The US community manager Bornakk has announced the arrival of the public test realms for patch 2.4 which will at long last satiate the unrest many World of Warcraft players have had over the wait.

You can read the patch notes (which are not finalized) here.

There is an interesting twist though and one that has truly surprised us here at KhellMirror.

With the 2.4.0 PTR, we will be allowing US, EU and Korean players to access all available PTR realms. Players will be able to choose which test realm they wish to play on without being restricted by region. We currently plan to make all PTR realms available in this way for all future patches.

Yes, if you are a player of WoW and you bought your game locally in North America, Australia, Europe, UK or Korea you can now play on the same public test realm! This will allow those that wanted to play with their EU friends (or vice versa) to do so, albeit temporarily.

We’re also collecting screenshots of the WoW 2.4 Sunwell instance (both 5-man and 25-man) so if you have one you’d like to share with us please go here and register for an account then upload a screenshot through that interface. You can also use it for other purposes such as general file hosting.

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Legal Notice and Disclaimer: This guide does not contain any unlawful information of or pertaining to illegal activities and is for informational purposes only.

You’re a user of the Internet. You browse the world wide web frequently and connect to Web 2.0 websites such as Myspace and Facebook. You receive hundreds of email each day into your inbox from friends and associates. You hear everywhere people talking about how they downloaded the latest CD of their favorite band or that single-player game they couldn’t afford. You even read about sites such as The Pirate Bay that get charges filed against them for operating a network to distribute potentially illegal files. Peer-to-peer is everywhere in your life, but you don’t have a single idea on how to get started. You’re clueless.

So you turn to your best friend on the web - Khell. You greet him and then plead that he introduce you to the world of file-sharing. Wish granted.

Getting started with P2P is a daunting task. The most vast network and easily the most popular today is BitTorrent. BitTorrent isn’t actually a network but a protocol and is what we will instruct you upon today.

BitTorrent works by having you download a small .torrent file from a website and then having you execute that file through a torrent program. This program then reads the information stored in the file and then connects to a specified tracker. A tracker is a server that keeps a track of all the seeders and leechers of a file and how to connect to them. It feeds all this information to you throughout the time the torrent remains active allowing you to continually connect to others wishing to download or upload the same file.

What is a seeder?

Seeders are people who have a complete version of the file you wish to download. When you finish downloading a file through BitTorrent, you automatically become a seeder unless you specify otherwise.

What is a leecher?

A leecher is anyone that does not have a complete copy of the file and is actively working to download it completely.

Alright, that’s the background information covered. Now let’s get you started.

Firstly, you have to download a torrent application that will allow you to execute the would-be torrent files. There are numerous BitTorrent applications that exist however we recommend you to download some of the more popular ones as it has been reported that some trackers seem to block certain ones from accessing their content.

KhellMirror recommends µTorrent. µTorrent is a free, lightweight BitTorrent application which uses very little memory unlike other torrent applications which are somewhat memory intensive. Keep in mind, however, that although it was originally developed by an independent developer, µTorrent is now maintained by BitTorrent Inc, a company founded by the mastermind behind the entire BitTorrent protocol.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed µTorrent and then made sure you’ve configured it properly you’ll want to find a torrent site or search engine. As a beginner to BitTorrent, we recommend you visit sites such as Mininova or The Pirate Bay.

Once there you can use their search tools to browse for a file you’re interested in downloading. Simply click on them and there will be a link on the torrent’s file page to download the small torrent file we mentioned earlier. When on TPB you will need to click on ‘Diese Torrent Datei herunterladen’ which quite simply means ‘Download torrent’ in Swedish. TPB, while being hosted in Sweden, has many English users and is very easy to browse despite a lot of the navigation being predominately in Swedish.

When you have your torrent file downloaded, navigate to it and double-click on it like you would any other file. This should open up your torrent application. If not, right-click on your file and select Open With (assuming you use Windows) and then click on your torrent application in the window that will appear. If it is not there, hit browse and navigate to where you installed it. The default path is in C:\Program Files\torrentapplicationyouchose\torrentapplicationyouchose.exe.

When your torrent application launches and depending on which torrent application you chose to install, a pop-up window may appear asking you where to save the file to be downloaded. Simply navigate to where you wish to save it and hit OK!

That’s all you need to know to get started. In part two we will cover the way people label their torrent files and the mysterious file extensions they choose to share them in. We will show you how to identify and open these file formats using the appropriate programs. Stay tuned and don’t forget to subscribe to our blog by registering so you can keep up-to-date with our updates!

If you liked reading this article, don’t forget to Digg it or submit it to any other social bookmarking site below. We appreciate comments as well!

Ah, Scientology. The so-called ‘religion’ founded by the greatest author of fiction books to have ever graced this world. Oh, L. Ron Hubbard, how we dearly worship you, even though you are now a pile of bones somewhere on the planet. Let us all take the time now to praise Xenu for granting us, you, so that you could spread this amazing and vibrant cult across the planet, alienating the minds of the poor fools that choose (chose) to devote their wealth - sorry, I meant lives - to the Church of Scientology. They are a true inspiration to us all and are the prime example of what Xenu the fictitiously marvelous envisioned us to be.

On with the story. We have retrieved this from the deep repositories of the ancient Catacombs of Scientology from the homeworld of the mysterious Xenuses, located approximately 241 light years or 5291 Scientology years away from our blessed planet. The retrieval process required using the forbidden dark magic of psychiatry and some neutral magic of hypnotism to lull this annal from within its confines. In order to do this, we were forced to infiltrate the Scientology church in Hollywood, where we held an innocent Tom Cruise at gunpoint and threatened to blow him up with a hydrogen bomb in the nearest active volcano if he did not fulfill our demands. Oh, we had a guy masquerading as Xenu while we were at it. He was the one holding the gun - er, superior weaponry, by the way. Not us!

WARNING: By continuing on, you must know the truth of your existence, else lightning will strike you and you will suffer the wrath of the dead L. Ron Hubbard - come back as a holographic projection with a life-size volcano being held in his left palm - for all eternity in Galactic Confederacy space.

 

 

I…write for my lord Xenu. He, in his great will, has inferred me to keep a vast amount of logs and biographies on him, his plans and his actions. He tells me it is for a future day and has further added that should I fail to do so, I will be incarcerated after 12 Scientology years of physical torture and rape. I fear for my life and so I have no choice but to submit myself to his horrific writing instruments liberated from these grumpy people called the Klingons. Boy, were they not happy being conquered right after they’d gotten owned by an enigmatic ship called the Exclusive Brethren travelling at over Warp 1601 speed.

Nonetheless…I am not without limits in this biographic compilation. The great lord has told me not to write on his…sex life. He says it isn’t normal to be involved with er, children. Oh well, this sharp needle that’s over 6 inches long and is poking into my excretion area couldn’t possibly be worse than being sent into a radioactive substance to degrade for slacking.

I have been a direct servitor and watcher of my lord in action for eons; I have watched him ravage worlds and manifest his soul into them. I have seen him deploy vast amounts of volcanos and blow them up using the lucrative power of hydrogen. I have been his loyal servant and observer, and now I dictate his life through the written word.

I am here now, on this smoldering ruin of a forming world. Earthquakes shake the very ground I stand upon and I attempt to calm myself through the operating thetan. The toxic gases pervert my senses and invade my nostrils, defiling my sense of smell. I feel my stomach gurgling and I am washed with a wave of nausea.

I am a trained thetan, my level far exceeding those of ordinary people. And yet, it fails me. Why? My attempts to calm myself and extricate myself from the events transpiring before me are met with failure. I have been trained all my life in the art of Scientology, in it’s beliefs and purposes - what have I done to deserve this?

I collapse onto the rocky ground which I can feel rumble and shake deep below in its volcanic core. My lord approaches. He stares at me, his face blank of emotion. I make eye contact with him and I tremble. He is a terrible sight to behold, my lord. He wears a simple rudimentary shoulder padding and chainmail. He leaves his reproduction organ in plain sight for all to behold and he covers the rest of his thighs and legs with iron plating. He loves to look primitive. His steel boots match his iron plate leggings, but they gleam with some unholy aura. That in and of itself is not terrible to behold - it is his face.

His face is a mass of black, depthless skin and if you look closely into his eyes you will see a swirling void reflecting the universe and it’s galaxies. They are like a black hole of antimatter; should you stare long enough you will disappear entirely. His lips are pitch-black and it is only through the parched lines on them that you can make them out at all. His nose, well, he cut it off.

My lord stops in front of me and he maintains the eye contact that we have. From a corner of my own eyes I see him curve his lips into a grin. He is trying to suck me in.

I continue to stare into the void of his eyes but I struggle to maintain myself. I am becoming lost within them and I feel my life being extracted from me. Memories of my childhood upbringing in the Church flood through me - harsh, brutal recollections of the abuse, torture and rape the scientologists executed upon me. The pain of it all courses through me and I feel myself once again being violated. I am on the verge of tears and then, unexpectedly, my lord breaks eye contact with me. He raises his right hand and slaps me hard across the face and I pelt towards the rocky ground. He moves away then, walking back over to his other servants.

I groan in pain. I know what he wants. I am not permitted any moment of rest and I must continue to write my biography on his life.

I watch as he speaks to another of his servants. He sneers.

At last, I look past the rock of the ground and take in my surroundings. I gasp. Volcanos - mountains with gaping holes at their peak that billow boiling ash and lava when they ‘erupt’ - stretch out for as far as the eye can see. Steam billows from them, a sign of their likelihood of eruption.

The next sight I see would truly shock me and leave me with guilt and an everlasting sadness. My people are lined up like slaves all around the perimeter of every volcano and are chained by their wrists and ankles to it. I realize now what he intends. These are all members of the Church of Scientology, the church I was raised in, the church he despises. He intends to kill them all.

Drawing upon the faceless power of his great shielding weaponry, he encases us all in a perfectly transparent shield. He signals to his other servants as I watch on. He turns around to face me suddenly, and I jump to attention, meeting his eyes once more.

I hope you’re writing this down, he relays to me telepathically.

Sneering once more, he makes a hand gesture to his servants and without further delay, they whisper a word in the language of the faceless Void of Psychiatry. I look once more to the volcanoes that stretch around us and see giant round balls of a metallic build materialize in the boiling air above the volcanoes. I don’t want to look. My lord notices this and silently he communicates a single word to me.

Look.

To me, it is a command which I must fulfill. And so I do. I watch as my people cower in terror at what they see. My lord cackles and then he signals his servants to bring the hydrogen bombs down. They do. I shudder in the icy anticipation of what was to happen next.

Boom! Wave after wave of volcanoes shatter with the force of thousands of tons of hydrogen exploding and my people shriek in agony as they are literally torn apart by the volcanoes. I collapse to the ground and writhe in horror. As explosion after explosion rocks the world and my earbrums nearly burst, for even the ’soundproof’ shielding cannot block out the noise, my lord laughs hysterically.

My lord hates scientologists and the Church of Scientology.

 

This was taken from the Annals of a Dedicated Servant and Ex-Scientologist on Xenuses. As the book is over fifty years old (way over!) we’ve taken it and made it the own property of KhellMirror.

To be continued…soon!

If you liked reading this article, don’t forget to Digg it as thanks.

The multiplayer version of Hellgate: London today has been patched to v1.1 forcing everyone to download a roughly ~17MB file. This is an estimate from our firewall statistics. As a side note, Flagship, please allow for more bandwidth. Our firewall reported a 32.4KB/s download speed of the patch…I understand you want to keep subscribers subscribing for as long as possible but this is simply too much. Either uncap your servers or let us download and mirror the patch through FTP.

Unfortunately, they’ve chosen to distribute this patch directly to you while you login and it ‘loads’ so we cannot provide you with a patch mirror. You can read the full patch notes at the Hellgate site.

Some interesting changes would be:

All Guardians, Evokers, and characters on Subscription accounts will have one Skill Retrainer when logging in after this patch goes live.

I actually right-clicked on the Skill Retainer and used it when 1.0 went live accidentally. I’m glad I get another one - I’ll keep it in the Stash for now until I feel like messing around with my skills. On the other hand, I can blindly choose new skills without worry or any long deliberation.

The Beast of Abbadon, Oculis, and Sydonai will now re-spawn normally, even if the player has previously completed their associated quests.

Yay! Farming time.

Stalkers and Burning Fiends are now part of the Beast caste and Tortured Souls are now part of the Spectral caste (to balance a disparity of Essence drop rates between castes). This applies to all types of Stalkers, Burning Fiends, and Tortured Souls.

Believe me, this will help out a lot and make Essence farming more worthwhile. I’m still not going to waste my time doing it though for minimal reward…

Skill Retrainers now have a confirmation dialogue to help players from accidentally using them.

This should’ve been implemented before I right-clicked on mine last patch. Just one right-click and it’s gone. If anyone with some influence reads this, may I suggest a confirmation dialogue for skills as well?

Increased the amount of Shields found on items and affixes, ramping up after level 10. Note that this change is not retroactive and will not apply to existing items; however, newly dropped items and existing items upgraded through the Nanoforge will receive the adjusted amount of shields.

Very nice change. I don’t see why they can’t apply it to existing items though. Flawed code is bad Flagship. Oh well, one Nanoforge upgrade to use my precious Nanoshards shouldn’t hurt. I’ve got around 20 now and (surprise!), one of them was from a white (common) item!

Guild Heralds can now be sold back to merchants for full price.

Yeah, about time.

Skills

• Increasing ranks of Drain Power now work properly at all power ranges.
• Increased the amount of Shields granted by skills that provide Shields.
• Engineer Drones now come with a base armor rating.

Any buff, is a good buff.

Players may now Recall or Party Portal out of the Hell’s Heart level.

Yeah, let players Recall for all of these sort of instances. Mind of 314, Exospector etc.

Stonehenge now appears as a destination on the Station Transit Terminal.

About time. For those subscribers still trying to find out where to get to Stonehenge initially, it’s in the southern part of Templar Base. Yeah, the holy church station place.

Stonehenge weapons can now have Mod slots.

No brainer.

The stash in Stonehenge now properly detects collision.

I’m in your stash, taking your loots!

Essence drop chance increased from 15% to 20%.

Great change but still far too little, too late. This minor improvement of 5% isn’t going to persuade me to specifically go out with the intention of farming essences. Farming, is bad.

Fixed a bug causing additional Skill Retrainers to spawn when they shouldn’t have. Duplicate Skill Retrainers should now be removed.

No fair. Why didn’t I get an extra skill retainer?

Yesterday I wrote the lengthy entry on how parents are failing to properly nurture their kids. Without a doubt if any parent had read it they would have been slightly peeved off at some minor telling them they failed at parenting. That or they would have laughed. Today, we continue on with why the offspring of today are failing thanks to their parents.

Kids today are far too spoiled (or spoilt if you’re a Brit) for their own good. Whereas a few decades ago allowances were far too small to be of any considerable use or monetary value, the amount parents give their kids today is far too excessive. Even the working class spoil their kids. You see kids as young as seven running round with gadgets that were not designed for their demographic. You see children throwing away tens - if not hundreds - of dollars for some worthless item that they’ll throw away in a few days.

All this money being given to them causes a belief that money does fall from the sky or grow off trees - whichever phrase you like.

The new generation today exhibits far too much laziness. They are not willing to work for anything, they are impatient and want things to happen as soon as they ask - or more often demand it.

And this trend is expanding and showing no signs of slowing down.

The educational aspect of life is also degrading. Kids today are illiterate and failing at things that were standard years ago. More and more fail at math and science and hundreds more cannot even read. They spend far too much time excessively and effectively wasting their brain cells completing video games and less time on study. What was once common - book reading - has practically vanished, more or less due in part to that they fail to comprehend basic vocabulary. Have you seen your child’s report card lately? Maybe you looked at it once or twice when they were six or seven.

Then there’s the prevalence of the Internet, which has helped to degrade literacy to the point of no return. If you’re a user of the Internet, without a doubt you’ve been exposed to ‘hai guyz how r u cuming along 2day?’ or ‘wot da ya fink of dis?’ crap. Tweens, teens - even adults, often type like this.

Parents, for the sake of the future of the world, teach your kids some manners, common sense and literacy and numeracy. Stop giving them hundreds of dollars from your bank account each month. Educate them on drugs, alcohol and copulation. Stop being neglectful because the consequences of your actions may as well be equal to not having kids at all.

As part of our continued war against paysites which violate the EA EULA and TOS we have taken the time to bring you Simslice’s most recent updates.

They are:

• Worf is back!
• Mad Scientist Set
• Far East Set
• Modern Warmth FirePit
• Old Hobo FireCan

We hope you enjoy the poorly-coded and designed objects. If you are a representative of PMBD you are free to download and upload these to the site. My subscription to Simslice is still active so if you need other objects to add to your archive please leave a comment and say so.

By uploading these objects to the site, we are not breaking any laws or agreements. We adhere fully to the EA EULA which states that custom content may be freely distributed across any site.

 

 

Being 14 myself and having parent’s who allow me to lead my own largely independent life where for years it is I who have chosen what to do, when to do it and how to do it, I know how exhilarating it is to feel free and be able to do what you want without any restraint.

However, some other children take it way overboard. These children are rebellious, loose and downright out of control and it is a clear fact that it is the parents - not society - that is to blame. These parents, such as those of the obnoxious 16-year-old Corey, who made it onto world news, have obviously spoiled him and allowed him to run free without a leash for far too long.

By allowing your children to be independent, you give them a boost of ego and a sense of superiority which they convey to the rest of the world. They begin to feel as if they should be treated as an adult would and they believe that by acting tough, they are tough. They become rebellious and dislike it when others tell them what to do. Take Corey for example. Your average (yes, average) teenager who has finished high school. Flamboyant hairstyle dyed from dishwater hair to wannabe blonde, sunglasses and ‘cool’ clothing and an extreme dislike for adults. He loves to go against the law and go drinking, often intoxicating himself and damaging his brain in ways his underdeveloped mind (blame the parents) could ever comprehend.

He is the striking example of what every teenager and tween is aspiring and developing to. Tough, cool, popular and largely independent. Dislikes authority and rebellious.

Yes, many children, possibly even yours wants to be like him. He is their role model because over the years, this new generation of children are not controlled because of parents that don’t know what parenting is about. A few people from my school are exactly like this. Well, almost. They intoxicate themselves at least once a month, go out for hours, sometimes even overnight and lead the ‘bad boy’ type of life which every kid wants to be. Worst of all, these people are actually quite pleasant to talk to and intelligent, unlike Corey, who is dumb’s best friend. He’s probably had his fair share of marijuana too.

It isn’t limited to this. Your children (I call them children because the definition of children is a minor and offspring and that is what they are) do other things even in your very own home. They look at pornographic imagery and cuss and generally make a nuisance of themselves and others on the ‘Net. Myspace is alright, except for those where stupid parents have let their kids be forced into suicide because of it.

Parents, coming from a teenager, you need to control your kids more. You need to monitor what they do online and get them off those porn sites (don’t tell me they don’t look at it because they do). You need to install software either on their computer or the router that will block these sites. You need to enforce curfews and actually see what they do with their friends. You need to exercise restraint and limits and stop them from consuming alcohol underage. You need to put Google into strict safe search mode permanently then stop them from deleting cookies and accessing that page entirely. You need to scour their possessions for drugs and dispose of it if discovered. You need to make sure they only converse with people who are well-mannered and matured. You need to make sure they lead a fruitful life and not one that is worthless.

There is another sect of children that aren’t like this. They are the truly intelligent type but are often neglected. They are not like me, who revel in the independence and seclusion but instead feel that they are forced into it. They want love and care but instead the parents distance themselves from them and do not take too close a look on their lives or thoughts. I am talking about the children that murder, oftentimes their very own parents who gave them life. Take this article for example. Seriously, this is the example of prime neglect. You need to sit down with your children and examine them closely. You need to figure out if anything is wrong with them mentally and if so send them to therapy. This would never have happened had the girl’s parents been more considerate.

It is my generation that will eventually be in control of this world, and then the generations after us. It scares me to think that so many of my generation in the western world have devolved into such moronic buffoons and it shames me to think that this is what western society, and possibly the society in every other developed country, is coming to.

The Qtrax P2P player is well and dead. The well-hyped pre-launch of Qtrax stopped short in it’s tracks, with all four music labels releasing statements that reinforced the rumors that Qtrax had no licensing deal and that all of the expectation that Qtrax had hoped to fulfill did not exist.

Qtrax was to be the world’s first media player, P2P application and web browser that allowed people to download music files completely legally. The Qtrax application, powered by Songbird, would have used the Gnutella network’s files by digitally signing them with DRM while the end-user downloaded the file.

The user would have browsed all their files through the music.qtrax.com subdomain, but for over 48 hours the page has been replaced from its sleek Apple look to the installation page for Oracle 10g.

Such a shame, Qtrax, such a shame.

A couple of days ago we wrote on how paysites are breaking the EA End-User License Agreement (EULA) and then provided an object for download from one of the worst paysites in existence - Simslice’s Rejuvenator. This site simply takes code in the game that is there but is unused and downright buggy and then places it in objects, allowing the code to be activated. Such is the case with almost every hacked object on Simslice.

We feel strongly about those who break EA’s EULA, and feel that it’s time to spill the beans. Yes, at paysites.mustbedestroyed.org you can download thousands of objects from paysites including all of Simslice’s objects, all of HolySimoly’s donation packs and tens of objects off one of the even worse paysites available - The Sims Resource (TSR) which profits off work created by members where the administrators of the site couldn’t code or design an object if they tried. We have it from an unconfirmed source that the creators (members) on the site receive absolutely no compensation for their work at all.

Paysites.mustbedestroyed.org already has thousands of members when you take a look at the Forums, and when you think about it, there are probably thousands more that don’t register on the forums.

Also, please note that the object we provided for download from the previous post wasn’t taken from that site - we actually subscribed to Simslice for that (and a whole lot more). Yeah, we were morons. We discovered this site only yesterday when we looked up the filename for the Rejuvenator on Google and one result came up for paysites.mustbedestroyed.org.

As of this day, we, KhellMirror, and it’s associates, declare open war on all paysites, who claim they use it to support their monthly fees. For those that feel offended, know this, KhellMirror uses hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth each month to supply it’s files to anonymous people and we do not even charge a cent. Paysites, must be destroyed.

 

The P2P service Qtrax has launched. A message on the download site says that ‘We’re thrilled with the massive response we’ve received. To ensure the best user experience, we’re activating accounts in stages. In the meantime, enjoy all the functionalities of the Qtrax player like importing and playing your music and searching for artist-related content.’

Upon downloading the Qtrax player, dubbed ‘Songbird’ and installing, then allowing it through our firewall, we found that it resembled very much Apple’s own music player iTunes with tabbed browsing and error pages like Firefox. Two tabs opened up the moment we launched Songbird, and, as you can see in the screenshot, both request to load music.qtrax.com. Unfortunately, the subdomain appears to be down and we are left with a music player that feels worse than the bloatware and memory hog that is iTunes.

According to Torrentfreak, Songbird uses the Gnutella P2P network that was prominent before the rise of BitTorrent. If so, what’s the legality in that?

Only time will tell. Stay tuned (sorry) for updates as we wait for these appalling server errors to be corrected and attempt to figure out what they mean by an account - KhellMirror was under the impression that it was a non-registration type of software according to their actual download page. Contradictory, to say the least.

If for some reason the Qtrax download server crashes from the strain as well, we’ve mirrored the Songbird player here.

UPDATE: Well, Songbird’s homepage finally loaded, but when we clicked to register, it promptly returned the same error page again. We’ll continue to keep you informed. You can see from the homepage though that the music tracks available aren’t…that well known.

UPDATE 2: The music.qtrax.com site is now responsive. It seems Qtrax is dead, however, due to the four music labels refusing to strike a licensing deal with Qtrax earlier today. When we attempted to digitally download Kate Nash’s Foundation track of a duration of 4:05 we got a pop-up stating ‘Downloads coming soon!’. To think, they invested $500,000 to build Qtrax. I wonder how much they’ve made from the advertising already, though?