Just a small lesson in web etiquette that some people tend to miss. I know it's pretty easy to use the 'ole nets these days, what with Myspace and Facebook and all, but there are some basic concepts which most folks should understand.

The old "don't be a dick, right-click and save-as" motto still exists as far as I'm concerned. Embedding content from Youtube, Flickr and the ilk is obviously cool, they provide those links right there to promote their bandwidth for your own personal usage, that's what they're there for. Copyright is also something fairly flexible: case in point, the Trogdor image below I originally used to reference the fine folks at homestarrunner.com, a typical example of fair usage.

I'm not going to get on any high horses here, just realize that embedding images from sites where the theme is not a shared-hosting service is asking for a bit of abuse at your own expense.

I know, I could set all of the images stored on my server to disallow referring, but there are circumstances when I'd like to use my own storage elsewhere (ala forum signatures and whatnot) and I'd rather not micromanage that. So when someone else treats my server like their own personal storage facility, like say... for their Myspace page, I have a tendency to do something like swap this:

for this:

Before you tell me how evil I may or may not be, consider that the standard photos most people substitute in these circumstances are tubgirl and goatse.cx. I think I'm being rather kind, comparatively speaking. Pretty soon I'll just remove the image and they can have a nice pretty broken image icon instead. =P

Here's a clue to Rogues and Druids who haven't been playing long: Your own faction can see you quite easily when you're stealthed. There are also numerous items and abilities that make you even more noticable, not to mention that tell-tale sound that gets everyone's attention. While I'm sure it feels cool and ninja-like when you're sneaking past mobs or in PvP--

--Stealthing past another player to try to sneak a resource isn't a clever kind of subterfuge, it just makes you look silly.

A Druid tried this today and I was mostly amused. Nethercite Ore isn't exactly a rare resource, but they stealthed right up to tap the vein I was fighting directly next to. I commented in Say: "lol rush veins much?"

A minute later I get a tell "Not seeing me doesn't mean I wasn't there, stealthed. I was." to which I replied that they aren't as clever as they think, because I did in fact see them, hence my comment. This continued as they tried to bullshit that they were also attacking a mob, which just couldn't add up in so many ways, not the least of which they wouldn't have been stealthed if they were in combat.

It's possible (albiet unlikely) that they didn't see me and made an honest mistake, but then just say so. Why is it some people act like a kid when their hand is caught in the cookie jar? The excuses never worked on your mom did they? Just fess up, explain or apologize and move on.

So here's my tip of the day: Stealth does not make you smart or clever. And when you're caught red-handed trying to pull one over on someone, trying to BS your way out just makes it worse.