I've been running an amber campaign for over a year now, and I can really recommend it. Just one thing that needs to be taken care of: More so than any other RPG you need to choose the right people to play with.
Elcomsoft did sell its software to people in the United States and it's not surprising that a U.S. court would claim jurisdiction over this.
surprising? no. Correct? Well, what about Yahoo! vs. France? And does that mean that next time I buy something at Amazon, I can sue them in a german court according to german consumer protection laws if I feel like it? I bet Jeff Bozos will not like that news.
of course, americans being what they are (single-languaged, specifically) they don't understand what "quid pro quo" means and are perfectly happy to apply the argument only single-sided. (i.e. US jurisdiction everywhere, but not vice versa)
they didn't just change the HTTP headers. nmap reporst:
Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release, MS Wind ows2000 Professional RC1/W2K Advance Server Beta3, Windows Millenium Edition v4. 90.3000
it also reports a number of interesting ports as open:
21/tcp open ftp 25/tcp open smtp 80/tcp open http 110/tcp open pop-3 443/tcp open https 1433/tcp open ms-sql-s 2105/tcp open eklogin 3306/tcp open mysql 5900/tcp open vnc
One: I love them for supporting Linux and releasing the game for it at the same time as the windos version.
Two: Don't forget that the toolkit, i.e. the parts that you need to create your own campaign, are currently windos only. Reasons are some missing tool (C++ Builder or something, currently in beta for Linux).
For me, the toolkit is the only reason to buy NWN. I don't like (A)D&D, but I'd swallow it if it means I can run online campaigns.
We should just throw criminals in jail and skip all this shitty expensive "trial" business.
Two points:
1) "Innocent until proven guilty" was a concept invented because the other way can very much ruin a humans life. Corporations do not have a life to ruin. That sounds trollish until you realize that we do throw people into jail before and while they have their trials. Maybe we should stop treating corporations like humans and start treating humans like humans.
2) M$ has been found guilty. Everything going down now is just haggling over the penalty. The minimum I'd expect from a working legal system is that a convicted criminal is stopped from continuing whatever his crime was.
no, it was necessary in europe, and it was being done. it's not like nobody in europe fought against hitler, you know? fuck you, my grandfather died in a nazi prison, so shove your self-rightousness somewhere where it hurts.
Funny, Europeans never seemed able to do that by themselves on their own soil before, I'm not sure why you think they could do it in the US in the future.
Even after reading the article, I'm not sure whether or not this is real.
Remember: AOL has done well with Windos, which is the OS of choice for most morons out there (and a couple non-morons) mostly because "it came with the 'puter".
There are a variety of reasons why they should/could switch, but also many why they should not. Maybe, just maybe, this was an intentional leak to put some pressure on M$ and get another "put us on the desktop" deal?
I would absolutely love to see the web move back to a "best viewed with any browser" attitude, and AOL switching to Mozilla/Gecko would ensure at least a parity. Just lets not break open the champagne just yet, hm?
it's becoming ever more obvious that warfare is domestic rather than foreign politics. being a european I just hope that you make another revolution before this time we have to come over to your site of the atlantic to get rid of the fascists.
the problem is that they aren't used and not advertised *at all*.
I have the opennic root into my dns here. I have never encountered a hyperlink pointing me to a place in one of those TDLs. (aside from the examples on the opennic webpage) not once.
the best way to get people to use them is to advertise them better. if/. would point a story to, say, www.something.god, thousands of people would suddenly learn about opennic, and a few dozen will probably "install" it.
did anyone else notice that there are almost no comments about the box itself, just tons of comments about other Linux-based firewalls?
has anyone ever seen the box, used it, witnessed a demo, anything? or knows some more details, like pricing, which aren't immediatly apparent from the website? if so, please share your knowledge.
I put my bets on arrogance - they really did (still do) believe they're the lords of the world and can do anything. Obviously, they've been mistaken.
On the other option: According to various sources, 300-500 or over 1000 africans, most of them innocent civilians, were killed. Is that not enough or why are you talking about artillery strikes into a city ???
What makes Black Hawk Down so jarring and effective a film is that it's about a real story. U.S. soldiers really did find themselves in a horrific shoot-out in Somalia, and really did behave heroically under awful pressure.
I guess you've seen the movie once too often. It's interesting to compare US and international reviews of Black Hawk Down. All US reviews I've seen go roughly along those lines, while the vast majority of international reviews points out that the actual events (to the best of our knowledge) where quite different - and much less heroic.
Almost all non-US reviews point out that Black Hawk Down is such an obvious piece of war propaganda that it almost hurts. So while we're at it with pointing out the heroism (perceived or real), let's not forget what then-president Bill Clinton said about the Mogadischu disaster, calling it "one of the darkest hours" of his presidency.
Maybe he just wasn't as much a war-monger as the current one.
> (If I knew what percentage of the world's
> population used computers on the internet
> regularly, this would be more meaningful, but
> I'll take a guess and say 33%.
you must be joking. about 70% of the world population can't even read and write. half of the world population is on the brink of starvation.
industry sources speak about around 600 mio. computers-in-use at the end of 2001 (c-i-a.com). that would give 10% of the world population a computer, except that it counts business machines, too, which outnumber privately-owned machines by several factors. and the vast majority of business machines will not be internet connected.
isc.org speaks of 125 mio internet connected hosts (july 2001), their definition being "hosts advertised in DNS". this may be several machines for a single DNS entry or - more likely - one or a few machines for many DNS entries (large hosting centers).
so we don't have any good figures, but I'd take bets that 33% is a tremendous exaggeration. even for the US, just over 50% of households own a PC with internet connection. in those parts of the world that contain the majority of the population, most homes don't have electricity or plumbing. I'd be surprised if 33% of the world population even knew what "the internet" is.
> If anything Unix needs to push it over the top
> as far as a secure server operating systems is
> the ability to tell the OS that "This File can
> never be deleted and can only be appended to by
> Postmaster. Forever. No matter what. Even if I
> want to get rid of it later." If I could give my
> clints that, they would jump to UNIX no matter
> what hurdels thay had to jump
man chattr
this functionality has been in UNIX for years. it isn't used much, though.
I'm happily breaking the law according to Valenti every time I rent a DVD (I don't buy many. I own maybe 6 or 7). I use non-licensed DVD players exclusively (VLC mostly).
I also still have my decss page up, as ever. I don't see a problem here. if I didn't care for DVDs, there would be no need to protest or hack it.
in fact, people are still busy hacking it. vlc is supposed to have ogle's menu support soon, and a german hacker is close to having the ability to replace the subtitles with anything you want.
there's just one thing the gov can do about network security: promote crypto.
as long as we have unencrypted protocols, we will never be secure.
of course, there are tons of other issues, such as shoody applications, the usual bugs even in good ones, low-level exploits such as the argus one, lazy admins not patching their systems, etc., etc. - but the gov can't do anything about any of those.
if al qaida shut down all US international internet connections, most telephone lines and destroyed the main money transfer institutes - how long would it take until bush is on the air talking about a terrorist attack?
I'm sure the perspectives are different in a country where most people don't know where their next meal will be coming from, but from a geekish perspective, that's incredible.
not only does it show just how much the internet has moved away from the initial highly resistant setup, it also shows that technical dangers (including physical loss of connectivity due to the line ceasing to exist after a bombing) aren't the only ones you face.
the article also shows that we're not talking about a "mommy, I can't surf porn anymore" situation. the countries largest employer has been destroyed, money transfers that lots of ordinary people rely on are frozen, human aids groups have lost contact to the outside world.
I see exactly one country that engages in terrorist activities, and it ain't afghanistan or iraq.
about a year ago, when first previews with more than just some marketing hype came around, Halo was the next step in FPS gaming.
let's see - it had a persistent, massive-multiplayer online world, a solid storyline driving an amazing outdoor graphics engine. and there were rumours that it was going to be released for windos, Mac and Linux - simultaneously.
then, bungie got bought.
when Halo finally comes to the PC in summer 2002, it will be yet another FPS, as all the really innovative concepts have been removed. the graphics will also be much less amazing given the amount of time that has passed.
all that wouldn't be catastrophic, if it weren't for the fact that 90% of those who were starving for Halo earlier this year have been alienated.
first the Mac and Linux users by bungie being acquired by none else then microsoft. the bungie forums were aflame in Mac users who felt somewhere between sold and raped.
then, all those looking for the "next generation" game were pissed of by waiting about a year longer than was originally said, during which time Halo's graphics and physics engines have dwindled from "revolutionary" to "quite nice".
and finally, everyone looking for the next step in FPS gaming, in the sense of more depth in gameplay than just kill-em-all, will have to look for some other place. sorry, Halo is just another shooter, try again next year.
frankly, selling the game as part of a bundle is, IMHO, the only chance it has to break even. some idiot has systematically destroyed its fanbase, and because of the early marketing offense, almost everyone who'd pay money for Halo *was* a part of the fanbase.
let's hope someone takes that which has been taken out of the game, i.e. all the *really* great parts, such as the persistent world, and makes a game around those.
I'm so happy about this ruling. if yahoo in the US is not bound by french law, then surely/me in Germany is not bound by silly US laws like the DMCA, right?
uh, right?
why is it that I have this feeling that this knife doesn't cut both ways? or will I be receiving a court document soon (to add to the other 1000 or so pages) that'll tell me I'm dismissed from the California DeCSS suit?
not holding my breath. the ruling is, of course, obvious. at least until the hague convention gets passed, which will invalidate it and make all those silly foreign lawsuits enforceable locally. that will be a day! finally you can sue everyone, everywhere for pretty much every imaginable reason.
needless to say we'll see another "groundswell" of support for microsoft.
question: will there be any consequences if its found out, say, three months later that 80% of the pro-M$ comments were paid for by emperor bill the 3rd? e.g. can the court decide to retroactively kill the settlement if it was fooled into accepting it?
a little overlooked game, but extremely well received by the hard-core strategy gamers (wargamers, tabletop players, etc) - Combat Mission. it's got an ugly website but the game is extremely good. three main points:
a) it does a ton of calculations to take into account as much as possible. e.g. wind speeds, weather, angle and location of hits on a tank, even the fact that pretty much every bullet/armour combination is unique.
b) it hides all that complexity from the user. if you don't want to know, all you really need to know is click a few buttons.
c) it is fully 3D. not the pseudo 3D of starcraft - you can really hide behind small hills. you can even go for a "hull down" (turret of your tank looks over the hill = free line of fire, but the tank itself is protected by the hill).
they've been discussing a Linux port several times in the forums. afaik there weren't enough people interested to make it financially feasable. but they are working on Combat Mission 2 now - so go there and tell them you want a Linux version.
Combat Mission rules. its the *only* reason I still have a windos partition.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been running an amber campaign for over a year now, and I can really recommend it. Just one thing that needs to be taken care of: More so than any other RPG you need to choose the right people to play with.
surprising? no. Correct? Well, what about Yahoo! vs. France? And does that mean that next time I buy something at Amazon, I can sue them in a german court according to german consumer protection laws if I feel like it? I bet Jeff Bozos will not like that news.
of course, americans being what they are (single-languaged, specifically) they don't understand what "quid pro quo" means and are perfectly happy to apply the argument only single-sided. (i.e. US jurisdiction everywhere, but not vice versa)
they didn't just change the HTTP headers. nmap reporst:
:)
Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release, MS Wind
ows2000 Professional RC1/W2K Advance Server Beta3, Windows Millenium Edition v4.
90.3000
it also reports a number of interesting ports as open:
21/tcp open ftp
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
110/tcp open pop-3
443/tcp open https
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
2105/tcp open eklogin
3306/tcp open mysql
5900/tcp open vnc
whoever set this up did it in a real hurry.
One: I love them for supporting Linux and releasing the game for it at the same time as the windos version.
Two: Don't forget that the toolkit, i.e. the parts that you need to create your own campaign, are currently windos only.
Reasons are some missing tool (C++ Builder or something, currently in beta for Linux).
For me, the toolkit is the only reason to buy NWN. I don't like (A)D&D, but I'd swallow it if it means I can run online campaigns.
Yeah, you know, fuck due process!
We should just throw criminals in jail and skip all this shitty expensive "trial" business.
Two points:
1) "Innocent until proven guilty" was a concept invented because the other way can very much ruin a humans life. Corporations do not have a life to ruin.
That sounds trollish until you realize that we do throw people into jail before and while they have their trials. Maybe we should stop treating corporations like humans and start treating humans like humans.
2) M$ has been found guilty. Everything going down now is just haggling over the penalty. The minimum I'd expect from a working legal system is that a convicted criminal is stopped from continuing whatever his crime was.
no, it was necessary in europe, and it was being done. it's not like nobody in europe fought against hitler, you know? fuck you, my grandfather died in a nazi prison, so shove your self-rightousness somewhere where it hurts.
Funny, Europeans never seemed able to do that by themselves on their own soil before, I'm not sure why you think they could do it in the US in the future.
necessity
Even after reading the article, I'm not sure whether or not this is real.
Remember: AOL has done well with Windos, which is the OS of choice for most morons out there (and a couple non-morons) mostly because "it came with the 'puter".
There are a variety of reasons why they should/could switch, but also many why they should not. Maybe, just maybe, this was an intentional leak to put some pressure on M$ and get another "put us on the desktop" deal?
I would absolutely love to see the web move back to a "best viewed with any browser" attitude, and AOL switching to Mozilla/Gecko would ensure at least a parity.
Just lets not break open the champagne just yet, hm?
distributed equally between the near east and northern america.
Osama bin Laden's call for Jihad reduced to one sentence.
Oh, you're talking from the other side, sorry, missed that.
are you at war with eurasia or oceania?
it's becoming ever more obvious that warfare is domestic rather than foreign politics. being a european I just hope that you make another revolution before this time we have to come over to your site of the atlantic to get rid of the fascists.
the problem is that they aren't used and not advertised *at all*.
/. would point a story to, say, www.something.god, thousands of people would suddenly learn about opennic, and a few dozen will probably "install" it.
I have the opennic root into my dns here. I have never encountered a hyperlink pointing me to a place in one of those TDLs. (aside from the examples on the opennic webpage) not once.
the best way to get people to use them is to advertise them better. if
did anyone else notice that there are almost no comments about the box itself, just tons of comments about other Linux-based firewalls?
has anyone ever seen the box, used it, witnessed a demo, anything? or knows some more details, like pricing, which aren't immediatly apparent from the website?
if so, please share your knowledge.
I put my bets on arrogance - they really did (still do) believe they're the lords of the world and can do anything. Obviously, they've been mistaken.
On the other option: According to various sources, 300-500 or over 1000 africans, most of them innocent civilians, were killed. Is that not enough or why are you talking about artillery strikes into a city ???
I guess you've seen the movie once too often. It's interesting to compare US and international reviews of Black Hawk Down. All US reviews I've seen go roughly along those lines, while the vast majority of international reviews points out that the actual events (to the best of our knowledge) where quite different - and much less heroic.
Almost all non-US reviews point out that Black Hawk Down is such an obvious piece of war propaganda that it almost hurts. So while we're at it with pointing out the heroism (perceived or real), let's not forget what then-president Bill Clinton said about the Mogadischu disaster, calling it "one of the darkest hours" of his presidency.
Maybe he just wasn't as much a war-monger as the current one.
> (If I knew what percentage of the world's
> population used computers on the internet
> regularly, this would be more meaningful, but
> I'll take a guess and say 33%.
you must be joking. about 70% of the world population can't even read and write. half of the world population is on the brink of starvation.
industry sources speak about around 600 mio. computers-in-use at the end of 2001 (c-i-a.com). that would give 10% of the world population a computer, except that it counts business machines, too, which outnumber privately-owned machines by several factors. and the vast majority of business machines will not be internet connected.
isc.org speaks of 125 mio internet connected hosts (july 2001), their definition being "hosts advertised in DNS". this may be several machines for a single DNS entry or - more likely - one or a few machines for many DNS entries (large hosting centers).
so we don't have any good figures, but I'd take bets that 33% is a tremendous exaggeration. even for the US, just over 50% of households own a PC with internet connection. in those parts of the world that contain the majority of the population, most homes don't have electricity or plumbing. I'd be surprised if 33% of the world population even knew what "the internet" is.
> If anything Unix needs to push it over the top
> as far as a secure server operating systems is
> the ability to tell the OS that "This File can
> never be deleted and can only be appended to by
> Postmaster. Forever. No matter what. Even if I
> want to get rid of it later." If I could give my
> clints that, they would jump to UNIX no matter
> what hurdels thay had to jump
man chattr
this functionality has been in UNIX for years. it isn't used much, though.
I'm happily breaking the law according to Valenti every time I rent a DVD (I don't buy many. I own maybe 6 or 7). I use non-licensed DVD players exclusively (VLC mostly).
I also still have my decss page up, as ever. I don't see a problem here. if I didn't care for DVDs, there would be no need to protest or hack it.
in fact, people are still busy hacking it. vlc is supposed to have ogle's menu support soon, and a german hacker is close to having the ability to replace the subtitles with anything you want.
there's just one thing the gov can do about network security: promote crypto.
as long as we have unencrypted protocols, we will never be secure.
of course, there are tons of other issues, such as shoody applications, the usual bugs even in good ones, low-level exploits such as the argus one, lazy admins not patching their systems, etc., etc. - but the gov can't do anything about any of those.
if al qaida shut down all US international internet connections, most telephone lines and destroyed the main money transfer institutes - how long would it take until bush is on the air talking about a terrorist attack?
taking a whole country offline. wow.
I'm sure the perspectives are different in a country where most people don't know where their next meal will be coming from, but from a geekish perspective, that's incredible.
not only does it show just how much the internet has moved away from the initial highly resistant setup, it also shows that technical dangers (including physical loss of connectivity due to the line ceasing to exist after a bombing) aren't the only ones you face.
the article also shows that we're not talking about a "mommy, I can't surf porn anymore" situation. the countries largest employer has been destroyed, money transfers that lots of ordinary people rely on are frozen, human aids groups have lost contact to the outside world.
I see exactly one country that engages in terrorist activities, and it ain't afghanistan or iraq.
about a year ago, when first previews with more than just some marketing hype came around, Halo was the next step in FPS gaming.
let's see - it had a persistent, massive-multiplayer online world, a solid storyline driving an amazing outdoor graphics engine. and there were rumours that it was going to be released for windos, Mac and Linux - simultaneously.
then, bungie got bought.
when Halo finally comes to the PC in summer 2002, it will be yet another FPS, as all the really innovative concepts have been removed. the graphics will also be much less amazing given the amount of time that has passed.
all that wouldn't be catastrophic, if it weren't for the fact that 90% of those who were starving for Halo earlier this year have been alienated.
first the Mac and Linux users by bungie being acquired by none else then microsoft. the bungie forums were aflame in Mac users who felt somewhere between sold and raped.
then, all those looking for the "next generation" game were pissed of by waiting about a year longer than was originally said, during which time Halo's graphics and physics engines have dwindled from "revolutionary" to "quite nice".
and finally, everyone looking for the next step in FPS gaming, in the sense of more depth in gameplay than just kill-em-all, will have to look for some other place. sorry, Halo is just another shooter, try again next year.
frankly, selling the game as part of a bundle is, IMHO, the only chance it has to break even. some idiot has systematically destroyed its fanbase, and because of the early marketing offense, almost everyone who'd pay money for Halo *was* a part of the fanbase.
let's hope someone takes that which has been taken out of the game, i.e. all the *really* great parts, such as the persistent world, and makes a game around those.
I'm so happy about this ruling. if yahoo in the US is not bound by french law, then surely /me in Germany is not bound by silly US laws like the DMCA, right?
uh, right?
why is it that I have this feeling that this knife doesn't cut both ways? or will I be receiving a court document soon (to add to the other 1000 or so pages) that'll tell me I'm dismissed from the California DeCSS suit?
not holding my breath. the ruling is, of course, obvious. at least until the hague convention gets passed, which will invalidate it and make all those silly foreign lawsuits enforceable locally. that will be a day! finally you can sue everyone, everywhere for pretty much every imaginable reason.
needless to say we'll see another "groundswell" of support for microsoft.
question: will there be any consequences if its found out, say, three months later that 80% of the pro-M$ comments were paid for by emperor bill the 3rd? e.g. can the court decide to retroactively kill the settlement if it was fooled into accepting it?
a little overlooked game, but extremely well received by the hard-core strategy gamers (wargamers, tabletop players, etc) - Combat Mission. it's got an ugly website but the game is extremely good. three main points:
a) it does a ton of calculations to take into account as much as possible. e.g. wind speeds, weather, angle and location of hits on a tank, even the fact that pretty much every bullet/armour combination is unique.
b) it hides all that complexity from the user. if you don't want to know, all you really need to know is click a few buttons.
c) it is fully 3D. not the pseudo 3D of starcraft - you can really hide behind small hills. you can even go for a "hull down" (turret of your tank looks over the hill = free line of fire, but the tank itself is protected by the hill).
they've been discussing a Linux port several times in the forums. afaik there weren't enough people interested to make it financially feasable. but they are working on Combat Mission 2 now - so go there and tell them you want a Linux version.
Combat Mission rules. its the *only* reason I still have a windos partition.