Try http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ Makes a Windows 7 like start menu as the default start, rather than the hideous mess that is the Windows 8 start screen. Still easy to make it to metro start screen via charms. Can even configure it to be Win XP style instead, to be available in desktop mode but still start in metro view, and a number of other handy customizations.
I did wonder this too. If blizzard was coding their anti cheating programs just to detect things running on a Windows OS, someone could code their cheats at a level the blizzard code might not see it. But, can always try to detect this type of system via behavior monitoring (detecting exact patterns repeating, etc). Still a chance for a false positiv, but if a coder doesn't put in at least some randomness, bots in most games start to stick out pretty quickly.
Of course, checking every configuration is impossible, and no DRM checking system is perfect, so always the chance for false positives. Was mostly responding to the blanket assumption people were making that Blizzard was targeting Linux/WINE specifically as a cheat, when that's not true, and they appear to be at least acknowledging the existence of Linux players, and performing some testing.
Bolstering your point, There were some cases in the past where Blizzard banned people from WoW for "unauthorized program use" only to discover, later, they were innocuous (handicap access programs, an anti virus program in another case) and eventually unbanned the players.
While I can understand them wanting to go after botters, and the negative effects they can have on gameplay, kinda wish you could play around with some automation, as would be a fun coding challenge (have had to do a fair amount of automation coding in my jobs before)
Actually, Blizzard has stated, in their official forums, that although not officially supported, they HAVE tested D3 on Linux with WINE in various configurations, and their anti-cheating tools do not detect this as cheating. They continue to state that those banned didn't just use WINE and Linux, but additional software that was trying to cheat the game.
Being versed and experienced in IT can be a selling point, if properly framed during a job interview for a programming position, as well as programming positions for IT jobs.
With SO many job candidates these days having narrow focuses, one can sell having more diverse background by explaining to a potential employer how you have a greater view than just the narrow focused candidates. For instance, a person with a good OS support background can know more about the internals of how the OS actually handles programs in the real world, and can take this into consideration when coding. Also valuable from spending time in IT can be the first hand knowledge of the full product life cycle. If you spend some time in QA, you'll know what the QA team really needs from the developers. If you spend time with the support team, you'll know what they need to support the software in the field and by supplying it, help minimize the number of times support needs to contact the developers.
It's all about how you spin it.
Sounds kind of like the "possession of criminal tools" charges so many cases have added on, when said "tools" are ANYTHING used to commit the crime.
Always seemed to me just a way for prosecutors to add an extra set of random charges for extending a sentence, or extra bargaining room for a plea.
In many states, you can be let go at any time for any reason.
It really comes down to what you value more, your principals or your job.
Of course, if you are a valued employee, and if you are coming up with patentable ideas, I'd assume you are, how you broach the subject may help influence how stable your job is.
Instead of first saying "I refuse," instead consider, "I object," followed by your reasoning. If they then push the issue past your objections, you can always move on to "I refuse."
One reason why it may of taken a while for commercial sites to become more common on the Internet, was, in the 1980s, there was a strong bias against ANY form of commercial message on the net expressed by many people. Posting a message on UseNET that even came close to an ad could easily get you emailbombed those days. (hard to think of these days, with UseNET so full of spam these days.)
It's nice to be able to switch to someone other than Comcast when the market has more than one broadband provider, but there are still many markets within the US that only have one broadband provider option (and still many with no real broadband option at all).
Along these lines, if the audit had to be done before the old, invalid license is updated, what's to prevent them from allowing you to upgrade, but then later charging you with software piracy using the audit's findings as evidence.
Usually when someone finds out something like this, they'll patent it. Due to the strange way patents work in the US, does this mean I'll have to get a licensing agreement now before I spit?
Personally, I've found over-use of read-reciepts to be a problem, but have found there to be times when they are necessary to. Main times I use them are on people who, in the past, I've sent an email to, a day or more goes by without a response, I call them, and they say "I never got your email." A number of these people use this as a constant work avoidance device, always claiming to not recieve the email, after multiple resends. A read reciept at least proves they did receive it, and thus it was not a glitch on the mail-server, etc.
Many skill based MMORPGs end up turning into a fashion of class based games, in a way. People start finding the "ideal" combination of skills that are effective for a certain method of play, and more and more people end up using the same template. One way that developers sometimes help feed this is by having one or more skills "feed" another, where having one skill helps make the original skill more effective. I know this was particularly true in some revs of Ultima Online.
I've seen this behavior in both (the original flavour) SWG and UO.
'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.'
What about patent lawsuits? (I'd assume there must be patents somewhere out there on systems like this. There are patents on everything else these days.)
Yes, it does have it's flaws, but I find it a decent solution for watching videos downloaded off the internet on TV/Stereo with just a remote, but it does take some tweaking to get things working at first. Also, who says you have to put the computer and the TV in the same room. Creative cabling, or even wireless connections for video, audio and IR (remote) can be done, to allow the computer to be a standard PC in a home office most of the time, but controlled by a living room user when desired.
Long story short, this is quite do-able by techies. But, like most things PC related, it is not yet simple enough to catch on with the mainstream, as the mainstream expects it to be as simple as setting up a DVD player. Because a PC, by it's very nature, is a general purpose device, instead of the specific function devices that are normally used in the living room, it may always be more complicated than many non-techies want to try.
A few years back, there was the big scare in the US about "Africanized Bees". I wonder now if there will be a scare campaign for "Europeanized Mosquitos".
If I were a fan of Mythic titles though, i'd be scared. EA has a history of closing down any internal competition to Ultima Online in the MMORPG sphere, no matter how much promise they show (look at UO2, UO:X, etc)
If they want an easy way for ISPs to detect who is looking at child porn, couldn't the ISPs just check the access logs to their UseNet servers (yes, some ISPs still provide these), and look for people who are accessing groups like alt.binaries.pictures.child.rape.whatever?
It's always struck me as odd that ISPs even carry newsgroups with names that tell they are only for underage content. (But, on the other hand, I can understand it too, just due to lazyness, and just letting the system newgroup any group request that comes through.)
I used to work for a company that had, as one of it's products, several similar type heads-up type displays (around 1995 or so). The problem we ran into with all our models, prolonged use (a couple of 8 hour shifts, a few days in a row) would start to cause eye strain. We eventually had to pull all the products from the market, because the risk/reward ratio for using them was just not worth it. I'd be curious to see if the next generation of such devices still have similar issues.
Another possibility if motion sickness pills don't seem to work could be that you are mildly epileptic. Some types of game designs can bring out forms of epilepsy that people don't even realize they have until they try playing such games.
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Try http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ Makes a Windows 7 like start menu as the default start, rather than the hideous mess that is the Windows 8 start screen. Still easy to make it to metro start screen via charms. Can even configure it to be Win XP style instead, to be available in desktop mode but still start in metro view, and a number of other handy customizations.
I did wonder this too. If blizzard was coding their anti cheating programs just to detect things running on a Windows OS, someone could code their cheats at a level the blizzard code might not see it. But, can always try to detect this type of system via behavior monitoring (detecting exact patterns repeating, etc). Still a chance for a false positiv, but if a coder doesn't put in at least some randomness, bots in most games start to stick out pretty quickly.
Of course, checking every configuration is impossible, and no DRM checking system is perfect, so always the chance for false positives. Was mostly responding to the blanket assumption people were making that Blizzard was targeting Linux/WINE specifically as a cheat, when that's not true, and they appear to be at least acknowledging the existence of Linux players, and performing some testing. Bolstering your point, There were some cases in the past where Blizzard banned people from WoW for "unauthorized program use" only to discover, later, they were innocuous (handicap access programs, an anti virus program in another case) and eventually unbanned the players. While I can understand them wanting to go after botters, and the negative effects they can have on gameplay, kinda wish you could play around with some automation, as would be a fun coding challenge (have had to do a fair amount of automation coding in my jobs before)
Actually, Blizzard has stated, in their official forums, that although not officially supported, they HAVE tested D3 on Linux with WINE in various configurations, and their anti-cheating tools do not detect this as cheating. They continue to state that those banned didn't just use WINE and Linux, but additional software that was trying to cheat the game.
Being versed and experienced in IT can be a selling point, if properly framed during a job interview for a programming position, as well as programming positions for IT jobs. With SO many job candidates these days having narrow focuses, one can sell having more diverse background by explaining to a potential employer how you have a greater view than just the narrow focused candidates. For instance, a person with a good OS support background can know more about the internals of how the OS actually handles programs in the real world, and can take this into consideration when coding. Also valuable from spending time in IT can be the first hand knowledge of the full product life cycle. If you spend some time in QA, you'll know what the QA team really needs from the developers. If you spend time with the support team, you'll know what they need to support the software in the field and by supplying it, help minimize the number of times support needs to contact the developers. It's all about how you spin it.
Isn't this like the Ultima Online volunteer system (counselors, seers, etc) that got them sued eventually?
Sounds kind of like the "possession of criminal tools" charges so many cases have added on, when said "tools" are ANYTHING used to commit the crime. Always seemed to me just a way for prosecutors to add an extra set of random charges for extending a sentence, or extra bargaining room for a plea.
Thanks. Couldn't remember the name. The mainframe I work with uses ACF2, but I knew that was a more recent product.
Seems like MVS on IBM mainframes had the capabilities that are covered by this patent, and it's been around for ages.
In many states, you can be let go at any time for any reason. It really comes down to what you value more, your principals or your job. Of course, if you are a valued employee, and if you are coming up with patentable ideas, I'd assume you are, how you broach the subject may help influence how stable your job is. Instead of first saying "I refuse," instead consider, "I object," followed by your reasoning. If they then push the issue past your objections, you can always move on to "I refuse."
What do you bet there may be a long list of people wanting that job?
One reason why it may of taken a while for commercial sites to become more common on the Internet, was, in the 1980s, there was a strong bias against ANY form of commercial message on the net expressed by many people. Posting a message on UseNET that even came close to an ad could easily get you emailbombed those days. (hard to think of these days, with UseNET so full of spam these days.)
It's nice to be able to switch to someone other than Comcast when the market has more than one broadband provider, but there are still many markets within the US that only have one broadband provider option (and still many with no real broadband option at all).
Along these lines, if the audit had to be done before the old, invalid license is updated, what's to prevent them from allowing you to upgrade, but then later charging you with software piracy using the audit's findings as evidence.
Usually when someone finds out something like this, they'll patent it. Due to the strange way patents work in the US, does this mean I'll have to get a licensing agreement now before I spit?
FYI, according to some http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6131900.html?ta g=nl.e589 news sites, MS has now reversed their minds about the restriction about transfering licenses between PCs.
Personally, I've found over-use of read-reciepts to be a problem, but have found there to be times when they are necessary to. Main times I use them are on people who, in the past, I've sent an email to, a day or more goes by without a response, I call them, and they say "I never got your email." A number of these people use this as a constant work avoidance device, always claiming to not recieve the email, after multiple resends. A read reciept at least proves they did receive it, and thus it was not a glitch on the mail-server, etc.
I've seen this behavior in both (the original flavour) SWG and UO.
Long story short, this is quite do-able by techies. But, like most things PC related, it is not yet simple enough to catch on with the mainstream, as the mainstream expects it to be as simple as setting up a DVD player. Because a PC, by it's very nature, is a general purpose device, instead of the specific function devices that are normally used in the living room, it may always be more complicated than many non-techies want to try.
A few years back, there was the big scare in the US about "Africanized Bees". I wonder now if there will be a scare campaign for "Europeanized Mosquitos".
If I were a fan of Mythic titles though, i'd be scared. EA has a history of closing down any internal competition to Ultima Online in the MMORPG sphere, no matter how much promise they show (look at UO2, UO:X, etc)
If they want an easy way for ISPs to detect who is looking at child porn, couldn't the ISPs just check the access logs to their UseNet servers (yes, some ISPs still provide these), and look for people who are accessing groups like alt.binaries.pictures.child.rape.whatever? It's always struck me as odd that ISPs even carry newsgroups with names that tell they are only for underage content. (But, on the other hand, I can understand it too, just due to lazyness, and just letting the system newgroup any group request that comes through.)
I used to work for a company that had, as one of it's products, several similar type heads-up type displays (around 1995 or so). The problem we ran into with all our models, prolonged use (a couple of 8 hour shifts, a few days in a row) would start to cause eye strain. We eventually had to pull all the products from the market, because the risk/reward ratio for using them was just not worth it. I'd be curious to see if the next generation of such devices still have similar issues.
Another possibility if motion sickness pills don't seem to work could be that you are mildly epileptic. Some types of game designs can bring out forms of epilepsy that people don't even realize they have until they try playing such games.