This is because Microsoft updated some certificate information and pidgin needs a little update. Just download the newest version of pidgin and install. The new certificate files will be automagically installed for you.
pidgin unable to validate certificate omega.contacts.msn.com
Content filtering firewall was my problem. I run an untangle firewall, shut the components down, ran the patches, worked fine. All of this functioned correctly while still running the windows firewall and MS Security Essentials for AV.
I have been playing WoW since the game came out what $600 dollars or so ago? Some of what I’m saying here may not be correct because I just haven’t found the right setting or option yet. From a complete noob perspective in Lord of the Rings, here is how it stacks up so far on the first few months:
Things LOTRO shines on:
When you ride from city to city, you can jump off at any time. Can’t jump off a bird in wow. This is so nice when leveling up your mining or heading to a quest in the middle of a flight path.
Max quests is 40 vs 25. I hate this in WoW because sometimes I want to be working on a few quest chains in several zones, then add the seasonal quests. I run out.
Graphics are different, sometimes better. Water looks good, but a river has to go uphill at the last second before becoming a waterfall. If you have a good video card the graphics are awesome. There are huge fields of tall grass and flowers that sway in the breeze, looks good on the tv computer.
There are really cool combo moves we haven’t quite figured out yet. So different classes working together can end up with a combo move coming up where if you all hit the same color, it does something awesome like summon an Ent to stomp your enemy.
The pace of some of the instances is fast and exciting.
WoW is better:
Plugins!!!! The biggest strength of WoW is the vast library of plugins available. If you use the curse gaming client you can download, search, manage all of your plugins in a snap. Things like healbot, bagnon, dpsmeter just aren’t available for LORTO yet. I haven’t studied the API, but so far I don’t think you can do much for LORTO besides skin the UI.
standing in a fire burns you in WoW
Bag space! UGH. I am so used to bagnon in WoW, having one giant bag pop up that I can’t stand the individual bags on LORTO. I don’t know yet if you can upgrade the bag slot numbers. If you can’t it is going to really suck long term.
Even after they opened free players up, the population of WoW is so vast that everything works better. The autodungeon finder, auction house, battlegrounds. Life is a lot easier because there are always people online outside your guild/kinship to accomplish what you need at the moment.
Autorun works with a mouse button (easily fixed by mapping in LOTRO)
Dragging items from bag to bag, or bag to vendor is awkward, slow, jerky in LORTO
For a 10GB download, the background music sucks. WoW music gets turned off on my machine, but once in a while i flip it back on cause i love running in to Stormwind and looking around. They picked their majestic music well. LORTO music is more accurate for the theme of the game. It sounds like a wandering band of minstrels with old instruments. Others may love this, just personal opinion.
No signs to be found in LORTO, I can’t find a trainer anywhere. Well that is how it started. Once you learn the interface it is easy to find things. I like being able to ask a guard in WoW and have my destination show up red on the map, or use the tool built in to the minimap. Questhelper handicapped my ability to go find things myself, it is a time saver that I would love to see in Lorto.
The map sort of kind of tells you an area. Sometimes it is right. I don’t like the icons they use to explain different points of interest because they aren’t very obvious.
The button interface is just awful. This weird grey wicker looking thing. The buttons make very little sense so far. I’l figure it out as I go.
It seems you have to have a bag open to keep your 3 additional spell bars open. This is easily fixed by going in to the options.
The learning curve for a minstrel is high, and the effects of each action you are capable of are confusing. The buffing doesn’t last very long, and you need to memorize what each one does because they aren’t self explanatory in the name.
Just different, not better or worse either way
jumping down far hurts you in WoW, jumping down breaks your leg and slows you down in LORTO.
Overall-
I like LORTO a lot. It is different and refreshing to play something that is easy to pick up with WoW skills. I love the graphics and the theme. My concern is that it won’t pick up enough players to drive development. And what happens when they finish the books? Do they have the rights to build new story or will the movie studios shoot them down? For now I’ll keep switching between both.
Thats about it. if you are an iwork ilife ifanbois, the only phone for you is an iphone. If you love google apps like me, get a droid. You want the best ladder up to your cloud. Both have more apps than you can shake a stick at. Can you really filter through 80,000 apps available on the google phone? Do you really care if 60% of droid apps are free? No, you want your ladder to your cloud.
Unless you have HIPAA, PHIPA, SOX, CISSP, work for DoD, or just a company who values privacy. Then you get a Blackberry and download the right apps. There should be no such thing as an iphone or droid at a company who has security requirements. Please tell me I’m wrong with citations of how an iphone or droid is fully compliant with FIPS140-2 and is listed on the appropriate NIST site so I can show my attorney. Then I will snuggle up in my happy google cloud or let my coworkers get all happy in their iphone cloud.
I do envy you people who are arguing about megapixels and screen size. Not becuase your petty arguments have merit, just because I want the happy ladder instead of the Escher staircase.
One side note- I still challenge anyone to show me an iphone app with a real business use for me that can’t be replicated by blackberry or droid. So far it doesn’t exist. I think these are all fairly equal platforms and just flavors, not fat vs carbs.
I’m not always the biggest fan of some of the things Apple does, but I think the Ipad is pretty darn cool. When CRN posted this story, I was a little offended at their assertion that the ipad is the target of the back door. It is not. Windows is the target. I am no lawyer, but I am guessing this is straight up libel against Apple/ipad. http://www.crn.com.au/News/173074,backdoor-malware-targets-apple-ipad.aspx
I forgot to publish this from Mexico after my birthday when it hit the press. One guy in Russia named Kirllos owns 1 in 300 facebook accounts and has them for sale. A close source today tells me he has a lead on a guy who is selling more accounts than that, and cheaper than Kirllos. My only point being, if there are 2 known people who have a 1 in 300 shot at already owning your password, I hope you change it as often as I do. There are a lot more than 2 Eastern European hackers in the world.
The combination of facebook owning your data, and you being excluded from that ownership/permissions editing should be something to ponder.
That is odd, but hey a 25% discount on awesome nerd gear at thinkgeek:
not sure which ad company is causing it. When you calculate directions in mapquest it just spins and spins. Verified on a few machines in a few states so far. I may investigate, probably will just say don’t use mapquest.
The argument with users should go like this – We block malware/adware. If Mapquest has recently changed partnerships and signed with someone who has a negative reputation, that does not give us a valid reason to stop using exisiting tools to block malware/adware. Write to mapquest or use Google maps, Bing maps, etc.
Mapquest hangs on Loading and just spins
I have a client who is having problems with Comcast and intermittent outages. We have both talked to comcast over the last few years to discuss the issue and come to no resolution or attempt at real troubleshooting. Tuesday a tech is finally coming out.
I will have pingdom stats this time to show how often the connection drops. Pingdom checks the firewall at the residence. It is possible for pingdom stats to be off in a few rare cases where the firewall is down. Currently that would occur because the power has been out or the hardware failed. Should give a pretty accurate show of Comcast uptime in a residence. I will update the stats if the hardware fails or power drops.
To troubleshoot the intermittent internet issue:
1. Ran pings from in the house to a bunch of addresses. In windows ping -t ping.mit.edu, fire up another command prompt, ping -t www.msu.edu, colorado.edu, etc. In linux just ping.
2. Swapped access points, copying config from ddwrt and moving to the other
3. New installation of DDWRT
4. Grounded cable splitters
5. Swapped cable splitters and coax
6. Called comcast, had them add a mac address for my newest cable modem. Seems on newer cheap ones you can’t copy the MAC. This guy was extremely helpful. Told me the Up link had some poor signal strength. At the time of the call. Only the cable modem was plugged in. This tells me there is a signal strength problem outside the house.
7. Tried with the Untangle UTM appliance inline and without.
None of these steps over a very long period of time has solved the issue, and now all hardware has been replaced.
Time will tell. And you will be able to monitor this locations performance as well as others on my Monitoring page very soon.
Be nice to the troubleshooting guy. I was nice to this one today and he was very very helpful. Crazy to have a native english speaker at 5 on a Sunday in the US. Maybe my comcast stock is worth holding on to. (disclaimer there… I own about $1000 worth of comcast stock. It pays pathetic dividends, I don’t recommend it.)
