DRM is working fairly well for Steam.
IIRC, when connecting to a game server with full Steam integration the Client first requests an authentication packet, based on a pub key from their client ID. The server then requests an authorization key from Valve, if that's provided, the user may begin connecting. On the client end, this dance is played directly with the Valve auth servers to even launch the game.
Yes, both avenues have been hacked, but in doing so you're left with either:
1. Playing only with other people who have hacked the client and server, without any match making support for finding such servers
2. Playing alone
I want an open source phone, I really do, but I can't justify spending 500 on little more than a PDA + phone. I already had a PDA once, hardly used it, and phones that just work as phones are less than a hundred these days. Make an open source phone that's a reasonable price and I'll buy it.
P4V and Cisco VPN commonly steal focus when disconnected. Many, many other apps steal focus for other reasons. Not commonly first-party, but still frustrating as hell coming from XFCE wherein I can block it almost entirely.
Cisco VPN _works_. I never meant to imply that it does not. It's just _frustrating_. It'll steal focus, but then P4V will do the same. If I'm happening to use multiple workspaces then the alert window for Cisco VPN can get buried on another page. Clicking the icon does not recover the VPN dialog, instead seeming to do/nothing at all/. I end up having to page through workspaces and perform a manual search for it.
Ooh, polished.
For a good example of apps which can lock down a modern OSX system look no farther than Screensavers. Should one of those fail (like, say, Electric Sheep) then short of rebooting there doesn't seem to be a good way to recover. Incidentally, it's why my Mac doesn't have the screensaver enabled anymore.
It's brittle as in the software doesn't stand up to pressure. The hardware, meh. The mushed in corners you mentioned tend to not occur on machines which are not made of malleable metals. Just about every other Mac owner I know has suffered a terminally clicking DVD drive and prematurelly failed hard disc. Anecdotal, sure, but enough to keep me from buying one again.
Anyhow, stating that the likes of VPN & SCM clients not being developer... Really? Really?! C'mon.
For my recent position I decided to try full-time development on a Macbook Pro. Things have been... Less than pleasant.
I'm not used to a single application taking down the entire system, or frequent and unpredictable focus-switching. Those irritants came quickly, in the first few weeks. Common dev apps like the Cisco VPN, P4V, et al, behave very poorly in a Mac environment. Not an indictment of apple, for certain, but still a real irritant you end up having to cope with.
The hardware has been shaky as hell, too. My partition table got nuked after a standard update recently. The display frequently refuses to change brightness. Hell, I can't even use the damn thing as a laptop because when running a VM and a few idle applications the CPU cranks up and the heat hits 70C.
Not to mention the highly variant battery life. Sometimes it lasts unbelievably long, other times it fails to properly enter standby and it drains away without warning.
Now, trying to plug in peripherals has been a pain. The Microsoft Ergo keyboard I have ends up with a bizarre Command key mapping, and there's no clear way to define a per-device mapping. Now that I've remapped it the OS absolutely/refuses/ to revert the mapping. So now Alt and Command seem permanently swapped on the Macbook's integrated keyboard.
Sounds like I got a nightmare Macbook, eh?
Well, I had a Ti Powerbook a ways back too, ended up giving it away due to similar ongoing nuisances.
At least MacPorts brings some sanity to the package management...
Macs are beautiful. Hardened beauty like a finely cut diamond, and just as brittle too.
This bias would also affect the PS3 and Wii stats. Being that the bias is universal, then shouldn't we be able to state that it's non-discriminatory? We can just state:
54% fail for 360
11% fail for PS3
7% fail for Wii
Caveat:
Sample may be biased to frequent gamers
But then... They've likely used the machines the hardest. If it doesn't fail for them... Kind of like those automatic chair testers in Ikea.
There's been a few cases surrounding this now that have developed some interesting precedent. IANAL, but IIRC there was a fairly high-profile early case of a holocaust denier who managed to evade the consequences of our hate speech laws until he stupidly called for violence against Jews. Likewise, in Richmond and Surrey there were a few Imams calling for violence against Jews and Christians in Canada who came under criminal charges as a result.
But in each case it was quite clear that their offense was directly inciting others to commit violence. Saying things like "We'd be better off without " or "All should die" is ok, as long as you don't say "Go forth and be violent against ".
Where it gets tricky is in the act of random violence. In Vancouver and recently Courtney there have been random beatings against Blacks, Homosexuals, and Sikhs which have been hard to pin down as "Hate Crimes". From what I understand it requires that a witness can verify that in some way the aggressors targeted the individual because of race/sexuality. It seems like this is very, very hard to do. Even with video showing a group beat-down and witnesses verifying racial-motivated threats and slurs.
Atheism is an act of faith as well. There's simply no way to test the veracity of the continuance of consciousness after death or the existence of meaning in the development of our universe. Or the lack thereof.
There very well could be that my qualia is an expression of a force that I cannot test for. But it's totally inconsequential and meaningless to consider that without a meaningful way to observe its existence.
But saying there -isn't- is kind of like kind of like the 18th century belief that atoms were indivisible.
The earliest two documented first person shooters were Maze War and Spasim. Maze War was the most similar to modern first person shooters, as it featured characters fighting on foot. Development of the game began some time in 1973 and was likely completed before Spasim, however its exact date of completion is unknown. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator, which featured a first-person perspective.[5] Spasim led to more detailed combat flight simulators and eventually to a tank simulator, developed for the U.S. army, in the later 1970s. These games were not available to consumers and it was not until 1980 that a tank game, Battlezone, was released in arcades. A version was released in 1983 for home computers, the first successful mass-market game featuring a first person viewpoint and 3D graphics.[27]
Id Software released Hovertank 3D in 1991, which pioneered ray casting technology to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators. Later developers added texture mapping with Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (by Looking Glass Technologies), a role-playing game featuring a first person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine, released in 1992. During development, this led to Catacomb 3-D which was actually released first, in late 1991, and introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (magical spells) on the screen.[27]
No resell is a EULA alteration of existing fair-use.
I would be fine giving up this right had they also allowed a simple "return it in 24 hours, no questions asked" refund system. There's a few games I was absolutely disappointed in I wish I could have returned.
I'm at Convergence 2009 -right now-. Not a word has been mentioned of any Icelandic issue, though I doubt it would be.
I'm getting the impression that Microsoft is hurting for cash, however. They're heavily emphasizing expanding sales of their poorly performing products (Sharepoint) and have mentioned abandoning any and all endeavors to greatly improve or integrate the Dynamics line. Definitely getting the "Hold the Fort" impression here.
Which got my thinking: here's a room of a thousand MCPs, about to be matched with 6000 clients, all of which would do well to be without Microsoft. They need a common software base to customize, resell, install and expand as they are now, but the Microsoft tax is hindering them. Many of the MCPs exist solely because of Microsoft's inflexibility.
FOSS needs high-profile alternatives for the Dynamics line, ASAP. This is a money-tree for Microsoft that they've left ignored.
Slashdot Mirror
I use it as a Credit Card broker only.
Each interaction with Paypal goes straight to my mastercard, after which I immediately delete my credit card information from Paypal.
DRM is working fairly well for Steam.
IIRC, when connecting to a game server with full Steam integration the Client first requests an authentication packet, based on a pub key from their client ID. The server then requests an authorization key from Valve, if that's provided, the user may begin connecting. On the client end, this dance is played directly with the Valve auth servers to even launch the game.
Yes, both avenues have been hacked, but in doing so you're left with either:
1. Playing only with other people who have hacked the client and server, without any match making support for finding such servers
2. Playing alone
No.
It's because they cost hundreds of dollars.
I want an open source phone, I really do, but I can't justify spending 500 on little more than a PDA + phone. I already had a PDA once, hardly used it, and phones that just work as phones are less than a hundred these days. Make an open source phone that's a reasonable price and I'll buy it.
"lock down" was meant to imply "crash", sorry for that misunderstanding.
Probably just an incompatibility with my KVM.
P4V and Cisco VPN commonly steal focus when disconnected. Many, many other apps steal focus for other reasons. Not commonly first-party, but still frustrating as hell coming from XFCE wherein I can block it almost entirely.
/nothing at all/. I end up having to page through workspaces and perform a manual search for it.
Cisco VPN _works_. I never meant to imply that it does not. It's just _frustrating_. It'll steal focus, but then P4V will do the same. If I'm happening to use multiple workspaces then the alert window for Cisco VPN can get buried on another page. Clicking the icon does not recover the VPN dialog, instead seeming to do
Ooh, polished.
For a good example of apps which can lock down a modern OSX system look no farther than Screensavers. Should one of those fail (like, say, Electric Sheep) then short of rebooting there doesn't seem to be a good way to recover. Incidentally, it's why my Mac doesn't have the screensaver enabled anymore.
It's brittle as in the software doesn't stand up to pressure. The hardware, meh. The mushed in corners you mentioned tend to not occur on machines which are not made of malleable metals. Just about every other Mac owner I know has suffered a terminally clicking DVD drive and prematurelly failed hard disc. Anecdotal, sure, but enough to keep me from buying one again.
Anyhow, stating that the likes of VPN & SCM clients not being developer... Really? Really?! C'mon.
I've done that. Appears to have no permanent effect.
Ugh. Macs.
/refuses/ to revert the mapping. So now Alt and Command seem permanently swapped on the Macbook's integrated keyboard.
Disclaimer: I've been a Linux user since 1994.
For my recent position I decided to try full-time development on a Macbook Pro. Things have been... Less than pleasant.
I'm not used to a single application taking down the entire system, or frequent and unpredictable focus-switching. Those irritants came quickly, in the first few weeks. Common dev apps like the Cisco VPN, P4V, et al, behave very poorly in a Mac environment. Not an indictment of apple, for certain, but still a real irritant you end up having to cope with.
The hardware has been shaky as hell, too. My partition table got nuked after a standard update recently. The display frequently refuses to change brightness. Hell, I can't even use the damn thing as a laptop because when running a VM and a few idle applications the CPU cranks up and the heat hits 70C.
Not to mention the highly variant battery life. Sometimes it lasts unbelievably long, other times it fails to properly enter standby and it drains away without warning.
Now, trying to plug in peripherals has been a pain. The Microsoft Ergo keyboard I have ends up with a bizarre Command key mapping, and there's no clear way to define a per-device mapping. Now that I've remapped it the OS absolutely
Sounds like I got a nightmare Macbook, eh?
Well, I had a Ti Powerbook a ways back too, ended up giving it away due to similar ongoing nuisances.
At least MacPorts brings some sanity to the package management...
Macs are beautiful. Hardened beauty like a finely cut diamond, and just as brittle too.
It varies. Usually between $0.06 and $0.08 per kw/h.
The city is also the local utility, acting as a broker of sorts for the provincial utility BC Hydro. Here's the related bylaw:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:lXaNBxkSEuMJ:www.newwestcity.ca/cityhall/Leg_Info/Electronic_Packages/2009/0420_Apr20/CW/Reports/cw13.pdf+new+westminster+electrical+rates+kw/h&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a
Where I live (Vancouver, Canada) my monthly bill is about $22. I use electric baseboard heaters, too!
Is this so different from licensing people to read books?
There's plenty of dangerous information in your local library that can be used for nefarious means...
Why isn't it valid?
This bias would also affect the PS3 and Wii stats. Being that the bias is universal, then shouldn't we be able to state that it's non-discriminatory? We can just state:
54% fail for 360
11% fail for PS3
7% fail for Wii
Caveat:
Sample may be biased to frequent gamers
But then... They've likely used the machines the hardest. If it doesn't fail for them... Kind of like those automatic chair testers in Ikea.
I wish I had mod points for you.
+1 Insightful
You have it correct.
There's been a few cases surrounding this now that have developed some interesting precedent. IANAL, but IIRC there was a fairly high-profile early case of a holocaust denier who managed to evade the consequences of our hate speech laws until he stupidly called for violence against Jews. Likewise, in Richmond and Surrey there were a few Imams calling for violence against Jews and Christians in Canada who came under criminal charges as a result.
But in each case it was quite clear that their offense was directly inciting others to commit violence. Saying things like "We'd be better off without " or "All should die" is ok, as long as you don't say "Go forth and be violent against ".
Where it gets tricky is in the act of random violence. In Vancouver and recently Courtney there have been random beatings against Blacks, Homosexuals, and Sikhs which have been hard to pin down as "Hate Crimes". From what I understand it requires that a witness can verify that in some way the aggressors targeted the individual because of race/sexuality. It seems like this is very, very hard to do. Even with video showing a group beat-down and witnesses verifying racial-motivated threats and slurs.
Atheism is an act of faith as well. There's simply no way to test the veracity of the continuance of consciousness after death or the existence of meaning in the development of our universe. Or the lack thereof. There very well could be that my qualia is an expression of a force that I cannot test for. But it's totally inconsequential and meaningless to consider that without a meaningful way to observe its existence. But saying there -isn't- is kind of like kind of like the 18th century belief that atoms were indivisible.
I used Emacs on UE3. That's a few million lines of code.
Visual Studio choked and died three or four times a day, so I did all the actual non-debugging work in Emacs in order to avoid losing state.
That project really brought out my hate for Visual Studio. What a piece of garbage.
No resell is a EULA alteration of existing fair-use.
I would be fine giving up this right had they also allowed a simple "return it in 24 hours, no questions asked" refund system. There's a few games I was absolutely disappointed in I wish I could have returned.
No, Yes.
You can play most of the games now without a Steam connection.
You simply have to download it and run it once then from there on out you can play offline, and/or directly via the game's executable.
This works for all but 1 of the >100 games I have via Steam.
I usually only mod down.
I'm at Convergence 2009 -right now-. Not a word has been mentioned of any Icelandic issue, though I doubt it would be.
I'm getting the impression that Microsoft is hurting for cash, however. They're heavily emphasizing expanding sales of their poorly performing products (Sharepoint) and have mentioned abandoning any and all endeavors to greatly improve or integrate the Dynamics line. Definitely getting the "Hold the Fort" impression here.
Which got my thinking: here's a room of a thousand MCPs, about to be matched with 6000 clients, all of which would do well to be without Microsoft. They need a common software base to customize, resell, install and expand as they are now, but the Microsoft tax is hindering them. Many of the MCPs exist solely because of Microsoft's inflexibility.
FOSS needs high-profile alternatives for the Dynamics line, ASAP. This is a money-tree for Microsoft that they've left ignored.
Why?
Solution: Stop paying for cable.