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Comment Re:New trends, new counter-trends (Score 1) 162

by peripatetic_bum (#30021880) Attached to: John Carmack Says No Dedicated Servers For <em>Rage</em>

I've been thinking about this since the MW2 server decision and it does seem to be a slight change in attitude recently.

Games like http://www.torchlightgame.com/, http://www.captainforever.com/ seem to be actively engaging its players in making the game but also expecting us to pay them.

We can't make good open-source games because someone has to stop playing them and DESIGN/CODE them! :)

So I think we are seeing something different and not so different,ie We should expect to pay for the games we play but we should expect much more input than the big game makers have been giving us lately. I think torchlight points the way: using opensource tools as much as possible but this leaves the ability to modify the game as much as we want but we should expect to pay for it. I think lately we have been expecting everything for free and as programs require more and more effort we should expect to pay for them. ie, the days of paying once and getting mods and upgrades and new content for free Are Over but I know that if I really enjoy playing a game, I think I would continue to support it. again Im not sure this if very much different then the DLC over 360/PS3 but the the difference would be that we wouldn't be limited to just the gamemaker, ie anyone could make mods with these quasi-open-source games and charge for them if they wanted.

anyway I hope Im making sense, the kids are up too early today

Comment Uhmmm. Is his research even legal? (Score 1) 895

by peripatetic_bum (#28602881) Attached to: Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him

As far as I understand it, he involved unwilling participants into his research and never informed them of what he was doing so I suspect they never gave him consent.
If people really wanted to punish this guy for being an ass, it's as easy as reporting him to his chair and asking him why he felt he inflict such grief on unwilling participants. I know most research requires that you consent and that's what bothers me most about his ass-hole antics
Biotech

Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever 343

Posted by Soulskill from the working-out-the-bugs dept.
Christina Valencia points us to a Wired story about scientists who plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the population of Dengue-carrying insects. The altered genes cause newly born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed if they are not supplied with a crucial antibiotic. This is a more aggressive approach than the anti-Malaria work we discussed last year. From Wired: "Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die. If the scientists can replicate their results in real field conditions, their technology could kill half of the next generation of dengue mosquitoes, which scientists say would significantly reduce the spread of the disease. If all goes well the company envisions releasing the insects in Malaysia on a large scale in three years."
Windows

Submission + - The pros of upgrading from Vista to XP! (dotnet.org.za) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A reviewer takes on the daunting task of upgrading [sic] from Vista to XP, and gives a very nice breakdown of the Pros and Cons (yes, there are a couple...;)
Microsoft

Submission + - What is Bill Gates learning from Open Source? (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "In the world of Free Open Source Software communities, Microsoft is often viewed as the very epitome of the Cathedral-style model of software production. But is Bill Gates learning from the software development phenomenon that he once compared loosely to communism? In commenting on the results of a Microsoft-commissioned survey of approximately 500 board-level executives about the importance of interpersonal skills versus raw IT coding skills, Gates starts to sound a bit more like a member of the Apache Foundation than the take-no-prisoners king of cut-throat competition: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.' [Emphasis added]. One wonders how long until 'sharing ideas' starts to become 'sharing source' code. Nah. it'll never happen."
Security

Submission + - Is 802.1X for real? If so, how do I pull it off?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been asked by management via auditors and regulatory compliance to deploy an 802.1X wired network at my work. This project has been going on for some time and with little success. The biggest problems we have seen is that the native windows supplicant does not work all that well and completely breaks down if you try to RDP in to a machine (which the support desk does all the time). It also has no support for EAP-TTLS/PAP, which we need as our user accounts are stored in Kerberos (MIT's). I have looked at a few other supplicants from Juniper and Cisco, but then stumbled upon XSupplicant from Open1X and read on their email list today that they have released 2.0 for Windows XP. Doing a little bit more reading I found out that this release comes on the heals of the announcement that Aruba Networks and HP Procurve have joined Open1X and the OpenSEA Alliance along with Extreme Networks, Identity Engines, Infoblox, Ja.net, Symantec, TippingPoint, and Trapeze to further secure network authentication via 802.1X. So with all of these vendors backing XSupplicant, does that mean it is pretty solid? I guess my big questions are, who is deploying 802.1X?, what are people's views of 802.1X? and does it really make the edge of my network more secure or are the auditors just up in the night? Thanks
Graphics

Submission + - Creating the perfect game content creation tool. (blender.org) 1

Submitted by
LetterRip
LetterRip writes: "The team from the Blender and Crystal Space Project Apricot want to know what features would help make Blender the perfect tool for your game content creation work flow. If you would like to turn Blender into your ultimate tool for either creating your original game models, or for adding models for a 'game mod' then please post your request (here or at the blender development forum. The Blender Institutes other major project the open movie Rabbits Revenge (aka Project Peach) has already resulted in some pretty amazing improvements in Blenders tools for creating beautiful fur and for animation."

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