That sounds like an OEM copy. The retail copies are more expensive, come with boxes, and the licence permits moving the software from machine to machine. (OEM is supposed to only be sold with a PC, and the licence doesn't permit moving the install to a different computer).
Here in Australia, most small computer stores only carry the OEM copies (and are often not too concerned with ensuring that they're "sold with a system"), and many large software stores only carry the retail boxes.
You don't even need some kind of Alias-style programming room.
Humans are distressingly easy to get into "just following orders" mode. It's awful how little effort it takes to turn a decent person into an Auschwitz guard. The Milgram experiments are an informative, albeit horrifying, place to start.
Your point 2 on non-portability is incorrect. Right-click on the game you want to back up and select "Back up game files", and there's a wizard that will step through the creation of a back-up archive that you can easily burn to DVD. The back-up archive includes a reinstallation utility that puts the games back into Steam without any messing around, and the wizard includes the choice of whether you want CD-sized volumes, DVD-sized volumes, or larger, and they're just standard Windows files so you can burn them onto whatever media you like using whatever program you want.
I keep backups of all my Steam games on my file server so that I can keep current games on my laptop's hard drive and store other games elsewhere, and so that I can migrate the games onto alternative devices without re-downloading, and it works well.
That's why I use ISO dates. Either 2010-04-01 or 20010401 or 2010.04.01 or 2010/04/01, optionally followed by a hh:mm:ss.ms timestamp. They have the wonderful property that (so long as the separators are consistent) the dates are correctly sorted by simple string comparisons!
Hooray for date formats where the digits are in most-to-least-significant order...
An SMS code sent to your phone is just a poor-man's RSA "rolling code" security token. The instant you begin to type that code on your keyboard, you've lost the battle again. The running malware can intercept the form submission attempt and then use the code you typed in to do whatever it wants while it delays or just fails your real login request. This isn't a theory, it's a proven fact that's already in use by malware in the wild.
It's possible to engineer that out. Instead of sending you a code to "authorise your login", which can then be stolen by the software, the bank sends you a code to authorise a *specific action* which has been requested (either by you or by the pwnage bot). The SMS would contain details of the requested transaction. That way, you get to view the details of the transaction *that was actually lodged*, rather than the transaction that you thought you were lodging, on a much more trustworthy interface.
The next step, I guess, would be Windows malware that attempts to compromise any phones that are connected to the PC so that the bad guys can somehow interfere with the bank SMSs at the phone end of the link. That would be significantly more challenging for the bad guys, though.
It's like Windows is now a new gaming console at my house, except that this one bugs me about drivers and DRM on a regular basis.
Seriously? Drivers, yeah, I understand that. A better distribution mechanism would be nice although I suppose Windows Update is better than having to actually seek out & download the installer yourself. But DRM? Windows doesn't include any DRM for controlling access to executables. The only built-in DRM is for media playing, like Bluray and DVDs and crappy audio files. (Windows XP didn't include any DRM at all - that's why it can't even play DVDs without a 3rd party DVD player installed).
I've never gotten any DRM-related bugging from Windows - although I *have* gotten DRM bugging from things like SecuROM, which isn't part of Windows. Blaming Windows (and by extension MS) for the shite-layer that third-party games publishers love to wrap their product in isn't really fair.
The next two rows on the list in TFA are as follows:
17: Freescale 1,375 0.9% 18: Google 1,261 0.9%
I'm not sure why the parent decided to stop where they did.
These rankings are based on number of kernel changes submitted broken down by employer.
However it seems that Google employees are making a significant contribution to Linux project management and quality processes though: Red Hat employees sign off on over 36.4% of changes, which is the highest proportion of sign-offs in the hands of a single company, but Google has second place in that table with 10.5% of all sign-offs. It looks like several Google employees are filling the roles of subsystem maintainers - they may not write as much code as some other companies but they are still contributing some senior people.
The fact that, as you say, 'there are so many cards, effects, and ways of playing' and not one of those is flat out best is a testament to how good Wizards are.
Well, that and a reasonably aggressive card retirement policy that applies to most organised play. That certainly helps keep things fresh too.
I find that quote particularly poignant when compared to this quote:
McCartney sees the game as âoea natural, modern extensionâ of what the Beatles did in the â(TM)60s, only now people can feel as if âoethey possess or own the song, that theyâ(TM)ve been in it.â
So, people can feel as if they possess or own the song - but Apple Corp, the owners of the Beatles' music (including McCarney), can't tolerate the thought of anyone getting ambitious and wanting to actually do something creative with it, like recombine elements of the Beatles' work into something new! This is a thin and watery form of ownership indeed.
Actually, the "lol wut" was the first post. You didn't quite make it.
That said, I've read the mailing list comments from the MS guy, and none of it seemed like unreasonable moaning. I agree that it's an excellent thing that MS is getting involved - IE's market share may be declining, but it's still the dominant browser, and I think MS is still capable of doing tremendous amounts of damage to emerging web standards if they refuse to support them.
It's not GPL; it has been released under a slightly tweaked version of the MIT licence I think. I'm think that's an OSI/FSF approved FOSS licence but I'm not completely certain.
MS doesn't like publishers to release free DLC on the XBox; they're trying to establish a community expectation that add ons should cost extra. I think I've read somewhere that they permit occasional small updates but insist that any significant expansions to the game's content be for.
Shame they didn't mention the Dark Engine, which was used for Thief, Thief II, and System Shock II, and basically drove the creation of the 3d stealth game as it now exists. Since Thief II and System Shock II are frequent visitors to "Best PC Game Ever" listings, the engine behind them seems notable. The switch to Unreal II for Thief III killed the ability to have large maps, which is one of the major shortfalls of that installment compared to the earlier games in the series. The same applies for the legendarily disappointing Deus Ex II.
It's a Core 2 Duo based laptop, but I went with the 32-bit version because I've only got 2GB of RAM (with limited BIOS support for more) and pretty much no native 64-bit software. So I judged that the potential for incompatibility hassles wasn't worth the negligible benefits.
All I can say is "works for me". In fact, System Restore has saved me from a couple of hosed anti-virus uninstalls (on different machines) and from a failed nVidia driver upgrade. I've found it quite effective.
Then, they released "coca-cola classic".. err.. i mean windows xp again...err.. i mean "windows 7".. which the public raved was so much better than before!
Except, of course, that Win 7 is far more like Vista than it is like XP.
So the developers laziness or technological limitations are just cause for forcing players to choose specific loadouts?
No, it's the game canon. Most Mechs are not intensely customizable. They have some hardpoints for mounting, and it makes sense that some hardpoints might not have the hardware to accept any old weapon. Energy weapon hardpoints will have large power and coolant conduits. ACs and Missiles will have smaller energy/coolant conduits, and ammo feed mechanisms. Additional modifications would not be within the realm of possiblity for a mercenary lance or other small combat group.
It seems a fair assumption that the MadCat designers (in canon) would not find the need to place ammo feeds into the arms (where the PPCs were located) or high-power conduits to the missile pods.
Actually, you're very close to exactly right but not quite. Traditional 'Mech designs were like real world armoured vehicles in that their weapons & equipment loadout was pretty non-modular. Like the real world, however, there were also many revisions of most of the basic designs. In the tabletop game, altering the loadout of one of these 'Mechs was a significant engineering effort that required skilled engineers, technicians, and weeks of work.
However, the Mad Cat is a slightly different beast. One of the primary features of the Mad Cat and its sister Clan mechs was that they were "OmniMechs", which had a completely modular design with respect to weaponry. (In the tabletop game, you have more or less free reign: You can't remove the built-in armour or heatsinks, although you can add more, and you can't change the engine. Other than that, go nuts). Canonically, these could be completely refitted in a matter of hours, and each OmniMech chassis came with 4 or 5 different "standard loadouts". They typically tend to follow the same general theme as the standard loadout, (eg tweaking the size and type of missile racks, or changing one "large barrel" type weapon for a different one such as swapping autocannons for lasers). However there are counter examples - I'm pretty sure there is at least one canonical Mad Cat loadout that doesn't include any missiles at all.
Lower-class warriors were required to use a standard loadout, if they could get an OmniMech at all, while higher-class warriors were allowed custom loadouts. I believe there are actually some miniatures available to represent some of the popular alternate loadouts.
He's talking about the freeform/LARP variant of World of Darkness (Mind's Eye Theatre, it's called). That's what they use in the Camarilla LARP society.
And yet... 4E is extravagantly more popular than any of those. Heck, I at least know what you're talking about (I've played Burning Empires), but there's not many gamers outside of rpg.net and the forge who would even recognise the names.
So, if by "savvier" gamers you mean the most arty 1% of an already obscure hobby, you're right. In practice, judging by the tone at the games clubs I see, 4E is not exactly taking the hobby world by storm (there are plenty of 3.x loyalists around) but I don't see a huge shift towards more adult games. In general, people seem to be sticking with relatively mass market & well established traditional RPGs. The games club I frequent is seeing a lot of Legend of the Five Rings, Earthdawn, World of Darkness and other classics - the most avant garde system currently in play seems to be Unhallowed Metropolis, and while that has a really cool setting, rules-wise it really doesn't push the boundaries at all.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds like an OEM copy. The retail copies are more expensive, come with boxes, and the licence permits moving the software from machine to machine. (OEM is supposed to only be sold with a PC, and the licence doesn't permit moving the install to a different computer).
Here in Australia, most small computer stores only carry the OEM copies (and are often not too concerned with ensuring that they're "sold with a system"), and many large software stores only carry the retail boxes.
You don't even need some kind of Alias-style programming room.
Humans are distressingly easy to get into "just following orders" mode. It's awful how little effort it takes to turn a decent person into an Auschwitz guard. The Milgram experiments are an informative, albeit horrifying, place to start.
Your point 2 on non-portability is incorrect. Right-click on the game you want to back up and select "Back up game files", and there's a wizard that will step through the creation of a back-up archive that you can easily burn to DVD. The back-up archive includes a reinstallation utility that puts the games back into Steam without any messing around, and the wizard includes the choice of whether you want CD-sized volumes, DVD-sized volumes, or larger, and they're just standard Windows files so you can burn them onto whatever media you like using whatever program you want.
I keep backups of all my Steam games on my file server so that I can keep current games on my laptop's hard drive and store other games elsewhere, and so that I can migrate the games onto alternative devices without re-downloading, and it works well.
This. It also sorts nicely when you add an hh:mm:ss.ms timestamp after the date!
That's why I use ISO dates. Either 2010-04-01 or 20010401 or 2010.04.01 or 2010/04/01, optionally followed by a hh:mm:ss.ms timestamp. They have the wonderful property that (so long as the separators are consistent) the dates are correctly sorted by simple string comparisons!
Hooray for date formats where the digits are in most-to-least-significant order...
Luckily, the use of blood to control the size and hardness of a mechanical system is a well-demonstrated technology.
Yes, of course.
Unfortunately, the correct symbol for the mega prefix is M, not m. It's a 250Mbps connection, not 250mbps.
The real question is, what are the "neutral", "chaotic" and "lawful" ways of going about it?
After all, we're discussing D&D Online...
An SMS code sent to your phone is just a poor-man's RSA "rolling code" security token. The instant you begin to type that code on your keyboard, you've lost the battle again. The running malware can intercept the form submission attempt and then use the code you typed in to do whatever it wants while it delays or just fails your real login request. This isn't a theory, it's a proven fact that's already in use by malware in the wild.
It's possible to engineer that out. Instead of sending you a code to "authorise your login", which can then be stolen by the software, the bank sends you a code to authorise a *specific action* which has been requested (either by you or by the pwnage bot). The SMS would contain details of the requested transaction. That way, you get to view the details of the transaction *that was actually lodged*, rather than the transaction that you thought you were lodging, on a much more trustworthy interface.
The next step, I guess, would be Windows malware that attempts to compromise any phones that are connected to the PC so that the bad guys can somehow interfere with the bank SMSs at the phone end of the link. That would be significantly more challenging for the bad guys, though.
Seriously? Drivers, yeah, I understand that. A better distribution mechanism would be nice although I suppose Windows Update is better than having to actually seek out & download the installer yourself. But DRM? Windows doesn't include any DRM for controlling access to executables. The only built-in DRM is for media playing, like Bluray and DVDs and crappy audio files. (Windows XP didn't include any DRM at all - that's why it can't even play DVDs without a 3rd party DVD player installed).
I've never gotten any DRM-related bugging from Windows - although I *have* gotten DRM bugging from things like SecuROM, which isn't part of Windows. Blaming Windows (and by extension MS) for the shite-layer that third-party games publishers love to wrap their product in isn't really fair.
They're a little bit further down.
The next two rows on the list in TFA are as follows:
17: Freescale 1,375 0.9%
18: Google 1,261 0.9%
I'm not sure why the parent decided to stop where they did.
These rankings are based on number of kernel changes submitted broken down by employer.
However it seems that Google employees are making a significant contribution to Linux project management and quality processes though: Red Hat employees sign off on over 36.4% of changes, which is the highest proportion of sign-offs in the hands of a single company, but Google has second place in that table with 10.5% of all sign-offs. It looks like several Google employees are filling the roles of subsystem maintainers - they may not write as much code as some other companies but they are still contributing some senior people.
Interesting stuff!
Well, that and a reasonably aggressive card retirement policy that applies to most organised play. That certainly helps keep things fresh too.
I find that quote particularly poignant when compared to this quote:
So, people can feel as if they possess or own the song - but Apple Corp, the owners of the Beatles' music (including McCarney), can't tolerate the thought of anyone getting ambitious and wanting to actually do something creative with it, like recombine elements of the Beatles' work into something new! This is a thin and watery form of ownership indeed.
Actually, the "lol wut" was the first post. You didn't quite make it.
That said, I've read the mailing list comments from the MS guy, and none of it seemed like unreasonable moaning. I agree that it's an excellent thing that MS is getting involved - IE's market share may be declining, but it's still the dominant browser, and I think MS is still capable of doing tremendous amounts of damage to emerging web standards if they refuse to support them.
It's not GPL; it has been released under a slightly tweaked version of the MIT licence I think. I'm think that's an OSI/FSF approved FOSS licence but I'm not completely certain.
Here's the detail:
http://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/en/License.html
MS doesn't like publishers to release free DLC on the XBox; they're trying to establish a community expectation that add ons should cost extra. I think I've read somewhere that they permit occasional small updates but insist that any significant expansions to the game's content be for.
Shame they didn't mention the Dark Engine, which was used for Thief, Thief II, and System Shock II, and basically drove the creation of the 3d stealth game as it now exists. Since Thief II and System Shock II are frequent visitors to "Best PC Game Ever" listings, the engine behind them seems notable. The switch to Unreal II for Thief III killed the ability to have large maps, which is one of the major shortfalls of that installment compared to the earlier games in the series. The same applies for the legendarily disappointing Deus Ex II.
There's a Thief 4 in the works already.
Actually, another person living in the house, where the petrol sniffer was, called the cops because he was getting abusive.
I think that's certainly a justified reason for police involvement.
It's a Core 2 Duo based laptop, but I went with the 32-bit version because I've only got 2GB of RAM (with limited BIOS support for more) and pretty much no native 64-bit software. So I judged that the potential for incompatibility hassles wasn't worth the negligible benefits.
Wow, that sucks.
All I can say is "works for me". In fact, System Restore has saved me from a couple of hosed anti-virus uninstalls (on different machines) and from a failed nVidia driver upgrade. I've found it quite effective.
Then, they released "coca-cola classic".. err.. i mean windows xp again...err.. i mean "windows 7".. which the public raved was so much better than before!
Except, of course, that Win 7 is far more like Vista than it is like XP.
So the developers laziness or technological limitations are just cause for forcing players to choose specific loadouts?
No, it's the game canon. Most Mechs are not intensely customizable. They have some hardpoints for mounting, and it makes sense that some hardpoints might not have the hardware to accept any old weapon. Energy weapon hardpoints will have large power and coolant conduits. ACs and Missiles will have smaller energy/coolant conduits, and ammo feed mechanisms. Additional modifications would not be within the realm of possiblity for a mercenary lance or other small combat group.
It seems a fair assumption that the MadCat designers (in canon) would not find the need to place ammo feeds into the arms (where the PPCs were located) or high-power conduits to the missile pods.
Actually, you're very close to exactly right but not quite. Traditional 'Mech designs were like real world armoured vehicles in that their weapons & equipment loadout was pretty non-modular. Like the real world, however, there were also many revisions of most of the basic designs. In the tabletop game, altering the loadout of one of these 'Mechs was a significant engineering effort that required skilled engineers, technicians, and weeks of work.
However, the Mad Cat is a slightly different beast. One of the primary features of the Mad Cat and its sister Clan mechs was that they were "OmniMechs", which had a completely modular design with respect to weaponry. (In the tabletop game, you have more or less free reign: You can't remove the built-in armour or heatsinks, although you can add more, and you can't change the engine. Other than that, go nuts). Canonically, these could be completely refitted in a matter of hours, and each OmniMech chassis came with 4 or 5 different "standard loadouts". They typically tend to follow the same general theme as the standard loadout, (eg tweaking the size and type of missile racks, or changing one "large barrel" type weapon for a different one such as swapping autocannons for lasers). However there are counter examples - I'm pretty sure there is at least one canonical Mad Cat loadout that doesn't include any missiles at all.
Lower-class warriors were required to use a standard loadout, if they could get an OmniMech at all, while higher-class warriors were allowed custom loadouts. I believe there are actually some miniatures available to represent some of the popular alternate loadouts.
He's talking about the freeform/LARP variant of World of Darkness (Mind's Eye Theatre, it's called). That's what they use in the Camarilla LARP society.
And yet... 4E is extravagantly more popular than any of those. Heck, I at least know what you're talking about (I've played Burning Empires), but there's not many gamers outside of rpg.net and the forge who would even recognise the names.
So, if by "savvier" gamers you mean the most arty 1% of an already obscure hobby, you're right. In practice, judging by the tone at the games clubs I see, 4E is not exactly taking the hobby world by storm (there are plenty of 3.x loyalists around) but I don't see a huge shift towards more adult games. In general, people seem to be sticking with relatively mass market & well established traditional RPGs. The games club I frequent is seeing a lot of Legend of the Five Rings, Earthdawn, World of Darkness and other classics - the most avant garde system currently in play seems to be Unhallowed Metropolis, and while that has a really cool setting, rules-wise it really doesn't push the boundaries at all.