Gamasutra - The Art & Business of Making Games What Happens To All That Digital Goodness You Have Purchased After You Die? With the proliferation of digitally distributed content, the question of ownership is always looming overhead. Part of that question is what happens to it all after you die. In the physical realm, any books, movies, games and music you purchase throughout your life can be left to your children and other heirs. Tex D'urt (I see what you did there) sent in this analysis by the Wall Street Journal on the question of who, if anyone, can inherit your digital library. Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.And one's heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. As the report points out, some people can spend as much as $360 a year on digital content. It is this non-transferability of the content that is the stickler. Digital distribution is still young and there have not been any real challenges to this sort of situation.
SteamOS De woonkamer en Steam Eindelijk hoef je je favoriete games, je online vrienden en alle Steam-functies waar je zo van houdt niet op te geven om op het televisiescherm te spelen. SteamOS, dat draait op elk apparaat voor in de woonkamer, geeft je toegang tot de beste games en door gebruikers gemaakte inhoud die beschikbaar is. Vooruitgang We hebben veelzeggende prestatievoortgang in beeldverwerking geboekt, en nu richten we ons op de geluidsprestaties en verlaging van de invoervertraging op het niveau van het besturingssysteem. Uniek besturingssysteem Steam is geen eenrichtingsverkeer; het is een entertainmentplatform waarin veel mensen samenwerken, waarin elke deelnemer een vermenigvuldigingsfactor voor de ervaring voor ieder ander is. De kern van SteamOS bevat alles wat Steam zo mooi maakt. De games waar je van houdt Honderden geweldige games werken meteen op SteamOS. Meer dan 50 miljoen vrienden Het leuke aan Steam zijn de gebruikers. Workshop Een cloud voor meerdere platformen Wereldwijd
Eternity puzzle An empty Eternity board Eternity is a tiling puzzle created by Christopher Monckton and launched by the Ertl Company in June 1999. Consisting of 209 pieces, it was marketed as being practically unsolveable, with a £1 million prize on offer for whoever could solve it within four years. The prize was paid out in October 2000 for a winning solution arrived at by two mathematicians from Cambridge.[1] A second puzzle, Eternity II, was launched in Summer 2007 with a prize of US$2 million.[2] Puzzle[edit] The puzzle consists of filling a large almost regular dodecagon with 209 irregularly shaped smaller polygon pieces of the same color. Retail[edit] The puzzle was launched in June 1999, by Ertl, marketed to puzzle enthusiasts and 500,000 copies were sold worldwide, with the game becoming a craze at one point. Prize[edit] The puzzle's inventor Christopher Monckton put up half the prize money himself, the other half being put up by underwriters in the London insurance market. Solution[edit]
DAP TRUST SteamOS Features[edit] Since SteamOS is designed for playing games it does not have many built-in functions beyond web browsing and playing games; for example there is no file manager or image viewer installed by default. Users can, however, access the available GNOME desktop environment and perform tasks like installing other software.[6] Though the OS does not, in its current form, support streaming services, Valve is in talks with streaming companies such as Spotify and Netflix to bring their features to SteamOS.[7][8] The OS natively supports Nvidia, Intel, and AMD graphics processors.[9][10] Valve stated that they plan to add support for movies, television, and music functionality prior to the consumer release of SteamOS.[11] The current system requirements for SteamOS include:[12] Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor4 GB or more main memoryNvidia, AMD, or Intel graphics card500 GB hard drive space History[edit] Performance[edit] Reception[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]
Eternity II puzzle The Eternity II puzzle The Eternity II puzzle, aka E2 or E II, is a puzzle competition which was released on 28 July 2007.[1] The competition ended at noon on 31 December 2010. It was published by Christopher Monckton, and is marketed and copyrighted by TOMY UK Ltd. A $2 million prize was offered for the first complete solution. Puzzle mechanics[edit] The Eternity II puzzle is an edge-matching puzzle which involves placing 256 square puzzle pieces into a 16 by 16 grid, constrained by the requirement to match adjacent edges. Each puzzle piece has its edges on one side marked with different shape/colour combinations (collectively called "colours" here), each of which must match precisely with its neighbouring side on each adjacent piece when the puzzle is complete. Two Clue Puzzles were available with the launch of the product, which, if solved, each give a piece position on the main 256-piece puzzle. Solution submissions[edit] The second scrutiny date was noon GMT on 31 December 2009.
Appeals Court Destroys First Sale; You Don't Own Your Software Anymore Earlier this year, we noted that the 9th Circuit appeals court was facing three separate important cases about the "first sale doctrine." We also warned that the 9th Circuit can be wacky at times, and its first ruling of the three confirms that, by effectively wiping out the first sale doctrine and stating that buying a piece of software is not really buying a piece of software -- and that, in many cases, you've merely licensed it and cannot resell it. The key point: We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user's ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. The full ruling is here: The case involved a regular eBay seller, who bought some copies of Autodesk at an "office sale" from a company who was no longer using them. That said, this case is hardly over.
SteamOS beta impressions: Well, Valve did warn you to wait It’s out! SteamOS—Valve’s living room-oriented operating system created primarily to run games—is finally here, in our office, running on a real machine. But notice how I didn’t say that it’s running on every machine in the office. We weren’t kidding when we wrote that you might want to wait before you install. Fun with the install It all begins with the installation process. First we run into the system requirements: Your computer must pack an Nvidia graphics card, because AMD and Intel aren’t supported (yet). Then there’s the pesky, UEFI-enabled motherboard requirement. Even if you are using a UEFI-enabled motherboard, prepare for some fun. I went with the 960MB, “harder” method for installation (it uses the Debian installer instead of a System Restore) because I’m a masochist. Getting started Next you have to log in to the computer’s “steam” user. Here I ran into my next bit of confusion. Instead, go up under the Activities menu, launch Terminal, type steam and hit Enter. I was in!
Thracia (video game) The game was also one of the first MMORTTBS(Mass Multiplayer Online Real-Time Turn Based Strategy) ever launched. As such, it managed to carry on the tradition of the classic turn-based gameplay made popular by famous titles like: Heroes Of Might and Magic or the Disciples series, while adding the online component. Thracia does not require players to install any client on their computers, therefore it offeres greater mobility than its predecessors. The game is divided into three modules: the kingdom, the great map of Thracia and the battle mode. The kingdom module is similar to the town view in HOMM. The battle mode module is the classic turn based part of the game. There are three races to pick from when creating a new account: the Elves, the Orcs and the Thracians. Each race has a different city view with twelve unique buildings. The great map is divided up into nine main regions. Every city in Thracia has a single hero.
UsedSoft and the principle of exhaustion: CJEU ruling published today Dear IPKat readers, This is my first post as a guest Kat, and I am indeed looking forward to these months together. The story I would like to start with may not be the most intriguing to tell, unless you believe that there is something sexy in the resale of downloaded software. Apparently this is what the Court of Justice of the European Union believed, when this morning delivered its 89-paragraph judgment in Case 128/11 UsedSoft v Oracle, on which Advocate General Bot had given his Opinion a few months ago (see earlier posts here and here). Background and questions referred As is well-known, Oracle has not only been busy in various courts recently (eg with the Oracle v Google saga), but is also a software house, which develops and markets computer software. The user right in those programs includes the right to store the software permanently on a server and to allow a number of users to access it by downloading the software to the main memory of their workstation. The response of the CJEU
How to Build Your Own Steam Box and Integrate It with XBMC Is it possible to build a silent Steam Box HTPC (Steam Big Picture with XBMC) that is capable of 1080p gaming? In this guide, I will show you how to build and configure a performance HTPC, from start to finish, that will achieve exactly this. All the components used in this guide have been tested and proven to be compatible in the My Media Experience test bench. This is definitely not the first DYI Steam Box guide, but this is an ambitious project for building a silent gaming HTPC with Steam and XBMC integrated, enabling a seamless experience in your living room. You can build a gaming HTPC for less than $500, but I wanted to select high quality components, so the cost will be around $900. I’m sure that you’ll be happy with this build if you decide to follow these instructions. What you’ll learn You will learn how to choose the right components for silent gaming and how to integrate Steam Big Picture with XBMC using either Windows 8.1 or SteamOS operating system. Why build a gaming HTPC now?
Portal (video game) Portal was acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, despite being considered short in length. The game received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly humorous story. It received acclaim for the character of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English-language version, and the end credits song "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton for the game. Not counting sales through Steam, over four million copies of the game have been sold since its release. A more advanced portal technique. Chell and all other objects in the game that can fit into the portal ends will pass through the portal. GameSpot noted, in its initial review of Portal, that many solutions exist for completing each puzzle, and that the gameplay "gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that you can attempt Portal's plot is revealed to the player via audio messages from GLaDOS and visual elements in side rooms found in later levels.
Digital libraries as modern Charon's obol? Like the coin which was buried with the dead person, it seems that a similar fate may now be reserved to one's own digital libraries. A few days ago an intriguing article was published on The Wall Street Journal, attempting to provide an answer the following question: Who inherits your iTunes library? Well, the response seems to be ... no one. As is well known, analogue copies of books and music (CDs, vinyl) pass into the hands of one's own heirs upon death. However, this may not be the case when it comes to iTunes or Kindle libraries. So, can you transfer what you don’t own? "It is this non-transferability of the content that is the stickler. TechDirt also recalls that the issue of transferability of licences has been recently appreciated under the lens of EU law in the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in Case C-128/11 UsedSoft (see IPKat post here).