Comment Damn it, foiled again (Score 1) 552
I'm moving house next week and that was going to bring my number of house moves equal to slashdot owners since I've been a member.
And then this happens.
Damn you all!
Comment Re:Seems ridiculously easy (Score 3, Informative) 41
It's not that simple.
You can't track from 'your house' to 'your work'. The tracking data is for London's bike hire scheme. These are picked up from specific 'docking points' around the city, and are returned to any docking point.
So you can only get 'station to station' data.
Comment Re:Can of worm !! (Score 2) 627
Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements contain specific clauses that allow Microsoft to give notice ( 90 days I think ) that they are going to come on site and perform a software audit. You don't have to sign these agreements, but then you lose a whole load of benefits ( pricing, downgrade rights, etc )
We currently have a customer that has been put on notice by Microsoft that they are going to be subject to a random audit. We have 4 weeks to supply a full list of software in use, list of purchased licenses and other evidenced documentation that they are in compliance. If MS aren't satisfied, they can send a team in to do an audit.
This type of thing applies to all sorts of domains. IT, finance, insurance. If you look, you'll find any large business has signed countless contracts that allow for on-site inspections to ensure compliance.
D.
Comment Re:Wonderful Support... (Score 2) 627
Wait... With Windows, you are beholden to HP to fix the driver, but.... with, Linux HP would be able to fix driver ?
Wonderful.
And I would lay money that a driver/firmware upgrade solved the issue, rather than HP deploying a brand-new, non-regression tested driver to a high volume site that was due to go live in under 12 days.
D.
Ubisoft's Constant Net Connection DRM Confirmed 631
A few weeks ago we discussed news of Ubisoft's DRM plans for future games, which reportedly went so far as to require a constant net connection, terminating your game if you get disconnected for any reason. Well, it's here; upon playing review copies of the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII, PCGamer found the DRM just as annoying as you might expect. Quoting:
"If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game. All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected. The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers.' The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen — all my progress since it last autosaved was lost."
Blizzard Previews Revamped Battle.net 188
Blizzard updated the official StarCraft II site today with a preview of how the revamped Battle.net will function. They emphasize the social features, competitive matchmaking system, and the ease of sharing mods and maps. Quoting:
"When the legacy Battle.net service introduced support for user-created mods such as DotA, Tower Defense, and many others, these user-created game types became immensely popular. But while Battle.net supported mods at a basic level, integration with tools and the mod community wasn't where it needed to be for a game releasing in 2010. The new Battle.net service will see some major improvements in this area. StarCraft II will include a full-featured content-creation toolkit — the same tools used by the StarCraft II design team to create the single-player campaign. To fully harness the community's mapmaking prowess, Battle.net will introduce a feature called Map Publishing. Map Publishing will let users upload their maps to the service and share them with the rest of the community immediately on the service. This also ties in with the goal of making Battle.net an always-connected experience — you can publish, browse, and download maps directly via the Battle.net client. Finding games based on specific mods will also be much easier with our all-new custom game system, placing the full breadth of the modding community's efforts at your fingertips."
Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access 497
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."
Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting 390
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Microsoft has allowed Visual Studio users to define arbitrary tab widths, often to the dismay of those viewing the resultant code in other editors. With VS 2010, it appears that they have taken the next step of forcing tab width to be the same as the indent size in code. Two-space tabs anyone?"
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