Holy crap people, not everyone *needs* broadband. Watching retarded YouTube videos and other crap isn't an essential part of life. If your only use for the Internet is email and browsing Wikipedia you can get by just fine with dialup. Personally, I'm a bandwidth addict, but my mom couldn't care less. She's happy with email and reading the occasional news story. America isn't going to collapse because these people don't have broadband.
Spam is the reason I have a gmail account. When I first got an e-mail address I was using a small ISP and spam didn't even exist. After 12 years of using the same e-mail address that thing is about 90% spam. I couldn't find an e-mail client capable of cleaning it and my ISPs filters were useless. Finally I caved and just started consolidating it all in gmail and letting gmail do the filtering for me. So, yes, spam is still a huge problem if you're not using gmail or a work e-mail where all the work is being done for you.
Why do people assume it's so easy to magically improve the infrastructure of the entire US? Have you compared the size of America to the size of Europe or Japan? The lower 48 are huge even without including Alaska. I want faster broadband and improved cell phone coverage too but lets be realistic. We're a bit bigger than Japan / insert-random-euro-country-that-we-should-be-like.
I love that console users *expect* updates now. Even last-gen consoles never got updates.
Buying for the console is silly anyway. You pay $10-$20 more than you do for the PC version so that you can play the game using a terrible controller. Consoles are good for playing my BluRay, watching my NetFlix and playing Rock Band!
Disclaimer: I grew up on consoles so don't read that the wrong way.
You gotta realize that running a game on a 2 year old laptop is like running it on a 4 year old desktop. Unless you dropped an insane amount of money on your laptop, chances are it was equivalent to a lower mid-range PC when you bought it. Valve updated the Source Engine for all of the Orange Box games. They take advantage of it to varying degrees but my understanding is that TF2 has the most new effects. They've even added more over time. EP2 probably does all right because it's single player and it's not using all of the bells and whistles. In a 32 player game you've got a lot more going on. On my old machine I would have FPS issues on big CS servers. Lots of players meant lag for me. So I'd stick to smaller servers. I'd definitely get more RAM if you're not getting a new machine. 1 GB just doesn't cut it anymore.:)
How so? I think snipers are perfectly balanced. Sure, a good sniper can be obnoxious but that's as it should be. If snipers are hassling you too much it's because the spies and snipers (and sometimes pyros!) on your team aren't doing their job.
Don't mind the obvious troll OP. He obviously hasn't read any of Valve's developer commentary that explains everything he's complaining about.
For example - Of course the characters look cartoonish. They're rocket and sticky jumping around, they're being healed by a giant blue raygun and they're fighting over bases they've built 100 feet from each other.
Yes, we mappers have tried many different things to get multiple flags working but none of them have worked. Moving the flag spawn isn't too much of a problem. I did see someone trying to create a sort of "center flag" game but I never saw what came of it. He was working on placing one flag in the middle to be capped by either team.
All of us are smart enough to understand that a cable is a cable.
Except when it's a MONSTER CABLE. Nothing says bad ass awesome like a MONSTER CABLE. My cable cost 10 times more than yours so it must be the ultimate power in the universe. MONSTER!
In all seriousness though, I do believe that protecting our kids from pedophiles is a good thing. We just need to reevaluate how effective what we're doing really is and whether there's a better way. Reporting kids for having pictures of other kids is asinine. If I were a parent I'd sue whatever teacher opened my kid's phone. Teachers searching through the pictures on a kid's phone are the real pedophiles.
I don't know how it happened but the last few months we've seen worse and worse modding. I see more misplaced troll and flamebait mods than ever before. It's ridiculous. I actually take the time to read the troll and flamebait posts now because half of the time they aren't that at all.
Consider also the consequences of getting it wrong. If your TomTom is off by 100 metres, you park in front of the wrong house. If my Garmin 530 is off by 100 metres, I crash into a mountain side and die.
So what you're saying is - all terrorism could be fixed by just making sure the terrorists have lousy GPS systems? That sounds like a cheaper solution than all this TSA crap.
Odd how this is the sort of post that pops up when it's a problem with the budding Obama administration but not so much when it has anything to do with Bush...
Mod disclaimer - I don't support one more than the other. I think just about any politician that's done what it takes to get to the presidency is bound to be a shyster.
The CueCat was the first thing I thought of as well. The trouble with these technologies is that I've never understood how the usefulness outweighed the inconvenience. The only interesting one I've heard about is for the G1 (android based phone). It lets you compare the price of something in online stores and nearby brick and mortars - pretty nifty.
If you do homeschool I'd really encourage you to find a way for your kids to regularly interact with their peers. I spent 5 years working with high school students. Every kid that came in that was homeschooled took at least a year to stop being socially retarded. It was almost impossible to have a conversation with them when they first started coming. After a year or so you could actually talk to them about something they were interested in and they had developed sufficient social skills to build friendships with the other kids. Obviously my experience isn't scientific, but I'm not exaggerating - Literally ever homeschooled kid, literally over a year.
Hehe, people that know enough to be dangerous can make your job much more interesting than the people that are dumping coffee on their keyboards and installing flash games. Figuring out what obscure registry key was tweaked that's preventing your AV from properly running is much tougher than grabbing a keyboard from the closet or deleting some garbage games.
That said, working in a gaming environment may only be marginally better. I suspect most of the guys there would think they knew more about IT than you and management would still have the "don't spend money" attitude that we all know and love.
Exactly. IT Guys know it's their butt on the line when stuff goes wrong. You think those 10% of guys sat around doing nothing? They probably asked for money, didn't get it, and then things slowly broke down. You can't download new hardware on a torrent!
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Holy crap people, not everyone *needs* broadband. Watching retarded YouTube videos and other crap isn't an essential part of life. If your only use for the Internet is email and browsing Wikipedia you can get by just fine with dialup. Personally, I'm a bandwidth addict, but my mom couldn't care less. She's happy with email and reading the occasional news story. America isn't going to collapse because these people don't have broadband.
Hey guys, we thought the first nuclear bomb might burn up the atmosphere and we survived that! Guys?
Spam is the reason I have a gmail account. When I first got an e-mail address I was using a small ISP and spam didn't even exist. After 12 years of using the same e-mail address that thing is about 90% spam. I couldn't find an e-mail client capable of cleaning it and my ISPs filters were useless. Finally I caved and just started consolidating it all in gmail and letting gmail do the filtering for me. So, yes, spam is still a huge problem if you're not using gmail or a work e-mail where all the work is being done for you.
Can't be more than the $8,000 a gallon we're all currently paying.
Why do people assume it's so easy to magically improve the infrastructure of the entire US? Have you compared the size of America to the size of Europe or Japan? The lower 48 are huge even without including Alaska. I want faster broadband and improved cell phone coverage too but lets be realistic. We're a bit bigger than Japan / insert-random-euro-country-that-we-should-be-like.
Buying for the console is silly anyway. You pay $10-$20 more than you do for the PC version so that you can play the game using a terrible controller. Consoles are good for playing my BluRay, watching my NetFlix and playing Rock Band!
Disclaimer: I grew up on consoles so don't read that the wrong way.
You gotta realize that running a game on a 2 year old laptop is like running it on a 4 year old desktop. Unless you dropped an insane amount of money on your laptop, chances are it was equivalent to a lower mid-range PC when you bought it. Valve updated the Source Engine for all of the Orange Box games. They take advantage of it to varying degrees but my understanding is that TF2 has the most new effects. They've even added more over time. EP2 probably does all right because it's single player and it's not using all of the bells and whistles. In a 32 player game you've got a lot more going on. On my old machine I would have FPS issues on big CS servers. Lots of players meant lag for me. So I'd stick to smaller servers. I'd definitely get more RAM if you're not getting a new machine. 1 GB just doesn't cut it anymore. :)
How so? I think snipers are perfectly balanced. Sure, a good sniper can be obnoxious but that's as it should be. If snipers are hassling you too much it's because the spies and snipers (and sometimes pyros!) on your team aren't doing their job.
For example - Of course the characters look cartoonish. They're rocket and sticky jumping around, they're being healed by a giant blue raygun and they're fighting over bases they've built 100 feet from each other.
Parent - just play on a no-crit server.
Yes, we mappers have tried many different things to get multiple flags working but none of them have worked. Moving the flag spawn isn't too much of a problem. I did see someone trying to create a sort of "center flag" game but I never saw what came of it. He was working on placing one flag in the middle to be capped by either team.
All of us are smart enough to understand that a cable is a cable.
Except when it's a MONSTER CABLE. Nothing says bad ass awesome like a MONSTER CABLE. My cable cost 10 times more than yours so it must be the ultimate power in the universe. MONSTER!
I believe the expression you're looking for is here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A
In all seriousness though, I do believe that protecting our kids from pedophiles is a good thing. We just need to reevaluate how effective what we're doing really is and whether there's a better way. Reporting kids for having pictures of other kids is asinine. If I were a parent I'd sue whatever teacher opened my kid's phone. Teachers searching through the pictures on a kid's phone are the real pedophiles.
I don't know how it happened but the last few months we've seen worse and worse modding. I see more misplaced troll and flamebait mods than ever before. It's ridiculous. I actually take the time to read the troll and flamebait posts now because half of the time they aren't that at all.
Can we just blind the lawmakers instead?
Consider also the consequences of getting it wrong. If your TomTom is off by 100 metres, you park in front of the wrong house. If my Garmin 530 is off by 100 metres, I crash into a mountain side and die.
So what you're saying is - all terrorism could be fixed by just making sure the terrorists have lousy GPS systems? That sounds like a cheaper solution than all this TSA crap.
Side note: Holy crap your post made me laugh
Odd how this is the sort of post that pops up when it's a problem with the budding Obama administration but not so much when it has anything to do with Bush...
Mod disclaimer - I don't support one more than the other. I think just about any politician that's done what it takes to get to the presidency is bound to be a shyster.
Can we set a new record for corruption!? YES WE CAN!
'Study shows stabbing yourself may increase blood loss'.
No it doesn't! You've been drinking too much coffee! You're clearly having a bad trip man. My hallucinations got me a machine that can run Crysis!
Lemme tell ya something Joe Rogan *scratch scratch* I SMOKE ROCKS!
The CueCat was the first thing I thought of as well. The trouble with these technologies is that I've never understood how the usefulness outweighed the inconvenience. The only interesting one I've heard about is for the G1 (android based phone). It lets you compare the price of something in online stores and nearby brick and mortars - pretty nifty.
If you do homeschool I'd really encourage you to find a way for your kids to regularly interact with their peers. I spent 5 years working with high school students. Every kid that came in that was homeschooled took at least a year to stop being socially retarded. It was almost impossible to have a conversation with them when they first started coming. After a year or so you could actually talk to them about something they were interested in and they had developed sufficient social skills to build friendships with the other kids. Obviously my experience isn't scientific, but I'm not exaggerating - Literally ever homeschooled kid, literally over a year.
Hehe, people that know enough to be dangerous can make your job much more interesting than the people that are dumping coffee on their keyboards and installing flash games. Figuring out what obscure registry key was tweaked that's preventing your AV from properly running is much tougher than grabbing a keyboard from the closet or deleting some garbage games.
That said, working in a gaming environment may only be marginally better. I suspect most of the guys there would think they knew more about IT than you and management would still have the "don't spend money" attitude that we all know and love.
Exactly. IT Guys know it's their butt on the line when stuff goes wrong. You think those 10% of guys sat around doing nothing? They probably asked for money, didn't get it, and then things slowly broke down. You can't download new hardware on a torrent!