*chinese encoding please*

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恭喜发财， 红包拿来。 Ops. I mean, 祝大家新年快乐，万事如意。学业进步 (for all of us)， 财源广进 (for those making money already)。

 

No really, I mean it. Happy Chinese New Year, even though it's a bit late now. >_<

That was my reaction when I read through every stuff on Beta at http://ideas.live.com. You know what I'm going to post about when I say this, right? No, you don't? Darn.

 

Anyways, I'm going to overview all their stuff and state my opinion. Of course, my opinion does not reflect on the actual usefulness of the service.

 

Live.com

   A customizable website with your choice of layouts and content. Unfortunately, many other search engines have somewhat the same idea. I'm using a spiffy html webpage I made for my homepage, so it won't matter to me.

 

Live Mail

  < scenario >

  "We are losing usership of our Hotmail service. What could be the problem?"

  "It must be that dreaded Gmail. Them with their 2 gigs of space.."

  "Great idea! 2 gigs! Let's put that in our new version of webmail service!"

  "Ok. Meanwhile, let's imitate Outlook and Gmail's sidebar thingy."

 

*Live Mail comes out*

*Developer goes to Gmail*

*Gmail's storage limit increases steadily*

*Storage limit shows as more than 2 gigs*

 

  "Aww, crud. We'll have to wait until the next big update."

  < /scenario >

They should be like, more original! Like pi gigs of space. But I'll still be using it. I've been using Hotmail since 2001 anyways.

 

Live Safety Center

  < scenario >

  *Norton 2006 does a lot of annoying useless stuff*

  "It's not worth the subscription fee. I'm switching to Safety Center."

  *Shiny Safety Center page pops up*

  "Yay, it's free." *use*

  < /scenario >

Or maybe I'll just use some freeware versions of various security programs. Norton's not good anymore, I've heard.

 

Live Favorites

  Ooh ooh! I forgot to tell you about my HTML page. It's a whole collection of links I normally browse around on. And it comes with a connection test.

Favorites are basically .url files. You could move them around..

 

Live Local

  Yahoo maps, Google maps, Google Earth, anyone?

 

Onecare Live.

  Paid. Subscription. But not everything's free in the world...*mind drifts off to Little Fighter Online* Hmm, if it's good, it's worth paying for, ne?

 

Live Search Mobile

  Problem. I don't have a handphone with l33t capabilities. Might be helpful to others though.

 

Live Custom Domains

  I don't have a domain though, so..

 

Live Messenger.

  ...

 ...

...

Okay, using the information from Chiang Fong's blog, it seems like they're just going all spiffy video and audio stuff. Browsing around the site gave me a list of more features. Since I don't use other messengers, I'll be using this. Hopefully, the people at Messenger Plus! will think of something..

 

Live Expo

  Better than Craig's list? I don't sell stuff though, so..

 

Yeah, that's all. I expect them to be good.

 

Unfortunately, the whole world has school, work and such. I wish Wintereenmas was official..

Through an information program called an instant messenger, I have gained the following facts about 2L right now.

 

-They are learning Bio right now.

    Ok.. My dad just bought me a Bio textbook. But SG bio goes deeper into the subject, like learning the pH of...erm, some stuff. o_o'''''

 

-They are learning Malay right now.

    ...what?! Malay? You know, there's something called a third lang center...

 

Oh noes. That means I have to learn it too. But I'm never good at languages. Jack of all trades, mastaz of none..

 

 

-Math covers expansion of linear equations.

    (a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2, or so I remember. It's Algebra 2. [crap].

 

-They are learning so called "World History".

     ...when it only covers WWI in Europe. That's like, only 1 chapter of what I'm learning here! I bet there is some elite way of answering essay questions that most people will not use. Answering essay questions in a particular type of way is not called History. It's called rhetoric.

 

Wait, I'm getting public speaking mixed up with the art of answering essay is a particular type of way.

 

-More people play Maple.

     Kah Hong, Han Yong, etc.

 

Hmm, that's all I could remember right now. Anyways, I have no chance to survive make my time. In Chinese, Malay, Geo, and History at least. Definitely History, though. History is weird. They make you write essays in a particular type of way. o_O....

 

EDIT: On a side note, it seems that I can't find anything I actually need in Maple.

It started when my mother commented on how Maple is so boring - you go around and whack stuff all the time. I thought about it, and agreed. Hence this post.

 

I shall now attempt to compare some MMORPGS that I play (MS), used to play (KO), want to play in the future (SO), and just some randomly picked MMORPG (??).

 

Here we go!

 

----------------------

[[comparing: Storyline

 

!!Maple Story

    In Maple, you have to defend towns from snails and mushrooms. Those high levelled monsters stay underground and are generally harmless.

 

@@Kal Online

     There was a moment of peace after some civil wars before the actual setting, but now Bango, leader of the Seotae tribe, is reborm as the demon king. Now he is using demons to attack people. You, however, is the general of a huge army, and you got injured in a huge battle and lost your memory.

 

If you lost your memory, how do you know you were a general? And if you are a general, where's your army? And why are you only level 1? Are your troops level 0?

 

##Seal Online

    There was a bunch of gods who created the world, and suddenly evil beings came out from the world's shadows, bringing chaos and stuff. They fight a lot, and the good gods win. Some living things got transformed into monsters in the process.

 

 

(not good at summarizing chinese paragraphs....oh noes la)

 

$$Guild Wars

    Ascalon gets attacked by Charrs and was destroyed. I think.

 

[[comparing Quests

 

!!Maple Story

    Hard quests, crappy rewards.

 

@@Kal Online

    You get a significant amount of experience so you won't have to train so much.

 

##Seal Online

    I heard you could do a quest to get a pet..

 

[[comparing Map Size

 

!!Maple Story

    Big enough for you to get tired of walking, small enough to make people go "omgwtf cc plox"

 

@@Kal Online

    Quite huge. "Today I ran for 6 hours to gather herbs."

 

##Seal Online

    Is also pretty big. Dunno exact size though.

 

[[comparing BGM

 

!!Maple Story

    Gets old pretty quick.

 

@@Kal Online

    Gets tired of it really fast.

 

##Seal Online

    N/A

 

[[comparing Skills

 

!!Maple Story

   Hotkey, "omg you din put into mp max yoo are scrooed lolol"

 

@@Kal Online

    Hotkey.

 

##Seal Online

    Tap combos, able to do up to 12 consectutive hits

 

$$FlyFF

    Hotkey, link skills for combos

 

[[comparing Level Cap

 

!!Maple Story

    Who knows?

 

@@Kal Online

    Same as Maple.

 

##Seal Online

    Same as Maple.

 

$$Guild Wars

    20. *waits for people to drop jaws*

 

[[comparing Jump

 

!!Maple Story

    Duh, it's 2D. Of course you need jump.

 

@@Kal Online

    No jump.

 

##Seal Online

   Should have no jump..

 

$$World of Warcraft

    Whee! You can jump over people!

 

[[Skills...2

 

!!Maple Story

    Training essentials.

 

@@Kal Online

    Training essentials. (If you're a mage, you get heal too)

 

##Seal Online

    ...You have to learn how to sleep?!

 

[[comparing Relevance of Name

 

!!Maple Story

    You spend most of your time in Victoria Island. Why not call it Victoria Story?

 

@@Kal Online

    Kal means sword in Korean. Quite okay.

 

##Seal Online

    ...I don't get it.

 

$$World of Warcraft

    It's an online version of Warcraft. Okay then.

 

-------------------------------------

That's all for now...I'll have to do some research on those, ne?

 

*goes back to school tomorrow, Jan 9*

 

------------------------

 

I was playing Maple just now, around 6.25 am (SG time) when there was an announcement about hacking tools and such.

 

 

Thinking that it will be over in a few minutes, I continued my own business. But it quickly came to me that this whole bunch of announcements would be very long.

 

The announcements after the one at the top were about people being banned for being such cheaters, mostly at Shane's quest. Some of the announcements caught my eye, so I took screenshots of them.

 

 

 

< scenario >

 

"Looking for pq!" *jump jump jump* *lies down in front of nothing in particular, and some people* *whacks random people like botting on monsters* *annoyed people reports*

 

< /scenario >

 

 

 

Not a good idea.

 

 

 

It ended with the same message. -___-

 

There was another message before this that worried me a bit, shown below.

 

 

 

 Last time, I bought 20k meso with 10k meso from a friend. Then just now, I tried to trade nothing for nothing. Will I be in trouble?

 

This was the first time I saw such a long period of announcements. Also, this post must be the most heavily-edited one I ever made.

I was going to make a Stream of posts, but I slack. Boo.

 

Anyways, I was away these five days, to go to tourist traps and waste money. Err, I mean go to theme parks in Florida.

 

To my dismay, most of the rides were roller coasters, and I fail at them. -__- (Added Guts stat to the RPG stats thingy.) Yes, I pheer free falls.

 

Sea World has DDR Extreme machine. Win +35! That's the first time I tried an actual machine. Turned out I'm stuck on Light. Again.

 

Universal Studios had lotsa stuff. Like roller coasters. And a freefall elevator thingy. And another Extreme machine, which I did not go on because it cost too much.

 

They had also this Poseidon's Fury, where this person attempts to act like we're all stuck in the temple with no way out. Poseidon, however, led us out. So, why did he help us and not Odysseus? Prejudice, it seems.

 

Then on the third day, we went to Kennedy Space Center. Teh awesomeness overwhelmed my already scrambled mind (due to the rollercoasters).

 

Fourth day, we went to Epcot at Disneyland. We were lining up for this Test Track ride when there was an announcement saying that the ride was experiencing some "technical difficulties", was temporary closed and we should exit. Leaving the building with my brother, I made a few assumptions.

 

The reasons for closure might be:

 

1. Someone fell off the track.

2. The car crashed.

3. Something fell off the car. (Wheel, etc.)

4. They closed for no reason.

5. They had technical difficulties.

 

My brother chose 4 and 5, but when we were in a queue for another ride, we saw an ambulance. Obviously, the answer was 1. I think.

 

So, we continued to queue for this Space Mission ride, and there was an announcement saying that the queue time is delayed. Having a similar announcement before the closure of the Test Track, we anticipated that this would close as well. ("Oh noes! Someone threw up in the simulator!")

 

However, we still managed to get into the ride. The G-forces were so realistic, my mother had motion sickness. -__-

 

On the fifth day (today), we came back, and I wrote this post.

 

While you people in SG were celebrating the New Year, I was in the car on an expressway. Bah. I still have another go tonight though. (1 pm SG time)

 

Happy New Year everyone. I'll laff at you all for no reason when you go back to school, and I don't.