Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

Well, big Arabic news for today. It was a great day! I talked with my teacher that I've got individual readings with, she's gonna place me in A350. That means that after this year, my Arabic is over. Well, my official language classes. I still get to take all the fun stuff. I also tested into the Second level Iraqi class, just on the power of telling her I'd start working now, and work my butt off next semester. This is an awesome teacher. She's Iraqi herself, and her brother helped to write one of the Constitution drafts! I'll also take Intro to Arabic Linguistics, and Multimedia Arabic. 4 Arabic courses. Should be an AWESOME semester. Note, no CS ones.

While we were talkig, instead of working, I brought up a program I'd worked on over the summer. It'll conjugate Arabic verbs for practice. She wants me to clean it up, and perhaps the department will accept it as a learning tool! Of course, this'll be FOSS only, and I won't ask for any money.

Ok, really long post I had on B&C about what I want my Marine Chapter to be. Please, someone comment on it, as I'd like to get a lot finalized before break.
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And it only gets better!

Apparently, Sony knew about the security flaws (they call 'em features *wink*) since the beginning of October. The flaws weren't told to the public (by an outsider) until the END of October. Now, what would happen to, say, a car company that hid a flaw for a month in the hopes it'd go unnoticed? It's called willful neglect. I hope they get strung up for this all the more.

First I thought they were stupid, just couldn't write good software.
Then I thought they were incompetant, for not checking what they put in (GPL code).
Now I think they're evil and should all burn for knowingly and willingly letting this stay out for a month as vulnerable as it is!

But luckily for us, the consumer, Sony-BMG had this to say:
"We're very, very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that this has caused to music consumers," (Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business).

That guy is a grade A joker, with everything he's said. Seriously guys, making fun of Bush's speeches is so 2003, lets jump on Hesse instead. This is the same guy who said that rootkits are OK, because the average user doesn't know what it is.... *blank stare*

Very sorry? Very SORRY?! If I infected millions of computers with a virus, I wouldn't be very sorry, I'd be in jail!! For anyone who thinks that is an unfair assumption, notice that the Sony rootkit has been found on computers in most major corporations (Fortune 500, the works) as well as DoD and foreign government systems.

Sorry doesn't cut it anymore, and these guy MUST pay. I don't care if First4Internet wrote it, Sony must take responsibility for this, just as a car company would have to if they didn't issue a recall for bad brakes they didn't make.

And this whole rant isn't even on DRM itself, merely Sony's raping of people's rights (colorful? yes. appropriate? definatly).

Well, thinking about the paint scheme I have right now (the 122nd Cadian) for my Imperial Guard, I realized I'm gonna need new paint. I'd rather not go spend money on that, so I'm rethinking my decision. Looking through the Imperial Guard Codex, I think I'm going to go with the 8th Cadian, in Winter Fatigues, as that will:

• If I get Ursarkar Creed, let him lead his 8th Cadian once more
• Use white, which I have about 4 of.
• Let me use my 8th Cadian Regimental banner

So, I'll be doing them, and hopefully start this week. Assuming I can bum a digital camera off someone, I should get pictures up.

Ok, quick post.

Thanks to Malap I now have a php script that updates my old livejournal blog with a link to here. Fun fun fun. I'll be playing with it more later in the week, to make it slicker.

I also had a quick brainstorm to make this site more managable, and will probably be adding a top nav-bar of user commands ([login/register]|[post/admin/comment]). It might be fun...

Also, I'm thinking, at least for warhammer battle reports, I might set-up guest posting, where you can post your own battle report on here (i.e. you register a user, and I can set your rights to post batreps and nothing else). If anyone wants tis feature (*cough* will) lemme know and I'll set it up.

That's it for now, gotta get back to a nice paper I need to write.

Well, deciding to forgo my tattoo for a little while I've made a few Warhammer purchases.

I only buy off eBay now, due to my dislike to Games Workshop pricing policies, and also try to only buy when they're 2/3 off.

I got two basilisks, one not made, and one made and converted pretty well, and a Lemun Russ for my Imperial Guard. This is due to Shelby and my brother's pleas for more armour.

Normally that'd by $40 each for the basilisks, not including cost of customizing it with bitz, and $40 for the Lemun Russ. Total of $120. I got all for $60, with an extra $15 of shipping. Note, the shipping is not included in the GW prices above.

I'm quite pleased with this buy, and it's my warhammer purchase for this semester.

I'll let ya know how they turn out in battle.

Edit: Ok, I put pictures of them over on the right side, under "Warhammer Vehicles". Check 'em out. You can also view the pics by clicking on the name in the post.

We got crushed. Now, I wasn't able to get pictures (which I guess isn't too bad as only my forces were painted, and it was on a piece of plywood), but I will write up a short battle report, and provide links to my army lists. The First Company is the main bulk of the force, and the second was the rest.

For those of you able to read the lists, and understand 'em you might notice some weird things. I think Army Builder screwed up... a lot. One guy has 3 Close Combat weapons, and not bolt pistol... hmm... that's a puzzler, as I made all my sergeants the same. Also, there was user error. That's what irks me most is I didn't know my list well enough to use some stuff until half-way through the game. And some guys are all of a sudden missing power weapons I had previously given them... *peer*.

All told the game lasted 7 turns (6, with the random game length failing on the first turn, and our "Death Before Dishonor" rule being used) which was a major victory for the Eldar scum. They had 2500 Victory Points, we only had 1800. Excuses above aside, we got our butt's whipped. That won't happen again. From now on I'm going to design in Army Builder, then put it all onto paper. Just like the good old days.

Good performing units:

• Lascannon Dev squad
• Landraider
• Terminators
• Librarian

Poor Performing Units:

• Chaplains, all of 'em
• Scout Squads
• Vindicator, one lousy kill off ordanance

Now, take the above with this grain of salt. Those chaplains were user error for me putting them where they did not belong, ill-equipped anyways. The scouts just didn't do much, tragically, and that vindicator, should been in front of the rhino, not behind, as he never had line of sight.

As for the good, the lascannon teams elicited a few "oh crap's" out of the enemy, and were worth their weight. The termies only lasted one turn but, again, were worth their weight. Next time they'll deep strike somewhere painful. The Librarian didn't kill anything, but I kind of liked his powers. That landraider, I wish I had two of 'em. If I see another on eBay for $20 I'll definatly spring for it.

Sean or Will, if either of you'd like to make a post in response, lemme know (just use the comments).

I put up a pictures section using a WordPress plugin. Its on the right under "Pages". I need to fix the spacing, but that's gonna wait until I have real pictures to put up.

The title says it all.

Also, tomorrow I'll put up a battle report of a 4500 Space marine/Eldar Grudge Match. Hopefully we'll have a digital camera, and it'll include pictures.

I just made two awesome (I think) conversions for Imperial Guard lascannons. They're both defensive positions, using the twin-linked lascannons from a land raider, and other tank parts to make the positions hard to assault. Pictures will come as soon as I get a digital camera down here.

Edit: I've also added a little defensive autocannon emplacement. Basically it's a flyer base, with the autocannon stuck in the center, and random imperial tank bits in front of it to have a make shift barricade.