Month: September 2015

Linux Mint – Windows File Sharing Just Works

Samba Built In
Samba Built In

Hurray! Windows File Sharing just works in Linux Mint 17!

It’s been a long time since I tried it.  Back in 2010 when I was using Ubuntu, I wrote a post about how to set up Samba, and WinBind to get network sharing going and was quite disappointed that it wasn’t working. Well, that process was so cumbersome that I haven’t used it much over the years and in spite of the fact that about half of my computers are Linux, I haven’t bothered to set it up, or check to see how things have progressed. But I was sharing files recently and lo and behold, it works just fine!

As you can see from this picture, I am looking into a share from a Linux Mint 17 system into a Windows 10 system and can see and read those files. The Windows 10 system drives are shared read/only, as is the best practice. More about that later. But here is what you can expect if you have a mixed network, and how you can use Windows File sharing between Windows 10 and Linux Mint 17.

Continue reading “Linux Mint – Windows File Sharing Just Works”

Social Gaming – Fostering Friendships in Games?

AK_2015_08_23_13_29_49_874

What makes an MMO game social? It seems to me that there are a few ways to meet friends in games:

  1. Meet them out in the world, and join up with them to accomplish shared goals in the open world.
  2. Meet them waiting for, or matched for, an instance – dungeon or battleground – to accomplish the shared goal of that instance.
  3. Join a Guild, or whatever the game calls a group larger and more permanent than a party, and meet other folks in the guild that share the above goals.
  4. Meet them outside of the game, and come into the game together.

But once you bump into someone in the game, there are aspects of the game that encourage or discourage the formation of longer term Social Interactions in the game.

Continue reading “Social Gaming – Fostering Friendships in Games?”