Weird Russians, BSG DVD, economic woes continue, Iceland for sale, Irving bruhaha & other bits

[misscam]

Anyone else getting friended by a lot of Russian LJ users, and then defriended fairly soon after? Because I sure have. Or in some cases, they've been deleted by the time I even check my mail and see the friending alert. It's getting kinda weird, honestly.

Got my BSG DVD today - had deleted scenes that were quite nice. Including an extended 'Faith' scene with Adama and Roslin, and some Helo & Athena bits you'd probably enjoy, falena84. But the trailer was the one already shown on TV, so blah on that. Still, it stirred some urge to write again. Want my shiny BSG, please. If I figure out some computer stuff I might be able to offer some stuff for you all.

You know things might be a bit economically bad when the US debt clock has run out of digits to show the number. Wow. Meanwhile, economic crisis continues across the globe. And the UK is so not happy with Iceland (and used ANTI-TERRORISM LEGISLATION against Iceland WTF?) and things are looking quite bad for Iceland. There's even talk of Norway getting involved and Russia granting some loans and what-not. Someone has put them on eBay and some of my Icelandic friends want Norway to take Iceland back. But as they say, in the long run Iceland should be fine. Fingers crossed, Icelandic siblings.

I am more worried about the US, actually. And reading 'Charlie Wilson's War' the other day gave me other worries about the US too. Erk. Why is real life so complicated and full of worrisome signs?

Conservative film-maker seem to suggest his film not getting more moviegoers is some conspiracy against the movie. Ahahahaha.

In Norway, aside from worries financial shit should smack us a bit too, a major bruhaha occured when a literature festival in honour of Sigrid Undset invited David Irving to speak. David Irving, if you don't know, is a holocuast denier, falsifier of history and revoltingly racist. Generally, I tend to favour free speech even having to endure asshats such as he, but that does not mean my country need to give a platform to a hatemongering git, thank you very much. So now, after huge outcry David Irving's invitation is cancelled and I will not have to endure him in the same country as me. Honestly, having the leader of Virgid once living in my neighbourhood gave me bad vibes enough for a lifetime.

Tomorrow, Norway reveal this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and cause someone to get all miffed at us. As always. Bring it on!

In WoW news, vid of a kill of Kael my guild did. We're playing with Archimonde now. Hurrah.

Should go to bed. Should really, really. But tell me CSI people, how was the season finale?

Comments

[dawning-star.livejournal.com]

It was heartbreaking.

Most TV shows won't make me cry. This one did.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I will have to watch it, but wah, Warrick :(

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Russian friending thing's been happening to me for the past month or two (or perhaps three). Seems to have happened to at least two other friends of mine, as well. Definitely weird.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Explanations have been offered in comments below. Bah, spammers and such.

[preachelectric]

The Russian friending thing has been happening to me for months. I think I've had about 10 of them friend and defriend me.

Apparently it's a game, or something, but I'm not sure on the details.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

This apparently is one explanation.

Getting rather annoying, I have to say.

[wickedelf.livejournal.com]

Anyone else getting friended by a lot of Russian LJ users, and then defriended fairly soon after? Because I sure have. Or in some cases, they've been deleted by the time I even check my mail and see the friending alert. It's getting kinda weird, honestly.

Yeah, I've been getting that for the past few months and it's getting annoying. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

By the sounds of it, half of LJ has gotten them by now.

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

Re. the Russian friending, as you know, I posted about that on my LJ a week or so ago. elbales just linked to a thread on journalfen which confirms that they're spammers trying to harvest email addresses; see her post here.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting - thanks for the link!

[deesarrachi.livejournal.com]

Russians are apparently a big problem on LJ right now. Other people have been hacked by Russian poets, and had their whole journal completely purged of all entries. These tended to be people who had a large reader base (copperbadge and a mod from the bad_sex community). Just as a warning.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

That definitely doesn't sound good. Ugh.

[deesarrachi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of terrifying. I've backed up all my entries so far, so I feel safe, but still. Apparently, the best way to stay safe is to make sure that the only email on you LJ is the one you use, and if you have an old email still associated with the account, take it off the account. copperbadge has put up all the tips he has, too.

[hellga.livejournal.com]

Friending by random Russian users is a known issue among Russian-speaking part of LJ community. Some of them are reasonably harmless bots trying to get their friends counts up so they can sell the account to someone else, some are worse. There is a checker developed to check your account for bots (as many of those frienders are bots, not real people), but it's all in Russian, so I am not sure how useful that would be. I can run your username through and let you know, though...

[hellga.livejournal.com]

I ran your username through, it says that you currently have no bots among your friends... must be just random people who friend and then defriend you if you don't friend them back...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I never friend them back since it seemed fishy. They defriend me a few days later mostly, though they seem to get deleted as well often.

Thanks for checking :)

[wintergreen126.livejournal.com]

the bailout nonsense here in the u.s is ridiculous. the economy is dreadful, we just pledged $700 billion to help out (in large part) the financial institutions who helped along this whole mess and just showed exactly why too much deregulation is a bad thing, and right now, what they've done so far in trying to bailout these banks has resulted in...well, nothing really good. the dow dropped 600 points and the outlook is not pretty- for anyone, this is obviously affecting more than just the u.s. meanwhile, people continue to lose jobs and homes...just unbelievable.

i miss bsg.

i hope you're doing well! have a great weekend :o)

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, greedy bullshit coupled with other circumstances causes this shit, and now something has to be done ore we all get the shit. Ain't that just glorious? And some idiot managed to claim this was because the markets weren't deregulasied enough. Are you kidding me?

I miss it too.

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

DAVID IRVING >:(

[misscam.livejournal.com]

I know, the mere thought of having him in the country.... Shudder.

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

CSI: So. Sad. But the preview for next week makes up for everything.

[jessickuh.livejournal.com]

I was totally waiting for *the* scene in tonight's episode. Boo-urns!

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Would that be implied sexings?

[siraj.livejournal.com]

I'm getting my bovine butt dragged through Scarlet Monastery lately, myself. I can't wait to hit 35... (I'm about halfway to 32 at the moment)

... know anyone American-side that needs a ton of Silk Cloth? I've got about a dozen stacks of 20...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Sell it on AH, it makes decent money.

And SM... Oh, memories. Boosted some many through there - and of course, now with Halloween coming up, there's a lvl 70 boss in SM to do.

[siraj.livejournal.com]

I've tried about half a dozen times in the past 5 or 6 days... it won't sell. 2 gold for a stack of 20 to start off isn't too much, is it?

Yeah, Alfador's a dear to me, whether he's playing as Lupiko or Shisno. He's getting me trained to stay back to be able to clear the room and AoE everything to death without me getting dead.

I can't wait to hit 40... I want to try and ding that by the end of next weekend.

[falena]

I get the weird Russian friending at least twice a week. Have been for the past three months, give or take. Since all entries are in Cyrillic, I can't even understand if it's a bot or not. At this point, I stopped caring.

I trust the deleted scenes will pop up on the big interwebs, sooner or later, yay. Thanks for the heads-up. *misses Helo&Sharon and the rest of the gang like crazy*

I've almost stopped caring about the trailer, you know? Long wait is too bloody long. *sigh*

Re: the economic crisis. The upside of working in a bank is that I can get to read the news with my students and then have them explain stuff to me (in broken English, still, but it's helping me understand lots :P).
Brit intern in my office was very worried because she banked with IceSave back in England, so yeah, I kind of understand the British being mad with Iceland, atm.

Are you really going to take Iceland back? Will you became the United States of Vikingland or what? :P
I kind of like the slogan "Norway- Saving the world, one country at a time". (Come save Italy soon, pls).

[misscam.livejournal.com]

I believe some of them already are. Goooo hunt. Or come visit me again and see them here.

I have sort of given up on trailer too, but I want hot snogging to see before the season is actually upon us, dammit.

My father has an economic degree so I have gotten quite a few explanations of various things related to this crisis, but a lot of it just seem so plain stupid. Bah.

But the UK using *anti-terrorism legistation* against Iceland just blows my mind, however annoyed the UK might be. Bwhuh?

United Vikinglands, maybe. Who knows... (But seriously, no we're not. We will no doubt step and help economically in if it gets really serious, for reasons of our own as well.)

(Yes, yes, we'll get to you.)

[caramelapples11.livejournal.com]

I've got a few Russian LJ users friend me, but lol, they've never defriended me though I never friended some of them back because I don't know how to read their Ljs. :P

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Cryllic is sure not my strong side either. And when you can't read their entries, it's hard to know if it's a real person or not.

[(Anonymous)]

It was interesting. Sad, that it took a character death to make a great ensemble episode, though.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Wah Warrick :(

[starsong24.livejournal.com]

Cam, do you mind if I ask you a few horribly basic questions about raiding in WoW? Only I've heard of it, and I can't really figure out some of the terms and so on...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Ask away, I don't mind.

[starsong24.livejournal.com]

How many people do you usually have in a raid? What kind of classes do you need and what do they do? What's a tank? And why do you need to turn off Growl in dungeons if you're playing a hunter?

Thanks...I'm kind of clueless.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

A raid is either 10 or 25 people. It depends on the max allowed for the raid instance, but these days, it's always either 10 or 25.

As for classes, my guild usually have all represented. Basically, a raid consists of three roles. Tank, healer or dps.
A tank is someone who will keep a mob on him and will absorb the damage of that mob because he has better armor, more hit points and can survive more damage. Tanks are either protection warriors, feral druids or protection paladins, as classes go. (In some rare cases, other classes will take the role as tank, but they're not normally tank classes.)

Actually, as a hunter, you have your very own tank - your pet. He takes the attention of the mob while you can then do more damage.

Healers keep the tank and the raid alive. They are either priests (mostly holy), restoration druids, holy paladins or restoration shamans.

Dps - that's short for damage per second - are the classes who do the serious damage to the mobs. A tank can survive a lot, but doesn't do that much damage. Healers don't either. Dps classes do the damage. Hereunder you have all hunters specs, all warlock specs, all mage specs, retribution paladins, enchantment and elemental shamans, balance druids, fury and arms warriors, all rogue specs and shadow priests. (Phew. I hope I didn't forget any there.)

(Some classes can actually fill more than one job. Feral druids can tank and do dps. Shadow priests can help heal through the damage they do. Hunters and warlock often tank mobs that can only be done ranged.)

A 10-man raid would usually consist of two tanks, two or three healers (depending on how good healers they are) and the rest dps. A 25-man raid can vary a great deal from having just two tanks to having five, six or seven healers (on on occasion five will also do) and the rest dps. What classes you use to tank, heal and dps will depend on what you raid. For instance, when my guild goes Mount Hyjal, we always bring a protection paladin because paladins have special skills to tank more than one mob at a time. In Mount Hyjal waves of mobs attack at the same time and they will kill most dps classes very fast. So, you need a tank to take a lot of mobs to ensure raid survival.

This making sense so far?

The growl thing... Well, basically, a growl is a threat ability that the pet does to be able to hold the mob on him while you as the hunter are doing massive damage. However, in a dungeon, you have a warrior, a druid or a paladin to tank. Because mobs in dungeons are elite, they do more damage and will probably kill your pet fairly fast if he tanked them. In addition, if your pet gets aggro (basically that the mob goes for him), the tank will not be able to generate aggro on the mob as fast, and when it's done killing your pet, it might then go for a dps or a healer, who will get killed.

So don't use growl in dungeons. You will get your pet killed, and might get other people killed.

(I only use growl on my pet in dungeons if he's taking a non-elite add or I am in a much lower-level dungeon than my current level and my pet can thus actually tank the mobs without problem.)

Any of this making sense? Feel free to ask if you're not sure about stuff. I've played this game a while, so I know a bit.

[starsong24.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense...really helped me understand. Thanks very much.

[siraj.livejournal.com]

I wish that there was a way to mesh Euro and US server userbase. I want to be cannon fodder for you.

*is speccing as a prot tank*

[nympholept.livejournal.com]

Hi, I found this post through Google

The "russians" are bots.
LJ Abuse will suspend them if you report them.

More information: http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots

It's a BIG problem, I know of 7000 bots so far, so please tell any of your friends who are affected.

List Easy

[listeasy.livejournal.com]

Thanx a lot for the great Journal
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Re: List Easy

[nympholept.livejournal.com]

that's interesting spam.