Microsoft's been known for slipping bugfixes into other bugfixes or packages without a word in the past. If there's ANY face to be lost, they'd do it that way in a heartbeat and save their reputations to the outside world. Well, at least to those who don't know better.
The "fix" being accidental, however.. well, I mostly agree, but I do have to say I wouldn't put it past them to fix it for IE6 but not for IE5 since "IE5 is outdated and no longer supported."
Nontheless, a bug of this HUGE magnatude has been a long time in coming! Every year the IE exploits get nastier, but this one's the one to tower over all of them. "Turn off images in your browser and you'll be safe."
Re:Scooby Snacks: Think of the butter
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Novell can't. A comment was made over at Groklaw that based on the way they're filing the paperwork, they're setting it up so that even THEY can't poison the well if they get their way in this. It's a truly grand gesture from Novell and worthy of real respect.
Every "serious" gamer I know owns at least one console as WELL as a higher-end PC, simply because there are a lot of extremely good console games you just can't get on PC.
I've actually SEEN two/three hour game sessions on a single quarter. Mind you, this was back when the game first came out-- oh, 1992 or so-- but you could go down to arcades and find lines of people surrounding a game like MK. I recall very specifically seeing a line of nine people taking their turns against some grand master-caliber player who was taking on and beating every challenger. When I left a few hours later, he was still undefeated. That kind of thing HAS happened in the past..
Good odds though that he's overestimating somewhat. An hour max, I'd say..
3DFX bought them to try to start *manufacturing* the retail cards; they needed a good 2D card to combine with the 3D ones they had for an all-in-one solution that would come from inhouse.
Though, you don't need knock support in clients, really. Just create a knocking tool that will do the process and run it before you start your first connection.
Not really-- just one tool on a given OS to do the knocks at the rate specified and where specified, then you go connect with your client of choice-- no changes needed to it. The open time should be enough to allow for you to get in, especially if something of this sort were designed to on-the-fly adjust IPTables configuration.
I had this exact idea some time back, actually, and that was precisely the answer I'd come to-- if you're blocking IPs for hitting a wrong port for twenty four hours, or even longer, then you're increasing the amount of time for a relatively simple scan by a LOT. Hell, a semi-permanent IP ban after three wrong guesses would be enough to discourage portscans.
It's not so much security through obscurity as it's an additional layer on top of already good security practices. I'm amazed at how many kneejerk reactions claiming it to be "security through obscurity" without even really thinking it through..
Well, I'd say Mario and Luigi was easy to get a feel for simply because it, like the other Mario games, follows its own reality. Once you accept that Mario games in general have a reality to themselves with a defined set of physics and a defined relationship between everything, you can pick up any game in the series and not really be surprised by the way it plays as it just feels natural.
Same applies with Metal Gear, incidentally. Hideo Kojima made a comment about how he'd tried to create physics "that were right for the Metal Gear world" while doing the second one, and it shows in many places and ways.
Wario Ware.. well, once you accept that it's just going to throw insanity at you at a pace beyond anything you've ever experienced, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. The common thread is that you have to adapt to something new every few seconds.
I guess the _best_ games really have a common physics that feels right to the world being portrayed.
Actually, I'd say it's more like EA pressured Origin to release U9 despite it being unfinished, having already systematically dismantled Origin over the past prior years and killing several other series in the process.
The enmity between Richard Garriott and Trip Hawkins is nearly legendary, with at least one snipe at EA in an early Ultima (2? Maybe 3, but most likely 2) with a pirate character named Pirt Snikwah. I'd venture to say EA bought out Origin PURELY to dismantle them and remove them from the market.
Of course, by the time U9 was released, no further Origin projects were on the release list per-say, so Garriott managed to extricate himself from the burning wreckage of his company.
Perhaps so, but I believe that if you're running a business that is THAT big, you can afford to toss a little more resources at the problem and do it _right_ rather than to make a huge mess of things.
That, of course, is purely my opinion and likely is to be scoffed at by larger businesses.. but I digress.
As they say, there's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over...
This is probably going to be very unpopular, but it's my opinion so I'll stand by it.
This whole situation is just so INCREDIBLY STUPID. I can see both sides of this issue-- the XFree people aren't asking for anything that's really all THAT onerous (personally, I think the requirement makes sense! Maybe the GPL should INCORPORATE the idea!), and the GPL people have an adversion to ANYTHING that would block standard GPL freedoms..
Unfortunately, we've got a case here where both sides are right but since it doesn't look like the GPL side is going to budge even an inch and I don't expect the XFree guys to falter any time soon......well, it looks like we've got a standoff. There's GOT to be some kind of compromise here that's not going to look like someone's abandoning their ideals.. but I don't see it happening.
This is one of those cases where I think it might be useful to have the filtering software actually content-check zip files and only block them when they're not CRC OK zips. This would, of course, fail all non-zip files.
Very good book series; I read those as a kid. I have to wonder how much of the series was grounded in reality-- I'm sure at least a good chunk of it was, considering the overall accuracy in results for each of Tom's stunts.
I'm amazed this made the news, though. I had assumed it a given that sleeping on something helped-- put your subconscious on it awhile, rest your body at the same time, and wake up refreshed and ready to tackle the problem.
Get yourself a copy of Daemon Tools, which will allow you to get past the protection issues for your games. Just turn on emulation modes and your originals should be able to run.
Not really enough information to go by, but an interesting idea. Looks like they're exponentially expanding the RAM beyond the GBA, which is a good thing in itself. No real details on if it'll be 2D or 3D, but we'll know soon enough. I'm going to bet on it being 3D since this isn't supposed to replace the GBA-- it'll likely also have a higher price tag.
Now this two screens thing I'm a bit surprised by. Really sounds to me like Nintendo's revisiting their roots for future ideas-- not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but definitely a new angle. I'm concerned on whether or not the third-party developers will be able to pull off innovative titles actually USING both screens, but I'm sure Nintendo'll have more than a few good games on it.
I'm not ready to call this "Virtual Boy" yet for obvious reasons: not enough details. For all we know, this could easily come out to be the next big thing, but we'll see more of this soon I'm sure.
In any case, the handheld market's building up for a nice battle. Nintendo will be pulling out the GBA and DS, Sony's prepping the PSP (which I'm still somewhat skeptical about; I'll wait until I actually see pictures of the games on it. The PS2 hype machine reminded me not to take what they say at face value..), and just maybe Microsoft might enter the race?
For now, my money's still on Nintendo. At the price point the GBA resides, it's a very tough opponent.
Once per second, but still relatively balanced out-- a shock rifle shot throws the sniper's aim off, rockets or flak shells send you flying or kill you outright, the chaingun's got the evil lockdown effect, and even dual handguns can take down a sniper if the sniper can't hold a good lock on a moving enemy.
UT had a much better balance of weapons than you're giving credit for.
I recall having read something about the author of Fusion having stopped development entirely on Mac emulation a few weeks back, so likely this product is completely dead and has been for a long while.
Well, the picture I found looks something like a modified 5.1 arrangement. You've still got the three front speakers, two back speakers, and subwoofer, but you also get two true side speakers for a total of seven. I guess this gives you a more distinct frontleft and frontright audio angle, but I doubt I could really hear the difference.
The very first thing I thought when I saw the article itself was, "Please don't let this be as bad as AC'97."
Don't get me wrong, AC97 is cheap, but it really dragged on the CPUs of the timeframe it came out. This one looks like it might be a shot at the Creative Labs end of the market, but with cheaper components (meaning most likely CPU-based)
I'm sure it'll be on pretty much every board before too long-- well, the non-nForce ones, anyway.
Funny you should mention the trance. When I first discovered it a very long time ago, I found myself spending a lot of time just trying to figure out what I'd just done to myself. Of course, at the time there weren't a whole lot of shooters around that were on that kind of level, so my first taste of Gradius 3's Arcade difficulty was really something new.
In the end I ended up calling it shooter Zen, simply because that's what it is-- a requirement you become one with the ship you're flying. If you can't find the nirvana, you're not going to finish the game. Hell, you probably won't even come close.
To this day, it's one of my guilty pleasures still. I still will start up a shooter on MAME or whatever and crank the difficulty to max.
On the other hand, I find it amusing how much my approach to various other games differs so wildly. For instance, the Mega Man titles I play with a technical approach. I don't Zen there so much as I learn patterns and how to twist them to my advantage since they're all reactive patterns.
My suggestion has already been said in part, but it doesn't hurt to reinforce it.
USB adaptor for PSX pads, to start with. The PSX controller is closest to the SNES in style, so you've also got your SNES and NES covered nicely. Then you go grab a good PSX arcade stick like the Blaze Twinstick, and you've got your arcade games covered-- get the arcade stick for PSX as you'll have more buttons to work with as compared to Saturn. If you also get a USB adaptor that does Saturn, you've got your Saturn and Genesis emulation covered. There are several N64 adaptors out there as well.
You'd probably want something like.. this for Saturn and PSX.
The adaptors I've worked with all show up as HID devices, meaning they should all run fine on any OS with HID support-- definitely Linux, Windows, and MacOS X.
I've been using a setup like this for some time and it works remarkably well.
Ah, not really thrilled about the idea of replying to myself, but I didn't think about this until AFTER I posted the last one.
Another idea that comes to mind is to have a tournament platform somewhere in the center of the place. Design it so that you can put whatever you need to in there depending on the situation. Got a counterstrike tournament going on? For the finals, you'll need to put a number of PCs over there. Got a Street Fighter tournament going on? You'll need to be able to put an arcade machine up there. Either case, you'll need some sort of big display there for the bystanders, and that display'll have a lot of other uses beyond the tournaments.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's been known for slipping bugfixes into other bugfixes or packages without a word in the past. If there's ANY face to be lost, they'd do it that way in a heartbeat and save their reputations to the outside world. Well, at least to those who don't know better.
The "fix" being accidental, however.. well, I mostly agree, but I do have to say I wouldn't put it past them to fix it for IE6 but not for IE5 since "IE5 is outdated and no longer supported."
Nontheless, a bug of this HUGE magnatude has been a long time in coming! Every year the IE exploits get nastier, but this one's the one to tower over all of them. "Turn off images in your browser and you'll be safe."
Novell can't. A comment was made over at Groklaw that based on the way they're filing the paperwork, they're setting it up so that even THEY can't poison the well if they get their way in this. It's a truly grand gesture from Novell and worthy of real respect.
Every "serious" gamer I know owns at least one console as WELL as a higher-end PC, simply because there are a lot of extremely good console games you just can't get on PC.
I've actually SEEN two/three hour game sessions on a single quarter. Mind you, this was back when the game first came out-- oh, 1992 or so-- but you could go down to arcades and find lines of people surrounding a game like MK. I recall very specifically seeing a line of nine people taking their turns against some grand master-caliber player who was taking on and beating every challenger. When I left a few hours later, he was still undefeated. That kind of thing HAS happened in the past..
Good odds though that he's overestimating somewhat. An hour max, I'd say..
Syntax error in line 70.
Yeah, yeah, I'm being pedantic, but there's no +1 Smartass mod.. ^_-;
3DFX bought them to try to start *manufacturing* the retail cards; they needed a good 2D card to combine with the 3D ones they had for an all-in-one solution that would come from inhouse.
That's what I'm waiting to see, myself..
Though, you don't need knock support in clients, really. Just create a knocking tool that will do the process and run it before you start your first connection.
Not really-- just one tool on a given OS to do the knocks at the rate specified and where specified, then you go connect with your client of choice-- no changes needed to it. The open time should be enough to allow for you to get in, especially if something of this sort were designed to on-the-fly adjust IPTables configuration.
I had this exact idea some time back, actually, and that was precisely the answer I'd come to-- if you're blocking IPs for hitting a wrong port for twenty four hours, or even longer, then you're increasing the amount of time for a relatively simple scan by a LOT. Hell, a semi-permanent IP ban after three wrong guesses would be enough to discourage portscans.
It's not so much security through obscurity as it's an additional layer on top of already good security practices. I'm amazed at how many kneejerk reactions claiming it to be "security through obscurity" without even really thinking it through..
Well, I'd say Mario and Luigi was easy to get a feel for simply because it, like the other Mario games, follows its own reality. Once you accept that Mario games in general have a reality to themselves with a defined set of physics and a defined relationship between everything, you can pick up any game in the series and not really be surprised by the way it plays as it just feels natural.
Same applies with Metal Gear, incidentally. Hideo Kojima made a comment about how he'd tried to create physics "that were right for the Metal Gear world" while doing the second one, and it shows in many places and ways.
Wario Ware.. well, once you accept that it's just going to throw insanity at you at a pace beyond anything you've ever experienced, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. The common thread is that you have to adapt to something new every few seconds.
I guess the _best_ games really have a common physics that feels right to the world being portrayed.
Actually, I'd say it's more like EA pressured Origin to release U9 despite it being unfinished, having already systematically dismantled Origin over the past prior years and killing several other series in the process.
The enmity between Richard Garriott and Trip Hawkins is nearly legendary, with at least one snipe at EA in an early Ultima (2? Maybe 3, but most likely 2) with a pirate character named Pirt Snikwah. I'd venture to say EA bought out Origin PURELY to dismantle them and remove them from the market.
Of course, by the time U9 was released, no further Origin projects were on the release list per-say, so Garriott managed to extricate himself from the burning wreckage of his company.
Perhaps so, but I believe that if you're running a business that is THAT big, you can afford to toss a little more resources at the problem and do it _right_ rather than to make a huge mess of things.
That, of course, is purely my opinion and likely is to be scoffed at by larger businesses.. but I digress.
As they say, there's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over...
This is probably going to be very unpopular, but it's my opinion so I'll stand by it.
...well, it looks like we've got a standoff. There's GOT to be some kind of compromise here that's not going to look like someone's abandoning their ideals.. but I don't see it happening.
This whole situation is just so INCREDIBLY STUPID. I can see both sides of this issue-- the XFree people aren't asking for anything that's really all THAT onerous (personally, I think the requirement makes sense! Maybe the GPL should INCORPORATE the idea!), and the GPL people have an adversion to ANYTHING that would block standard GPL freedoms..
Unfortunately, we've got a case here where both sides are right but since it doesn't look like the GPL side is going to budge even an inch and I don't expect the XFree guys to falter any time soon...
This is one of those cases where I think it might be useful to have the filtering software actually content-check zip files and only block them when they're not CRC OK zips. This would, of course, fail all non-zip files.
Very good book series; I read those as a kid. I have to wonder how much of the series was grounded in reality-- I'm sure at least a good chunk of it was, considering the overall accuracy in results for each of Tom's stunts.
I'm amazed this made the news, though. I had assumed it a given that sleeping on something helped-- put your subconscious on it awhile, rest your body at the same time, and wake up refreshed and ready to tackle the problem.
Get yourself a copy of Daemon Tools, which will allow you to get past the protection issues for your games. Just turn on emulation modes and your originals should be able to run.
Not really enough information to go by, but an interesting idea. Looks like they're exponentially expanding the RAM beyond the GBA, which is a good thing in itself. No real details on if it'll be 2D or 3D, but we'll know soon enough. I'm going to bet on it being 3D since this isn't supposed to replace the GBA-- it'll likely also have a higher price tag.
Now this two screens thing I'm a bit surprised by. Really sounds to me like Nintendo's revisiting their roots for future ideas-- not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but definitely a new angle. I'm concerned on whether or not the third-party developers will be able to pull off innovative titles actually USING both screens, but I'm sure Nintendo'll have more than a few good games on it.
I'm not ready to call this "Virtual Boy" yet for obvious reasons: not enough details. For all we know, this could easily come out to be the next big thing, but we'll see more of this soon I'm sure.
In any case, the handheld market's building up for a nice battle. Nintendo will be pulling out the GBA and DS, Sony's prepping the PSP (which I'm still somewhat skeptical about; I'll wait until I actually see pictures of the games on it. The PS2 hype machine reminded me not to take what they say at face value..), and just maybe Microsoft might enter the race?
For now, my money's still on Nintendo. At the price point the GBA resides, it's a very tough opponent.
I don't think there's ROOM for one's thumb there, considering how far Darl has his own head shoved up there.
Once per second, but still relatively balanced out-- a shock rifle shot throws the sniper's aim off, rockets or flak shells send you flying or kill you outright, the chaingun's got the evil lockdown effect, and even dual handguns can take down a sniper if the sniper can't hold a good lock on a moving enemy.
UT had a much better balance of weapons than you're giving credit for.
I recall having read something about the author of Fusion having stopped development entirely on Mac emulation a few weeks back, so likely this product is completely dead and has been for a long while.
Well, the picture I found looks something like a modified 5.1 arrangement. You've still got the three front speakers, two back speakers, and subwoofer, but you also get two true side speakers for a total of seven. I guess this gives you a more distinct frontleft and frontright audio angle, but I doubt I could really hear the difference.
The very first thing I thought when I saw the article itself was, "Please don't let this be as bad as AC'97."
Don't get me wrong, AC97 is cheap, but it really dragged on the CPUs of the timeframe it came out. This one looks like it might be a shot at the Creative Labs end of the market, but with cheaper components (meaning most likely CPU-based)
I'm sure it'll be on pretty much every board before too long-- well, the non-nForce ones, anyway.
Funny you should mention the trance. When I first discovered it a very long time ago, I found myself spending a lot of time just trying to figure out what I'd just done to myself. Of course, at the time there weren't a whole lot of shooters around that were on that kind of level, so my first taste of Gradius 3's Arcade difficulty was really something new.
In the end I ended up calling it shooter Zen, simply because that's what it is-- a requirement you become one with the ship you're flying. If you can't find the nirvana, you're not going to finish the game. Hell, you probably won't even come close.
To this day, it's one of my guilty pleasures still. I still will start up a shooter on MAME or whatever and crank the difficulty to max.
On the other hand, I find it amusing how much my approach to various other games differs so wildly. For instance, the Mega Man titles I play with a technical approach. I don't Zen there so much as I learn patterns and how to twist them to my advantage since they're all reactive patterns.
My suggestion has already been said in part, but it doesn't hurt to reinforce it.
USB adaptor for PSX pads, to start with. The PSX controller is closest to the SNES in style, so you've also got your SNES and NES covered nicely. Then you go grab a good PSX arcade stick like the Blaze Twinstick, and you've got your arcade games covered-- get the arcade stick for PSX as you'll have more buttons to work with as compared to Saturn. If you also get a USB adaptor that does Saturn, you've got your Saturn and Genesis emulation covered. There are several N64 adaptors out there as well.
You'd probably want something like.. this for Saturn and PSX.
The adaptors I've worked with all show up as HID devices, meaning they should all run fine on any OS with HID support-- definitely Linux, Windows, and MacOS X.
I've been using a setup like this for some time and it works remarkably well.
Ah, not really thrilled about the idea of replying to myself, but I didn't think about this until AFTER I posted the last one.
Another idea that comes to mind is to have a tournament platform somewhere in the center of the place. Design it so that you can put whatever you need to in there depending on the situation. Got a counterstrike tournament going on? For the finals, you'll need to put a number of PCs over there. Got a Street Fighter tournament going on? You'll need to be able to put an arcade machine up there. Either case, you'll need some sort of big display there for the bystanders, and that display'll have a lot of other uses beyond the tournaments.