I don't know how true it is (again, I'm not that much of a nerd anymore) but I heard or read somewhere that they justified the canon change in Enterprise by the fact that Zefram Cochrane (and I had to look that up to remember his name!) witnessed the Borg time travelling back in First Contact which therefore changed events from that point onwards... I don't know whether that's true or not.
Yes, Enterprise wasn't brilliant but it had a higher percentage of reasonable stories than did Voyager - and I've nothing against women captains per se, but Janeway's whiny voice used to really grate on my nerves...
LDAP is actually something I've just started to do some reading up on in connection with some customer authentication work I might need to do, I understand its principle functionality without knowing how to configure it... yet.
Please don't go around suggesting to normal users to do the same.
Hey, I'm not a FOSS evangelist, I'm doing this for me... and I'll still need to dual boot XP and Office for a while until I'm happy that the alternative works well enough.
No, I don't use Outlook or the Calendar for all it's features,
Actually, thanks for the posting because you've put the seed of an idea into my head.
I'm a Linux & security consultant at my place of work & therefore get a lot of freedom in running what I want to on my laptop. I've been using OpenOffice (on Linux and XP) at home for a while now, I finally managed to ditch Office 2003, specifically Outlook, when I recently got rid of the last phone dependant on ActiveSync and Outlook for synching contacts.
The standard at work is XP and Office 2003, having messed about with Thunderbird & Sunbird recently, I'm pretty sure I can manage on those for email & calendaring at work - really the last issue to resolve is how to deal with Microsoft domain resources & cope with forced password changes every 60 days. I was planning to look more deeply into Samba to see what that's capable of, but now you've put the VM idea in my head, specifically because I also got updraded to a dual-core Lenovo laptop a few weeks ago.
...when you've worked out how to make a middle-aged fat bloke simultaneously appear to be mowing his front lawn & be drinking down the pub on a Sunday afternoon.
I'm not going to respond to each point - you are a fellow Linux user after all!
But no, it isn't *just* because they cannot stealthily deploy DRM on Linux but it is a part of it - you know as well as I do that personal information about people is one of the most valuable commodities that can be traded across the Internet, and I'm sure that if some knowledgeable hacker types took the time & interest in looking at what gets sent across the Internet in the name of games' DRM, there would be some shocking revelations. Because Linux code is under constant peer review, someone would see what was happening very quickly and raise the alarm.
Likewise, as a "shell and Perl" man, I don't claim to be an expert in games programming in any way - but it does strike me that if a game is written using OpenGL graphics' calls, rather than DirectX, then there's a pretty good chance it will get ported to Linux at some point. Whether games programmers *want* to use OpenGL over DirectX is another issue, but I'd hope that whoever was creating a game would write it with the intention of porting it from the outset.
Here we go... next you'll start preaching about how you can here the devil's voice if you play a Judas Priest song backwards...
My friend, I've had that album nigh on 30 years, it's a great blues rock album & I had completely forgotten any idea about that being an underage semi-nude model on the cover until you mentioned it; in the same way, now you've reminded me of the fact, I really don't feel the urge to go and sexually abuse an underage girl - if nothing else, my wife of 16 years probably wouldn't approve of such behaviour.
Yep, child porn is evil and hanging is too good for the people that make the stuff - but put into some *CONTEXT*, please! It's not as though anyone's ever suggested tearing down the ceiling of Sistine Chapel just because there's a few naked cherubs on it.
People like you need to wake up in the morning having done a complete "reboot" on life - start by assuming that the great majority of adult people in this world a normal, boring, law-abiding citizens who are just getting on with their own lives, and know right from wrong without people like you preaching to them...
I seem to recall playing Starflight briefly on the Amiga, but the one I remember having a codewheel was F/A-18 Interceptor.
Another reason that game sticks in my mind is that a lot of it was about landing on an aircraft carrier which was fun in itself - but I seem to remember you could put the engine "into reverse" whilst in flight; not enough to be able to hover or fly backwards but certainly enough to slow your descent a bit when trying carrier landings...
Great fun though, it kept me occupied for hours between bouts of Dungeon Master.
I've read Lord Of The Rings a total of five times during my life (with a 6th read planned for soon), I've listen to the BBC audio adaptation several times and I played D&D and Advanced D&D for many years.
I saw the LOTR movies once at the cinema & own the Special Edition movies which I've watched a few times - I'll even confess to shedding a quick tear when Boromir died (despite knowing it would happen) in Fellowship, when the Ents started moving in Towers, and when Bilbo and Sam were up on Mount Doom in Return.
I don't care that the films were not completely accurate to the books, they were a great adaptation that I thoroughly enjoyed & that were hopefully easy enough on the general populace to hopefully have made them realise that fantasy tales don't all start & end with Harry Potter.
Therefore I've decided that at 48 years of age, it's possible to care deeply about something you enjoy but that it's time to stop being too nerdy about stuff - after all, it's *JUST* entertainment, enjoy it & feel a bit happier about things in general, or don't enjoy it & go find something you do enjoy.
As a Star Trek fan, I was appalled 10 years ago when they started talking about a prequel movie or series to the original series, but I actually quite enjoyed Enterprise (as good as DS9 and better than Voyager) and thoroughly enjoyed the complete reboot of the franchise in the latest movie... bugger timelines, bugger proper adaptations, all that matters is whether or not I enjoyed it.
Sorry, kiddies, but when you get to my age a whole lot of stuff that used to seem really important now just gets in the way of you enjoying stuff that little bit more - so don't worry, you'll grow out of it...
I use Linux for some things, I use Windows for others - both have their strengths & weaknesses.
At work, I'm a techie and security guy on a range of telephony products that run on UNIX & Linux - believe me, the presence of Linux on "workhorse" servers and embedded devices has increased exponentially over the past decade or so, mainly at the expense of commercial UNIXes; this is in addition to UNIX (and Linux) now being at the core of the Internet in ISP servers, mail servers, etc.
Please stop with "cheap shots" about miniscule market size, it depends entirely on which market you are talking about. If you mean the "desktop", you're probably right but then I don't actually give a toss - I use Linux because it's good for stuff I need to do with a computer and the fact it's been here 20-odd years is enough of a testament to it as an OS. If there's a "war" between Linux and Windows, then it's a war with only one side, and it isn't the Linux one.
Incidentally, in Europe, Linux is used equally as much on the desktop as OS X, maybe not so much in the US but there's not much in it. They already port some games to OS X and OS X is, when all said and done, a UNIX variant.
So I don't think the idea of porting games to Linux is so preposterous.
I'm afraid there's one fact you've overlooked - DRM has been on games a lot longer that it was ever on music, especially if you consider any sort of copy protection as being DRM.
Not to mention the fact that DRM on music did actually stop some CDs being played on some hifis - also the Sony rootkit debacle was the one thing that killed DRM on music CDs for good.
Agreed - but whilst I know it's not the ideal solution, you can get away with a lot in Linux by using static binaries so that all the libraries that are needed are compiled in.
Anyway, why bother with KDE? Everyone knows Gnome is better!;-)
Thanks for the advice on Death Claws but this is the second time I've taken a character to Level 30 and beyond, so I've well-versed in dealing with them!
I have to admit, I've built lots of the custom weapons but haven't really used them much in anger - this time I did the "Mothership" DLC quite early on in the game and made sure I got off the ship with a huge amount of alien weaponry & ammo; all I will say is the "Destabilizer" alien rifle you find on one of the mothership missions is a *GREAT* piece of kit!
The only problem is, I keep going back to it to try different game strategies but always end up being Mr. Super Nice Guy! I just can't bring myself to nuke Megaton at the start of the game rather than disarming the bomb...
Sorry, I stand by what he said and what I said - if you're demonically possessed or schizophrenic then maybe you have the capability of writing in two completely different styles - otherwise no.
You're also steering the argument - of course people speak on the phone differently to their peers than they would at, say, a job interview; but that is, as you say, partially about colloquial styles but is more about having a *GOOD* command of the language so that you have the flexibility in your vocabulary to be able to do it in the first place!
And please *STOP* with treating this as an attack on the kids because it's *NOT*. It's about standards dropping in the education system and the adults around the kids not taking the time to mentor and help the kids properly...
I don't know what part of the world you're in but I'm in the UK and earlier this week Ed Balls, Our Secretary Of State For Children, Schools & Families was being interviewed on the radio when an examiner from one of the GCSE Examination Boards phoned in and asked Mr. Balls what a "compound verb" is and he didn't know the answer - and we have people like this in control of our education system????
And let's face it, that's exactly the reason *WHY* games companies *CAN* do it, because their audience probably aren't going to be people who are, or even want to be, particularly tech savvy people.
And likewise, I am not saying there's an easy solution for us - because if you hold back buying games then games companies may well start putting on less DRM but they're also going to start releasing a lot less as well... as I said elsewhere, they want the majority of their sales in the first few weeks after release, that's what their business strategy is based on.
So if people don't rush to the shops with their wallets to do that, then they *WILL* release a lot fewer games.
So yeah, DRM will stay, but not because the companies "want" it. It will stay because the companies compulsively must have it.
Sorry, I don't see the distinction.
I'm sure you know as well as I do that the whole purpose of capitalism is to price goods at the highest price the market will bear but not make it too expensive so you don't actually get the sales you want to get.
If a new movie, game or music CD does not do well in the first few days of its release (and/or doesn't get a lot of pre-release orders/bookings), then the marketing people can kick themselves into gear and try to do something about it - maybe reduce the price a bit, put more advertisements up, give a freebie away with it, etc., so that there's a chance of clawing some money back quickly.
You also need to consider that there are *SO* many albums, games and movies being released, and a fixed amount of money people will spend on those things, that there is a very fixed window during which time you can claw in most of your revenue - or do you not believe that albums, games and movies do *NOT* have very fixed and very well thought out release dates...
And that's precisely why they have to claw back as much revenue as possible close to the release day - before we "great unwashed" go and decide to spend our disposable income on something else.
Okay, but think about that statement for one minute.
If the intention is to get as many people as possible to buy the game on its first day of release, then what's wrong with reducing the price of it considerably within the first couple of weeks to try and encourage that? It could even be used as a marketing tool because getting the game at a reduced price is done on the understanding that as an early adopter, you may suffer bugs and crashes until one or two post-release patches have been issued.
But we know that won't happen because games companies are *GREEDY* - pure and simple.
I agree, and I've played games for over a quarter of a century now (Damn! My fingers are tired!).
In that time I've seen some *CRAZY* game protection schemes including Lenslok on Sinclair ZX Spectrum games, as well as unlock keys generated from coloured stripes in manuals (because in those days there were only black & white photocopiers).
Nowadays, I don't think any of it is acceptable because I'm a cynical old man in his 40s. But in those days, it used to piss me off a little, but it didn't stop me buying more protected games and/or copying them - so whilst I don't have much good to say about most modern games, I can see why kids today are putting up with the same crap I was willing to put up with.
The only thing that was better "then" was that the protection wasn't as intrusive - i.e. you put in a code, then went off and played the games. These days there's information being retrieved from your PC and console, stored on some centralised server somewhere...
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I don't know how true it is (again, I'm not that much of a nerd anymore) but I heard or read somewhere that they justified the canon change in Enterprise by the fact that Zefram Cochrane (and I had to look that up to remember his name!) witnessed the Borg time travelling back in First Contact which therefore changed events from that point onwards... I don't know whether that's true or not.
Yes, Enterprise wasn't brilliant but it had a higher percentage of reasonable stories than did Voyager - and I've nothing against women captains per se, but Janeway's whiny voice used to really grate on my nerves...
Right terminology but I doubt any teenager would even take his/her hand out of their pocket to take a fiver from you! :-)
Thanks, I might well do that.
LDAP is actually something I've just started to do some reading up on in connection with some customer authentication work I might need to do, I understand its principle functionality without knowing how to configure it... yet.
Please don't go around suggesting to normal users to do the same.
Hey, I'm not a FOSS evangelist, I'm doing this for me... and I'll still need to dual boot XP and Office for a while until I'm happy that the alternative works well enough.
No, I don't use Outlook or the Calendar for all it's features,
...to which he will reply "Dollars are not acceptable currency in England, you fat middle-aged person".
Actually, thanks for the posting because you've put the seed of an idea into my head.
I'm a Linux & security consultant at my place of work & therefore get a lot of freedom in running what I want to on my laptop. I've been using OpenOffice (on Linux and XP) at home for a while now, I finally managed to ditch Office 2003, specifically Outlook, when I recently got rid of the last phone dependant on ActiveSync and Outlook for synching contacts.
The standard at work is XP and Office 2003, having messed about with Thunderbird & Sunbird recently, I'm pretty sure I can manage on those for email & calendaring at work - really the last issue to resolve is how to deal with Microsoft domain resources & cope with forced password changes every 60 days. I was planning to look more deeply into Samba to see what that's capable of, but now you've put the VM idea in my head, specifically because I also got updraded to a dual-core Lenovo laptop a few weeks ago.
...when you've worked out how to make a middle-aged fat bloke simultaneously appear to be mowing his front lawn & be drinking down the pub on a Sunday afternoon.
So change your IDE & program your own games for Linux, problem solved! :-)
I'm not going to respond to each point - you are a fellow Linux user after all!
But no, it isn't *just* because they cannot stealthily deploy DRM on Linux but it is a part of it - you know as well as I do that personal information about people is one of the most valuable commodities that can be traded across the Internet, and I'm sure that if some knowledgeable hacker types took the time & interest in looking at what gets sent across the Internet in the name of games' DRM, there would be some shocking revelations. Because Linux code is under constant peer review, someone would see what was happening very quickly and raise the alarm.
Likewise, as a "shell and Perl" man, I don't claim to be an expert in games programming in any way - but it does strike me that if a game is written using OpenGL graphics' calls, rather than DirectX, then there's a pretty good chance it will get ported to Linux at some point. Whether games programmers *want* to use OpenGL over DirectX is another issue, but I'd hope that whoever was creating a game would write it with the intention of porting it from the outset.
Here we go... next you'll start preaching about how you can here the devil's voice if you play a Judas Priest song backwards...
My friend, I've had that album nigh on 30 years, it's a great blues rock album & I had completely forgotten any idea about that being an underage semi-nude model on the cover until you mentioned it; in the same way, now you've reminded me of the fact, I really don't feel the urge to go and sexually abuse an underage girl - if nothing else, my wife of 16 years probably wouldn't approve of such behaviour.
Yep, child porn is evil and hanging is too good for the people that make the stuff - but put into some *CONTEXT*, please! It's not as though anyone's ever suggested tearing down the ceiling of Sistine Chapel just because there's a few naked cherubs on it.
People like you need to wake up in the morning having done a complete "reboot" on life - start by assuming that the great majority of adult people in this world a normal, boring, law-abiding citizens who are just getting on with their own lives, and know right from wrong without people like you preaching to them...
I seem to recall playing Starflight briefly on the Amiga, but the one I remember having a codewheel was F/A-18 Interceptor.
Another reason that game sticks in my mind is that a lot of it was about landing on an aircraft carrier which was fun in itself - but I seem to remember you could put the engine "into reverse" whilst in flight; not enough to be able to hover or fly backwards but certainly enough to slow your descent a bit when trying carrier landings...
Great fun though, it kept me occupied for hours between bouts of Dungeon Master.
I've read Lord Of The Rings a total of five times during my life (with a 6th read planned for soon), I've listen to the BBC audio adaptation several times and I played D&D and Advanced D&D for many years.
I saw the LOTR movies once at the cinema & own the Special Edition movies which I've watched a few times - I'll even confess to shedding a quick tear when Boromir died (despite knowing it would happen) in Fellowship, when the Ents started moving in Towers, and when Bilbo and Sam were up on Mount Doom in Return.
I don't care that the films were not completely accurate to the books, they were a great adaptation that I thoroughly enjoyed & that were hopefully easy enough on the general populace to hopefully have made them realise that fantasy tales don't all start & end with Harry Potter.
Therefore I've decided that at 48 years of age, it's possible to care deeply about something you enjoy but that it's time to stop being too nerdy about stuff - after all, it's *JUST* entertainment, enjoy it & feel a bit happier about things in general, or don't enjoy it & go find something you do enjoy.
As a Star Trek fan, I was appalled 10 years ago when they started talking about a prequel movie or series to the original series, but I actually quite enjoyed Enterprise (as good as DS9 and better than Voyager) and thoroughly enjoyed the complete reboot of the franchise in the latest movie... bugger timelines, bugger proper adaptations, all that matters is whether or not I enjoyed it.
Sorry, kiddies, but when you get to my age a whole lot of stuff that used to seem really important now just gets in the way of you enjoying stuff that little bit more - so don't worry, you'll grow out of it...
...like Battlefield Earth.
My friend, stop trolling.
I use Linux for some things, I use Windows for others - both have their strengths & weaknesses.
At work, I'm a techie and security guy on a range of telephony products that run on UNIX & Linux - believe me, the presence of Linux on "workhorse" servers and embedded devices has increased exponentially over the past decade or so, mainly at the expense of commercial UNIXes; this is in addition to UNIX (and Linux) now being at the core of the Internet in ISP servers, mail servers, etc.
Please stop with "cheap shots" about miniscule market size, it depends entirely on which market you are talking about. If you mean the "desktop", you're probably right but then I don't actually give a toss - I use Linux because it's good for stuff I need to do with a computer and the fact it's been here 20-odd years is enough of a testament to it as an OS. If there's a "war" between Linux and Windows, then it's a war with only one side, and it isn't the Linux one.
Incidentally, in Europe, Linux is used equally as much on the desktop as OS X, maybe not so much in the US but there's not much in it. They already port some games to OS X and OS X is, when all said and done, a UNIX variant.
So I don't think the idea of porting games to Linux is so preposterous.
I'm afraid there's one fact you've overlooked - DRM has been on games a lot longer that it was ever on music, especially if you consider any sort of copy protection as being DRM.
Not to mention the fact that DRM on music did actually stop some CDs being played on some hifis - also the Sony rootkit debacle was the one thing that killed DRM on music CDs for good.
Agreed - but whilst I know it's not the ideal solution, you can get away with a lot in Linux by using static binaries so that all the libraries that are needed are compiled in.
Anyway, why bother with KDE? Everyone knows Gnome is better! ;-)
Oh yes... it *DOES* like popping up those albino rad scorpions!!!
Incidentally, my Death Claw strategy is about 4 blasts with "The Terrible Shotgun"!
Thanks for the advice on Death Claws but this is the second time I've taken a character to Level 30 and beyond, so I've well-versed in dealing with them!
I have to admit, I've built lots of the custom weapons but haven't really used them much in anger - this time I did the "Mothership" DLC quite early on in the game and made sure I got off the ship with a huge amount of alien weaponry & ammo; all I will say is the "Destabilizer" alien rifle you find on one of the mothership missions is a *GREAT* piece of kit!
The only problem is, I keep going back to it to try different game strategies but always end up being Mr. Super Nice Guy! I just can't bring myself to nuke Megaton at the start of the game rather than disarming the bomb...
Sorry, I stand by what he said and what I said - if you're demonically possessed or schizophrenic then maybe you have the capability of writing in two completely different styles - otherwise no.
You're also steering the argument - of course people speak on the phone differently to their peers than they would at, say, a job interview; but that is, as you say, partially about colloquial styles but is more about having a *GOOD* command of the language so that you have the flexibility in your vocabulary to be able to do it in the first place!
And please *STOP* with treating this as an attack on the kids because it's *NOT*. It's about standards dropping in the education system and the adults around the kids not taking the time to mentor and help the kids properly...
I don't know what part of the world you're in but I'm in the UK and earlier this week Ed Balls, Our Secretary Of State For Children, Schools & Families was being interviewed on the radio when an examiner from one of the GCSE Examination Boards phoned in and asked Mr. Balls what a "compound verb" is and he didn't know the answer - and we have people like this in control of our education system????
Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with you!
And let's face it, that's exactly the reason *WHY* games companies *CAN* do it, because their audience probably aren't going to be people who are, or even want to be, particularly tech savvy people.
And likewise, I am not saying there's an easy solution for us - because if you hold back buying games then games companies may well start putting on less DRM but they're also going to start releasing a lot less as well... as I said elsewhere, they want the majority of their sales in the first few weeks after release, that's what their business strategy is based on.
So if people don't rush to the shops with their wallets to do that, then they *WILL* release a lot fewer games.
Thanks for the info, I'll try that. I must admit someone else did mention to me that there was a way of doing it.
The best I managed to do was find a cracked .exe but it was in Polish and I really try to avoid cracks these days....
So yeah, DRM will stay, but not because the companies "want" it. It will stay because the companies compulsively must have it.
Sorry, I don't see the distinction.
I'm sure you know as well as I do that the whole purpose of capitalism is to price goods at the highest price the market will bear but not make it too expensive so you don't actually get the sales you want to get.
If a new movie, game or music CD does not do well in the first few days of its release (and/or doesn't get a lot of pre-release orders/bookings), then the marketing people can kick themselves into gear and try to do something about it - maybe reduce the price a bit, put more advertisements up, give a freebie away with it, etc., so that there's a chance of clawing some money back quickly.
You also need to consider that there are *SO* many albums, games and movies being released, and a fixed amount of money people will spend on those things, that there is a very fixed window during which time you can claw in most of your revenue - or do you not believe that albums, games and movies do *NOT* have very fixed and very well thought out release dates...
And that's precisely why they have to claw back as much revenue as possible close to the release day - before we "great unwashed" go and decide to spend our disposable income on something else.
Okay, but think about that statement for one minute.
If the intention is to get as many people as possible to buy the game on its first day of release, then what's wrong with reducing the price of it considerably within the first couple of weeks to try and encourage that? It could even be used as a marketing tool because getting the game at a reduced price is done on the understanding that as an early adopter, you may suffer bugs and crashes until one or two post-release patches have been issued.
But we know that won't happen because games companies are *GREEDY* - pure and simple.
I agree, and I've played games for over a quarter of a century now (Damn! My fingers are tired!).
In that time I've seen some *CRAZY* game protection schemes including Lenslok on Sinclair ZX Spectrum games, as well as unlock keys generated from coloured stripes in manuals (because in those days there were only black & white photocopiers).
Nowadays, I don't think any of it is acceptable because I'm a cynical old man in his 40s. But in those days, it used to piss me off a little, but it didn't stop me buying more protected games and/or copying them - so whilst I don't have much good to say about most modern games, I can see why kids today are putting up with the same crap I was willing to put up with.
The only thing that was better "then" was that the protection wasn't as intrusive - i.e. you put in a code, then went off and played the games. These days there's information being retrieved from your PC and console, stored on some centralised server somewhere...