My main frustration was that that single line in that single file wasn't added *before* the OS was released to the general public.
So, it's a matter of principle. Got it.
It's like they don't even slightly care about quality, the calendar says it goes out today so it goes out today-- easily-fixed, super-annoying bug or not!
You keep calling it a bug. I'm going to say it's faulty design -- that line didn't go in because they didn't want it to, not because they were lazy.
My computer making extremely embarrassing beeping sounds in public is not a lame reason to stop using an OS. In fact, rules of politeness basically dictate I should stop using the OS in this circumstance, since there's no way to predict what action will cause the beep.
No, rules of politeness dictate that you should stop the beeping noise. And with the PC speaker driver not installed, you can pretty well predict what action will cause the beep -- that is, none at all.
If I could have used my computer without being deafened by a horrible sound, I would have continued struggling through the other issues.
Well, now you can.
The battery is *just enough* to make this all work without plugging it in at the office. Ubuntu would make it so I have to carry the adapter around, too.
For what it's worth, I just keep multiple adapters, regardless of my OS. Again, not saying this is an excuse for sleep being broken (though it works great for me).
The problem is that we don't have infinite energy,
True, but I don't plan on living another 4-5 billion years to see the sun burn out. Within that timespan, we really do have about as much as we need.
I don't think it's tiny. I think if we can change the selfish habits even if in a small things, it will make a major diference.
If that major difference is still only a few fractions of a percent, that's really not going to reduce demand for alternative energies, or prevent a single energy-motivated war.
You mentioned this:
We had a campaign over here a few years back about separating the garbage for recycling. No one was recycling garbage at the time.
See, even per person, that is a huge difference, and has a pretty negligible effect on our daily lives -- it takes the same amount of time to toss a jar into the recycling bin as it does to toss it into the trash.
This, not so much -- a tiny effect on battery life, perhaps even counterproductive (slower response time means I have to spend more time with it powered up, versus letting it go to an extremely low-powered sleep mode when I'm done with it),
It's not hard to come up with the best of both worlds -- I'm typing this on an 800 mhz laptop. Actually, it's a 2.51 ghz laptop that is currently clocked down to 800 mhz because I'm not using it. The second I need it, the power is there. THIS is the kind of energy efficient technology I can appreciate.
What you're suggesting, if anything, is more like me forcing it to low-power mode, so it's always exactly 800 mhz. I'm sorry, but that's not worth it.
Oh, please. SSH keys are fine, but very few people handle them correctly. Subversion, for example, stores your local passwords in clear-text,
Firstly: Chances are, if someone has access to that, you're already hosed. A better solution might be full disk encryption, or just home directory encryption.
Second: Keys aren't passwords. What does any of this have to do with Subversion?
If you are one of the many idiots who use such passphrase free keys, and use the same key for everything, I only have to steal your key once to get fairly untrammeled access to your systsems.
Correct. But you have exactly one place to steal it from. The servers only have public keys, not private keys, so you can't pull it from there.
And you only have to steal it once anyway, passphrase or not. The passphrase just makes it more difficult to do.
And, if I did use a different key for each server, what then? They're still all going to be stored on or accessible from my laptop. I'm always going to be one keylogger away from being completely 0wned.
Yes, layers of security and all that, but in this case, it feels like using ssh keys (and disabling passwords) is probably the single biggest step one could take to increase security, with little downside.
What does it mean for a specialization (talent trees are similar but not identical in WoW, btw) to be "player-run"?
It means that, among other things, the players who control that specialization choose who may specialize and how. It also means that the other things I mentioned are mostly under player control. Things that require changes to the game, like a new spell, must be approved by "the gods" (that is, the corporation running the game), but it's generally players who ask for specific things.
What are the limitations on the custom areas, how large are they, and how much of interest occurs within them?
Relatively small, compared to a hunting area. Relatively large, compared to a house a player can own. The limitations are mostly number of rooms, and quite a lot of community events (player-run games) take place there.
Are they little more than guild houses, or are they areas requiring significant exploration and adventuring?
Closer to guild houses. That isn't to say that there's no adventuring involved -- several paths I know of have significant quests they've created for the community, for instance. Some of these are done via NPCs, and some are managed by players.
Is there loot involved in each path? How different is it, and what are the mechanisms that ensure it is available through normal and specialized play?
Stat-wise, hard to say how different it is, as the paths tend to guard these secrets well.
They are generally either available to members of the path exclusively, or are given out by Guides (think a council) to specific members of the path (or the community) as a way of recognizing them for something.
For example: Only Geomancers can wield a Staff of Chi. However, it still has to be earned through a series of player-run quests, and can be outright denied.
What other kinds of play focus on the specializations?
Not sure quite what you mean here. Other than roleplay?
There's also the question of how representative this game is of the "interesting" MMOGs - the estimate of player count [everything2.com] puts it at 3000, with a normal active load of 700 at a time, which falls below the size of a single server for most games,
Yes... it's a tiny game.
I point it out because I believe it's interesting, and I don't see this kind of thing elsewhere.
There are lore and unlock rewards in several other big MMOs, and some of them are tied to class (the death knight area in WoW is a natural example)
Are these awarded by players, or NPCs?
Rewards typically refer specifically to cash and items given specifically for a behaviour.
Right.
Geomancers will give out Keeper of Balance (a legend mark and associated dye (armor color)) to people they consider to be Keepers of Balance, in a roleplay sense.
As an example: There was one I met who posted frequently on the Community Board offering assistance to "those in need". That is, if you needed help with something, she'd find a way to help you -- everything from running through a quest with you to outright giving you items you need.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to her, she was already Keeper of Balance, and she'd already been given a Helmet of Balance, among other things. We recognize good people.
Disruptor of Balance, while it's occasionally given out for roleplay reasons, is also used to mark people we specifically have an issue with. And again, it's based on actual actions -- for instance, a Geomancer who leaked path secrets would likely be kicked from the path and marked Disruptor of Balance. This has real consequences -- loss of karma, other paths will tend to shun them, etc.
Essentially, the way you reward roleplay is by putting those rewards under human control -- and with a population this small, that means player co
Background: I play a small, 2D MMO. I'm going to try to provide as much context as I can, since I doubt anyone else here plays it. Also, I don't play WoW, so if I'm describing things that other games already do, sorry...
First of all, WoW recently got "achievements", which I believe are like the Xbox Live or Steam "achievements" -- they don't get you anything except a little badge that says "I did this." Nexus has had these for pretty much as long as it's existed, which is over ten years -- they are called "Legend Marks".
This game has four main paths -- I believe WoW calls them "classes" -- Mages, Poets, Rogues, Warriors. However, each of those is split up into four sub-paths. One of those is "NPC", as in, just a quest like anything else, and in return, you get some new spells.
The other three sub-paths -- per main path, so twelve sub-paths, total -- are very much roleplay-oriented, and player-run.
Each sub-path has its own unique spells. Some are useful, some provide a real advantage, and some are just fun. For example, the Barbarians have a "push" spell, with which they can shove other players around.
Each also has a number of roleplay requirements. For example, to become a Geomancer, you must be knowledgeable in Taoism, Feng Shui, Elementalism, and a number of other things. To be a Muse, you must keep a journal, and occasionally write stories, poems, plays, etc -- indeed, the Muses often host a Dinner Theater (in-game). To be a Spy, well, I can't help you -- to even know what you have to do to become a spy, you'll have to do some information gathering on your own -- in other words, spy on some spies.
Each can also give legend marks -- for example, "Scouted with the Rangers" might be desirable, while "Disruptor of Balance" wouldn't be. At the moment, nearly all clans and subpaths will reject people with negative legend marks like "Disruptor of Balance" or "Angered the Horde".
Finally, each subpath has their own unique areas -- both a path-only area, and an area open to the community. Barbarians often invite people into their cave to drink brew, to train, to brawl...
What am I getting at here?
It's a nice balance, I think, between the two extremes you're talking about. It's not just "roleplay for its own sake" -- while there is plenty of that, many players do see that as silly, with good reason. After all, if roleplay was all we wanted, with no "physical" consequences, why bother with a game? We can do that on IRC, or on a tabletop, for that matter.
On the other hand, people who are just in it for the loot aren't likely to get far. This is a lot of work, and it's completely different work than just grinding. Even if they're very good actors, and simply pretend to enjoy roleplay just to get the item, they may well find themselves enjoying it anyway.
And if they don't, I'm not sure I care too much. If they can manage to actively roleplay as a part of the community, no matter what their real motivation, that's a good thing for those of us who do enjoy it.
The game designers absolutely have a reason to reward roleplay, in this case, because they've managed to carve out a niche for themselves in a very crowded market. Some people come for other reasons -- some hunt to millions of points of vitality (there's no level cap), some do nothing but play events (elixir wars are fun) -- and some come for the roleplay, or even for a sense of community that's missing from many larger games.
Basically if you want to be single-shard, you have to essentially guess how much population you'll get.
No, what you really have to do is react to the population you get, quickly.
Hardware-wise, "cloud computing" can help, as in Amazon EC2 -- just fire up a new instance and you can handle some number of more players.
The real challenge, and I think the reason procedural generation was mentioned, is to actually create a big enough world, without it looking repetitive -- and to provide enough to do that you don't have choke points of everyone appearing at the same place.
Additionally, world size influences other things, like travel times, exploration, etc.
This is a game. Teleportation is possible.
How to prevent it from breaking gameplay is another issue, of course, but it is possible to get right.
Then, what should I do if I'm an aspiring musician, and I'd like to draw on some of my cultural heritage -- and yes, copyright lasts so insanely long that we are talking about cultural heritage here -- and these thugs come and sue me?
For that matter, as part of my "boycott", should I stop singing Happy Birthday?
Fuck no. I will not spend my life avoiding our culture because it happens to be owned by a few corporations. I will continue to assert that this is our culture, not theirs.
A dedicated backup box can be much more hardened than a general-purpose webserver, as the backup box pretty much has a job of storing and retrieving files.
A solid system of incremental backups helps, too.
Yes, taking it offline is great. Do that... maybe monthly, if that.
This scenario sounds much more like someone confused "RAID" with "Backup". RAID (and other high-availability schemes) protects you from hardware failure. Backup protects you from more software failure and human error.
because they aren't available in high quality open digital formats without DRM,
That's actually a big one for me. I buy un-DRM'd PDFs from people like the Pragmatic Programmers, when they're available. I don't buy DRM'd ebooks, period. No way I'm booting Windows or paying for a $400 device (when I already have a $2000 laptop) just to read ebooks.
That would be my first suggestion. Clearly the DRM is doing you no good at all, so drop it. Once you've done that, you'll have to decide whether it's worth it to publish a digital copy at all, or whether to stick purely to print -- or, for that matter, whether to give the digital version away for free, and sell the print version.
2. Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages the third reading with the average just computed.
There you go. It's also inaccurate:
The A/D converters measuring the IR readings and the fuel cell readings can produce values between 0 and 4095. However, the software divides the final average(s) by 256... Further, because of an attribute in the IR calculations, the result value is further divided in half. This means that only 8 values are possible for the IR detection...
And, if there were a catastrophic bug, you wouldn't know it, you'd just keep getting readings:
An interrupt that detects that the microprocessor is trying to execute an illegal instruction is disabled, meaning that the Alcotest software could appear to run correctly while executing wild branches or invalid code for a period of time. Other interrupts ignored are the Computer Operating Property (a watchdog timer), and the Software Interrupt.
Just read Schneier's comments. He cites some of the more important things:
Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages the third reading with the average just computed... There is no comment or note detailing a reason for this calculation, which would cause the first reading to have more weight than successive readings.
That alone should be enough -- the readings are not averaged correctly. But it goes on:
The A/D converters measuring the IR readings and the fuel cell readings can produce values between 0 and 4095. However, the software divides the final average(s) by 256, meaning the final result can only have 16 values to represent the five-volt range (or less), or, represent the range of alcohol readings possible. This is a loss of precision in the data; of a possible twelve bits of information, only four bits are used. Further, because of an attribute in the IR calculations, the result value is further divided in half. This means that only 8 values are possible for the IR detection, and this is compared against the 16 values of the fuel cell.
So we know it's buggy and inaccurate, to a moronic degree. If that wasn't enough:
Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled: An interrupt that detects that the microprocessor is trying to execute an illegal instruction is disabled, meaning that the Alcotest software could appear to run correctly while executing wild branches or invalid code for a period of time. Other interrupts ignored are the Computer Operating Property (a watchdog timer), and the Software Interrupt.
So, basically, it's designed to always return some value, even if it's wildly inaccurate, and even if the software is executing garbage at the time.
In other words: It appears to be a very low-level equivalent of Visual Basic's "on error resume next".
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
So to answer your question: No, it does not work. Even if it did somehow work, there's obviously an unacceptably poor level of quality control here.
Ok, I'm not happy that some people almost certainly were measured inaccurately by these things. I'm not happy that this company was allowed to pull this kind of shit -- when you do government contracting, the government should own what you do.
However, I am very glad that the precedent has been set.
And I am especially glad that not only is there precedent, but there's a real live example of why we need this stuff to be open.
Aunt Sally absolutely should not, ever, be touching about:config.
What's been suggested here may very well be improving performance, but also very likely isn't a recommended approach. For example: HTTP pipelining is a nice idea, but really doesn't have much of an advantage over opening more connections. And, too many connections can slow you down as easily as too few connections.
So, rather than suggesting that people should change about:config, if you really think the defaults should be changed, file a bug.
As it is, Aunt Sally is likely more secure, and much faster, once you tell her to install Adblock (which she probably can do herself). She really doesn't need to tweak anything.
The most obvious thing missing is: Keyboard shortcuts. I can actually navigate a lot of email in gmail without using the mouse. Can you do that with the basic HTML version?
Point is, we really shouldn't have to make this choice.
Electricity is just electricity. It can come from coal or oil, yes. It can also come from a waterfall, or a nuclear reaction, or the wind, or the sun, even geothermal...
Saving a few watts, multiplied by thousands of people, still isn't going to make a tiny fraction of the difference of, say, replacing a coal plant with a wind farm.
No, I'm guessing they're mainly focusing on battery life for mobile apps. And I applaud them for that, but I don't know that I like this particular method. I'd rather have it jump right up to full throttle when I need it, without me having to get stressed. And I'd much rather see effort put towards better batteries, and generating electricity from other sources -- like movement, considering how much I might be walking around with a mobile device...
It's not even that he's unaware of DRM-free iTunes. If that were the only problem, I'd be quite happy to inform him of an opportunity that I simply don't see being exploited right now:
Purely web-based purchasing, with an open API.
Amazon MP3 is pretty cool. Better than iTunes, because I can use any program I want to play the music, and because there's a Linux client, I've now set my mother up to purchase music that way, and have it automatically imported into Amarok.
But it could be so much better.
Purely web-based would mean no client I have to download and figure out. An open API, or even a decent enough web interface, would mean I could write an Amarok plugin -- be able to listen to a preview, and buy it right there, just like (I assume) iTunes does. Others could write Songbird plugins. It's possible they could even make a deal to incorporate it into iTunes.
Protection would be relatively easy: Just a temporary URL, and it'd be about as good as Amazon MP3 is right now.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn't get it at all.
A lot of people thought Sony's content download service was doomed, but it's in a pretty good place right now in the form of the PlayStation Network, available to PS3 users for network gaming, video, etc. The DRM is based on Marlin, an open scheme developed by consumer electronics companies and other companies.
So close, and yet so far...
So, I'm guessing to this guy, "open" is just a buzzword. He seemed to have a basic grasp of what it means, and then he went and claimed a DRM scheme could be "open".
If you don't defend a trademark, you can lose it. I'm not sure how this applies to copyright.
That's why RMS doesn't like the term "Intellectual Property", by the way. It's a vague concept that combines three very different bodies of law: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights.
For that matter, think about just about every copyleft-style license -- GPL, Creative Commons, etc -- do those become invalid just because people are copying them? No.
If such a law exists at all (for copyright, instead of trademarks), I would think it would have to do with actually legally defending your copyright -- as in, when you're aware of the vendor down the block selling burned pirate copies, you should sue him. It absolutely has nothing to do with taking the law into your own hands with DRM.
Ever notice how all cable and satellite providers offer massive bundles, which include the one channel you need and fifty or so you don't?
Yeah... not going to try to go through the mental contortions to why they like that, but clearly, they do. No way they'd let me subscribe to a single show at a reasonable price -- certainly not if it skips the ads, the way DVDs do.
2) I probably wouldn't hear any alert sound at all if I turned off the PC Speaker, since it was trying to use the PC Speaker instead of the digitized alert sound. And a computer with no alert sound at all is almost as bad as a computer with an irritating 120 dB alert sound.
I suppose it depends what it was alerting you to. I've never seen the PC speaker be used for any sort of alert I actually needed to hear.
It's stuff like, backspace too far in a terminal window. Yeah, I could see the cursor stop moving. Thanks for the info. Neither OS X nor Windows provide any indication at all.
I respectfully disagree that the PC speaker should never be used, but it certainly shouldn't be the default. And, I'd suggest that the fact that the beep was that loud is a bug in your hardware -- it shouldn't be possible for an OS to do that through a bug.
I'm answering this concern, because your others really aren't valid in light of that. No, you should not have to be deafened, or bug your passengers, but given that a single line to a single file would've solved this problem, I'm going to say that it's a lame reason to stop using an OS.
You had other reasons, good ones. Clearly, if there had been other compelling reasons for you to use Ubuntu, and if you hadn't had other problems, you'd have dealt with this one.
What I'd do, in that position: Investigate the mod, first. If it's a good one, then talk to them about becoming official. Either give them a license or hire them outright.
Of course, you may want to intimidate people. You could send them a C&D along with this, reminding them that if they decline the job, the mod is very well dead.
But, I agree with the summary -- done right, this is more money for them.
And no, I don't think it's covered under fair use. It's a bit like fan fiction -- probably fine if you release it online, anonymously, but you probably wouldn't be able to sell it without a license. (Example: Star wars slash fic vs actual expanded universe.)
Don't let them get 51%, if you can help it. If, as you say, you really care more about the project than about the money, you might very well prefer to see it die than to see it killed by a large corporation.
Of course, this depends very much on the company, and on your level of trust.
But that's my gut reaction -- hold onto control. If they want to fund your sales and keep a cut of the profits, that's fine, but don't put them in a position to dictate what you're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not how Slashdot works.
More likely, she has a few more fans...
But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something?
Ubuntu pretty much considers the fact that MS hasn't been killed off, or at least humbled, to be a bug.
Promise? No, but they're trying.
My main frustration was that that single line in that single file wasn't added *before* the OS was released to the general public.
So, it's a matter of principle. Got it.
It's like they don't even slightly care about quality, the calendar says it goes out today so it goes out today-- easily-fixed, super-annoying bug or not!
You keep calling it a bug. I'm going to say it's faulty design -- that line didn't go in because they didn't want it to, not because they were lazy.
My computer making extremely embarrassing beeping sounds in public is not a lame reason to stop using an OS. In fact, rules of politeness basically dictate I should stop using the OS in this circumstance, since there's no way to predict what action will cause the beep.
No, rules of politeness dictate that you should stop the beeping noise. And with the PC speaker driver not installed, you can pretty well predict what action will cause the beep -- that is, none at all.
If I could have used my computer without being deafened by a horrible sound, I would have continued struggling through the other issues.
Well, now you can.
The battery is *just enough* to make this all work without plugging it in at the office. Ubuntu would make it so I have to carry the adapter around, too.
For what it's worth, I just keep multiple adapters, regardless of my OS. Again, not saying this is an excuse for sleep being broken (though it works great for me).
The problem is that we don't have infinite energy,
True, but I don't plan on living another 4-5 billion years to see the sun burn out. Within that timespan, we really do have about as much as we need.
I don't think it's tiny. I think if we can change the selfish habits even if in a small things, it will make a major diference.
If that major difference is still only a few fractions of a percent, that's really not going to reduce demand for alternative energies, or prevent a single energy-motivated war.
You mentioned this:
We had a campaign over here a few years back about separating the garbage for recycling. No one was recycling garbage at the time.
See, even per person, that is a huge difference, and has a pretty negligible effect on our daily lives -- it takes the same amount of time to toss a jar into the recycling bin as it does to toss it into the trash.
This, not so much -- a tiny effect on battery life, perhaps even counterproductive (slower response time means I have to spend more time with it powered up, versus letting it go to an extremely low-powered sleep mode when I'm done with it),
It's not hard to come up with the best of both worlds -- I'm typing this on an 800 mhz laptop. Actually, it's a 2.51 ghz laptop that is currently clocked down to 800 mhz because I'm not using it. The second I need it, the power is there. THIS is the kind of energy efficient technology I can appreciate.
What you're suggesting, if anything, is more like me forcing it to low-power mode, so it's always exactly 800 mhz. I'm sorry, but that's not worth it.
Oh, please. SSH keys are fine, but very few people handle them correctly. Subversion, for example, stores your local passwords in clear-text,
Firstly: Chances are, if someone has access to that, you're already hosed. A better solution might be full disk encryption, or just home directory encryption.
Second: Keys aren't passwords. What does any of this have to do with Subversion?
If you are one of the many idiots who use such passphrase free keys, and use the same key for everything, I only have to steal your key once to get fairly untrammeled access to your systsems.
Correct. But you have exactly one place to steal it from. The servers only have public keys, not private keys, so you can't pull it from there.
And you only have to steal it once anyway, passphrase or not. The passphrase just makes it more difficult to do.
And, if I did use a different key for each server, what then? They're still all going to be stored on or accessible from my laptop. I'm always going to be one keylogger away from being completely 0wned.
Yes, layers of security and all that, but in this case, it feels like using ssh keys (and disabling passwords) is probably the single biggest step one could take to increase security, with little downside.
What does it mean for a specialization (talent trees are similar but not identical in WoW, btw) to be "player-run"?
It means that, among other things, the players who control that specialization choose who may specialize and how. It also means that the other things I mentioned are mostly under player control. Things that require changes to the game, like a new spell, must be approved by "the gods" (that is, the corporation running the game), but it's generally players who ask for specific things.
What are the limitations on the custom areas, how large are they, and how much of interest occurs within them?
Relatively small, compared to a hunting area. Relatively large, compared to a house a player can own. The limitations are mostly number of rooms, and quite a lot of community events (player-run games) take place there.
Are they little more than guild houses, or are they areas requiring significant exploration and adventuring?
Closer to guild houses. That isn't to say that there's no adventuring involved -- several paths I know of have significant quests they've created for the community, for instance. Some of these are done via NPCs, and some are managed by players.
Is there loot involved in each path? How different is it, and what are the mechanisms that ensure it is available through normal and specialized play?
Stat-wise, hard to say how different it is, as the paths tend to guard these secrets well.
They are generally either available to members of the path exclusively, or are given out by Guides (think a council) to specific members of the path (or the community) as a way of recognizing them for something.
For example: Only Geomancers can wield a Staff of Chi. However, it still has to be earned through a series of player-run quests, and can be outright denied.
What other kinds of play focus on the specializations?
Not sure quite what you mean here. Other than roleplay?
There's also the question of how representative this game is of the "interesting" MMOGs - the estimate of player count [everything2.com] puts it at 3000, with a normal active load of 700 at a time, which falls below the size of a single server for most games,
Yes... it's a tiny game.
I point it out because I believe it's interesting, and I don't see this kind of thing elsewhere.
There are lore and unlock rewards in several other big MMOs, and some of them are tied to class (the death knight area in WoW is a natural example)
Are these awarded by players, or NPCs?
Rewards typically refer specifically to cash and items given specifically for a behaviour.
Right.
Geomancers will give out Keeper of Balance (a legend mark and associated dye (armor color)) to people they consider to be Keepers of Balance, in a roleplay sense.
As an example: There was one I met who posted frequently on the Community Board offering assistance to "those in need". That is, if you needed help with something, she'd find a way to help you -- everything from running through a quest with you to outright giving you items you need.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to her, she was already Keeper of Balance, and she'd already been given a Helmet of Balance, among other things. We recognize good people.
Disruptor of Balance, while it's occasionally given out for roleplay reasons, is also used to mark people we specifically have an issue with. And again, it's based on actual actions -- for instance, a Geomancer who leaked path secrets would likely be kicked from the path and marked Disruptor of Balance. This has real consequences -- loss of karma, other paths will tend to shun them, etc.
Essentially, the way you reward roleplay is by putting those rewards under human control -- and with a population this small, that means player co
Background: I play a small, 2D MMO. I'm going to try to provide as much context as I can, since I doubt anyone else here plays it. Also, I don't play WoW, so if I'm describing things that other games already do, sorry...
First of all, WoW recently got "achievements", which I believe are like the Xbox Live or Steam "achievements" -- they don't get you anything except a little badge that says "I did this." Nexus has had these for pretty much as long as it's existed, which is over ten years -- they are called "Legend Marks".
This game has four main paths -- I believe WoW calls them "classes" -- Mages, Poets, Rogues, Warriors. However, each of those is split up into four sub-paths. One of those is "NPC", as in, just a quest like anything else, and in return, you get some new spells.
The other three sub-paths -- per main path, so twelve sub-paths, total -- are very much roleplay-oriented, and player-run.
Each sub-path has its own unique spells. Some are useful, some provide a real advantage, and some are just fun. For example, the Barbarians have a "push" spell, with which they can shove other players around.
Each also has a number of roleplay requirements. For example, to become a Geomancer, you must be knowledgeable in Taoism, Feng Shui, Elementalism, and a number of other things. To be a Muse, you must keep a journal, and occasionally write stories, poems, plays, etc -- indeed, the Muses often host a Dinner Theater (in-game). To be a Spy, well, I can't help you -- to even know what you have to do to become a spy, you'll have to do some information gathering on your own -- in other words, spy on some spies.
Each can also give legend marks -- for example, "Scouted with the Rangers" might be desirable, while "Disruptor of Balance" wouldn't be. At the moment, nearly all clans and subpaths will reject people with negative legend marks like "Disruptor of Balance" or "Angered the Horde".
Finally, each subpath has their own unique areas -- both a path-only area, and an area open to the community. Barbarians often invite people into their cave to drink brew, to train, to brawl...
What am I getting at here?
It's a nice balance, I think, between the two extremes you're talking about. It's not just "roleplay for its own sake" -- while there is plenty of that, many players do see that as silly, with good reason. After all, if roleplay was all we wanted, with no "physical" consequences, why bother with a game? We can do that on IRC, or on a tabletop, for that matter.
On the other hand, people who are just in it for the loot aren't likely to get far. This is a lot of work, and it's completely different work than just grinding. Even if they're very good actors, and simply pretend to enjoy roleplay just to get the item, they may well find themselves enjoying it anyway.
And if they don't, I'm not sure I care too much. If they can manage to actively roleplay as a part of the community, no matter what their real motivation, that's a good thing for those of us who do enjoy it.
The game designers absolutely have a reason to reward roleplay, in this case, because they've managed to carve out a niche for themselves in a very crowded market. Some people come for other reasons -- some hunt to millions of points of vitality (there's no level cap), some do nothing but play events (elixir wars are fun) -- and some come for the roleplay, or even for a sense of community that's missing from many larger games.
Basically if you want to be single-shard, you have to essentially guess how much population you'll get.
No, what you really have to do is react to the population you get, quickly.
Hardware-wise, "cloud computing" can help, as in Amazon EC2 -- just fire up a new instance and you can handle some number of more players.
The real challenge, and I think the reason procedural generation was mentioned, is to actually create a big enough world, without it looking repetitive -- and to provide enough to do that you don't have choke points of everyone appearing at the same place.
Additionally, world size influences other things, like travel times, exploration, etc.
This is a game. Teleportation is possible.
How to prevent it from breaking gameplay is another issue, of course, but it is possible to get right.
Or good luck getting a good frame rate with a graphics engine that uses PyOpenGL.
Has this been tried?
Then, what should I do if I'm an aspiring musician, and I'd like to draw on some of my cultural heritage -- and yes, copyright lasts so insanely long that we are talking about cultural heritage here -- and these thugs come and sue me?
In other words: What do we do about The Grey Album?
For that matter, as part of my "boycott", should I stop singing Happy Birthday?
Fuck no. I will not spend my life avoiding our culture because it happens to be owned by a few corporations. I will continue to assert that this is our culture, not theirs.
I'm going to respectfully disagree, there.
A dedicated backup box can be much more hardened than a general-purpose webserver, as the backup box pretty much has a job of storing and retrieving files.
A solid system of incremental backups helps, too.
Yes, taking it offline is great. Do that... maybe monthly, if that.
This scenario sounds much more like someone confused "RAID" with "Backup". RAID (and other high-availability schemes) protects you from hardware failure. Backup protects you from more software failure and human error.
because they aren't available in high quality open digital formats without DRM,
That's actually a big one for me. I buy un-DRM'd PDFs from people like the Pragmatic Programmers, when they're available. I don't buy DRM'd ebooks, period. No way I'm booting Windows or paying for a $400 device (when I already have a $2000 laptop) just to read ebooks.
That would be my first suggestion. Clearly the DRM is doing you no good at all, so drop it. Once you've done that, you'll have to decide whether it's worth it to publish a digital copy at all, or whether to stick purely to print -- or, for that matter, whether to give the digital version away for free, and sell the print version.
Did they find any coding bugs,
Yes. RTFA.
2. Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages the third reading with the average just computed.
There you go. It's also inaccurate:
The A/D converters measuring the IR readings and the fuel cell readings can produce values between 0 and 4095. However, the software divides the final average(s) by 256... Further, because of an attribute in the IR calculations, the result value is further divided in half. This means that only 8 values are possible for the IR detection...
And, if there were a catastrophic bug, you wouldn't know it, you'd just keep getting readings:
An interrupt that detects that the microprocessor is trying to execute an illegal instruction is disabled, meaning that the Alcotest software could appear to run correctly while executing wild branches or invalid code for a period of time. Other interrupts ignored are the Computer Operating Property (a watchdog timer), and the Software Interrupt.
This belongs on The Daily WTF.
Just read Schneier's comments. He cites some of the more important things:
Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages the third reading with the average just computed... There is no comment or note detailing a reason for this calculation, which would cause the first reading to have more weight than successive readings.
That alone should be enough -- the readings are not averaged correctly. But it goes on:
The A/D converters measuring the IR readings and the fuel cell readings can produce values between 0 and 4095. However, the software divides the final average(s) by 256, meaning the final result can only have 16 values to represent the five-volt range (or less), or, represent the range of alcohol readings possible. This is a loss of precision in the data; of a possible twelve bits of information, only four bits are used. Further, because of an attribute in the IR calculations, the result value is further divided in half. This means that only 8 values are possible for the IR detection, and this is compared against the 16 values of the fuel cell.
So we know it's buggy and inaccurate, to a moronic degree. If that wasn't enough:
Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled: An interrupt that detects that the microprocessor is trying to execute an illegal instruction is disabled, meaning that the Alcotest software could appear to run correctly while executing wild branches or invalid code for a period of time. Other interrupts ignored are the Computer Operating Property (a watchdog timer), and the Software Interrupt.
So, basically, it's designed to always return some value, even if it's wildly inaccurate, and even if the software is executing garbage at the time.
In other words: It appears to be a very low-level equivalent of Visual Basic's "on error resume next".
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
So to answer your question: No, it does not work. Even if it did somehow work, there's obviously an unacceptably poor level of quality control here.
Ok, I'm not happy that some people almost certainly were measured inaccurately by these things. I'm not happy that this company was allowed to pull this kind of shit -- when you do government contracting, the government should own what you do.
However, I am very glad that the precedent has been set.
And I am especially glad that not only is there precedent, but there's a real live example of why we need this stuff to be open.
In reply to both you and the parent:
Aunt Sally absolutely should not, ever, be touching about:config.
What's been suggested here may very well be improving performance, but also very likely isn't a recommended approach. For example: HTTP pipelining is a nice idea, but really doesn't have much of an advantage over opening more connections. And, too many connections can slow you down as easily as too few connections.
So, rather than suggesting that people should change about:config, if you really think the defaults should be changed, file a bug.
As it is, Aunt Sally is likely more secure, and much faster, once you tell her to install Adblock (which she probably can do herself). She really doesn't need to tweak anything.
I have tried it, but not for awhile.
The most obvious thing missing is: Keyboard shortcuts. I can actually navigate a lot of email in gmail without using the mouse. Can you do that with the basic HTML version?
Point is, we really shouldn't have to make this choice.
Electricity is just electricity. It can come from coal or oil, yes. It can also come from a waterfall, or a nuclear reaction, or the wind, or the sun, even geothermal...
Saving a few watts, multiplied by thousands of people, still isn't going to make a tiny fraction of the difference of, say, replacing a coal plant with a wind farm.
No, I'm guessing they're mainly focusing on battery life for mobile apps. And I applaud them for that, but I don't know that I like this particular method. I'd rather have it jump right up to full throttle when I need it, without me having to get stressed. And I'd much rather see effort put towards better batteries, and generating electricity from other sources -- like movement, considering how much I might be walking around with a mobile device...
It's not even that he's unaware of DRM-free iTunes. If that were the only problem, I'd be quite happy to inform him of an opportunity that I simply don't see being exploited right now:
Purely web-based purchasing, with an open API.
Amazon MP3 is pretty cool. Better than iTunes, because I can use any program I want to play the music, and because there's a Linux client, I've now set my mother up to purchase music that way, and have it automatically imported into Amarok.
But it could be so much better.
Purely web-based would mean no client I have to download and figure out. An open API, or even a decent enough web interface, would mean I could write an Amarok plugin -- be able to listen to a preview, and buy it right there, just like (I assume) iTunes does. Others could write Songbird plugins. It's possible they could even make a deal to incorporate it into iTunes.
Protection would be relatively easy: Just a temporary URL, and it'd be about as good as Amazon MP3 is right now.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn't get it at all.
A lot of people thought Sony's content download service was doomed, but it's in a pretty good place right now in the form of the PlayStation Network, available to PS3 users for network gaming, video, etc. The DRM is based on Marlin, an open scheme developed by consumer electronics companies and other companies.
So close, and yet so far...
So, I'm guessing to this guy, "open" is just a buzzword. He seemed to have a basic grasp of what it means, and then he went and claimed a DRM scheme could be "open".
If you don't defend a trademark, you can lose it. I'm not sure how this applies to copyright.
That's why RMS doesn't like the term "Intellectual Property", by the way. It's a vague concept that combines three very different bodies of law: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights.
For that matter, think about just about every copyleft-style license -- GPL, Creative Commons, etc -- do those become invalid just because people are copying them? No.
If such a law exists at all (for copyright, instead of trademarks), I would think it would have to do with actually legally defending your copyright -- as in, when you're aware of the vendor down the block selling burned pirate copies, you should sue him. It absolutely has nothing to do with taking the law into your own hands with DRM.
I love it, but I doubt it will happen. Ever.
Ever notice how all cable and satellite providers offer massive bundles, which include the one channel you need and fifty or so you don't?
Yeah... not going to try to go through the mental contortions to why they like that, but clearly, they do. No way they'd let me subscribe to a single show at a reasonable price -- certainly not if it skips the ads, the way DVDs do.
2) I probably wouldn't hear any alert sound at all if I turned off the PC Speaker, since it was trying to use the PC Speaker instead of the digitized alert sound. And a computer with no alert sound at all is almost as bad as a computer with an irritating 120 dB alert sound.
I suppose it depends what it was alerting you to. I've never seen the PC speaker be used for any sort of alert I actually needed to hear.
It's stuff like, backspace too far in a terminal window. Yeah, I could see the cursor stop moving. Thanks for the info. Neither OS X nor Windows provide any indication at all.
I respectfully disagree that the PC speaker should never be used, but it certainly shouldn't be the default. And, I'd suggest that the fact that the beep was that loud is a bug in your hardware -- it shouldn't be possible for an OS to do that through a bug.
I'm answering this concern, because your others really aren't valid in light of that. No, you should not have to be deafened, or bug your passengers, but given that a single line to a single file would've solved this problem, I'm going to say that it's a lame reason to stop using an OS.
You had other reasons, good ones. Clearly, if there had been other compelling reasons for you to use Ubuntu, and if you hadn't had other problems, you'd have dealt with this one.
Maybe they're already doing this...
What I'd do, in that position: Investigate the mod, first. If it's a good one, then talk to them about becoming official. Either give them a license or hire them outright.
Of course, you may want to intimidate people. You could send them a C&D along with this, reminding them that if they decline the job, the mod is very well dead.
But, I agree with the summary -- done right, this is more money for them.
And no, I don't think it's covered under fair use. It's a bit like fan fiction -- probably fine if you release it online, anonymously, but you probably wouldn't be able to sell it without a license. (Example: Star wars slash fic vs actual expanded universe.)
Don't let them get 51%, if you can help it. If, as you say, you really care more about the project than about the money, you might very well prefer to see it die than to see it killed by a large corporation.
Of course, this depends very much on the company, and on your level of trust.
But that's my gut reaction -- hold onto control. If they want to fund your sales and keep a cut of the profits, that's fine, but don't put them in a position to dictate what you're doing.
These are metaphors.