Until now, I honestly didn't think there was a chance of survival or escape options when shit went bad on launch or during lift-off. I thought your options were make it or blow up.
Is embedded steaming blocked as well? You could just throw together a quick site that has embed links for the relevant videos and send a link to the man in charge.
I was initially a bit worried about this as I live in New Jersey, but then I realized we'd be relatively safe here. I don't think the Border Patrol has the budget for all of those gas masks.
There's an urban legend with EZ-Pass that goes something like this - a lot of people aren't getting it for the following reason.
Let's say you pass through an EZ-Pass terminal. You keep on driving and pass through another one. Using timestamps, a computer calculates how long it took you to get from Point A to Point B and whether you've been speeding. If you cover 25 miles in 15 minutes, then you've obvously been speeding (100 miles an hour).
It's not true AFAIK and it would probably be hard for it to hold up in court.
It's also quite easy to do a 90 day trial for a job to evaluate performance. Many places do this and something similar. An acquaintance of mine started out working at Google as a contract worker - he works for the company for a limited amount of time (a year, I believe), and then they evaluate him at the conclusion of that time period and see if they want to bring him on board.
He now proudly sports his @google.com e-mail as he's a full-time employee. He's working for a good company and Google knows they have a good worker.
Back in my father's day, you'd walk into a store and a manager might try you out for a few weeks and see how you do. If he liked you, he'd keep you on as a full-time employee. If not, he'd have the courtesy to offer you to quit instead of firing you. It's more expensive than just looking at applications and taking a guess, but this is how some of the best businesses get a high percentage of high quality employees.
Nowadays it's an all-or-nothing prospect - usually start someone full time and at their full wage (or not) based on their application and interview alone. I think that's pretty bass ackwards.
I don't suppose that someone has the old text file about what one would have to do to convert a Cray to a PC? It was mostly silliness but seems damn appropriate here.
"Mostly silliness" interests me greatly, sir, and I would like to see that as well.
Wait, so there's no like... LCSE? Why the Hell not, considering Linux is used on so many servers and is the backbone of a LOT of important hardware. Like servers for Steam games. (Okay, important to ME. d:)
You're welcome. There's some other cool stuff in the works, too:
Valve's Steamworks is taking on mods that will be distributed and updateable through Steam. So woot, free games.
So long as you have Source SDK, you can play pretty much any Source Engine mod. Some, like Insurgency or Garry's Mod, require you to also have another game like Counter-Strike because of the materials they use in it (textures, etc.), but most don't. You can get Source SDK cheapest by buying HL2:DM for $5. There's lots of great mods, my favorite being Zombie Panic!, Eternal Silence, and Fortress Forever at the moment. Full disclosure: I'm a staffer for Fortress Forever.
One of my favorite bits, though, is that other people who have Steam accounts can use my already installed games. The way things work nowadays, if my buddy logs into his account and wants to play HL2 you'd expect that he'd have to redownload it and install it even though I already have it installed under my account. Not true. He can just play my copy while logged into his account. (I believe it keeps save games stored seperately from mine, but I'm not 100% sure on that.) Games he doesn't own are locked out, obviously.
Steam has the potential to be great. They still have a lot of kinks to work out and their customer service leaves much to be desired, but overall its probably the best digital distribution platform out there.
Also, try giving the Valve guys an e-mail. If you Google online (or listen to the HL2 commentary), they often list their e-mails. Most of the Valve guys actually get around to answering them, even Gabe Newell himself ( gaben (a)valve.com, I believe). If you have concerns, bring them up to them. They'll listen.
Oh, and lastly - stay away from the Steam Forums. There's a Hell of a lot more bad there than good./=
Hear this game developers, none of your methods, none of them, ever have ever worked and never will.
You're talking to the wrong people, my friend. I don't think Ocean Quigley (formerly known as Maxis) wanted Securom on Spore. The people who owned them (Electronic Arts) did.
Would it seem fair to have every new model of a car cost $30,000 if the first one cost $1,000,000 to make but every one after that was magically copied from nothingness?
I find it quite curious how people that stand firm against DRM are so positive about Steam.
Because despite all of the errors you can (and will eventually) get with Steam, they don't make it annoying.
Doesn't Steam suffer from everything DRM does?
Not really? One of the core tenets of anti-DRM is that it just screws over the user who paid for stuff. I don't think Steam really does for the most part IMO.
It isn't portable, you need Steam to be ON to play and worse of all, what happens when Steam goes offline one day? Wouldn't all our games just stop playing?
It depends on your definition of "portable". To me, Steam is actually highly portable.
Let's say I go to a buddy's house and I want to show him what Portal is like. I can download Steam, log into my account, and show him the game. Installing on a new format is easy as pie. Hell, even backing up files is easy - just copy and paste. It always works. Steam keeps 99.9% of their files in the Steam folder, so backing it up just consists of copying it elsewhere.
You don't need Steam to be ON to play, just to play online. If you want to play only single player games, you just need to verify the games *once* on the current install of Windows (which happens automatically in the background - you just load it up, I believe). Then you can set the games to "Offline Mode" and play without having to log into Steam.
As for playing online, well... it's a compromise worth making. You're going to be online anyway, and the conveniences (able to pull down my games from their servers at 1.7 MB/s, anywhere, anytime, the friends network, easy to backup, etc.) are more than worth it.
If Steam ever went down, I believe that someone at Valve (I think it was Gabe Newell) stated that it wouldn't be too hard for them to write up a "killswitch" patch. Considering that there already are shadow Steam networks running for people who pirate the games, somebody else would write up a patch on the off chance Valve *didn't* write such a patch themselves.
I buy quite a lot of titles on Steam, however, I can't say I feel too good about it. I merely do it because it is comfortable, but it still doesn't seem to me like the Right Way to do things.
So you're saying you keep building up this collection of games that could disappear at any moment - you're aware of this, but you do it anyway? I don't know whether it's subconscious or conscious, but it's because Steam is probably the best compromise when it comes to DRM out there. That's a Hell of a statement for me to make, yes, but it wouldn't be so successful if it weren't so damned convenient.
I do have my gripes, though. One of my mates lost his Steam account. Why? Someone re-registered his original Hotmail account that expired and used password recovery to get his account. Nevermind the fact that he bought many games under a credit card in his name - they tie the account to the e-mail. He was basically shit outta luck.
The Steam API is also a huge resource hog. Playing Steam on a low-end system with in-game friends enabled will *hurt* your system - some games will flat-out just not run, and many will run slow. It's coded very sloppily and is in need of many efficiency improvements.
I'd like to be able to "sell" games, using Steam as a payment system. While you can sell your account (which is against the TOS), you can't really sell one game off of it because it is tied to your account. However, the Steam Store lets you buy games as a "gift" that you can give to another account. I don't see why it would be so hard to say "transfer X game to this account when I receive the money over Steam". Hell, use the money as credit in the Steam store or something - even that would be better than not being able to sell it at all.
Steam customer service leaves a lot to be desired and there's still a good lot of bugs, but it's a big improvement over previous DRM schemes and previous iterations of Steam.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't they just make the buttons far enough apart so it's pretty much impossible to errantly push one?
For example, the top 1/3 of the screen says "John McCain" and the bottom 1/3 says "Barack Obama". The middle part of the screen is blank.
(Yes, I know, you can vote for more than just two people, but you get the idea. d:)
Until now, I honestly didn't think there was a chance of survival or escape options when shit went bad on launch or during lift-off. I thought your options were make it or blow up.
So according to both of your estimates, great nuclear fusion is 35-40 years away. Of course, 30 years from now, we'll have mediocre nuclear fusion.
Is embedded steaming blocked as well? You could just throw together a quick site that has embed links for the relevant videos and send a link to the man in charge.
Surely the White House wouldn't refuse to give interviews because someone asks hard questions! Oh wait...
Expert Sexchange is pretty good, simply for the security they have on not showing you the answers: "Gee whiz, we hope nobody scrolls down!"
Has a breach in Matter/Anti-Matter containment ever opened up a time rift? Not AFAIK...
New Jersey
I was initially a bit worried about this as I live in New Jersey, but then I realized we'd be relatively safe here. I don't think the Border Patrol has the budget for all of those gas masks.
Maude: Ned, go faster!
Ned: I can't. It's a Geo!
I love Mad Libs! My turn, my turn!
Karma's a HIGHLY FLAMMABLE MATERIAL.
There's an urban legend with EZ-Pass that goes something like this - a lot of people aren't getting it for the following reason.
Let's say you pass through an EZ-Pass terminal. You keep on driving and pass through another one. Using timestamps, a computer calculates how long it took you to get from Point A to Point B and whether you've been speeding. If you cover 25 miles in 15 minutes, then you've obvously been speeding (100 miles an hour).
It's not true AFAIK and it would probably be hard for it to hold up in court.
It's also quite easy to do a 90 day trial for a job to evaluate performance. Many places do this and something similar. An acquaintance of mine started out working at Google as a contract worker - he works for the company for a limited amount of time (a year, I believe), and then they evaluate him at the conclusion of that time period and see if they want to bring him on board.
He now proudly sports his @google.com e-mail as he's a full-time employee. He's working for a good company and Google knows they have a good worker.
Back in my father's day, you'd walk into a store and a manager might try you out for a few weeks and see how you do. If he liked you, he'd keep you on as a full-time employee. If not, he'd have the courtesy to offer you to quit instead of firing you. It's more expensive than just looking at applications and taking a guess, but this is how some of the best businesses get a high percentage of high quality employees.
Nowadays it's an all-or-nothing prospect - usually start someone full time and at their full wage (or not) based on their application and interview alone. I think that's pretty bass ackwards.
No, it's not happening. That's insane. Besides, I'm sure there would be some after effects like brain damage.
No, it's not happening. That's insane. Besides, I'm sure there would be some after effects like brain damage.
No, it's not happening. That's insane. Besides, I'm sure there would be some after effects like brain damage.
Cherry Littlebottom? Sounds like the sluttier sister of Strawberry Shortcake.
What I'm trying to understand is why you're using a pharmacy to manage your data. Doesn't really sound like their specialty.
Why not use Open Office 3? More of the features, less of the hassle, and still compatable with all of your '97 docs.
it's a static load.
That's what SHE said!
I don't suppose that someone has the old text file about what one would have to do to convert a Cray to a PC? It was mostly silliness but seems damn appropriate here.
"Mostly silliness" interests me greatly, sir, and I would like to see that as well.
Wait, so there's no like... LCSE? Why the Hell not, considering Linux is used on so many servers and is the backbone of a LOT of important hardware. Like servers for Steam games. (Okay, important to ME. d:)
You're welcome. There's some other cool stuff in the works, too:
Valve's Steamworks is taking on mods that will be distributed and updateable through Steam. So woot, free games.
So long as you have Source SDK, you can play pretty much any Source Engine mod. Some, like Insurgency or Garry's Mod, require you to also have another game like Counter-Strike because of the materials they use in it (textures, etc.), but most don't. You can get Source SDK cheapest by buying HL2:DM for $5. There's lots of great mods, my favorite being Zombie Panic!, Eternal Silence, and Fortress Forever at the moment. Full disclosure: I'm a staffer for Fortress Forever.
One of my favorite bits, though, is that other people who have Steam accounts can use my already installed games. The way things work nowadays, if my buddy logs into his account and wants to play HL2 you'd expect that he'd have to redownload it and install it even though I already have it installed under my account. Not true. He can just play my copy while logged into his account. (I believe it keeps save games stored seperately from mine, but I'm not 100% sure on that.) Games he doesn't own are locked out, obviously.
Steam has the potential to be great. They still have a lot of kinks to work out and their customer service leaves much to be desired, but overall its probably the best digital distribution platform out there.
Also, try giving the Valve guys an e-mail. If you Google online (or listen to the HL2 commentary), they often list their e-mails. Most of the Valve guys actually get around to answering them, even Gabe Newell himself ( gaben (a)valve.com, I believe). If you have concerns, bring them up to them. They'll listen.
Oh, and lastly - stay away from the Steam Forums. There's a Hell of a lot more bad there than good. /=
That's why I'd wish we'd tax the Hell out of the most non-green businesses... gotta make it worth their while somehow.
Hear this game developers, none of your methods, none of them, ever have ever worked and never will.
You're talking to the wrong people, my friend. I don't think Ocean Quigley (formerly known as Maxis) wanted Securom on Spore. The people who owned them (Electronic Arts) did.
Would it seem fair to have every new model of a car cost $30,000 if the first one cost $1,000,000 to make but every one after that was magically copied from nothingness?
I find it quite curious how people that stand firm against DRM are so positive about Steam.
Because despite all of the errors you can (and will eventually) get with Steam, they don't make it annoying.
Doesn't Steam suffer from everything DRM does?
Not really? One of the core tenets of anti-DRM is that it just screws over the user who paid for stuff. I don't think Steam really does for the most part IMO.
It isn't portable, you need Steam to be ON to play and worse of all, what happens when Steam goes offline one day? Wouldn't all our games just stop playing?
It depends on your definition of "portable". To me, Steam is actually highly portable.
Let's say I go to a buddy's house and I want to show him what Portal is like. I can download Steam, log into my account, and show him the game. Installing on a new format is easy as pie. Hell, even backing up files is easy - just copy and paste. It always works. Steam keeps 99.9% of their files in the Steam folder, so backing it up just consists of copying it elsewhere.
You don't need Steam to be ON to play, just to play online. If you want to play only single player games, you just need to verify the games *once* on the current install of Windows (which happens automatically in the background - you just load it up, I believe). Then you can set the games to "Offline Mode" and play without having to log into Steam.
As for playing online, well... it's a compromise worth making. You're going to be online anyway, and the conveniences (able to pull down my games from their servers at 1.7 MB/s, anywhere, anytime, the friends network, easy to backup, etc.) are more than worth it.
If Steam ever went down, I believe that someone at Valve (I think it was Gabe Newell) stated that it wouldn't be too hard for them to write up a "killswitch" patch. Considering that there already are shadow Steam networks running for people who pirate the games, somebody else would write up a patch on the off chance Valve *didn't* write such a patch themselves.
I buy quite a lot of titles on Steam, however, I can't say I feel too good about it. I merely do it because it is comfortable, but it still doesn't seem to me like the Right Way to do things.
So you're saying you keep building up this collection of games that could disappear at any moment - you're aware of this, but you do it anyway? I don't know whether it's subconscious or conscious, but it's because Steam is probably the best compromise when it comes to DRM out there. That's a Hell of a statement for me to make, yes, but it wouldn't be so successful if it weren't so damned convenient.
I do have my gripes, though. One of my mates lost his Steam account. Why? Someone re-registered his original Hotmail account that expired and used password recovery to get his account. Nevermind the fact that he bought many games under a credit card in his name - they tie the account to the e-mail. He was basically shit outta luck.
The Steam API is also a huge resource hog. Playing Steam on a low-end system with in-game friends enabled will *hurt* your system - some games will flat-out just not run, and many will run slow. It's coded very sloppily and is in need of many efficiency improvements.
I'd like to be able to "sell" games, using Steam as a payment system. While you can sell your account (which is against the TOS), you can't really sell one game off of it because it is tied to your account. However, the Steam Store lets you buy games as a "gift" that you can give to another account. I don't see why it would be so hard to say "transfer X game to this account when I receive the money over Steam". Hell, use the money as credit in the Steam store or something - even that would be better than not being able to sell it at all.
Steam customer service leaves a lot to be desired and there's still a good lot of bugs, but it's a big improvement over previous DRM schemes and previous iterations of Steam.
Geez, did somebody set off a M-80 under a bridge today or what? All the trolls are grumpy.