This has nothing to do with a pseudolegal EULA and everything to do with selling pirated games for profit.
I understand that -- what I'm asking is if they sold the games with the modded system, have they done anything illegal?
If they were modding consoles and adding illegal copies of games, they were in the wrong and should face the consequences. However, if they were just selling modded consoles that could be used to illegally copy games, or selling the console, the games, and backups on the HDD, I don't see a problem with this. Wouldn't that be like the backup images Dell or Gateway have? You have a license for the software, and they provide 1) a copy on the PC and 2) a backup on optical media.
"They were burning games onto the hard drive and equipping the hard drive with copying software so that the average consumer could just go ahead and copy the software themselves," she said.
Reading the article, I can't tell if the consoles being sold with pre-loaded games on the hard drives came with retail copies of the games. Would it be illegal to mod an XBox, copy a game to the HDD (for faster load times, less chance of scratching the optical disc, etc.) and then sell the modded console and the original game disc from which the HDD copy was made?
I'm assuming so, there's probably some clause in the EULA or whatever about copying the disc, modding the console, or something. But to me, if you have a purchased copy of the game, copying it to the HDD would be fair use -- it's just a backup with faster access times.:-)
From the Web page: "Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other."
Seems like the parent post was correct -- this may come in handy on my newly-aquired USB drive.
Does it also have the ability to automatically force it.slashdot.org, games.slashdot.org, etc. to load from slashdot.org instead, with the default color scheme? Not trolling, I'd really like something that does this. And no, I don't want to set my slahdot prefs to 'lite'.
No, SlashFix only corrects the table layout issue. There may be other extensions that would do as you wish, but I don't know of any myself.
As far as the other features you'd like to see in Firefox, check out other extensions that are available. So far, every time I've said, "Wow, I wish Firefox could do x," someone had already written an extension to do it.
Tell me, anyone, what is the lure of console games?
Several other people have mentioned price, exclusive titles, etc. But I still think the main lure of consoles is the 'couch' factor. I've had great times with friends playing console games, competing with each other in GT:3 or playing co-operative games. A party I was at recently featured a hacked XBox with a bunch of emulators (and ROMs), plus four or five XBox games on the hard drive. We had fun all night passing the controllers around, trying to beat someone's score in this or that, or pass this level, etc.
Can you do great multiplayer games on the PC? Sure. But the couch factor is missing. A console can be part of a fun evening with friends consuming junk food, telling jokes, and generally lounging on the couch having a good time. PCs don't have that.
Particularly because of it's UI (for example, double-space is two clicks, not six).
I do it with no clicks -- Ctrl-2 for double-spaced, Ctrl-5 for 1.5 spaced, Ctrl-1 to go back to single spaced. This keyboard shortcut works in both MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Another option, as others have pointed out, is to customize your toolbars -- again, a solution that works for both products.
While we're on the subject of cooking, Epicurious has a pretty neat section of HOWTO videos (, covering everything from dicing an onion to carving a turkey to working dough properly. They can be seen at http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/how_to/video/. Lots of other great content on that site -- I've learned a lot from them.
The videos are in Real format, just in case you were wondering.
Why can't cooking be a combination of art and science?
I agree. I love to cook -- it makes people happy to serve them good food, I get to play with knives, alcohol, and fire, and I find it a great way to relax after work. Work for me is software development, and I see a lot of parallels between my profession and cooking. The way I look at it, in both you are given a set of tools and basic rules to follow -- in software the "rules" may be syntax or design patterns, in cooking it may be "rosemary goes well with tomatos" or "olive oil allows spices to soak into the chicken in a marinade". These "rules" are there for a reason, because they work. You can get a lot done following them, be they an algorithm or a recipie. However, as one spends time in either dicipline, you can begin to be more creative -- you see the overall trends, you use shortcuts, hacks, and other tricks gained from experience.
I find writing code and playing in my kitchen to be both codified and science-like, as well as being spontanious and creative.
. . . don't be afraid to rock the boat and demand what you want, from IT or anybody.
I don't know that "demand" is the best word choice, especially in your specific example of the IT staff. I worked for years on the IT staff of my college, and the people that "demanded" something be done always went to the bottom of the work queue -- students, faculty, staff, it didn't matter. Don't foget that politeness and courtesy go a long way, in all aspects of life.
I'm not saying that there are not times when it is appropiate to be forceful or assertive. But I don't know that I would ever advise someone to be demanding.
And just to be on topic, I'll say that I agree with many other people here -- lock your room. Also, getting a single room helps a great deal, if you're the kind of person that would enjoy space to yourself. Many (most?) colleges and universities will give you a single room for a bit extra on your dorm fees, and in my experience it's well worth it. You put up with a lot less BS that way -- roommates can't get drunk and piss on your desk if you have no roommates.:-)
Hey, that voice track is the exact same as the one as the "Easter egg" in the beginning of "Summoner" on the PS2...
I wonder which one was around first...
According to www.ifilm.com, the Summoner Easter Egg uses the audio from the same Dead Alewives skit. Not being a console gamer I didn't know anything about the Summoner version, but some poking around on Google makes me think that there are various animations of this skit, all using the audio from the Dead Alewives.
It's not funny because it relies on readers to know of something that's not very well known. It's called an obscure joke, something that most people who crack one end up looking pathetic with, and a few like Douglas Adams knew how to turn into fantastic jokes.
Perhaps. However, most of the roleplaying folks I've known over the years have heard the Dead Alewives' skit, and most think it's highly amusing. This is because far, far too many gaming sessions are just like they describe. And when I read the grandparent post, it did make me laugh, so I thought I'd share the joke with anyone interested in D&D who hadn't heard it before. By sharing it, you see, it's not an obscure joke anymore -- it's something that can give us all a laugh.
Slashdot is loaded with many "second-degree" jokes. I think some are funny, some are lame and overdone, and some I honestly just don't know what they are referencing. But I suppose funny, like many other things, is in the eye of the beholder.
I'll leave "eye of the beholder" D&D puns to someone else.:-)
Personally, im going to be interested to see how they handle the different endings from the first game.
I remember reading in the Computer Game World preview (I think that was the source -- the magazine/issue with Tribes 1/2 free) that KOTOR2 would have the first few missions/encounters ask you questions. Based on your responses, it figures out what you think the ending to the original game was, and adjusts accordingly.
If you are really an enthusiast, then you will be able to build a mod chip from schematics available online. The ruling only affects commercial distributions of mod chips, which are used almost primarily for piracy.
What if I'm an enthusiast who doesn't want to take the time/effort/whatever to build a mod chip? What if my soldering skills are terrible? What if I wanted to pay someone for a mod chip? Does it make any sense that it should be illegal for me to do that?
To go back to the abused automobile analogy, that's like saying it should be illegal to buy after-market parts for my car, because I could machine them myself. If I had time. And a machine shop. And the material. And the skill. And . . .
Perhaps most commercial modchips do get used for piracy. But I think that they also have substantial non-infringing use -- ban the use, not the tool.
KHaHa. It's hit and miss (though since what's funny varies from person to person, there's no reason it wouldn't be) but they have a lot of entertaining content.
One more thing I forgot -- you might want to grab what you can from Massinova: Reborn with Streamripper. Never know when someone will take it down again due to bandwidth costs, RIAA threats, etc.
Does anyone still remember Massinova? They offered near CD quality streams, a great request system, etc etc...
And to thank them for their efforts, the RIAA sued and screwed em, and now that great Trance stream is no more.
Ah, but it lives on at Massinova: Reborn -- http://massinova.db140.com/.
The stream itself is at http://66.135.33.226:8000/listen.pls.
The request system is gone, I'm afraid, but the tunes that made up the soundtrack of many late night coding sessions are still there. Enjoy!
Also, you might want to think about helping to keep Massinova and other Webcasts up -- check out PeerCast.
The maker of P2P Client, Shareaza, is working on a new Radio P2P project called Mercora. This network gives users the ability legally webcast music to other users on the network.
How is this different from PeerCast? I glanced at the Web site, and didn't see anything that was revolutionary -- looks like PeerCast combined with IRC to me.
Though, perhaps they have fixed the problems PeerCast seems to have with bandwidth -- I've used it off and on, but it seems to always suffer from lag. Perhaps that would go away if there were more users, or perhaps it's just inherent in the design of the network -- I've never bothered to look at the technical details.
Anyway, I think the more exposure Webcasting has, the better. More variety, smaller players that can appeal to niche audiences, and lack of corporate interests playing to the lowest common denominator for the highest advertising profits are all advantages Webcasting has over traditional, ClearChannel-dominated radio. At the moment, at least.:-)
Those of us that are real fans were at Trilogy Tuesday.
Let me tell you, after waking up at four in the morning, standing all morning in the cold Denver weather, and then watching 12 hours of LotR, seeing Shelob come after Frodo was bloody scary. When I got home, my wife asked me how the movie was. Apparently, the only thing I said before crashing into bed was, "It was good. Spiders are frightening. Shelob was huge."
I enjoyed RotK much more the second time, when my senses weren't numbed by sleep depravation and cold. I'm sure we'll do a home showing of all three films when the extended RotK comes out, but I think spreading them out over three nights or weekends will make them easier to appreciate. Thirteen hours of movie is just hard to take, even really good movies.
That said, I'm extremely proud I was at Trilogy Tuesday, and enjoyed it immensely.
Which leads to my question: to which board games do you feel a close affinity? And to what degree have they engendered social interaction with those who don't share your particular interests?"
Others have already mentioned several of my favorite games:
Risk
Settlers of Catan
Magic: the Gathering
I think all of these games have "engendered social interaction". These games have been the impetus for social interaction since I was a kid, be it playing Risk with my family, the nights (and days) spent playing M:tG in college, or the evenings with friends around the coffee table and Settlers board now.
For me, the games have always been a distant second to enjoying time with those close to me. Through these games I've found many people with whom I have common interests. I consider this a boon, and it was especially so in college. There was always a group of five or six Magic players who would hang out on weekends together. We'd relax, complain about politics, talk about whatever, and generally have a good time. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus was at the frat houses giving themselves alcohol poisoning and acting the fool until the cops or paramedics were called -- and that was never my idea of a good time.
The way I see it, those who share my interest in these games probably have more in common with me, and I am more likely to get along with them and enjoy their company. At least, it's worked that way so far.
If your going to quote a movie (Rounders) get the whole quote:-)
Despite seeing and enjoying that movie, I didn't remember that bit of advice (see, I spelled it properly this time) was from the film. I just thought it was something a friend had told me.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
While you're waiting for the movie, check out the fan-created flight sim, complete with a detailed story, realistic physics, and great ship models:
http://ifh.firstones.com/
Enjoy!
I understand that -- what I'm asking is if they sold the games with the modded system, have they done anything illegal?
If they were modding consoles and adding illegal copies of games, they were in the wrong and should face the consequences. However, if they were just selling modded consoles that could be used to illegally copy games, or selling the console, the games, and backups on the HDD, I don't see a problem with this. Wouldn't that be like the backup images Dell or Gateway have? You have a license for the software, and they provide 1) a copy on the PC and 2) a backup on optical media.
Reading the article, I can't tell if the consoles being sold with pre-loaded games on the hard drives came with retail copies of the games. Would it be illegal to mod an XBox, copy a game to the HDD (for faster load times, less chance of scratching the optical disc, etc.) and then sell the modded console and the original game disc from which the HDD copy was made?
I'm assuming so, there's probably some clause in the EULA or whatever about copying the disc, modding the console, or something. But to me, if you have a purchased copy of the game, copying it to the HDD would be fair use -- it's just a backup with faster access times. :-)
Unsion can be found at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
From the Web page: "Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other."
Seems like the parent post was correct -- this may come in handy on my newly-aquired USB drive.
No, SlashFix only corrects the table layout issue. There may be other extensions that would do as you wish, but I don't know of any myself.
There's a Firefox extension to fix the screwy Slashdot HTML issue at
http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-firefox -extension.html
As far as the other features you'd like to see in Firefox, check out other extensions that are available. So far, every time I've said, "Wow, I wish Firefox could do x," someone had already written an extension to do it.
Several other people have mentioned price, exclusive titles, etc. But I still think the main lure of consoles is the 'couch' factor. I've had great times with friends playing console games, competing with each other in GT:3 or playing co-operative games. A party I was at recently featured a hacked XBox with a bunch of emulators (and ROMs), plus four or five XBox games on the hard drive. We had fun all night passing the controllers around, trying to beat someone's score in this or that, or pass this level, etc.
Can you do great multiplayer games on the PC? Sure. But the couch factor is missing. A console can be part of a fun evening with friends consuming junk food, telling jokes, and generally lounging on the couch having a good time. PCs don't have that.
The Wrinkled Future of Online Gaming
I do it with no clicks -- Ctrl-2 for double-spaced, Ctrl-5 for 1.5 spaced, Ctrl-1 to go back to single spaced. This keyboard shortcut works in both MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Another option, as others have pointed out, is to customize your toolbars -- again, a solution that works for both products.
The videos are in Real format, just in case you were wondering.
I agree. I love to cook -- it makes people happy to serve them good food, I get to play with knives, alcohol, and fire, and I find it a great way to relax after work. Work for me is software development, and I see a lot of parallels between my profession and cooking. The way I look at it, in both you are given a set of tools and basic rules to follow -- in software the "rules" may be syntax or design patterns, in cooking it may be "rosemary goes well with tomatos" or "olive oil allows spices to soak into the chicken in a marinade". These "rules" are there for a reason, because they work. You can get a lot done following them, be they an algorithm or a recipie. However, as one spends time in either dicipline, you can begin to be more creative -- you see the overall trends, you use shortcuts, hacks, and other tricks gained from experience.
I find writing code and playing in my kitchen to be both codified and science-like, as well as being spontanious and creative.
I don't know that "demand" is the best word choice, especially in your specific example of the IT staff. I worked for years on the IT staff of my college, and the people that "demanded" something be done always went to the bottom of the work queue -- students, faculty, staff, it didn't matter. Don't foget that politeness and courtesy go a long way, in all aspects of life.
I'm not saying that there are not times when it is appropiate to be forceful or assertive. But I don't know that I would ever advise someone to be demanding.
And just to be on topic, I'll say that I agree with many other people here -- lock your room. Also, getting a single room helps a great deal, if you're the kind of person that would enjoy space to yourself. Many (most?) colleges and universities will give you a single room for a bit extra on your dorm fees, and in my experience it's well worth it. You put up with a lot less BS that way -- roommates can't get drunk and piss on your desk if you have no roommates. :-)
According to www.ifilm.com, the Summoner Easter Egg uses the audio from the same Dead Alewives skit. Not being a console gamer I didn't know anything about the Summoner version, but some poking around on Google makes me think that there are various animations of this skit, all using the audio from the Dead Alewives.
Perhaps. However, most of the roleplaying folks I've known over the years have heard the Dead Alewives' skit, and most think it's highly amusing. This is because far, far too many gaming sessions are just like they describe. And when I read the grandparent post, it did make me laugh, so I thought I'd share the joke with anyone interested in D&D who hadn't heard it before. By sharing it, you see, it's not an obscure joke anymore -- it's something that can give us all a laugh.
Slashdot is loaded with many "second-degree" jokes. I think some are funny, some are lame and overdone, and some I honestly just don't know what they are referencing. But I suppose funny, like many other things, is in the eye of the beholder.
I'll leave "eye of the beholder" D&D puns to someone else. :-)
http://www.cybermoonstudios.com/8bitDandD.html
I remember reading in the Computer Game World preview (I think that was the source -- the magazine/issue with Tribes 1/2 free) that KOTOR2 would have the first few missions/encounters ask you questions. Based on your responses, it figures out what you think the ending to the original game was, and adjusts accordingly.
What if I'm an enthusiast who doesn't want to take the time/effort/whatever to build a mod chip? What if my soldering skills are terrible? What if I wanted to pay someone for a mod chip? Does it make any sense that it should be illegal for me to do that?
To go back to the abused automobile analogy, that's like saying it should be illegal to buy after-market parts for my car, because I could machine them myself. If I had time. And a machine shop. And the material. And the skill. And . . .
Perhaps most commercial modchips do get used for piracy. But I think that they also have substantial non-infringing use -- ban the use, not the tool.
KHaHa. It's hit and miss (though since what's funny varies from person to person, there's no reason it wouldn't be) but they have a lot of entertaining content.
In that case, allow me to say thank you!
One more thing I forgot -- you might want to grab what you can from Massinova: Reborn with Streamripper. Never know when someone will take it down again due to bandwidth costs, RIAA threats, etc.
Ah, but it lives on at Massinova: Reborn -- http://massinova.db140.com/. The stream itself is at http://66.135.33.226:8000/listen.pls. The request system is gone, I'm afraid, but the tunes that made up the soundtrack of many late night coding sessions are still there. Enjoy!
Also, you might want to think about helping to keep Massinova and other Webcasts up -- check out PeerCast.
How is this different from PeerCast? I glanced at the Web site, and didn't see anything that was revolutionary -- looks like PeerCast combined with IRC to me.
Though, perhaps they have fixed the problems PeerCast seems to have with bandwidth -- I've used it off and on, but it seems to always suffer from lag. Perhaps that would go away if there were more users, or perhaps it's just inherent in the design of the network -- I've never bothered to look at the technical details.
Anyway, I think the more exposure Webcasting has, the better. More variety, smaller players that can appeal to niche audiences, and lack of corporate interests playing to the lowest common denominator for the highest advertising profits are all advantages Webcasting has over traditional, ClearChannel-dominated radio. At the moment, at least. :-)
Let me tell you, after waking up at four in the morning, standing all morning in the cold Denver weather, and then watching 12 hours of LotR, seeing Shelob come after Frodo was bloody scary. When I got home, my wife asked me how the movie was. Apparently, the only thing I said before crashing into bed was, "It was good. Spiders are frightening. Shelob was huge."
I enjoyed RotK much more the second time, when my senses weren't numbed by sleep depravation and cold. I'm sure we'll do a home showing of all three films when the extended RotK comes out, but I think spreading them out over three nights or weekends will make them easier to appreciate. Thirteen hours of movie is just hard to take, even really good movies.
That said, I'm extremely proud I was at Trilogy Tuesday, and enjoyed it immensely.
Others have already mentioned several of my favorite games:
- Risk
- Settlers of Catan
- Magic: the Gathering
I think all of these games have "engendered social interaction". These games have been the impetus for social interaction since I was a kid, be it playing Risk with my family, the nights (and days) spent playing M:tG in college, or the evenings with friends around the coffee table and Settlers board now.For me, the games have always been a distant second to enjoying time with those close to me. Through these games I've found many people with whom I have common interests. I consider this a boon, and it was especially so in college. There was always a group of five or six Magic players who would hang out on weekends together. We'd relax, complain about politics, talk about whatever, and generally have a good time. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus was at the frat houses giving themselves alcohol poisoning and acting the fool until the cops or paramedics were called -- and that was never my idea of a good time.
The way I see it, those who share my interest in these games probably have more in common with me, and I am more likely to get along with them and enjoy their company. At least, it's worked that way so far.