Category Archives: Illuminati

Because Secret World is such a massive game, we've decided to split our review of the game into several weekly installments, rather than try to cover the whole game based on a few days of play. This week, we discuss the world of The Secret World and our first few hours of play.

Since World of Warcraft emerged to dominate the MMO landscape more than half a decade ago, almost every major MMO release could easily be described as "It's like WoW, but..." Even this year's massive Star Wars: The Old Republic largely boiled down to "It's like WoW, but with BioWare voice acting."

Secret World has positioned itself as the first MMO to break from WoW's formula for success, and on paper it appears to actively rebel against tradition. In contrast to WoW's fantasy setting, Secret World is set in an altered modern day where H.P. Lovecraft was right: Every conspiracy theory is true, and magic lurks around every corner. In place of WoW's class system and leveling treadmill, Secret World awards players ability points that they can spend to create their own "deck" of skills from a common pool of abilities, an arrangement that allows any character to gain any skill in the game.

Finally, whereas WoW presents players with an endless series of "fetch 10 X" and "kill 10 Y" quests, Secret World promises to alter the formula with a lot of story-intensive missions tied to your chosen faction. My choice of the gun-toting suit-wearing Illuminati and my handler's musical taste inspired the diary's headline. The game also deviates from the grind with stealth-based sabotage missions and investigative missions that require critical thinking and puzzle solving to progress to the next stage of the quest.

I'm only a few hours into the game, and already the investigative missions are the most compelling part of the game. The first one I stumbled on required me to follow secret Illuminati symbols scattered around town, eventually leading me to a plaque engraved with a riddle that I couldn't solve off the top of my head.

One of Secret World's most interesting features is its in-game Web browser. When you first encounter the browser, you might think that it's a simple trick to prevent players from Alt-Tabbing out of the game to check their email, but you soon learn that it's essential for solving investigative missions.

That's because you can't solve some of the puzzles merely by using information found in the game. In the case of my mission, a quick visit to the website of the small (fictional) town of Kingsmouth that I was visiting cleared up my confusion. Other missions might require a quick visit to the Wikipedia pages for various mythological beings and conspiracy theories that the game alludes to, so that you can better understand what you're chasing after.

This compelling, immersive spin on solving in-game puzzles is simultaneously the most entertaining and least WoW-like part of Secret World.

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Secret World Diary 1: The Illuminati Love Old-School Hip-Hop

Zealous fan tangles with wrestler at Mount Carmel Block Party Published July 9th, 2012 10:18 pm

Wrestler Robbie Cassidy puts a member of the audience in a sleeper hold Saturday night during the Mount Carmel Block Party. The fan wasn't charged in the indicent. Photo ourtersy of Robbie Cassidy.

MOUNT CARMEL Theres at least one person who attended Saturdays Mount Carmel Block Party who could testify from personal experience that pro wrestling isnt fake.

That fan, who became part of the action during a NWA Smoky Mountain ProWrestling Federation exhibition Saturday, wasnt identified.

He also wasnt charged with assault, although he was ejected from the festival by police after becoming an involuntary recipient of a sleeper hold by bad guy wrestler Robbie Cassidy.

Cassidy and his tag team partner, Tony Givens, call themselves The Illuminati, and in pro wrestling culture they would be considered bad guys and villains.

Their opponents for Saturday nights Mount Carmel Block Party bout were good guys Mountain Goat Jack and Rain Rodriguez.

Prior to the actual bout, Cassidy and Givens began taunting the crowd, as one may expect wrestling bad guys to do.

The crowd was told multiple times throughout the night, Do not touch the wrestlers. They could scream, yell, taunt and exhibit their feelings toward them in a number of ways, but they could not physically touch them. The Illuminatis taunts put that rule to the test Saturday night.

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Zealous fan tangles with wrestler at Mount Carmel Block Party

Since The Secret World is such a massive game, we've decided to split our review of the game up into several smaller weekly diaries rather than try to cover the whole game based on a few days of play. This week, well be discussing the world of The Secret World and our first few hours of play.

Since World of Warcraft emerged to dominate the MMO landscape over a half decade ago almost every major MMO release could be easily described as Its like WoW, but Even this years massive Star Wars: The Old Republic largely boiled down to Its like WoW, but with BioWare voice acting.

The Secret World has positioned itself as the first MMO to break from WoWs formula for success, and on paper it appears to actively rebel against tradition. Instead of WoWs fantasy setting, Secret World is set in a modern day world where H.P. Lovecraft was right, every conspiracy theory is true and magic lurks around every corner. Instead of WoWs class system and leveling treadmill the Secret World awards players ability points that can be spent to make their own deck of skills from a common pool of abilities, allowing any character to gain any skill in the game.

Finally, instead of WoWs endless series of fetch 10 X and kill 10 Y quests, Secret World promises to change up the formula with a lot of story intensive missions that play off of your chosen faction. My choice of the gun-toting suit-wearing Illuminati and my handlers musical taste inspired the diarys headline. The game also deviates from the grind with stealth-based sabotage missions and investigative missions that require critical thinking and puzzle solving to progress to the next stage of the quest.

Im only a few hours into the game and already the investigative missions are the most compelling part of the game. The first one I stumbled upon required me to follow secret Illuminati symbols scattered around town that led me to a plaque that had a riddle on it that I at least wasnt able to solve off the top of my head.

One of Secret Worlds most interesting features is an in-game web browser. When you first discover the browser you might think its a simple trick to keep players from alt-tabbing out of the game to check their e-mail, but you soon learn its an absolute must for solving investigative missions.

You see, some of the puzzles cant be solved just using information found in the game. In the case of my mission a quick visit to the website for the small (fictional) town of Kingsmouth I was visiting cleared up my confusion. Other missions however might require a quick visit to the Wikipedia page of some of the actual mythological beings and conspiracy theories referenced in the game to better understand what exactly youre chasing after.

Its a compelling and immersive spin on solving in-game puzzles and its simultaneously the most entertaining and least WoW-like part of Secret World.

See the rest here:
Secret World Diary 1: The Illuminati Loves Old School Hip-Hop

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Moderated by Glenn ODonnell, principal analyst, at Forrester Research, Cisco, Puppet Labs, rPath, Inc., and ScaleXtreme will participate in a live webinar panel anticipated to be the definitive debate on the present and future states of cloud automation, July 12th at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

In this panel session, some of IT's automation thought leaders will gather for an authentic conversation around many of the key challenges facing enterprise IT today.

"Gone are the days ruled by the technology illuminati, and Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) must evolve. Its future requires customer obsession, relentless focus on just the right portfolio of services, automation, and an expansion far beyond Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the walls of the Information and Operations (I&O) organization. To stay relevant, I&O leaders should drop the "IT" from ITSM and add automation instead to deliver customer outcomes faster, cheaper, and at higher quality," says Glenn ODonnell, principal analyst of Forrester Research.

Panelists:

Key takeaways:

To register

To register for this event, visit http://www.rpath.com/it-automation/.

About rPath, Inc.

rPath is App Logistics for the cloud. Headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., rPath transforms infrastructure as a service (IaaS) into platform as a service (PaaS) by deploying, configuring and maintaining OS and middleware platforms on demand. Cloud stack vendors and service providers need to onboard enterprise applications rapidly to drive cloud consumption. rPath provides the pushbutton simplicity of PaaS without forcing infrastructure or application change. Find out more at http://www.rpath.com.

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Forrester Powers “IT Automation Unplugged”

By the time John Adams became president, Americans already had taken to noisy celebrations of Independence Day, of which he heartily approved.

"It ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other," he wrote to his beloved Abigail.

That tradition continues, of course, to the point that not only Independence Day, but its underlying ideals and the sacrifices that made it possible, might be taken for granted.

The Center for the American Dream at Xavier University recently conducted a survey, asking native-born Americans any 10 of a group of 99 questions on the civics portion of the naturalization test taken by immigrants.

Whereas 97.5 percent of immigrants achieved a passing grade of 60 percent, only 65 percent of citizens born here passed. The natives tended to do well on questions related to geography, national symbols and holidays, but poorly regarding principles and ideas.

About 96 percent knew that the Statue of Liberty is in New York Harbor, for example, and 100 percent knew that each star on the U.S. flag represents a state. About 99 percent knew that Barack Obama is president, but only 71 percent correctly identified Joe Biden as vice president.

Only 7 percent knew that the Constitution has 27 amendments; 8 percent could name any of the authors of the Federalist Papers: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

There was widespread misunderstanding about the powers of the federal government and the states. In the survey only 43 percent correctly identified one power reserved for the federal government and just 23 percent correctly named one power held by the states.

The facts, principles and ideas addressed in the survey should be fundamental to every American's education.

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty," said Thomas Jefferson, John Adams' rival, successor as president and, ultimately, friend by correspondence.

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Honor our country's legacy by learning more about it

By the time John Adams became president, Americans already had taken to noisy celebrations of Independence Day, of which he heartily approved.

"It ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other," he wrote to his beloved Abigail.

That tradition continues, of course, to the point that not only Independence Day, but its underlying ideals and the sacrifices that made it possible, might be taken for granted.

Immigrants learn civics

The Center for the American Dream at Xavier University recently conducted a survey, asking native-born Americans any 10 of a group of 99 questions on the civics portion of the naturalization test taken by immigrants.

Whereas 97.5 percent of immigrants achieved a passing grade of 60 percent, only 65 percent of citizens born here passed. If the passing grade had been 70, the Xavier researchers reported, only 50 percent of the natives would have passed.

The natives tended to do well on questions related to geography, national symbols and holidays, but poorly regarding principles and ideas.

About 96 percent knew that the Statue of Liberty is in New York Harbor, for example, and 100 percent knew that each star on the U.S. flag represents a state. About 99 percent knew that Barack Obama is president, but only 71 percent correctly identified Joe Biden as vice president; 38 percent could name the governor of their state or the speaker of the U.S. House, and only 37 percent could name one of their state's two U.S. senators.

Only 7 percent knew that the Constitution has 27 amendments; 8 percent could name any of the authors of the Federalist Papers: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

The right not to know

Excerpt from:
Give nation civics lesson for birthday Third of native-born citizens fail naturalization test

TULSA - The suspect accused of opening fire outside the Tulsa County Courthouse is not fit for trial, according to a mental health evaluator.

At the request of his counsel, Andrew Joseph Dennehy underwent psychological testing in April and May, the results of which were released last week.

Dr. Curtis Grundy, the psychologist assigned to assess Dennehy's mental health, ultimately recommended he be considered unfit to stand trial and instead be referred for further treatment.

----------------------------------------------------- Slideshow of courthouse shooting ----------------------------------------------------- Dennehy told Grundy he feared Freemasons and the Illuminati, in conjunction with Satan, were trying to harm he and his parents. "They work for [Satan]," Dennehy was quoted in official competency evaluation documents.

Dennehy said he intended for police to kill him at the courthouse, so his parents would be left alone.

The documents reveal Dennehy, 24, had a history of hypertension and depression and may have heard voices and experienced hallucinations prior to the courthouse shooting.

Dennehy is charged with two counts of shooting with intent to kill. He is also charged with assault and battery of a deputy from a medical center incident.

Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Courthouse suspect feared Illuminati

games Magazine

Published on Jul 2, 2012

Funcom isn't the most prolific MMO developer to date, it has two MMORPGs under its belt, Anarchy Online and Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

But the Norwegian developer has been at it for over a decade now, weathering economic storms and evolving online communities yet still staying competitive.

We'd describe the build up to the release of The Secret World as 'tentative', not that there hasn't been the usual marketing flurry associated with a new launch, but there has been little mention of genre-busting or breaking the mould, not from Funcom anyway.

Yet, The Secret World is the only major MMO in these turbulent times that could come close to making this claim without shuffling its feet nervously and crossing its fingers behind its back.

It's distinguished by its setting, a world of cabals and clandestine groups where a surreal multi-dimensional backdrop of magic and monsters meets modern society in a remarkably Phillip Pullman way.

Its nine-year development is evident in its lore and detail: we're running around a contemporary metropolitan street, replete with pop-culture references and swearing natives, but The Secret World seething with nefarious magic and otherworld creatures that surface elsewhere.

You're not the chosen one, you're told by one of the three main factions in the game and sure enough, whether you're aligned with The Templars, The Illuminati or The Dragon, the glowing bug that flew into your character's mouth in the opening credits will dutifully familiarise itself with your gob and somehow impart its powers.

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The Secret World Review

Andrew Joseph Dennehy "is exhibiting psychotic symptoms that are marked by delusions of persecution, paranoid ideation and auditory hallucinations," according to the report of Curtis Grundy, a psychologist retained by the defense to evaluate Dennehy.

Grundy's report, filed Monday as a court document, recommends that Dennehy "be adjudicated as incompetent to stand trial and referred for inpatient psychiatric treatment" for competency restoration at the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita.

He is now in the Tulsa Jail.

Grundy's report says Dennehy has explained that "the Freemasons and illuminati were conspiring to harm or kill himself and his parents" and that in response "he attempted to have himself killed by the police so that the illuminati and Freemasons would leave his parents alone."

A copy of the report is attached to an application for a determination of Dennehy's competency, filed by defense attorney Allen Smallwood.

The test for mental competency focuses on whether a defendant can appreciate the nature of the charges against him, consult with his attorney and rationally assist in preparing a court defense.

Grundy found that Dennehy, 24, can appreciate the nature of the charges but is not able to consult with his lawyer and rationally assist in preparing a defense.

An out-of-county assistant district attorney handling the case said prosecutors have the option of getting a different psychologist to evaluate Dennehy's competency.

The office of Brian Kuester, the district attorney for Wagoner, Cherokee, Sequoyah and Adair counties, is prosecuting the Tulsa County case.

Jack Thorp, a prosecutor on Kuester's staff, said Grundy's report will be reviewed before it is decided whether another psychologist will evaluate Dennehy.

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Shooting suspect not fit for trial, evaluator says

by Alvin aqua Blanco (aqua174) July 1, 2012, 10:30am

Yeezyprovides more fodder for "Kanye Westis in the Illuminati" conspiracy theorists to eat up. Model Anja Rubik is premiering her new magazine, 25, and the "Can't Tell Me Nothing" rapperappears in a video salute to the issue's theme of eroticism, reports New York magazine's The Cut blog.

The video opens with a close up shot of the Chicago rapper/producer's face and he says something about "through me the everlasting pain" and abandoning all hope. The rest of the video is kaleidoscopic shots, naked chicks, close ups...and stuff.

25's first issue is features the photography of solely women, including Emma Summerton, Annie Leibovitz, Paola Kudacki and Ellen Von Unwerth. Rubik told The Cut that she discussed 25's first issue, with West, particularly how it tackled s-x. "It's funny. We talked about p0rn looks these days, and he agreed with me that there's no p0rn out there that is beautiful aesthetically and integrates fashion to make a beautiful image," said Rubik, who West name checked on "Way Too Cold." "We were on the same page about a lot of things.

"I thought it would be really interesting to make it seem like we were entering Kanye's head," added Rubik. "It's not pornographic, but it's very sensual."

The image of a pyramid near the conclusion of the video is what will have folks yapping about Yeezy repping the all seeing eye or riding pale horses. Watch the Barnaby Roper directed video below.

MORE ON HIP-HOP WIRED!

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The Meaning Of The 5%: A Look At The Nation Of Gods And Earths

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Kanye West Reps Anja Rubik's 25 Magazine [VIDEO]