Lame. Companies need to understand that fan-made content extends product life and popularity, and keeps their product selling off the shelves.
Guess the kids are going to have to be old-school guitar heroes, playing their real guitars along to illegally downloaded MP3s of their favourite songs. Maybe they'll even develop real talents of their own, instead of making burned-out has-been rock star geezers even richer.
I had an early ATI Radeon card (7xxx something I think), which had terrible driver support, but I lived with it (and subsequent headaches of bad driver errors, the old "uninstall BEFORE you install the new drivers" nightmare). Then I got a 9000 Pro which was OK, until it became obsolete. I switched to an nVidia FX 5700 LE ("Lame Edition") which had good driver support but was woefully underpowered. Then I went back to ATI (what can I say, I was trying to support a "Canadian company") for an x800, which was OK until it became obsolete.
I found an X1350 pro on sale somewhere, which was great... until the new drivers borked all my Steam Source games, forcing me to run on year-old drivers. This was not fixed after six months of subsequent driver releases so when I built my new machine this summer I went back to nVidia and have not been disappointed.
For me, I don't really care about the minute differences between the cards either as long as the drivers are powerful, reliable and updated regularly. ATI lost my business, but on the flip side I haven't seen any updated nVidia drivers since July (unless they have been released in the last week).
That's a long-winded way of saying I agree with you, and adding that with this news about product life, nVidia better pull up its socks in the driver department unless it wants to lose fickle customers... although I won't be buying any ATI GPUs unless they're the only ones available.
Why is this modded troll? I pointed out a few things people don't like about Apple, and one thing they really do like. Then I used a car analogy. It's classic Slashdot and I thought I was fair.
For the record I use Apple computers every day and like them a lot. This post was created on a Mac.
-- don't like how Apple's hardware is always more expensive, even though it's older than what's available for the PC
-- don't like how Apple locks customers in to using said hardware
-- but do like the software, because it's powerful, "just works" is harder than PC software to mess up and is fun to use.
In the fine/. tradition of using car analogies, it's like finding the car of your dreams except it only runs on biodiesel, which is not available in your community, and is right-hand drive only (and you're in North America.) Then, you discover, that you can run it on normal diesel and right-hand drives are legal after all.
I really stretched the hell out of that, didn't I.
Morrowind's NPCs and towns were horribly boring without mods.
The dancing girls were a lot more interesting after applying the "Better Bodies" mod. It really improved the, uh, realism of the, uh, storytelling and, uh, stuff.
I agree with you that this is overdue for Photoshop. Pushing some of the workload over to the GPU is a great idea.
I also agree that the upgrades are too expensive and that irritating bugs have not been fixed.
But I also wonder where Indesign fits into this. I can imagine several ways Indesign would function better using the GPU -- no more grainy photo previews, smooth zooming in and out (a la Google Earth?) but I don't want eye candy at the expense of functionality. And I want them to fix things that are mind-blowingly irritating, like importing text files. It chokes on UTF-8 files and anything with even a hint of Unicode punctuation. It's incredibly frustrating and there's no way to add filters for importing that I can find.
I think Indesign's text importing is actually worse now (CS3) than it was when it first came out. Don't neglect stuff like this in favour of the "shiny" factor, Adobe.
I have a bit of trouble with tech-speak, but I read the article as suggesting the GPU was on its way out entirely, meaning on a multi-core system one (or more) of the cores could be used to render a game's graphics while the rest of the cores do the rest of the work.
If that's correct, I wonder if this would make the PC platform attractive to gamers and programmers again? Eliminating the need for a $500 graphics card - and one of the hurdles to programmers - all of a sudden makes a cheap, but processor-powerful PC pretty attractive for gaming.
Also, it would eliminate the "runs best on" nonsense.
This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.
It's already loaded with enough sex, violence, intrigue, dismemberment, rape and murder to be meaningful to today's society. It's more disgusting than your average 18A torture-porn flick.
Maybe a new movie version is needed. It would be like "300" except because it's from the Bible it would be Sunday School-approved.
Unless they come to my house and compare the files on my computer with the CDs in my collection, there's no way they can tell what's legal and what isn't.
Uh... BRB I have to go lock some doors and turn out some lights.
I quit playing WoW once I realized that under the shiny veneer was nothing special.
Killing thousands of boar-men to get a pile of questy items to turn in so I could kill another thousand creatures for something else and finally get some doo-dad was lame.
Grinding dungeons over and over again for loot was lame.
But I have to wonder if that's what people want? It's rare people will want to sit down and experience a good story together. That's why big, loud dumb movies always pack the theatres (not that there's anything wrong with that.)
But I, too, would love to see an online game that lets players interact in a good story, not just grind and kill. I believe there was an online version of Myst that was going to attempt that, don't know how that turned out (poorly, I guess, since I never heard anything about it ever again.)
You find a friend who has access to an activation-free version, like a site licence version.
I paid for XP. But my copy sits in storage. I have no qualms about using a copy of my friend's disc and reg code so I don't have to put up with that activation nonsense when I do upgrades/reinstalls.
Oblig. Planescape reference
on
Quests
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The book touches on Planescape: Torment, but doesn't really do that game justice.
That game was all about finding out who you were/are, and who your companions were/are.
There are few games that go outside the standard fetch/carry/kill RPG quests, and that was one of them.
There was enough narrative in that game to fill a book. Sometimes I found myself wanting there to be less combat so I could get back to the story.
They were probably in the basement checking the breaker box and the electrical connections to the air conditioner, looking for potential electrical fires in the wall, when they found Mr. Wizard's stash.
I suspect they're the ones who turned this into a fiasco. They probably complained that if they were ever to respond to a serious fire at this house, the unknown effects of all those chemicals burning could be deadly. I know TFA said only a few were flammable, but some stuff when it burns releases deadly gases, toxins, etc.
Firefighters want to know that when they enter into a burning house, they are not going to be exposed to the equivalent of a burning college chemistry lab. They get paid to take risks, but some end up with health problems later in life because of all the toxic stuff they've inhaled over the years.
They are probably making an example of this guy as a warning to others with stashes of chemicals.
That said, I don't think the authorities had the right to take over the house and rummage through it. They should get an omelette on their collective faces for that.
I know it's tacky to reply to your own posts, but I wanted to add something here. According to the article:
In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch...
One of the strongest and most counterintuitive findings in this nascent field is that children with a sweet temperament, which is under strong genetic control, are the least likely to emulate their parents and absorb the lessons they teach, while fussy kids are the most likely to do so.
DNA variants can protect children from bad parenting.
Both views--that everything is genetic and that parents can transform a child like a lump of clay--are as wrong as wrong can be.
I think these finding have serious implications for how we look at religion, and how it can or cannot work effectively to shape people's behaviour from the time they are children to adults. Some people -- at least 30 per cent -- are hard-wired to find it difficult to deal with "sin" without feeling guilt, shame, failure and worthlessness. They will either end with serious psychological and spiritual hang-ups, or will reject religion altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
Lame. Companies need to understand that fan-made content extends product life and popularity, and keeps their product selling off the shelves.
Guess the kids are going to have to be old-school guitar heroes, playing their real guitars along to illegally downloaded MP3s of their favourite songs. Maybe they'll even develop real talents of their own, instead of making burned-out has-been rock star geezers even richer.
I had an early ATI Radeon card (7xxx something I think), which had terrible driver support, but I lived with it (and subsequent headaches of bad driver errors, the old "uninstall BEFORE you install the new drivers" nightmare). Then I got a 9000 Pro which was OK, until it became obsolete. I switched to an nVidia FX 5700 LE ("Lame Edition") which had good driver support but was woefully underpowered. Then I went back to ATI (what can I say, I was trying to support a "Canadian company") for an x800, which was OK until it became obsolete.
I found an X1350 pro on sale somewhere, which was great... until the new drivers borked all my Steam Source games, forcing me to run on year-old drivers. This was not fixed after six months of subsequent driver releases so when I built my new machine this summer I went back to nVidia and have not been disappointed.
For me, I don't really care about the minute differences between the cards either as long as the drivers are powerful, reliable and updated regularly. ATI lost my business, but on the flip side I haven't seen any updated nVidia drivers since July (unless they have been released in the last week).
That's a long-winded way of saying I agree with you, and adding that with this news about product life, nVidia better pull up its socks in the driver department unless it wants to lose fickle customers... although I won't be buying any ATI GPUs unless they're the only ones available.
Why is this modded troll? I pointed out a few things people don't like about Apple, and one thing they really do like. Then I used a car analogy. It's classic Slashdot and I thought I was fair.
For the record I use Apple computers every day and like them a lot. This post was created on a Mac.
Oh, vista's not dead...
Mike Swanson, a Microsoft technology evangelist
Here's the text from his upcoming speech:
"And, beeHOLD, Ah say to YOO-uh, Windows 7 comes NOT to ABOLISH Vista but to FULFILL it! Ay-men!"
Don't stick around for the faith healings, you might get smacked upside the head with an external 160 Gig HDD.
That's because people:
-- don't like how Apple's hardware is always more expensive, even though it's older than what's available for the PC
-- don't like how Apple locks customers in to using said hardware
-- but do like the software, because it's powerful, "just works" is harder than PC software to mess up and is fun to use.
In the fine /. tradition of using car analogies, it's like finding the car of your dreams except it only runs on biodiesel, which is not available in your community, and is right-hand drive only (and you're in North America.) Then, you discover, that you can run it on normal diesel and right-hand drives are legal after all.
I really stretched the hell out of that, didn't I.
Morrowind's NPCs and towns were horribly boring without mods.
The dancing girls were a lot more interesting after applying the "Better Bodies" mod. It really improved the, uh, realism of the, uh, storytelling and, uh, stuff.
I agree with you that this is overdue for Photoshop. Pushing some of the workload over to the GPU is a great idea.
I also agree that the upgrades are too expensive and that irritating bugs have not been fixed.
But I also wonder where Indesign fits into this. I can imagine several ways Indesign would function better using the GPU -- no more grainy photo previews, smooth zooming in and out (a la Google Earth?) but I don't want eye candy at the expense of functionality. And I want them to fix things that are mind-blowingly irritating, like importing text files. It chokes on UTF-8 files and anything with even a hint of Unicode punctuation. It's incredibly frustrating and there's no way to add filters for importing that I can find.
I think Indesign's text importing is actually worse now (CS3) than it was when it first came out. Don't neglect stuff like this in favour of the "shiny" factor, Adobe.
Money.
Dumb question time -- I'm assuming we all know that eBay owns PayPal?
The only things they can hit are robot troopers. A good guy may occasionally get hit, but only in the arm.
Only bad guys have robot troopers; therefore the bad guys always lose.
All guns - from M16s to pistols to artillery - fire lasers.
Good guys get blue lasers, bad guys get red lasers.
See previous post for approved battle locations.
I have a bit of trouble with tech-speak, but I read the article as suggesting the GPU was on its way out entirely, meaning on a multi-core system one (or more) of the cores could be used to render a game's graphics while the rest of the cores do the rest of the work.
If that's correct, I wonder if this would make the PC platform attractive to gamers and programmers again? Eliminating the need for a $500 graphics card - and one of the hurdles to programmers - all of a sudden makes a cheap, but processor-powerful PC pretty attractive for gaming.
Also, it would eliminate the "runs best on" nonsense.
Best job EVAR
It's not a giant black monolith, is it?
That their IT security team "sucks bosons."
It's already loaded with enough sex, violence, intrigue, dismemberment, rape and murder to be meaningful to today's society. It's more disgusting than your average 18A torture-porn flick.
Maybe a new movie version is needed. It would be like "300" except because it's from the Bible it would be Sunday School-approved.
I'd like to see that on the flannelgraph.
Since they are backups, you have every right to listen to them even after the original media is gone.
You know that, and I know that, but they don't know that we know and they would rather we didn't know that :(
Unless they come to my house and compare the files on my computer with the CDs in my collection, there's no way they can tell what's legal and what isn't.
Uh... BRB I have to go lock some doors and turn out some lights.
I quit playing WoW once I realized that under the shiny veneer was nothing special.
Killing thousands of boar-men to get a pile of questy items to turn in so I could kill another thousand creatures for something else and finally get some doo-dad was lame.
Grinding dungeons over and over again for loot was lame.
But I have to wonder if that's what people want? It's rare people will want to sit down and experience a good story together. That's why big, loud dumb movies always pack the theatres (not that there's anything wrong with that.)
But I, too, would love to see an online game that lets players interact in a good story, not just grind and kill. I believe there was an online version of Myst that was going to attempt that, don't know how that turned out (poorly, I guess, since I never heard anything about it ever again.)
I paid for XP. But my copy sits in storage. I have no qualms about using a copy of my friend's disc and reg code so I don't have to put up with that activation nonsense when I do upgrades/reinstalls.
The book touches on Planescape: Torment, but doesn't really do that game justice. That game was all about finding out who you were/are, and who your companions were/are. There are few games that go outside the standard fetch/carry/kill RPG quests, and that was one of them. There was enough narrative in that game to fill a book. Sometimes I found myself wanting there to be less combat so I could get back to the story.
What a stupid-looking game.
The whole game website is about how great its violence and blood are, and says nothing about what the hell it is actually about.
Knowing that there are no other action games with this sort of avant-garde graphical style, our course was set.
Mr. Sulu, set a course for SUCK!
anyone who knows how it feels to read a comic book (or watch an episode of Tom & Jerry) should instantly be able to enjoy playing MadWorld.
So, all tease and no payoff then.
"Mature" games have already been done on the Wii, and done better.
I was gonna say the same thing. 100 years? Smells like union FUD.
Got to love the manipulation of good ol' American pride.
Bang-on.
Good analysis.
They were probably in the basement checking the breaker box and the electrical connections to the air conditioner, looking for potential electrical fires in the wall, when they found Mr. Wizard's stash.
I suspect they're the ones who turned this into a fiasco. They probably complained that if they were ever to respond to a serious fire at this house, the unknown effects of all those chemicals burning could be deadly. I know TFA said only a few were flammable, but some stuff when it burns releases deadly gases, toxins, etc.
Firefighters want to know that when they enter into a burning house, they are not going to be exposed to the equivalent of a burning college chemistry lab. They get paid to take risks, but some end up with health problems later in life because of all the toxic stuff they've inhaled over the years.
They are probably making an example of this guy as a warning to others with stashes of chemicals.
That said, I don't think the authorities had the right to take over the house and rummage through it. They should get an omelette on their collective faces for that.
That's a really good point, too bad you posted AC...
I know it's tacky to reply to your own posts, but I wanted to add something here. According to the article:
In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch...
One of the strongest and most counterintuitive findings in this nascent field is that children with a sweet temperament, which is under strong genetic control, are the least likely to emulate their parents and absorb the lessons they teach, while fussy kids are the most likely to do so.
DNA variants can protect children from bad parenting.
Both views--that everything is genetic and that parents can transform a child like a lump of clay--are as wrong as wrong can be.
I think these finding have serious implications for how we look at religion, and how it can or cannot work effectively to shape people's behaviour from the time they are children to adults. Some people -- at least 30 per cent -- are hard-wired to find it difficult to deal with "sin" without feeling guilt, shame, failure and worthlessness. They will either end with serious psychological and spiritual hang-ups, or will reject religion altogether.