From the moderately complex games like Settlers of Catan, to the simple but intensely fun game Flux; there are hundreds of games in the world that don't have system requirements.
If you want to look at what makes a fun game, first look at non computer gaming, because a computer game can sell because of lots of things before fun even gets considered. It will sell based on marketing, graphics, studio, theme, setting, style, sequel status, etc; all long before the concept of "is it fun to play" come into the equation.
Board and card games, tabletop role playing games, even theater of the mind games, all of these have to sell based on what the game is. Very few of these games sell at all unless the reviews are spectacular, and if you read those reviews they are based on enjoyment for all the players (both winners and losers). Many many computer/console games are based on the fun-factor of defeating other players, and in very few of them is losing rewarding or fun. There is no sense of community like there is sitting around a table with people, so you didn't share a game, you are focused purely on your own selfish goals.
There are some amazingly fun computer/console games, but they are few and far between. It's not because the studios and developers have lost the plot, it's because they players have become too self-centered.
The objections come from people with objections based on their religious beliefs. If the current opposition in Australia's Federal Government was in charge they would be wanting to block anything that didn't support the concept of White Male Christian Supremacy. However they still have people who have power, and those people in power are raising the objections. Imagine if you will the Tea Party in the US was given complete control over DNS - but without needing to support the concept of Freedom of Speech.
The problem with your entire statement is a psychopath will often make a decision not out of a lack of empathy, but because they understand and reject it completely.
The might look at the ability to prevent 50% of automobile related deaths for $1 a car and decide they can save $1 a car at the cost of a 25% increase in automobile related deaths, and choose that option. Sociopaths may make similar decisions, but out of more understandable motives - which is generally pure greed.
All of us have these tendencies to a greater or lesser extent. You see it in the way they drive, the way they vote, and the way they shop. Many people speed on the roads because they feel their time is more important than the safety of the people around them. They make risk decisions for other people based out of their personal desire. Many people buy cheap even if they know the cost in human suffering is high, because it saves them money.
Similarly, schadenfreude is not in decline; especially on the internet. People will take actions just to cause other people to react. They might be forum trolls, hate bloggers or even just a MMO player who goes out of their way to ruin the game for as many people as possible. Similarly we see practical jokes, bullying, and other "tom foolery" in workplaces and schools.
These are less extreme versions of the same problem, and most of us have performed these actions. We are capable of seeing both sides of an argument and understand the impacts.
A psychopath or a sociopath doesn't make these distinctions, and we should stop rewarding them for behavior which outside of management would be criminal.
Facebook will have a say when she hands over the password, then Facebook blocks the password because of "Too many simultaneous logins" or logins from unusual locations. Then they will have to get access to her email account to be able to perform the password reset, which depending on the provider might lead to the same sort of issues.
Someone posts a article that accidentally mentions your name in relation to a scandal (say child-pornography for example. It was supposed to be a different name, but the person got it wrong. Someone else goes to your LinkedIn Profile (or something) and grabs a photo, which gets linked to the article. Google caches the search and the result.
The original poster fixes the problem and pulls the content; Google refuses to.
Then you go for a job, the potential employer goes to your LinkedIn profile and grabs the photo and does a search on that in google (which is common practice). They find a result for the photo and your name linked to a defunct article on child-pornography. Don't expect a call.
This is the sort of thing the courts are there to protect us all from. Getting Google to pay a small sum in order to motivate them to prevent issues like this in the future is a good thing.
Wait... Microsoft have finally developed a File Transfer Progress Bar? And it works? Took 25 years to catch up with XTerm, but I am glad they finally made it.
So you bought a new product that is "pretty much the same" as the previous version? Why buy it then? Simply for continued operation? This is a subscription based attitude towards software.
I don't use Windows except at work, where I only really use it to start Chrome and a Text Editor, then I just use those apps. All this after a 2 years Windows 7 Project that deployed a new OS that everyone uses the same way as they used the old one.
A new operating system should offer new services, which apparently Microsoft did with Windows 8. However what services did they remove? I have no idea, but it still boggles that you buy a new piece of software so you can make it act exactly like the software you replaces.
When I bought the Authenticator's for my wife and I several years ago, it was $6.50 for each Authenticator, and then about $30 for shipping. If you don't live in the US, the cost of these things is really quite high.
Installing an Authenticator on your phone is an acceptable compromise, but people lose their phones a lot, and that is yet another issue.
I still don't feel this man should have a case. Blizzard do not force you to use an Authenticator, though I think they should. They also don't charge for the Mobile Authenticator.
The biggest issue is having the same password for both Forum and Game access.
Many years ago Blizzard should have made it that you have a "Forum Password" field in your account, and that is used to log into the forums. The number of people I see who use really secure passwords, then log into the Blizzard Forums from work using IE 6 is crazy. They are giving their passwords away.
Even when I have something to say, which isn't often, I rarely do because I don't want to log into the forums with the same password as my game.
The Republicans would never allow it anyway. Republicans own the companies making the machines now, so they know how to rig the votes and no one else does. An open standard would level the playing field, or potentially eliminate corruption; and that would never be supported.
Wouldn't it be funny if the person who performed the take down just went to the page again 24 hours later to see if he could still see the content... without clearing his browser cache!
The number of times I have committed changes to a site and then had confusion caused by the end users getting a cached version when they tried to test it is not insignificant. I have had customers refuse to pay for work because "it wasn't done in time" when the work was complete, but they were looking at an old cached version.
Then imagine what it is like to get hundreds of false DCMA takedown emails (I have seen fake ones sent from a company's competitors trying to cause problems) a day, and have no way to know which ones are real or not. Then imagine having a whole series of servers taken completely offline (including not being able to maintain them due to them being down), because you missed one of them.
Put all this together and you have a recipe for disaster for any company, especially if they are involved with teaching and/or research.
"Cure for cancer discovered! Server and backups with cure deleted because the name of one of the chemicals involved was posted in a textbook in 1934."
I am not sure why this was/. newsworthy, but I'll play along.
After the events of Theramore and Jaina becoming their leader, I would have fully expected something like this to happen, with Jaina at the forefront of the battle.
She and about a hundred of the Kirin Tor teleport to a city. They lay waste to everything in sight. They teleport home and claim ignorance of the events.
People were saying they wanted a pre-expansion event like the undead plague. This makes up for it; just as annoying.
Emergency Kit = Australia has extremely good emergency response (SES, Fire Services, Police, Ambulance Services) for everyone. Basic Medical Care = Medicare. Quality health care for anyone all billed directly to the government. Place to Live = Low homeless rate and good quality government housing. Proper Nutritional Assistance = Covered under Medicare Bomb Shelter = We aren't paranoid. Gun = Don't want em. Efficient Car = Some excellent cars available if people want them, but many still drive SUVs or low efficient cars through choice. Water Filtration System = We have excellent tap water in most cities. One exception, and they have alternatives in place. Money off their taxes = We have a AAA economy still. Vote that actually counts = Compulsory voting and our representatives will generally talk to us if we need them to. Additional Insulation = Been there, was a waste of money. Own surveillance and security system = What now? See point 1. Money = AAA economy. Strong dollar. Food talks = We produce most of our own food and export almost as much again.
Looks like we covered your bases. Time to build us an Internet that's better.
It's very simple. If you find a defect that could lead to a comprehensive security breach, and you can't fix it within a reasonable period of time (say 4-6 weeks) then you notify people of the fact that your software is defective and should not be used - no details, just simply "stop using it until we have a fix".
If your software is web enabled, and reports back to base (like IE does), issue an "update" that stops it working.
If an airline found out that their planes were vulnerable to sudden engine failure, they are required to stop using them immediately until they are fixed.
Saying that software doesn't risk people's lives like a planes engine does is simply wrong in this day and age. Everything from traffic control, security, financial, through to hospitals and medical support systems all run windows. It's just less "graphic" when they cause people to die.
Anyone who is subjected to loss through this should be able to hold the vendor liable for the loss, because they did not report the potentially devastating defect.
Of course the other advantage with subscription model is the ability to lock users out of their own content if they don't keep paying. "Of course you own the data, but you don't expect to be able to use it without giving us money do you?"
MS Office is the defacto for the business world, but it is losing ground for sure.
Going to large conferences and meetings I am seeing more people use Google Presentations, and also LibreOffice Impress; or even just pdf. It's funny watching someone take the podium, and then spend over a minute of their 10 minutes on stage getting powerpoint to show their presentation the way they want it.
For nearly three years I have been using Open/Libre Office, working in their native formats, and when I send a document to someone in a MS Office house saving it in their format before sending. When they send back to me, I open it, save it in the Open/Libre Office native format for making my changes, then save as MS Office again for sending back.
Number of people who have noticed = zero. I just don't tell them I am not using MS Office, and they have no idea I am not; or if they do, they have never mentioned it.
Slashdot Mirror
...and many of them are fantastic.
From the moderately complex games like Settlers of Catan, to the simple but intensely fun game Flux; there are hundreds of games in the world that don't have system requirements.
If you want to look at what makes a fun game, first look at non computer gaming, because a computer game can sell because of lots of things before fun even gets considered. It will sell based on marketing, graphics, studio, theme, setting, style, sequel status, etc; all long before the concept of "is it fun to play" come into the equation.
Board and card games, tabletop role playing games, even theater of the mind games, all of these have to sell based on what the game is. Very few of these games sell at all unless the reviews are spectacular, and if you read those reviews they are based on enjoyment for all the players (both winners and losers). Many many computer/console games are based on the fun-factor of defeating other players, and in very few of them is losing rewarding or fun. There is no sense of community like there is sitting around a table with people, so you didn't share a game, you are focused purely on your own selfish goals.
There are some amazingly fun computer/console games, but they are few and far between. It's not because the studios and developers have lost the plot, it's because they players have become too self-centered.
The objections come from people with objections based on their religious beliefs. If the current opposition in Australia's Federal Government was in charge they would be wanting to block anything that didn't support the concept of White Male Christian Supremacy. However they still have people who have power, and those people in power are raising the objections.
Imagine if you will the Tea Party in the US was given complete control over DNS - but without needing to support the concept of Freedom of Speech.
The problem with your entire statement is a psychopath will often make a decision not out of a lack of empathy, but because they understand and reject it completely.
The might look at the ability to prevent 50% of automobile related deaths for $1 a car and decide they can save $1 a car at the cost of a 25% increase in automobile related deaths, and choose that option. Sociopaths may make similar decisions, but out of more understandable motives - which is generally pure greed.
All of us have these tendencies to a greater or lesser extent. You see it in the way they drive, the way they vote, and the way they shop. Many people speed on the roads because they feel their time is more important than the safety of the people around them. They make risk decisions for other people based out of their personal desire. Many people buy cheap even if they know the cost in human suffering is high, because it saves them money.
Similarly, schadenfreude is not in decline; especially on the internet. People will take actions just to cause other people to react. They might be forum trolls, hate bloggers or even just a MMO player who goes out of their way to ruin the game for as many people as possible. Similarly we see practical jokes, bullying, and other "tom foolery" in workplaces and schools.
These are less extreme versions of the same problem, and most of us have performed these actions. We are capable of seeing both sides of an argument and understand the impacts.
A psychopath or a sociopath doesn't make these distinctions, and we should stop rewarding them for behavior which outside of management would be criminal.
Facebook will have a say when she hands over the password, then Facebook blocks the password because of "Too many simultaneous logins" or logins from unusual locations.
Then they will have to get access to her email account to be able to perform the password reset, which depending on the provider might lead to the same sort of issues.
I hope they are all different breeds and colors, with variations in their markings. Otherwise you might get a visit from the PC Brigade.
Or go to google images, and do a search for "Ruby" and do an image search of the type "Face".
Looks pretty diverse to me.
Someone posts a article that accidentally mentions your name in relation to a scandal (say child-pornography for example. It was supposed to be a different name, but the person got it wrong.
Someone else goes to your LinkedIn Profile (or something) and grabs a photo, which gets linked to the article.
Google caches the search and the result.
The original poster fixes the problem and pulls the content; Google refuses to.
Then you go for a job, the potential employer goes to your LinkedIn profile and grabs the photo and does a search on that in google (which is common practice).
They find a result for the photo and your name linked to a defunct article on child-pornography.
Don't expect a call.
This is the sort of thing the courts are there to protect us all from. Getting Google to pay a small sum in order to motivate them to prevent issues like this in the future is a good thing.
Wait... Microsoft have finally developed a File Transfer Progress Bar? And it works?
Took 25 years to catch up with XTerm, but I am glad they finally made it.
So you bought a new product that is "pretty much the same" as the previous version? Why buy it then?
Simply for continued operation? This is a subscription based attitude towards software.
I don't use Windows except at work, where I only really use it to start Chrome and a Text Editor, then I just use those apps. All this after a 2 years Windows 7 Project that deployed a new OS that everyone uses the same way as they used the old one.
A new operating system should offer new services, which apparently Microsoft did with Windows 8. However what services did they remove? I have no idea, but it still boggles that you buy a new piece of software so you can make it act exactly like the software you replaces.
When I bought the Authenticator's for my wife and I several years ago, it was $6.50 for each Authenticator, and then about $30 for shipping. If you don't live in the US, the cost of these things is really quite high.
Installing an Authenticator on your phone is an acceptable compromise, but people lose their phones a lot, and that is yet another issue.
I still don't feel this man should have a case. Blizzard do not force you to use an Authenticator, though I think they should. They also don't charge for the Mobile Authenticator.
The biggest issue is having the same password for both Forum and Game access.
Many years ago Blizzard should have made it that you have a "Forum Password" field in your account, and that is used to log into the forums. The number of people I see who use really secure passwords, then log into the Blizzard Forums from work using IE 6 is crazy. They are giving their passwords away.
Even when I have something to say, which isn't often, I rarely do because I don't want to log into the forums with the same password as my game.
The Republicans would never allow it anyway. Republicans own the companies making the machines now, so they know how to rig the votes and no one else does. An open standard would level the playing field, or potentially eliminate corruption; and that would never be supported.
Wouldn't it be funny if the person who performed the take down just went to the page again 24 hours later to see if he could still see the content... without clearing his browser cache!
The number of times I have committed changes to a site and then had confusion caused by the end users getting a cached version when they tried to test it is not insignificant. I have had customers refuse to pay for work because "it wasn't done in time" when the work was complete, but they were looking at an old cached version.
Then imagine what it is like to get hundreds of false DCMA takedown emails (I have seen fake ones sent from a company's competitors trying to cause problems) a day, and have no way to know which ones are real or not. Then imagine having a whole series of servers taken completely offline (including not being able to maintain them due to them being down), because you missed one of them.
Put all this together and you have a recipe for disaster for any company, especially if they are involved with teaching and/or research.
"Cure for cancer discovered! Server and backups with cure deleted because the name of one of the chemicals involved was posted in a textbook in 1934."
This exploit being implemented in 5.2 as a new DK ability.
I would be fine with the hat as long as any story about the US is accompanied by a picture of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic.
Same cultural relevance; same era; same coverage level.
I am not sure why this was /. newsworthy, but I'll play along.
After the events of Theramore and Jaina becoming their leader, I would have fully expected something like this to happen, with Jaina at the forefront of the battle.
She and about a hundred of the Kirin Tor teleport to a city.
They lay waste to everything in sight.
They teleport home and claim ignorance of the events.
People were saying they wanted a pre-expansion event like the undead plague. This makes up for it; just as annoying.
At least she could be a politician who understands truly what it is like to have the wrong person in charge.
I mean, who the hell can still support Garrosh Hellscream?
Modern News Outlets are like YouTube commenters, on a race to be "First!"
The ironic thing is that realistically if you want to be First! you have to publish in New Zealand.
Emergency Kit = Australia has extremely good emergency response (SES, Fire Services, Police, Ambulance Services) for everyone.
Basic Medical Care = Medicare. Quality health care for anyone all billed directly to the government.
Place to Live = Low homeless rate and good quality government housing.
Proper Nutritional Assistance = Covered under Medicare
Bomb Shelter = We aren't paranoid.
Gun = Don't want em.
Efficient Car = Some excellent cars available if people want them, but many still drive SUVs or low efficient cars through choice.
Water Filtration System = We have excellent tap water in most cities. One exception, and they have alternatives in place.
Money off their taxes = We have a AAA economy still.
Vote that actually counts = Compulsory voting and our representatives will generally talk to us if we need them to.
Additional Insulation = Been there, was a waste of money.
Own surveillance and security system = What now? See point 1.
Money = AAA economy. Strong dollar.
Food talks = We produce most of our own food and export almost as much again.
Looks like we covered your bases. Time to build us an Internet that's better.
It's very simple. If you find a defect that could lead to a comprehensive security breach, and you can't fix it within a reasonable period of time (say 4-6 weeks) then you notify people of the fact that your software is defective and should not be used - no details, just simply "stop using it until we have a fix".
If your software is web enabled, and reports back to base (like IE does), issue an "update" that stops it working.
If an airline found out that their planes were vulnerable to sudden engine failure, they are required to stop using them immediately until they are fixed.
Saying that software doesn't risk people's lives like a planes engine does is simply wrong in this day and age. Everything from traffic control, security, financial, through to hospitals and medical support systems all run windows. It's just less "graphic" when they cause people to die.
Anyone who is subjected to loss through this should be able to hold the vendor liable for the loss, because they did not report the potentially devastating defect.
Of course the other advantage with subscription model is the ability to lock users out of their own content if they don't keep paying.
"Of course you own the data, but you don't expect to be able to use it without giving us money do you?"
MS Office is the defacto for the business world, but it is losing ground for sure.
Going to large conferences and meetings I am seeing more people use Google Presentations, and also LibreOffice Impress; or even just pdf.
It's funny watching someone take the podium, and then spend over a minute of their 10 minutes on stage getting powerpoint to show their presentation the way they want it.
For nearly three years I have been using Open/Libre Office, working in their native formats, and when I send a document to someone in a MS Office house saving it in their format before sending.
When they send back to me, I open it, save it in the Open/Libre Office native format for making my changes, then save as MS Office again for sending back.
Number of people who have noticed = zero. I just don't tell them I am not using MS Office, and they have no idea I am not; or if they do, they have never mentioned it.
Sure, put your coffee on top of it and keep it warm.
Purchase two of them and replace that old waffle iron.