When sales figures were last announced, over four million copies of Half-Life 2 had been sold.[6] Roughly 25 percent of all Half-Life 2 copies have been purchased using the Steam content delivery service; their exact number is between 750,000 and one million, depending on whether they are included in the figure of four million.[7]
Yes, Steam is a cool means of distribution, but don't think for a second that it is anywhere close to replacing actual media. That point is a looooong way away. Joe Six-Pack wants a physical box and disc in his hands, or an actual package under the tree for his kids to unwrap. Consumer America is not ready for purely digital distribution quite yet.
-l
Re:Applying logic seen on Slashdot
on
Free Geek Robbed
·
· Score: 1
I promise you can commit a lot more than $4500 worth of theft with even a dozen credit card numbers, much less a couple hundred thousand of them.
Ok, I've been a gamer of various sorts for approaching 30 years, and the only game on their list that I think belongs in a top TWENTY is Doom.
Top 5, in no particular order.
Zork Adventure for the Atari 2600 (Warren Robbinett forever) Civilization II (sorry, Civ fans, Civ 2 is the definitive version) Utopia for the Intellivision (the FIRST widespread RTS) Asteroids arcade version
These aren't even my top five favorites of all time, but the ones I feel deserve even more recognition than they got (ESPECIALLY Utopia, we wouldn't have Starcraft without it). They pioneered generations of games, and their influence is still felt today.
>I am an old school gamer. I remember when the great sound >tracks were Final Fantasy VI and to an extent Link to the >Past.
FFVI? "old school gamer"? Uhm... well... no.
Go back to Loom (an early Lucas release) and Wing Commander in 1990, or any of the other projects involving The Fat Man (George Sanger).
Check out some of the Apple II stuff Origin did with the Mockingboard, particularly Ultima V.
There were great computer soundtracks back in at LEAST the mid 80s, if not earlier. Sometimes you just had to pay a little extra for the hardware (SB16s are a dime a dozen now, but back when an AdLib card ran $200 or more... imagine what it was like paying for a Mockingboard Sound II, much less two of them for maximum effect on Ultima V).
I hear so many people talk about how Americans eat too much, how kids are too fat, and how it's always the parents' fault if a kid is fat.
Now here's a way for parents to control what their kids eat, and people are screaming about how it's invasive and controlling.
Screw you guys. If you're gonna play two sides of an issue, at least seperate it by a few degress, don't sit here and say how it's wrong for parents to let their kids eat crap and then say it's wrong for parents to NOT let their kids eat crap.
Anyone that knows enough about the feature to think this is a privacy concern knows enough about the feature to protect themselves from it.
Anyone that doesn't know enough to protect themself, doesn't know it exists, and won't care.
And.. yaknow.. if writing objectionable Word documents is the worst of your offenses.. well.. I think you're safe. Unless you're writing detailed directions for the assassination of a highly placed company or government official.
Then again, I guess you could be coming up with Excel documents showing how you can rip the company off for bazillions of dollars, but if you're smart enough to figure that out, I don't think backups of your spreadsheets are gonna be what nails you.
>(Occasionally books move humans to kill, re: politics, re: >religion. But those folks were pretty messed in the head to >begin with.
So... you think the people that commit murder with guns aren't, somehow, "pretty messed in the head to begin with"?
I have many guns (somewhere around 25 at last inventory). None of them (with the possible exception of the Russian surplus pistol, I don't know what was done with it before I got it) have ever killed anyone. At least 15 of them have never even killed an animal. Five or six of them have never been fired at all.
Are my guns broken, or am I just abnormally exceedingly un-messed up in the head?
See, in my world, the gun is just a tool. The messed-up person does the killing. If the gun wasn't available, they'd use a knife, a baseball bat, a pointy stick, a rope, or a car to do the job.
Blaming a video game, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, a book, or a gun for killing is just asinine. Somewhere at some point a person makes a conscious decision that leads to a death, either of themself or another.
>We cry out against the beheading that happened to Berg and >others, and yet, it may very well be minor compared to what we >are doing in gitmo
What, pray tell, COULD we be doing to people that would make sawing off a man's head with a knife "minor"?!
Are you fucking KIDDING me?
I'm gonna go way out on a limb here and say there's no way you've actually seen the Berg video. Look it up, then come back here and tell me that a guard wiping his ass with the Koran is staggeringly brutal and horrible compared to that.
Been a rough week and I was pretty drunk when I posted that. I apologize for the name-calling, but I stand by my position that IE is effectively disabled on this system.
Does it use the rendering libraries for file explorer related functions? Sure. But the iexplore process itself is never started.
>You don't like Dell preinstalling IE? Fine... no wait, you CAN'T do anything about it
Ok, apparently you're a FUCKING IDIOT, because the first (well, third, after drivers) thing I did after reinstalling XP was installing Firefox and disable IE.
Can I remove it? Well, no. Can I disable it and render it as impotent as you on a Saturday night? Well, yes. Well, nearly. It's at least still there.
When this was AOL or MSN, sources that were known to filter news and other unconsionable actions, this was BAAAAAAAAAD(!).
Now that it's Google, which has been shown recently to filter news and engage in other (arguably) unconscionable actions... is it.. still... BAAAAAAD(!)?
>No, the stupid part is thinking that it justifies >their actions. If it's wrong for Bush to do >something, it doesn't make it right that Clinton >did it.
The converse also applies: If it's wrong for Bush to do something it was ALSO wrong for Clinton to do it.
90% of the time I hear this whole line of conversation happen, it's because someone is demonizing Bush for something Clinton got a free pass on (Kyoto, military action without UN approval, Patriot vs DMCA, and so on).
An awful lot of people out there hate ANYTHING Bush does simply because it's Bush doing it, and nothing illustrates this better than watching Democrats wail and gnash their teeth over issues they were strangely silent on (or even supportive of) when their man was in the White House.
I've said it before, and I'll say it here: If Bush single-handedly stopped a busload of orphans from going over a cliff into a river full of ravenous crocodiles, he'd be criticized for starving those poor animals.
Not really. It's a hardware thing (near as we can tell) that's causing it to go down every single Monday. It's also a software thing on the box itself that has to be restarted AFTER we restart the hardware thing.
It's "open source" as far as the box being Linux-based. Beyond that? I can't do a damn thing.
>I can't imagine how a 2.4 GHz wireless radio can >be used to hack a 980 MHz remote
You've just addressed this entire conversation.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward! You have single-handedly, by this post, demonstrated that this entire thread is without merit, and should no longer be discussed.
Where were you two days ago?
You could have saved every single participant in this conversation a whole lot of trouble.
Guinness Extra Stout (bottles without the widget) and Guinness (cans or bottles with the widget or draught) are entirely different beers with entirely different tastes, textures, and caloric/ABV values.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree with any part of what you said except for this:
(yeah I know EA helped distribute hard copies of HL2, but valve sold most of the copies themselves through downloads)
Uhh, you really think this?
I'd bet a six-pack that Best Buy and Wal-Mart sold more copies of HL2 than the Steam distribution network.
Ah, here it is, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2 :
When sales figures were last announced, over four million copies of Half-Life 2 had been sold.[6] Roughly 25 percent of all Half-Life 2 copies have been purchased using the Steam content delivery service; their exact number is between 750,000 and one million, depending on whether they are included in the figure of four million.[7]
Yes, Steam is a cool means of distribution, but don't think for a second that it is anywhere close to replacing actual media. That point is a looooong way away. Joe Six-Pack wants a physical box and disc in his hands, or an actual package under the tree for his kids to unwrap. Consumer America is not ready for purely digital distribution quite yet.
-l
I promise you can commit a lot more than $4500 worth of theft with even a dozen credit card numbers, much less a couple hundred thousand of them.
-l
Australian and Canadian Mountain Dew has no added caffiene.
...what is it about the Powertoy that DOESN'T suit your needs?
Note: Having Microsoft's name attached doesn't count.
-l
Huh, my bad, UMHB is in Belton, for some reason I remembered them being in San Antonio... nevermind.
There's also Mary-Hardin Baylor, another private christian university..
-l
Claims that requiring an ID would be racist or violate poll tax laws revolved around the payment required for an ID.
If the ID is free, these claims fall apart.
-l
Ok, I've been a gamer of various sorts for approaching 30 years, and the only game on their list that I think belongs in a top TWENTY is Doom.
Top 5, in no particular order.
Zork
Adventure for the Atari 2600 (Warren Robbinett forever)
Civilization II (sorry, Civ fans, Civ 2 is the definitive version)
Utopia for the Intellivision (the FIRST widespread RTS)
Asteroids arcade version
These aren't even my top five favorites of all time, but the ones I feel deserve even more recognition than they got (ESPECIALLY Utopia, we wouldn't have Starcraft without it). They pioneered generations of games, and their influence is still felt today.
-l
>I am an old school gamer. I remember when the great sound
>tracks were Final Fantasy VI and to an extent Link to the
>Past.
FFVI? "old school gamer"? Uhm... well... no.
Go back to Loom (an early Lucas release) and Wing Commander in 1990, or any of the other projects involving The Fat Man (George Sanger).
Check out some of the Apple II stuff Origin did with the Mockingboard, particularly Ultima V.
There were great computer soundtracks back in at LEAST the mid 80s, if not earlier. Sometimes you just had to pay a little extra for the hardware (SB16s are a dime a dozen now, but back when an AdLib card ran $200 or more... imagine what it was like paying for a Mockingboard Sound II, much less two of them for maximum effect on Ultima V).
-l
I hear so many people talk about how Americans eat too much, how kids are too fat, and how it's always the parents' fault if a kid is fat.
Now here's a way for parents to control what their kids eat, and people are screaming about how it's invasive and controlling.
Screw you guys. If you're gonna play two sides of an issue, at least seperate it by a few degress, don't sit here and say how it's wrong for parents to let their kids eat crap and then say it's wrong for parents to NOT let their kids eat crap.
Christ.
This is 100% pure anti-Microsoft FUD.
/did I mention VMS having the same feature?
Anyone that knows enough about the feature to think this is a privacy concern knows enough about the feature to protect themselves from it.
Anyone that doesn't know enough to protect themself, doesn't know it exists, and won't care.
And.. yaknow.. if writing objectionable Word documents is the worst of your offenses.. well.. I think you're safe. Unless you're writing detailed directions for the assassination of a highly placed company or government official.
Then again, I guess you could be coming up with Excel documents showing how you can rip the company off for bazillions of dollars, but if you're smart enough to figure that out, I don't think backups of your spreadsheets are gonna be what nails you.
-l
>Guns, believe it or not, kill.
>...
>(Occasionally books move humans to kill, re: politics, re:
>religion. But those folks were pretty messed in the head to
>begin with.
So... you think the people that commit murder with guns aren't, somehow, "pretty messed in the head to begin with"?
I have many guns (somewhere around 25 at last inventory). None of them (with the possible exception of the Russian surplus pistol, I don't know what was done with it before I got it) have ever killed anyone. At least 15 of them have never even killed an animal. Five or six of them have never been fired at all.
Are my guns broken, or am I just abnormally exceedingly un-messed up in the head?
See, in my world, the gun is just a tool. The messed-up person does the killing. If the gun wasn't available, they'd use a knife, a baseball bat, a pointy stick, a rope, or a car to do the job.
Blaming a video game, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, a book, or a gun for killing is just asinine. Somewhere at some point a person makes a conscious decision that leads to a death, either of themself or another.
-l
>We cry out against the beheading that happened to Berg and
>others, and yet, it may very well be minor compared to what we
>are doing in gitmo
What, pray tell, COULD we be doing to people that would make sawing off a man's head with a knife "minor"?!
Are you fucking KIDDING me?
I'm gonna go way out on a limb here and say there's no way you've actually seen the Berg video. Look it up, then come back here and tell me that a guard wiping his ass with the Koran is staggeringly brutal and horrible compared to that.
For fuck's sake.
-l
Been a rough week and I was pretty drunk when I posted that. I apologize for the name-calling, but I stand by my position that IE is effectively disabled on this system.
Does it use the rendering libraries for file explorer related functions? Sure. But the iexplore process itself is never started.
-l
>You don't like Dell preinstalling IE? Fine... no wait, you CAN'T do anything about it
Ok, apparently you're a FUCKING IDIOT, because the first (well, third, after drivers) thing I did after reinstalling XP was installing Firefox and disable IE.
Can I remove it? Well, no. Can I disable it and render it as impotent as you on a Saturday night? Well, yes. Well, nearly. It's at least still there.
-l
When this was AOL or MSN, sources that were known to filter news and other unconsionable actions, this was BAAAAAAAAAD(!).
Now that it's Google, which has been shown recently to filter news and engage in other (arguably) unconscionable actions... is it.. still... BAAAAAAD(!)?
I'm.. just.. wondering.
>No, the stupid part is thinking that it justifies
>their actions. If it's wrong for Bush to do
>something, it doesn't make it right that Clinton
>did it.
The converse also applies: If it's wrong for Bush to do something it was ALSO wrong for Clinton to do it.
90% of the time I hear this whole line of conversation happen, it's because someone is demonizing Bush for something Clinton got a free pass on (Kyoto, military action without UN approval, Patriot vs DMCA, and so on).
An awful lot of people out there hate ANYTHING Bush does simply because it's Bush doing it, and nothing illustrates this better than watching Democrats wail and gnash their teeth over issues they were strangely silent on (or even supportive of) when their man was in the White House.
I've said it before, and I'll say it here: If Bush single-handedly stopped a busload of orphans from going over a cliff into a river full of ravenous crocodiles, he'd be criticized for starving those poor animals.
-l
> 4. Someone who can actually write IAAL
We have plenty of those, but due to their career choice, they start out with massively negative karma.
They're here, they're just all below your threshold.
Gotta go with Chris Knight...
-l
Not really. It's a hardware thing (near as we can tell) that's causing it to go down every single Monday. It's also a software thing on the box itself that has to be restarted AFTER we restart the hardware thing.
It's "open source" as far as the box being Linux-based. Beyond that? I can't do a damn thing.
-l
>I can't imagine how a 2.4 GHz wireless radio can
>be used to hack a 980 MHz remote
You've just addressed this entire conversation.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward! You have single-handedly, by this post, demonstrated that this entire thread is without merit, and should no longer be discussed.
Where were you two days ago?
You could have saved every single participant in this conversation a whole lot of trouble.
You irresponsible bastard.
-l
I'm no longer a professional geek. These days I run the night shift at a bar in central Montana.
Amusingly, though, Linux has appeared and helped my bar in the form of a digital jukebox that runs a Linux-based front end.
This thing brings in more cash in a night than our old mechanical CD jukebox did in a week.
The downside is that our net connection seems to die every Monday morning, so I have to show up to deal with that (being "the computer guy").
-l
>I don't think you'll get a whole lot of hits on a
>open source OS at the same place that has a gun
>counter and offers hunting licenses.
Eric would disagree.
So would I.
-l
(former sys/net admin, drives a 4x4 with a gun rack (with at least one gun in it), hunts regularly)
I still don't get it: This article is about people buying DIY parts at Wal-Mart, not about you buying a laptop at Best Buy.
Then again, as someone already pointed out earlier in this same article's discussion tree, WalMart already sells systems with Linspire.
Guinness Extra Stout (bottles without the widget) and Guinness (cans or bottles with the widget or draught) are entirely different beers with entirely different tastes, textures, and caloric/ABV values.
-l