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Desktops (Apple)

StarCraft Is Now Free, Nearly 20 Years After Its Release (techcrunch.com) 239

Posted by BeauHD from the free-for-all dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Nearly two decades after its 1998 release, StarCraft is now free. Legally! Blizzard has just released the original game -- plus the Brood War expansion -- for free for both PC and Mac. You can find it here. Up until a few weeks ago, getting the game with its expansion would've cost $10-15 bucks. The company says they've also used this opportunity to improve the game's anti-cheat system, add "improved compatibility" with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and fix a few long lasting bugs. So why now? The company is about to release a remastered version of the game in just a few months, its graphics/audio overhauled for modern systems. Once that version hits, the original will probably look a bit ancient by comparison -- so they might as well use it to win over a few new fans, right?
Cloud

Minefold Launches Minecraft Game Hosting Service 67

Posted by Soulskill from the still-waiting-on-minceraft-hosting dept.
itwbennett writes "If you drew the short straw among your Minecraft-playing friends and ended up running the game server, this news is for you. A YCombinator-funded startup called Minefold will handle all the server admin tasks for just $5 a month. 'Minefold isn't the first firm to offer servers dedicated to game hosting (see for example gameservers.com) but as far as I know they're the first to structure things so each player pays his own way,' writes Peter Smith. 'In other words, if I want to set up a Call of Duty 4 server at Gameservers I can, but it'll cost me (for example) $15.95/month for a 16 player server. So I pay Gameservers and I get my buddies all to send me a few bucks to defray the costs. It's a messy system. Using the Minefold model, everyone would pay $5/month to play wherever they want. On my server today, on someone else's server tomorrow and on their own server the day after that.'"

Comment Re:ask a mechanic (Score 1) 672

by quietlikeachurch (#39136633) Attached to: Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?

i have to say (on the topic of 'hotter-burning' gas hurting air-cooled engines) that if you keep up on your timing and valve-timing adjustments, and run 93 from the pump, those old air-cooled engines will be fine. hi-po vw, porsche, corvair, tatra, etc. may burn some valves, but prolly not. if you're running hard you will get some nice bronze seats installed, and have 'em staked. right?

Comment Re:Municipal broadband is on its way, then (Score 1) 397

by quietlikeachurch (#38241662) Attached to: Web Usage-Based Billing On Its Way

I put off owning a smartphone due to crazy pricing until a little while ago.

There are now a couple of carriers that offer plans with unlimited data/email/texting + limited minutes for a price comparable to other
carriers' unlimited talk minutes + limited everything else ($30..ish, maybe a bit more). If you need more minutes, you pay 10-20-30
extra bucks, depending.

Android phone, no contract. Just shop around a bit and you'll find them.

Comment Re:Slackware (Score 1) 798

by quietlikeachurch (#37903588) Attached to: Are Power Users Too Cool For Ubuntu Unity?

Aww.. let's be fair here.

Slackware is a fantastic distro. If, as a novice, you want to tinker and fail and tinker some more and gain experience with the inner workings of Linux, Slackware
is a great choice. If you're a pro, Slack is stable as hell and you already know what to do. Does it work 'out of the box' for absolute beginners who just want to point
and click? Not yet (though it's getting better).

I don't see it as cool/leet/etc. It is, IMO, honest. Like a box of Lego - you have the stuff, now try to do something cool with it.

Then again, I love figuring out how stuff works. Slackware + Fluxbox = hours upon hours of frustration, high blood pressure, cold sweats, and finally the reward of understanding how all of it goes together. :)

Comment I'm all set! (Score 5, Funny) 249

by quietlikeachurch (#37858730) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Are You Haunting Your House This Hallowe'en?

My front yard has three years' worth of overgrowth (one of the bushes has an old saw stuck in it), the lamppost
bulbs flicker, and there are real spiders and crickets and spider-crickets everywhere. Plus, I have a derelict car in
the driveway and the front porch is littered with beer cans and errant cigarette butts. Perfect.

Who wants some candy?
Oracle

Oracle To Bring Dtrace To Linux 155

Posted by timothy from the dplane-dplane-no-that's-fantasy-island dept.
mvar writes "Dtrace co-author Adam Leventhal writes on his blog about Dtrace for Linux: 'Yesterday (October 4, 2011) Oracle made the surprising announcement that they would be porting some key Solaris features, DTrace and Zones, to Oracle Enterprise Linux. As one of the original authors, the news about DTrace was particularly interesting to me, so I started digging. Even among Oracle employees, there's uncertainty about what was announced. Ed Screven gave us just a couple of bullet points in his keynote; Sergio Leunissen, the product manager for OEL, didn't have further details in his OpenWorld talk beyond it being a beta of limited functionality; and the entire Solaris team seemed completely taken by surprise. Leunissen stated that only the kernel components of DTrace are part of the port. It's unclear whether that means just fbt or includes sdt and the related providers. It sounds certain, though, that it won't pass the DTrace test suite which is the deciding criterion between a DTrace port and some sort of work in progress.'"
Government

United States Loses S&P AAA Credit Rating 1239

Posted by timothy from the don't-worry-the-next-19-generations-won't-mind dept.
oxide7 writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's on Friday in an unprecedented reversal of fortune for the world's largest economy. S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government's budget deficits and rising debt burden. The move is likely to raise borrowing costs eventually for the American government, companies and consumers."

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