Fwd: Re: Fwd: Fwd: Re: Re: Fwd: THIS IS HILARIOUS!

OK, so you've all gotten that sort of thing. Several times, I bet. You're probably getting several every week, and they're fun or interesting sometimes. But what about the ones where you "have to" forward them? They probably drive you crazy, right? Well, there's not a lot one can do to stop it.
But that doesn't mean you can't turn it into something fun!

For example, I collect them (well, they do eventually get deleted, but the point is that I've gotten them, that's all I really care about). My goal is to eventually have all of the widespread and most interesting ones. So far I've gotten:

-Pass on the Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe!
-Forward this and Bill Gates will give you money!
-Forward this or you will have bad luck; if you do, you will have good luck!
-Forward this to __ people and you will fall in love by midnight!
-Send this to everyone on your MSN Messenger contact list or Microsoft will start charging you money to use it!
-Virus Alert!! An email containing a virus called ____ will soon be sent to you; don't open it or it will do ____, which will destroy your computer. Pass this on!
-Send this to __ people and you will see the funniest video ever!

...And there are probably a ton of other ones I can't think of right now, but you get the idea (the only ones I know of that I don't have are the "forward this or die" and "forward this and lose your soul" ones).
Oh, I've also gotten some funny spam emails, like the infamous "Nigerian email scam" (Except the person was allegedly from Cote D'ivoire instead of Nigeria, and the email address ended in ".jp," which is for Japan!) and emails from banks I allegedly have an account at who need important information to better serve me (you know, like my credit card and social security numbers).
Anyway, back to the original subject; if you want to get back at the people who incessantly send you this stuff, you'll be glad to know that this morning I crafted this (in my opinion) excellent and hilarious email that I can send you and you can forward to all your friends.
It's pretty funny, but you'll just have to see it to fully understand. I will say, though, that it involves sorcery and promises certain death to non-forwarders.
My goal with this is for it to be spread enough to be put on Wikipedia, so let me know if you want it so you can help spread it around!

I think I'm going to turn this into a totally Internet/computer culture related post. So next I'm going to be talking about MMOGs. Yep.

So what are they? Well, MMOG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. MMOGs are different than regular online games, because, rather than having to set up a game and invite players to join, you just log in and enter the game world, interacting with players from all over the place who have connected to the Internet. Most MMOGs are of the RPG (Role Playing Game: an adventurey-type game, like Zelda or Final Fantasy) genre, and are thus called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs. In fact, I would say that almost every MMOG is an MMORPG, because any other kind of game doesn't really work well with the concept, and is really just a normal online game, no matter how "massively multiplayer" they pretend to be.
The concept of an MMOG is pretty interesting, but, sadly, it almost always fails. In fact, I've never seen an MMOG that could really keep be occupied (with one exception I will mention later). Of course, I've never paid any money for one, which might be the problem, but I doubt it.
The reason I don't like them is because you're basically forced to invest a lot of time in it, or you can't enjoy it. The main point is to advance your character most of the time, and to do that you have to spend a lot of time playing the game. Basically, you either spend all your free time on the game, or you accept the fact that you're just going to be a total n00b in the game for the rest of your life. This problem may even be compounded by commercial games, because not only do you have to invest time, but you also have to invest money, usually a monthly fee!
There are other totally different problems with these games, too. For instance, if the game isn't well-moderated, it could have a nasty community with really rude players, making it totally not fun to play.
Now, I said there was an exception. This exception is called PlaneShift. PlaneShift is an MMORPG, but it's very different than most. For starters, it's OK if you don't advance your character much. In fact, being good in/at the game itself is a very small aspect of the game. See, PlaneShift actually defines the term "Role-Playing Game" literally. You and your character are not the same person at all, and you're not allowed to break the fourth wall. It's really quite interesting, and you can go to the game's website to learn more about it (click up there where I said PlaneShift; that's a link). I like this game because I can actually just play it occasionally and not feel like I'm behind. It also solves the problem of a bad community, because of the roleplaying thing (why this is is rather hard to explain).
Anyhow, if you like RPGs or MMOGs or both, or even neither and this sounds interesting to you anyway, you should check it out. If you like it, let me know who you are in-game and everything.

Now on to open source community development. This is a really cool concept that works really well and is growing a lot these days. The general idea is that you have a project -- usually a computer program or game -- that lots of people are working on. The source code is freely available, and everyone can experience the game or program or whatever without having to wait for its full release. "Yeah, so what?"
Well, I'll tell you what. Since anyone who wants to can work on it, you have lots of people's work and ideas thrown into the project. That makes it really cool, and bugs and things get fixed faster, because someone might say "Hey, that's messed up, I can fix it," and then they do. Also, if you're a programmer (which of course I'm not), an artist, or a musician, or whatever the project needs, you can help them.
There are a lot of things that are open source; in fact, a lot of the games I've already mentioned in earlier posts that I said were free are also open source!

Well, I guess I'm done with this one. It was a bit shorter than usual, I think, but oh well. Stay tuned!

:::Source= Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
...P0std...