“Microsoft's `My' default for the likes of `My Documents,' etc, will disappear with the arrival of Longhorn”

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

Though... my use of Longhorn will depend on how many games require it.

I'm a bit stuck at the moment. I picked up a cheap laptop for various reasons which I'll not bore you with here. I've got it all hooked up to the network wirelessly and whatnot and it's running XP Home.

It cheerfully will connect to and browse my XP Home desktop's shares no probs, but refuses to have anything to do with the Samba share on the Fedora box (“\\Elmonstro is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found” .

But when I access the Samba share from the desktop it pops up a password login to which I enter my details and get in, so I know it's working to some degree.

What may - or may not - be related is that on the desktop I no longer can reach the “Sharing” tab for folders. It's there for printers, but has disappeared from folders. The existing shares still work, but I can't switch them off.

I wonder if I fiddled with something on the desktop to get it working in the first place and just can't remember what it was...

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“But my focus was on MMOGs; specifically, the no less than 25 new MMOGs in development that will be coming to market over the next 2 years. In this report, I will summarize my impressions of the upcoming titles, including both gameplay and commercial expectations.”

E3 2005 MMOG Report

NCsoft reactivated my City of Heroes account for five days in an attempt to tempt me back:

The recent arrival of Issue #4 and PvP marks a milestone in the history of City of Heroes and we’re celebrating by granting you 5 FREE days of game play! There’s no better time to check out the multitude of new features and updated game content the streets of Paragon City™ have to offer.

From the innovative Costume options of Issue 4, to the Epic Archetypes and Zone Events of Issue 3, to the exciting Zones/Villain Groups/Trials of Issue 2...there’s something new for everyone to enjoy!

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Orson Scott Card on why saying your religion is “Jedi” is a load of codswallop:

“It's one thing to put your faith in a religion founded by a real person who claimed divine revelation, but it's something else entirely to have, as the scripture of your religion, a storyline that you know was made up by a very nonprophetic human being.”

beliefnet: Orson Scott Card on Star Wars and Revenge of the Sith Jedi religion faith force

Why does my Gym have automatic doors to enter, but manual ones to leave?

I finally got around to playing the demo of Psychonauts I downloaded a little while back, and liked it so much I considered purchasing it.

However, it doesn't seem to be on the release schedules - at least, not the PC version anyway. Amazon.co.uk has the Xbox version, but no listing for the PC. Given it's been released in the US since April, this seems odd...

Update - reply from Amazon:

At the moment we do not have any plans to release the PC version of “Psychonauts”. However this may change in future and we would advise you to keep checking on the website.

Update 2 - from Majesco (the publisher), who seemed unconcerned:

The game is very big and will take some time to localize so it will be awhile before it hits your area (and when it does it will be on Xbox, PS2 and PC). It probably won't be sooner than fourth quarter but that's still to be determined. We'll keep you updated as it comes
together.

I mused on why they needed to localise a game in English for the UK...

It's being localized for several territories and must launch at the same time. PC will be included but as I said, it will be a long time. You could always order the US version from a US retailer and have them ship it to you though. EBGames.com and GameStop.com both sell it. DoubleFine.com does too.

I ended up ordering from Doublefine (since they're the developer) - even with the £ dropping a touch, it's only £27 including shipping.

wil-wheaton-is-pooped on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

With news like this:

“Mythic Entertainment announced they've acquired the license and are developing a massively multiplayer version [of Warhammer] planned for release in 2007.”

PC Games: E3 2005: Warhammer Online

Came the complaints like this:

“Why aren't they making a 40k MMORPG! It would make more sense to have a game in a time period that hasn't been exploited to the fullest by other game companies. Being a space marine in the grim future where there is only war would be TIGHT!”

Mythic Acquires MMORPG Warhammer Rights

Whereas I would suggest this is the only option...

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Also, mad props to Amazon for replacing the damaged DVD in the Firefly set even though I'd bought it 60 days ago by shipping out an entire replacement set the same day I emailed them about it.

No... not of the car... (hopefully) short reviews of things I've recently watched/read.

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I'd grant that Malcolm “Malky” Glazer's purchase of all those shares from other equally diehard “Blue Devils” fans is a cause for concern (as well as somewhat amusing for those of us whose teams have already taken a dive into the crapper). And there's something to be said for worrying about the state of football given what can happen when a market leader suddenly needs to work off a lot of debt. But seriously, “sheer pandemonium”? I think we need to save that sort of outrage for real issues, mmmm-kay?

“Manchester United fans opposed to the club takeover bid launched by US businessman Malcolm Glazer have threatened to disrupt Saturday's FA Cup Final, with one supporters group warning the army may be needed to control scenes of "sheer pandemonium".”

Anti-Glazer protests could hit FA Cup final - Yahoo! News

I added Gravatars to the comments - via Rakaz's plugin - so if you sign up there with the same email address you signed up here, you can get your own little image next to your comments. Or you can stick with the default “?” one I knocked up in two minutes in Paint Shop Pro.

I was going to mention how the MPAA's suing of six BitTorrent tracker sites with links to torrents of TV shows was stupid and small-minded, but couldn't really put together anything that didn't wander off into incoherence. In lieu of that, here's an article showing why it's stupid and small-minded (via Warren Ellis).

“The British aficionados of [Battlestar Galactica] provided torrents for each episode within a few hours of each broadcast. Many fans in the US picked them up and watched them; so did many people in Australia.

While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its [US] premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for "word-of-mouth" to spread about Battlestar Galactica.”

Mindjack - Piracy is Good?

Couple of things from Gamespy's early preview of Turbine's renamed Lord of the Rings Online (née Middle-Earth Online) struck me.

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When I first got the FC3 box up and the running I ended up using Rhythmbox to play my ripped choons, mainly because of the two audio players that ended up on there it was the one that hadn't slavishly copied WinAmp. That it had supposedly copied iTunes I didn't find out 'til later.

Anyway, either because it was primarily intended for use under GNOME and I was using KDE or just 'cos, it had a tendency to flake out on random tracks and just stop playing them or, on occasion, crash.

So when I was wandering around the MusicBrainz site and spotted a link to amaroK - “the audio player for KDE” I decided to give it a try. There were some stumbling blocks to overcome initially, in that I had to add a new repository to Apt and a few things had to be downgraded to allow a few requirements to be installed.

It was well worth it though. The interface is very well done and I especially like the “suggested songs” feature that pops up when you're playing a track. In addition it submits to AudioScrobbler itself rather than Rhythmbox's python add-on. Plus I can spell amaroK correctly nearly every time when it takes me a running start to get Rhythmbox right...

There's apparently some fuss over in Star Wars Galaxies resulting from a recent overhaul of the combat system. SOE's El Presidente John “Smed” Smedly arose from his dark chamber to opine:

“Please understand that we love this game too.. our goal wasn't to upset the existing userbase.. but we do recognize that changing a game does inherently mean some people aren't going to like that change. What we're trying to do is to insure that we can accomplish a lot of what you've all been asking us to do (things like Galactic Civil War) in really cool and meaningul ways.. and frankly speaking, we just couldn't do that with the old combat system in place.”

Combat Upgrade - General Game Discussion - Star Wars Galaxies Official Forums

Now, I've never played SWG so I can't say whether the new system is so much worse than the old or it's your usual generic “we phear change” MMOG whining. But, if it does suck so much, you'd have to say of all the films to base a game on, with this one they really should have been aware that just because you created something and love it doesn't mean your follow-up ideas don't blow goats.

Welp, Leeds United's first season down in the Championship (AKA Division 1 [© grumpy young men]; AKA Division 2 [© grumpy old men]) finished with a 14^th place finish. It could have been much much worse of course, but with all the new and ineffective faces that went through Elland Road this year. I would have liked to have made the top half of the table or, gods willing, the playoffs. But hopefully that's for next year.

(final league table after the more)

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Checking the freshly-minted Logwatch output from the now resurrected ex-hacked server I saw three logins through SSH. One was from the office IP (which would be me), one from my home IP (uh... me again) and one from a Spanish IP with a number of password failures before one success. Oh noes! Spanish hax0rs!?

Well... there was the possibility it was our guy in Spain, so I IM'd him.

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They're releasing the album before the current one it seems though.

Pitchfork: Daily Music News

Someone managed to get a rootkit on one of the boxes at work. The first clue we had was when the password was changed. Since I log in through ssh using no-password authentication this didn't affect nor stop me logging in. At first I thought maybe someone else at work had changed the password - but then it turned out that every command that made use of dates threw up a segfault - notably ls -l.

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I originally found this HOWTO very useful, but where it was on the Internets has now disappeared. So, in case I need to use it again, I'm sticking a copy here.

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“No Labour or Conservative MPs were available to comment on the matter, however when asked about software patents and the EU, a Labour telephone assistant said, "There is an election going on."”

UKIP bashes software patents - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

This pic was in a Fark thread. If it wasn't for the fact I drove past it last week, I would have thought it was 'shopped.

My earlier issue with The Matrix Online has been solved. However I can't seem to build up any enthusiasm for playing it. Maybe I'm too jaded with MMOGs or, coming on top of the highly derivative WoW, it's just not different enough from what's gone before to pique any interest.

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