Prince of Kitties

I personally believe on-access antivirus software is starting to get obsolete anyway. There are too many new malware varieties for signature based detection to keep up, and heuristics are often ineffective (never mind resource-intensive). And there are less intrusive strategies of at least equal efficacy. (The one I usually think of is mandatory access control, which various UNIXes have had for ages. Windows alas is only starting on that.)

Also, a bit of advice... Never, ever assume that your security setup is working at its theoretical best. If something can go wrong, it will. (Which is why I'm now trying to track down a rootkit infection on a Windows machine that I thought was pretty well secured. It seems to be some kind of awful TDSS variant... Yay.)

There are also some other routes you can go... - SandBoxie is like a UNIX chroot sandbox - it creates a fake filesystem that malware can write to, only to be deleted later. It can also block internet access, access to certain hardware, and other stuff. The free version is limited to one sandbox, and is good for browser security; the paid version lets you create sandboxes as needed, and can be used for testing applications and stuff. Pros: Currently impenetrable to the vast majority of malware. Cons: Requires a fair amount of user interaction. Also, some malware may be able to log activity and phone home from within a sandbox, depending on settings. - Host Intrusion Prevention System. The best free one I know of is Online Armor. These are aimed at experienced users; they can be a royal pain to set up, especially if you use execution control. But they're pretty light on resources, and offer better security than an antivirus if you know what you're doing... Pros: Lets you manage all kind of policies for all kinds of applications. Theoretically better security than an AV. Cons: Lots of user interaction during initial setup. Inconvenient if you compile stuff. Can break applications if you don't know what you're doing. Mistakes or lapses in attention on the user's part can result in infection, and are more likely the more paranoid the security setup! - Software Restriction policy. You run as a limited user, and only allow applications that are installed by the administrator user. See MechBGone's SRP guide. The best way to do this is with the Parental Controls on Windows Vista/7, but it's easy enough to set up on XP Pro as well. If you're using XP Home, though, then you're unfortunately out of luck. Pros: Makes almost all malware inoperable. Easy to set up, and requires almost no maintenance. Cons: Requires a limited user account. Inconvenient if you compile stuff, or run applications from your home directory. May prevent some games from working properly. DLL-based malware,or any malware that injects itself into a trusted process, will probably slip right through this security setup. ... Like I've said, all of these have their disadvantages, and IMO none of them are really adequate. Nonetheless I this helps you out.

Open Firmware for PowerPC Macintoshes was written in Forth... I don't know much about the language itself. I've heard it's more robust than C, and has similar performance, but is harder to learn (not surprising looking at the syntax). Also there's the small issue of almost everything on the desktop being written in or otherwise based on C. Kind of a shame IMO; it seems to me that there are several other low-level langauges available, with more features and less fragility. Fortran 95 is supposed to have some impressive capabilities for instance. (Hmm, and Fortran 2003 is supposed to be wholly interoperable with C. Alas, GCC doesn't entirely support the 2003 standard.)

Wow. Sad story there. I will say, regarding the courses I'm taking, that they've so far been consistently interesting and consistently difficult - not because of poor instruction, but because the material requires serious thought. These are 200-level CS courses though, not sure what this says about lower or higher level courses.

Originally Posted By: "The Mystic" One book I was told to avoid was C++ For Dummies. After flipping though it once, I can see why; it's horrible. Yes, it is. Run, do not walk, run from any book or course that tells you to use system("PAUSE"); in any introductory coding exercise.

Hmm, sorry to hear that though. What major if you don't mind my asking?

^^^ Amen. I've learned more in the past week from the C programming course I'm taking, than from reading Practical C++ Programming cover to cover. The homework and lectures help. OTOH, so does having the right book (in this case the second edition K&R text). But I find I'm bad at setting my own pace; YMMV. (Also, if you go this route, be careful where you take your programming courses. The ones I'm taking are credited night courses at UMass Boston, and are comprehensively excellent. But I've also seen some at Northeastern, which were similarly priced but abhorrently bad. Not all universities will give you your money's worth.)

You're welcome!

Noscript is great. Not very user friendly, even with fairly lax configurations, but I would not use Firefox without it.

Here: http://www.truesite4blades.com/SWArchive/Geocities/falcata2/maps/Redemption.html Happy BoEing. Redemption is pretty much my favorite scenario.

Nioca: unfortunately your "low-maintenance" antivirus does not exist, free or otherwise. Windows security is difficult, and no solutions are truly low-maintenance. When you're using the same family of OS as 90% of computer users, you're simply going to be a bigger target. Lilith's advice is generally sound, but attack vectors are many, malware is nasty, and weekly scanning can be too little too late (e.g. if you pick up a keylogger). You can get infected from a drive-by install, a PDF or Office document, a malicious or hacked website... IMO the most important rule on Windows is caution, with or without an antivirus. Don't open emails that might be spam. Don't go to websites that you're not sure are trustworthy. Don't install software you've never heard of. Don't open files from unknown sources - and be aware that antiviruses might declare them clean when they're not. Also you probably want to disable USB autorun. See here. (And if you make payments online, you might want to think about making them from a live CD such as Knoppix if possible. This will ensure that your keystrokes are not logged by any local malware. Likewise for unsafe browsing - the live CD makes it harder to get to your Windows installation.) Edit: A disclaimer... I'm a bit of a security nut and I don't use Windows much, so do take my advice with a grain of salt.

Not to sound whiney, but it's not that the graphics are poorly done... More like the isometric aspect incurs some loss of detail, given the size of the pixmaps. Character graphics in particular look really blocky and awful compared to BoE.

And it turns out it crashes immediately with a popup about "unhandled exception c05" and the following fixme: Code: fixme:d3d_caps:select_card_intel_mesa Card selection not handled for Mesa Intel driverfixme:d3d_caps:init_driver_info Unhandled vendor 8086. followed by lots of stuff about an unhandled page fault. Yay. Edit: got the demo game running under the latest stable Wine version, but I find it highly annoying to use - isometric view is really not my favorite, the graphics are hugely inferior to BoE, and changing my screen resolution is annoying. The editor I'm not yet sure about, but this is looking like a nonstarter.

Thanks. Guess I'll check out the demo (which I'd completely forgotten about when I wrote this for some reason)... D'oh.

Between the horrible unfriendliness of the BoE Scenario Editor and running out of decent BoE scenarios, I'm thinking of buying a copy of BoA. But I'd like to get some info on it first. First off: I've heard some not-nice things said about BoA's scripting system. How does it compare to to BoE nodework for debugging? How about transparency - if I create a scenario and comment the scripts well, will I be able to come back to it a month later and understand what they do? (Noting that my most familiar languages are Java, which I'm rather terrible at, and Perl, which I can write passable scripts in... I also hack around with roguelikes in C, but pointer arithmetic gives me the heebie-jeebies.) Second: does anyone here run BoA under Wine? If so, what version and how well does it work?

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan I think the comments section has the right idea: I want to see Rob Liefeld's MLP next. POUCHES! MUSCLES! TINY FEET! (But at least the ponies' heads would be traced from photographs of actual horses.)

Thanks for the clarification re spells... Shame low-level casting is so much worse in BoE, in E3 it's quite the strategy. (And I love glass cannon characters.)

Since I know absolutely nothing about MLP... The article reminded me of the first time I played At the Gallows - when my party was climbing through the monastery to retrieve the Onyx Scepter. I remember becoming more and more disturbed as I cut down greater and greater numbers of monks... When my party got to the Scepter, and the monastery was destroyed, I nearly called it quits on the scenario. I was playing an escapist fantasy game; it seemed wrong and offensive that my party of heroes could become so morally gray... And to this day I'm still a bit put off by that part of AtG. It's one of my favorite BoE scenarios, and as a (nominal) adult I recognize that there is such a thing as a necessary evil. Yet part of me insists that such situations are artificial; that one should always look for a better way out. That one should never compromise. It's a tough choice. How many civilians would have died if, say, the US hadn't bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and Tokyo for that matter)? How many died because we did? On the one hand, you have the naive insistence that it really is possible to always be in the right... And on the other, you have the fetishization of the necessary evil - the glorification of "doing what needs to be done" common in military SF stories. (See Footfall by Niven and Pournelle for a classic example.) I think that, when you get down to it, both are dangerous. We tread a narrow road. Anyway, before I stop spouting longwinded drivel, I'm going to thank Mr. Vogel (and likewise Stareye, whoever and wherever he is) for creating games that actually make the player think, "Hey, am I really doing the right thing here?" Even if it's only for a minute. Fun entertainment is good, but unsettling entertainment is healthier, if you get my drift.

Yeah, that's what I thought you said. Funny, I never figured that out.

I've already got spell points, the PC is a level 7 mage... But wait, you have to buy the beginning spells if you don't start with those levels? Eww.

Hmm, yeah, this is what I was missing in BoE. Magic is *way* more powerful in E3 at low levels, to the point that I wonder if the BoE implementation was somehow bugged. I mean, Fireballs from my level 5 character are doing 15-25 damage versus most monsters, compared to 5-10 damage for a similar character and similar monsters in BoE. Re armor, I did kind of forget about that. I haven't encountered any SP draining dungeons or monsters yet, so I'm relying on Strength to just make my character dodge everything. Obviously that will not work later on, but by then I should have at least level 3 priest spells... I figure on switching over mostly to priest spells by the middle of the game. Not the most efficient use of skill points perhaps, but make spells wil get you further earlier... I think.

Hmm. I did a little experimenting with a singleton fighter/mage, and discovered that the mage spell Strength is more powerful in E3 than in BoE. With 4 Intelligence, 4 Strength, 4 Edged Weapons, and Magically Apt, it lets you kick goblins around with impunity. Also, Fireball is much more powerful at low levels in E3, so you can deal with spiders and mauve slimes at a distance. I'll see how far I can get this guy...

So... If I wanted to play Exile 3 through with a party of 1-3 characters, and no use of the Editor, what do you think the best character builds would be? And what skills should be boosted as the game progresses? Keeping in mind that some things work very differently in E3 than in BoE... (e.g. for starters, throwing weapons actually work in E3.)

Just a second, I have to check on my cat. I'm afraid Brocktree's logic might have killed her.