It's amazing how much valve has done so much right and so much wrong at the same time.
Basically, what steam does is handle it's userbase for an FPS game exactly like a MMORPG does it. The only difference is they dont charge you a monthly fee for using the service.
There are some benefits to this design, Particularly the ability to patch more often and offer new content on the fly rather than downloading a huge patch every 3 months. They can also sell their games on it. It's how I bought HL2 and it worked really well.
The disavantages to this are numerous for this particular type of game. Not being able to play offline is the big one. LAN parties get screwed royally by this. Basically if you dont have internet in your lan party your screwed. Also, since valve really screwed up on many points of the program, such as rollout, it's filled with bogus accounts used for nothing but cheating and the like.
I definetly like many parts of steam. especially the part that I dont need CD's anymore to scratch, lose CD keys, and the like, but they really need to iron out a lot of the legitimate issues that FPS players have with this system instead of force feeding them that it's just like an MMORPG now, and if you dont have Internet or we screw up, your screwed.
I agree. After reading the PDF, it seems that they were focusing on the software DEP system rather then the hardware (NX) DEP.
For those not in the know, XPSP2 has two forms of DEP. Hardware and Software. If your Processor supports it, WinXP uses Hardware DEP in the form of the NX bit to protect your PC. If the NX bit is not available on your CPU (Most CPU's fall under this category) then it defaultes to the Software DEP, or "sandboxing" as they put it.
If anyone wants to try and exploit this on an NX capable PC it would be interesting to see if it works. The Software DEP definetly is going to need some more work done to it though.
I'm using MSAS. It works well, And it's one of the best realtime scanners i've seen so far. Although as you can see from the above comparisons, while Giant AS was one of the best performing apps in the tests, it didn't catch every spyware app out there. In fact no other app did.
The only problems I see from MSAS so far is it might not be a free app and an MS lawsuit frenzy from every big name spyware company out there screaming Antitrust and monopoly all day.
If your on panix.com and you haven't changed your password yet I highly suggest you do. E-mail might be a good idea to change too if panix lets you.
Basicially, since they owned the domain, they also owned all the servers on it, including the E-mail server. It wouldn't be too hard for them to write a dummy E-mail server that captures every login attempt to it as well as the password sent. From that they got your E-mail address (SPAM!) and your password for it (SPY!).
From what this dotster.com business practice sounds like, It screams spammer, spyware and scammer all in one fun box.
If there making a Sims TV show, it's not going to last too long. The Entire cast will be dead by the first episode either by Fire or drowning or some other Darwin Award like way.
I've always said that everybody who plays The Sims has an uncanny facination with death. Dont believe me? Ask anyone who plays The Sims their most favorite moment. I can almost guarantee it has death involved in one form or another.
I've been testing this thing against some of the worst laptops students can put in front of me and it does a great job so far.
It's beating Spybot pretty much every time I've put them head to haed. It's still got a way to go against Ad-Aware but generally speaking it's not bad and it does a much more through job then just about every other automatic scanner I've used. I'm finding much less residue with hijackthis with MSAS than anything else so far. With a little more work on their definitions this could easily be a top notch antispyware utility.
The on demand scanner is really through. If on demand virus scanners were written with a system similar to this it would be really impressive against viral attacks. It checks just about every startup point I can think of where spyware hides. MS definitly didn't waste money by buying this impressive scanner Giant Developed.
The only problems I see is that it's questionable if MS is going to keep this program free and MS is a huge Lawsuit target. I can see every Spyware company suing the holy crap out of them for removing their product Screaming "Monopoly" and "Antitrust" all the way to the Judge.
I've been using Pebuilder for my recovery needs with great success.
It's easy to customize with plugins that you can create, download, and add. The UBCD for Windows is a must have for pebuilder and makes it a real powerful tool. from browsing to e-mail, web browsing, disk recovery and lots more. I basicially used one of these CD's as my PC's OS while I was waiting for Dell to send me a new hard drive when the one in my machine at work crashed.
Anandtech didn't seem to be too impressed by this solution.
From Anandtech:Unfortunately, in light of the performance tests, there really isn't much remarkable to say about the 3D1. In fact, unless Gigabyte can become very price competitive, there isn't much reason to recommend the 3D1 over a 2-card SLI solution. Currently, buying all the parts separately would cost the same as what Gigabyte is planning to sell the bundle.
The drawbacks to the 3D1 are its limited application (it will only run on the GA-K8NXP-SLI), the fact that it doesn't perform any better than 2-card SLI, and the fact that the user loses a DVI and an HD-15 display connection when compared to the 2-card solution.
Something like this might be very cool for use in a SFF with a motherboard that has only one physical PCIe x16 connector with the NVIDIA SLI chipset. But until we see NVIDIA relax their driver restrictions, and unless Gigabyte can find a way to boot their card on non-Gigabyte boards, there aren't very many other "killer" apps for the 3D1
They pretty much say Stick with true SLI unless size restraints force you into a single card solution
Go to Download.com and download something, and chances are your eventually getting spyware, and it's not IE's fault. Spyware started big time when programs (Kazaa comes to mind) started adding this crap in their installs for money, Spyware companies only focused on IE when they realized that people will download and install anything you tell them to.
In fact, When we started the Laptop program at the college where I work for studnets I Insisted that we installed some sort of spyware solution on the laptops. So we installed Spybot and Spywareblaster and immunized IE to the point that no spyware could infect the machine at the time the image was made, but we still had spyware on half of the laptops. How you ask if IE was reletively secure? AOL Instant Messenger and Ares is how. The students would go download AIM and Ares and breeze right through the install process installing every spyware app the installer had, then scream and yell how crappy the laptops were when they crashed from running so much spyware garbage.
Basicially, I can almost guarantee that someone could write a virus and implant it in a Peer to Peer app installer and have the installer Explicitly say that this extra program will make your peer to peer experience much better by removing all data from your hard drive in 7 days and people would gladly keep the checkmark in the box marked "YES!, please install HacknSlashSoft Data Eradicator!!" and click next halfway through the installer process.
Regardless of what browser you use, your going to get spyware from something unless you watch out for what your installing on your PC.
The only other thing I see happening is that they get sucked up by either Intel, AMD and possibly VIA.
Intel and AMD will buy it just so Transmeta can't sell their IP to their competitor. VIA might buy it to strengthen their EPIA line, which ironicially is more successful then Transmeta's offering. I also remember seeing rumors a long time ago that Nvidia was going to buy it and start making processors. Although I very much doubt that.
Regardless, I don't see them selling processors too much longer. Crusoe is barely selling and Effecion is barely in the channel let alone selling.
I really have a problem with how G4 claimes to have merged Techtv with G4 to make G4techTV.
I didn't have G4 here (Adelphia didn't carry it) But I had TechTV. In fact I remember when ZDNet owned it and it was called ZDTV. Frankly when it bacame TechTV it changed a little for the worst, but thats a different story.
Anyhow, A friend of mine, lived in OH and had Time Warner, Which had G4. Him and his roommate which were both avid gamers couldn't stand G4 but I decided to at least see what was on it and agreed with them in 3 hours that basicially all they would show was...
1) games running in demos against techno music 2) rehashed gaming related shows (GameproTV, Some old Arcade game show I cant remember the name of, ETC) 3) Other original shows that were either boring, stupid or both.
I'll admit. I wasn't a big fan of TechTV. I didn't like or watch The Screen Savers, Call for help seemed like I was watching my Job on TV, ETC, but generally I knew what was on it and I knew that what they were broadcasting was much better than anything on G4 and was helpful to the people that would watch their shows.
When G4 took it over, it almost immediatly went into the crapper. I never once considered it a Merger between TechTV and G4, more like G4 lost it's broadcast license and aquired TechTV's to stay on the air. Basicially TechTV became G4 almost overnight. All of it's garbage programming took the place of the decent TechTV lineup. The shows that TechTV did keep so that it didn't look like a complete takeover of G4 were butchered to the point that they were practially a G4 show, or cancelled to put on CinemaTech or some other Brain Dead Show of the day G4 could come up with.
Basicially, G4TechTV is a lesson in how to make a quasi-hostile takeover look like a merger.
and the SP2 one isn't really an exploit as much as it is a stupidity check.
"Gee! Bob from Accounting sent me this brand spankin' new Help file in my E-mail for Christmas! He's So Helpful! I'd better click on it because Bob told me to in his E-mail!"
I mean come on. At this point everyone and their uncle should know not to open attachments unless you were expecting it from someone considering the media coverage these types of viruses get. In fact, Outlook Express blocks.hlp files by default, Of course most people turn that security setting off anyway.
Generally speaking, SP2 has been impressive security wise VS SP1 and below. there hasn't been too many exploits that have affected this SP release so far. Of course SP1 was an absolute joke security wise so just about anything would be an improvement.
they said television was going to kill the box office
And it hurt them. Before TV, the Box office was the only visual media in town. If you wanted to see what was happening in the war, or watch cartoons or the like, You were going to the Theather. Once TV Came out, Box office attendance dropped dramitically. What was a weekly trip to the theater became a monthly if not quaratly trip. A lot of theaters went out of business after TV.
they said the vcr was going to kill the box office
It also hurt second and third run theaters to the point where many closed. I can remember where there were three theaters in our town. We're down to 1 now.
people still go to movies, and always will, because of
1. the quality
Right now, you can buy a complete Standard Def Home theater quality system for around $500-1000 and HI def for around $3000-4000. now imagine that price 10 years from now. Remember that color tv was over $1000 when it came out in the fifties, and that's not inflation adjusted. The Price of a Home Theater system will keep people in the theater's but as the price of a decent quality home theater system drops, attendance will drop, and Frankly the MPAA doesn't want to lose that Revenue.
2. those cell phones and babies? THAT'S PART OF THE APPEAL
I'll agree that if there is anything that will keep the box office going it's going to be the social aspect of the Theater, but to some people they dont want to deal with that. and thats lost revenue in the MPAA's Eyes.
The only thing thats going to keep the box office alive is the social aspect, people who dont want to pay or have the room for a home theater system and the business model of Theater First, Cable/Satellite Second, and DVD Third which will be in danger once they can charge admission in your very own home.
Remember Divx? The First Generation DVD players Circuit City pushed like crack that would play $5.00 DVD's for only a few days after the disk phoned home?
Don't be surprised when it makes a comeback in HD-DVD or BluRay. Regardless of how catastrophic a failure Divx was it was exactly what the MPAA wanted, which was a way to tell a DVD not to play unless the MPAA says so.
Simply put, the MPAA knows that the box office is eventually going to die. I mean why go to a cineplex and pay outrageous prices (for tickes and food) and then have to deal with cell phones and babies making a ton of noise in a sticky seat when you can just watch it in your own home theather on your couch with the same visual and audio quality on a HDTV.
Basicially their overall plan is to shift ticket sales from the Movie Theather to your Home Theather. It's already on in the Cable and Satellite Industry and it's going to start soon on the DVD side, if not with HD-DVD or Bluray then with the Next Format.
I'm still waiting for a scientist to say "If It uses electricity, is a chemical or is not natural in any way, It will kill you slowly" and get it over with.
They must make more money doing it individually then all at once.
I'll buy that, the guy will just bury the plane somewhere to get the terror effect.
At that point however, and this is where I'm going to take a ton of "Your a Cold-Hearted Bastard" shots now, We're talking about expendibility here. At that point all the people on the plane outside of a miracle happening are going to die somehow either by hitting a building, the ground, shot down. ETC and collateral damage starts to sink in. In other words, it's better the 747 hit that motel 6 and kill 40 people in it instead of hitting the sears tower and killing a couple thousand.
VFR, or Visual Flight Rules, is kinda hard at 30000 feet, In the clouds, over an ocean or in the dark if the sun goes down.
We're not talking Cessna here. We're talking Boeing 747 Class aircraft. This stuff flies pretty high at crusing altitude and overseas. Yes the Terrorist can drop the plane to get a better visual but that not going to help him much flying over the pacific is it?
But you already knew that since your a pilot, right?
They seemed to locate everything just fine on 9/11 w/o any GPS...
Yes. It's easy to fly a plane in a building, that is if you can see it.
Most of the planes used during 9/11 were hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their targets. At that distance, you would have to navigate to the destination because you cant get a visusal on the target. GPS makes navigating absurdly easy so by disabling the civilian GPS over a suspect plane, you make it much harder to locate the target.
At that point however, you could silll get a general direction by using a compass reading to get a bearing and then eye the target once you get in visual range. Assuming that older aviation repeter guide towers would be disabled as well as GPS and Since Commercial Pilots are well trained in navigation and terrorists most likely aren't, theres a good chance that they will screw up and stray off course.
A 1 degree miscalculation in a compass reading over 500 miles can be measured in miles off course. Being off course wastes time, which buys time for us to try and stop it. Since time is precious when it comes to an emergency situation, any amount of time we can gain by Jamming the GPS system is a good thing.
if you count watching a different show and switching to spikeTV while commercials were running on the other channel then yes I did.
Like I said. It's like watching a train wreck. You want to turn away but that tanker train car's about to derail onto the flaming car the train just hit...
Last year. I said that they should have called the VGA's something like "WWE Most Xtreme Beach Volleyball Def Jam Vice City Madden Football challenge with Funkmaster Flex."
This year, Im going to go with "EA Sports Xtreme Beach Def Jam San Andres Pro Skater Football with Funkmaster Flex."
I dont know who the hell this show even appeals to. I dont have anything wrong with Hip Hop or Rap but geez its a video game awards show not a music awards show. Seriosly the first 10 minutes was a Gansta Rap War that was half censored. Most of the Stars of this thing were rappers or skateboarders. and Frankly, the only reason to even watch this was for Motley Crue (again not VG related), which they cut off in the end. This is a Video game awards show that I swear to god thinks it's some sort of music awards show.
Frankly, this article has it on the money. What needs to happen is let gamers take this over. I know I'm going to take a ton of flak for this, but G4 really needs to take this off of SpikeTV's hands. Sure it will suck but at least it will be game related instead of T&A filled Rappers Delight, and the one awards show G4 had was a much better show than this thing ever was, and thats saying something.
Second, screw the "Viewers Choice" voting that SpikeTV does. All thats ever going to win that is Madden and the like even though they did nothing innovative or groundbreaking. I agree that what needs to happen is a Oscar like board of professional Video game reviewers, programmers and people directly associated with the industry to nominate and award.
Third. The Advertising goes away, pure and simple. No promoting of awards, games or anything in particular. Half of this show was video game previews and acts based on most of the games that won awards. The minute you saw all the Promos for San Andreas you already knew it won GOTY hands down. The "Most addictive game fueled by Dew" presented by Virgin mobile and Moutain Dew is a perfect example of whats got to go away.
Frankly, at this point, I dont think this show could ever be saved. The Gaming public has been so scorned by these last two showings that I can't see SpikeTV possibly getting out of the deep hole they dug. I'm frankly amazed that gamers watched this one because the only reason I watched it is because I cant stop watching a train wreck. I'm guessing the same goes for most of the gaming public out there.
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It's amazing how much valve has done so much right and so much wrong at the same time.
Basically, what steam does is handle it's userbase for an FPS game exactly like a MMORPG does it. The only difference is they dont charge you a monthly fee for using the service.
There are some benefits to this design, Particularly the ability to patch more often and offer new content on the fly rather than downloading a huge patch every 3 months. They can also sell their games on it. It's how I bought HL2 and it worked really well.
The disavantages to this are numerous for this particular type of game. Not being able to play offline is the big one. LAN parties get screwed royally by this. Basically if you dont have internet in your lan party your screwed. Also, since valve really screwed up on many points of the program, such as rollout, it's filled with bogus accounts used for nothing but cheating and the like.
I definetly like many parts of steam. especially the part that I dont need CD's anymore to scratch, lose CD keys, and the like, but they really need to iron out a lot of the legitimate issues that FPS players have with this system instead of force feeding them that it's just like an MMORPG now, and if you dont have Internet or we screw up, your screwed.
I agree. After reading the PDF, it seems that they were focusing on the software DEP system rather then the hardware (NX) DEP.
For those not in the know, XPSP2 has two forms of DEP. Hardware and Software. If your Processor supports it, WinXP uses Hardware DEP in the form of the NX bit to protect your PC. If the NX bit is not available on your CPU (Most CPU's fall under this category) then it defaultes to the Software DEP, or "sandboxing" as they put it.
If anyone wants to try and exploit this on an NX capable PC it would be interesting to see if it works. The Software DEP definetly is going to need some more work done to it though.
Hmm. does it work with Roadrunner? :)
Spyware Warrior's Testing of AntiSpyware Clients. Basicially Replace Giant AS with Microsoft AS and there you go.
I'm using MSAS. It works well, And it's one of the best realtime scanners i've seen so far. Although as you can see from the above comparisons, while Giant AS was one of the best performing apps in the tests, it didn't catch every spyware app out there. In fact no other app did.
The only problems I see from MSAS so far is it might not be a free app and an MS lawsuit frenzy from every big name spyware company out there screaming Antitrust and monopoly all day.
If your on panix.com and you haven't changed your password yet I highly suggest you do. E-mail might be a good idea to change too if panix lets you.
Basicially, since they owned the domain, they also owned all the servers on it, including the E-mail server. It wouldn't be too hard for them to write a dummy E-mail server that captures every login attempt to it as well as the password sent. From that they got your E-mail address (SPAM!) and your password for it (SPY!).
From what this dotster.com business practice sounds like, It screams spammer, spyware and scammer all in one fun box.
It could stop an invading Zentradi force.
:)
Of course any bimbo could do that
If there making a Sims TV show, it's not going to last too long. The Entire cast will be dead by the first episode either by Fire or drowning or some other Darwin Award like way.
I've always said that everybody who plays The Sims has an uncanny facination with death. Dont believe me? Ask anyone who plays The Sims their most favorite moment. I can almost guarantee it has death involved in one form or another.
I've been testing this thing against some of the worst laptops students can put in front of me and it does a great job so far.
It's beating Spybot pretty much every time I've put them head to haed. It's still got a way to go against Ad-Aware but generally speaking it's not bad and it does a much more through job then just about every other automatic scanner I've used. I'm finding much less residue with hijackthis with MSAS than anything else so far. With a little more work on their definitions this could easily be a top notch antispyware utility.
The on demand scanner is really through. If on demand virus scanners were written with a system similar to this it would be really impressive against viral attacks. It checks just about every startup point I can think of where spyware hides. MS definitly didn't waste money by buying this impressive scanner Giant Developed.
The only problems I see is that it's questionable if MS is going to keep this program free and MS is a huge Lawsuit target. I can see every Spyware company suing the holy crap out of them for removing their product Screaming "Monopoly" and "Antitrust" all the way to the Judge.
I've been using Pebuilder for my recovery needs with great success.
It's easy to customize with plugins that you can create, download, and add. The UBCD for Windows is a must have for pebuilder and makes it a real powerful tool. from browsing to e-mail, web browsing, disk recovery and lots more. I basicially used one of these CD's as my PC's OS while I was waiting for Dell to send me a new hard drive when the one in my machine at work crashed.
Anandtech didn't seem to be too impressed by this solution.
From Anandtech: Unfortunately, in light of the performance tests, there really isn't much remarkable to say about the 3D1. In fact, unless Gigabyte can become very price competitive, there isn't much reason to recommend the 3D1 over a 2-card SLI solution. Currently, buying all the parts separately would cost the same as what Gigabyte is planning to sell the bundle.
The drawbacks to the 3D1 are its limited application (it will only run on the GA-K8NXP-SLI), the fact that it doesn't perform any better than 2-card SLI, and the fact that the user loses a DVI and an HD-15 display connection when compared to the 2-card solution.
Something like this might be very cool for use in a SFF with a motherboard that has only one physical PCIe x16 connector with the NVIDIA SLI chipset. But until we see NVIDIA relax their driver restrictions, and unless Gigabyte can find a way to boot their card on non-Gigabyte boards, there aren't very many other "killer" apps for the 3D1
They pretty much say Stick with true SLI unless size restraints force you into a single card solution
Actually, It's been beyond firefox for years now.
Go to Download.com and download something, and chances are your eventually getting spyware, and it's not IE's fault. Spyware started big time when programs (Kazaa comes to mind) started adding this crap in their installs for money, Spyware companies only focused on IE when they realized that people will download and install anything you tell them to.
In fact, When we started the Laptop program at the college where I work for studnets I Insisted that we installed some sort of spyware solution on the laptops. So we installed Spybot and Spywareblaster and immunized IE to the point that no spyware could infect the machine at the time the image was made, but we still had spyware on half of the laptops. How you ask if IE was reletively secure? AOL Instant Messenger and Ares is how. The students would go download AIM and Ares and breeze right through the install process installing every spyware app the installer had, then scream and yell how crappy the laptops were when they crashed from running so much spyware garbage.
Basicially, I can almost guarantee that someone could write a virus and implant it in a Peer to Peer app installer and have the installer Explicitly say that this extra program will make your peer to peer experience much better by removing all data from your hard drive in 7 days and people would gladly keep the checkmark in the box marked "YES!, please install HacknSlashSoft Data Eradicator!!" and click next halfway through the installer process.
Regardless of what browser you use, your going to get spyware from something unless you watch out for what your installing on your PC.
The only other thing I see happening is that they get sucked up by either Intel, AMD and possibly VIA.
Intel and AMD will buy it just so Transmeta can't sell their IP to their competitor. VIA might buy it to strengthen their EPIA line, which ironicially is more successful then Transmeta's offering. I also remember seeing rumors a long time ago that Nvidia was going to buy it and start making processors. Although I very much doubt that.
Regardless, I don't see them selling processors too much longer. Crusoe is barely selling and Effecion is barely in the channel let alone selling.
I really have a problem with how G4 claimes to have merged Techtv with G4 to make G4techTV.
I didn't have G4 here (Adelphia didn't carry it) But I had TechTV. In fact I remember when ZDNet owned it and it was called ZDTV. Frankly when it bacame TechTV it changed a little for the worst, but thats a different story.
Anyhow, A friend of mine, lived in OH and had Time Warner, Which had G4. Him and his roommate which were both avid gamers couldn't stand G4 but I decided to at least see what was on it and agreed with them in 3 hours that basicially all they would show was...
1) games running in demos against techno music
2) rehashed gaming related shows (GameproTV, Some old Arcade game show I cant remember the name of, ETC)
3) Other original shows that were either boring, stupid or both.
I'll admit. I wasn't a big fan of TechTV. I didn't like or watch The Screen Savers, Call for help seemed like I was watching my Job on TV, ETC, but generally I knew what was on it and I knew that what they were broadcasting was much better than anything on G4 and was helpful to the people that would watch their shows.
When G4 took it over, it almost immediatly went into the crapper. I never once considered it a Merger between TechTV and G4, more like G4 lost it's broadcast license and aquired TechTV's to stay on the air. Basicially TechTV became G4 almost overnight. All of it's garbage programming took the place of the decent TechTV lineup. The shows that TechTV did keep so that it didn't look like a complete takeover of G4 were butchered to the point that they were practially a G4 show, or cancelled to put on CinemaTech or some other Brain Dead Show of the day G4 could come up with.
Basicially, G4TechTV is a lesson in how to make a quasi-hostile takeover look like a merger.
and the SP2 one isn't really an exploit as much as it is a stupidity check.
.hlp files by default, Of course most people turn that security setting off anyway.
"Gee! Bob from Accounting sent me this brand spankin' new Help file in my E-mail for Christmas! He's So Helpful! I'd better click on it because Bob told me to in his E-mail!"
I mean come on. At this point everyone and their uncle should know not to open attachments unless you were expecting it from someone considering the media coverage these types of viruses get. In fact, Outlook Express blocks
Generally speaking, SP2 has been impressive security wise VS SP1 and below. there hasn't been too many exploits that have affected this SP release so far. Of course SP1 was an absolute joke security wise so just about anything would be an improvement.
they said television was going to kill the box office
And it hurt them. Before TV, the Box office was the only visual media in town. If you wanted to see what was happening in the war, or watch cartoons or the like, You were going to the Theather. Once TV Came out, Box office attendance dropped dramitically. What was a weekly trip to the theater became a monthly if not quaratly trip. A lot of theaters went out of business after TV.
they said the vcr was going to kill the box office
It also hurt second and third run theaters to the point where many closed. I can remember where there were three theaters in our town. We're down to 1 now.
people still go to movies, and always will, because of
1. the quality
Right now, you can buy a complete Standard Def Home theater quality system for around $500-1000 and HI def for around $3000-4000. now imagine that price 10 years from now. Remember that color tv was over $1000 when it came out in the fifties, and that's not inflation adjusted. The Price of a Home Theater system will keep people in the theater's but as the price of a decent quality home theater system drops, attendance will drop, and Frankly the MPAA doesn't want to lose that Revenue.
2. those cell phones and babies? THAT'S PART OF THE APPEAL
I'll agree that if there is anything that will keep the box office going it's going to be the social aspect of the Theater, but to some people they dont want to deal with that. and thats lost revenue in the MPAA's Eyes.
The only thing thats going to keep the box office alive is the social aspect, people who dont want to pay or have the room for a home theater system and the business model of Theater First, Cable/Satellite Second, and DVD Third which will be in danger once they can charge admission in your very own home.
Remember Divx? The First Generation DVD players Circuit City pushed like crack that would play $5.00 DVD's for only a few days after the disk phoned home?
Don't be surprised when it makes a comeback in HD-DVD or BluRay. Regardless of how catastrophic a failure Divx was it was exactly what the MPAA wanted, which was a way to tell a DVD not to play unless the MPAA says so.
Simply put, the MPAA knows that the box office is eventually going to die. I mean why go to a cineplex and pay outrageous prices (for tickes and food) and then have to deal with cell phones and babies making a ton of noise in a sticky seat when you can just watch it in your own home theather on your couch with the same visual and audio quality on a HDTV.
Basicially their overall plan is to shift ticket sales from the Movie Theather to your Home Theather. It's already on in the Cable and Satellite Industry and it's going to start soon on the DVD side, if not with HD-DVD or Bluray then with the Next Format.
A lightning bolt is natural, and is pretty damn dangerous, as is arsenic, and bears.
:)
Yes they are natural, but they don't kill you Slowly.
I'm still waiting for a scientist to say "If It uses electricity, is a chemical or is not natural in any way, It will kill you slowly" and get it over with.
They must make more money doing it individually then all at once.
Does anybody know what Symantec's size is saleswise?
MS is #1 Oracle is #2. Are they #3 at this point?
I'll buy that, the guy will just bury the plane somewhere to get the terror effect.
At that point however, and this is where I'm going to take a ton of "Your a Cold-Hearted Bastard" shots now, We're talking about expendibility here. At that point all the people on the plane outside of a miracle happening are going to die somehow either by hitting a building, the ground, shot down. ETC and collateral damage starts to sink in. In other words, it's better the 747 hit that motel 6 and kill 40 people in it instead of hitting the sears tower and killing a couple thousand.
VFR, or Visual Flight Rules, is kinda hard at 30000 feet, In the clouds, over an ocean or in the dark if the sun goes down.
We're not talking Cessna here. We're talking Boeing 747 Class aircraft. This stuff flies pretty high at crusing altitude and overseas. Yes the Terrorist can drop the plane to get a better visual but that not going to help him much flying over the pacific is it?
But you already knew that since your a pilot, right?
They seemed to locate everything just fine on 9/11 w/o any GPS...
Yes. It's easy to fly a plane in a building, that is if you can see it.
Most of the planes used during 9/11 were hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their targets. At that distance, you would have to navigate to the destination because you cant get a visusal on the target. GPS makes navigating absurdly easy so by disabling the civilian GPS over a suspect plane, you make it much harder to locate the target.
At that point however, you could silll get a general direction by using a compass reading to get a bearing and then eye the target once you get in visual range. Assuming that older aviation repeter guide towers would be disabled as well as GPS and Since Commercial Pilots are well trained in navigation and terrorists most likely aren't, theres a good chance that they will screw up and stray off course.
A 1 degree miscalculation in a compass reading over 500 miles can be measured in miles off course. Being off course wastes time, which buys time for us to try and stop it. Since time is precious when it comes to an emergency situation, any amount of time we can gain by Jamming the GPS system is a good thing.
if you count watching a different show and switching to spikeTV while commercials were running on the other channel then yes I did.
Like I said. It's like watching a train wreck. You want to turn away but that tanker train car's about to derail onto the flaming car the train just hit...
Last year. I said that they should have called the VGA's something like "WWE Most Xtreme Beach Volleyball Def Jam Vice City Madden Football challenge with Funkmaster Flex."
This year, Im going to go with "EA Sports Xtreme Beach Def Jam San Andres Pro Skater Football with Funkmaster Flex."
I dont know who the hell this show even appeals to. I dont have anything wrong with Hip Hop or Rap but geez its a video game awards show not a music awards show. Seriosly the first 10 minutes was a Gansta Rap War that was half censored. Most of the Stars of this thing were rappers or skateboarders. and Frankly, the only reason to even watch this was for Motley Crue (again not VG related), which they cut off in the end. This is a Video game awards show that I swear to god thinks it's some sort of music awards show.
Frankly, this article has it on the money. What needs to happen is let gamers take this over. I know I'm going to take a ton of flak for this, but G4 really needs to take this off of SpikeTV's hands. Sure it will suck but at least it will be game related instead of T&A filled Rappers Delight, and the one awards show G4 had was a much better show than this thing ever was, and thats saying something.
Second, screw the "Viewers Choice" voting that SpikeTV does. All thats ever going to win that is Madden and the like even though they did nothing innovative or groundbreaking. I agree that what needs to happen is a Oscar like board of professional Video game reviewers, programmers and people directly associated with the industry to nominate and award.
Third. The Advertising goes away, pure and simple. No promoting of awards, games or anything in particular. Half of this show was video game previews and acts based on most of the games that won awards. The minute you saw all the Promos for San Andreas you already knew it won GOTY hands down. The "Most addictive game fueled by Dew" presented by Virgin mobile and Moutain Dew is a perfect example of whats got to go away.
Frankly, at this point, I dont think this show could ever be saved. The Gaming public has been so scorned by these last two showings that I can't see SpikeTV possibly getting out of the deep hole they dug. I'm frankly amazed that gamers watched this one because the only reason I watched it is because I cant stop watching a train wreck. I'm guessing the same goes for most of the gaming public out there.
...Microsoft Released a Rebranded Google toolbar?