Assume Nothing

That rank should be given to the Editors in the EP :o Unspam: http://acidcow.com/famous/19827-maxims-hottest-100-women-of-2011-100-pics.html

Confession: when I was 15, I used to laugh at people like you. :-D I've always been far too cynical, I suppose. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Confession: I'm a terribly fussy shopper. I'd look through 15 packs of bacon before choosing the one I want.

Try not sleeping naked?

Yep - I remember posting Stoke's vid on this thread.

Sad fact is, with 0.6mb/s download speed most of the time, that's what always happens. What makes it worse would be the fact that my videos would load until right before the juicy part, then stop and buffer. Which reminds me, I hate having epic nice dreams stop before the really hot part :(

Does subway count?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGa3kjRS7o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSUelcpopU8 I'm sure there's more, but that's all I have for now :(

Sure they can. Every time you move the mouse even the slightest amount, it sends data to the computer to let it know where to position the mouse on screen, and what to interact with. This data can easily be picked up with Java, and Jagex does use something like this to track bots, although all but the most basic have a large area of random spots to click to throw off a detection program. Runescape does not have this. It would require constant uploading of data just for moving the mouse and it's completely unessesary. As you rightly say many bots click random locations on items, mainly due to paranoid users as this really isn't an issue. How do you think they register clicks and interactions? Randomisation of clicks is done via a 'click radius', which is still detectable over an extended period of time. Registering and logging basic information like cursor location is extremely easy, and it's essentially integrated into RuneScape anyways, so I don't understand your argument at all. Besides, how would you know what JaGex has or hasn't got in place?

This just made my day. I was about to say.

On the contrary, you're the one that appears to over-estimate jagex's bot detection systems. All i stated is that if a bot hunter thinks you are a bot and you do not reply to them, of course they're going to report you and assume you are one. It isn't your fault if you're not a bot, you act in the exact same way as one so it's only logical. Now. Mouse detection: Pffffahahahaha. No. They can not see how you move your mouse or even in what location of an item you click, (it's phsyically impossible in java unless they make each pixel of said item a different indivdual item, but that would eat up so many resources it's impractical and wouldn't fool a bot anyway as it could be coded to choose one of the pixel items at random, thus fooling the hours of work per item with a copy paste and 1 line of code). The only thing they *CAN* see is that you clicked something and when you did so. (There are videos of people using a fletching glitch getting over 3m xp an hour with insane inhuman speeds and none of those are banned, so i doubt they even do this.) Injection: As you say, most bots do not use this so it's irrelevant. Fake objects: Bots are designed to interact with what they're told to, they wouldn't 'go rogue' and click some object they were not programmed to just because it exists. Admiting to botting: Unless you admit in the game or on runescape forums, they do not have legitimate proof that it is the real account owner posting and thus can't do anything. Inhuman playtime: Yep. Most botters use a break system or simply break themselves and don't bot 24/7. It's common sense and very easy to avoid. I've coloured in the facts or important parts as you seem to ignore them and accuse me of errors (Without actually pointing them out, cute.) Jagex are too cheap to implement an actual bot detection system or hire staff to do some serious dedicated bot busting (Probably because they live off the bot's membership fees and ad views, and as a business this would be a terrible move for them despite some good PR for a while.) and thus they depend almost entirely on player reports. The things that are done by the annoying kids following you around with your public chat off. As for the bet. I said imaginary bet. If he was serious about his statment he would say something actually doable such as 20m, but no, he said $1,000,000 with no intention of backing it up. Sign of weakness. We're both speculating on the detection systems, that's a given. JaGex can't release information on it, for that would be counter productive - but it's only logical that they use those tools, and I don't feel that any of those are implausible. In response to bot hunters reporting you; ofcourse they'd report, since no interaction with others would indicate that it may not be a player. However, you claimed that on the basis of not talking, JaGex would take action - something that doesn't seem very likely. Sure, they could ban people for it, but who's to say they're not doing something completely innocent, like multitasking? I don't see why they couldn't log mouse movements, as if it's different to any other part of the game. Autoclickers, which activates only mouse inputs, have been known to get banned - so if they can detect clicks, why can't they log movements too? They don't need to make every pixel a different item at all, they'd simply need to log each click co-ordinate, like (3074,7452), and if the player interacts with the same pixel more than 'x' times in 'y' hours, that's clear evidence of botting. Reflection interacts with objects (item IDS) prior to being drawn to the screen - so if JaGex delves into the graphics rendering pipeline, fake objects could be identical to real objects. Ofcourse, you have to be tolerant of those who would unknowingly interact with them, but if a player interacts with it more than 'x' times in 'y' hours, it's pretty obvious that it's indeed a bot, as fake objects are completely invisible to humans. Whilst it's true that most bots use a break system, it still doesn't reflect human behaviour. Humans tend to sleep, instead of taking 'x' minute breaks every 'n' hours. JaGex has implemented a detection system before, the only problem would be the mass scale of bots which makes it so difficult to catch them all. Even if JaGex is catching say, 70% of the bots, there is still many more than run rampant around the game. Bot busting is an inefficient PR move - it requires a lot of human resources for little gain. It's merely a PR move aimed at legitimate players to give the image that they're actually doing something. The bet is quite irrelevant to the argument anyways, so I won't even bother about that.

You have terrible logic. If I was botting this would not annoy me because I wouldn't even see it... So please bet me $1,000,000 I always enjoy winning bets. Just because it may bring you great pleasure to counter an annoying person by being an annoying troll doesn't mean everyone does. And how would someone following a bot saying "bot" even interrupt botting? Do you even think before you spew out stupidity or do you just type without thinking? You have absolutely no reason to think any of us are botting but I guess that doesn't matter because you don't seem to think anyway.. Well first of all, you sure are getting mighty defenseive about it. I didn't even accuse you personally. For your bet, i only have to be right about the majority (50% or more), and it's a well known fact the majority of runescape players use bots at some point in their life. So yes, i'll call your $1,000,000 bet. I doubt you're capable of paying that though, so i'll just accept 2b in game instead. :) Secondly, a botter would be annoyed by it as when they are not watching their bot, if someone asks them if they're a bot they can not reply. Thus they will be reported and hopefully banned. By interupting i also mean they will be banned. (Try botting on a banned account.) You're the one with terrible logic. People are activley hunting the people that make the skill you're training less profitable for you, and you hate them for it. Seeing from your recent posts that may just be because you're an angry and hateful person. And that's just unfortunate. First off, before you berate another player, it would be a good idea to reread your own post to make sure it’s logical and coherent. I don’t understand your ‘you’re getting mighty defensive about it’ argument – are you trying to imply something about defending a position in the argument? If you are, care to elaborate exactly what’s wrong with it? You state that it’s a ‘well known fact’ that the majority of players use bots at some point in their RuneScape career – how would you know? Do you have any stats to back yourself up, or are you merely forming an argument on the basis of speculation, for which you lose any notable credibility? I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply about the alleged ‘bet’ made – are you saying that because he is unlikely to pay up as it’s a figure of speech, that his argument is somehow weaker? That appears to be the fallacy ‘appeal to wealth’. In response to your second argument – there are many possible, and plausible alternative reasons that a player could refuse to talk or get annoyed that players would report them for refusing to talk. You’ve merely committed the fallacy of a false dilemma – you restricted the reasons to ‘must be a bot’, when it’s pretty clear that it’s not the case. You appear to use the ad hominem (attacking the arguer) fallacy several times too – instead of arguing with his argument, you simply berated him. Next time, if you want to appear to be anything more than an irrational, immature player, then you better post in a more logical manner. There’s already plenty of misconception and misinformation, we don’t need to make that worse.

Most people who play with public off talk in clan chats. You're just another one of those people who assume everyone hates training skills as much as you do and can't stand doing the same activity over and over again. Basically, you're another one of those annoying people who assume everyone bots skills you hate so you report them when they don't answer you because you have some thought in your head that if you speak to them they must speak back to you for you are the single most important thing to them. It's in my rights to play the game as it was designed to play (even though grinding skills is a horrible design) without being accused of botting. If a skill was designed so that you run from alter to bank and back for hours then I will do that if you don't enjoy it fine but if I do enjoy training skills that doesn't mean I'm botting. Also, back when natures were at their prime they made well over 1m per hour and still new pvm beats that. And you seem to forget that the same thing applies to pvm. Less people doing pvm = higher prices of rewards. How does them lowering because the amount of people doing pvm make any sense at all. Lower supply = higher prices even with a slightly lower demand. I'm just going to assume you never really played back when skilling was the most profitable because if you had you'd know that when all the skills were at their prime the new pvm methods still make the most money and the ways to obtain maximum profit with skilling hasn't changed (in terms of new methods). I can't imagine natures going back to 400+ gp even without bots simply because of the newer, faster ways to train magic. When they were at their highest it was because they were simply the best thing to use for training. If anything they'll maybe hit 250 because of the uninformed people who don't realize alcing is one of the slower methods of training. Mining anything but rune was never a good way to make money ,and still has no reason why it would be, and the profit/hour of mining rune hasn't really changed. TLDR slightly better profit =/= best profit and new ways to make the best money with skills haven't been added. Sure no bots would make skills much better profit/hour but it is in no way incorrect to say that pvm will still beat skilling based on past profit/hour of the best skills with methods that have not changed. Show me a skill that has potential of realistically ever making 2m+ per hour and I'll admit it would beat some pvm. Seriously, no bots would still not make skilling the most profitable. You will still be able to make 2m+/hour easily with pvm and skilling would more than likely max out at 1m/hour. For the sole reason that the only skills that would still be likely to still make good profit are runecrafting and mining. Due to the fact that natures are not the best rune for training and rune ore prices haven't changed drastically they won't ever reach the point that they used to be. Even though as far back as I can remember the highest nature crafting ever was was about 1.4m/hour. Really the only reason I think people still train with alcing is because it's cheap, as soon as natures reach the point that stringing amulets/hunter kits/plank make cost the same they'll stop rising. Also, you're not very bright for taking my bet seriously for this long. Did you really ever think I was serious about betting anything? But of course you would never admit to such stupidity. If you have chat off and someone thinks you're a bot and then asks 'Are you a bot?' and you do not reply, of course they're going to report you. And of course jagex are going to assume you're a bot. Do it at your own risk is what i say. Now if you're talking in your clan or pm the whole time then perhaps jagex can see this and will know you not to be a bot, but i doubt they look that far into it. I'm not even going to read your crap about prices as you're wrong. If there were zero bots the prices of items would be: How fun it is to do ~ More fun = less profit Level requirments to do it ~ Higher requirments = more profit How fun those requirments are to get ~ More fun = less profit How well known the method is ~ More popularity = less profit How useful to other things the item you get is ~ More usefull = more profit That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. Of course prices would still flactuate and even out as everyone would do the best method, then the 2nd, then 3rd right until the original 1st is back on top. Of course i knew you'd never pay me and that i couldn't prove the statement at all. It's a sign of weakness when you post clearly imaginary bets though. No rule states that you have to talk to anyone - the presumption that it's even used in the detection process is completely unfounded. You have to realise that JaGex cannot ban players on the basis of their 'social-ness' in the game - for any inefficiency would result in a PR disaster with many angry players stating that they have been unfairly banned. They must have concrete, undeniable proof that a player is macroing before the macroer could be banned - hence why you see many people seemingly 'getting away with it'. You appear to over-estimate JaGex's detection systems. Although, you are right in the way that it would arouse suspicion, thus if indeed the player is a bot, it would increase their ban chances exponentially as sooner or later, since JaGex would have to investigate your account. I'd say there's a few criteria JaGex searches for when they try and detect bots (including, not limited to): Mouse movements - there are few, if any algorithms that can perfectly mimic the human player's mouse. It is humanly impossible to move a mouse in a perfectly straight line (excluding mouse-keys), so it'll be quite obvious that someone is indeed botting. I'm guessing that JaGex can detect click ranges too, so if a mouse continually clicks within [x*x] amount of pixels, it'll be detected as a bot - randomization with click radius' can still be detected. Injection - this is where a client reads and modifies the game data in order to extrapolate information about the game, and it's environment. This is an obsolete method as most of the popular clients now use Reflection (simply reading the game code without being read itself). When JaGex detects that your account has modified game-code, that's 100% evidence of botting leading directly to your account. Again, it's impossible to do it legitimately. Interaction with fake objects/spoofdata - something again, which is impossible with a normal player, as the fake objects would be invisible to the human eye, as it's not drawn towards the screen. Blatantly admitting to botting - cross-referencing 'bot blogs' that some players make, with a real player is likely to be sufficient evidence that a player is indeed botting. At least, it's beyond reasonable doubt that a player is indeed a bot. Inhuman playtime - no human player can consistently maintain 20+ hours of game-play every single day. Even if a player is wrongly caught for macroing, where they have actually account shared, it is a risk that they have to be aware of as both are against the ToS of the game. I fail to see how 'not talking' fits in with the detection systems - there are many plausible reasons for a player to refuse to talk. They could be muted, or that they don't care what supposed 'bot hunters' think, or apathy. It's less about what a player would do, it's more about what a player could do. If a player couldn't do it, then it's almost definitely a bot. I don't see how making a 'bet' is supposedly a sign of 'weakness', care to elaborate? I do know that what really weakens an argument is the flaws and errors in reasoning it has - which judging from your posts, you have plenty.

They go down, how you say, more often than a stripper's panties :P And stay down even longer. I guess 2 hours is a long time for some. Wait, what?

I forget what article exactly, but an article on cracked talked about this. It happens every couple years or so, you say "oh how stupid I was, now I'm much more with it". Then in two years you'll say it again. Would it be this one? http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-they-never-told-us/ Based off a Google search, so it could be completely wrong though EDIT - It is!!

Me (my younger variant). I'm not joking either - it's only 2 years back that I was a completely different person, judging from my older posts. It's hard to imagine that people change so rapidly too. This also brings up another thing - the search restrictions on TIF. I want to see my first few posts, to reflect on how much I've changed, but I can't.

Well, the few situations where you'd want to change your prayer book would generally be where you'd want to range, which is pretty much Jad tasks (only if you don't like meleeing though). The lack of soulsplit at CT wfs isn't worthwhile, Spirit Mages are considered poor tasks anyways and Aberrant Spectres ought to be cannoned (thus Deflects are superior). It's also worthy of noting that Piety drains at a significantly faster rate than Turmoil too (extra bank trips can counter any marginal benefits of faster killing ability)

The solution - if you truly believe that it's the right choice, move in with him. Be sure that your brother is being looked after, by a relative or a friend. It shouldn't be too hard to get used to, but I agree it's difficult when you're in a dilemma/lose-lose situation. As a new times writer myself - I can feel your pain. I never let it get to a personal level though.

The lack of vocabulary in the English language.

Should I point out how fallacious that post is?

I should have been clearer. I should have said that stricter anti-bot code would disrupt the gameplay of those players that don't bot. That statement has been made elsewhere, RS Wiki for one. Anyways, it's an interesting ideal, but I think it'd be very difficult to achieve. You're essentially saying the developers should be so good, there's absolutely no incentive to cheat. Gaming... not just computer gaming, but wargaming, RPGs, minis, etc., etc., etc., there has always been cheating. I don't say that to justify it, but that trying to eliminating it 99.98% is a near impossible standard. At best you have to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator: everyone can cheat equally. Here's a quick RS example: RS1/Classic has had a known problem of botting. There was an official suggestion for a little while from a J-mod... can't remember who, exactly, but essentially all players would be given the ability to alter any stat to their heart's content, similar to what a J-mod can do for testing purposes. My immediate thought is if they did that-- the game would be so severely cheapened so that the majority playing would lose any interest. It'd likely kill that branch of the game, effectively. As far as I know, the plan was never carried out. I'd agree - it's a very ambitious proposal, but I believe it could be achieved. Even reducing the bots to 50% of what there is today would be brilliant; it allows the JaGex team to essentially double their relative productivity against bots - which shows that community that they are doing something. I don't think it would be too difficult to reduce the bot population by that much (if not more), as long as JaGex could make the 'grind' in skills not feel like a chore. As far as I know, most goldfarmers use mule f2p accounts given that $1 pins are no longer on the table (save Sorc Garden/Frosties, but they're very concentrated). There's an additional perk to that too - it would attract more customers, which is all the more incentive for JaGex to do it.

Though I didn't actually contribute an article this week, I just want to thank you for your kind words, which is perhaps one of the most flattering appraisals of the Times I've ever seen. :mrgreen: Beat me to it - it's constructive criticism, and posts like these that really motivates us to continue writing for the community.

Exactly. Sure, some WBM behavior is annoying - but would you rather have a WBM or a bot? At least that's 1 more real player out there. Honestly at least bots don't annoy the hell out of me. Even if a WBM isn't even talking to me they're just annoying. I usually just mute them immediately. But I do hate how bots control the runescape economy. Inaccuracy there - they influence the markets due to supply/demand, but they don't control it.

I was 'caught' pointing out innuendos in class, and the implied humour ensued with lulz + rage (the teacher was female). Oh, and the time I got banned from the internet because I was messing with proxies.

I used to wonder what electrocution felt like - then I discovered it when I accidentally put water onto an electrical application. To put it mildly - it wasn't very nice. I've actually been tased too >.<. It's one of those feelings that's hard to describe