Could anyone enlighten me, why is “reviving” old topics forbidden on so many forums? I can’t see any problem with contributing to topics, especially where it’s requested, even if the last post was half a year ago. Is that some kind of stupid attempt to increase the number of topics or what?

I never cared about those kind of rules and if some hyper moderator hadn’t locked the topic earlier, i posted even after years of silence. Call me a necromancer, it’s one of my favourite undead units in Warcraft. Of course if i was aware of that rule, which i rarely am, since even if i go to a forum, which hardly happened in the past couple of years, and even then i usually register for the sake of making a few contribution to good topics, and then even less do i care about reviving or whatever.

It must be of some kind of misconception, that there is such a thing as “dead topic”. A topic can’t be dead. Just by considering what that word means, it’s clear that opening a new thread for the same discussion, in other words the same topic, is simply pointless. Of course it’s another thing if the old topic was spammed or flamed to pieces, or it’s simply useless. That’s the mods’ job to lock or clean up. Not mine to care about.

Of course this post was inspired by a recent experience, when i dared to try to contribute to a topic about DotA hero responses. (The “hero attack” response of Sven, the Rouge Knight is “ash nazg gimbatul”, which is from the inscription of the One Ring of Sauron, meaning “one ring to find them”.)

I wanted to set up a wireless mesh network here in the dorm so that we wouldn’t have to gather in a room to play lan games. Setting up a wireless network without a router is a pain in itself with Windows, because apparently, and correct me if i’m wrong, you have to enable internet connection sharing (ics) to get an ad-hoc wireless network to work. The reason, i figure, is that there needs to be a host to organize the network. The problem with that is, that if that host computer is not there, the network falls apart. And in a situation when we can’t know who will join the game, that is not acceptable. Also, in the case of Warcraft 3, according to my experience, only the host computer can create game, though i have no idea about the reason for that.

Thus i set out to look for a method to set up a mesh network, but i had to realise it’s hopeless. Finding unstable and buggy mesh organizer software was hard enough in itself, and after that i’d still have to get everyone to install and configure it, a program that might or might not work at all. So, the choices remaining gathering and/or setting up an “ad-hoc” network.

Just in case someone interested, there is a Microsoft wireless mesh project, although it doesn’t work for me throwing errors i can’t do anything about, and also olsr, which seems pretty nice, but i’m still testing, so can’t say anything about it.

Let me know if i’m wrong in any points above.

Not so long ago a friend sent me an invitation to Lockerz. At first i couldn’t really get what’s the point of it all, but then they opened the preview of Redemption and launched Play, and it all starts to make a bit of (still not much) sense. I was wondering the purpose of the site: it obviously costs a lot of money to maintain, even if those numbers they’re saying are totally off (and i think they are not), so there must be some reason it will worth it. And now that Play’s on, it’s getting brighter: you get PTZ (pointz) for watching video, some of which are songs from popular artists or such. Advertising, i guess. And people will be happy to watch them, because they get PTZ, and PTZ are good. By default you can get around four PTZ a day: two for logging in, and two for answering an often totally random question. With Play, especially if more videos will be up, that number will go to infinity. I kind of doubled my PTZ in a day with videos (though still quite low). Let me quote their about section. “Our mission is to be your daily habit, not a site for your parents or grandparents looking for their long-lost friends from kindergarten.” “Too good to be true? Why are we doing this? To thank you for joining early. To build a Lockerz community of leaders and trendsetters.” I really wonder what Lockerz will turn into once out of beta and ready. Will it stay invitational? Anyway, it’s fun and free, and legit: they really send you what you order from your PTZ during a Redemption. Still, most of the people consider it mistaken spam when i ask them about it. My blog ain’t spam. If you want to get invited, leave a comment.

It’s so difficult. It’s so tempting. What am i talking about? The big three: smartphone, tablet pc, and laptop. The only problem is, i don’t need a smartphone, i don’t need a tablet pc, and i already have a good candidate for laptop. But still, when i see all the fuss going on about the new iPhone, the new Android-based whatever, most impressing still being the Nexus One, or the new Windows Phone 7, the iPad or the Microsoft Courier, i am way too tempted. It makes me want to buy one, even though i know i don’t need one, and that’s like a mantra i’m reciting in my head whenever i’m reading those articles. But still, if i were to choose, i wouldn’t choose the Apple stuff. First, it’s way too trendy. Everyone is or will be carrying around one of those (second) glossy, child-safe looking rounded stuff. I don’t like that. And also, when i watched a video of the iPad, it didn’t impress me nowhere as much as any promo material of Courier. Same goes for the iPhone vs (Nexus One OR Windows Phone 7). As of Nexus One vs Windows Phone 7, now that would be more difficult. Nexus One with Android is open, and thus closer. Also, the Win7 phone had Internet Explorer icons, which although the latest versions are quite sleek, i still can’t get myself to use it: the memories of the IE6 nightmares still linger around here. On the other hand, the Win7 phone looks simply great, and i’ve seen much more of it than of Nexus One. (Probably my fault.) As for the laptop, the only competitor possible for the above linked ASUS power machine is a high-end MacBook, but as i said, i don’t like Apple products by default…