Fragmented Development

As of today, I'll be booting into Ubuntu at work instead of the usual Windows XP. I am psyched.

For the past month or so, I've been spending an hour or so after work building up a second drive on my machine. I think I started off with Crunchbang, moved to Xubuntu with a lot of pieces stripped out, and eventually settled on a Ubuntu minimal install with Openbox for a window manager. Tonight, I was able to get the last bits sorted out that make it a sensible alternative in an all-Windows environment.

Here are a couple tips I learned along the way:

• The Likewise Open packages in the Ubuntu repos will allow you to join your computer to an Active Directory domain, provided you have the user permissions to do so. But beware; in Ubuntu 9.10, this completely destroyed my ability to log into my machine with a local user through GDM, so I had to tear it out and use Getty & run "startx" to get to a GUI. There are alternatives, like qingy, but I didn't get very far with them.
• Lots of things are simplified if you set the default domain in your Likewise configuration. Since AD users are represented as DOMAIN\user, and a backslash is an escape character in unix-like systems, this makes commands and configurations awfully tricky. Simply logging in with your user name, and having Likewise assume you mean to log into your domain, makes things much smoother.
• Auto-mounting samba shares is a pain in the ass. I couldn't get it working without putting my user name and password in a plain text file, so I went for the manu-matic approach. I created a quick shell script that prompts me for my password twice (once for sudo, once for pasting into the mount options) and created a bash alias for it. The first thing I do when I log into my machine is open a terminal and type "connect", and that kicks things off nicely.
• I have a Windows XP VM around for annoying programs that don't have a FLOSS alternative or a native Linux port. There are so many crappy pieces of software that we use internally, some of which need IE to function, etc. Keeping a VM around with Windows allows me to run Linux for mostly everything while still being able to work on the help desk.

So far, things are going well; Ubuntu with Openbox is proving to be lightning fast and far out-performs my XP installation on the same machine. Hell, the XP VM runs faster than the native install. I'll keep posting tips and tricks I run into along the way, and who knows: maybe I'll save someone time in the process. Here's hoping!

I've been working a lot with SVG a lot lately, and you know what? It would be really handy to have a SVG-like format that could be embedded via the img tag.

Hell, I'd even use the SVG format we have today inside an image tag, if I could. Note to self: find out why that isn't allowed.

Okay, now I need to get back to being late for work.

Just a quick tip to keep in mind when overriding default color values on elements with CSS: Make sure to override all colors involved.

I have been bitten by this in some of my own sites. When I switched over to a dark theme in Openbox, all of the form controls inside web pages inverted from their usual colors; they now had black backgrounds and white text. This presented problems when people would change the text color or the background color of input fields, but allow the other property to stay with the default.

I can't tell you how many times I tried to enter something in a web form, only to realize that I wasn't going to be able to read the text I was entering, because the web site designer decided to specify black text on top of my black form fields.

The moral of the story: If you're specifying the color property, make sure to specify background-color as well!

After running around on their support forums for a couple hours, one of the 2K support techs provided me with the following information:

While it's still not perfect, this at least makes the game playable. The aforementioned "Create a local profile" is a plain hyperlink, hidden at the bottom of the description of the Games for Windows Live "service". It's definitely one of those weasel compromises that Microsoft is famous for; enough to keep their legal team happy, while basically forcing their service on people. If the process of creating an account didn't fail on three separate occasions, I would have never known to look for it.

With that considered, though, I can kind of understand why the 2K people would have integrated this Games for Windows nonsense into their game. With the knowledge that it is, indeed, optional to use the service (if you're willing to hunt the fuck around), and that Microsoft usually pays people in Yachts to implement their bullshit, it must be hard to be concerned for your users when you can't see them through all of the giant green dollar signs that were covering their eyeballs.

I'm excited that I can play this game, but will definitely be wary of purchasing another one. Anything with a "Games for Windows Live" label on it won't get a damn dime from me, now that I know what to look out for.

Update: There is a workaround that allows you to save games locally, but it still requires the Games for Windows application.

...or any games from 2K, for that matter. Watch out for the Windows Live Game whateverthefuck logo, too, because this apparently means your games are dependent on Microsoft for basic functionality (like saving).

So, I recently purchased a legal copy of the PC game, Bioshock 2, for my freedom-hating gaming partition. I purchased this through the Steam platform, as is normally my process.

After downloading the game, and attempting to run it for the first time, I was notified that Steam was installing SecuROM - a DRM used to prevent game piracy. I didn't like it, but I really just use this partition for games by shitty publishers that don't have a Linux port. I was already freedom-hating, so what do I care if they take away more of my freedom?

Then the game client launched, and asked for a CD key. Every other game I've ever bought from Steam hasn't needed this, but I don't mind the extra hassle too much. After all, those publishers need their pennies! I dutifully copied the game key into the game, and was greeted with an overlay for Windows Live Gamer something or other, which informed me that I could sign into it.

I informed it that it could go fuck a charcoal grill, and tried to close the overlay. I was greeted with a message that informed me certain things would not be available, such as saving.

Like, saving your progress in a game. Making a save file. SAVING.

Angry but still interested in trying to salvage some fun out of this game, I tried signing up for a live account. I filled out all the requisite forms (including the game CD key AGAIN), and was greeted by a 404 message from the Microsoft Live web site.

So, I'm going to look into getting a refund. I am most certainly not going to pay $50+ for a high-graphics version of Altered Beast. In addition, I will no longer be purchasing anything from 2K studios, or any game that integrates Windows Live Games for Genuine Advantage Gaming Ultimate Rainbow Unicorns.

Maybe I'll look on the Pirate Bay - I hear pirated games have a much better experience, as all of the DRM has been circumvented ahead of time. I've payed thousands of dollars in hardware and games to be a PC gamer, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stop because Microsoft and 2K want to make it difficult for me.

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