31 März, 2019 | Webfundsachen
Die DSGVO war komplex? Dann wartet mal SCA ab!
Die DSGVO war komplex? Dann wartet mal SCA ab!
http://bit.ly/2uD7YEU
Unser Gastautor erklärt, warum sich Unternehmen schon jetzt auf SCA vorbereiten sollten. Die Vorgaben werden ab Herbst für alle Online-Zahlungen in Europa gelten. Europa steht vor einem großen Umbruch in der Abwicklung von Online-Zahlungen, der weitreichende Auswirkungen auf alle europäischen Unternehmen haben wird. Ähnlich wie die DSGVO unseren Umgang mit personenbezogenen Daten nachhaltig beeinflusst hat, […]
Technologie
via t3n – digital pioneers http://bit.ly/2CxAyNr
March 31, 2019 at 03:06PM
29 März, 2019 | Webfundsachen
Initial findings put Boeings software at center of Ethiopian 737 crash
Initial findings put Boeing’s software at center of Ethiopian 737 crash
http://bit.ly/2HLQI99
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The Boeing 737 MAX’s MCAS software was officially linked by FAA investigators to the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight earlier this month. The software was intended to compansate for the aerodynamic differences caused by the aircraft’s larger engines.
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At a high-level briefing at the Federal Aviation Administration on March 28, officials revealed „black box“ data from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 indicated that the Boeing 737 MAX’s flight software had activated an anti-stall feature that pushed the nose of the plane down just moments after takeoff. The preliminary finding officially links Boeing’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to a second crash within a five-month period. The finding was based on data provided to FAA officials by Ethiopian investigators.
The MCAS was partly blamed for the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX off Indonesia last October. The software, intended to adjust the aircraft’s handling because of aerodynamic changes caused by the 737 MAX’s larger turbofan engines and their proximity to the wing, was designed to take input from one of two angle-of-attack (AOA) sensors on the aircraft’s nose to determine if the aircraft was in danger of stalling. Faulty sensor data caused the MCAS systems on both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights to react as if the aircraft was entering a stall and to push the nose of the aircraft down to gain airspeed.
On March 27, acting FAA Administrator Daniel Ewell told the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s aviation subcommittee that there had been no flight tests of the 737 MAX prior to its certification to determine how pilots would react in the event of an MCAS malfunction. He said that a panel of pilots had reviewed the software in a simulator and determined no additional training was required for 737-rated pilots to fly the 737 MAX.
Ewell defended the FAA’s late decision to ground the 737 MAX after the Ethiopian Airlines crash, telling senators,“We may have been, I think someone said, the last country to ground the aircraft but the United States and Canada were the first countries to ground the aircraft with data.“
While a final conclusion on the cause of the Ethiopian Airlines crash has not been reached, a Boeing spokesperson told reporters on a March 27 press conference call that the company was working with the FAA to release a new version of MCAS that would rely on additional sensor data and be less aggressive about taking control of the aircraft. But the Boeing representative emphasized that the company stood behind the overall safety of the aircraft. „We’ve conducted some thorough audits since the Lion Air accident of all aspects of the systems on the 737 MAX,” the spokesperson said, reviewing areas of potential safety concern. „We have uncovered nothing that concerns us in any of those areas…Those reviews continue and I’m sure they will continue for some time.”
Technologie
via Ars Technica http://bit.ly/2TqRI92
March 29, 2019 at 03:35PM
28 März, 2019 | Webfundsachen
Today WarCraft 1 & 2 get their first-ever digital launchand its on GOG
Today, WarCraft 1 & 2 get their first-ever digital launch—and it’s on GOG
http://bit.ly/2U2G0Sq
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The kind of image that makes us immediately ask, „What you wan’me kill?“
Blizzard / GOG
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When we last spoke with Blizzard Entertainment about one of its biggest classics, the original Diablo, the chat came with a surprise announcement: the original PC game was now for sale online for the first time, and not on Battle.net. The game’s launch on GOG prompted many technical and logistical questions, and after answering those, Blizzard confirmed an intriguing „one more thing“ about the first two WarCraft RTS games also coming to GOG. At the time, these had no release date.
Turns out, the wait was surprisingly brief.
GOG and Blizzard have officially opened a veritable Dark Portal to the first-ever digital-download version of its first two PC RTS games, WarCraft: Orcs & Humans and WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition (which includes that sequel’s awesome expansion pack). Right now, you can buy both as a combo pack for $15, or buy them separately for $6 and $10, respectively. And we’ve played them!
GOG got axe for you
Taking it back to the days when Battle.net support required a full SKU update.
Familiar RTS sights. Yes, you can walk on this ice, and the trolls in question won’t slide around. (But they will constantly remind you that you are, indeed, the boss.)
Pre-mission briefing.
Post-mission taunting. (Lose one unit in battle, and they call you a slave… some nerve, Blizzard.)
WC2’s launcher, like the GOG launcher for Diablo 1, offers two versions of the EXE. The „updated“ one includes this inset options menu for visual preferences.
GOG’s interface makes it easy to insert your newly acquired CD key, should you wish to look that info up before booting into the game.
Trouble is, of course, that a mix of ancient netcode and port-opening requirements make this a less than ideal game to play online.
But, hey, Battle.net still works for this game.
Just like this month’s Diablo re-launch, GOG has rebuilt WarCraft II’s executable to run with modern operating systems and monitor resolutions in mind. Meaning: nothing has been remastered. Instead, players can expect „integer scaling“ as an option for any monitor resolution they have so that the original artwork and sprites fall into a proper 4:3 ratio whether they appear in a window or full-screen mode. Other GOG-specific bonuses include optional anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. (As with Diablo, I would advise WarCraft II players to ignore these pixel-blurring options, but if that’s your jam, then by all means use them.)
The problem with this is the same as in Diablo: in many of the „integer scaling“ modes, WC2 lets your mouse cursor float away if pushed against the right or bottom edges. This happens when you move the map around with your mouse, which is way more common in an RTS than in a Diablo game. I prefer moving an RTS map via the mouse instead of arrow keys, so this issue bums me out. The solution has been to pick the generic „fullscreen“ option, which fixes the mouse-boundary issue but adds much blurrier pixels (and messes up my Windows desktop once the game quits out). I’ve asked GOG for help with this issue and will update this section with any pointers they send.
Additionally, GOG’s version of WC2 includes a „vanilla“ binary without many of the modern display adaptations. The reason is that this version includes Battle.net support, which requires leaving the executable in its ancient 2.02 state. Just like the 1999 launch of this game’s „Battle.net edition,“ it requires a valid CD key, which GOG packs into your purchase. (GOG’s version of Diablo doesn’t require this.) And, yep, Blizzard’s WC2 servers are still alive and kickin‘.
But once again, GOG has loosed a „Battle.net“ game of old that requires a stomach-turning combination: you have to open specific ports on both your PC and your router, and you have to subject your machine to some pretty ancient netcode. As Ars‘ Peter Bright said last time around: „Running this game and opening up your network to it is going to make it extraordinarily easy to hack your computer. We have built numerous safeguards over the last 15 years to try to reduce the risks of exploitable network code, and this game removes all of them.“ (Click here to read the full screed.)
In good news, you can either directly connect to other computers on your LAN or fake a LAN connection by using a VPN program like Hamachi and loading an old-school online IPX session to play eight-player WarCraft II versus matches.
Bombs are great!
The original WarCraft means we’re going back to DOS, baby. (Or, technically, DOSBox, a DOS emulator.)
Welcome, human.
Gearing up to launch the orc campaign.
Blizzard’s art for the first game still looks pretty great, all things considered. But it’s a pain in the butt to actually play.
Meanwhile, the original WarCraft has been repackaged to boot into a DOSBox emulation session, essentially running DOS 3.1.1 within your OS of choice. And, you know, it works in that funky-but-functional DOSBox way. (Thanks to this DOSBox support, WC1 works in both Windows and MacOS; WC2 with its customized binaries sticks to a Windows-only release on GOG.)
But I have a hard time recommending WarCraft: Orcs & Humans as anything other than a historic relic. This game saw Blizzard boldly dipping its toes into the nascent real-time strategy universe, which meant dealing with early ’90s expectations that anything outside of slow, rigid, turn-based tactics was „too fast.“ The result is a painfully ponderous experience in desperate need of quality-of-life fixes across the board.
WC2 wasn’t just a „WarCraft but slightly better“ kind of sequel. It was the true fulfillment of the original game’s potential—first on a mechanical level, then supercharged with incredible pixel art, sound design, and army balance. It’s a no-brainer recommendation for every proud mouse-and-keyboard gamer in the world, from the wistful and nostalgic to the RTS-clueless, because its early take on the genre combines slower speeds with good ideas and an endearing, fresh-faced universe. There’s a reason WarCraft was embraced as its own world of characters and lore, as opposed to laughed off as a Tolkien rip-off, and WC2 is the primary source of that reputation.
If you want to open your wallet to GOG and Blizzard today and dive into a DRM-free
WarCraft
game, skip the bundle and grab the $10
WC2
package. Its massive single-player campaign, boosted by the critically acclaimed
Beyond the Dark Portal
expansion pack, will keep you (or an excited kiddo) busy for fifty quintillion hours, give or take. And since it’s DRM-free and the CD key is only required for the vanilla Battle.net mode (which, again, we don’t necessarily recommend), you might find a way to get your paid copy of the game onto a second computer and boot some satisfying IPX-based versus combat. (Every parent who reads Ars Technica should do this with their kids. It’s the responsible thing to do.)
These are the remaining two games GOG and Blizzard teased earlier this month during Diablo’s GOG launch. We think it’s now up to the Blizzard Classic team to put out a „new“ old game from here on out, and WarCraft III: Reforged is on deck.
Technologie
via Ars Technica http://bit.ly/2TqRI92
March 28, 2019 at 03:06PM
