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Comment Re:Doesn't everybody do that? (Score 2, Informative) 397

by Kalroth (#34172444) Attached to: Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases

When game developers can see that people are willing to pay for beta access to games, what is their incentive to ship a polished game? Most consoles have online connectivity as well, so patching up later is usually not a problem either. I don't see this changing anytime soon, with quarterly budgets being more important than quality.

As for Fallout: New Vegas; the bugs were totally expected from anyone that played Fallout 3, which was also full of bugs. And it is not just gameplay bugs, the entire engine is extremely buggy and the game was neigh unplayable for a lot of PC players, but thankfully a very clever developer at http://www.transgaming.com/business/swiftshader made a custom D3D9.dll which corrects some of the engine bugs (like NOP all debug calls, ignore some buggy shaders, etc.):
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778 for the nVidia version.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34970 for the ATI version.
(The custom dll was made for Fallout 3 and not Fallout: New Vegas. Yet it fixes the same issues in both games.)

Note: the game is very, very good -- without the bugs. Too bad that it is the community that has to fix the bugs.

Submission + - Apple Sues Maker Of Cables, Batteries (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Hkibtimes
Hkibtimes writes: Apple is cracking down on third-party accessories, filing a patent-infringement lawsuit against TKT, a California company that makes external batteries.

The suit, originally filed last month, accuses Sanho of violating a set of six patents that cover the magnetic connector, called MagSafe, for power cables that Apple introduced for its Macintosh laptop computers in 2006, as well as the 30-pin connector used on iPods and the associated power cables.

Submission + - The global church under attack

Submitted by berbmit
berbmit writes: "... the widest gathering of Christians in the history of the Church, today announced that their internet communication to the outside world had been hacked"

I guess a high concentration of Christians is not enough to prevent attack (http://www.lausanne.org/news-releases/cyber-attack-hits-global-church-gathering.html). The 2010 Lausanne conference, the largest gathering of church leaders, had their ability to stream the conference to other centers around the world compromised by hacking. Initial suspicions are directed at China (http://www.outreachmagazine.com/blogs/lausanne/3864-Lausanne-Congress-Cyber-Attack.html), who also denied their national delegates permission to attend (http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2010/10/lausanne_delega.html).

Apparently two Indian IT support staff from Bangelore, managed to sort it out after two days.

Comment Re:Acronym courtesy missing... (Score 1) 128

by Kalroth (#33891914) Attached to: Valve Announces <em>Dota 2</em>

Please, if you encounter new acronyms or new words on the internet, follow common sense and try searching for them. Google is especially helpful in this regard.

Odds are that if you don't know what "DotA" means, then you wont know what "Defense of the Ancients" means anyways.
PC Games (Games)

Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access 497

Posted by Soulskill from the this-will-go-over-well dept.
Following up on our discussion yesterday of annoying game distribution platforms, Ubisoft has announced the details of their Online Services Platform, which they will use to distribute and administer future PC game releases. The platform will require internet access in order to play installed games, saved games will be stored remotely, and the game you're playing will even pause and try to reconnect if your connection is lost during play. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven't experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a WiFi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there's the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."
Games

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

Posted by Soulskill from the blame-it-on-the-torrents dept.
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."
Television

Submission + - In Norway, prisoners take part in TV debates (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
Sheen
Sheen writes: "Prisoners take part in a live pre-election tv debate, airing their concerns and opinions. They are also allowed to vote. After the show aired, in an online chat most of the chatters said one of the inmates was the winner of the debate."

Submission + - Russia's New Holiday: Programmer's Day (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Russia's President Medvedev has decreed a new holiday for his country: Programmer's Day. Appropriately enough, it will be celebrated on the 256th day of the year: September 13th (September 12th for a leap year). Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions? Should the rest of the world follow suit?"

Submission + - Sam Ramji, Microsoft's Open Source Guru Moving On (typepad.com)

Submitted by
barking_at_airplanes
barking_at_airplanes writes: "Some called him crazy 3-1/2 years ago when he joined Microsoft to run the Open Source Software Lab but he endured and made real differences to how Microsoft treats Open Source and how open source people now view Microsoft. Sam Ramji is now heading back to Silicon Valley to join a Cloud Computing startup. Sam comments in his announcement:
46 months later, I am amazed at the changes that have occurred for the company, for the team I belonged to, and the sentiments of the industry.
It's a statement that 46 months ago few Slashdotters would have thought could come true! With Sam leaving, can Microsoft's positive momentum into Open Source continue successfully?"

Submission + - When click of a mouse cost £2,000 (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
pthompson
pthompson writes: "The BBC has reported how an online banking customer accidentally transferred £2K into the wrong account. I am a command-line fan, and wouldn't trust a mouse for, say, dragging-and-dropping files between NFS shares due to the risk of this kind of mouse-slip having undesired results. Are we too reliant on the mouse? Do you have any examples of mouse-slip causing problems in a Systems Admin role?"
Space

Submission + - Risk Aversion as a Barrier to Space Exploration (riehlworldview.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Writing in Popular Mechanics, Rand Simberg argues that space exploration and risk-aversion don't mix.

Everyone has noted that the bottom line of the report is that NASA doesn't have enough money to both go beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) and continue the other politically mandated missions. But it's worth noting a couple other aspects of the summary: From the very beginning of the document, there are two disturbing statements. First: "Human safety can never be absolutely assured, but throughout this report, it is treated as a sine qua non. It is not discussed in extensive detail because any concepts falling short in human safety have simply been eliminated from consideration." Second, in its list of fundamental questions: "On what should the next heavy-lift launch vehicle be based?" Both of these statements (though more subtly in the case of the second) are about risk, and NASA's costly and extreme aversion to it ever since Apollo. Recall the famous words of Gene Kranz (that he never actually said, despite the fact that he used it as a title for his autobiography) from the movie Apollo 13: "Failure is not an option." The problem with that is, as some have responded, that success gets very expensive. This is the cost of risk aversion.

It does seem that the early, less risk-averse NASA accomplished a lot more. But can our political system today tolerate things that don't work the first time?
Media

Submission + - Blur and Radiohead join forces to battle Governmen

Submitted by
TheWin32Guy
TheWin32Guy writes: "The telegraph.co.uk reports: "Blur and Radiohead are among a host of bands calling on the Government to abandon proposals to cut off the internet connections of people who illegally download music. "

From the article:

Ed O'Brien, the Radiohead guitarist, said: "My generation grew up with the point of view that you pay for your music. Every generation has a different method. "

"File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate's music. You go, 'I like that, I'll go and buy the album'. Or, âyou know what, I'll go and see them live'. What's going on is a huge paradigm shift."

Nick Mason, drummer with Pink Floyd, said: "The last thing we want to be doing is going to war with our fan base. File sharing means a new generation of fans for us.""

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