h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i've always thought beta ndas were there just to get people excited enough to actually want to leak information - where as if there was no nda it would all be ho hum and matter of fact

Hmm.

Instinctively (and speaking as someone who in his own opinion knows how people work) and at first glance, that doesn't sound entirely right. At least, it doesn't sound *universally* right. Apart from anything else, when there's an NDA, the loudest voices (i.e. "official" things like Penny Arcade) will be silent. There's certainly going to be a "doing it because they can and they shouldn't" element, of course.

Companies tend to feel that their IP (intellectual property) is their most valuable asset. They will go to extreme lengths to protect their IP. If they are a publicly traded company then they have an obligation to their shareholders to protect their IP and trademarks. This creates a situation where overly litigious trademark attorneys will go after entities that are engaging in fair use.

If I was a game developer, and I had something that was unique, I would want an NDA signed by all testers to protect the design. If I did not have something unique, I may want to have NDAs out there to keep potentially negative press from being published about my product prior to launch. I am not saying that this is right, but it makes sense from a business viewpoint.

Yeah, that's the other side of it, really. I think major corporations are more likely to (ineffectively) try to prevent leakage than artificially induce it.

I've downloaded MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot and, every time I try to play it, I get stuck in a 'game loading' window.

But I need help figuring out if my laptop meets the minimum requirements, which are:

------------------------------------------------

If you have a Pentium II:

PII 450
256mb RAM
600mb free hard drive space
32mb 3D accelerated video card

If you have a Pentium III/IV:

PIII 450
128mb RAM
600mb free hard drive space
16mb 3D accelerated video card

(Please note that Voodoo 1/2/3/5 cards are not supported in Camelot, although Voodoo 3's and 5's may work).

The recommended system is:
PIII 1ghz
256mb RAM or higher
32mb 3D accelerated video card
------------------------------------------------

I have a Compaq Presario R3000, 797 MHz, 512 MB RAM with a NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go 32M. Oh, and 7.6 GB of free hard drive space...

I got Portal. It's totally awesome, between the nifty concept, the rather well-done level design, and the funniest dark humor (BEST CLOSING CREDITS EVER!!) I've ever seen.

The only fault I can find is the short length (I got through it in three hours, and that was when I got stuck a few times for maybe a total of half an hour), and the fact that they haven't released the level editor yet.

It runs on a PII? That's so old, I think you don't need to worry about minimum specifications unless your laptop is more than 10 years old.

Maybe you need to run in Windows 98 compatibility mode? Right-click the game icon, and go to "properties" - you'll find the setting in there somewhere. Says the mac user.

Thanks d'E, I'll try that - I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't run, and I got even more confused when I browsed the game forums and couldn't find anyone having had a similar problem...

10 years old ...? Laptops EXISTED back then!?

Oh, wait, that would've made it 1997, never mind!

Nope, changing the compatability mode didn't make much difference, so I've now sent off a mail to their support departement - reply guaranteed within the next 72 hours...

I've never found the compatibility modes to be very helpful. Anyway, if the game is currently being distributed I'd assume it works in XP and probably Vista. I've had trouble running games on my laptop - it seems that the video card is somehow "integrated" with the main processor in a way that games don't like.

Mm, yes ... seems you've just added another argument against getting another laptop, next time I get a computer ...

Here's yet another argument against laptops - turns out the DAoC Support doesn't support laptops since 'these are usually not powerful enough to play DAoC' according to the e-mail I recieved...

This is the first and so far only MMORPG I've had any kind of trouble with (I've tried out five so far) and I've never seen any of their support teams answer a question (on the official forums) with 'sorry, we don't support laptops'.

Bah!

... What.

Okay, that's another one of those executive decisions that, if someone in a company *I* ran made it, would result in one or more people being fired, preferably via flamethrower.

Right after "cancelling Firefly" and "making some sort of security measure which is designed to protect the seller rather than the buyer and which interferes with legal, legitimate use." And "making some sort of security measure which, no matter what it's intended to protect, interferes with whatever it's intended to protect."

AND FURTHERMORE! I once saw a review of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, which -- well, my feelings on this are that if you use the word "hardcore" without a trace of irony, particularly in the context of lambasting other reviewers who said that the original DMC3 was too difficult and saying that they "just suck", [rant rant rant -- I won't post the entire rant I have on this subject except on request ]

Ugh. I don't have enough time on my hands!

Next week Assassin's Creed and Super Mario Galaxy come out. Already at home I've got the Orange Box, Halo 3 and Gears of War - all unopened. Plus I'm eying Beautiful Katamari.

That's not even counting the games I'm currently play - Metriod Prime, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Blue Dragon, BioShock and Final Fantasy XII.

I need a vacation just so I can finish some games.

I kinda know the feeling.

One bit of PC entertainment I recently discovered is the games made by one "Nifflas", here: http://nifflas.ni2.se/index.php Within A Deep Forest is the most delightfully frustrating game I've ever encountered. And Knytt Stories has a level editor. Goodbye, free time!

Knytt is ... a bit below-par, though. It has no real direction; in Knytt Stories you're bounded in by the powerups you don't have yet, and it's pretty obvious when you reach a place you can't go yet. In Knytt, though, you can always go everywhere (except when you can't), and the only thing you gain for getting each item is that now you get to go and find the next one, oh joy. So it's hard to navigate without any real reward.

Are you a WoW and proud of it? Why not show it to the whole and get a WoW laptop?

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/m1730_wow?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&dgc=EM&cid=26383&lid=601037

Pity it only comes as either Alliance or Horde - I have characters in both fractions...

Not available in the UK... though I think Mrs. D would likely object to me spending £2,000 on a laptop.

If I *did* manage to get one though it'd be Horde.

FOR THE HORDE!

We were talking about these at work the other day, trying to come up with business cases to justify ordering them for IT, Ops, and dev.

That's just overpriced, overpriced, overpriced.