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DC Gamer Club / EXPIRED -GoG excellent deal on the Deponia Trilogy
« on: November 15, 2014, 04:51 PM »If you're into this sort of adventure game, it's a really good deal.
I just bit.
UPDATE : Offer has expired.
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About: This War of Mine is the first game that lets you experience war not as a soldier, but as a group of civilians in a besieged city, struggling with a constant threat of disease, starvation and death, either from hardship, a sniper's bullet or at the hands of bandits. Do whatever it takes to survive - without destroying your souls, if possible.
The pace of the game is imposed by the day and night cycle. During the day snipers outside stop you from leaving your refuge, so you need to focus on maintaining your hideout: crafting, trading and taking care of survivors. At night, take one of your civilians on a mission to scavenge through a set of unique locations for items that will help you stay alive.
Experience war from a completely new angle: play as civilians trying to survive
Forge emotional bonds with your characters
Inspired by real events
The aim of the game is to get your group of civilians to survive through the war or if they all die the game will end. Each time you play the game you are assigned a random group of characters. Not only is this random but the length of the play-through is random, sometimes the war can last 30 days other times it can last months like in real life the length of a war is never certain. Both the location on the map and the things you find there are randomly generated too, which ensures replay-ability so each play-through you have will differ in some way.
I certainly feel that the games vision has been achieved. As a video game it hits all the right marks, solid mechanics, great art and sound but what tops it for me is the events and it's sandbox nature. Not only are you creating your own story as you go through but it's a deeply meaningful one. The game has both feel good experiences and experiences that make you sick to your stomach. Through the characters, events and game play a powerful message is sent to you as the player. I grew attached to every character I had in my party and the people I met. The whole game was a gripping experience that left me as a gamer wanting more but as a human being truly distraught at the realities of civilian life in a war torn city. For all these reasons and more This War Of Mine has easily become one of my favorite games of the year and is probably my indie game of the year by leaps and bounds. There is a lot of mature content in the game so it's certainly not for younger audiences but for everyone else I certainly would say to pick it up and experience it for yourself.
Gamer Gate: Three Stages to Obit
Posted By Clark On October 21, 2014 @ 12:09 pm
A lot of things been written about Gamer Gate. Some of them wrong, some of them stupid, some of them both.
A lot of the confusion (both accidental and malicious) is because Gamer Gate is three separate things clustered together under one name. <more>
Ten Short Rants About #GamerGate
by Ken White · October 26, 2014
If you know what #GamerGate is, I don't have to tell you. If you don't know what #GamerGate is, any description I give you will be attacked by hordes of partisans saying that I have described it unfairly and that the sources I have linked are biased. So I'm going to treat you, dear readers, as if you know what it is. Clark wrote a post about it last week. My take is different. I'm not going to offer you a timeline or an attempt at a definitive "what happened" or "who is right." Instead I'm going to rant about ten ways that this controversy illuminates how we're screwed up. <more>
Landing syndication rights to The Simpsons was a huge deal for the FXX network, and it's trying to make the absolute most out of them. It's now made every single episode of the show available to stream online and through apps for iOS and Android. They'll also be available to stream through the FXNow app for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, Apple TV, and select smart TVs and other streaming boxes. A cable subscription with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or several other US providers is required, but streaming episodes is free beyond that.
The streaming service is being called Simpsons World, and FXX is loading it up with clips, quotes, and playlists designed to help viewers explore the show's catalog. It'll even display the current popularity of each episode across each season, as well as how many views they have. It's clear that a good amount of time was spent tailoring this service to the show, and that should make it a pretty appealing way for a lot of people to start streaming.
Jack Bruce, legendary Cream bassist, dies
Cream co-founder passes away, aged 71
Will GrovesOctober 25, 2014, 17:39 UTC
Jack Bruce, singer, bassist and co-founder of '60s titans Cream has died aged 71, of liver disease.
Bruce's death was announced on his website and confirmed by Claire Singers, his publicist, who said "He died today at his home in Suffolk surrounded by his family."
His family have also issued a statement: "It is with great sadness that we, Jack's family, announce the passing of our beloved Jack: husband, father, granddad, and all round legend. The world of music will be a poorer place without him but he lives on in his music and forever in our hearts."
ownCloud Ubuntu Package Affected By Multiple Critical Security Issues, Nobody To Fix It
Author: Andrew | Date: Friday, October 24, 2014
ownCloud developer Lukas Reschke has sent an email to the Ubuntu Devel mailing list, requesting that ownCloud (server) is removed from the Ubuntu repositories because the package is old and there are multiple critical security bugs for which no fixes have been backported. He adds that:
"Those security bugs allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain complete control about the web server process".
However, packages can't be removed from the Ubuntu repositories for an Ubuntu version that was already released, that's why the package was removed from Ubuntu 14.10 (2 days before its release) but it's still available in the Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04 repositories (ownCloud 6.0.1 for Ubuntu 14.04 and ownCloud 5.0.4 for Ubuntu 12.04, while the latest ownCloud version is 7.0.2).
Furthermore, the ownCloud package is in the universe repository and software in this repository "WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security team" (you should see this if you take a look at your /etc/apt/sources.list file) so it's up to someone from the Ubuntu community to step up and fix it. "If nobody does that, then it unfortunately stays the way it is", says Marc Deslauriers, Security Tech Lead at Canonical.
You can follow the discussion @ Ubuntu Devel mailing list.
So, until (if) someone fixes this, if you're using ownCloud from the Ubuntu repositories, you should either remove it or upgrade to the latest ownCloud from its official repository, hosted by the openSUSE Build Service <more>
John Oliver Has The Solution To The Supreme Court's Refusal To Videotape Supreme Court Hearings: Dogs
from the not-cats? dept
For many years, we've discussed the pure ridiculousness of the Supreme court's adamant refusal to allow cameras in the courtroom, along with the Justices' questionable justifications of the ban. Now it appears that John Oliver has taken up the issue as well, but unlike those just whining about it, Oliver (thanks to the resources of HBO) has a possible "solution." Dogs.
Oliver starts out mocking Justice Antonin Scalia's reason for barring cameras: that people would just see 15- or 30-second clips from the arguments, taking things out of context. Of course, as Oliver points out, that makes absolutely no sense, since the Supreme Court already releases audio of the hearings, and thus we already do hear the same clips -- it's just that they're generally paired with artistic renderings of the Justices instead of the actual video.
His solution -- using "an almost immoral amount of resources" -- is to present video representations of the entire Supreme Court... using dogs (and a couple of birds in supporting roles). And, Oliver claims, they're making those videos freely available to any other news provider who would like to create complete reenactments of any court case in a way that is cute and guaranteed to draw more attention than the court renderings, or, hell, actual videos if they were ever allowed.
Can an Idea Be Dangerous?
An Australian festival aims to shock and provoke its audience. Does it go too far?
Kathy Gilsinan Aug 31 2014, 12:08 PM ET
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What does the notion that “cat videos will save journalism” have in common with the claim that “women are sexual predators?”
According to the organizers of this weekend's Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, these ideas are both dangerous. The festival, which just wrapped up its sixth installment, offers a roster of speakers on topics that could alternately be described as gently counterintuitive or, in the words of co-curator Simon Longstaff, “offensive, obnoxious, fearsome, [or] dangerously stupid.”
And while even journalists don't tend to seek shelter at the sight of a cat video, what makes all of these ideas “dangerous” to the festival’s organizers is their potential to challenge. “The original intention was to look at things that are difficult to discuss and are not discussed, that go against mainstream thought and opinion,” co-curator Ann Mossop tells me from Sydney. These can include big ideas about freedom, life, and death, or ideas that challenge everyday behavior by arguing, for example, that recycling is basically a waste of time. An idea could pose danger to any number of targets, be they a set of beliefs, an industry, or the very structure of society.
... it's not just designers. I received a ton of responses from writers, cartoonists, architects and people in other professions who get asked to work for free. I don't know what it is. Maybe people think that if you went to art school you don't understand money?
How They Did It: Jesse Zwick Dives Straight into About Alex
By Jesse Zwick on August 13, 2014
Two years of working on a movie—three weeks to prep it. How Jesse Zwick found himself making his directorial debut, the seven-person ensemble piece About Alex, with high-profile actors and no film school buddies to call upon for favors.
——————————————————–
Writing a movie, not a script
A couple of years into my attempted life as a screenwriter—after several scripts had received the damning praise of being “good writing samples”—I became convinced that the best thing I could do for my career was to stop waiting for someone to hire me and, instead, write a very contained story that I could make on any budget. In other words, I decided to stop writing scripts and instead write a movie,...<more>
Delaware Passes Law Which Makes eBooks and Other Digital Content Inheritable
19 August, 2014 - Nate Hoffelder
Do you know that clause in the TOS for the Kindle Store and many other digital content stores which says that the content is licensed to you and is nontransferable?
The state of Delaware just negated that clause (in part).
Last week Governor Jack Markell signed House Bill (HB) 345, “Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act”, giving heirs and the executors to estates the same rights over digital content which they would have over physical property. ...
July 31, 2014 | By Peter Eckersley
Mitro Releases a New Free & Open Source Password Manager
Good security practices require us to use different passwords for most or all of the websites and services we interact with. For accounts of any significance, those also need to be strong passwords of one form or another. But if you combine those two requirements (one password per site, most or all passwords are strong) then remembering all of your passwords requires an inhuman display of memory. Of course, when we need to perform inhuman tasks, we use software. And in this case, we use password stores and generators of various sorts. There are a lot of options for password managers out there, but if like us you prefer all of your security-sensitive code to be free, auditable software, then the choices are more limited.
Today, the team from a password manager startup called Mitro will be joining Twitter. As part of the deal, Mitro will be releasing the source to its client and server code under the GPL. We're very pleased to see this happening, and will be advising the Mitro team on how best to turn their startup's code into a sustainable free/open source software project.
Mitro is distinctive amongst free/open source password managers in that it's architected around cloud storage. For security, the online password databases are encrypted with client-side keys derived from your master password. For availability, they are mirrored across three cloud storage providers. With this design (documented here), passwords can be synchronized across all of your computers and devices with minimal effort. They can also be shared across teams and organizations. For those reasons, we're excited about the possibility that Mitro may turn into a valuable piece of infrastructure for the community.
Mitro has committed to funding continued operations of its servers until at least the end of 2014. If their code proves to be secure and popular with the community, we will be advising them on how to create a sustainable home for that infrastructure.
Mitro is already quite a mature and usable system. You can try it today and if you like it, tell your friends.1
Hacking on Mitro
Mitro will succeed if it has an enthusiastic userbase and developer community. Aside from trying out the software, there are lots of things you can do to contribute:
Report any problems — there is a new bug tracker on github, so if you run into a bug or a web site that doesn’t work reliably, please let them know. You can also always tweet @MitroCo.
Review the code, fix bugs — Mitro is free and open source; if you know Javascript or Java, you can improve it. Mitro has had some professional security auditing in the past, but if you're a security researcher, extra eyes looking for and reporting vulnerabilities are valuable.
Contribute documentation — Mitro has some limited documentation on Github. The Mitro team would welcome any contributions to help others use it effectively.
Update, 2014-07-31: revised post to link to Mitro's announcement, and clarify that while the Mitro team is joining Twitter, Mitro itself will continue as an independent corporation.
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1. For the time being, we don't recommend using the Android variant of Mitro; the Android app is likely to be vulnerable to password theft by malicious apps because of security problems that follow inherently from its use of the Android clipboard. We are presently researching ways to work around this problem.
DRM Performs Another Miracle, Turns Purchased Childrens Books Into Nothing At All
from the the-magic-of-technology,-in-Biblical-terms dept
An anonymous Techdirt reader sends in the now-unsurprising news that another publisher and its DRM are declaring customers' purchased e-goods null and void. This time it's Scholastic, publisher of many youth and teen titles, as well as the long-running host of numerous parental wallet-emptying book fairs.
According to Scholastic's 2012 press release, Storia (the DRMed ebook collection currently affected) allowed students and teachers to purchase ebooks and share them with up to 10 family members/students via its proprietary app. (The app is the DRM. Scholastic purchases don't work outside of it. To quote its now-vanished FAQs page: "Storia eBooks are designed with unique learning features and enrichments that make them readable only while using the Storia eReading app.") It also included enhanced content to encourage readers to dig deeper into unfamiliar subjects and allow teachers to connect with downloaded books via Smartboards and other computers. All in all, not a terrible product and one that comes from a particularly trusted name in academic publishing.
At least Scholastic is being upfront about what's happening to people's purchases.
The switch to streaming means that eBooks you've previously purchased may soon no longer be accessible.
But Scholastic is at least trying to mitigate the damage. Some purchases will stay active in users' accounts if customers follow this one simple trick. (Sorry.)
You may be able to continue using your eBooks by making sure to open them on a bookshelf at least once by October 15.
Unfortunately, there's that troublesome word "may" stuck right in the middle of the damage control. Scholastic's site offers no odds on which books will still work and which purchased items will simply vanish. This is likely due to further licensing agreements behind the scenes -- those between Scholastic and authors/other publishers. (Scholastic handles book fair distribution for high-powered franchises like Harry Potter and Goosebumps.) Chances are, the bigger the title, the greater the likelihood of this maneuver not working. Just as Netflix streaming is 90% stuff no one wants to watch, a switch to an unlimited access streaming service will likely result in a.) the disappearance of titles whose upstream publishers are asking for increased licensing fees or b.) the increased upstream licensing fees pricing Scholastic out of many schools/parents' budgets.
But Scholastic is going further than most companies in the same position would, and doing it proactively (rather than waiting for the angry wisdom of the crowd to shame them into acting like they care).
Upon your request, we will refund the cost of all Storia eBooks you've purchased. Call Customer Service at 1-855-STORIA1 by August 1, 2015.
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Pipelight is a wrapper for using Windows plugins in Linux browsers and therefore giving you the possibility to access services which are otherwise not available for Linux users. Typical examples of such services are Netflix and Amazon Instant, which both use the proprietary browser plugin Silverlight. These services cannot normally be used on Linux since this plugin is only available for Windows, and the only open source alternative (Moonlight) is lacking support for DRM.
Pipelight helps you access these services by using the original Silverlight plugin directly in your browser, all while giving you a better hardware acceleration and performance than a virtual machine. Besides Silverlight, you can also use a variety of other plugins that are supported by Pipelight. Take a look at the installation page for a complete list.
Pipelight uses a patched wine version to provide a windows environment to the plugins, but you do not need to worry about this as Pipelight will take care of installing, configuring and updating all supported plugins. From the perspective of the browser these plugins will behave just like any other normal Linux plugin after you have enabled them.
Who's this for?
Roll20 is a virtual tabletop. So it's all about taking any game that you traditionally play on a table (especially pen and paper RPGs and board games), and bringing it online. Play with friends who've moved across the country, or find a completely new gaming group online. Roll20 is easy to use, so dive in and get started!
Is this really free?
Yes! Roll20 is absolutely free to use for both GMs and players. Initial development of Roll20 was funded via Kickstarter, and we do offer totally optional supporter accounts for those who want access to additional perks (like more storage space and direct access to the Dev team) to help fund further improvements. But even if you're on a Base account for free, you'll still have access to everything you need to run your game -- unlimited campaigns and players, with access to all the great features listed on this page.
There's just a few days left to grab unlimited enrollments for $9!
Learnable memberships are normally $29/month. And with unlimited course enrollments, all SitePoint ebooks, 4,500+ tutorials, and quick answers from the experts, we think it's an incredible value.
But we've heard the requests for a cheaper plan, and today we have an awesome deal: The $9 Plan.
Unlimited Enrollments, Now $9
Join now and pay just $9/month to access our entire library of web dev courses and ebooks—online and on demand. There's no contract, so you can pause or cancel at anytime.
We've never offered a monthly price this low, and it's not available outside of this email so please use the special links in this email to purchase.