There really havn't been a lot of games of late that have had me diving back in for a 2nd go after finishing them.
The only ones that have stood out in that respect in the past few years have been:
Half-life 2 and the Episodes because HL2 always feels like a grand masterpiece to me, and the episodes are bite size enough to be tackled in an evening. Portal because it's short and makes me laugh every time. Call of Duty 4 because its one of the most intense gaming experiences ever created, also it's quite short. Devil May Cry 4 because it just feels fun to play. Quake 3 Because it's perfectly balanced online play is timeless.
I was going to list Final Fantasy 7, but after having played through it twice I really couldn't face the prospect of another 60-80 hours.
From that list COD4 and DMC4 are the only games that I've started again on a harder difficulty imediately after finishing them.
I use way more bandwidth since I stopped using torrents (don't have to throttle or pay back at 1/4 of the speed). I'm on 1meg and regularly hit 250GB/month.
Thankfully I'm on a "Full Unlimited" package at the moment, but my isp is trying to force me off it claiming that BT is sunsetting fixed speed DSLAMS within the next few months and only offering me 8meg (of which their "unlimited" service costs £100/month more than I'm paying right now) regardless of the fact that BT will only gaurentee ~1.5meg to my line on ADSLMax.
I have a new provider in mind that I'm switching to shortly who will do 2meg fixed for £5 per month more than I'm paying my current isp for 1meg.
While it does seem that BT will eventually be sunsetting the fixed speed DSLAMS, it looks like it will still be some time away, and I've been informed that they will even then still be able to offer speed capped 1 and 2meg connections via the ADSLMax DSLAMS. The crux of which is that my current isp has no real requirement to force me into a speed upgrade on a new contract for any reason aside from them not wanting to make good on the "Full Unlimited" at the price I'm currently paying.
.... only use firstname.surname@isp.tld for job applications. Mine is not used for anything other than job applications and other official business. It's not linked to anything that can be googled either. In fact aside from the small group of people that I socialize with both oti and irl, there's nothing to link the real me to my online persona. The interenet is just entertainment and nothing that happens there should impact on real life.
Never had opertunity to try one. They don't appear to be available from dabs.com ebuyer.com or scan.co.uk. Is there a reason that they're not being distrubuted by 3 of the UK's biggest online computer retailers?
....on the list of motherboard manufacturers that I'll never use again. In fact prety much all of them are on that list except for ASUS and Gigabyte (and ASUS have an icky bios interface).
NNTP over SSL is a great option at the moment. There's some cheap providers with good rentention and unlimited download (I'm paying Euro 17.5 / quarter for 100 days retention and unlimited download up to 30mbit/s)..nzb files makes it much simpler to grab binaries than it ever has been from usenet, and software like AltBinz which has great automation and RSS options makes it all simple and convenient.
There's also a big boom in downloading from those mass file hosting sites like Rapidshare. People use Uploadjockey to automate uploading to rapidshare, badongo, easy-share, zshare, megaupload and depositfiles. They add as many files as required, then post all the uploadjockey links into paste2.org and distribute that link. Downloaders sinply copy'n'paste the contents of that link into jDownloader, which then automates the process of downloading the file parts from the download sites, automatically waiting for the site timers to expire, inputting the captchas, rejoining split files, decompressing archives and outputting the result to your download folder ready for consumption.
I do wonder if the major record labels and movie studios realize that most of the illegal downloads come from scene releases. Would be amusing to see the looks on their faces when they realized that most of their alleged losses come from a bunch of teenagers having an e-penis contest.
I lol every time that somthing like this comes up. All these idiots putting their private lives up for the public scrutiny of prospective employers, business partners, invistigators, prosecuters and anyone else who might want to use your personal life against you.
I try where possible to keep my IRL and OTI presences unlinked.
I'm praying to god that bioware realizes that not everyone wants to be the hero or fight in intergalactic wars. A lot of players will just want to live in that world as crafters, traders, smuglers, etc. The non-combat classes are usually the centers of the community, since they will genrally be the suppliers of high quality goods and have lots of money to invest into guilds/clans. Item degredation is also an essential part of a healthy community as it stops the usual glut of noob-ware appearing at auction, thus keeping the ecconomy more stable and allowing low level crafters to get a foot hold without having to cut their own throats to get a return on their skill investment.
I also believe that SWG got it very right with player housing and vendors. Having to travel to another planet and trek half way accross the desert to buy a rare item from an amazingly decorated player-owned "junk shop" was one of the things that made me smile when I used to play it. Making the act of buying somthing more of an experience for he player than just going to the AH and selecting an item from a list.
Anyway, I'm going to pray that we get a Bounty Hunter class in this one. Would be very nice to go Jedi hunting as MBH again. Would also be cool to see HK-47 as a master level quest NCP for BH.
I have a large number of feeds that encapsulate/link.nzb files, condensed and filtered via Yahoo Pipes and the resultant feed is read by my alt.binz usenet client, which is setup to auto-download files from usenet based on a text filter list.
So I don't actually read any RRS feeds myself, I have software to do that for me.
To my knowledge there is no wireless DVI/HDMI, which means you're probably getting the signal via a composit TV out on the back of your server, which will already be lossy as hell by it's very nature, then sending it over a lossy radio connection. The difference between a PC's TV out and an HDMI connection is very large and you are not getting the benefit of your shiny new screen if you're going to use a non-digital source.
The best advice I can offer you is to grab one of the new barebone pc's with HDMI out and build a small unobtusive looking Media PC, which can then run MythTV, Media Portal, LinuxMCE, XBMC Linux/Windows, GeexBox, or any of the other great Mediacenter solutions that are out there. I'd also ditch the idea of the KB/M after initial setup and just grab yourself an MCE remote as your main input device (they're cheap, good quality and are well supported on both Windows and Linux).
For what it's worth, I've got a 3.2TB media server based on FreeNAS with 8x 500GB drives in RAID-5. I've got a media box under every TV in the house. The HD capable screens have the Asus P2-M2A690G barebones case with X2 4800+ CPU running Media Portal (Will be XBMC for Windows/Linux when a more stable build of either is out), while the SD TV's each have a modified Xbox running XBMC (unfortunately the otherwise rubust Xbox just isn't capable of decoding H.264 on it's 733Mhz cpu).
The Asus Barebones is whisper quiet, smaller than a PS3 and wouldn't look out of place next to a DVD or VCR.
Anyway, I wish you good luck with whatever solution you choose to go with.
Because the most likely outcome is that the African government will get the money instead of the people who need it and will spend it on their military instead of sorting out their starving and aids afflicted nation.
Or how about for filesharing? put this in a little box with a chunk of SSS or a microdrive and a USB2. Upload a list of keywords to search for. Walk around all day letting the device trade files with random people on the street. Plug into PC and see what you've caught. File trawling.
Agreed. I see no reason that ISP's should be complaining about bandwidth usage. Bandwidth does not cost that much, I can rent a 1U CoLo for £39.99/month (inc VAT) which comes with 3TB/month transfer. Some ADSL ISP's are charging that much for 50GB/month transfer. I am failing to see where exactly ISP's are loosing out here in terms of bandwidth costs.
Personally I pay £24.99/month for 1meg ADSL to a small local ISP that mostly deals with business customers. I am paying over the odds for it, but I'm getting REAL unlimited transfer, no questions asked and am also getting some bloody good tech support. The one time we've had a serious problem with the connection they actually called me back with a resolution at 8.30pm on a friday, which is not the level of service you'd get from a lot of ISP's.
I'm not a heavy linux user, but if I had to choose between that or the lightly polished turd that is Vista, I know which I'd choose.
As it stands, XP Pro does all of what I want without me having to hunt around to find where the settings got hidden, or at the other end of the spectrum go hunting around to find what to execute at the cl and then figure out an arcane set of switches to go after it.
Slashdot Mirror
Also funny how you mention Metal Gear Solid rather than the original Metal Gear on the NES.
There really havn't been a lot of games of late that have had me diving back in for a 2nd go after finishing them.
The only ones that have stood out in that respect in the past few years have been:
Half-life 2 and the Episodes because HL2 always feels like a grand masterpiece to me, and the episodes are bite size enough to be tackled in an evening.
Portal because it's short and makes me laugh every time.
Call of Duty 4 because its one of the most intense gaming experiences ever created, also it's quite short.
Devil May Cry 4 because it just feels fun to play.
Quake 3 Because it's perfectly balanced online play is timeless.
I was going to list Final Fantasy 7, but after having played through it twice I really couldn't face the prospect of another 60-80 hours.
From that list COD4 and DMC4 are the only games that I've started again on a harder difficulty imediately after finishing them.
I use way more bandwidth since I stopped using torrents (don't have to throttle or pay back at 1/4 of the speed). I'm on 1meg and regularly hit 250GB/month.
Thankfully I'm on a "Full Unlimited" package at the moment, but my isp is trying to force me off it claiming that BT is sunsetting fixed speed DSLAMS within the next few months and only offering me 8meg (of which their "unlimited" service costs £100 /month more than I'm paying right now) regardless of the fact that BT will only gaurentee ~1.5meg to my line on ADSLMax.
I have a new provider in mind that I'm switching to shortly who will do 2meg fixed for £5 per month more than I'm paying my current isp for 1meg.
While it does seem that BT will eventually be sunsetting the fixed speed DSLAMS, it looks like it will still be some time away, and I've been informed that they will even then still be able to offer speed capped 1 and 2meg connections via the ADSLMax DSLAMS. The crux of which is that my current isp has no real requirement to force me into a speed upgrade on a new contract for any reason aside from them not wanting to make good on the "Full Unlimited" at the price I'm currently paying.
Have been seeing that image used as an avatar on forums for at least 5 years.
.... only use firstname.surname@isp.tld for job applications. Mine is not used for anything other than job applications and other official business. It's not linked to anything that can be googled either. In fact aside from the small group of people that I socialize with both oti and irl, there's nothing to link the real me to my online persona. The interenet is just entertainment and nothing that happens there should impact on real life.
Never had opertunity to try one. They don't appear to be available from dabs.com ebuyer.com or scan.co.uk. Is there a reason that they're not being distrubuted by 3 of the UK's biggest online computer retailers?
....on the list of motherboard manufacturers that I'll never use again. In fact prety much all of them are on that list except for ASUS and Gigabyte (and ASUS have an icky bios interface).
He's busy circle-straffing an infinite number of generic mobs accross an infinite number of generic arenas.
NNTP over SSL is a great option at the moment. There's some cheap providers with good rentention and unlimited download (I'm paying Euro 17.5 / quarter for 100 days retention and unlimited download up to 30mbit/s). .nzb files makes it much simpler to grab binaries than it ever has been from usenet, and software like AltBinz which has great automation and RSS options makes it all simple and convenient.
There's also a big boom in downloading from those mass file hosting sites like Rapidshare. People use Uploadjockey to automate uploading to rapidshare, badongo, easy-share, zshare, megaupload and depositfiles. They add as many files as required, then post all the uploadjockey links into paste2.org and distribute that link. Downloaders sinply copy'n'paste the contents of that link into jDownloader, which then automates the process of downloading the file parts from the download sites, automatically waiting for the site timers to expire, inputting the captchas, rejoining split files, decompressing archives and outputting the result to your download folder ready for consumption.
I do wonder if the major record labels and movie studios realize that most of the illegal downloads come from scene releases. Would be amusing to see the looks on their faces when they realized that most of their alleged losses come from a bunch of teenagers having an e-penis contest.
I lol every time that somthing like this comes up. All these idiots putting their private lives up for the public scrutiny of prospective employers, business partners, invistigators, prosecuters and anyone else who might want to use your personal life against you.
I try where possible to keep my IRL and OTI presences unlinked.
I'm praying to god that bioware realizes that not everyone wants to be the hero or fight in intergalactic wars. A lot of players will just want to live in that world as crafters, traders, smuglers, etc. The non-combat classes are usually the centers of the community, since they will genrally be the suppliers of high quality goods and have lots of money to invest into guilds/clans. Item degredation is also an essential part of a healthy community as it stops the usual glut of noob-ware appearing at auction, thus keeping the ecconomy more stable and allowing low level crafters to get a foot hold without having to cut their own throats to get a return on their skill investment.
I also believe that SWG got it very right with player housing and vendors. Having to travel to another planet and trek half way accross the desert to buy a rare item from an amazingly decorated player-owned "junk shop" was one of the things that made me smile when I used to play it. Making the act of buying somthing more of an experience for he player than just going to the AH and selecting an item from a list.
Anyway, I'm going to pray that we get a Bounty Hunter class in this one. Would be very nice to go Jedi hunting as MBH again. Would also be cool to see HK-47 as a master level quest NCP for BH.
I have a large number of feeds that encapsulate/link .nzb files, condensed and filtered via Yahoo Pipes and the resultant feed is read by my alt.binz usenet client, which is setup to auto-download files from usenet based on a text filter list.
So I don't actually read any RRS feeds myself, I have software to do that for me.
Backup essential data, throw down stairs, claim on home insurance accidental damage policy, pay excess, get new laptop.
Works for me.
To my knowledge there is no wireless DVI/HDMI, which means you're probably getting the signal via a composit TV out on the back of your server, which will already be lossy as hell by it's very nature, then sending it over a lossy radio connection. The difference between a PC's TV out and an HDMI connection is very large and you are not getting the benefit of your shiny new screen if you're going to use a non-digital source.
The best advice I can offer you is to grab one of the new barebone pc's with HDMI out and build a small unobtusive looking Media PC, which can then run MythTV, Media Portal, LinuxMCE, XBMC Linux/Windows, GeexBox, or any of the other great Mediacenter solutions that are out there. I'd also ditch the idea of the KB/M after initial setup and just grab yourself an MCE remote as your main input device (they're cheap, good quality and are well supported on both Windows and Linux).
For what it's worth, I've got a 3.2TB media server based on FreeNAS with 8x 500GB drives in RAID-5. I've got a media box under every TV in the house. The HD capable screens have the Asus P2-M2A690G barebones case with X2 4800+ CPU running Media Portal (Will be XBMC for Windows/Linux when a more stable build of either is out), while the SD TV's each have a modified Xbox running XBMC (unfortunately the otherwise rubust Xbox just isn't capable of decoding H.264 on it's 733Mhz cpu).
The Asus Barebones is whisper quiet, smaller than a PS3 and wouldn't look out of place next to a DVD or VCR.
Anyway, I wish you good luck with whatever solution you choose to go with.
Because the most likely outcome is that the African government will get the money instead of the people who need it and will spend it on their military instead of sorting out their starving and aids afflicted nation.
Happened to be in London yesterday and grabbed a few shots of the protest. http://gallery.amphetamine.org.uk/v/Scientology+Protest_+London+2008-03-15/
On monday I will be starting my own internet and the RIAA, MPAA, BPI, CRIA, etc arn't invited.
... I shall create my own internet also! Oh, and I'm only inviting the cool people.
Lillypad mesh networks anyone?
Or how about for filesharing? put this in a little box with a chunk of SSS or a microdrive and a USB2. Upload a list of keywords to search for. Walk around all day letting the device trade files with random people on the street. Plug into PC and see what you've caught. File trawling.
Agreed. I see no reason that ISP's should be complaining about bandwidth usage. Bandwidth does not cost that much, I can rent a 1U CoLo for £39.99 /month (inc VAT) which comes with 3TB /month transfer. Some ADSL ISP's are charging that much for 50GB /month transfer. I am failing to see where exactly ISP's are loosing out here in terms of bandwidth costs.
/month for 1meg ADSL to a small local ISP that mostly deals with business customers. I am paying over the odds for it, but I'm getting REAL unlimited transfer, no questions asked and am also getting some bloody good tech support. The one time we've had a serious problem with the connection they actually called me back with a resolution at 8.30pm on a friday, which is not the level of service you'd get from a lot of ISP's.
Personally I pay £24.99
I can't be the only one that was thinking it after reading the title can I?
Now what we need is for someone to port Frets On Fire and support the Guitar Hero III Controller.
Xbox1 can't play back from H.264 properly due to lack of CPU cycles. Unfortunately it will be no use at all to the thread parent.
I'm not a heavy linux user, but if I had to choose between that or the lightly polished turd that is Vista, I know which I'd choose.
As it stands, XP Pro does all of what I want without me having to hunt around to find where the settings got hidden, or at the other end of the spectrum go hunting around to find what to execute at the cl and then figure out an arcane set of switches to go after it.
H.264 in the MKV container. Primary choice of HD pirates everywhere.