By any chance do you connect through a single always-on high bandwidth network connection?
Never move between networks?
Steam has all those problems. Laptop users and people who sometimes lose their net connection hit the problems far far more.
If you have any kind of network connection(say a lan or low bandwidth connection) then steam will decide you don't really want to be in offline mode, kick you out of offline mode and then lock itself up because it can't connect to the steam servers. or even better- it'll decide that the game you're trying to play offline definitly requires that 100mb patch and won't let you play until it's downloaded it through your low-bandwidth edge dongle.
The most annoying thing is that if you raise the issue of these awful design problems steam fanboys leap in with shit like "nobody with dialup/tethering plays games"(bonus if they link to a steam poll showing that yes in fact hardly anyone with dialup uses steam), "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH STEAM", "HURR HURR HURR, GET A BETTER ISP"
Etc etc
the fanboys are far far more iritating than the devs.
In most countries if your bank account is compromised there's regulations to protect you. If on the other hand you have a large number of games the steam admins can simply confiscate your property and you have no recourse.
It's vastly more satisfying to thumb your nose at the pointlessness of the DRM by downloading the superior cracked version even if philosophically it's better to just not buy or play the game.
They'll blame the lost sale on piracy and lobby government for more draconian laws either way.
It's more the way your own stats are increased. I'd quite like to simply play normally and level now and then.
If I want a 5,5,5 stat increase at each level(if you don't do this the enemies gradually out-scale you.) then you have to grind skills carefully.In part because if you go up 20 levels in one skills and then level up 10 levels of that skill are essentially thrown away as you get no stat increase and it doesn't carry over.
It's a fairly awful leveling system, I've been tempted to install one of the leveling/stat mods which change it to a more sane setup where you don't have to keep track of every skill gain.
100+ pictures of fully clothed kids going to school
That's a good way to catch people who are creepy but seems somewhat disconnected from the justification for CP laws- ie child abuse.
Is the goal to lock up child abusers? it should be.
Lock up anyone who might become a child abuser? Possibly.
Or just lock of everyone who is creepy in any way for being creepy? This seems to be the reality and what the majority(especially parents) seem to want.
I've run into people who honestly support criminalizing kids for that.
It's a result of the mindset that
*pedophiles viewing pictures of you* = *the same as rape*
and as such if there exists the posibility that a picture you take of yourself might make its way onto the net and be viewed by pedophiles then they're *protecting you from something as bad as rape*.
"what if pedophiles get hold of the pictures!" is apparently a genuine justification in some peoples minds for utterly ruining some kids life since being put on the sex offenders register for life as a child pornographer is somehow less damaging than a creepy pedophile sitting in his basement on the other side of the world masturbating to pictures of you.
1:Pretty much though a good bet is to try to have some hard-copy paperwork stating that your laptop contains confidential company info.
2:Add some serious looking messeges at the boot screen about confidentiality and claims that imply that viewing anything on the laptop with less than 5 company lawyers present would lead to them getting in trouble with their bosses bosses boss.
3:Best solution: just temporarily uninstall the GUI package.
If the person who's deicding if it's child porn likes you then it's fine. If they don't like you then it's child porn and you can enjoy being on the sex offenders register.
"One of the characters is selling "carbon credits" and explains it as a way for those who are worried about the environment to not have to actually do anything about it"
That's a stunningly good summary of carbon credits.
I'd just be wary that Cyclical Earth Processes,Solar Influence etc are just an easy answer for people who want to believe that they cause no negative effect on the world.
Personally the moment I find myself grinding just to continue with the main plot (as opposed to grinding for some particular little side goal) I stop playing the game since I know I've just hit the point where the devs ran out of good ideas.
Some games lend themselves better to being long. Oblivion I've sunk a lot of time into and I still have a lot of game left and I'm fine with that since it's a sort of "no pressure" game.(though the leveling system sucks and pushes you to grind)
My point is that "cyberwar",while a silly made up word that I'm fully expecting to lead to as much stupidity in the next decade as the "war on drugs" has in the last, is nothing special.
Defendin against *hackers working for your favorite hostile government* and defending against every other hacker, cracker, script kiddie or bot out there is pretty much the same.
The internet is already the a bandlands filled with bandits armed with the digital equivilent of nuklear weapons yet it's puttered along for decades without problem.
Our own politicians and their desire to control the internet are inifitely more dangerous to the net than any real or imagined malicious force out there.
Slashdot Mirror
By any chance do you connect through a single always-on high bandwidth network connection?
Never move between networks?
Steam has all those problems.
Laptop users and people who sometimes lose their net connection hit the problems far far more.
If you have any kind of network connection(say a lan or low bandwidth connection) then steam will decide you don't really want to be in offline mode, kick you out of offline mode and then lock itself up because it can't connect to the steam servers.
or even better- it'll decide that the game you're trying to play offline definitly requires that 100mb patch and won't let you play until it's downloaded it through your low-bandwidth edge dongle.
Steam still has some serious design issues.
The most annoying thing is that if you raise the issue of these awful design problems steam fanboys leap in with shit like
"nobody with dialup/tethering plays games"(bonus if they link to a steam poll showing that yes in fact hardly anyone with dialup uses steam),
"THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH STEAM",
"HURR HURR HURR, GET A BETTER ISP"
Etc etc
the fanboys are far far more iritating than the devs.
In most countries if your bank account is compromised there's regulations to protect you.
If on the other hand you have a large number of games the steam admins can simply confiscate your property and you have no recourse.
It's vastly more satisfying to thumb your nose at the pointlessness of the DRM by downloading the superior cracked version even if philosophically it's better to just not buy or play the game.
They'll blame the lost sale on piracy and lobby government for more draconian laws either way.
In the case of academics getting their names on the publications is more than an ego thing- it actually influences their chances of staying employed.
Do you by chance work in marketing? BIS graduate? Management?
You speak with the pashion of an advertisement and the vocabulary of someone who memorized the buzzword dictionary but never saw the joke.
he beat you.
Deal with it.
Personally I know I've had problems with netgear wireless cards on linux.
It's a bit pot luck.
And to make it even more complex if this comes in I plan to buy a .xxx domain and host nothing but non-pornographic political material.
A red light district on the internet is like a paddling pool in the ocean.
Just to clear this up as people seem to think I'm proposing that people should be locked up on the basis of what they might do in the future.
I was commenting on the apparent goals, not proposing how I think things should be.
Oh I was commenting on the apparent goals, not proposing how I think things should be.
I was commenting on the apparent goals.
Not what I think should happen.
It's more the way your own stats are increased.
I'd quite like to simply play normally and level now and then.
If I want a 5,5,5 stat increase at each level(if you don't do this the enemies gradually out-scale you.) then you have to grind skills carefully.In part because if you go up 20 levels in one skills and then level up 10 levels of that skill are essentially thrown away as you get no stat increase and it doesn't carry over.
It's a fairly awful leveling system, I've been tempted to install one of the leveling/stat mods which change it to a more sane setup where you don't have to keep track of every skill gain.
100+ pictures of fully clothed kids going to school
That's a good way to catch people who are creepy but seems somewhat disconnected from the justification for CP laws- ie child abuse.
Is the goal to lock up child abusers?
it should be.
Lock up anyone who might become a child abuser?
Possibly.
Or just lock of everyone who is creepy in any way for being creepy?
This seems to be the reality and what the majority(especially parents) seem to want.
I've run into people who honestly support criminalizing kids for that.
It's a result of the mindset that
*pedophiles viewing pictures of you* = *the same as rape*
and as such if there exists the posibility that a picture you take of yourself might make its way onto the net and be viewed by pedophiles then they're *protecting you from something as bad as rape*.
"what if pedophiles get hold of the pictures!" is apparently a genuine justification in some peoples minds for utterly ruining some kids life since being put on the sex offenders register for life as a child pornographer is somehow less damaging than a creepy pedophile sitting in his basement on the other side of the world masturbating to pictures of you.
No no.
They were talking about a flash drive full of ebooks about tubes carried by the driver of a pickup truck.
1:Pretty much though a good bet is to try to have some hard-copy paperwork stating that your laptop contains confidential company info.
2:Add some serious looking messeges at the boot screen about confidentiality and claims that imply that viewing anything on the laptop with less than 5 company lawyers present would lead to them getting in trouble with their bosses bosses boss.
3:Best solution: just temporarily uninstall the GUI package.
If the person who's deicding if it's child porn likes you then it's fine.
If they don't like you then it's child porn and you can enjoy being on the sex offenders register.
You had mandatory gym class?
In college?
seriously?
"One of the characters is selling "carbon credits" and explains it as a way for those who are worried about the environment to not have to actually do anything about it"
That's a stunningly good summary of carbon credits.
I'd just be wary that Cyclical Earth Processes,Solar Influence etc are just an easy answer for people who want to believe that they cause no negative effect on the world.
Personally the moment I find myself grinding just to continue with the main plot (as opposed to grinding for some particular little side goal) I stop playing the game since I know I've just hit the point where the devs ran out of good ideas.
Some games lend themselves better to being long.
Oblivion I've sunk a lot of time into and I still have a lot of game left and I'm fine with that since it's a sort of "no pressure" game.(though the leveling system sucks and pushes you to grind)
Have you ever found any MUD clients with built in text-to-speach?
some things might happen too fast to be spoken.Not sure.
I get too used to the spellcheck feature in firefox.
And I'm far too used to typing nuklear rather than nuclear from visiting nuklearpower.com
My point is that "cyberwar" ,while a silly made up word that I'm fully expecting to lead to as much stupidity in the next decade as the "war on drugs" has in the last, is nothing special.
Defendin against *hackers working for your favorite hostile government* and defending against every other hacker, cracker, script kiddie or bot out there is pretty much the same.
The internet is already the a bandlands filled with bandits armed with the digital equivilent of nuklear weapons yet it's puttered along for decades without problem.
Our own politicians and their desire to control the internet are inifitely more dangerous to the net than any real or imagined malicious force out there.