I definitely understand where you're coming from, but this just isn't the case anymore. In fact, I'd say it hasn't been for several generations. I can't think of a single console since we made it to 32-bit that has had processing power be a make-or-break issue. If the processor is a little slower, they take out a few polygons, and things might look a *little* less sharp, but really, who cares? The game is still there, it still does everything it should, and as others have pointed out, it's still *fun*.
This is obviously what Nintendo is banking on with the Wii. They can run anything the xbox360 or ps3 can, and probably at a level of detail where consumers can't even tell the difference, especially not on most people's little 25" tube tvs.
The things that make or break consoles, and are intimately tied together, are: 1) ease of development 2) third party support 3) fun games 4) price
The Saturn and Nintendo64 both failed due to #1 and #4, which both led to a failure in #2. The only reason either console "survived" is due to great first party games. However without the 3rd party support, they went on to have problems with their next consoles, the Dreamcast and Gamecube, despite the consoles having entirely adequate processing power and much better developer support.
The Wii looks ready to dominate in all four categories. Processing power hasn't mattered in a long time, and will do nothing for the xbox360 or ps3 if they're missing those 4 things that are actually important.
The PS3 in particular looks ready to fail in all of these categories. It sounds like they've got really crazy and bad hardware, that will be extremely difficult to take advantage of. They've got a ridiculous price, which will make it very hard to gain any market share. Because of those reasons, they will have a lot of trouble getting third party games, and thus will be stuck much like the Saturn and Nintendo64, relying almost entirely on first party games and exclusives to sell the console.
Nintendo will need to do something really stupid to screw up their shot at the title this generation.
While your general idea is somewhat true, you are greatly exaggerating. Would many of their linux sales come from dual-booters? Sure. Would all of their linux sales come from dual-booters? No way. I used to be a dual-booter, and I can tell you for a fact - no one likes buying a game KNOWING that they will have to reboot their computer (closing everything they have open) every time they want to play. ESPECIALLY Linux users who tend to have multiple desktops filled with browser tabs, irc windows, and development windows.
Having a Linux client would push a LOT of "well i'd like to, but dont feel like dual-booting" people over the edge to buy the game.
Regardless, the fact is that many games have been ported to linux several years after release, and STILL earned enough money to easily pay for the cost of porting. The primary factors here being a) porting just isn't that hard, and b) if these games made enough money years after release, imagine how much more could be made releasing a game for the added platform when its new and popular?
Note: I am a WOW-addict, but only bought it because they have a Mac client. If I hadn't bought a Powerbook two months ago to replace my Linux desktop, I never would have touched WOW with a ten-foot pole. In fact, neither would my girlfriend, or my two roommates we now play with. Especially for social games like WOW, the sales cascade -- porting to linux would draw in entire communities of friends who would otherwise never have tried it.
Just wanted to point something out - mutation has VERY little to do with evolution.
It turns out that crossover is the primary mechanism of evolution. Mutation, as is insinctive, tends to do more to hurt an organism than to help it. Crossover is far far far more likely to produce non-detrimental genes and changes within genes, because it's always reusing combinations of the same code that's already there.
(of course with only 4 bases, every possible combination can still come from reusing and reordering the existing DNA in any organism)
Science has observed the creation of new information PLENTY of times.
It's apparent that you know extremely little about genetics, so let me explain it in some briefer terms for you.
1) It's well-known, observed, and even photographed that genes cross over, creating new combinations of genes.
2) It's also well-known, observed, and even photographed that there are relatively common genetic "mistakes" that result in variations of duplicated and new genes. If a gene is duplicated, it's readily apparent that the old copy can remain, serving the same function, while the copy can combine with other genes in novel ways to extend the length of one's DNA with "new" improvements.
3) So it's already obvious that new genetic information can be created without this third item. But in addition to all of that, we also have heavily observed and photographed the interactions of viruses, which frequently inject foreign DNA into their host. There are even chromosomes (again, heavily observed and "photographed") that act much like viruses to insert and remove pieces of DNA.
Of course it's very unclear what you mean by "new" information. You've got 4 bases in DNA. All "new" information is just new combination of these 4 bases. Much like people write new books all the time by simply rearranging and appending more "words" made up of 26 "letters". All of which is being represented as you read this by "new" combinations of 1s and 0s, which gets us down to 2 bases, half as many as are used in human DNA.
The most compelling purpose of this study is probably the fact that it closely links Tyrannosaurus Rex to modern birds. This is one of many things that are helping us understand evolution, which in turn tells us a lot about modern animals, including humans, and medicine.
Having a government body to study studies is a perfect example of a complete waste of money, and of worthless studies. If a study is worthless, no one will report on it, and no one will fund it. It's a self-correcting problem.
I don't know how you could have missed this, so I doubt you actually did -
But every linux distro I've installed in the past decade has had 1 or more default package installs available. They typically look something like this:Default Install (typically has KDE, firefox, etc.):Maximum Install (everything):Minimum Install (as bare bones as you can imagine)
I don't like that you're pretending Linux is more difficult to set up, just because it's more flexible in the install process than Windows is. Every linux distro gives you the "dumb simple" default install as an option. Give it the time zone and use DHCP and you're in KDE within a few clicks.
Meanwhile Linux installation has WAY more flexibility, and lets you do things like install onto SATA drives, and start from a minimum install that doesn't have a bunch of exploitable services running from first boot.
This statement isn't accurate at all. For 300$ you can get a Poweredge "server" computer that is totally barebones, but fairly powerful (with a pentium 4 if you get the right deal). However you then have to add RAM (128mb is not enough for anyone), a monitor, keyboard+mouse, cd writer, and any other extras you want. Oh yeah, and that's without an operating system, and I'm sure you're going to pay the additional $80+ for a legit copy of XP Home.
Alternatively, you can get a Dell Home machine for 300-400$ that has XP Home, no cd writer, 128mb of RAM, a 40gb hard drive, and a worthless Celeron processor. Wow what a deal.
However if you look at the circuit city or best buy advertisements you can find E-Machines for about 300-400$ that really do come with everything. Keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, cdrw, printer...it still has a crappy Celeron processor, but still a great deal for your Mom. (or my mom, in this case).
Of course when I helped my brother build a computer I got him a Poweredge with a real Pentium 4, and added a decent graphics card and some memory to the system. He already had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so it ended up being a good deal for a Powerful machine.
Considering the power and size of the Mac mini, it's easily comparable with either Dell or Emachines. It's more full-featured than the cheap Dell Home machine, and more powerful than the EMachines computer. And as others have mentioned, it doesnt take $300+ in mail in rebates to get that 300$ price on the mac mini.
(my mom is still sorting through all of the emachines rebates - I think there are 5+ different rebates, each requiring a different combination of photocopies of UPCs from products in the bundle. And you just know they're going to find some excuse to reject some or all of those rebates anyway)
Oh, and as for "not valid unless signed", that's really just warning you:
A) If you don't sign this, merchants can refuse to accept it B) If you don't sign this (or write SEE ID), then any thief can sign the back of it, and then go around buying things, and have their receipt signature match the signature on the back of their card.
My school's bookstore always checked signatures, possibly because of how big most book purchases are ($300+). But it is pretty rare that merchants actually check the signature like they're supposed to:\
Actually, you are completely 100% wrong. And rude too, calling someone an idiot, when you don't even know what you're talking about.
The credit card company is never going to see whether you signed the card or not. It wouldn't make any sense for that signature to be there for your credit card company.
Have you ever noticed that you sign a receipt for a credit card? Credit cards are NOT pin-based transactions. Your signature is your PIN in this case. What merchants are SUPPOSED to do, is check your signature when you sign the receipt, against your signature on the back of your credit card. If they match, then you are the rightful owner of that credit card. If they don't match, well, you're not going to leave with any merchandise.
I worked at a bank, and had to check signatures all the time for the same reason.
Credit cards are NOT the same transactions as debit cards.
I ran into this problem just recently as well. I've been enjoying Counter-Strike for quite a while, and just recently had the fortune to be able to run my own server.
I have a friend who is a die-hard Quake3 fan, and we've been trying to get him to play CS 1.6 with us for quite some time. About two years ago we bought him a boxed copy of Counter-Strike ($30) to get him to play with us. I think we all got busy with school, and he never even installed the game.
So, as I said, I got my own server, and he finally found his old boxed copy of CS at home, at the bottom of his closet, and tried to install Counter-Strike - the game I paid 30$ for him to be able to play.
It said his CD-KEY was already registered to a Steam account.
Now get this -- in Steam's support forums, they admits that duplicate CD-KEYs were printed. So the person using my friend's CDKEY isnt even a "l33t Haxor", it's just another person who legitimately bought the game.
So no problem, right? My friend has ample proof that he owns the boxed copy + cd + cdkey, and they've already admitted fault for preventing him from playing. Right?
They will only help you if you bought the game within the past 90 days. No fucking joke. So if you bought the game 91 days ago, and they're preventing you from playing it, tough shit.
If anyone wants to start a class-action lawsuit against Valve/Vivendi/Sierra for going overboard with their authentication system and blocking legitimate users, I'm totally down.
**PS: I'm really not against any of what Valve has done, it's just that they've done it so POORLY. No redundancy in authentication (most users being unable to play on a Sat. night), contempt in taking responsibility for their own mistakes (duplicate cd-keys only helped if 90days old), and inadequate fair use (offline mode works poorly if at all)
You said yourself that it DOES advertise the fact that it requires internet.
I think Steam is an overall good idea, but they definitely need to put a little more effort into working out bugs in non-standard-but-legit usage (ie: offline play), and add some expected fair-use funtionality, like the ability to dis-associate cd-keys from steam accounts. (eg. I bought Half-Life, Condition Zero, and Half-life 2. HL2 gives me access to all 3 games, so I *should* be able to "give away" my half-life and condition-zero games/access to a friend. Instead I have 3x redundant cd-keys for CS 1.6)
Here's how to make HL2 load a bit faster on startup. I wrote this little howto when I got so sick of hl2's load times that I figured out how to stop it.
How to make starting up Half-Life 2 somewhat bearable:
1) First to stop Half-Life2 from loading an entire map every time you start. The loading times are bad enough when there's actually a REASON to load the level...
Open valve.rc in Notepad and add two forward slashes to the line that says "startupmenu", so it looks like this://startupmenu This "comments out" the line, so it gets ignored. Now the game will load the fuzzy background image and thats it.
2) Next for the obnoxious Valve startup movie:
Go into this folder: ?:\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2\hl2\media\
Used to be, in half-life 1, you could delete "valve.avi" and not have to watch the annoying video over and over every time you run the game. Now it seems the game "regenerates" the file for you. How kind.
Next I tried creating a 0-byte file of the same name. But on startup it still regenerates the movie file and forces you to watch it.
HOWEVER, try right clicking on your 0-byte valve.avi, go to properties, and check the "read-only" box, then hit OK.
Now Half-Life 2 is unable to overwrite your much more pleasant version of valve.avi.
Note to Valve: Nothing wrong with the video itself, but it's completely obnoxious to not let people press a button to skip it, especially after having started the game 500 times already. WE KNOW WHO MADE THE DAMN GAME, LET US PLAY IT!!!!
Note to all: Similar load times can be achieved with some kind of developer=1 paramater set on the command line options. But then you got developer messages scrolling on your screen the whole time you play, unless you go in and manually turn developer=0 after the game boots. So IMO a pain in the ass and not at all ideal solution.
I have done the same thing. I've ripped games and used Daemon Tools for a long time. However, this is *not allowed by the EULA*. Kinda sucks, but if you did it, and they found out, they can ban you.
If they can tell a difference, I think they'd do good to unban the cd-key hack people with a warning not to do it again.
But they don't have to.
Just the fact that they aren't suing every person who was trying to pirate the game is Valve being VERY NICE to a bunch of jerks.
In a nutshell, because you can still play the game in offline mode.
It's very easy for you to go around to 100 computers, install HL2 off the DVD, active it, put STEAM in offline mode, then use the no-cd crack.
Without the no-cd crack, it's much more difficult for you to give the game out to all your friends.
You could still put your steam account on all their computers, then download hl2 to each of them, and put it in offline mode (downloads dont require the cd). But I think the mass quantity of data you have to download is probably sufficient deterrent to doing this en masse.
Frankly I'm shocked at how many "geeks" are OK with pirating games instead of supporting the great companies making them.
If Valve stops allowing hl2 activation at some point, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If it takes suing Valve (or whoever owns the hl2 copyright) for not letting us play a game we bought, then that's what we'll do.
And if no company owns the game anymore? Then we're free to reverse engineer and offer for download any hacks/cracks/copies of the game that we can dream up.
Works for me. Only person it doesn't work for is pirates.
Overall I agree with you that activation *isnt that bad*. But there are two major issues that I would like to see resolved, by law if necessary:
(1) What if you dont have internet? In Microsoft's case they let you call in, which I think is sufficient.
In Valve's case, they say "dont buy the game". Half the time I play single player games its BECAUSE i dont have internet to play online. (like when i'd go home for my college winter break).
Still, for Steam it isn't that bad. You only have to get online and activate once - so as long as I dont reinstall steam+hl2 over winter break, I can play hl2 single player until my eye's bleed. So once again...really not that big of a problem.
(2) What happens when the company stops offering activation in 10 years, or the company goes bankrupt and dies? Are we no longer allowed to use the product?
Is the company legally liable for allowing activation for as long as the company is around?
What about Nintendo -- I can't buy an 8-bit NES anymore to play my 8-bit NES games. Should Nintendo be legally liable for continuing to create consoles that play 8-bit NES games? But I paid for those games, and I can't play them anymore!
I think the solution I would like to see for (2) is that the company is legally liable for providing activation as long as any company is around which owns the rights to that bit of software.
If the company dies, or otherwise gives up rights to the software, then people can reverse engineer the game to their heart's content and post the results online for anyone to obtain.
So really, the only thing we need is some laws saying
1) any software (or otherwise) product that requires activation must allow it in a timely manner, and via multiple communication forms (mail, phone, internet, whatever)
2) Any company which owns software that requires activation (or cd-key, or even cd-in-drive checks) to run, must continue allowing activation (or keep their cd-key checking servers around, or offering replacement media for scratched CDs) indefinitely.
3) Any software product requiring activation, may be reverse engineered and offered freely in any form, if activation is no longer available for that product. (this offers an easy out for if a company stops offering activation [reasonably] but still tries to retain the rights to the software)
This could easily be the last chance. This is nothing at all like the felt-tipped-marker scheme - that was a company trying to illicitly install software on people's computers. More like spyware than the broadcast flag. The thing with the broadcast flag is that, like DVD encryption, the broadcast flag is currently under the force of LAW.
The MPAA could easily start suing any company that makes devices that circumvent the broadcast flag. They could do the same thing with DVD players that circumvent region locking and macrovision. I'm not even sure why they haven't. Even if a "special code" gets "leaked" they can still hold the manufacturer responsible for it. At this point it's completely up to the MPAA whether you ever get to record something again. You can be optimistic that they'll let a lot of crap slide by them...but don't bitch when they actually enforce the laws they paid good money to pass.
"i totally agree.....Gmail was put out to beta simply to hype up the IPO price..."
"Gmail is at best equal to offerings by YahooMail and Hotmail."
Oh cm'on, you've never actually paid the slightest attention to gmail have you? "at best equal" to hotmail? You must work for Microsoft or something to say such utter bullshit. When Gmail came out Hotmail had, what, 4mb mailboxes? And if you paid them X$ you could get 100mb? Then gmail came out and actually did something innovative and competitive by giving people a ton of space, good spam filtering, an awesome interface, text-only ads, etc. I would never *touch* web-based email before, and was very skeptical of gmail. Until I actually used it, that is. Now Hotmail and Yahoo are scrambling to give up their gravy train of expensive shitty webmail services so they can actually compete. Thank goodness google showed up to scare their pathetic sites into doing some work.
You say it was released beta to hype IPO price, but it's been better than hotmail for months. I've never seen a single bug using gmail. I really don't see any reason for it to be beta at all. As far as I can tell it's just so they can controllably expand their userbase by giving out invitations, instead of trying to keep up with an overnight explosion of users.
I don't know (or care) a bit about Orkut or froogle or the kitchen sink, but your rantings on gmail are totally misplaced.
You probably aren't going to be charged with a criminal matter anyway. Chances are it's gonna be the RIAA coming with a subpoena, and that's a civil matter. In which case I'm pretty sure showing it happened on your connection is enough to hold you liable for damages.
You are 100% right. It is retarded. Anyone who tried to do this to try to coverup their own illegal acts (like downloading pirated music) is going to get more than what they deserve: punishment for their own crimes, AND for those of anyone else who uses their network. Good luck proving it WASNT you who did all that stuff on your network, especially with logging turned off...
Re:completely offtopic but worth it
on
X-43A Hits Mach 7
·
· Score: 1
A few little picks to nit.
You didn't really clarify, but while yes, BGH is injected into cows, it comes out in their milk, and is therefore present in dairy milk consumed.
BGH is I believe very similar to human growth hormone, and is known(?) to affect the human body. I haven't ready about it in a while but it's stuff that MAY be safe, but certainly needs to be looked into.
The FDA didn't conduct tests on whether BGH is safe. The FDA requires these tests on any product sold as human food, but since technically the BGH is added to the cows, not their milk, BGH wasn't tested on humans before being included in human food.
This is why most people who know anything about it want it to be 1) tested thoroughly by the FDA 2) labeled on milk cartons containing it
Number 2 isn't *too* important, as you can at this point assume ALL milk contains BGH unless the milk carton explicitly states otherwise. But number 1 is definitely important.
(i welcome any additions as its been a while since I read up on the BGH issue. I'm lactose intolerant and don't eat dairy, so I'm not too concerned about the hormones and antibiotics and crap that people are drinking in milk)
You're right, Nintendo fanboy or not. I'm a "Sega fanboy", and they're still pushing out amazing games (though since the Dreamcast I haven't kept up as much).
That's why I loved the Dreamcast - I'll play original games like Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi and Seaman any day, over a more overpriced system liked the PS2 that's a haven for me-too shooters and other clone games. I plan to buy a Gamecube even if its lifecycle is already over, because that cute little box has more good games on it than the XBox and PS2 combined.
I haven't used knoppix personally, but I imagine it's as simple as booting into knoppix and mounting your windows partitions. you could try to fix windows from the knoppix mount, copy the data to a backup before reformatting, or access data urgently without waiting for windows to reinstall.
In any case that knoppix works it seems to me that reinstalling windows without reformatting would also work. But I don't really trust windows to work properly if I install it overtop of an existing installation.
Umm, are you just plain retarded? Having your OS and browser running from a CD (ala knoppix) is just as good as running it off any other ROM. Knoppix is VERY on topic.
Use Daemon-Tools. Every game I buy gets ripped immediately to a.CUE/.BIN. The disk gets left at home while the game is still available to play any time, without the CD. It sucks having to bring 30 CDs with you everywhere you go "just in case" you might want to play that game. Same thing with ripping CDs and using your computer or an mp3-cd player to listen to them.
Especially when you're going to college, you're WAY better off carrying around burned mp3-cds and video game ISOs. At my college anyway, many 200-cd binders and video games and consoles get stolen. What would you rather lose, 30 burned CDs, or 200 original copies?
Slashdot Mirror
I definitely understand where you're coming from, but this just isn't the case anymore. In fact, I'd say it hasn't been for several generations. I can't think of a single console since we made it to 32-bit that has had processing power be a make-or-break issue. If the processor is a little slower, they take out a few polygons, and things might look a *little* less sharp, but really, who cares? The game is still there, it still does everything it should, and as others have pointed out, it's still *fun*.
This is obviously what Nintendo is banking on with the Wii. They can run anything the xbox360 or ps3 can, and probably at a level of detail where consumers can't even tell the difference, especially not on most people's little 25" tube tvs.
The things that make or break consoles, and are intimately tied together, are:
1) ease of development
2) third party support
3) fun games
4) price
The Saturn and Nintendo64 both failed due to #1 and #4, which both led to a failure in #2. The only reason either console "survived" is due to great first party games. However without the 3rd party support, they went on to have problems with their next consoles, the Dreamcast and Gamecube, despite the consoles having entirely adequate processing power and much better developer support.
The Wii looks ready to dominate in all four categories. Processing power hasn't mattered in a long time, and will do nothing for the xbox360 or ps3 if they're missing those 4 things that are actually important.
The PS3 in particular looks ready to fail in all of these categories. It sounds like they've got really crazy and bad hardware, that will be extremely difficult to take advantage of. They've got a ridiculous price, which will make it very hard to gain any market share. Because of those reasons, they will have a lot of trouble getting third party games, and thus will be stuck much like the Saturn and Nintendo64, relying almost entirely on first party games and exclusives to sell the console.
Nintendo will need to do something really stupid to screw up their shot at the title this generation.
While your general idea is somewhat true, you are greatly exaggerating. Would many of their linux sales come from dual-booters? Sure. Would all of their linux sales come from dual-booters? No way. I used to be a dual-booter, and I can tell you for a fact - no one likes buying a game KNOWING that they will have to reboot their computer (closing everything they have open) every time they want to play. ESPECIALLY Linux users who tend to have multiple desktops filled with browser tabs, irc windows, and development windows.
Having a Linux client would push a LOT of "well i'd like to, but dont feel like dual-booting" people over the edge to buy the game.
Regardless, the fact is that many games have been ported to linux several years after release, and STILL earned enough money to easily pay for the cost of porting. The primary factors here being a) porting just isn't that hard, and b) if these games made enough money years after release, imagine how much more could be made releasing a game for the added platform when its new and popular?
Note: I am a WOW-addict, but only bought it because they have a Mac client. If I hadn't bought a Powerbook two months ago to replace my Linux desktop, I never would have touched WOW with a ten-foot pole. In fact, neither would my girlfriend, or my two roommates we now play with. Especially for social games like WOW, the sales cascade -- porting to linux would draw in entire communities of friends who would otherwise never have tried it.
Just wanted to point something out - mutation has VERY little to do with evolution.
It turns out that crossover is the primary mechanism of evolution. Mutation, as is insinctive, tends to do more to hurt an organism than to help it. Crossover is far far far more likely to produce non-detrimental genes and changes within genes, because it's always reusing combinations of the same code that's already there.
(of course with only 4 bases, every possible combination can still come from reusing and reordering the existing DNA in any organism)
Science has observed the creation of new information PLENTY of times.
It's apparent that you know extremely little about genetics, so let me explain it in some briefer terms for you.
1) It's well-known, observed, and even photographed that genes cross over, creating new combinations of genes.
2) It's also well-known, observed, and even photographed that there are relatively common genetic "mistakes" that result in variations of duplicated and new genes. If a gene is duplicated, it's readily apparent that the old copy can remain, serving the same function, while the copy can combine with other genes in novel ways to extend the length of one's DNA with "new" improvements.
3) So it's already obvious that new genetic information can be created without this third item. But in addition to all of that, we also have heavily observed and photographed the interactions of viruses, which frequently inject foreign DNA into their host. There are even chromosomes (again, heavily observed and "photographed") that act much like viruses to insert and remove pieces of DNA.
Of course it's very unclear what you mean by "new" information. You've got 4 bases in DNA. All "new" information is just new combination of these 4 bases. Much like people write new books all the time by simply rearranging and appending more "words" made up of 26 "letters". All of which is being represented as you read this by "new" combinations of 1s and 0s, which gets us down to 2 bases, half as many as are used in human DNA.
The most compelling purpose of this study is probably the fact that it closely links Tyrannosaurus Rex to modern birds. This is one of many things that are helping us understand evolution, which in turn tells us a lot about modern animals, including humans, and medicine.
Having a government body to study studies is a perfect example of a complete waste of money, and of worthless studies. If a study is worthless, no one will report on it, and no one will fund it. It's a self-correcting problem.
I don't know how you could have missed this, so I doubt you actually did -
:Default Install (typically has KDE, firefox, etc.) :Maximum Install (everything) :Minimum Install (as bare bones as you can imagine)
But every linux distro I've installed in the past decade has had 1 or more default package installs available. They typically look something like this
I don't like that you're pretending Linux is more difficult to set up, just because it's more flexible in the install process than Windows is. Every linux distro gives you the "dumb simple" default install as an option. Give it the time zone and use DHCP and you're in KDE within a few clicks.
Meanwhile Linux installation has WAY more flexibility, and lets you do things like install onto SATA drives, and start from a minimum install that doesn't have a bunch of exploitable services running from first boot.
This statement isn't accurate at all. For 300$ you can get a Poweredge "server" computer that is totally barebones, but fairly powerful (with a pentium 4 if you get the right deal). However you then have to add RAM (128mb is not enough for anyone), a monitor, keyboard+mouse, cd writer, and any other extras you want. Oh yeah, and that's without an operating system, and I'm sure you're going to pay the additional $80+ for a legit copy of XP Home.
.
Alternatively, you can get a Dell Home machine for 300-400$ that has XP Home, no cd writer, 128mb of RAM, a 40gb hard drive, and a worthless Celeron processor. Wow what a deal
However if you look at the circuit city or best buy advertisements you can find E-Machines for about 300-400$ that really do come with everything. Keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, cdrw, printer...it still has a crappy Celeron processor, but still a great deal for your Mom. (or my mom, in this case).
Of course when I helped my brother build a computer I got him a Poweredge with a real Pentium 4, and added a decent graphics card and some memory to the system. He already had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so it ended up being a good deal for a Powerful machine.
Considering the power and size of the Mac mini, it's easily comparable with either Dell or Emachines. It's more full-featured than the cheap Dell Home machine, and more powerful than the EMachines computer. And as others have mentioned, it doesnt take $300+ in mail in rebates to get that 300$ price on the mac mini.
(my mom is still sorting through all of the emachines rebates - I think there are 5+ different rebates, each requiring a different combination of photocopies of UPCs from products in the bundle. And you just know they're going to find some excuse to reject some or all of those rebates anyway)
Oh, and as for "not valid unless signed", that's really just warning you:
:\
A) If you don't sign this, merchants can refuse to accept it
B) If you don't sign this (or write SEE ID), then any thief can sign the back of it, and then go around buying things, and have their receipt signature match the signature on the back of their card.
My school's bookstore always checked signatures, possibly because of how big most book purchases are ($300+). But it is pretty rare that merchants actually check the signature like they're supposed to
Actually, you are completely 100% wrong. And rude too, calling someone an idiot, when you don't even know what you're talking about.
The credit card company is never going to see whether you signed the card or not. It wouldn't make any sense for that signature to be there for your credit card company.
Have you ever noticed that you sign a receipt for a credit card? Credit cards are NOT pin-based transactions. Your signature is your PIN in this case. What merchants are SUPPOSED to do, is check your signature when you sign the receipt, against your signature on the back of your credit card. If they match, then you are the rightful owner of that credit card. If they don't match, well, you're not going to leave with any merchandise.
I worked at a bank, and had to check signatures all the time for the same reason.
Credit cards are NOT the same transactions as debit cards.
Debit card verification == PIN
Credit card verification == SIGNATURE
I ran into this problem just recently as well. I've been enjoying Counter-Strike for quite a while, and just recently had the fortune to be able to run my own server.
I have a friend who is a die-hard Quake3 fan, and we've been trying to get him to play CS 1.6 with us for quite some time. About two years ago we bought him a boxed copy of Counter-Strike ($30) to get him to play with us. I think we all got busy with school, and he never even installed the game.
So, as I said, I got my own server, and he finally found his old boxed copy of CS at home, at the bottom of his closet, and tried to install Counter-Strike - the game I paid 30$ for him to be able to play.
It said his CD-KEY was already registered to a Steam account.
Now get this -- in Steam's support forums, they admits that duplicate CD-KEYs were printed. So the person using my friend's CDKEY isnt even a "l33t Haxor", it's just another person who legitimately bought the game.
So no problem, right? My friend has ample proof that he owns the boxed copy + cd + cdkey, and they've already admitted fault for preventing him from playing. Right?
They will only help you if you bought the game within the past 90 days. No fucking joke. So if you bought the game 91 days ago, and they're preventing you from playing it, tough shit.
If anyone wants to start a class-action lawsuit against Valve/Vivendi/Sierra for going overboard with their authentication system and blocking legitimate users, I'm totally down.
**PS: I'm really not against any of what Valve has done, it's just that they've done it so POORLY. No redundancy in authentication (most users being unable to play on a Sat. night), contempt in taking responsibility for their own mistakes (duplicate cd-keys only helped if 90days old), and inadequate fair use (offline mode works poorly if at all)
You said yourself that it DOES advertise the fact that it requires internet.
I think Steam is an overall good idea, but they definitely need to put a little more effort into working out bugs in non-standard-but-legit usage (ie: offline play),
and add some expected fair-use funtionality, like the ability to dis-associate cd-keys from steam accounts.
(eg. I bought Half-Life, Condition Zero, and Half-life 2. HL2 gives me access to all 3 games, so I *should* be able to "give away" my half-life and condition-zero games/access to a friend. Instead I have 3x redundant cd-keys for CS 1.6)
Here's how to make HL2 load a bit faster on startup. I wrote this little howto when I got so sick of hl2's load times that I figured out how to stop it.
//startupmenu
How to make starting up Half-Life 2 somewhat bearable:
1) First to stop Half-Life2 from loading an entire map every time you start. The loading times are bad enough when there's actually a REASON to load the level...
Go into this folder:
?:\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2\hl2\cfg
Open valve.rc in Notepad and add two forward slashes to the line that says "startupmenu", so it looks like this:
This "comments out" the line, so it gets ignored.
Now the game will load the fuzzy background image and thats it.
2) Next for the obnoxious Valve startup movie:
Go into this folder:
?:\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2\hl2\media\
Used to be, in half-life 1, you could delete "valve.avi" and not have to watch the annoying video over and over every time you run the game. Now it seems the game "regenerates" the file for you. How kind.
Next I tried creating a 0-byte file of the same name. But on startup it still regenerates the movie file and forces you to watch it.
HOWEVER, try right clicking on your 0-byte valve.avi, go to properties, and check the "read-only" box, then hit OK.
Now Half-Life 2 is unable to overwrite your much more pleasant version of valve.avi.
Note to Valve: Nothing wrong with the video itself, but it's completely obnoxious to not let people press a button to skip it, especially after having started the game 500 times already. WE KNOW WHO MADE THE DAMN GAME, LET US PLAY IT!!!!
Note to all: Similar load times can be achieved with some kind of developer=1 paramater set on the command line options. But then you got developer messages scrolling on your screen the whole time you play, unless you go in and manually turn developer=0 after the game boots. So IMO a pain in the ass and not at all ideal solution.
I have done the same thing. I've ripped games and used Daemon Tools for a long time. However, this is *not allowed by the EULA*. Kinda sucks, but if you did it, and they found out, they can ban you.
If they can tell a difference, I think they'd do good to unban the cd-key hack people with a warning not to do it again.
But they don't have to.
Just the fact that they aren't suing every person who was trying to pirate the game is Valve being VERY NICE to a bunch of jerks.
In a nutshell, because you can still play the game in offline mode.
It's very easy for you to go around to 100 computers, install HL2 off the DVD, active it, put STEAM in offline mode, then use the no-cd crack.
Without the no-cd crack, it's much more difficult for you to give the game out to all your friends.
You could still put your steam account on all their computers, then download hl2 to each of them, and put it in offline mode (downloads dont require the cd). But I think the mass quantity of data you have to download is probably sufficient deterrent to doing this en masse.
Frankly I'm shocked at how many "geeks" are OK with pirating games instead of supporting the great companies making them.
If Valve stops allowing hl2 activation at some point, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If it takes suing Valve (or whoever owns the hl2 copyright) for not letting us play a game we bought, then that's what we'll do.
And if no company owns the game anymore? Then we're free to reverse engineer and offer for download any hacks/cracks/copies of the game that we can dream up.
Works for me. Only person it doesn't work for is pirates.
Overall I agree with you that activation *isnt that bad*. But there are two major issues that I would like to see resolved, by law if necessary:
(1) What if you dont have internet? In Microsoft's case they let you call in, which I think is sufficient.
In Valve's case, they say "dont buy the game". Half the time I play single player games its BECAUSE i dont have internet to play online. (like when i'd go home for my college winter break).
Still, for Steam it isn't that bad. You only have to get online and activate once - so as long as I dont reinstall steam+hl2 over winter break, I can play hl2 single player until my eye's bleed. So once again...really not that big of a problem.
(2) What happens when the company stops offering activation in 10 years, or the company goes bankrupt and dies? Are we no longer allowed to use the product?
Is the company legally liable for allowing activation for as long as the company is around?
What about Nintendo -- I can't buy an 8-bit NES anymore to play my 8-bit NES games. Should Nintendo be legally liable for continuing to create consoles that play 8-bit NES games? But I paid for those games, and I can't play them anymore!
I think the solution I would like to see for (2) is that the company is legally liable for providing activation as long as any company is around which owns the rights to that bit of software.
If the company dies, or otherwise gives up rights to the software, then people can reverse engineer the game to their heart's content and post the results online for anyone to obtain.
So really, the only thing we need is some laws saying
1) any software (or otherwise) product that requires activation must allow it in a timely manner, and via multiple communication forms (mail, phone, internet, whatever)
2) Any company which owns software that requires activation (or cd-key, or even cd-in-drive checks) to run, must continue allowing activation (or keep their cd-key checking servers around, or offering replacement media for scratched CDs) indefinitely.
3) Any software product requiring activation, may be reverse engineered and offered freely in any form, if activation is no longer available for that product. (this offers an easy out for if a company stops offering activation [reasonably] but still tries to retain the rights to the software)
This could easily be the last chance. This is nothing at all like the felt-tipped-marker scheme - that was a company trying to illicitly install software on people's computers. More like spyware than the broadcast flag. The thing with the broadcast flag is that, like DVD encryption, the broadcast flag is currently under the force of LAW.
The MPAA could easily start suing any company that makes devices that circumvent the broadcast flag. They could do the same thing with DVD players that circumvent region locking and macrovision. I'm not even sure why they haven't. Even if a "special code" gets "leaked" they can still hold the manufacturer responsible for it. At this point it's completely up to the MPAA whether you ever get to record something again. You can be optimistic that they'll let a lot of crap slide by them...but don't bitch when they actually enforce the laws they paid good money to pass.
"i totally agree.....Gmail was put out to beta simply to hype up the IPO price..."
"Gmail is at best equal to offerings by YahooMail and Hotmail."
Oh cm'on, you've never actually paid the slightest attention to gmail have you? "at best equal" to hotmail? You must work for Microsoft or something to say such utter bullshit. When Gmail came out Hotmail had, what, 4mb mailboxes? And if you paid them X$ you could get 100mb? Then gmail came out and actually did something innovative and competitive by giving people a ton of space, good spam filtering, an awesome interface, text-only ads, etc. I would never *touch* web-based email before, and was very skeptical of gmail. Until I actually used it, that is. Now Hotmail and Yahoo are scrambling to give up their gravy train of expensive shitty webmail services so they can actually compete. Thank goodness google showed up to scare their pathetic sites into doing some work.
You say it was released beta to hype IPO price, but it's been better than hotmail for months. I've never seen a single bug using gmail. I really don't see any reason for it to be beta at all. As far as I can tell it's just so they can controllably expand their userbase by giving out invitations, instead of trying to keep up with an overnight explosion of users.
I don't know (or care) a bit about Orkut or froogle or the kitchen sink, but your rantings on gmail are totally misplaced.
You probably aren't going to be charged with a criminal matter anyway. Chances are it's gonna be the RIAA coming with a subpoena, and that's a civil matter. In which case I'm pretty sure showing it happened on your connection is enough to hold you liable for damages.
You are 100% right. It is retarded. Anyone who tried to do this to try to coverup their own illegal acts (like downloading pirated music) is going to get more than what they deserve: punishment for their own crimes, AND for those of anyone else who uses their network. Good luck proving it WASNT you who did all that stuff on your network, especially with logging turned off...
A few little picks to nit.
You didn't really clarify, but while yes, BGH is injected into cows, it comes out in their milk, and is therefore present in dairy milk consumed.
BGH is I believe very similar to human growth hormone, and is known(?) to affect the human body. I haven't ready about it in a while but it's stuff that MAY be safe, but certainly needs to be looked into.
The FDA didn't conduct tests on whether BGH is safe. The FDA requires these tests on any product sold as human food, but since technically the BGH is added to the cows, not their milk, BGH wasn't tested on humans before being included in human food.
This is why most people who know anything about it want it to be
1) tested thoroughly by the FDA
2) labeled on milk cartons containing it
Number 2 isn't *too* important, as you can at this point assume ALL milk contains BGH unless the milk carton explicitly states otherwise. But number 1 is definitely important.
(i welcome any additions as its been a while since I read up on the BGH issue. I'm lactose intolerant and don't eat dairy, so I'm not too concerned about the hormones and antibiotics and crap that people are drinking in milk)
You're right, Nintendo fanboy or not. I'm a "Sega fanboy", and they're still pushing out amazing games (though since the Dreamcast I haven't kept up as much).
That's why I loved the Dreamcast - I'll play original games like Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi and Seaman any day, over a more overpriced system liked the PS2 that's a haven for me-too shooters and other clone games. I plan to buy a Gamecube even if its lifecycle is already over, because that cute little box has more good games on it than the XBox and PS2 combined.
I haven't used knoppix personally, but I imagine it's as simple as booting into knoppix and mounting your windows partitions. you could try to fix windows from the knoppix mount, copy the data to a backup before reformatting, or access data urgently without waiting for windows to reinstall.
In any case that knoppix works it seems to me that reinstalling windows without reformatting would also work. But I don't really trust windows to work properly if I install it overtop of an existing installation.
Umm, are you just plain retarded? Having your OS and browser running from a CD (ala knoppix) is just as good as running it off any other ROM. Knoppix is VERY on topic.
Use Daemon-Tools. Every game I buy gets ripped immediately to a .CUE/.BIN. The disk gets left at home while the game is still available to play any time, without the CD. It sucks having to bring 30 CDs with you everywhere you go "just in case" you might want to play that game. Same thing with ripping CDs and using your computer or an mp3-cd player to listen to them.
Especially when you're going to college, you're WAY better off carrying around burned mp3-cds and video game ISOs. At my college anyway, many 200-cd binders and video games and consoles get stolen. What would you rather lose, 30 burned CDs, or 200 original copies?