It really depends on your use case. Some things are more irritated by seek than others.
I switched from a 5400 rpm 3.5" drive to a 10k RPM 2.5" drive in my main PC a while back, strictly because one game was stuttering on texture load. (Lord of the Rings Online. It stores all its textures in one massive file.)
I figure the smaller platter is more important than the spindle speed for seek time in my case, but the game ran a heck of a lot smoother after I swapped drives.
(For what it's worth, I didn't go SSD because I didn't feel like manually moving my games around to keep them on a small drive, and at the time 500+ gig SSDs were still hugely expensive.)
So if you're looking for access speed, going from a 7200 RPM 3.5" drive to a 7200 RPM 2.5" laptop drive might actually make some sense.
This gets even more confusing because VW offers a pretty good manumatic as well as an automatically shifted manual.
The difference? A manumatic is a torque-converter based automatic transmission that you can shift manually if you want to. An automatically shifted manual is a clutch-based manual transmission that a computer can shift for you.
If your car has a Tiptronic, it's actually a manumatic, not an automatic manual. (VW calls that DSG.) I'd be surprised to find a DSG in a rental car.
It depends a lot on the monitor, and even then you won't usually notice unless the latency is really bad, or something forces you to.
I never noticed any latency using my Dell U2410 monitor to play games on via HDMI.. until I got a WiiU. The WiiU's gamepad has no latency, and the sound coming out of it was just enough out of sync with the Dell U2410's HDMI audio passthrough to drive me totally batshit insane.
I had to update the 2410's firmware and then switch to a low-latency mode (without color correction) to deal with it.
I can do that without even needing more than one make.
GTI ($26k model), Beetle Turbo or diesel version ($24.5k), Sportwagen diesel station wagon ($27k), Jetta sedan diesel or hybrid ($24k), CC ($32k), Eos $34.7k).
So that's six cars with an automated manual under $35k, and I didn't even have to leave Volkswagen.
My phone's much smaller than a 'phablet', but can I do it?
Can I unlock it with one hand? Yeah, I just flick the screen open to expose the keyboard.
Can I type a text message with my thumb? Uh, theoretically yes, but it would be really awkward to balance my phone across my hand and tap out a message on the hardware keyboard that way. If I needed to send a text after my other hand was chopped off or something, I guess I'd hit the Vlingo icon and say 'Text Bob, AAAAUGH SOMEONE CUT OFF MY HAND!'
Can I adjust the volume rocker one-handed? Sure. I can do that on my tablet, too. And my DSi XL, which is bigger than any 'phablet' when open. For that matter, it only takes one hand to adjust the volume on my record player, though I'll admit that usually isn't in my pocket.
N64 release was Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 and NOTHING ELSE.
There wasn't even a single third-party title on release day.
In Japan, it launched with Mario, Pilotwings, and a chess game.
The GameCube had a dozen launch titles, though some were ports from other consoles.
I think part of what's hurting Nintendo a lot with the WiiU is that some of the most anticipated third party launch titles - particularly Lego City Undercover - got pushed way back. LCU still isn't out.
Every apartment I've ever had rent was paid in advance; I had to pay for the upcoming month.
A hotel stay, where you pay at the end of the stay? That's a debt, and they have to take cash. A lease, where you're paying up front for the right to live there for that month? That's not a debt. Now, if they refused to take cash, evicted you, then billed you for the portion of the month you were there? THAT would be a debt, and they would have to take cash.
At which time they point out that a retail sale of an automobile is not a debt, and they don't have to take cash.
In fact, if a store only wants to accept New York City subway tokens as payment, that's perfectly legal. For a retail purchase any sort of method can be used or NOT used. What matters is that both parties agree to it.
So if I had a business and decided, for a gag, that one day I was going to have a sale and only accept Monopoly money, not US dollars, I could do that.
Speaking as someone who has a crappy net connection, Steam's offline mode very often doesn't 'just work'.
It often refuses to let me play a game, or says 'there are no account credentials on this computer' if the network's acting up. Or Steam will load theoretically in Offline Mode, but when I try to play a game it mysteriously reports the game isn't ready to play.
In at least some parts of the US, you can actually get Pepsi and Mountain Dew made with cane sugar. They're marketed as a different product - Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback. They have retro labels on 'em, too.
If you're importing anyway, see if you can get the Throwback versions.
At least, that's what I see comparing the label on Mott's and Coca-Cola.
(I sort of wonder why they don't fortify soda. Apparently Coke had a Diet Coke with added B-complex, but I never even heard of it till it was discontinued, so it must not have been marketed very hard.)
The worst part about the Kin is that it destroyed the Danger team responsible for the Hiptop.
No, my Sidekick/Hiptop phones never did as much as my Android phones, but what they did, they did far better.
(Seriously, ConnectBot has fewer features than Terminal Monkey on my Sidekick or even the telnet client on my Apple Newton. And it crashes a lot in Jelly Bean.)
I wish someone had managed to bootleg a Sidekick server somehow.
My 'crapsack part of America' is in the same state. I'm in a suburb of Knoxville.
Well, as much as Knoxville has suburbs. I guess it counts. Most of the people who live here work in Knoxville.
(Extra obnoxious: My neighbor works for Charter, and can't get cable. He has a Dish Network dish on his house. Charter considers this a 'Comcast area' and as far as I can tell doesn't service this side of Knoxville at all.)
I live in a nation that, despite giving billions to the telecom industry, doesn't even have reliable dialup in every town.
I'm in a town about five miles outside a city of 200,000 people, and the best I can get is 3G cellular. The speed on it is actually okay, but it's certainly not reliable, and it drops out fairly regularly.
I'm half a mile from a school, so it's not like I'm way out in the boonies.
(Technically yes, I could get service with another company. There's satellite, with its dropouts and terrible ping times, there's dialup at 28.8 at best due to the quality of the copper, there's ISDN at $700 per b-channel, or a T1 at $2619.20 per month.)
But then, that's how things are in these United States of America.
Uh, 10 Mbps IS high speed internet. I'd sing hosannas and turn cartwheels if I could get 10 megabit internet.
The best I can get here is 6 megabit, and that's for $2419.20 a month, for an Nx6 T1. That ain't happening.
If I lived on one of the cross-streets to either side, I could get cable, but they won't run a line up this street because every house has a DirecTV dish on it. So I get 1.1 megabit 3G for $70 a month. At least it's unlimited.
(And no, I'm not in the middle of nowhere. But DSL just isn't a thing in this neighborhood, and there's only one cable company. Wish I could afford to move!)
I started computing with a VIC-20, and grew up with a C-64. I never really used the 'must have' apps that made businesses want computer in the first place, though. I knew about them, and knew my uncle spent a fortune on an Apple II to run them for his store, but knew little about them.
So recently I picked up a Commodore 128D and got some CP/M software: WordStar, dBASE II, and VisiCalc. After some configuration brouhaha (this wasn't easy, without the manuals!) I gave them a go.
What most surprised me was how usable they all are, still. Oh, the interfaces require actual studying, but WordStar's is sensible, and dBASE's total lack of anything resembling user friendliness at least exposes its raw flexibility.
Of course, then my 30-year old Commodore monitor let the blue smoke out of the capacitors, so it's out of commission till I get them replaced.
I think having current compsci people take at least a brief course using these old, old programs might help them understand not all that much has really changed - and maybe inspire them to change things.
Uh, no. What you just said is 'it's not illegal as long as no one catches us'.
Copyright infringement is against the law. Whether you agree with that law or not isn't at issue here.
There is a certain threshold that has to be passed for criminal prosecution. It's $1000 worth of copyrighted works in 180 days. The works do not currently have to be for sale for that amount; that has to be their listed value. Most computer and console games have a listed value somewhere between $30 and $60, so it wouldn't take many downloads to pass that.
The penalty for that gets as high as ten years imprisonment, though a fine is more likely.
But hey, don't take my word for it. You'll forgive me for only citing relevant bits of the code.
17 USC 506 - (a) Criminal Infringement. (1) In general Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18;; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180â"day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000;
covers the offense. And
18 USC 2319 - Criminal infringement of a copyright (a) Any person who violates section 506 (a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b), (c), and (d) and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(A) of title 17 (1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500; (2) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a felony and is a second or subsequent offense under subsection (a); and (3) shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
covers the punishment.
Of course, this is US law, but I believe most Berne Convention nations have similar provisions.
I'm not making a statement on what 'should be' or what I think is 'fair'. I'm making a statement about what the law is.
The same way you install games like Just Cause 2 and Battlefield 3.
You don't.
There's no reason for a -gamer- to be running XP at this point. While not many games REQUIRE DirectX 10 or 11, games that support 10 look better, and games that support 11 run much faster.
Try finding a game that supports all three levels of DirectX, and run it in each. There's quite a visual difference between 9 and 10, and a big speed boost from 10 to 11, in most games I've tried them in.
I used to use Linux regularly. I stopped because I couldn't find a way to do a task (I was trying to back up a large filesystem to live CDs, and everything I could find choked on directories with a ' in the name.)
It 'just worked' in Windows 2000, so that's what I switched to.
I've tinkered with assorted free *nixes over the years. Last year I decided 'It's been a while, I'll give Linux another go.' So I downloaded a current Ubuntu release. (I don't recall which version - it was the latest stable release at the time.)
I installed it. That went okay. I booted it up. That went okay. I thought the desktop was kinda ugly, but whatever. It prompted me to install the proprietary drivers for my video card. That went okay. Then it said I should check for updates. Okay. I let it do that. It downloaded a bunch and installed them, reported no errors. It warned some of the updates wouldn't be active till after a reboot.
I rebooted.
I had no network any more. The system couldn't see my ethernet port at all.
And so I went 'Well, if running a system update breaks something that hard, I'm not going to bother.' and went back to Windows.
So at least for me, it didn't 'just work'. I'm getting old. I don't like having to screw around with my desktop just to get it to work. If I want to screw around with a computer just for the sake of screwing around with a computer, I have oddball hobbyist machines.
Well, a live distro wouldn't work well for something like World of Warcraft. Unless you gave it write access to local storage, you'd be downloading gigs upon gigs of patches eventually every time you booted the thing. Steam games run into the same issue. (Especially if a publisher screws up. I recall one game- the first patch was 30 megs for the non-Steam version, 15 gigs for Steam.)
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It really depends on your use case. Some things are more irritated by seek than others.
I switched from a 5400 rpm 3.5" drive to a 10k RPM 2.5" drive in my main PC a while back, strictly because one game was stuttering on texture load. (Lord of the Rings Online. It stores all its textures in one massive file.)
I figure the smaller platter is more important than the spindle speed for seek time in my case, but the game ran a heck of a lot smoother after I swapped drives.
(For what it's worth, I didn't go SSD because I didn't feel like manually moving my games around to keep them on a small drive, and at the time 500+ gig SSDs were still hugely expensive.)
So if you're looking for access speed, going from a 7200 RPM 3.5" drive to a 7200 RPM 2.5" laptop drive might actually make some sense.
This gets even more confusing because VW offers a pretty good manumatic as well as an automatically shifted manual.
The difference? A manumatic is a torque-converter based automatic transmission that you can shift manually if you want to. An automatically shifted manual is a clutch-based manual transmission that a computer can shift for you.
If your car has a Tiptronic, it's actually a manumatic, not an automatic manual. (VW calls that DSG.) I'd be surprised to find a DSG in a rental car.
It depends a lot on the monitor, and even then you won't usually notice unless the latency is really bad, or something forces you to.
I never noticed any latency using my Dell U2410 monitor to play games on via HDMI.. until I got a WiiU. The WiiU's gamepad has no latency, and the sound coming out of it was just enough out of sync with the Dell U2410's HDMI audio passthrough to drive me totally batshit insane.
I had to update the 2410's firmware and then switch to a low-latency mode (without color correction) to deal with it.
I can do that without even needing more than one make.
GTI ($26k model), Beetle Turbo or diesel version ($24.5k), Sportwagen diesel station wagon ($27k), Jetta sedan diesel or hybrid ($24k), CC ($32k), Eos $34.7k).
So that's six cars with an automated manual under $35k, and I didn't even have to leave Volkswagen.
My phone's much smaller than a 'phablet', but can I do it?
Can I unlock it with one hand? Yeah, I just flick the screen open to expose the keyboard.
Can I type a text message with my thumb? Uh, theoretically yes, but it would be really awkward to balance my phone across my hand and tap out a message on the hardware keyboard that way. If I needed to send a text after my other hand was chopped off or something, I guess I'd hit the Vlingo icon and say 'Text Bob, AAAAUGH SOMEONE CUT OFF MY HAND!'
Can I adjust the volume rocker one-handed? Sure. I can do that on my tablet, too. And my DSi XL, which is bigger than any 'phablet' when open. For that matter, it only takes one hand to adjust the volume on my record player, though I'll admit that usually isn't in my pocket.
What a bizarre set of things to rate a phone on!
N64 release was Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 and NOTHING ELSE.
There wasn't even a single third-party title on release day.
In Japan, it launched with Mario, Pilotwings, and a chess game.
The GameCube had a dozen launch titles, though some were ports from other consoles.
I think part of what's hurting Nintendo a lot with the WiiU is that some of the most anticipated third party launch titles - particularly Lego City Undercover - got pushed way back. LCU still isn't out.
No, you do not have to have Google Plus to have a Google account.
I have a Google account, but not a Google+ account. If I try to access Google+, it asks me to create an account.
Rent is not a debt unless it is paid in arrears.
Every apartment I've ever had rent was paid in advance; I had to pay for the upcoming month.
A hotel stay, where you pay at the end of the stay? That's a debt, and they have to take cash. A lease, where you're paying up front for the right to live there for that month? That's not a debt. Now, if they refused to take cash, evicted you, then billed you for the portion of the month you were there? THAT would be a debt, and they would have to take cash.
At which time they point out that a retail sale of an automobile is not a debt, and they don't have to take cash.
In fact, if a store only wants to accept New York City subway tokens as payment, that's perfectly legal. For a retail purchase any sort of method can be used or NOT used. What matters is that both parties agree to it.
So if I had a business and decided, for a gag, that one day I was going to have a sale and only accept Monopoly money, not US dollars, I could do that.
Speaking as someone who has a crappy net connection, Steam's offline mode very often doesn't 'just work'.
It often refuses to let me play a game, or says 'there are no account credentials on this computer' if the network's acting up. Or Steam will load theoretically in Offline Mode, but when I try to play a game it mysteriously reports the game isn't ready to play.
Unfortunately, Serious Sam 3 requires Steam. I dislike that, strongly, but I wanted to play SS3 enough that I bought it anyway.
And bitch about it needing Steam, natch.
In at least some parts of the US, you can actually get Pepsi and Mountain Dew made with cane sugar. They're marketed as a different product - Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback. They have retro labels on 'em, too.
If you're importing anyway, see if you can get the Throwback versions.
Actually, apple juice has more sugar than soda.
At least, that's what I see comparing the label on Mott's and Coca-Cola.
(I sort of wonder why they don't fortify soda. Apparently Coke had a Diet Coke with added B-complex, but I never even heard of it till it was discontinued, so it must not have been marketed very hard.)
The worst part about the Kin is that it destroyed the Danger team responsible for the Hiptop.
No, my Sidekick/Hiptop phones never did as much as my Android phones, but what they did, they did far better.
(Seriously, ConnectBot has fewer features than Terminal Monkey on my Sidekick or even the telnet client on my Apple Newton. And it crashes a lot in Jelly Bean.)
I wish someone had managed to bootleg a Sidekick server somehow.
My 'crapsack part of America' is in the same state. I'm in a suburb of Knoxville.
Well, as much as Knoxville has suburbs. I guess it counts. Most of the people who live here work in Knoxville.
(Extra obnoxious: My neighbor works for Charter, and can't get cable. He has a Dish Network dish on his house. Charter considers this a 'Comcast area' and as far as I can tell doesn't service this side of Knoxville at all.)
ISDN isn't normally that expensive. In one of my old apartments, I could have had it for roughly the same cost as dialup.
It depends on location and who your telco is. (Some telcos like ISDN, some don't.)
I've used satellite. It drops connection.
A lot.
It would be entirely impossible to play games that require an always-on connection using satellite.
Hell, it was hard staying connected to MUDs using satellite.
The 3G I've got now is much more reliable than satellite was, but it still drops a few times a day.
I live in a nation that, despite giving billions to the telecom industry, doesn't even have reliable dialup in every town.
I'm in a town about five miles outside a city of 200,000 people, and the best I can get is 3G cellular. The speed on it is actually okay, but it's certainly not reliable, and it drops out fairly regularly.
I'm half a mile from a school, so it's not like I'm way out in the boonies.
(Technically yes, I could get service with another company. There's satellite, with its dropouts and terrible ping times, there's dialup at 28.8 at best due to the quality of the copper, there's ISDN at $700 per b-channel, or a T1 at $2619.20 per month.)
But then, that's how things are in these United States of America.
Uh, 10 Mbps IS high speed internet. I'd sing hosannas and turn cartwheels if I could get 10 megabit internet.
The best I can get here is 6 megabit, and that's for $2419.20 a month, for an Nx6 T1. That ain't happening.
If I lived on one of the cross-streets to either side, I could get cable, but they won't run a line up this street because every house has a DirecTV dish on it. So I get 1.1 megabit 3G for $70 a month. At least it's unlimited.
(And no, I'm not in the middle of nowhere. But DSL just isn't a thing in this neighborhood, and there's only one cable company. Wish I could afford to move!)
I started computing with a VIC-20, and grew up with a C-64. I never really used the 'must have' apps that made businesses want computer in the first place, though. I knew about them, and knew my uncle spent a fortune on an Apple II to run them for his store, but knew little about them.
So recently I picked up a Commodore 128D and got some CP/M software: WordStar, dBASE II, and VisiCalc. After some configuration brouhaha (this wasn't easy, without the manuals!) I gave them a go.
What most surprised me was how usable they all are, still. Oh, the interfaces require actual studying, but WordStar's is sensible, and dBASE's total lack of anything resembling user friendliness at least exposes its raw flexibility.
Of course, then my 30-year old Commodore monitor let the blue smoke out of the capacitors, so it's out of commission till I get them replaced.
I think having current compsci people take at least a brief course using these old, old programs might help them understand not all that much has really changed - and maybe inspire them to change things.
Who knows? Probably couldn't hurt, at least.
Uh, no. What you just said is 'it's not illegal as long as no one catches us'.
Copyright infringement is against the law. Whether you agree with that law or not isn't at issue here.
There is a certain threshold that has to be passed for criminal prosecution. It's $1000 worth of copyrighted works in 180 days. The works do not currently have to be for sale for that amount; that has to be their listed value. Most computer and console games have a listed value somewhere between $30 and $60, so it wouldn't take many downloads to pass that.
The penalty for that gets as high as ten years imprisonment, though a fine is more likely.
But hey, don't take my word for it. You'll forgive me for only citing relevant bits of the code.
17 USC 506 - (a) Criminal Infringement. ;; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180â"day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000;
(1) In general Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18
covers the offense. And
18 USC 2319 - Criminal infringement of a copyright
(a) Any person who violates section 506 (a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b), (c), and (d) and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506 (a)(1)(A) of title 17
(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
(2) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a felony and is a second or subsequent offense under subsection (a); and
(3) shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
covers the punishment.
Of course, this is US law, but I believe most Berne Convention nations have similar provisions.
I'm not making a statement on what 'should be' or what I think is 'fair'. I'm making a statement about what the law is.
Um, no. Abandonware is illegal. Flat-out, no questions asked.
Just because you can't get it commercially doesn't mean it's legal to pass around.
Abandonware proponents like to claim this, but it's just something they made up to make themselves feel better.
They get away with passing stuff around as long as no one -cares- or if they're in a country it's difficult to enforce copyright in.
But it's not legal.
The same way you install games like Just Cause 2 and Battlefield 3.
You don't.
There's no reason for a -gamer- to be running XP at this point. While not many games REQUIRE DirectX 10 or 11, games that support 10 look better, and games that support 11 run much faster.
Try finding a game that supports all three levels of DirectX, and run it in each. There's quite a visual difference between 9 and 10, and a big speed boost from 10 to 11, in most games I've tried them in.
I used to use Linux regularly. I stopped because I couldn't find a way to do a task (I was trying to back up a large filesystem to live CDs, and everything I could find choked on directories with a ' in the name.)
It 'just worked' in Windows 2000, so that's what I switched to.
I've tinkered with assorted free *nixes over the years. Last year I decided 'It's been a while, I'll give Linux another go.' So I downloaded a current Ubuntu release. (I don't recall which version - it was the latest stable release at the time.)
I installed it. That went okay. I booted it up. That went okay. I thought the desktop was kinda ugly, but whatever. It prompted me to install the proprietary drivers for my video card. That went okay. Then it said I should check for updates. Okay. I let it do that. It downloaded a bunch and installed them, reported no errors. It warned some of the updates wouldn't be active till after a reboot.
I rebooted.
I had no network any more. The system couldn't see my ethernet port at all.
And so I went 'Well, if running a system update breaks something that hard, I'm not going to bother.' and went back to Windows.
So at least for me, it didn't 'just work'. I'm getting old. I don't like having to screw around with my desktop just to get it to work. If I want to screw around with a computer just for the sake of screwing around with a computer, I have oddball hobbyist machines.
Well, a live distro wouldn't work well for something like World of Warcraft. Unless you gave it write access to local storage, you'd be downloading gigs upon gigs of patches eventually every time you booted the thing. Steam games run into the same issue. (Especially if a publisher screws up. I recall one game- the first patch was 30 megs for the non-Steam version, 15 gigs for Steam.)