Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Scholomance

Silent Hills

Scholomance — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 20:35:29 +0800

So Sony dropped this interactive teaser on the PlayStation Store yesterday..

From the brilliant minds of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and Pan’s Labyrinth + Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro:

Part 1:
[YOUTUBE]LrL8ybvDSkA[/YOUTUBE]

Part 2:
[YOUTUBE]gCx2aFG4TYk[/YOUTUBE]

P.T. Synopsis / Assumptions:

- family man got possessed, murders entire family
- wakes up in his room a la Silent Hill version
- have to confront the vengeful ghosts of his wife, unborn child, son and daughter while escaping from his house
- stuck in endless loop of horror, picking up well-hidden and other less obvious clues to advance
- failing to solve clues, or failing to heed certain hints will end with death, but forced to relive the horror again as he wakes up back in the room

Additional reading:
http://metro.co.uk/2014/08/13/hideo-kojima...-hills-4832051/
http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/12/5996537/s...llermo-del-toro
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/ga...s-30505715.html
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/13/hid...new-silent-hill

ASUS right arrow, del & numpad 4,5,6 not working

Scholomance — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 17:04:55 +0800

Dear all,

My laptop model is ASUS Notebook K52JU/K52JT series, keyboard drivers up to date

The right arrow key, delete button, & numpad keys 4, 5 & 6 are not working since a few days back

Did a preliminary search on Google, with some users reporting issues with the exact same keys which leads me to believe it is not a hardware issue (correct me if I'm wrong!):

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?2...key-Not-Working
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...19083956AAgJPzm

Any solutions for this issue?

Thank you!

p.s. the only major change i made with my comp in the past few days (when the buttons stopped working) is installation of AOEII HD version from Steam

Maymayed by virus

Scholomance — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:03:02 +0800

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

awang i sue u

Gaga Lady's revealing outfits

Scholomance — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:02:32 +0800

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Sos

Madagascar

Scholomance — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:00:52 +0800

Panic as three children escape nursery and make a break for Africa
By Heidi Blake
Published: 7:00AM GMT 15 Jan 2010

Three nursery schoolchildren caused panic when they escaped from lessons and tried to fly to Africa, police said on Thursday.

The three children, aged five and six, waited until their teacher wasn't looking before escaping from their nursery building in Nuremberg, Germany.
Police were alerted as soon as the their absence was noticed and a search was launched involving the fire brigade and a police helicopter.

The errant youngsters were found safe two hours later, and told police they had intended to catch a plane to Africa, but were making their way to a local toyshop first.

German police said in a statement: "The rogue youngsters aged five and six took advantage of an unobserved moment to break out of their class."
Last January, two childhood sweethearts, aged six and seven, tried to elope from northern Germany and get married under the African sun.
The pair, accompanied by the five-year-old sister of the "bride" as a "witness", were apprehended by police and returned to their parents.

SOS

Oprah + free KFC

Scholomance — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:18:07 +0800

QUOTE

Oprah's free KFC deal causes pandemonium
ABC - May 9, 2009, 5:02 am

Oprah Winfrey's free chicken giveaway that caused pandemonium at US Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants has been cancelled, due to the "overwhelming response."

Roger Eaton, president of KFC in the United States said restaurants would no longer accept the free coupons for its new grilled chicken meal after Oprah's chat show promotion caused long lines around the nation.

"The lines of customers wanting to redeem their coupons have been out the door and around the block, so we're unable to redeem customer coupons at this time," Mr Eaton said in a statement.

KFC said millions of Americans had downloaded free coupons after the offer was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and website on Tuesday, driving traffic to levels unseen in the brand's 50-year history.

Mr Eaton apologised to customers for the cancellation of the scheme and said those who already had a coupon could get a rain check form to enable them to use it at a later date.

Winfrey, 55, is regarded as the most influential woman on US television, driving popular opinion in areas such as books, pop culture and even politics through her support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Louisville, Kentucky-based KFC has more than 15,000 outlets in 80 countries around the world, and its corporate parent is Yum! Brands Inc.

- *Reuters*

/nosrowpoke
sos: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/odd/5554480/o...es-pandemonium/

WoW Player Receives 1337 Item, kills everything

Scholomance — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:21:31 +0800

Player receives Developer item in the mail, one-shots Ulduar (full original article)
by ALEX ZIEBART

We first received a tip on a mysterious guild that was blowing through Ulduar's hardest achievements one after the other, all in one day, about a day or two ago. Their gear and raid experience stated very well that they were in no position to do any of those achievements, but we sort of shrugged and let it pass by. It was odd that these players were barely in Naxxramas gear, and their first recorded Kel'thuzad kill was only two weeks prior to their explosion of Ulduar achievements, but we initially ignored these reports because surely, nobody could be hacking the game. On top of that, the forum threads submitted to us all had so many posts deleted from them that they were completely incomprehensible. There was nothing solid about any of it.

Tips on it are still flooding our mailboxes today and a bit more information has surfaced, so let's look into it a little, shall we? The guild is The Marvel Family of US-Vek'nilash. The character Karatechop is the one that has attracted the most attention, and you'll see why in just a moment. If you look over his gear, it's not that bad, really. Epic tank gear, a lot of it from Naxxramas, so it's feasible that he could make some progress through Ulduar. It gets weird when you go to his Statistics and/or Achievements panels. Let's go to his statistics first.

If you can't make out the numbers there, his largest recorded hit is 353,892,967 damage. That's just shy of 354 million damage. There are a lot of solo quests in the world that let you put out insane damage (The Battle for the Undercity for example) but there are none that cause you to do damage in the hundreds of millions. However, there is something in the game that gives this number some significance. It's the total health pool of Flame Leviathan's hardest hard mode, leaving all four preceeding towers standing. Let's go take a look at his achievements...

Yep, there she is! Orbit-uary, leaving all four towers up on Flame Leviathan. Even more absurdly suspiscious is that they apparently did Shutout at the same time. How were they able to do both? Well, they didn't. Not legitimately. Somehow, Karatechop managed to 1-shot Flame Leviathan.

Flame Leviathan isn't the only thing that Karatechop massacred, either. His achievement list is highly suspect, to say the least. I'd bet that the list will disappear from his Armory within a day or two, so go ahead and look at them via GuildOx instead. For the bosses he's recorded as having killed, he has all of the "Beat X boss in under Y minutes" achievements. Why? He one-shotted everything. It's hard to stay in combat over that amount of time when you can hit things for their full health pool.

There has to be an exploit or something here, right? Surely Blizzard can't be hacked, right? Well, no. I wouldn't call what they're doing an 'exploit' in the traditional gaming sense, nor have they hacked Blizzard's servers. What we're seeing here is the result of an 'oops' by a GM (or developer?) hopefully. The possibility of malicious intent exists, but I have serious doubts anybody would risk their job over this.

What am I talking about, you ask? Let's look closer at Karatechop's equipment.

Hey, that's weird. He has something in his shirt slot, but it's not displaying properly. Error loading tooltip, huh? Well, alright. That's fine. This is the internet, our resources are endless. Let's just look it up elsewhere. You can see the item ID in the bottom left, and I've put the red box around it so you can't possibly miss it. Item #17, how curious.

Cheater, indeed. Martin Fury is one of those mysterious, fascinating GM/Developer items that were never meant for player hands. Items you only saw on Wowhead, WoWDB, or Thottbot. The only way to even have a glimpse of them was via datamining. Karatechop, however, woke up one day to one sitting in his mailbox.

Such is temptation. With infinite power at your fingertips, could you resist using it? Karatechop couldn't, apparently. As the saying goes, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That can certainly be applied to Karatechop here, but what of the person who awarded it to him? If this is an accident, it's on the list of most unlikely accidents ever.

If you look at item IDs on most any other item in WoW, a two digit item ID is an amazingly rare thing. Those items just aren't in the game itself whatsoever. Even items that drop in the earliest content of the game have at least four digits in their item ID. Almost every item after that has at least five digits. This has two. Either this was completely intentional, or a GM's keyboard stopped working in the middle of typing in an item ID and they sent item #17 to someone instead of, for example, item #17604. And they sent the item off anyway. The chances of this actually being an accident and not deliberate: Very, very low.

No matter how this happened, you can bet a pretty massive internal investigation is happening (or has happened) to find out how it all went down. A member of The Marvel Family posted on his blog about this event, stating that the entire guild has received bans over this even if they weren't present at any of Karatechop's miracle raids. How long these bans will last, we don't know. We can't ask, either. This event essentially brought the entire population of WoW down on this guy's blog like a nuke. It's down for the count.

The whole thing is essentially wrapped up now, the accounts are banned, the item is gone, but it's certainly a memorable event. It's not often someone gets their hands on one of those.

Alternate title: Player gifted with Death Note, vows to fix all that is wrong in Azeroth.

SOS: WoWInsider

Suicide Bomber Killed En Route By Car Bomb

Scholomance — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:10:37 +0800

AUGUST 3, 2005 | ISSUE 41•31

BAGHDAD—Terrorist cells in Baghdad are in mourning for suicide bomber Ahmed al-Khalaf, 19, who was killed by a car bomb Monday, 200 yards from an Iraqi police station, his intended target.

Sources within the insurgency said al-Khalaf was "on his way to becoming a glorious martyr" when he was struck down by the car-bomb explosion. Twenty-three other civilians were also killed.

"What kind of God allows the death of people who are on their way to kill innocent people?" insurgent leader Abdulwahid al-Tomizie said. "On the one hand, I am elated that the car-bomb explosion was successful, but the loss of the suicide bomber is a tragedy, as is the survival of all the innocent people he might have killed."

According to al-Tomizie, al-Khalaf could have killed as many as 40 innocent people, had his life not been cut short.

"It is tragic that al-Khalaf died seven minutes sooner than he intended," said Hassan Abdul Aziz, leader of a local cabal of Sunni separatists. "To think that he was just yards from his intended target. Our thoughts and prayers are with his terrorist cell."

No insurgent groups have claimed responsibility for the car bomb, although as many as 18 separate insurgency factions have vowed to carry on the fight in al-Khalaf's memory.

In the past week, over 170 Iraqi citizens and U.S. troops have died in terrorist or insurgent attacks, but al-Khalaf's death marks the first time a terrorist has been killed by another terrorist while on a different terrorist mission.

Iraqis mourn the car-bombing death of suicide bomber al-Khalaf.

Terrorist leaders have called the incident a "wake-up call."

"No one likes to see a senseless waste of a willingness to take human life," said al-Qaeda operative Salih al-Shimiri, in a videotaped message aired on Al-Jazeera Monday evening. "However, there are worse problems than having too many suicide bombers on our streets."

Insurgent leaders met Monday to draft new rules to prevent bombing mix-ups like the one that killed al-Khalaf. One proposal would limit suicide bombings to odd hours, car bombings to even. Another designates "Car Bomb Only" traffic lanes to help terrorists get to their bombing locations more quickly and efficiently.

"I had a man last week get stuck in traffic while driving a car bomb to the Mendi Temple," al-Shimiri said. "When he arrived, he found it already on fire. We don't fill the cars up with enough gas to make two-way trips, so he was forced to blow up a nearby disco. This is madness."

Al-Shimiri added: "We all have the same goal here—the killing of innocent civilians. Let's stop working at cross purposes."

Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr believes all insurgents must find direction in their extreme fundamentalist faith. "When I close my eyes, all I can see are the faces of all the innocents al-Khalaf will never get a chance to kill. It is a sad day, but we must not let it shake our faith in the wrath of Allah."

www.theonion.com