This not what DDO staff said at PAX and it's irritating that to make users believe they did some serious work for their pretty shallow and superficial (at least at start) D&D licensed game they have to steal another designer's work that should have to be the base for their own game setting (like Baker pointed out).
I'll grant you that this was an unsightly boast on behalf of Turbine. Not giving proper credit, even.
But stealing someone's work? They didn't steal anything. They have been tasked with creating a gameworld based on the Eberron campaign setting. It's a fully licensed effort, on behalf of the copyright holders, Wizards of the Coast.
To say they "stole" Eberron is like saying Peter Jackson "stole" Lord of the Rings when he filmed it.
I remember watching a panel debate featuring an EA vice-president-of-something-or-other asking developers things they could do to make games "more humourous".
My first thought was a time in BF1942 getting blown out of the sky, landing in my friend's jeep, surviving, and both of us driving off laughing hysterically.
Games can encourage humour, but the real funny stuff is within us, the players.
I'm not experienced with a VM setup like the one you describe, but let me offer this - if you have them download their images every morning you may run straight into a brick wall. Performance testers call this "the 9am syndrome", and you'll need some fairly serious server bandwidth to handle everyone copying such a large file. This will turn your network, and the disc you're serving the images from, into a seething pile of molasses. OK maybe I'm being a shade gloomy, but I'd recommend not going the download route it if all possible. Even if you have 1GB to the desk.
Yeeps, it seems that you're right. My information said that Torque was included, but it seems that this information is wrong. Thanks for seting me straight.
If you read my post a little close, you will see that I am saying that when you download XNA Game Studio, you're getting the Torque engine. That was my point, the rest of your value-added stuff is interesting, but the criticisms at my reading ability are totally baseless.
Actually, you have that backwards. Torque runs on top of the XNA Framework.
The "game engine" piece of the product, "XNA Game Studio", is the Torque engine. That's what I said in my post.
I had nothing "backwards", as I didn't touch the details of XNA at all. That's great that you wanted to do talk about that, but that has nothing to do with my post.
I just wanted to add that, ironically, if you want to do development using a very popular "indie-level" game engine you would choose the Torque engine. And to use it, you pay them $100. If you want their studio tools on top of that, it's another 100$.
The new MS-XNA Game Studio is based on this Torque engine. When you pay your $100, you also get additional content downloads, the studio package, listing on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), etc. etc. These are pretty decent extras, and it's cheaper than just using Torque!
There are obvious reasons Microsoft is doing this, but my feeling is that positives outweigh the negatives.
That's pretty good, even if you write it down as someone finding them is likely not going to assume song lyrics are a password. Contrast this to "zex242ab" which does indeed appear like a password.
Another suggestion I've heard is to use a combination of visual patterns on a keyboard, i.e. "pl,12#edc" is a good password that you can follow visually without having to necessarily remember it exactly.
...and hope you didn't eat something messy for lunch that'd leave a trail behind as you type.;-)
I was shocked to see Guildwars missing. Some argue its not really an MMO, as it is a hub-centred world, however it shares this with DDO (which has been listed on mmogchart.com). I hope to see it listed in future, as the last subscriber numbers I saw put it near 1,000,000 people!
So, by now people have seen the news. Yes, it is true I am leaving SOE.
Why? Well, I've been here for gosh, almost six years maybe? It's been a good ride, and I think we've gotten to do some really fun and interesting work. But I am getting interested in doing some stuff that is a bit off the beaten path -- really, anyone who has been reading the blog can see that! -- and while SOE feels it's really cool stuff, it's just not where they are at right now. My contract was up, and it was the right time to poke my head up and look around, that sort of thing. It's all quite friendly, and actually, I hope that I'll work with SOE again in the future, because there's a lot of wonderful talent here and a lot of cool technology, and a lot of friends.
So, sometime soon here I'll be off on my own. Nope, no announcements about plans or anything. I don't have a new studio in my back pocket, I don't have a job lined up, any of that. And... we'll see what comes. I'm thinking sleeping in next week sounds good.
Oh -- the old email still works, for now. You can always post a comment or use the email addy at the bottom of this page to reach me, too.
All sort of anti-climactic, huh?;)
Personally, I think he is one talented individual who would absolutely shine in a less, shall we say, strangling environment? GL Raph!
First off, if the coroner had indeed provided the system's password, wasn't he the one contravening security policy (if not the law)?
Their justification for the computer seizure doesn't explain it at all. If they were concerned about a possible breach (even one obtained through some fraud or password sharing), they'd be able to ascertain the truth more reliably and certainly via access logs from the host systems, or even the intervening logs from the newspaper's ISP. Period.
Searching through the hard drives would be a last ditch effort for a legitimate investigation, since the cache could have been modified or deleted (thus requiring a forensic examination of the suspect systems).
The investigators are either stupid or lying about their true motivations. I can smell a lawsuit of significant proportion.
This post is coming late so no one is gonna read it.... but I'm sitting here on a patio in Waikiki writing on my wireless laptop, and enjoying a morning coffee. My girlfriend just completed a conference call and is just finishing up some email. She wouldn't be here enjoying the sunshine if she weren't able to keep up her commitments remotely.
If anything, many of the.NET and other programming jobs that I see coming across my desk are in the range of 85-100K (in Canada). And there are a lot of them.
Also, I see a lot of new QA jobs emphasizing programming skills, thus driving up the wages. These days, excellent QA organizations will devote at least 50% of their efforts towards automation, either by building their own suites or leveraging off-the-shelf solutions. This is good for QA folk who eventually want to migrate into development, as they'll gain valuable skills along the way.
I just shake my head when I see this stuff. If they are angling this as Security's answer to "Web 2.0", then perhaps they should start by examining what Web 2.0 is supposedly about. Stuff like web services and aggregation, arguably important pieces of this mythical beast, make *everyone* a content provider on the Internet. And Symantec is intending on having us run a service that gates that content?
This is Symantec's big push... in the wrong direction.
The Ask Slashdot question, admittedly somewhat naive, touched on an interesting aspect of this wide field of computer security. When old tech gets swept away by the new, does that make you less vulnerable to old exploits?
Case in point.
Quite a lonnggg time ago, in my more reckless youth, I was doing some work at a very large datacentre. This place had extremely rigourous procedures for both physical and virtual security, so much so that actually getting through change control, the talking doors, armed guards, and all that was a major headache if you wanted to test something in production. On UNIX it was less of a problem, they allowed very limited shell access to these systems via telnet from internal IP addresses so that their scripters could change things without as much hassle. But if you wanted to do something on the Windows boxes or upload a binary, no way. No ftp in or out. They had a strict approval procedure for specially marked CDs to be allowed into the datacentre. Nothing else was allowed.
I was a days travel from an exciting urban centre, and I wanted to get away for a fun bit of R&R. But I wouldn't have enough time unless I finished a very very non-essential project before Thursday. By the time I'd be able to get this stuff through change control onto the production Windows systems, I'd miss my train. It was frustrating that I had to go through this stuff for an extremely minor change to a very minor project, but I wanted to test it thoroughly regardless. By late Thursday I knew I was in trouble. I had just completed the work, but I knew I'd be spending half the day in the datacentre trying to get my files onto the production system.
Enter Z-Modem.
My telnet client had builtin Zmodem support, and just on a lark I tried the command on the production UNIX system. Blam! I was able to upload my files there. In their wisdom, even though they had removed every possible other thing on these systems (heavily hacked UNIX systems), they had forgotten zmodem! Next problem - although the envelope around the environment explicitly disallowed FTP, it was totally OK among the production boxes. So from the UNIX machine, I was able to FTP it over to my target Windows box. Fun fun. Friday morning, I was able to circumvent change control, zmodem my files to UNIX, FTP them to Windows, and take off for the train station early.
Bad bad bad. Both for them, and for me (for being so reckless). But the point is clear... they'd forgotten about the low tech - the basics, and missed a covert channel into their system. Smartie pants will always try to circumvent procedure for their own ends, and exploit the low tech to get there. Sometimes, low-tech is the vulnerability.
Slashdot Mirror
This not what DDO staff said at PAX and it's irritating that to make users believe they did some serious work for their pretty shallow and superficial (at least at start) D&D licensed game they have to steal another designer's work that should have to be the base for their own game setting (like Baker pointed out).
I'll grant you that this was an unsightly boast on behalf of Turbine. Not giving proper credit, even.
But stealing someone's work? They didn't steal anything. They have been tasked with creating a gameworld based on the Eberron campaign setting. It's a fully licensed effort, on behalf of the copyright holders, Wizards of the Coast.
To say they "stole" Eberron is like saying Peter Jackson "stole" Lord of the Rings when he filmed it.
Uh, could you please rephrase that?
(heheh, couldn't resist) :-)
I remember watching a panel debate featuring an EA vice-president-of-something-or-other asking developers things they could do to make games "more humourous".
My first thought was a time in BF1942 getting blown out of the sky, landing in my friend's jeep, surviving, and both of us driving off laughing hysterically.
Games can encourage humour, but the real funny stuff is within us, the players.
I'm not experienced with a VM setup like the one you describe, but let me offer this - if you have them download their images every morning you may run straight into a brick wall. Performance testers call this "the 9am syndrome", and you'll need some fairly serious server bandwidth to handle everyone copying such a large file. This will turn your network, and the disc you're serving the images from, into a seething pile of molasses. OK maybe I'm being a shade gloomy, but I'd recommend not going the download route it if all possible. Even if you have 1GB to the desk.
Yeeps, it seems that you're right. My information said that Torque was included, but it seems that this information is wrong. Thanks for seting me straight.
If you read my post a little close, you will see that I am saying that when you download XNA Game Studio, you're getting the Torque engine. That was my point, the rest of your value-added stuff is interesting, but the criticisms at my reading ability are totally baseless.
That's his point, bringing him a step closer to pure genius.
YOU are the seventh category.
Actually, you have that backwards. Torque runs on top of the XNA Framework.
The "game engine" piece of the product, "XNA Game Studio", is the Torque engine. That's what I said in my post.
I had nothing "backwards", as I didn't touch the details of XNA at all. That's great that you wanted to do talk about that, but that has nothing to do with my post.
I just wanted to add that, ironically, if you want to do development using a very popular "indie-level" game engine you would choose the Torque engine. And to use it, you pay them $100. If you want their studio tools on top of that, it's another 100$.
The new MS-XNA Game Studio is based on this Torque engine. When you pay your $100, you also get additional content downloads, the studio package, listing on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), etc. etc. These are pretty decent extras, and it's cheaper than just using Torque!
There are obvious reasons Microsoft is doing this, but my feeling is that positives outweigh the negatives.
Did I suggest arresting him? How about just public humiliation?
I'm so behind the times.
I thought that everytime I heard, 'new breed of applications', 'aggregation' and 'asynchronous XML data exchange', I was sposed to take a drink...
Another suggestion I've heard is to use a combination of visual patterns on a keyboard, i.e. "pl,12#edc" is a good password that you can follow visually without having to necessarily remember it exactly.
Other than the fact that this version will likely have a Director's commentary track and perhaps some added material? No, no reason at all.
I've only been waiting years for this. Speak for yourself!
So, by now people have seen the news. Yes, it is true I am leaving SOE.
Why? Well, I've been here for gosh, almost six years maybe? It's been a good ride, and I think we've gotten to do some really fun and interesting work. But I am getting interested in doing some stuff that is a bit off the beaten path -- really, anyone who has been reading the blog can see that! -- and while SOE feels it's really cool stuff, it's just not where they are at right now. My contract was up, and it was the right time to poke my head up and look around, that sort of thing. It's all quite friendly, and actually, I hope that I'll work with SOE again in the future, because there's a lot of wonderful talent here and a lot of cool technology, and a lot of friends.
So, sometime soon here I'll be off on my own. Nope, no announcements about plans or anything. I don't have a new studio in my back pocket, I don't have a job lined up, any of that. And... we'll see what comes. I'm thinking sleeping in next week sounds good.
Oh -- the old email still works, for now. You can always post a comment or use the email addy at the bottom of this page to reach me, too.
All sort of anti-climactic, huh? ;)
Personally, I think he is one talented individual who would absolutely shine in a less, shall we say, strangling environment? GL Raph!
First off, if the coroner had indeed provided the system's password, wasn't he the one contravening security policy (if not the law)?
Their justification for the computer seizure doesn't explain it at all. If they were concerned about a possible breach (even one obtained through some fraud or password sharing), they'd be able to ascertain the truth more reliably and certainly via access logs from the host systems, or even the intervening logs from the newspaper's ISP. Period.
Searching through the hard drives would be a last ditch effort for a legitimate investigation, since the cache could have been modified or deleted (thus requiring a forensic examination of the suspect systems).
The investigators are either stupid or lying about their true motivations. I can smell a lawsuit of significant proportion.
Not geeky, no gizmos or doodads, but Storm watches look the coolest (and are fairly cheap, too).
I have two Storms, one Diesel and a beautiful St. Moritz for scubadiving. Am always on the lookout for nicely designed watches.
Also, I see a lot of new QA jobs emphasizing programming skills, thus driving up the wages. These days, excellent QA organizations will devote at least 50% of their efforts towards automation, either by building their own suites or leveraging off-the-shelf solutions. This is good for QA folk who eventually want to migrate into development, as they'll gain valuable skills along the way.
This is Symantec's big push... in the wrong direction.
Case in point.
Quite a lonnggg time ago, in my more reckless youth, I was doing some work at a very large datacentre. This place had extremely rigourous procedures for both physical and virtual security, so much so that actually getting through change control, the talking doors, armed guards, and all that was a major headache if you wanted to test something in production. On UNIX it was less of a problem, they allowed very limited shell access to these systems via telnet from internal IP addresses so that their scripters could change things without as much hassle. But if you wanted to do something on the Windows boxes or upload a binary, no way. No ftp in or out. They had a strict approval procedure for specially marked CDs to be allowed into the datacentre. Nothing else was allowed.
I was a days travel from an exciting urban centre, and I wanted to get away for a fun bit of R&R. But I wouldn't have enough time unless I finished a very very non-essential project before Thursday. By the time I'd be able to get this stuff through change control onto the production Windows systems, I'd miss my train. It was frustrating that I had to go through this stuff for an extremely minor change to a very minor project, but I wanted to test it thoroughly regardless. By late Thursday I knew I was in trouble. I had just completed the work, but I knew I'd be spending half the day in the datacentre trying to get my files onto the production system.
Enter Z-Modem.
My telnet client had builtin Zmodem support, and just on a lark I tried the command on the production UNIX system. Blam! I was able to upload my files there. In their wisdom, even though they had removed every possible other thing on these systems (heavily hacked UNIX systems), they had forgotten zmodem! Next problem - although the envelope around the environment explicitly disallowed FTP, it was totally OK among the production boxes. So from the UNIX machine, I was able to FTP it over to my target Windows box. Fun fun. Friday morning, I was able to circumvent change control, zmodem my files to UNIX, FTP them to Windows, and take off for the train station early.
Bad bad bad. Both for them, and for me (for being so reckless). But the point is clear... they'd forgotten about the low tech - the basics, and missed a covert channel into their system. Smartie pants will always try to circumvent procedure for their own ends, and exploit the low tech to get there. Sometimes, low-tech is the vulnerability.