

More talk about iceage

This is a link from dredge report: http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/ Apparently before 1970 ice age was all the rage. Now the talk about it returns.

Are we so short sighted that our science goes 180 degree turns every 30 years?

I was a firm believer of global warming just about 2 year ago. And I have turned my mind in the past one and a half years.

However we should not starting to waste energy, because an ice age will be far more dangers than global warming.

Go go Starcraft II

I find myself constantly checking on status of StarCraft II. A little bit inpatient after I saw the great videos :-)

I am a fan of StarCraft ever since it went out, bought the expansion but love the original. From what I can see from the demo, StarCraft II looks great. I'd wish Blizzard can release the game then add the story lines later.

One great advantage of StarCraft II over WOW will be, WOW requires a internet connection to play, so at places where there is a firewall you can't play it. StarCraft II is totally different, I can play the single player version after work, where my wife can't check.

new year surprises

No it is not the stock market. It is my bot. A bunch of people reported they are having problem with melee classes, and finally I got time to try it out.

That was annoying. They are right, there is a problem. I set the waypoint threshold too small and the bot, sometime after chasing the mobs, run to far and quit.

Just imaging how annoying it is when the bot run out of the short range, stopped and then some mob kills it while my computer is contributing to global warming. Then I came and found the bot won't automatically run back even a ghost waypoint is there. Because it think the corpse is too far??!!

OK so I finally got it all fixed yesterday, hopefully I can enjoy the automatic gold now :-)