Well I don't like the potential precedence this sets but atleast some one competent won out. If you've ever had to work with Visa (I have) then you know they are the most positively anal retentive group about security on the planet.
it's an apples and oranges comparison. WoW and EQ2 are very different games that will find very different audiences. Thier similarities start and stop with the MMOG acronym.
If you really like WoW you will hate EQ2 and if you like EQ2 you will hate WoW.
But that said MMOGs are different from normal games in regards to how much crap a player will put with in theri game of choice. As horrible as it is Anarchy Online still has players who have been playing since launch day. People started and stuck with ranger and rogues in EQ even though they were for all intents and purposes they were completley useless classes for the first 2-3 years.
Sure every one remembers BC3K is the text book example of gaming at it's worst but MMOGs are different from single player games. You have to think of them more like you would the stuff the drug dealer on the corner is selling. The driver of releasing before the competition is to get you hooked on thier "crack" first because once they have you hooked they know they have you for a long time and they know that the chances you'll jump to another game drop tremendously.
I can't see TW sitting on the sidelines and allowing thier biggest rival to to gain total control over one of the most influential cable properties (ESPN) around. They will at least try to drive the price Comcast has to pay by $10-20B
Re:stand somewhere in a casino w/o being on camera
on
RFID Casino Chips
·
· Score: 1
Whether employee or guest there are only 2 places.
Inside a restroom and inside your hotel room. Everywhere else you can possible be on the casino's property (inside or outside) you will be in view of a camera that is recording. And that's mostly dictated by regulation.
I hate to scare you but every bettor _is_ filmed and has been for years now.
Part of the reason is for security (casino's are a rich target environment for pick pockets and petty thieves).
Part is for integrity reasons (employees are caught cheating/scamming as often as patrons when you look at the numbers)
Part is regulatory, most acutally. Firstly every jurisdication has standards concerning surveilence. Some of the ones that the company I work for operates in require that every gaming and money handling position have either a dedicated camera watching it, or in lieu of a dedicated camera it must be viewable from atleast 7 different camera positions. If something happens on our gaming floor and we don't have art work (pictures/video) to detail it the gaming comissions get rather irked and that usually results in an _after tax_ fine of some sort.
"The tags could also help casinos manage large-scale theft. If a large stash of chips goes missing after a table is overturned during an argument, for example casinos sometimes have to change their entire stock. This is unpopular with gamblers, since any chips that they have not cashed become worthless. RFID tags would allow the casinos to identify stolen chips without the expensive process of restocking."
----
Have to make the "Bad example" call on this one. No casino is going to swap out it's entire stock of chips (they are not cheap to start with btw) just because a tables worth got snatched. Outside of high limits areas a typical table is going to have $25K-50K on it (50K-100K for a craps table). Why would I spend a million or two replacing my chip stock because $50K got stolen? Hell I'd burn $50K worth of man hours and another $50K in lawyer fees just filling out paper work that the gaming commissions are going to want for doing something as drastic as a chip swap out.
"Although VeriSign has been providing instructions on how to manually install the new Global Server Intermediate Root CA to all GSID customers since December, 2001, it is possible that some customers may not have noticed the reminder and are unaware of this issue."
Or like me, it's a case of it was fixed (I know it was because I was the one that did it in early 2002) and now they are trying to figure how (and when) it got broken again....
I suspect a more realistic guess is that its one of Teradata's larger installations that is preparing to defect to a DB2 EEE install and they aren't quite ready for NCR to know just yet.
I think part of it has to be attributed to lack of choice. There's not a whole lot of other games for linux users to spend thier money on. Suppose you could play EQ, DAoC or FFXI on linux, would you see the same subscription and retentions rates then? Hard to speculate but I suspect not.
The other thing is the player themselves. It's no stretch to say that linux users are of a different mindset than windows users right? It may also be a case of this particular game just being more to thier tastes. Afterall ATITD is very different game, certainly very different than anything other MMOG you will find on windows.
BTW grats to the guys behind ATITD for coming up with something that's truly unique and refreshing in the MMOG, definitely something made from a different mold.
" So either you're saying the @stake people are liars. Or the bad press from the story made Apple change their minds. I'd say the latter is more likely to be true."
Well we don't know all the details. It's possible @stake wasn't lying and it's possible Apple hasn't changed it's position.
@Stake quite possibly was talking to a developer type when the matter came up. And when asked about the developer, being aware of development schedules and all, truthfully answered "We currently have no plans to fix 10.2". Which may have been true but still may not have been the directoin of position of Spple management.
"Apple's policy is to quickly address significant vulnerabilities in past releases of Mac OS X wherever feasible," Apple said in a statement given to MacCentral. "The shipment of Panther does not change this policy. Apple has an excellent track record of working with CERT and the open source community to proactively identify and correct potential vulnerabilities."
Which is a nice bit of damage control but stops far of saying "We are going to patch pre 10.3 releases."
I personally think they will fix 10.2 but I do find it unsettling that they, having been givin the opportunity *twice* to directly answer now, haven't done so with a definitive answer.
I would like to know why they picked 60 FPS. 72 or 75 FPS would have been a better. It just seems to me that since flourescent lighting flickers at a 60Hz rate that 60 FPS would have been best avoided.
I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.
Of course the era's are different but EQ was definitely no anywhere near as lacking in content and other such things at its release as SWG will be. In other words EQ was basically finished at launch, SWG is no where near so.
The game will undoubtedly succeed to some degree simply due to the fact it is Star Wars but there is still a lot missing and a lot left to do development wise (How about at least fixing the character sync problems that currently require a server reset to clean up before launching guys????)
In my estimation SWG is a good 6 to 12 months of development from being something a seasoned EQ player would find to be an acceptable game (I know, I know, we've been mindlessly soaking up unfinished expansions since Velious came out). I've spent a decent bit of time with Beta 3 and I am not so sure that this launch won't end up making the Anarchy Online launch look good. ^..^!
My recommendation is do not buy it at launch, wait 3 months or so and see what the buzz is saying about it then. Or maybe even wait to the first expansion hits and check the various boards to see what the buzz about the game is then.
"Solaris 2.x+ is very much System V Release 4. Sun were a member of that collective and Solaris still retains that structure."
Doubt it's still there but in trying to figure out Solaris to get a firewall working back in the early early 2.x days I ran across an interesting comment in the start up files related to inted
---- # Start inetd with the -s switch so it's not a slave to AT&Ts TLI ways. Why did we ever let AT&T fvck with inetd?/usr/sbin/inetd -s . . .
"They also need DB2, Oracle, and Websphere to run on it"
This is debatable. Sure they need Oracle because Oracle is the 800Lb gorrila of the DB market on open systems, but as for DB2, well it's just not up to the same level as the other databases available for open platforms. It still shows too much of it's heritage of starting out as IBM's answer to dBase.
WebSphere will run on Itanium. It's written in java and will run on any platform you care to port a supported version of java to.
"Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck. It is not a game where you can ever feel secure."
Duh. That's a key part of what makes EQ so great (in some respects). There is always that sense of having something at risk. Once you let yourself settle in the boring exp camps that are completely risk free is when this game starts becoming work like and very not fun.
"(Before you think they're making out like bandits, where'd all Adelphia and AT&T Broadband's money go... yep, the content owners.)"
Wrong. Adelphia's money was stolen in fradulant transactions. AT&T Broadband's money was basically squandered in a series of pathetically managed aquisitions. Both Adelphia and AT&T Broadband are broke because they were mismanaged not because they were fleeced by thier content providers.
"intel wants to move ahead in the world, they have to support the newest features, like ATA/166,and AGP 8X."
No they don't. For one AGP is dead and 8x will certainly be the last version since Intel and others are working on the next bus design that will replace it.
"same seniro with ATI Vs. Nvidia again all the graphic people know ATI is better, Nvidia knows what the public wants to here, so they make the fastes clock speed. but ATi has much better features, like smoothvision, and truform."
Whatever. Features good or bad are meaningless unless people want and use them. And nVidia does know what people really want and they deliver it - stable, fast drivers. That's something that has escaped ATI for more than a decade now...
"Clearly the patent is an application of existing methods to something that is a clearly understood problem. There is no inventive step whatsoever in the patent. Even if you agree with software patents, this particular patent should never have been granted."
I don't agree with software patents, patenting software is akin to patenting a spoken language in my book. The idea of granting someone a patent simply on the basis of them saying "a software method for doing (insert common everyday task here)..." is just ludicrous.
I hate to give any kind of credit to M$ but they patented the idea of using Bayesian analysis for spam filtering circa 1995. They even had it in one of thier beta's. However the filters were tagging some of those fricking Blue Mountain greeting cards as spam (imagine that!) so Blue Mountain sued them on anti-competitive grounds and M$ pulled it. Blue Mountain wanted to have the spam filters universally pass Blue Mountain content but MS refused that on the grounds that if a user considers it spam then it is in fact spam to them (Hurray for the "bad guys"!). The law suit has been settled/dropped/died for reasons I don't know.
Anyway I hear that the next version of MSN will have a Bayesian filter and that it will be introduced in an up coming version of Outlook Express (no idea about Exchange and Outlook).
BTW I believe internally MS uses this technique for spam control and that they don't seem to have any spam problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I don't like the potential precedence this sets but atleast some one competent won out. If you've ever had to work with Visa (I have) then you know they are the most positively anal retentive group about security on the planet.
it's an apples and oranges comparison. WoW and EQ2 are very different games that will find very different audiences. Thier similarities start and stop with the MMOG acronym.
If you really like WoW you will hate EQ2 and if you like EQ2 you will hate WoW.
But that said MMOGs are different from normal games in regards to how much crap a player will put with in theri game of choice. As horrible as it is Anarchy Online still has players who have been playing since launch day. People started and stuck with ranger and rogues in EQ even though they were for all intents and purposes they were completley useless classes for the first 2-3 years.
Sure every one remembers BC3K is the text book example of gaming at it's worst but MMOGs are different from single player games. You have to think of them more like you would the stuff the drug dealer on the corner is selling. The driver of releasing before the competition is to get you hooked on thier "crack" first because once they have you hooked they know they have you for a long time and they know that the chances you'll jump to another game drop tremendously.
I can't see TW sitting on the sidelines and allowing thier biggest rival to to gain total control over one of the most influential cable properties (ESPN) around. They will at least try to drive the price Comcast has to pay by $10-20B
Whether employee or guest there are only 2 places.
Inside a restroom and inside your hotel room. Everywhere else you can possible be on the casino's property (inside or outside) you will be in view of a camera that is recording. And that's mostly dictated by regulation.
I hate to scare you but every bettor _is_ filmed and has been for years now.
Part of the reason is for security (casino's are a rich target environment for pick pockets and petty thieves).
Part is for integrity reasons (employees are caught cheating/scamming as often as patrons when you look at the numbers)
Part is regulatory, most acutally. Firstly every jurisdication has standards concerning surveilence. Some of the ones that the company I work for operates in require that every gaming and money handling position have either a dedicated camera watching it, or in lieu of a dedicated camera it must be viewable from atleast 7 different camera positions. If something happens on our gaming floor and we don't have art work (pictures/video) to detail it the gaming comissions get rather irked and that usually results in an _after tax_ fine of some sort.
"The tags could also help casinos manage large-scale theft. If a large stash of chips goes missing after a table is overturned during an argument, for example casinos sometimes have to change their entire stock. This is unpopular with gamblers, since any chips that they have not cashed become worthless. RFID tags would allow the casinos to identify stolen chips without the expensive process of restocking."
----
Have to make the "Bad example" call on this one. No casino is going to swap out it's entire stock of chips (they are not cheap to start with btw) just because a tables worth got snatched. Outside of high limits areas a typical table is going to have $25K-50K on it (50K-100K for a craps table). Why would I spend a million or two replacing my chip stock because $50K got stolen? Hell I'd burn $50K worth of man hours and another $50K in lawyer fees just filling out paper work that the gaming commissions are going to want for doing something as drastic as a chip swap out.
"Although VeriSign has been providing instructions on how to manually install
the new Global Server Intermediate Root CA to all GSID customers since
December, 2001, it is possible that some customers may not have noticed the
reminder and are unaware of this issue."
Or like me, it's a case of it was fixed (I know it was because I was the one that did it in early 2002) and now they are trying to figure how (and when) it got broken again....
I suspect a more realistic guess is that its one of Teradata's larger installations that is preparing to defect to a DB2 EEE install and they aren't quite ready for NCR to know just yet.
Wally World, errr Walmart is suspiciously absent from that list.
They have a HUGE (200+ node) Teradata install.
I think part of it has to be attributed to lack of choice. There's not a whole lot of other games for linux users to spend thier money on. Suppose you could play EQ, DAoC or FFXI on linux, would you see the same subscription and retentions rates then? Hard to speculate but I suspect not.
The other thing is the player themselves. It's no stretch to say that linux users are of a different mindset than windows users right? It may also be a case of this particular game just being more to thier tastes. Afterall ATITD is very different game, certainly very different than anything other MMOG you will find on windows.
BTW grats to the guys behind ATITD for coming up with something that's truly unique and refreshing in the MMOG, definitely something made from a different mold.
" So either you're saying the @stake people are liars. Or the bad press from the story made Apple change their minds. I'd say the latter is more likely to be true."
Well we don't know all the details. It's possible @stake wasn't lying and it's possible Apple hasn't changed it's position.
@Stake quite possibly was talking to a developer type when the matter came up. And when asked about the developer, being aware of development schedules and all, truthfully answered "We currently have no plans to fix 10.2". Which may have been true but still may not have been the directoin of position of Spple management.
Apple said:
"Apple's policy is to quickly address significant vulnerabilities in past releases of Mac OS X wherever feasible," Apple said in a statement given to MacCentral. "The shipment of Panther does not change this policy. Apple has an excellent track record of working with CERT and the open source community to proactively identify and correct potential vulnerabilities."
Which is a nice bit of damage control but stops far of saying "We are going to patch pre 10.3 releases."
I personally think they will fix 10.2 but I do find it unsettling that they, having been givin the opportunity *twice* to directly answer now, haven't done so with a definitive answer.
I would like to know why they picked 60 FPS. 72 or 75 FPS would have been a better. It just seems to me that since flourescent lighting flickers at a 60Hz rate that 60 FPS would have been best avoided.
Maybe the choice was nVidia only or not at all. Perhaps that was the only way to get the backing to do the project.
No Akira from the Virtua Fighter series? They can kiss my arse.
I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.
Of course the era's are different but EQ was definitely no anywhere near as lacking in content and other such things at its release as SWG will be. In other words EQ was basically finished at launch, SWG is no where near so.
The game will undoubtedly succeed to some degree simply due to the fact it is Star Wars but there is still a lot missing and a lot left to do development wise (How about at least fixing the character sync problems that currently require a server reset to clean up before launching guys????)
In my estimation SWG is a good 6 to 12 months of development from being something a seasoned EQ player would find to be an acceptable game (I know, I know, we've been mindlessly soaking up unfinished expansions since Velious came out). I've spent a decent bit of time with Beta 3 and I am not so sure that this launch won't end up making the Anarchy Online launch look good. ^..^!
My recommendation is do not buy it at launch, wait 3 months or so and see what the buzz is saying about it then. Or maybe even wait to the first expansion hits and check the various boards to see what the buzz about the game is then.
"Solaris 2.x+ is very much System V Release 4. Sun were a member of that collective and Solaris still retains that structure."
/usr/sbin/inetd -s
Doubt it's still there but in trying to figure out Solaris to get a firewall working back in the early early 2.x days I ran across an interesting comment in the start up files related to inted
----
# Start inetd with the -s switch so it's not a slave to AT&Ts TLI ways. Why did we ever let AT&T fvck with inetd?
.
.
.
"They also need DB2, Oracle, and Websphere to run on it"
This is debatable. Sure they need Oracle because Oracle is the 800Lb gorrila of the DB market on open systems, but as for DB2, well it's just not up to the same level as the other databases available for open platforms. It still shows too much of it's heritage of starting out as IBM's answer to dBase.
WebSphere will run on Itanium. It's written in java and will run on any platform you care to port a supported version of java to.
"Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck. It is not a game where you can ever feel secure."
Duh. That's a key part of what makes EQ so great (in some respects). There is always that sense of having something at risk. Once you let yourself settle in the boring exp camps that are completely risk free is when this game starts becoming work like and very not fun.
"(Before you think they're making out like bandits, where'd all Adelphia and AT&T Broadband's money go... yep, the content owners.)"
Wrong. Adelphia's money was stolen in fradulant transactions. AT&T Broadband's money was basically squandered in a series of pathetically managed aquisitions. Both Adelphia and AT&T Broadband are broke because they were mismanaged not because they were fleeced by thier content providers.
"intel wants to move ahead in the world, they have to support the newest features, like ATA/166,and AGP 8X."
No they don't. For one AGP is dead and 8x will certainly be the last version since Intel and others are working on the next bus design that will replace it.
"same seniro with ATI Vs. Nvidia again all the graphic people know ATI is better, Nvidia knows what the public wants to here, so they make the fastes clock speed. but ATi has much better features, like smoothvision, and truform."
Whatever. Features good or bad are meaningless unless people want and use them. And nVidia does know what people really want and they deliver it - stable, fast drivers. That's something that has escaped ATI for more than a decade now...
"Clearly the patent is an application of existing methods to something that is a clearly understood problem. There is no inventive step whatsoever in the patent. Even if you agree with software patents, this particular patent should never have been granted."
I don't agree with software patents, patenting software is akin to patenting a spoken language in my book. The idea of granting someone a patent simply on the basis of them saying "a software method for doing (insert common everyday task here)..." is just ludicrous.
I hate to give any kind of credit to M$ but they patented the idea of using Bayesian analysis for spam filtering circa 1995. They even had it in one of thier beta's. However the filters were tagging some of those fricking Blue Mountain greeting cards as spam (imagine that!) so Blue Mountain sued them on anti-competitive grounds and M$ pulled it. Blue Mountain wanted to have the spam filters universally pass Blue Mountain content but MS refused that on the grounds that if a user considers it spam then it is in fact spam to them (Hurray for the "bad guys"!). The law suit has been settled/dropped/died for reasons I don't know.
Anyway I hear that the next version of MSN will have a Bayesian filter and that it will be introduced in an up coming version of Outlook Express (no idea about Exchange and Outlook).
BTW I believe internally MS uses this technique for spam control and that they don't seem to have any spam problems.
Firewire will do up to 400MB/s. That's truly in the realm of system bus speeds.