#Linux online classes

[webtechno09]

Webasha | Red hat Linux Course RHCSA CCNA Azure AWS GCP CKA DevOps Python Ethical Hacking Classes

WebAsha's Red Hat Linux course offers comprehensive training in RHCSA, CCNA, Azure, AWS, GCP, CKA, DevOps, Python, and Ethical Hacking. The course is designed to provide students with a strong foundation in Linux administration and a deep understanding of various cloud platforms and technologies. Students will learn to deploy and manage Linux systems, automate tasks, and troubleshoot issues. Additionally, students will gain skills in cloud computing, DevOps, Python programming, and ethical hacking, making them well-rounded IT professionals. The course is perfect for those looking to advance their career in IT or for those who want to gain a competitive edge in the job market.

Business Category:Software Training InstituteBusiness Hours:8 am–7:30 am Monday to SundayOwner Name:Mayank RajBusiness Email:lms@webasha.comKeywords:

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[themostefficientwaywithwater]

maybe i should switch to linux. maybe one fucking hour updating Windows 10 (which forced me to update right bow bc It was laggy as fuck) is not normal. maybe i deserve better-

[emexotechnologies]

🚀 Elevate Your IT Skills with the Best Linux Training Institute in Electronic City Bangalore - eMexo Technologies! 🌟💻

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[algotutor23]

course for data structures and algorithms

We take immense pride in offering you this exceptional opportunity. While various online courses cover the topic of mastering Data Structures & Algorithms [Beginner], the reality remains that none of them offer comprehensive preparation.

Contact No - +91-7260058093

Email ID - support@algotutor.io

Address - 2C-001 Shilpitha Splendour, Chinappa Layout, Mahadevpura, Bengaluru, 560048

[highskyit]

Advance Your Career Pathways with Microsoft Azure Certification Courses

The Microsoft cloud server system requires individuals specialising in technology, development, data science, and machine learning to hold Azure certificates. You can develop your cloud computing profession by earning an Azure certification, demonstrating that you are familiar with the basics of cloud computing and Azure's services, design, control, and administration.

·         Key to workplace adaptability

When looking to work in the cloud computing industry, enrolling on Microsoft Azure Certification Ahmedabad is crucial because the field provides a variety of job paths. Microsoft Azure certificate supports obtaining respectable positions such as cloud manager, developer, safety engineer, AI technician, data scientist, systems architect, and DevOps analyst.

·         Increased salary and professional standing

The increased salaries and more market reputation are two other key benefits of obtaining a Microsoft Azure Training & Certification in Ahmedabad. Your qualifications for being a Microsoft Azure-trained expert represent your abilities. You receive superior salary packages globally compared with different IT professions due to the increasing demand for cloud-based computing expertise.

·         Excel in cloud computing with a certification course

Cloud computing has become one of the modern innovations developing quickly along with the constant adoption of new ones. Most of the leading cloud service companies offer Cloud Computing Courses in Ahmedabad and career pathways for those interested in working in cloud computing.

Still, only Microsoft Azure provides role-based certifications tailored to meet the needs of the employment positions and the marketplace. Microsoft Azure-trained specialists are in great demand for creating cloud-based apps and maintaining cloud platforms because of the widespread usage of Microsoft Azure cloud-based services.

·         Expand your business using Ansible on Azure

You can expand your business from anywhere using Ansible Automation System on Azure. By enrolling on Ansible Training and Certification Course in Ahmedabad, you will learn how to streamline the administration of your IT resources and utilise the Ansible Automation System on Azure, regardless of whether it's a local or worldwide corporate network. The Ansible Platform on Azure integrates the efficiency of a controlled product with the strength of cloud computing. IT departments can expand and operate swiftly on their cloud.

With a training course,

Highsky IT Solutions

 enables you to begin your journey toward the subsequent Azure certification. As the need for cloud-based technologies increases, Azure certifications have become exceptionally in demand. One of the expanding developments is cloud computing, and numerous businesses are seeking qualified Azure managers, system architects, programmers, and security experts.

[butchgtow]

Introduction to Armchair Activism

Current feelings about the state of radblr.

Fundamentals

"Yes, Everyone on the Internet Is a Loser." Luke Smith. Sep 3, 2022. YouTube.

An activist movement can be a place to build community with like-minded people, but action is its foremost purpose, not community. To allow yourself and other activists to remain effective, you are obliged to abandon your personal dislikes of other individual activists. Disagreements are worth discussion, but interpersonal toxicity is not.

Connect with in-person community and do not unhealthily over-prioritize online community. Over-prioritization of online community is self-harm.

Luke is a loser, but his channel is teeming with entry-level digital literacy information and advice pertaining to healthy use of technology for us cyborgs.

"Surveillance Self-Defense: Tips, Tools and How-Tos For Safer Online Communication." Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Hackblossom, outdated, is discontinued. The EFF project Surveillance Self-Defense is up-to-date, comprehensive, and follows personal educational principles of simplicity and concision.

To learn more about general (not focused solely on personal action) cybersecurity, visit Cybersecurity by Codecademy and Cyber Security Tutorial by W3Schools. Both contain further segueways into other important digital literacies.

Direct recommendation: Install and set up the linux distribution Tails on a cheap flash drive.

Direct recommendation: Develop your own home network security schema.

Direct recommendation: Always enable 2FA security for Tumblr, disable active / inactive status sharing, and learn to queue reblogs and posts to protect against others' interpretations of your time zone.

Direct recommendation: It's both possible and relatively simple to host your own instance of a search engine using SearXNG.

Zero-Knowledge Architecture.

As a remote activist (even if also a hybrid activist), none of your action should be taken on, using, or interfacing with non-zero-knowledge-architecture services. Tumblr is, of course, a risk in and of itself, but you should not be using services provided by companies such as Google, Microsoft, or any others based in or with servers hosted in 13-eyes agreement nations.

Search for services (email, word processor, cloud storage) which emphasize zero-knowledge architecture. Businesses whose services are structured as such cannot hand over your data and information, as they cannot access it in the first place. If they cannot access the majority of your metadata, either - all the better.

Communications for Armchair Activism

"Technical Writing." Google.

Contained within the linked page at Google Developers, the self-paced, online, pre-class material for courses Technical Writing One, Technical Writing Two, and Tech Writing for Accessibility teach activists to communicate technical concepts in plain English.

"Plain Language." U.S. General Services Administration.

Plain language is strictly defined by U.S. government agencies, which are required to communicate in it for simplicity and quick, thorough comprehension of information.

"Explore Business Law." Study.com.

Extensive courses are offered to quickly uptake principles of business law such as antitrust law, contract law, financial legislation, copyright law, etc. Legal literacy is often the difference between unethical action of a business and its inaction. Legal literacy is also often the difference between consideration and investment in your policy idea and lack thereof.

"Business Communication." Study.com.

Now that you're able to communicate your prioritized information, you may also initiate writing with bells and whistles. While other activists care most about the information itself, business communication allows you to communicate your ideas and needs to those who you must convince worthiness of investment to and win over.

Logic.

Learn it through and through. Start with fallacies if you're better at language and work your way backwards to discrete mathematics; start with discrete mathematics if you're better at maths and work your way forwards to fallacies, critical literacy, and media literacy. State that which you intend to state. Recognize empiricism and rationalism for what they are. Congratulations: you are both a mathematician and a law student.

Economic Literacy for Armchair Activism

"Microeconomics." Khan Academy.

"Macroeconomics." Khan Academy.

The globe operates on profitability. Women's unpaid labor is a massive slice of the profitability pie. While it's possible to enact change without understanding all that drives the events around you, it's impossible to direct or meaningfully manipulate the events around you beyond your scope of comprehension.

Understand economics or be a sheep to every movement you're active in and to every storm that rolls your way.

[davekat-sucks]

I have my troll headcanons, and this is gonna be a long one, I’m doing all the Beta trolls. Also note these headcanons assume all characters survive and exist on Earth C.

Aradia Megido is trying to puck back up on the hobbies she abandoned when she became a ghost, and with her luck Earth has a vast archeological expanse of history and paleontology that Alternia destroyed to legitimize the Condesce’s rule, and to erase any mention of organized rebellion against the empire. Of course, history still existed, but is almost exclusively known by highbloods who have the class and age to study writing, own journals to write on, live long enough to document dozens of sweeps of their life history, and have less of a chance to get culled by drones controlling population growth. Reassembling Alternian history on Earth C is like finishing a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces hiding across the empty void of space. Aradia likes to search for fossils, but her interest in the dead and telekinetic connection with ghosts make her a professional paranormal investigator as well, she once snuck into a haunted house being filmed for a ghost hunters TV show, and was caught on camera. Her ripped clothes and ruffled hair from attempting a breaking and entering made her look like an undead troll.

Tavros thinks Pokémon is too simple and amateur for him, when in reality he’s mad he still loses in competitive matches in both card game and online game. He still likes the Pokémon anime! A boy who never grows up going on adventures against an organized crime syndicate trying to steal a powerful ally and nonverbal creature! Not to mention that the Ash character has friends to tag along on their perilous journey! When it comes to fighting with mythical magical monsters and complex bullshit with cards, Tavros has a soft spot for Yu-Gi-Oh, and Seto Kaiba reminds him of a troll that kept on meddling with him… and still does.

Sollux is possibly the best software technician on Earth C. He is an admin for a forum that discusses obscure desktop/master software. He obviously uses Linux and Gnu, and codes .ath viruses as practice for whitehat hackers to disarm. His Earth C hive is entirely themed by bifurcation. His curtains, his furniture, his goddamn toilet are themed by 2 colors. Karkat calls it ugly, Kanaya calls it creative. To cope with his psiionics and his loss of them, Sollux teamed up with Aradia, Karkat, and Feferi to code and design a walkie talkie that can talk to the recently deceased, this was also done so people could stop running specifically to him for predictions of armageddon.

Karkat is trying very hard to accustom himself to human culture, he has watched a lot of human film (mostly American, a few Fench and Soviet films and a bunch of Tokusatsu and Anime slop) to get why humans were like that, and if everyone was like Dave and Rose. He finds human film boring and generic, but continues to watch it anyway, to connect with the human way of life. He also follows John’s Youtube account… to leave hate comments, they don’t even attack John’s appearance or the points John makes about the film, it’s general allusions to how frustrated he gets watching John’s videos.

Nepeta has been banned from New York C’s central park zoo for scaring the bears at their enclosure and intimidating them into smashing the glass. Nepeta was allowed back in 2 years later when she promised she would not harm any animals because “it would be too easy to hunt them.” Nepeta is a professional huntress who is unique in that she doesn’t use firearms, she just catches the animal in her mouth and slices their neck if it’s big game like deer or wild boar. She meets her maximum bag capacity within a day. She is the scourge of human huntsmen and she is known as “the green lioness” to many.

Kanaya was able to pass on the duties of brooding cavern patrol once the first Jadebloods reached maturation after 9 sweeps. On Earth she was introduced to a new series of monsters and beasts after being accustomed to the animated corpses she’d hunt during the Alternian day and rainbow drinkers in her trashy teengrub erotica. Since she was always around Rose, a girlfriend and devout student of zoologically dubious, she became a cryptozoologist and eventually a bigfoot hunter. Her agility, strength, night vision, and rainbow drinker hearing made her perfect for hunting North America C’s most hidden animal. She would mostly stalk the rustling of leaves and moaning from the shadows of the forest to find it’s a human hiker or a bear, until she actually caught Bigfoot in an open Brush 30 miles West of Marquette C, Michigan C. Notably sightings were made days after Kanaya caught the creature, and after a week on news channels, talk shows, radio interviews, getting a nobel prize in biology and ecology, and getting a giant golden trophy called the “first big step” she now is treading westwards for possible other bigfoot sighted from California to Idaho. That is, when she can schedule it, she has a girlfriend she also wants to be there for. Of course, Rose has joined Kanaya on a few bigfoot searches to support her girlfriend.

Terezi IS the law. Professional trollcop and private investigator, she has her own TV show like that of Chris Hansen where she roleplays as different people, ranging from kids that pedophiles prey on to lone wolfs and depressed deadbeats that drug cartels search for to hire as peddlers and soldiers. Terezi’s strongest expertise is hunting down anti-troll hate groups, since she gets to be herself instead of roleplay as a human. She struggles the most catching anti-human troll groups and Neo-Condescites considering she has to fight against her own species, which have an easier time sniffing out if she’s faking her human archetype and some of them are super strong indigobloods.

Vriska haaaaaaaates how boring and fake human roleplaying games are. In FLARP you had real costumes, stat bats, real loot, month long continuous sessions, and dire consequences if you lose. To keep herself not bored she has become a practitioner of the extreme sport of rock climbing, since Vriska hated walking down and up all those stairs just to get to her lusus, and climbing a shear face would be more safe than slipping on those infernal steps! She also wanted one day for her lusus to watch her climb, as spidermom laud down in that pit of webs, too fat and loud to crawl up herself. Spidermom has been dead for sweeps now so Vriska still won. GET F8CKED FUSSYF8NGS!!!!!!!!

Equius was an unfortunate troll who got caught up in strange human subcultures, and that subculture was human hypermasculinity and “alpha” male mentality. He has a Youtube channel, Twitter, and Instagram dedicated to exercising routines, habits, and hobbies that make male trolls, humans, carapacians, and even denizens respected leaders in their community. Equius tried to co-opt My Little Pony as being masculine and sigma despite the protagonists being all colorful horses. Equius believes all of the protagonist ponies (the mane 6 as they’re called in fandom circles) each hold masculine traits that can correlate with the masculine archetypes in alpha men. Think how Twilight Sparkle exemplifies intelligence and planning, AppleJack has strength and stoicism, Rarity appreciates natural beauty and appearence, etc. Also they are horses, and Equius is frustrated that humans took the maned roarbeast (lions) and striped fangbeast (tigers) as the mascot of alpha males. Equius made his own personal gym in his hive because he was banned from all the gyms for excessive sweating and never cleaning up his station. He films fighting tutorials with his combat robots, but they all break in one punch, so Nepeta has to be invited for any successful demonstrations on how to demonstrate Equius’s fighting style and not break in one punch.

Gamzee is in a mental Asylum becaise of the whole murder thing and has only broken off from Lord English’s control for the first time in his life. He expresses himself by rhyming the GREGCLOUROIAN WICKED RHYTHMS for THE FROWNING MASSES to proselytize the NEW COMING OF THE DARKER CARNIVAL. After 5 sweeps in a straitjacket Gamzee was deemed sane and pacified, so he can finally start his real life. He immediately asked Tavros to start dueting some sick bars he wrote in the brig to bring forth the new prophesy of the evanjesters. Tavros agreed without hesitation. “Mike Club” and “Wild T” sell albums as the “UNHINGED PAGLIACCI TROUPE” and have gotten many a negative review as “the worst rappers in all paradox space” but in the end, built up a dedicated fanbase of clownfolk and followers of the true faith.

Eridan doesn’t go out much, if at all. He plays a lot of video games, grand strategy, roleplaying games, a few puzzle games. He feels mixed about First Person Shooters and asks for a good story in an FPS campaign. He sees himself as honorablenand only shoots with a reason, like how he killed lusii to feed G’bolg’lyb and stop the vast glub. He doesn’t want to shoot people because some authority tells him to! Honest! Ask Sollux and he’ll agree Eridan shot in self defense! And Sollux is still alive and happier that he doesn’t hear the boices ofbthe dead doesn’t he?! Maybe Sollux should THANK HIM FOR BEING CONSIDERATE. Sorry what was I talking about? Eridan does not regret a lot of things, but he will still talk about them when you bring them up to insist he does not regret anything, nope, he’s fine. He does hang around with the people, or rather, person he tolerates. Karkat. Everyone else are lowbloods that don’t like him because he’s better than them so they insult him and say he smells bad when that’s the natural smell of the ocean and they don’t understand how important he is, or Feferi who toyed with his emotions and left him for some bipolar mustardblood and avoided him after ALL HE DUD FOR HER AND WAS SO NICE TO HER AND SHE DIDN’T RECIPROCATE THOSE FEELINGS wait what was I talking about? Eridan insists he does not need help. He’s fine. He’s fine fine fine fine fin.

Feferi loves Spongebob Squarepants, it’s a match made in heaven, but she’s not obsessed with it. She still went far enough to paint her recuperacoon blue with the colorful flowers that dotted the oceans of Bikini Bottom. She is an advocate for saving all the coral reefs and has sued many companies with her nonprofit organization and vast personal wealth for spillover of hazardous chemicals into protected waters. Considering how often CrockerCorp gets into these environmentalist lawsuits, Feferi gets under Jane’s nerves. A lot.

Final thoughts. Eridan, Karkat, Nepeta, Vriska, Tavros, and Terezi (sometimes Sollux but he’s busy most of the time) all run a discord for roleplaying and video games. Eridan Karkat and Tavros like to play the Elder Scrolls series, Sollux likes to play the Fallout series, Vriska, Nepeta, and Terezi like both. Sollux tried to get Eridan to play Fallout: New Vegas once, but Eridan got bored after a few hours and thought the morality system was too simple. Between the organized disciplined and stable Caesar’s Legion or the corrupt incompetent bureaucrats of the New California Republic, or the selfish authoritarian Mr. House, or you thrusting the wasteland into chaos as you throw all 3 of the remaining lighthouses of civilization into collapse. Sollux has a let’s play channel but the only uploads on it are Nepeta’s playthrough of Postal 2 she shared on the discord server.

Karkat does a lot of human movie watchparties with his old friends to keep his trollian friends close enough that they don’t kill each other or wander off on this new weird alien world, and to his surprise they like some of the human films even though they are bottom of the barrel compared to peak alternian film. Each of the trolls favorite films are:

Aradia: Carrie (1976)

Tavros: Pokémon the First Movie (2000)

Sollux: The Matrix (1999)

Karkat: Con Air (1996)

Nepeta: The Lion King (1994)

Kanaya Maryam: Harry and the Hendersons (1987)

Terezi: Trolls (2016)

Vriska: Pirates of the Caribbean (2005)

Equius: Spirit (2003) and Fight Club (1999)

Gamzee: Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Eridan: Waterloo (1970)

Feferi: Atlantis the Lost Empire (2001)

Final fact: since films from the beta kids library still had a chronological year, the release year of films gets confusing, so to make up for it, films on Earth C are released on a separate calendar, the year on the Earth C Planetary Film Board is equal to current year (number of years after the original kids touched down on Earth C) plus 2009. Old Alternian films are hard to chronologically measure since they were made billions of years before April 2009.

This is a long one!

These are all amazing!

[projectadulthood]

39 Best Websites to Find Free Textbooks, Research Papers, Study Guides, and Books

Whether you’ve just received a long list of textbooks you need for a specific uni class or are looking for a particular book/research paper for a high school project, books (and journal subscriptions) can be expensive.

The good news is that there are plenty of resources online where you can find free PDF versions of most written materials, starting with Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology and ending with Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Note that although some of the websites below provide access to copyright-free texts only, or texts that publishers/authors have agreed to share freely, others have been accused of internet privacy.

However, many people see open access practices as morally acceptable, especially considering the unsustainable prices of academic textbooks and papers.

To quote a recent paper on the topic:

"Since shadow libraries are a product of the cooperation between scholars, who contribute texts and other resources (such as donations, volunteer work, etc.), shadow libraries represent a ‘bottom-up’, radical approach to open access: a physical approximation of the Platonic ideal of knowledge sharing that would exist if there were no legal, economic, or institutional barriers to the circulation of scholarly knowledge."

Free Textbooks

Library Genesis

Library Genesis, or Libgen for short, is a shadow online library website where college students can find academic books (including those that are hard to find/very expensive) and scholarly journal articles.

The site also hosts general-interest books, audiobooks, comics, magazines, and images.

Z-Library

Z-Library is another shadow library website that hosts college textbooks, scholarly journal articles, and general-interest books. It calls itself “the world’s largest e-book library.” It mirrors Library Genesis.

The front page also features some of the most popular books at the time. When we viewed it, these included “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and Harry Potter the Complete Collection by J. K. Rowling.

You can also use the right-hand navigation menu to see the books that have been added most recently, as well as sort through books based on category.

Use the Book Request option if you can’t find a book you’re looking for. There’s no guarantee your book will be added, but community members look at requests to see what books to upload (you can also upload books).

PDF Drive

PDF Drive is an online library with a ton of free ebooks and PDF textbooks in various categories, including academic & education (but also lifestyle, personal growth, art, linguistics, etc.)

ForCoder.su

Forcoder.su has lots of online textbooks on programming. It also provides free access to online courses, like Apache Kafka for beginners and object-oriented programming with Python. Currently, there are hundreds of free courses available.

Online Mathematics Textbooks

Online Mathematics Textbooks is your source for free digital textbooks on all things math. It’s just one page featuring 77 textbooks.

Tech Books for Free Download

Tech Books for Free Download is where you’ll find free science and engineering books on topics ranging from data mining to general relativity.

There’s no way to search for books easily. However, the site is divided into books on Linux, Java, Microsoft, C and C++, Perl/Python, Science, Networking, Database, Security, and Assembly.

Free Tech Books

Free Tech Books is an open textbook library. It provides access to free computer science books and textbooks, plus lecture notes. All the books and lecture notes listed on this site are freely available on authors’ and/or publishers’ sites.

You can browse books by category (computer science, mathematics, supporting fields, operating system, programming/scripting, miscellaneous), author, publisher, or license.

Directory of Open Access Books

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a website that indexes and provides access to academic, peer-reviewed open-access books. All disciplines are covered, but there’s a particular emphasis on humanities, social sciences, and law.

Ubiquity Press

Ubiquity Press has been an open-access publisher of academic, peer-reviewed books and journals since 2012. It was founded by University of College London (UCL) researchers.

Research Papers

Sci-Hub

Sci-hub has the most expansive collection of research papers. Its mission is to “remove all barriers in the way of science.”

Directory of Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an online directory of open-access, peer-reviewed research journals covering humanities, social sciences, technology, science, medicine, and art.

The directory indexes journals from different countries and languages. DOAJ is supported financially by publishers, libraries, and other organizations.

Wiley Open Access

Wiley Open Access provides peer-reviewed open-access journals across topics like biochemistry, economics, sociology, mathematics, and law.

SpringerOpen

SpringerOpen publishes open-access journals across a wide range of areas, mainly STEM.

Elsevier

Elsevier publishes open-access, peer-reviewed journals. You can search for journals by title, keyword, or subject (dentistry, nursing, decision sciences, etc.)

Springer Link

Springer Link provides access to ebooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and other resources (mostly scientific).

BASE

BASE is a search engine for academic texts, including journals, digital collections, institutional repositories, etc. You can access about 60% of the indexed texts for free.

Study Guides

Bibliomania

Bibliomania has study guides to the most-read books, like “A Hero of Our Time,” “Animal Farm,” and even Irish politics. It also has over 2,000 classic texts, book summaries, author biographies, and more.

Books

Open Library

Open Library is an open library catalog of more than 3 million new and old books. The project was created by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive. It has also received partial funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation and the California State Library.

You can read old books without an account. However, for new books, you’ll need to set one up (it takes just a few minutes).

Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a digital library of ebooks. It also has free movies, music, and software.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a famous site where you can find lots of free books. There are more than 60,000 books in its collection.

Standard Ebooks

Standard Ebooks take public domain texts and make them as nice as new books. They fix typographical errors and typos, create cool cover art, and format the text for e-readers like Kindle and iPad.

Planet eBook

Planet eBook is where you can download free PDF copies of classics like Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

What really makes Planet eBook stand out is its UX. It’s one of those rare sites that are super easy to navigate and actually look good (aesthetically speaking).

The Ultimate Book Search Engine

The Ultimate Book Search Engine is an ebook search engine that includes 350 open directory sites that relate to ebooks. It was created by the Reddit user u/NotoriousYEG.

Classic Bookshelf

The Classic Bookshelf is a site where you’ll find lots of classic novels, everything from Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy.

Literature.org

Literature.org features classic works of English literature, both fiction and non-fiction.

Bartleby

Bartleby is a site that features both fiction and nonfiction books.

Fiction.us

Fiction.us has a ton of books, including fiction, short stories, children's picture books, poetry, books on writing, and plays.

Classic Literature Library

As the name suggests, Classic Literature Library is where you’ll find classic literature works.

Ideology.us

Ideology.us is a site that has ebooks on philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, and education.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is where you’ll find all of Shakespeare’s work. The site is run by The Tech, the largest and oldest newspaper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Read Books Online

Read Books Online has around 6,000 ebooks, including novels, short stories, poems, essays, plays, and non-fiction.

Public Bookshelf

Public Bookshelf is a site dedicated to romance novels.

Categories of ebooks here include contemporary romance, romantic suspense, historical romance, regency romance, inspirational romance, vampire romance, western romance, general romance, and fantasy and paranormal romance.

The Perseus Project

The Perseus Project is a digital library created by Tufts University with books from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in original languages and English.

Chest of Books

Chest of Books has books on a ton of different subjects, including animals, finance, real estate, science, and travel.

The Literature Network

The Literature Network has books by authors like Anne Bronte, Lewis Carroll, and Lord George Gordon Byron. It also features forums, literature summaries, and quizzes.

The Online Books Page

The Online Books Page is a site by the University of Pennsylvania that houses books in categories like philosophy, history, medicine, science, agriculture, music, anthropology, and more. The site also links to the following:

Banned Books Online: A directory of books that were once banned and links to places where you can read them in full.

A Celebration of Women Writers: A directory that lists online editions of literary works by women as well as resources about women writers.

Prize Winners Online: A directory of prize-winning books.

Many Books

Many Books is “your friendly neighborhood library.” It houses over 50,000 books in genres like romance, mystery, young adult, horror, and non-fiction. You can read books online or download them to your device.

Authorama

Authorama turns public domain books on sites like Google Books and Project Gutenberg into HTML format, making it easier to read them.

Audiobooks

Librivox

Librivox has free audiobooks that you can listen to from any device.

[404icy]

learning the linux command line has been fun... stressful but fun... i needed to use additional resources because i didn't really understood what my professor is trying to say... it's an online class without video lectures so it was blegh...

[bjsmall]

16.05.24

Mum found my classic 'Songs for Every Assembly' music CD.

The CD features various primary school classic songs which were sung by my class at the Pilgrims' Way School. Out of the Ark's Songs for Every Assembly was released in 1998. It features easy listening and life songs for children.

My parents ordered it from the Out of the Ark online store when I was at the school.

The songs were composed by Mark & Helen Johnson, the songs are sung by the Out of the Ark choir.

It contains 30 tracks, 15 which are vocal and 15 which are backing tracks. Many of the songs are based on traditional hymns.

The CDs came with songbooks and also contain 'Words on Screen™' software which displays lyrics on screen.

More recently Out of the Ark's albums are available digitally for schools.

Out of the Ark assembly album music link:

https://www.outoftheark.co.uk/songs-for-every-assembly.html

I decided to use my Linux Mint laptop to extract them from the CD.

I installed and used the free and open source Asunder CD Ripper tool and set the audio format to .mp3 at 320kpbs. I had to install the LAME MP3 codec which was easy to do. I installed them through the Software Manager.

Asunder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asunder_(software)

As soon as I put the disc in the drive, Asunder identified the disc and its file contents to rip.

Its user interface is very user friendly and simple to pick up.

I successfully extracted the music from the CD including both the vocal and instrumental tracks. This included track meta-data.

The instrumental tracks are clearly labelled as (Accomp).

Asunder also created a playlist file in the .m3u format.

I located the tracks in the specified folder. I also uploaded the audio files on to OneDrive for private use.

I remember singing along to these tracks at Pilgrims' Way during the school assemblies and music lessons in the hall. I particularly enjoyed humming along as well to the really catchy tunes!

My favourite track is 'Together' as this tune brings back memories of my time at the school.

The album, 'Songs for Every Season' was another one that we used to sing along to as well. This features the popular 'Conkers!' music track.

Here is an old photo of me next to my school report from 2000!

See short video below. Visit the web link to listen to track previews.

[crowcryptid]

The default advice for people trying to get into IT is to get certifications and make a homelab but this if your resume gets seen by a human and it’s seen by the IT manager and not some hr rep or recruiter

TLDR: getting an entry level IT job is impossible and advice online is just get one more certification bro just one more just one more and you will get that $16 an hour job also please spend $300 setting up a server to store movies and control the rgb lights in your room I guess. (To be fair this can be done for “free” if you have an old laptop or enough parts to build something. The price is if you want it in a little box that sits next to the tv)

Anyway I do not see the point of having a homelab other than doing it for experience

IoT devices? Absolutely not. Nothing that isn’t a phone, console, tv, or pc should ever have an internet connection. And the tv is pushing it tbh. Why can your fridge receive updates? What’s wrong with you.

File storage? Ok yes but this only makes sense if you’re a data hoarder or some kind of content creator. If you don’t have a tiny ass pc, most cases will allow for at least 2 hdds.

Media server? I mean. This one is just me personally, I don’t watch movies or tv. The few times I do I just stream it for free.

What’s left? Virtual machines? How many do you actually need? I have a single Linux vm that I use for some class work/learning. It’s not running all the time.

[illusoryxdays]

Semester/End of Term Update

Hi internet people! Tomorrow is my final exam for my last class of the term so I figured I'd do a bit of a recap.

Classes Taken: 5

Credit hours: 19

Certifications gained: 3/10

I started my first term with WGU in October of 2023 and in that time completed 19 credit hours and five classes; two of which were certifications. WGU is a self paced online university which lets me go through classes much faster than I would at a brick & mortar. Being able to do one class at a time has been such a huge lifesaver with my ADHD. I can only focus on one thing at a time. It did kind of kick me in the ass with Linux though, because I couldn't make myself concentrate on it for my life.

I'm tentatively scheduled for 26 credits next term and I'm not 100% sure if I will end up meeting that goal. I hope so though! My next certifications are Network+ and Security+ which should help me get a government sector job and up my pay a little bit.

On another note: I finally finished the Crescent City series from Sarah J Maas last night and woweee is it a rollercoaster. Next reads are the Atlas Complex and a nonfiction duology on Germanic paganism and folk magic.

[fordp1nes]

cool dice [heart]

ok here i go!

Team Fortress 2 is a 2007 multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. The game was released in October 2007 as part of The Orange Box for Windows and the Xbox 360, and ported to the PlayStation 3 in December 2007. It was released as a standalone game for Windows in April 2008, and updated to support Mac OS X in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with Electronic Arts managing retail and console editions.

Players join one of two teams—RED or BLU—and choose one of nine character classes to play as, with game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. Development was led by John Cook and Robin Walker, the developers of the original Team Fortress mod. Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1998 under the name Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms. Initially, the game had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine years of development. After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other entries. Finally released on the Source game engine in 2007, Team Fortress 2 would preserve much of the core class-based gameplay of its predecessors while featuring an overhauled, cartoon-like visual style influenced by the works of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, alongside an increased focus on the visual and verbal characterization of its playable classes and what the developers have described as a 1960s spy movie aesthetic.

Team Fortress 2 has received critical acclaim for its art direction, gameplay, humor, and use of character in a wholly multiplayer game, and since its release has been referred to as one of the greatest video games ever created. The game continues to receive official Valve server support as of January 2023, in addition to new content being released on a seasonal basis in the form of submissions made through the Steam Workshop. In June 2011, the game became free-to-play, supported by microtransactions for in-game cosmetics. A 'drop system' was also added and refined, allowing free-to-play users to periodically receive in-game equipment and items. Though the game has had an unofficial competitive scene since its release, both support for official competitive play through ranked matchmaking and an overhauled casual experience were added in July 2016. Since early 2020, the official Valve servers have seen an influx of bot accounts using cheat software, often inhibiting legitimate gameplay.

Gameplay

A group of RED players attack a BLU base on the map "Well".

In most game modes, BLU and RED compete for a combat-based objective. Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapon sets. In order to accomplish objectives efficiently, a balance of these classes is required due to how these strengths and weaknesses interact with each other in a team-based environment. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon. The game was released with six official maps, although over one hundred maps have since been included in subsequent updates, including community-created maps. When players choose a gamemode for the first time, an introductory video is played, showing how to complete its objectives. During matches, the Administrator, voiced by Ellen McLain, announces events over loudspeakers. The player limit for one match is 16 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and 24 on the Windows edition. However, in 2008, the Windows edition was updated to include a server variable that allows for up to 32 players.

Team Fortress 2 is the first of Valve's multiplayer games to provide detailed statistics for individual players, such as the total amount of time spent playing as each class, most points obtained, and most objectives completed in a single life. Persistent statistics tell the player how they are performing in relation to these statistics, such as if a player comes close to their record for the damage inflicted in a round. Team Fortress 2 also features numerous achievements for carrying out certain tasks, such as achieving a certain number of kills or completing a round within a certain time. Sets of class-specific achievements have been added in updates, which can award weapons to the player upon completion. This unlockable system has since been expanded into a random drop system, whereby players can also obtain items simply by playing the game.

Game modes

Core game modes

Team Fortress 2 contains five core game modes.

Attack/Defend (A/D) is a timed game mode in which the BLU team's goal is to capture RED control points. The number of control points varies between maps, and the points must be captured by the BLU team in respective order. To capture a control point, a player must stand on it for a certain amount of time. This process can be sped up by more players on one team capturing a single point. Once a control point is captured by the BLU team, it cannot be re-captured by the RED team. The RED team's job is to prevent the BLU team from capturing all the control points before the time limit ends. Once a point is captured, the time limit will extend.

Capture the Flag (CtF) is a mode which revolves around the BLU and RED teams attempting to steal and capture the opposing team's flag, represented in-game as an intelligence briefcase. At the same time, both teams must defend their own intelligence. When the intelligence is dropped by the carrier – either by dying or dropping it manually, it will stay on the ground for 1 minute before returning to its original location if it is not picked up again. A team's intelligence can only be carried by the opposing team. The first team to capture the enemy's intelligence three times wins.

Control Points (CP) is a timed game mode where there are several control points placed around the map, with 3 or 5 control points in total depending on the map. These are referred to as "3CP" and "5CP," respectively. The game will start off with only the middle control point being available for capture, with the other control points split equally among both teams. Once this middle control point is captured, a team can begin capturing the enemy team's points in respective order. The time limit is extended on the capture of a control point by either team. For a team to win, they must capture all the control points within the time limit.

King of the Hill (KOTH) is a timed game mode that contains a single control point at the middle of the map that can be captured by both the RED and BLU teams. Upon capturing the control point, a team-specific timer starts counting down but stops upon the point being captured by the opposing team. The first team to have their timer count down to 0 wins.

Payload (PL) is a timed game mode where the BLU team must push an explosive cart along a track, while the RED team must prevent the cart from reaching their base. To push the cart, at least one BLU player must stay within the range of the cart, which will dispense health and ammo every few seconds. The cart's speed will increase as more BLU players attempt to push it. Payload maps have multiple "checkpoints" along the track. Once these checkpoints are captured, they may adjust the spawn locations of both teams. Capturing a checkpoint will also increase the time limit. If the cart is not pushed by the BLU team for 20 seconds, it will begin to move back to the last captured checkpoint, where it will stop. The RED team can stop the cart from being pushed by being within range of it. The RED team wins by preventing the cart from reaching the final checkpoint before time runs out.

Alternative game modes

There are several alternative game modes in Team Fortress 2. These modes consist of a small number of maps and detach from the core game modes in some way.

Arena is a special game mode in which players do not respawn upon death. A team can win either by eliminating all opposing players, or by claiming a single capture point that opens after a certain time has elapsed. This mode is currently unavailable through matchmaking, but is still accessible through community servers.

Mannpower is a mode in which players have access to a grappling hook and assorted power-ups laid around the map that grant unique abilities. While not bound to any specific mode, all current official Mannpower maps use a variation of Capture the Flag. In Mannpower's variation of Capture the Flag, both teams have an intelligence flag, and the first team to capture the enemy's intelligence ten times wins. The mode is heavily inspired by the Quake mod, Threewave CTF, a mod created by former Valve employee David Kirsch.

Medieval Mode is a mode in which players are restricted to using melee and support weapons, with certain exceptions for medieval-themed projectile weapons. While not bound to any specific mode, the only official Medieval Mode map uses a 3CP variation of Attack/Defend. If Medieval Mode is enabled on a map, select phrases spoken by players in the in-game text chat will be replaced with more thematic variants, such as "hello" being replaced with "well meteth".

PASS Time is a unique timed game mode inspired by rugby, developed by Valve, Bad Robot Interactive, and Escalation Studios. Three unique goals (the Run-In, Throw-In, and Bonus Goals) are placed on each team's side of the map. A single ball called the JACK will spawn at the center of the map, and players must pick it up and carry it to the opposing team's side. Players can score a goal by either carrying the JACK to a Run-In Goal or by throwing the JACK through the Throw-In Goal. Three goals can be scored by throwing the JACK through the Bonus Goal, which is much more difficult to score. To win, a team must either score five goals, or have the most goals when the timer runs out.

Payload Race, like Payload, has the main objective being to push a cart to a final checkpoint. Unlike Payload, both the RED and BLU teams are fighting to push their cart to the final checkpoint. There is only one checkpoint for each track, and there is no time limit. The team to reach their checkpoint first wins.

Player Destruction is a community-made game mode in which a player's death causes a pickup to appear. The first team to collect a set number of pickups and deliver them to a drop-off point wins the game. The players on each team with the most pickups are highlighted for everyone to see, and gain a passive healing effect for themselves and any nearby teammates.

Special Delivery is a mode similar to Capture the Flag, but there is only one neutral briefcase that can be picked up both the RED and BLU teams. Upon a team picking up the briefcase, the opposing team will be unable to pick up the briefcase until it has been dropped for 45 seconds and respawns as a neutral briefcase. A team wins by carrying the briefcase onto a loading platform, which will gradually rise until the platform reaches its peak.

Territorial Control consists of several control points spread out across a single map. Like Control Points, each point can be captured by either the RED or BLU teams. Unlike Control Points, only two points are accessible at a single time. Upon a team's successful capture of a point, the "stage" ends and the accessible capture points change. When a team only has control of a single control point, they are blocked from capturing the opposing team's control point and the team must wait until the time limit is up and the accessible capture points change. A team wins by capturing all the control points.

Other game modes

These modes are not categorized with the other modes, and instead have their own separate sections in the game.

Halloween Mode is a special mode that is enabled during the Halloween season, and allows the players access to more than 20 maps, Halloween-exclusive cosmetics, and challenges. For example, Halloween 2012 included a difficult Mann vs. Machine mission involving destroying more than 800 enemy forces. Owing to popular demand of the Halloween events, Valve later added the Full Moon event, an event that triggers around every full moon phase throughout the year, which allows players to equip Halloween-exclusive cosmetics. In 2013, Valve introduced an item called Eternaween, and upon use, allows players of a specific server to use Halloween-exclusive cosmetics for 2 hours.

Mann vs Machine, also known as MvM, is a cooperative game mode where players must defend their base from waves of robots modeled after all nine playable classes, and slow-moving tanks carrying bombs. Robots and tanks drop a currency referred to as Credits upon their death, which players can use to buy upgrades for themselves or their weapons. The players win upon successfully defending their base from the bomb until the last wave. A paid version of this game mode called "Mann Up" is also available, where players buy tickets to play "Tours of Duty", a collection of missions with the chance to win unique cosmetics and weapon skins upon completion.

Offline Practice Mode is just like any other multiplayer match, but it only consists of the player and bots. The number of bots, their difficulty, and the map can all be adjusted to a player's preference, though only a select amount of maps are available to play.

Training Mode exists to help new players get acquainted with basic controls, and teaches them the basics of four of the nine classes. It uses wooden dummies and bots to teach players the basic mechanics of classes and the game.

Competitive play

Team Fortress 2 is played competitively, through multiple leagues. The North American league, ESEA, supports a paid Team Fortress 2 league, with $42,000 in prizes for the top teams in 2017. While formalized competitive gameplay is very different from normal Team Fortress 2, it offers an environment with a much higher level of teamwork than in public servers. Most teams use voice chat to communicate, and use a combination of strategy, communication, and mechanical skill to win against other teams. Community-run competitive leagues also tend to feature restrictions such as item bans and class limits. These leagues are often supported by Valve via in-game medals (which are submitted via the Steam Workshop) and announcements on the official blog.

In April 2015, Valve announced that a dedicated competitive mode would be added to Team Fortress 2, utilizing skill-based matchmaking; closed beta testing began in the following year. The competitive mode was added in the "Meet Your Match" update, released on July 7, 2016. Ranked matches are played six-vs-six, with players ranked in thirteen tiers based on win/losses and an assessment of their skills. Ranked matchmaking will balance players based on their tiers and rating. A similar matchmaking approach has been added for casual games for matches of 12-vs-12 players. In order to join competitive matchmaking, players must have associated their Steam account with the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, as well as having a Team Fortress 2 "premium account", which is unlocked by either having bought the game before it went free-to-play or by having made an in-game item purchase since.

Formats

Team Fortress 2 is played in a variety of different formats, which dictate the maximum size and composition of a team and can drastically change the impact of a single player's gameplay or choice of class. The two most basic formats consist of 12v12 and 6v6 ("Sixes"), the two being used on official Valve servers for casual and competitive modes respectively with no additional limitations. Most competitive leagues host Sixes but include limits on certain classes and weapons to preserve traditional, skill-based playstyles, for example limiting the allowed amount of medics or demomen to one on either team or banning certain movement-enhancing weapons from use. Other popular formats include "Highlander", a 9v9 format with a limit of one player per each of the nine classes, as well as a Sixes-inspired 7v7 variant thereof known as "Prolander" to allow for strategically switching classes during a competitive game.

Characters and setting

From left to right: Pyro, Engineer, Spy, Heavy, Sniper, Scout, Soldier, Demoman, and Medic

Team Fortress 2 features nine playable classes, evenly split and categorized into "Offense", "Defense", and "Support". Each class has strengths and weaknesses and must work with other classes to be efficient, encouraging strategy and teamwork. Each class has at least three default weapons: a primary weapon, secondary weapon, and melee weapon. Some classes have additional slots for PDAs.

Offense

The Scout (Nathan Vetterlein) is an American baseball fan and street runner from Boston, Massachusetts who practiced running to "beat his mad dog siblings to the fray." He is a fast, agile character, who is armed by default with a scattergun, a pistol, and an aluminum baseball bat. The Scout can double jump, and counts as two people when capturing control points, thus doubling the capture speed, and when pushing the Payload cart.

The Soldier (Rick May) is an American jingoistic patriot from the Midwest who stylizes himself as a military man despite having never served in any branch of the Armed Forces. The Soldier is armed by default with a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a folding shovel. He is both the second-slowest class in the game and the class with the second-highest health, after the Heavy Weapons Guy. The Soldier can use his rocket launcher to rocket jump to other locations at the cost of some health.

The Pyro (Dennis Bateman) is a pyromaniac of unknown gender and origin who wears a fire-retardant suit and a voice-muffling gas mask. By default, the Pyro is armed with a flamethrower, a shotgun, and a fire axe. In addition to simply flames, the Pyro's flamethrower can also produce a blast of compressed air that repels any nearby enemies and projectiles, and extinguishes burning teammates. The Pyro is deluded and believes they are living in a utopian fantasy world referred to as "Pyroland".

Defense

The Demoman (Gary Schwartz) is a Black Scottish, one-eyed, alcoholic demolitions expert from Ullapool, Scotland. Armed by default with a timed-fuse grenade launcher, a remotely-detonated "stickybomb" launcher, and a glass bottle of scrumpy, the Demoman can use his explosives to provide indirect fire and set traps. Similar to the Soldier's rocket jump, the Demoman can use his stickybomb launcher to "sticky jump" at the cost of some health.

The Heavy Weapons Guy, or simply the Heavy (Gary Schwartz), is a large Russian man from the Dzhugdzhur Mountains of the USSR. He is heavy in stature and accent, and is obsessed with firepower. He is the slowest class, and can both sustain and deal substantial amounts of damage. His default weapons consist of a minigun that he affectionately refers to as "Sasha", a shotgun, and his fists.

The Engineer (Grant Goodeve) is an American inventor, engineer, intellectual, and "good ol' boy" from Bee Cave, Texas. The Engineer can build structures to support his team: a sentry gun for defending key points, a health and ammunition dispenser, and a pair of teleporter modules (one entrance and one exit). The Engineer is armed by default with a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench that functions as both a melee weapon and to repair and upgrade his buildings, and two separate PDAs; one to erect his buildings and one to remotely destroy them.

Support

The Medic (Robin Atkin Downes) is a German doctor from Stuttgart with little regard for the Hippocratic Oath. He is equipped with a "Medi Gun" that can restore health to injured teammates. When healing teammates, the Medi Gun progressively builds an "ÜberCharge" meter, which, when fully charged, can be activated to provide the Medic and his patient with temporary invulnerability. The Medic is also equipped with a syringe gun and a bonesaw for situations in which he must fight without his teammates' protection. He keeps doves as pets, one of which is named Archimedes.

The Sniper (John Patrick Lowrie) is an ocker assassin born in New Zealand and raised in the Australian outback, equipped by default with a laser-sighted sniper rifle to shoot enemies from afar. Depending on how the player aims and fires, he can cause severe damage or an instant kill with a headshot. By default, he also carries a submachine gun and a kukri for close combat.

The Spy (Dennis Bateman) is a French covert operative whose equipment is designed for stealth and infiltration, including a cloaking device disguised as a wristwatch, an electronic sapper used to disable and destroy enemy Engineers' buildings, and a device hidden in his cigarette case that enables him to disguise himself as any player on either team. He is armed with a revolver and a butterfly knife, able to use the latter to instantly kill enemies by stabbing them in the back. He is the only character who does not wear any clothing in his team's bright color or a patch denoting his specialty, instead preferring a balaclava, business suit, necktie, and gloves in muted team-color hues. In the extended media it is revealed that the Spy is the father of the Scout.

Non-playable characters

Other characters include the Administrator (voiced by Ellen McLain), an unseen announcer who provides information about time limits and objectives to players, and her assistant Miss Pauling (Ashly Burch). The cast has expanded with Halloween updates, including the characters of the "Horseless Headless Horsemann" and Monoculus (Gary Schwartz). 2012 and 2013 saw the addition of Merasmus, the Bombinomicon, and Redmond, Blutarch, Zepheniah, and Gray Mann (the first three all played by Nolan North). Previous unused voicelines recorded by North were later used for Horseless Headless Horsemann seen in the 2019 map "Laughter" and a jack-o'-lantern resting atop the Payload cart in the 2020 map "Bloodwater". The character Davy Jones (voiced by Calvin Kipperman) made an appearance in the 2018 map "Cursed Cove".

In the video announcement for the "Jungle Inferno" update, Mann Co. CEO Saxton Hale, a hypermasculine Australian adventurer, is voiced by JB Blanc.

Setting

Logo and motto of the fictional Mann Co.

Although Team Fortress 2 is designed as an open-ended multiplayer experience without an active storyline, the game and additional material nonetheless feature a wider narrative centered around the fictional Mann Co., a large shipping and manufacturing company led by CEO Saxton Hale. The main PvP gamemodes are set during the "Gravel Wars", a conflict between the rival heirs Redmond "Red" and Blutarch "Blu" Mann for which the nine playable characters were hired out as mercenaries. Gray Mann later emerges as the third competitor, killing the other two brothers and forcing Hale to rehire the mercenaries to protect Mann Co. from Gray's robot army in the Mann vs Machine cooperative horde shooter mode.

Development

Origins

The original Team Fortress was developed by the Australian team TF Software, comprising Robin Walker and John Cook, as a free mod for the 1996 PC game Quake. In 1998, Walker and Cook were employed by Valve, which had just released its first game, Half-Life. Valve began developing Team Fortress 2 as an expansion pack for Half-Life using Valve's GoldSrc engine, and gave a release date for the end of the year. In 1999, Valve released Team Fortress Classic, a port of the original Team Fortress, as a free Half-Life mod. Team Fortress Classic was developed using the publicly available Half-Life software development kit as an example to the community and industry of its flexibility. Team Fortress 2 originally featured a realistic visual style.

Unlike Team Fortress, Valve originally planned Team Fortress 2 to have a modern war aesthetic. It would feature innovations including a command hierarchy with a Commander class, parachute drops over enemy territory, and networked voice communication. The Commander class played similarly to a real-time strategy game, with the player viewing the game from a bird's-eye perspective and issuing orders to players and AI-controlled soldiers.

Team Fortress 2 was first shown at E3 1999 as Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of Arms, where Valve showcased new technologies including parametric animation, which blended animations for smoother, more lifelike movement, and Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology, which dynamically reduced the detail of distant on-screen elements to improve performance. The game earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game.

In mid-2000, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 had been delayed for a second time. They attributed the delay to development switching to its new in-house engine, Source. Following the announcement, Valve released no news on the game for six years. Walker and Cook worked on various other Valve projects; Walker was project lead on Half-Life 2: Episode One and Cook worked on Valve's content distribution platform Steam. Team Fortress 2 became a prominent example of vaporware, a long-anticipated game that had seen years of development, and was often mentioned alongside another much-delayed game, Duke Nukem Forever. Walker said that Valve built three or four different versions of Team Fortress 2 before settling on their final design. Shortly before the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi confirmed that Team Fortress 2 was still in development.

Final design and release

Valve reintroduced Team Fortress 2 at the July 2006 EA Summer Showcase event. Departing from the realistic visual design of other Valve games, Team Fortress 2 features a cartoon-like visual style influenced by 20th-century commercial illustrations and the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, achieved through Gooch shading. The game debuted with the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It was the first game to implement the Source engine's new Facial Animation 3 features.

Valve abandoned the realistic style when it became impossible to reconcile it with the unrealistic gameplay, with opposing armies having constructed elaborate bases directly next to each other. The Commander class was abandoned as other players would simply refuse to follow their orders.

Valve designed each character, team, and equipped weapon to be visually distinct, even at range; for example, the coloring draws attention to the chest area, bringing focus on the equipped weapon. The voices for each of the classes were based on imagining what people from the 1960s would expect the classes to have sounded like, according to writer Chet Faliszek.

The map design has an "evil genius" theme with archetypical spy fortresses, concealed within inconspicuous buildings such as industrial warehouses and farms to give plausibility to their close proximities; these bases are usually separated by a neutrally themed space. The bases hide exaggerated super weapons such as laser cannons, nuclear warheads, and missile launch facilities, taking the role of objectives. The maps have little visual clutter and stylized, almost impressionistic modeling, to allow enemies to be spotted more easily. The impressionistic design approach also affects textures, which are based on photos that are filtered and improved by hand, giving them a tactile quality and giving Team Fortress 2 its distinct look. The bases are designed to let players immediately know where they are. RED bases use warm colors, natural materials, and angular shapes, while BLU bases use cool colors, industrial materials, and orthogonal shapes.

During the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference, Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 would ship as the multiplayer component of The Orange Box. A conference trailer showcasing all nine of the classes demonstrated for the first time the game's whimsical new visual style. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, said that the team's goal was to create "the best-looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game". A beta release of the entire game was made on Steam on September 17, 2007, for customers who had pre-purchased The Orange Box, who had activated their Black Box coupon, which was included with the ATI HD 2900XT Graphics cards, and for members of Valve's Cyber Café Program.

Team Fortress 2 was released on October 10, 2007, both as a standalone product via Steam and at retail stores as part of The Orange Box compilation pack, priced at each gaming platform's recommended retail price. The Orange Box also contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal. Valve offered The Orange Box at a ten percent discount for those who pre-purchased it via Steam before the October 10 release, as well as the opportunity to participate in the beta test.

Post-release

Since the release of Team Fortress 2, Valve has continually released free updates and patches through Steam for Windows, OS X, and Linux users; though most patches are used for improving the reliability of the software or to tweak gameplay changes, several patches have been used to introduce new features and gameplay modes, and are often associated with marketing materials such as comics or videos offered on the Team Fortress 2 website; this blog is also used to keep players up to date with the ongoing developments in Team Fortress 2. As of July 2012, each class has been given a dedicated patch that provides new weapons, items, and other gameplay changes; these class patches typically included the release of the class's "Meet the Team" video. Other major patches have included new gameplay modes including the Payload, Payload Race, Training, Highlander, Medieval, and Mann vs. Machine modes. Themed patches have also been released, such as a yearly Halloween-themed event called "Scream Fortress", where players may obtain unique items available only during a set period around the holiday. Other new features have given players the ability to craft items within the game from other items, trade items with other players, purchase in-game items through funds in Steam, and save and edit replay videos that can be posted to YouTube.

Valve has released tools to allow users to create maps, weapons, and cosmetic items through a contribution site; the most popular are added as official content for the game. This approach has subsequently created the basis for the Steam Workshop functionality of the software client. In one case, more than fifty users from the content-creation community worked with Valve to release an official content update in May 2013, with all of the content generated by these players. Valve reported that as of June 2013, over $10 million has been paid back to over 400 community members that have helped to contribute content to the game, including a total of $250,000 for the participants in the May 2013 patch. To help promote community-made features, Valve has released limited-time events, such as the "Gun Mettle" or "Invasion" events in the second half of 2015, also including the "Tough Break" update in December 2015, in which players can spend a small amount of money which is paid back to the community developers for the ability to gain unique items offered while playing on community-made maps during the event.

Development of the new content had been confirmed for the Xbox 360, while development for the PlayStation 3 was deemed "uncertain" by Valve. However, the PlayStation 3 version of Team Fortress 2 received an update that repaired some of the issues found within the game, ranging from graphical issues to online connectivity problems; this update was included in a patch that also repaired issues found in the other games within The Orange Box. The updates released on PC and planned for later release on Xbox 360 include new official maps and game modes, as well as tweaks to classes and new weapons that can be unlocked through the game's achievement system. The developers attempted to negotiate with Xbox 360 developer Microsoft to keep the Xbox 360 releases of these updates free, but Microsoft refused and Valve announced that they would release bundles of several updates together to justify the price. Because of the cost of patching during the seventh generation of video game consoles, Valve has been unable to provide additional patches to the Xbox 360 version since 2009, effectively cancelling development of the console versions. On March 29, 2023, the servers for the PlayStation 3 version of Team Fortress 2 went offline.

On June 10, 2010, Team Fortress 2 was released for OS X, shortly after the release of Steam for OS X. The release was teased by way of an image similar to early iPod advertising, showing a dark silhouette of the Heavy on a bright green background, his Sandvich highlighted in his hand. Virtual earbuds, which can be worn when playing on either OS X or Windows once acquired, were given to players playing the game on OS X before June 14, though the giveaway period was later extended to August 16.

On November 6, 2012, Valve announced the release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux as part of a restricted beta launch of Steam on the platform. This initial release of Steam and Team Fortress 2 was targeted at Ubuntu with support for other distributions planned for the future. Later, on December 20, 2012, Valve opened up access to the beta, including Team Fortress 2, to all Steam users without the need to wait for an invitation. On February 14, 2013, Valve announced the full release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux. From then to March 1, anyone who played the game on Linux would receive a free Tux penguin, which can be equipped in-game.

Team Fortress 2 was announced in March 2013 to be the first game to officially support the Oculus Rift, a consumer-grade virtual reality headset. A patch will be made to the client to include a "VR Mode" that can be used with the headset on any public server.

In April 2020, source code for 2018 versions Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive leaked online. This created fears that malicious users would use the code to make remote code execution software and attack servers or players' computers. Several fan projects halted development until the impact of the leak could be determined. Valve confirmed the legitimacy of the code leaks, but stated they do not believe it affects servers and clients running the latest official builds of either game.

On May 1, 2020, shortly following the death of the voice actor of the Soldier, Rick May, Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2, adding a tribute to his voicework as the Soldier in the form of a new main menu theme (a rendition of Taps), as well as statues of the Soldier saluting, added to most of the official in-game maps. These statues all featured a commemorative plaque dedicated to May and lasted through the end of the month. One of these statues, appearing on the map "cp_granary", the setting of the "Meet the Soldier" short video, was made permanent in an August 21 update.

Free-to-play

On June 23, 2011, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 would become free to play. Unique equipment including weapons and outfits would be available as microtransactions through the in-game store, tied through Steam. Walker stated that Valve would continue to provide new features and items free. Walker stated that Valve had learned that the more players Team Fortress 2 had, the more value it had for each player.

The move came a week after Valve introduced several third-party free-to-play games to Steam and stated they were working on a new free-to-play game. Within nine months of becoming free to play, Valve reported that revenue from Team Fortress 2 had increased by a factor of twelve.

Bot accounts and "#SaveTF2"

Since early 2020, Team Fortress 2 has endured large amounts of bot accounts entering Valve casual matchmaking servers. Though bot accounts had been an issue in Team Fortress 2 for some time prior to this, multiple sources began to report a spike in activity for these bot accounts. The activities of these bots have included forcibly crashing servers, spamming copypastas in the text chats of matches, assuming other players' usernames, and the usage of aimbots. Additionally, some bots were programmed taking advantage of a TF2 source code leak that Valve had confirmed in April 2020. A common bot that exploited this leak used the Sniper class, allowing them to exploit the "headshot" mechanic to instantly kill enemy players from across the map regardless of direction they were aiming.

On June 16, 2020, Valve responded to this by restricting accounts that have not paid for Mann Co. Store items or purchased Team Fortress 2 prior to the game becoming free-to-play from the use of both voice and text chat in game. On June 24, all players were restricted from changing their Steam username while connected to any Valve matchmaking server or any server with display name updates disabled.The change was implemented to prevent bots from changing their display name to impersonate legitimate players, which allowed the bots to avoid being kicked due to the confusion caused by their duplicate name. On voting, changes were also introduced to prevent bots from spamming this functionality in an attempt to prevent real players from using kicking bots.

Approximately one year later, on June 22, 2021, additional changes were implemented to discourage bot activity. Another YouTuber, Toofty, posted a video that provided input from several of those that were behind the bot problem; reasons given ranged from grieving against Valve developers to simply finding the disruption fun to watch. These are issues normally dealt with by a game's developer but Valve's lack of response allowed their activities to go unchecked for two years.

These issues remained ongoing as of May 2022, prompting YouTuber SquimJim to uploaded a video to his YouTube channel encouraging his viewers to express their grievances to Valve and news outlets through letters. After receiving over a hundred news tips, IGN journalist Rebekah Valentine wrote of her experience with trying to play the game. She remarked that the game was "literally unplayable" on official Valve servers, forcing many players to join unofficial community servers instead. She also said that some bots would "...spam chat with homophobic or racist remarks, outside links, or just plain rude or obnoxious messages". In response to these issues, Robin Atkin Downes, voice actor for the Medic, also reached out to his contacts at Valve for a response, and encouraged fans to continue making their voices heard in a "peaceful, passionate manner".

On May 26, 2022, members of the TF2 community held a "peaceful protest" on Twitter using the hashtag #savetf2 with the goal of getting a response from Valve regarding the issues. With the hashtag trending on Twitter, Valve responded, saying "TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things."

Across June and July 2022, Valve released a number of patches to help players deal with the bot issue, such as improving the game's vote kicking system so that both teams can vote to kick players accused of abusive behavior at the same time. Valve took down the servers for five minutes in August 2022, during which a number of bans were issued via Valve Anti-Cheat to players that were known to be running these bots, effectively ending the problem. Valve's efforts helped to increase the player count in the months that followed.

On February 9, 2023, a blog post was shared on the official website, saying that a new "update-sized" update was coming to the game. The update will be released sometime around summer and will use community-made content submitted before May 1st. However, shortly after the post was made, Valve silently changed the message to say "holiday-sized update" instead. The update was released on July 13, 2023.

Tie-in materials

Beginning in May 2007, to promote the game, Valve began a ten-video advertisement series referred to as "Meet the Team". Constructed using Source Filmmaker and using more detailed character models, the series consists of short videos introducing each class and displaying their personalities and abilities. The videos are usually interspersed with simulated gameplay footage. The format of the videos varies greatly; the first installment, "Meet the Heavy", depicts him being interviewed, while "Meet the Soldier" shows the Soldier giving a misinformed lecture on Sun Tzu to a row of severed BLU heads as if they were raw recruits. He claims Sun Tzu "invented" fighting, then further confuses this claim with the story of Noah and his Ark. The videos were generally released through Valve's official YouTube channels, though in one notable exception, the "Meet the Spy" video was leaked onto YouTube, several days before its intended release.

Early "Meet the Team" videos were based on the audition scripts used for the voice actors for each of the classes; the "Meet the Heavy" script is nearly word-for-word a copy of the Heavy's script. Later videos, such as "Meet the Sniper", contain more original material. The videos have been used by Valve to help improve the technology for the game, specifically improving the facial animations, as well as a source of new gameplay elements, such as the Heavy's "Sandvich" or the Sniper's "Jarate". The final video in the Meet the Team series, "Meet the Pyro", was released on June 27, 2012. Gabe Newell has stated that Valve used the "Meet the Team" series as a means of exploring the possibilities of making feature film movies themselves. He believes that only game developers themselves have the ability to bring the interesting parts of a game to a film, and suggested that this would be the only manner through which a Half-Life-based movie would be made. A fifteen-minute short, "Expiration Date", was released on June 17, 2014. The shorts were made using Source Filmmaker, which was officially released and has been in open beta as of July 11, 2012.

In more recent major updates to the game, Valve has presented teaser images and online comic books that expand the fictional continuity and characters of Team Fortress 2, as part of the expansion of the "cross-media property", according to Newell. In August 2009, Valve brought aboard American comic writer Michael Avon Oeming to teach Valve "about what it means to have a character and do character development in a comic format, how you do storytelling". "Loose Canon", a comic associated with the Engineer Update, establishes the history of RED versus BLU as a result of the last will and testament of Zepheniah Mann in 1890, forcing his two bickering sons Blutarch and Redmond to vie for control of Zepheniah's lands between them; both have engineered ways of maintaining their mortality to the present, waiting to outlast the other while employing separate forces to try to wrest control of the land. This and other comics also establish other background characters such as Saxton Hale, the CEO of Mann Co., the company that provides the weapons for the two sides and was bequeathed to one of Hale's ancestors by Zepheniah, and the Administrator, the game's announcer, that watches over, encourages the RED/BLU conflict, and keeps each side from winning. The collected comics were published by Dark Horse Comics in Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories, a volume along with other comics created by Valve for Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead, and released in November 2011. Cumulative details in updates both in-game and on Valve's sites from 2010 through 2012 were part of a larger alternate reality game preceding the reveal of the Mann vs. Machine mode, which was revealed as a co-op mode on August 15, 2012.

Marketing and microtransactions

Valve had provided other promotions to draw players into the game. Valve has held weekends of free play for Team Fortress 2 before the game was made free-to-play. Through various updates, hats and accessories can be worn by any of the classes, giving players an ability to customize the look of their character, and extremely rare hats named "Unusuals" have particle effects attached to it and are only obtainable through opening "crates" or trading with other players. New weapons were added in updates to allow the player to choose a loadout and play style that best suits them.

Hats and weapons can be gained as a random drop, through the crafting/trading systems, or via cross-promotion: Limited-edition hats and weapons have been awarded for pre-ordering or gaining Achievements in other content from Steam, both from Valve or other third-party games such as Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, Worms Reloaded, Killing Floor, or Poker Night at the Inventory (which features the Heavy class as a character). According to Robin Walker, Valve introduced these additional hats as an indirect means for players to show status within the game or their affiliation with another game series simply by visual appearance.

The Pyro, Heavy, and Spy all function as a single playable character in the PC release of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. The Pyro, Medic, Engineer, and Heavy appear as playable characters in Dungeon of the Endless. The Pyro was added as a playable character to Killing Floor in 2010, along with appearing as a henchman in the 2021 game Evil Genius 2.

The game's first television commercial premiered during the first episode of the fifth season of The Venture Bros. in June 2013, featuring in-game accessories that were created with the help of Adult Swim.

Items and economy

In Team Fortress 2, players can trade with others for items such as weapons and cosmetics. This functionality was added in the 2010 Mann-Conomy Update, alongside being able to purchase items through an in-game store with real money. Operating largely through informal gray markets before the introduction of the official Steam Community Market, trading items made players susceptible to fraud.

Team Fortress 2 features an in-built item valuing system known as an item quality, assigned to a given instance of an item through a variety of different means and ranging from "Normal" items used as the stock weapons of each class, to "Unique" items used as the base obtainable items from the item drop or achievement systems, to far rarer qualities such as "Strange", "Unusual" or "Decorated" which feature special cosmetic effects that can immensely increase the market value of a given item; Strange items keep track of kills or other objectives achieved while equipped in-game while Unusual items feature item-specific particle effects, with both Strange and Unusual items being obtainable through rare crafting items or randomly obtained in place of the far more common Unique items. Decorated items are instead redeemed from rare items known as "war paints", awarding the player a weapon retextured with a pseudo-random cosmetic skin. Other qualities include "Vintage", awarded to older items to compensate for changes in obtainability, and "Collector's", created through combining 200 Unique instances of a single item.

Cosmetics and war paints are typically released through seasonal "cases" that award a random item from an associated collection unique to the given season of a specific year. Such items are additionally assigned a "grade" from "Civilian" to "Mercenary" to track their relative rarity within a collection.

Third-party websites such as the crowd-sourced backpack.tf have been created to aid users in trading, as well as track the value of in-game items. Crate keys, crafting metal, and in-game items such as an "earbuds" cosmetic (also referred to as "buds") are all used as currency due to their value.

The economy of Team Fortress 2 has received significant attention from economists, journalists, and users, due to its relative sophistication and the value of many of its in-game items. It has often been the subject of study. It operates on a system of supply and demand, barter, and scarcity value, akin to many real-world economies such as that of the United States. In 2011, it was reported that the economy of Team Fortress 2 was worth over US$50 million.

2019 Crate bug

On July 25, 2019, a bug was mistakenly included in an update - if players unboxed certain older series of Crates, they would be guaranteed to receive an Unusual-grade cosmetic item, compared to the usual 1% chance of obtaining an Unusual-grade cosmetic item from a Crate. This damaged the in-game economy, causing Unusual-grade cosmetic items able to be unboxed from these Crates to drop substantially in value. The incident has been nicknamed "The Crate Depression" (a pun on "Crate" and "The Great Depression") by fans. On July 26, 2019, this bug was fixed. Users who received any Unusual-grade cosmetic items from the bug were restricted from trading them, with Valve later announcing in an official statement on August 2, 2019 that the first Unusual-grade item any player received from the bug is tradable, with any subsequent Unusual-grade items being permanently untradeable and only usable by the player who received them.

Reception and legacy

See also: Critical reception of The Orange Box

Best Action Game (1999)

Best Online Multiplayer (1999)

IGN

Best Artistic Design (2007)

1UP.com

Best Multiplayer Experience (2007)

Best Artistic Direction (2007)

GameSpy

Best Multiplayer Game of the Year (2007)

Most Unique Art Style (2007)

Team Fortress 2 received widespread critical acclaim, with overall scores of 92/100 "universal acclaim" on Metacritic. Many reviewers praised the cartoon-styled graphics, and the resulting light-hearted gameplay, and the use of distinct personalities and appearances for the classes impressed a number of critics, with PC Gamer UK stating that "until now multiplayer games just haven't had it". Similarly, the game modes were received well, GamePro described the settings as focusing "on just simple fun", while several reviewers praised Valve for the map "Hydro" and its attempts to create a game mode with variety in each map. Additional praise was bestowed on the game's level design, game balance and teamwork promotion. Team Fortress 2 has received several awards individually for its multiplayer gameplay and its graphical style, as well as having received a number of "game of the year" awards as part of The Orange Box.

Although Team Fortress 2 was well received, its removal of class-specific grenades, a feature of previous Team Fortress incarnations, was controversial amongst reviewers. IGN expressed some disappointment over this, while conversely, PC Gamer UK approved, stating "grenades have been removed entirely—thank God". Some further criticism came over a variety of issues, such as the lack of extra content such as bots (although Valve has since added bots in an update), problems of players finding their way around maps due to the lack of a minimap, and some criticism of the Medic class being too passive and repetitive in his nature. The Medic class has since been re-tooled by Valve, giving it new unlockable weapons and abilities.

With the "Gold Rush Update" in April 2008, Valve had started to add fundamentals of character customization through unlockable weapons for each class, which continued in subsequent updates, most notably the "Sniper vs. Spy Update" in April 2009, which introduced unlockable cosmetic items into the game. Further updates expanded the number of weapons and cosmetics available, but also introduced monetization options, eventually allowing it to go free-to-play. To this end, Team Fortress 2 is considered one of the first games to offer games as a service, a feature which would become more prevalent in the 2010s.

Fans of Team Fortress Classic have made a total conversion mod of Team Fortress 2 titled Team Fortress 2 Classic, which seeks to marry gameplay elements and concepts from both entries alongside scrapped ideas from the sequel's development cycle and several entirely original additions.

[codingguru123]

Is Java training useful for future generations?

Introduction:

Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and it has been around for over 27 years. Since its creation, Java has become the backbone of many software applications and is widely used in the industry. Java training can be a valuable asset for future generations as it provides a strong foundation for computer programming and software development. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of Java training and how it can prepare future generations for success in the tech industry.

Java is widely used:

Java is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world, and it has become the standard for many software applications. It is used in web development, mobile app development, and enterprise software development. Java is also used in the development of games, e-commerce websites, and many other applications. Therefore, it is a valuable skill for anyone who wants to work in the tech industry.

High demand for Java Developers:

Java Developers are in high demand in the tech industry, and the demand is expected to grow in the future. According to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of software developers is projected to grow 22 percent from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations. Therefore, Java training can prepare future generations for lucrative careers in the tech industry.

Java is versatile:

Java is a versatile language that can be used for a wide range of applications. It is used for everything from web development to game development, and it can be used on many different platforms. Java can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and many other operating systems. This versatility makes Java a valuable skill for anyone who wants to work in the tech industry.

Java is easy to learn:

Java is a relatively easy language to learn, and it is an excellent choice for beginners who want to learn programming. Java has a simple syntax, and it is easy to read and understand. Java is also an object-oriented language, which means that it is organized around objects rather than actions or functions. This makes Java easy to learn and understand.

Java is free:

Java is an open-source language, which means that it is free to use and distribute. This makes Java an excellent choice for anyone who wants to learn programming without investing in expensive software. Java can be downloaded and installed for free, and there are many resources available online for learning Java.

Java is used in education:

Java is used in many educational programs, including computer science courses at universities and coding boot camps. Java is an excellent language for teaching programming concepts because it is easy to learn and understand. Java is also a great language for teaching object-oriented programming, which is an essential concept in software development.

Java has a strong community:

Java has a strong community of developers who are constantly creating new libraries and frameworks. This community is dedicated to improving the language and making it easier to use. This means that there are many resources available for Java developers, including documentation, forums, and open-source projects.

Why Learning Java is Important.

Learning Java is a valuable investment for anyone who wants to pursue a career in the tech industry. Java is a versatile language that is widely used in the development of software applications, and there is a high demand for Java developers. Pursuing a Java course from a reputable institute like Fullstack Guru can provide a strong foundation in Java programming and prepare individuals for success in the tech industry. Fullstack Guru offers the best java classes in Pune taught by experienced instructors who are dedicated to helping students succeed. With hands-on training and real-world projects, Fullstack Guru's Java course provides a practical learning experience that prepares students for a career in software development.

Conclusion:

Java training is a valuable asset for future generations, as it provides a strong foundation for computer programming and software development. Java is a versatile language that is widely used in the tech industry, and there is a high demand for Java developers. Java is also easy to learn and free to use, making it an excellent choice for beginners who want to learn programming. Java is used in many educational programs, and it has a strong community of developers who are dedicated to improving the language. Therefore, Java training is a valuable investment for anyone who wants to work in the tech industry or pursue a career in software development.

[iricressent]

team fortress 2 !!

Team Fortress 2 is a 2007 multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. The game was released in October 2007 as part of The Orange Box for Windows and the Xbox 360, and ported to the PlayStation 3 in December 2007.[1][2] It was released as a standalone game for Windows in April 2008, and updated to support Mac OS X in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with Electronic Arts managing retail and console editions.

Players join one of two teams—RED or BLU—and choose one of nine character classes to play as, with game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. Development was led by John Cook and Robin Walker, the developers of the original Team Fortress mod. Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1998 under the name Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms. Initially, the game had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine years of development. After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other entries. Finally released on the Source game engine in 2007, Team Fortress 2 would preserve much of the core class-based gameplay of its predecessors while featuring an overhauled, cartoon-like visual style influenced by the works of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, alongside an increased focus on the visual and verbal characterization of its playable classes and what the developers have described as a 1960s spy movie aesthetic.

Team Fortress 2 has received critical acclaim for its art direction, gameplay, humor, and use of character in a wholly multiplayer game,[3][4][5][6] and since its release has been referred to as one of the greatest video games ever created.[7][8][9] The game continues to receive official Valve server support as of January 2023, in addition to new content being released on a seasonal basis in the form of submissions made through the Steam Workshop. In June 2011, the game became free-to-play, supported by microtransactions for in-game cosmetics. A 'drop system' was also added and refined, allowing free-to-play users to periodically receive in-game equipment and items. Though the game has had an unofficial competitive scene since its release, both support for official competitive play through ranked matchmaking and an overhauled casual experience were added in July 2016.[10] Since early 2020, the official Valve servers have seen an influx of bot accounts using cheat software, often inhibiting legitimate gameplay.[11]

Gameplay

A group of RED players attack a BLU base on the map "Well".

In most game modes, BLU and RED compete for a combat-based objective.[4] Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapon sets. In order to accomplish objectives efficiently, a balance of these classes is required due to how these strengths and weaknesses interact with each other in a team-based environment. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon.[12][13] The game was released with six official maps, although over one hundred maps have since been included in subsequent updates, including community-created maps.[14][15] When players choose a gamemode for the first time, an introductory video is played, showing how to complete its objectives. During matches, the Administrator,[16] voiced by Ellen McLain, announces events over loudspeakers.[17] The player limit for one match is 16 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and 24 on the Windows edition.[18] However, in 2008, the Windows edition was updated to include a server variable that allows for up to 32 players.[19]

Team Fortress 2 is the first of Valve's multiplayer games to provide detailed statistics for individual players, such as the total amount of time spent playing as each class, most points obtained, and most objectives completed in a single life. Persistent statistics tell the player how they are performing in relation to these statistics, such as if a player comes close to their record for the damage inflicted in a round.[14] Team Fortress 2 also features numerous achievements for carrying out certain tasks, such as achieving a certain number of kills or completing a round within a certain time. Sets of class-specific achievements have been added in updates, which can award weapons to the player upon completion. This unlockable system has since been expanded into a random drop system, whereby players can also obtain items simply by playing the game.[20]

Game modes

Core game modes

Team Fortress 2 contains five core game modes.

Attack/Defend (A/D) is a timed game mode in which the BLU team's goal is to capture RED control points. The number of control points varies between maps, and the points must be captured by the BLU team in respective order. To capture a control point, a player must stand on it for a certain amount of time. This process can be sped up by more players on one team capturing a single point. Once a control point is captured by the BLU team, it cannot be re-captured by the RED team. The RED team's job is to prevent the BLU team from capturing all the control points before the time limit ends. Once a point is captured, the time limit will extend.[21]

Capture the Flag (CtF) is a mode which revolves around the BLU and RED teams attempting to steal and capture the opposing team's flag, represented in-game as an intelligence briefcase. At the same time, both teams must defend their own intelligence. When the intelligence is dropped by the carrier – either by dying or dropping it manually, it will stay on the ground for 1 minute before returning to its original location if it is not picked up again. A team's intelligence can only be carried by the opposing team. The first team to capture the enemy's intelligence three times wins.[22]

Control Points (CP) is a timed game mode where there are several control points placed around the map, with 3 or 5 control points in total depending on the map. These are referred to as "3CP" and "5CP," respectively. The game will start off with only the middle control point being available for capture, with the other control points split equally among both teams. Once this middle control point is captured, a team can begin capturing the enemy team's points in respective order. The time limit is extended on the capture of a control point by either team. For a team to win, they must capture all the control points within the time limit.[21]

King of the Hill (KOTH) is a timed game mode that contains a single control point at the middle of the map that can be captured by both the RED and BLU teams. Upon capturing the control point, a team-specific timer sta

[linuxgamenews]

Barotrauma has a free weekend and massive discount

Hoist the Sails game update out now for Barotrauma on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Thanks to the ongoing work and dedication of developer FakeFish and Undertow Games. Which is available now on both Steam and Humble Store. Developers FakeFish and Undertow Games are happy to extend an open invitation for gamers worldwide. Due to try Barotrauma for free this coming weekend. Deep divers and submarine crews better strap in and prepare. While they submerge into the amazing frozen depths of the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Diong so free of charge, starting now until October 9th at 1 PM Pacific Time. Barotrauma is currently available through Steam Early Access with a new Hoist the Sails update.

Free Weekend and Discount:

To complement an already exciting weekend on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Daedalic Entertainment is also happy to confirm more news. Barotrauma will sport a staggering 75% discount on Steam. Due to span the entire weekend and ending on Thursday, October 20th at 10 AM Pacific time. No better time than the present to get your feet in the Hoist the Sails update. While adding Barotrauma to your library!

Barotrauma Feature Trailer

Barotrauma is a co-op sci-fi-inspired 2D submarine sim. Which also offers survival horror elements that will keep even the most experienced of captains on the edge of their seats. The game takes place in the frozen oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Which will have players exploring the hostile depths of the mysterious Galilean Satellite. All while working and repairing a multi-station submarine. Fending off the many creatures living in the dangerous waters around you. Man a wide range of submarines and deploy solo or with crews of up to 16 players online! Hoist the Sails will be the final major content update ahead of the game’s full release in early 2023. It comes with a wide array of additions and changes. Including performance upgrades and an entirely new transport sub. The removal of the Deep Diver class, re-worked upgrade systems, and the addition of submarine tiers. There are new and better categorization for weapons. Also a ton of quality of life upgrades.

Full Hoist the Sails update breakdown:

New vanilla sub dubbed, The Camel: An early-game transport submarine.

Sleeker submarine upgrades system: fewer upgrades for greater gain at a time. Welcoming some class-specific upgrades to make the submarine classes stand out better.

No more Deep Diver: This class offers little advantage. Due to being able to take you through the last levels of a campaign. Deciding to remove it altogether. Deep Divers become Scouts in Hoist the Sails. You will be able to finish the campaign on any ship that you have upgraded enough.

A new submarine tier system: Besides being of a specific class, subs will now be ranking in tiers (I–III) depending on how advanced they are. Tier is assigned based on a submarine’s price and can be adjusted in the Sub Editor. Tier and class together determine the maximum limit for upgrades for a sub. Also making it more easier to buy new subs as well as upgrade existing ones.

New and bigger guns!

Tutorials Reworked: Hoist the Sails has a new set of tutorials coming to the game. All in an effort to make onboarding a little easier for new players. First off, players will be greeted by a basic tutorial to bring in general mechanics. Useful for all player roles. After that, the player will be free to access more role specific tutorials.

Performance and quality of life updates!

Barotrauma is currently available through Steam Early Access. Priced at $7.49 USD/ £5.37 / 6,24€. Regular price on Humble Store. Due to release its 1.0 version early in 2023. Along with support for Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. The Hoist the Sails update, along with the free weekend. The special weekend deal are live right now.