Errrr...Stuff?

I found this great website on the net discussing the psychology of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). Awesome read. Particularly interesting is this section about a phenomenon called the Chinese Gold Farmer. The gist of the article is too complex to be discussed here.

Great read.

All in all, it's kind of ironic. People play MMORPGs usually to get away from real life and what happens? Things that happen in real life follow them into the game universe. Good and bad. Negative things like elitism and racism. It's kind of expected when a large number people are involved.

People can argue the pros and cons of MMORPGs all day long especially about it potential effects on players.

My take is my usual take. It isn't what it is or what it is or where it is. It's what people do with it. If people allow it to take over their lives, it's their own personal responsibility. In the case of MMORPGs, the game developers do what they can to control what goes on in their virtual worlds. For most part, the players are more responsible in determining what happens in that world.

Just like real life, in fact.

Personal responsibility. You'd think this kind of thing goes without saying. So sad that it isn't quite so. If it was, laws like this wouldn't have to be passed.

My copy of World of Warcraft hasn't arrived yet. My trial account expires tomorrow evening. I'm getting twitchy.

I also found out that there's this thing called Godwin's Law. The funniest thing about this is that it's actually true.

In other news, I recently borrowed the last three seasons of Angel from a friend. I had wanted to copy the DVDs, but they were double layer discs and my writer can only write single layer.

I've been trying to figure out a way to rip those DVDs. The best I can do now is to rip the individual episodes to VOB files which are 1 Gb each. Now I'm looking around for a converter that can convert to DivX AVI files. I have one, but it converts in real time (if the episode lasts 45 minutes, it'll take that long to convert). I don't have that kind of time.

I wonder, is there a faster way to convert VOB to AVI?

If not, then I guess I have to make do with those VOB files. Anyone got any suggestions?