Doomsday: She's Gonna Blow

Earth is humanity’s cradle, but by no means can it completely harbour us from harm. Many risks threaten individual lives, but there are some catastrophic enough to wipe out entire species. Is it possible for the prolific human species to face extinction?

Volcanoes cause much disruption in their own right. However, much larger supervolcanoes do exist, with as many as eleven likely hotspots found around the world. Should one erupt, the surrounding area will certainly be levelled and buried, and the broader world would go through an unseasonal winter.

History
There are countless examples of volcanic eruptions throughout human history, let alone throughout the life of planet Earth. A more famous one occurred in AD 79 when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried under several metres of pumice, sudden enough to preserve the inhabitants in their original positions.

Gift Card Creditors

Last February, REDgroup in Australia entered into voluntary administration after finding it difficult to pay off debts. Owning the Borders and Angus & Robertson bookstore chains in Australia, the administrators demanded that gift cards issued by these stores only pay for half the cost of purchases; the remaining half would have to come out of the customer's pocket.

As customers are accustomed to gift cards' applying to the full cost of a purchase, this caused quite an uproar, with sales staff being abused despite no fault of their own. However, this gesture may well have been a generous one considering how liquidation works, for gift card holders are creditors to the issuing business.

Gift cards are debt
The Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements (AASB) concisely defines a liability as:

...a present obligation of the entity arising from past events, the settlement of which is expected to result in an outflow from the entity of resources embodying economic benefits.

Doomsday: Sunfury

Earth is humanity’s cradle, but by no means can it completely harbour us from harm. Many risks threaten individual lives, but there are some catastrophic enough to wipe out entire species. Is it possible for the prolific human species to face extinction?

The Sun provides all living things with the heat (and, indirectly, food) needed to survive. Yet for all its needed sustenance, there are also times when it turns against life, in particularly spectacular fashion. Every 13 years it throws a tantrum of sorts, with the next one due on late 2012.

Doomsday: The Mayan Code

Earth is humanity’s cradle, but by no means can it completely harbour us from harm. Many risks threaten individual lives, but there are some catastrophic enough to wipe out entire species. Is it possible for the prolific human species to face extinction?

The Maya empire fell centuries ago, yet their work continues to intrigue to this day. Among many opinions of that work is the conclusion that the world will end on 21 December 2012. How well does that theory stand up to modern scrutiny?

Raid Checklists [Checklist]

Like an airplane, a raid is made up of several parts that need to work together for the whole thing itself to work. Those parts need to be set correctly in order for that to happen.

Because of the daunting number of controls to set, airline pilots need to use checklists to ensure that every switch, dial and button are in the correct states for whatever the plane will be doing, whether taking off, cruising or landing. Similarly, several aspects of a raid need to be in specific states for the raid experience to be as smooth as possible. The following checklists mimic the pre-flight checklists used in airline aviation, listing the states of the various aspects of a typical raid.

There are checklists for:

• Preparing for the raid (pre-raid checklist)
• Preparing for a boss attempt (pre-boss checklist)
• Handling a raid wipe (wipe checklist)
• Concluding a raid (post-raid checklist)

Value Added to MMO Items

In real life, people engage in production to make goods and provide services. In doing so, they hope to add value of the finished product above what it cost them in materials, labour and capital. Normally, this is what actually does happen, however in MMOs (massively multiplayer online [roleplaying games]), especially those whose skills are difficult to learn, items actually decrease in value as they are processed.

Like their real-life counterparts, items usually are assets, that is, they provide economic benefits to whoever is in possession of it. As part of production of a real-life asset, any combination of materials, labour and capital may be used in an effort to add value to it. This is usually what happens with an ingame asset as well.

As is the case both in real life and ingame, as a person/character repeatedly makes the same good or provides the same service, they learn more about how to do so. As part of an asset's total value (which includes its value as part of a finished product), there is value placed on its ability to facilitate such learning. When the materials/items are finally processed, such benefits are consumed and the total value somewhat falls.

WoW Mathematics: Server Loading

Hosts of MMORPGs face several dilemmas regarding the servers they operate. One of these, by far a significant one, is the maximum capacity the servers are able to take. Too low a capacity and players will complain about latency and other performance problems, while too high a capacity and the investment in the hardware will not be cost-effective. This problem is exacerbated by the tendency of the load to change cyclically throughout the day.

Deciding on the servers' capabilities is not a simple matter of allowing for a specific number of players. As the mathematics that follows shows, the throughput load created by those players will change according to the tendency of players to cluster together in the game world.