I have a quad core gaming PC and I use it daily for internet access, gaming obviously, and streaming media to my TV. I don't own a games console or tablet as I don't believe in having three devices to badly do the job of one. I've been spending most of my time, like some people (i won't presume to apply my anecdote to most people), on my PC, a Q6600 which I'm about to upgrade. It's done 5 years, it's time for something new.
For personal use, CPUs matter a whole lot to me. My PC is my entertainment centre, so I spend a lot of time and money making it just how I like.
The license agreement for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows RT operating system, for example, explicitly bars device manufacturers from allowing the end user to install a custom signing certificate.
I missed the part where you were forced to buy Microsoft devices, instead of employing a little forward-thinking and buying a device without a locked bootloader.
It's only an issue if you make it one. WinRT will die a death, as long as nobody buys it.
As time as gone on DRM has gotten more intrusive and restrictive while only inconveniencing paying customers.
FTFY. No pirate has ever been inconvenienced by these DRM schemes. Their product is free, better quality, and works all of the time.
Re:Playing single-player _because_ you're offline
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Bugbear of mine is Steam Offline Mode, which doesn't work when unexpectedly offline (connection drop, hardware fault etc). You need to play to be offline, or your library is locked.
Personally when the internet goes down and I have some spare time I go read a book in the garden now, and don't by games on Steam anymore. Fool me once...
Re:Diablo III servers down for maintenance...
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Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
LISTER: Hang on, he can't do this. Holly's got an IQ of six thousand!
HOLLY: Yeah. Right on.
QUEEG: Is that what he told you?
LISTER: Well, what is it, then?
QUEEG: It has a six in it, but it's not six thousand.
CAT: What is it?
QUEEG: Six.
So you're saying we should arrest Blizzard for not providing sufficient login servers to handle the load?
Worst. Analogy. Ever. At least make the token effort of having the solution applicable to the problem you're attempting to explain.
A better analogy would be (especially considering the audience): "Everyone wants to drive from Birmingham to London, but the on-ramp at Birmingham is only one lane while the off-ramp at London is 3. So, we're going to put traffic lights at the on-ramp to alleviate congestion on the motorway." This works because the motorway isn't congested, only the on-ramp, and the solution simply organises the congestion instead of resolving it.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
Assassin's Creed always was. Assassin's Creed 2 onwards had always-on DRM, and required an account with their online service (Origin, I think. I didn't pay much attention before quitting and uninstalling the game).
I forgot; The subject, unless defined, is assumed from the previous sentence. Really the last sentence should be changed so it doesn't parse as "In most cases (the interim solution) causes Windows to not boot properly." Still, most folk here know that's now what was intended.
You call them "Editors". Why? They don't edit anything. All they do is wade through the "Free p1llz 2 make sausage fatter!" "Designer shoes for the women of your website" and "I hate all $demographic" posts, modding them down, and picking through the rest to get something worth reading on the fron... Wait, what's that? That's what the Firehose is for?
Then just what the fuck do these people do? They're not paid, are they?!
This is an English language website. Please hire some editors who can correct the grammar of non-English speakers (as is most likely the case here) before posts are on the front page. Here, let me give you an example:
" It [s]eems that [anti-virus vendor] Avira is having difficulty with an update of all their Premium customers' products. An update that has been downloaded over 70 million times is causing the 32-bit version of their AV software to block almost all critical Windows applications. Avira has responded promptly with an interim solution for this problem. In most cases this causes Windows to not boot properly."
I even added a link for you. I wasn't even paid to do this, and it took me 5 minutes.
It's idiotic, unreliable, slow, and prevents you fron removing Windows.
Really? I thought it was a great way to have a persistent Linux install for a newbie to test driver compatibility and get a taste of the environment without having to worry about partitioning, data loss, and other headaches relating to OS installations.
I suppose there had to be at least one troll with a 3-digit UserID.
|So how many guns and tanks does Anonymous control?
Maybe all of them?
Never mind the tanks, it's the drones you need to be worried about. Fall out of the sky, dump payload on take-off, land safely in Iran, swap red for blue, just self destruct in mid-air... These things are flown over networks run by nerds, using code written by nerds, on hardware built by nerds. It's nerds all the way down.
Yeah! How dare those bastards have more money than they could ever spend, including if they started buying countries for themselves.
Made that into a valid opinion for you.
I have no problem with people having more than me; I am not motivated by monetary gain. If anything, the idea of having this level of personal wealth actually makes me quite nervous. I'd feel like I was hoarding a resource for no other reason than I didn't want anyone else to have it.
No person on the planet would have any problems living a comfortable life on £50k a year except Bentley salesmen and ultra-yacht builders. What value do they add to humanity again?
Heh, don't get me started on hollow sentiment. I'm supposed to tighten my belt in this "global economic crisis" while these ten folk have a personal worth in excess of the GDP of all but twenty-eight countries of the world?
Google does not wield the power of life and death over its users.
There are worse fates than death. Private companies control or influence your employment status, your credit availability, your insurance details, your medical information, your educational background, your driving privileges, in some instances your criminal record. Never mind separation of church and state; I want to see separation of business and state. Unfortunately more and more government services are being privatised, and those private companies are operating without any judicial oversight, sometimes with laws written specifically to make them immune (retroactive immunity for wiretapping, anyone?)
Don't think that private entities snooping on you is any better than government; Their data is one asset seizure away from government hands, and I'm willing to guess the government has more clout when it comes to taking stuff they want.
#8. Interactive lock screen Tits on a bull useless. A lockscreen should show nothing but a prompt for a password and possibly the screensaver. It's a lockscreen for a reason.
Preach the word, brother. Lock screens are to stop people accessing your data when you're not there. Why would you want that data visible on the lockscreen?!
#12. Fewer surprise restarts
How about none? Please? The only surprise restart should be a STOP error, and at that point, it's a hardware/driver issue. All other restarts should be optional, like in sane operating systems.
Having lost data to an automatic restart, I can only add more strings to your bow. This is the main reason for me doing next to everything on Mint, gaming on Windows. I essentially paid £70 to have a games console OS.
#15. Built-in antivirus
It would be nice to not need this, wouldn't it?
Isn't this what MS Security Essentials is? Seems capable enough, but like you say a little redundant if the exploitable surface of the OS is minimised in the first place.
#21. Restore PC
Only Windows users think it's normal to re-image the machine every quarter.
Separate partition for/home/ and it doesn't matter what happens to the OS. Hell, put it on a different drive. I've not had data on my Windows partition for years, and only ever had basic apps on it like Office.
This list is nothing. Win7 has most of these "features" and Linux has almost all of them excluding Metro-specific rubbish.
TrueCrypt doesn't have an audit trail. You can claim the data is encrypted with an AES-finalist algorithm and a good key, but without a log to prove it you're SOL if the shit hits the fan.
I use a Sophos product (you can search for it, I'm not giving them the page hits needlessly) which has centralised key management, challenge-response access for off-site workers, removeable storage management (Encrypt or deny access) and full audit trail for The Powers That Be to fawn over if something goes wrong.
I'm almost certain TrueCrypt is as secure as many other whole-disk encryption systems, but without the audit trail it's really not enterprise-compatible.
Ubuntu has a feature to install Linux to your Windows partition using their Wubi tool. Instead of repartitioning your hard disk and displacing the Windows bootloader with GRUB, Wubi installs Ubuntu to your Windows partition and adds an entry in the boot.ini file pointing to Linux.
It's safer for your data (though I've never had any problems with repartitioning using a LiveCD that I didn't cause myself), but less elegant.
Are your support folk allowed to answer queries, or do they read from a script? Reading from a script gets you 1 star and a swift loss of the support contract.
Businesses pay for Photoshop because home users (future employees) grow up using the pirated version at home. Adobe profits from piracy of Photoshop by home users.
This factoid has been published in the press, and is attributed either to someone from Adobe, or to someone doing a study on the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a quad core gaming PC and I use it daily for internet access, gaming obviously, and streaming media to my TV. I don't own a games console or tablet as I don't believe in having three devices to badly do the job of one. I've been spending most of my time, like some people (i won't presume to apply my anecdote to most people), on my PC, a Q6600 which I'm about to upgrade. It's done 5 years, it's time for something new.
:)
For personal use, CPUs matter a whole lot to me. My PC is my entertainment centre, so I spend a lot of time and money making it just how I like.
I like this game! Let's play again sometime
The license agreement for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows RT operating system, for example, explicitly bars device manufacturers from allowing the end user to install a custom signing certificate.
I missed the part where you were forced to buy Microsoft devices, instead of employing a little forward-thinking and buying a device without a locked bootloader.
It's only an issue if you make it one. WinRT will die a death, as long as nobody buys it.
As time as gone on DRM has gotten more intrusive and restrictive while only inconveniencing paying customers.
FTFY. No pirate has ever been inconvenienced by these DRM schemes. Their product is free, better quality, and works all of the time.
Bugbear of mine is Steam Offline Mode, which doesn't work when unexpectedly offline (connection drop, hardware fault etc). You need to play to be offline, or your library is locked.
Personally when the internet goes down and I have some spare time I go read a book in the garden now, and don't by games on Steam anymore. Fool me once...
LISTER: Hang on, he can't do this. Holly's got an IQ of six thousand!
HOLLY: Yeah. Right on.
QUEEG: Is that what he told you?
LISTER: Well, what is it, then?
QUEEG: It has a six in it, but it's not six thousand.
CAT: What is it?
QUEEG: Six.
So you're saying we should arrest Blizzard for not providing sufficient login servers to handle the load?
Worst. Analogy. Ever. At least make the token effort of having the solution applicable to the problem you're attempting to explain.
A better analogy would be (especially considering the audience): "Everyone wants to drive from Birmingham to London, but the on-ramp at Birmingham is only one lane while the off-ramp at London is 3. So, we're going to put traffic lights at the on-ramp to alleviate congestion on the motorway." This works because the motorway isn't congested, only the on-ramp, and the solution simply organises the congestion instead of resolving it.
Assassin's Creed always was. Assassin's Creed 2 onwards had always-on DRM, and required an account with their online service (Origin, I think. I didn't pay much attention before quitting and uninstalling the game).
-1 reading comprehension points.
Peace through superior flower power.
I forgot; The subject, unless defined, is assumed from the previous sentence. Really the last sentence should be changed so it doesn't parse as "In most cases (the interim solution) causes Windows to not boot properly." Still, most folk here know that's now what was intended.
You call them "Editors". Why? They don't edit anything. All they do is wade through the "Free p1llz 2 make sausage fatter!" "Designer shoes for the women of your website" and "I hate all $demographic" posts, modding them down, and picking through the rest to get something worth reading on the fron... Wait, what's that? That's what the Firehose is for?
Then just what the fuck do these people do? They're not paid, are they?!
This is an English language website. Please hire some editors who can correct the grammar of non-English speakers (as is most likely the case here) before posts are on the front page. Here, let me give you an example:
" It [s]eems that [anti-virus vendor] Avira is having difficulty with an update of all their Premium customers' products. An update that has been downloaded over 70 million times is causing the 32-bit version of their AV software to block almost all critical Windows applications. Avira has responded promptly with an interim solution for this problem . In most cases this causes Windows to not boot properly."
I even added a link for you. I wasn't even paid to do this, and it took me 5 minutes.
JS execution in Chrom(e/ium) is unrivalled. I have it on my Mint install at work just for accessing our JS-heavy KB/ticketing system.
There's now effectively zero forgiveness in American society for ex-criminals, reformed or not. One mistake and you're branded for life.
No wonder your prison system is so successful^Wprofitable. Criminals simply cannot afford be rehabilitated.
It's idiotic, unreliable, slow, and prevents you fron removing Windows.
Really? I thought it was a great way to have a persistent Linux install for a newbie to test driver compatibility and get a taste of the environment without having to worry about partitioning, data loss, and other headaches relating to OS installations.
I suppose there had to be at least one troll with a 3-digit UserID.
|So how many guns and tanks does Anonymous control?
Maybe all of them?
Never mind the tanks, it's the drones you need to be worried about. Fall out of the sky, dump payload on take-off, land safely in Iran, swap red for blue, just self destruct in mid-air... These things are flown over networks run by nerds, using code written by nerds, on hardware built by nerds. It's nerds all the way down.
This guy might have a point.
Yeah! How dare those bastards have more money than they could ever spend, including if they started buying countries for themselves.
Made that into a valid opinion for you.
I have no problem with people having more than me; I am not motivated by monetary gain. If anything, the idea of having this level of personal wealth actually makes me quite nervous. I'd feel like I was hoarding a resource for no other reason than I didn't want anyone else to have it.
No person on the planet would have any problems living a comfortable life on £50k a year except Bentley salesmen and ultra-yacht builders. What value do they add to humanity again?
In the other arm is an IV drip of Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze.
Heh, don't get me started on hollow sentiment. I'm supposed to tighten my belt in this "global economic crisis" while these ten folk have a personal worth in excess of the GDP of all but twenty-eight countries of the world?
Makes me sick.
Google does not wield the power of life and death over its users.
There are worse fates than death. Private companies control or influence your employment status, your credit availability, your insurance details, your medical information, your educational background, your driving privileges, in some instances your criminal record. Never mind separation of church and state; I want to see separation of business and state. Unfortunately more and more government services are being privatised, and those private companies are operating without any judicial oversight, sometimes with laws written specifically to make them immune (retroactive immunity for wiretapping, anyone?)
Don't think that private entities snooping on you is any better than government; Their data is one asset seizure away from government hands, and I'm willing to guess the government has more clout when it comes to taking stuff they want.
#8. Interactive lock screen
Tits on a bull useless. A lockscreen should show nothing but a prompt for a password and possibly the screensaver. It's a lockscreen for a reason.
Preach the word, brother. Lock screens are to stop people accessing your data when you're not there. Why would you want that data visible on the lockscreen?!
#12. Fewer surprise restarts
How about none? Please? The only surprise restart should be a STOP error, and at that point, it's a hardware/driver issue. All other restarts should be optional, like in sane operating systems.
Having lost data to an automatic restart, I can only add more strings to your bow. This is the main reason for me doing next to everything on Mint, gaming on Windows. I essentially paid £70 to have a games console OS.
#15. Built-in antivirus
It would be nice to not need this, wouldn't it?
Isn't this what MS Security Essentials is? Seems capable enough, but like you say a little redundant if the exploitable surface of the OS is minimised in the first place.
#21. Restore PC
Only Windows users think it's normal to re-image the machine every quarter.
Separate partition for /home/ and it doesn't matter what happens to the OS. Hell, put it on a different drive. I've not had data on my Windows partition for years, and only ever had basic apps on it like Office.
This list is nothing. Win7 has most of these "features" and Linux has almost all of them excluding Metro-specific rubbish.
Should be renamed Windows 7 SP2.
TrueCrypt doesn't have an audit trail. You can claim the data is encrypted with an AES-finalist algorithm and a good key, but without a log to prove it you're SOL if the shit hits the fan.
I use a Sophos product (you can search for it, I'm not giving them the page hits needlessly) which has centralised key management, challenge-response access for off-site workers, removeable storage management (Encrypt or deny access) and full audit trail for The Powers That Be to fawn over if something goes wrong.
I'm almost certain TrueCrypt is as secure as many other whole-disk encryption systems, but without the audit trail it's really not enterprise-compatible.
Ubuntu has a feature to install Linux to your Windows partition using their Wubi tool. Instead of repartitioning your hard disk and displacing the Windows bootloader with GRUB, Wubi installs Ubuntu to your Windows partition and adds an entry in the boot.ini file pointing to Linux.
It's safer for your data (though I've never had any problems with repartitioning using a LiveCD that I didn't cause myself), but less elegant.
That film is already a success beyond all other successes. It has grossed over $1bn worldwide, with 3/4 of that in the first week.
The MPAA is talking out of it's ass. Fifth year of record profits. Not even the "best" Hollywood Accounting could spin that film as a loss.
Are your support folk allowed to answer queries, or do they read from a script? Reading from a script gets you 1 star and a swift loss of the support contract.
Nice plug for your company, by the way.
Businesses pay for Photoshop because home users (future employees) grow up using the pirated version at home. Adobe profits from piracy of Photoshop by home users.
This factoid has been published in the press, and is attributed either to someone from Adobe, or to someone doing a study on the subject.
The Avengers will make a loss. All Hollywood movies make a loss. Profit is not allowed, because it means Hollywood has to pay people royalties.
Hollywood Accounting