Intel is up to Pentium 5 now, my question is when will they drop the 'Pentium n' line and go with something new. By the same token, Apple as well is up to 5 with their G-line. After a while, it gets a little rediculous and reduntant, so companies come up with a new product line (Geforce FX, kinda hybrid cause nvidia didnt want to loose the geforce recognized name). I have to say that I prefer AMD's system more with the lettered naming system, XP, MP, etc since atleast its different. So how far do you think pentium will rise to? I have a hard time saying 'Pentium 7'...
I no longer play any capcom games due to the fact that capcom has honestly not really made a new game since their first releases of their various concepts: street fighter, resident evil, dino crisis, etc. Street fighter original was great and so were its immediate relatives like Street Fighter 2, but then came "Street Fighter: Electric Boogaloo" and all its brothers, which was crap. Same exact games as Street Fighter, just with updated graphics. Resident Evil has taken on the same update formula; I enjoy a good story like anyone else and while RE has a good story, unfortunately, I hardly think its good enough to justify "Directors Cut" that was made of one version and then to make many sequels that ultimately did not innovate that much. Capcom has not made a new game for a long time since they've had the blessing of having very bright developers from the start that they can keep reusing their concepts over and over again, even now years after and never have to worry about actually taking a risk on a game. What was once good is no longer, so do everyone a favor and do not buy Capcom games, for by doing so you support the creation of endless clone titles. Witness Dino Crisis 3...
How about we already have ATMs running windows
on
Windows ATMs by 2005
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is nothing new, certain banks have had NT running as for atms for a while now. Hell, the subway card dispensing machines in NYC run NT as well as the entire line of NJ Transit ticket-dispensing machines. So dont go off making silly comments of doom and destruction since guess what, they're already here and have been for a while! This is not to say that things cannot go wrong (I see the above mentioned machines being serviced fairly often and they do get errors), but lets not get too dramatic.
Battlefield 1942 was my favorite FPS game released last year and the recent additions of Desert Combat and other good mods make it even better. On the other hand however, EA has really demonstrated their money-grab desires with this game as the first expansion showed. The announcement for the expansion came before the second patch (the first patch was released before the ship date), which IMO somewhat uneloquently displayed EA's desire to make as much money as possible off BF942's success. The first expansion was barely worth the $30 retail price and added a couple new maps and vehicles; Desert Combat had more innovation in their first alpha release than this. Secret Weapons seems a little better in that they might actually have a decent amount of new content, but I refuse to buy it since that would only support EA's Release-Patch-Expansion system. I agree that EA should make money off this, obviously, but I find it a little disrepectful of your audience (the people who spent $50 on the original game) to release a game and inside a month announce an expansion when there are plenty of bugs to iron out still in future patches.
One should remember that Oscar Wilde was one of the 'inventors' of the one-liner. As a literary device, they came along much later, during Wilde's era.
Lucasarts has released some of my favorite games of all time, the best IMO being Grim Fandango. At first I think "Dammit, I was really looking forward to that, there hasn't been a decent adventure game done in a while and Lucas is the company to bring one out." But it would only piss us all off if they released FT2 and it turned out to not only suck, but was obviously so bad that it shouldn't have passed production. Of course, we don't know why they cancelled it; they could have decided that their other higher profile games took priority, or they could have realized they had essentially created nothing new. So lets hope that Lucas will either resurrect the project at some point or will begin development on something like Grim Fandango II.
When the Matrix game was released, I was dissappointed, not at the game but at the developer Shiny Entertainment. For those who don't know, Shiny has brought us such games as Earthworm Jim and Sacrifice, both which were and still are great games. When I heard that Matrix sucked, especially due to major technical issues, I wondered why Shiny would do such a thing especially since they've never slacked on a project before. If you look at the schedule however, it explains a lot. Look at it this way: movies are usually very strict on release dates and its rare that a movie will be pushed back once a date has been announced. Video games on the other hand are well known for coming within days of gold status and then being pushed back weeks, sometimes months. If you make a video game based off a movie, especially a 'pop' movie like the Matrix, you are forced to work under the deadline of the movie. And believe it or not, movies are easier to 'cheat' on by using simple technology tricks in place of other more time-consuming methods. Code on the other hand does not deal in tricks and cheats, its either all or nothing, or a buggy piece of crap. Publishers these days wield a lot of power; when your console game craps out repeatedly you can garentee 70% of the time that it was the publisher and not slapshod work on the part of the developers.
For those who are saying that this is a move by Valve after saying how ATI was 'recommended' chip for HL2, do you seriously think Valve would want to alienate roughly 50% of their target population? Basically, Nvidia users experiencing a lack of a feature (albeit, realistically this is not going to impact anything at all gameplay wise and really can be gotten around by just running a higher res...) is not a 'power move' designed to pressure anyone. Think of the facts:
1. All cards can play HL2 without issue (that we know of)
2. FSAA works fine on ATI but fails due to issues on Nvidia.
3. Why would Valve punish Nvidia in such a petty, and ultimately wasted way since Nvidia users can still play the game, just without FSAA...
4. FSAA in no way alters the gameplay. In fact about 99% of the time I play w/ FSAA enabled on my R9700, I forget its even on, and vice-versa when its off.
My conclusion is that the chances of this being deliberate are pretty damn small, since Nvidia users can still play the game just without a relatively minor graphical enhancement. I hope they come up with a fix, and lets give Valve a little bit of credit here... though I still want my damn TF2!
The screenshots you see on boxes are edited 99% of the time, so you might as well include them under the heading of box art. A friend of mine made decent money doing this for a well known company on a very well known game that was released recently. If you really want to see how a game looks, your best bet is to look up screen shots on gaming sites since they are supposed to be unaltered. Much like how game commercials these days show nothing but FMV and no in-game shots, game companies want the box to look as attractive as possible, so screenshots are included as part of the marketing package.
Is it me, or has Capcom been remaking the same damn games over and over again and just slapping on new titles/graphics. The Resident Evil series (directors cut? I might respect that...) got a little rediculous, and Street Fighter they've just been remaking since the originals. Seriously, look up how many Street Fighter derivatives there are from Capcom, its a little disgusting. I fully enjoyed the original games, but its rather dissappointing to me now that Capcom has failed to really do anything new and instead tries to bank purely on all of their former success.
Stunts was probably one of the few racing games I ever enjoyed; going fast around a set track repeatedly isn't very exciting, but flying off a ramp, getting 100ft of air and then flipping repeatedly till you slam into the ground, that is fun. Between the different cars, and the ability to create your own tracks, Stunts took a simple game model and made it into something that you could play over and over, different everytime. Though the graphics were nothing special, racing in Stunts still supercedes many of todays uninspired racing games.
I swear if I heard 'adventure is dead' again, I'm gonna go into a psychopathic rage of destruction. Yes, adventure games now are nothing like their older counterparts who made up for their so-so graphical ability with indepth stories and interaction within the game. Adventure however is not dead since they are still making games for it. Last year 'Syberia' was a pretty big one, and though I did not think it was anything close to the classics, it was an adventure game and a well made one at that. The Longest Journey which came out in 2000 was another great adventure game, one that surprised many people with its appearance and quality. Again, while this may not be as good as the classics, it was a good game, and well made. Full Throttle 2 is slated for released soon, and I know the makers of Syberia are working on another game.
No, those who say adventure is dead are either A) not playing the games at all and thus dont know what theyre talking about or B) have such a rigid definition of adventure games they cant accept whats available now. Thats too bad for you, but don't go around saying the horse is dead when we're all still riding it around. Not to mention the HUGE potential for a really good adventure game to be released; the more people who say stuff like this, the more likely the only adventure games you will find in the future will be on ebay or abandonedware. So yes, please lets not get too dramatic here, nothing is dead yet, only on its way.
Yes, this system could be abused, however considering the seriousness of SARS, this is one of the few genuinely fast methods of screening people that is also effective. Taking temperatures, screening by appearance, etc etc are all either slower or not reliable enough to detect SARS. And yes, someone who merely has a fever could 'trip' this, but that is a small price to pay. It is important to note however, this is not a fix, since someone who is incubating the virus will pass through any scanner just fine.
Regarding privacy & rights: On the other hand a quarantine is a massive elimination of rights, and I would rather be scanned via infrared to prevent that from happening, then say 'I wish to sacrifice my and other people's health since I see this as a violation of my privacy.' Yea, it may be, but its 10x worst when you are in quarantine and cant do jack for 10 - 14 days except sit in an oxygen tent. Then you can talk all about privacy, alone in a hospital ward.
Yes, we must be vigilent to ensure that our privacy and freedoms do not go away, or dissappear while we look away. But, in this case, it is more harmful than good.
IMO you are completely correct; yahoo is a portal, google (while i and many others here probably use it as a portal) is not. Yahoo has a gazillion different signup services you can go onto, such as email, groups, games, etc etc; Google has a preferences cookie.Yahoo news depends largely upon Reuters, where as Google news is fairly indiscriminate (nor does it serve up 'google brand' news. Basically, unless yahoo sold off almost all of the bullshit that makes them what they are today, they could not turn into a google. And even if they did, the mentality that got them into the position they are now, would not allow them to create a google out of yahoo. Lets face it, yahoo wants greens more so than google, especially since its larger, so in the end if they turn into a kickass search engine, you are left with the same exact thing: a huge ass services portal with a search engine that loads quickly. You can call a horse a rocket, but it'll still be a damn horse.
So does it like *work* this time around?
on
Virtual PC 6 Review
·
· Score: 1
About 4 months ago i tried setting up my friend's OSX titanium (no special hardware) up with VPC and windows 2000 (using the cd that comes w/ vpc). Without fail, it would blue-screen and then eventually cause OSX to kernel dump. After reinstalling vpc, windows 2000 several times and encountering the same results, I said screw it. My other friends who have tried the same have also said windows was impossible to get configured using VPC. So hopefully this time around, their software will work as advertised.
The system itself is fine, but I personally would not want literally mission critical apps running on OS X, nor would I want them on Windows. I would say that *nix (not apple's version) is a better solution as far as operating systems go. Ive seen OS X dump programs, become unresponsive temporarily, etc on powerbooks before and it happens a bit too much I think to actually perform extremely time-critical tasks on; atleast, without a backup.
This game developer equivalent of a director has existed from the start. It is called a 'project leader' who oversees the entire game development effort. But much like a film, this is more of a collaborative effort than 1 guy saying 'roll, action!' all the time and calling all the shots. If you want to know why video games are sucking more and more it is mostly because of 1 thing: publishers. They have the money, the method of distribution and they wanna see a game that will sell. This is why games like BMX:XXX or DOA:EBV can exist and get plenty of money.
Though it does not have quite THAT much data, it does have quite a bit of great art of all types. It has everything from ASCII art to demos. I personally downloaded their entire music collection (consists mostly of tracker files), and have been slowly but surely sorting through it. Definitely a great source of music and is the last home to many a forgotten art (atleast these days for the most part).
What is this helpdesk for? It sounds like a product or service of some sort, so I must ask, why are you letting the developers handle support issues? I think your first problem is a major lack of responsibility and clear set roles for your developers and helpdesk people. Developers are not support, they develope. Helpdesk does support, that is their job. If a developer gets a support issue, they should automatically send it to the helpdesk unless it came from the helpdesk. I don't know about you, but if users refuse to follow support guidelines, they do not get any service.
As far as your helpdesk itself, having people who know what theyre doing is a major requirement, and training them for the responsibility is also needed. I'd make a formal system that logs support requests complete with filing dates and 'due dates' by which those requests must be handled. In tech support, using the standard queue system works well for the most part. First come, first serve; everyone gets served. Support requests should be centrally stored so everyone knows what is going on; no pieces of paper that once lost mean a support request is gone, thats sloppy. Id make sure the system tracked open and closed requests and draw a distinction between the two. Make sure your helpdesk knows the difference.
Quite frankly, a lot of this is fairly straight forward, and requires mostly setting up the right infrastructure to handle it. The keys are making sure your personell are properly trained, and that everyone has their own responsibilities. Forgetting about a support request or not being able to properly handle it is not acceptable. The problem might be the manager more than anything since I myself would not accept that level of slackness from my employees.
Trust me, the experience isnt great
on
Old Age Simulator
·
· Score: 4, Informative
As someone who is more then half-deaf naturally (and 21 years old), I don't really think you are missing out on much if you don't get to use this little toy. I would rather cherish my good hearing then experience crappier hearing, and save arthitis for when I have to deal with it (if I have to). How about they work on devices that allow the opposite to happen instead of allowing 'normal' people to simulate being disabled in some manner; seems kinda pointless. I can see the point w/ drunk driving simulations, but this? I dunno, like I said you are not missing much.
While corperate bribery is pretty damn bad, do not forget that peoples' own 'grassroots' groups (special interest groups) such as the "Christian Colition", NRA, and such are not corperate entities but can hold just as much, if not more sway. How? They do the exact same thing as corperations: hand over large chunks of cash to politicians via donations from members.
If geeks want to fight, they need a special interest group, likc the EFF (which doesnt do this sorta thing, but thats the idea) that is a conduit between washington and all the geeks involved. Money sacrifice is required; as has already been stated, politicians listen to the people stocking their wallets. I know it sucks, but to change the system you need to work it from the inside; expecting huge changes just because you do not like it is not very likely. And like anything else, everything takes time. Geeks' short attention spans work against us as these types of battles take months/years.
No offense to Apple, but their zealots are ignorant for the most part. These are the sort of people who are blindly loyal to Apple and do not have a clue what actually goes on under the hood, but yet profess to say it is better than MS, PC, etc etc. If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'.
Seriously, the way people treat Apple the company, you'd think they were a non-profit organization helping out 3rd world countries with free hardware and software. They're trying to make a buck like everyone else...
As a zealot tweaker, I disagree that tweaking is useless. First off, if someone thinks they are going to double the speed of their system with some tweaks, thats ignorance. Tweaking serves two purposes for games: performance and quality. You know how often you can goto a support forum for a new game and see people saying, "Why does ___ run so slow?" and they dont realize they have all of the default game graphic settings on, which probably including shadows, realtime lighting, antialiasing, anistropic filtering and such. Understanding what these settings do can GREATLY improve your experience. No, this is not like buying a Radeon 9700, but thats $320, and this is free w/ a little time. Saying that tweaking is useless is like saying that recompiling your kernel is pointless if it works. Don't whine about people bothering to make the most of their hardware, no one is forcing you to do the same.
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Intel is up to Pentium 5 now, my question is when will they drop the 'Pentium n' line and go with something new. By the same token, Apple as well is up to 5 with their G-line. After a while, it gets a little rediculous and reduntant, so companies come up with a new product line (Geforce FX, kinda hybrid cause nvidia didnt want to loose the geforce recognized name). I have to say that I prefer AMD's system more with the lettered naming system, XP, MP, etc since atleast its different. So how far do you think pentium will rise to? I have a hard time saying 'Pentium 7'...
That has to be one of the only clever Philip K Dick references I've seen in a while...
I no longer play any capcom games due to the fact that capcom has honestly not really made a new game since their first releases of their various concepts: street fighter, resident evil, dino crisis, etc. Street fighter original was great and so were its immediate relatives like Street Fighter 2, but then came "Street Fighter: Electric Boogaloo" and all its brothers, which was crap. Same exact games as Street Fighter, just with updated graphics. Resident Evil has taken on the same update formula; I enjoy a good story like anyone else and while RE has a good story, unfortunately, I hardly think its good enough to justify "Directors Cut" that was made of one version and then to make many sequels that ultimately did not innovate that much. Capcom has not made a new game for a long time since they've had the blessing of having very bright developers from the start that they can keep reusing their concepts over and over again, even now years after and never have to worry about actually taking a risk on a game. What was once good is no longer, so do everyone a favor and do not buy Capcom games, for by doing so you support the creation of endless clone titles. Witness Dino Crisis 3...
This is nothing new, certain banks have had NT running as for atms for a while now. Hell, the subway card dispensing machines in NYC run NT as well as the entire line of NJ Transit ticket-dispensing machines. So dont go off making silly comments of doom and destruction since guess what, they're already here and have been for a while! This is not to say that things cannot go wrong (I see the above mentioned machines being serviced fairly often and they do get errors), but lets not get too dramatic.
Battlefield 1942 was my favorite FPS game released last year and the recent additions of Desert Combat and other good mods make it even better. On the other hand however, EA has really demonstrated their money-grab desires with this game as the first expansion showed. The announcement for the expansion came before the second patch (the first patch was released before the ship date), which IMO somewhat uneloquently displayed EA's desire to make as much money as possible off BF942's success. The first expansion was barely worth the $30 retail price and added a couple new maps and vehicles; Desert Combat had more innovation in their first alpha release than this. Secret Weapons seems a little better in that they might actually have a decent amount of new content, but I refuse to buy it since that would only support EA's Release-Patch-Expansion system. I agree that EA should make money off this, obviously, but I find it a little disrepectful of your audience (the people who spent $50 on the original game) to release a game and inside a month announce an expansion when there are plenty of bugs to iron out still in future patches.
One should remember that Oscar Wilde was one of the 'inventors' of the one-liner. As a literary device, they came along much later, during Wilde's era.
Lucasarts has released some of my favorite games of all time, the best IMO being Grim Fandango. At first I think "Dammit, I was really looking forward to that, there hasn't been a decent adventure game done in a while and Lucas is the company to bring one out." But it would only piss us all off if they released FT2 and it turned out to not only suck, but was obviously so bad that it shouldn't have passed production. Of course, we don't know why they cancelled it; they could have decided that their other higher profile games took priority, or they could have realized they had essentially created nothing new. So lets hope that Lucas will either resurrect the project at some point or will begin development on something like Grim Fandango II.
When the Matrix game was released, I was dissappointed, not at the game but at the developer Shiny Entertainment. For those who don't know, Shiny has brought us such games as Earthworm Jim and Sacrifice, both which were and still are great games. When I heard that Matrix sucked, especially due to major technical issues, I wondered why Shiny would do such a thing especially since they've never slacked on a project before. If you look at the schedule however, it explains a lot. Look at it this way: movies are usually very strict on release dates and its rare that a movie will be pushed back once a date has been announced. Video games on the other hand are well known for coming within days of gold status and then being pushed back weeks, sometimes months. If you make a video game based off a movie, especially a 'pop' movie like the Matrix, you are forced to work under the deadline of the movie. And believe it or not, movies are easier to 'cheat' on by using simple technology tricks in place of other more time-consuming methods. Code on the other hand does not deal in tricks and cheats, its either all or nothing, or a buggy piece of crap. Publishers these days wield a lot of power; when your console game craps out repeatedly you can garentee 70% of the time that it was the publisher and not slapshod work on the part of the developers.
For those who are saying that this is a move by Valve after saying how ATI was 'recommended' chip for HL2, do you seriously think Valve would want to alienate roughly 50% of their target population? Basically, Nvidia users experiencing a lack of a feature (albeit, realistically this is not going to impact anything at all gameplay wise and really can be gotten around by just running a higher res...) is not a 'power move' designed to pressure anyone. Think of the facts:
1. All cards can play HL2 without issue (that we know of)
2. FSAA works fine on ATI but fails due to issues on Nvidia.
3. Why would Valve punish Nvidia in such a petty, and ultimately wasted way since Nvidia users can still play the game, just without FSAA...
4. FSAA in no way alters the gameplay. In fact about 99% of the time I play w/ FSAA enabled on my R9700, I forget its even on, and vice-versa when its off.
My conclusion is that the chances of this being deliberate are pretty damn small, since Nvidia users can still play the game just without a relatively minor graphical enhancement. I hope they come up with a fix, and lets give Valve a little bit of credit here... though I still want my damn TF2!
The screenshots you see on boxes are edited 99% of the time, so you might as well include them under the heading of box art. A friend of mine made decent money doing this for a well known company on a very well known game that was released recently. If you really want to see how a game looks, your best bet is to look up screen shots on gaming sites since they are supposed to be unaltered. Much like how game commercials these days show nothing but FMV and no in-game shots, game companies want the box to look as attractive as possible, so screenshots are included as part of the marketing package.
Is it me, or has Capcom been remaking the same damn games over and over again and just slapping on new titles/graphics. The Resident Evil series (directors cut? I might respect that...) got a little rediculous, and Street Fighter they've just been remaking since the originals. Seriously, look up how many Street Fighter derivatives there are from Capcom, its a little disgusting. I fully enjoyed the original games, but its rather dissappointing to me now that Capcom has failed to really do anything new and instead tries to bank purely on all of their former success.
You can download Stunts at:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2162
Stunts was probably one of the few racing games I ever enjoyed; going fast around a set track repeatedly isn't very exciting, but flying off a ramp, getting 100ft of air and then flipping repeatedly till you slam into the ground, that is fun. Between the different cars, and the ability to create your own tracks, Stunts took a simple game model and made it into something that you could play over and over, different everytime. Though the graphics were nothing special, racing in Stunts still supercedes many of todays uninspired racing games.
I swear if I heard 'adventure is dead' again, I'm gonna go into a psychopathic rage of destruction. Yes, adventure games now are nothing like their older counterparts who made up for their so-so graphical ability with indepth stories and interaction within the game. Adventure however is not dead since they are still making games for it. Last year 'Syberia' was a pretty big one, and though I did not think it was anything close to the classics, it was an adventure game and a well made one at that. The Longest Journey which came out in 2000 was another great adventure game, one that surprised many people with its appearance and quality. Again, while this may not be as good as the classics, it was a good game, and well made. Full Throttle 2 is slated for released soon, and I know the makers of Syberia are working on another game.
No, those who say adventure is dead are either A) not playing the games at all and thus dont know what theyre talking about or B) have such a rigid definition of adventure games they cant accept whats available now. Thats too bad for you, but don't go around saying the horse is dead when we're all still riding it around. Not to mention the HUGE potential for a really good adventure game to be released; the more people who say stuff like this, the more likely the only adventure games you will find in the future will be on ebay or abandonedware. So yes, please lets not get too dramatic here, nothing is dead yet, only on its way.
Yes, this system could be abused, however considering the seriousness of SARS, this is one of the few genuinely fast methods of screening people that is also effective. Taking temperatures, screening by appearance, etc etc are all either slower or not reliable enough to detect SARS. And yes, someone who merely has a fever could 'trip' this, but that is a small price to pay. It is important to note however, this is not a fix, since someone who is incubating the virus will pass through any scanner just fine. Regarding privacy & rights: On the other hand a quarantine is a massive elimination of rights, and I would rather be scanned via infrared to prevent that from happening, then say 'I wish to sacrifice my and other people's health since I see this as a violation of my privacy.' Yea, it may be, but its 10x worst when you are in quarantine and cant do jack for 10 - 14 days except sit in an oxygen tent. Then you can talk all about privacy, alone in a hospital ward. Yes, we must be vigilent to ensure that our privacy and freedoms do not go away, or dissappear while we look away. But, in this case, it is more harmful than good.
IMO you are completely correct; yahoo is a portal, google (while i and many others here probably use it as a portal) is not. Yahoo has a gazillion different signup services you can go onto, such as email, groups, games, etc etc; Google has a preferences cookie.Yahoo news depends largely upon Reuters, where as Google news is fairly indiscriminate (nor does it serve up 'google brand' news. Basically, unless yahoo sold off almost all of the bullshit that makes them what they are today, they could not turn into a google. And even if they did, the mentality that got them into the position they are now, would not allow them to create a google out of yahoo. Lets face it, yahoo wants greens more so than google, especially since its larger, so in the end if they turn into a kickass search engine, you are left with the same exact thing: a huge ass services portal with a search engine that loads quickly. You can call a horse a rocket, but it'll still be a damn horse.
About 4 months ago i tried setting up my friend's OSX titanium (no special hardware) up with VPC and windows 2000 (using the cd that comes w/ vpc). Without fail, it would blue-screen and then eventually cause OSX to kernel dump. After reinstalling vpc, windows 2000 several times and encountering the same results, I said screw it. My other friends who have tried the same have also said windows was impossible to get configured using VPC. So hopefully this time around, their software will work as advertised.
The system itself is fine, but I personally would not want literally mission critical apps running on OS X, nor would I want them on Windows. I would say that *nix (not apple's version) is a better solution as far as operating systems go. Ive seen OS X dump programs, become unresponsive temporarily, etc on powerbooks before and it happens a bit too much I think to actually perform extremely time-critical tasks on; atleast, without a backup.
This game developer equivalent of a director has existed from the start. It is called a 'project leader' who oversees the entire game development effort. But much like a film, this is more of a collaborative effort than 1 guy saying 'roll, action!' all the time and calling all the shots. If you want to know why video games are sucking more and more it is mostly because of 1 thing: publishers. They have the money, the method of distribution and they wanna see a game that will sell. This is why games like BMX:XXX or DOA:EBV can exist and get plenty of money.
Though it does not have quite THAT much data, it does have quite a bit of great art of all types. It has everything from ASCII art to demos. I personally downloaded their entire music collection (consists mostly of tracker files), and have been slowly but surely sorting through it. Definitely a great source of music and is the last home to many a forgotten art (atleast these days for the most part).
What is this helpdesk for? It sounds like a product or service of some sort, so I must ask, why are you letting the developers handle support issues? I think your first problem is a major lack of responsibility and clear set roles for your developers and helpdesk people. Developers are not support, they develope. Helpdesk does support, that is their job. If a developer gets a support issue, they should automatically send it to the helpdesk unless it came from the helpdesk. I don't know about you, but if users refuse to follow support guidelines, they do not get any service.
As far as your helpdesk itself, having people who know what theyre doing is a major requirement, and training them for the responsibility is also needed. I'd make a formal system that logs support requests complete with filing dates and 'due dates' by which those requests must be handled. In tech support, using the standard queue system works well for the most part. First come, first serve; everyone gets served. Support requests should be centrally stored so everyone knows what is going on; no pieces of paper that once lost mean a support request is gone, thats sloppy. Id make sure the system tracked open and closed requests and draw a distinction between the two. Make sure your helpdesk knows the difference.
Quite frankly, a lot of this is fairly straight forward, and requires mostly setting up the right infrastructure to handle it. The keys are making sure your personell are properly trained, and that everyone has their own responsibilities. Forgetting about a support request or not being able to properly handle it is not acceptable. The problem might be the manager more than anything since I myself would not accept that level of slackness from my employees.
As someone who is more then half-deaf naturally (and 21 years old), I don't really think you are missing out on much if you don't get to use this little toy. I would rather cherish my good hearing then experience crappier hearing, and save arthitis for when I have to deal with it (if I have to). How about they work on devices that allow the opposite to happen instead of allowing 'normal' people to simulate being disabled in some manner; seems kinda pointless. I can see the point w/ drunk driving simulations, but this? I dunno, like I said you are not missing much.
While corperate bribery is pretty damn bad, do not forget that peoples' own 'grassroots' groups (special interest groups) such as the "Christian Colition", NRA, and such are not corperate entities but can hold just as much, if not more sway. How? They do the exact same thing as corperations: hand over large chunks of cash to politicians via donations from members.
If geeks want to fight, they need a special interest group, likc the EFF (which doesnt do this sorta thing, but thats the idea) that is a conduit between washington and all the geeks involved. Money sacrifice is required; as has already been stated, politicians listen to the people stocking their wallets. I know it sucks, but to change the system you need to work it from the inside; expecting huge changes just because you do not like it is not very likely. And like anything else, everything takes time. Geeks' short attention spans work against us as these types of battles take months/years.
No offense to Apple, but their zealots are ignorant for the most part. These are the sort of people who are blindly loyal to Apple and do not have a clue what actually goes on under the hood, but yet profess to say it is better than MS, PC, etc etc. If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'.
Seriously, the way people treat Apple the company, you'd think they were a non-profit organization helping out 3rd world countries with free hardware and software. They're trying to make a buck like everyone else...
As a zealot tweaker, I disagree that tweaking is useless. First off, if someone thinks they are going to double the speed of their system with some tweaks, thats ignorance. Tweaking serves two purposes for games: performance and quality. You know how often you can goto a support forum for a new game and see people saying, "Why does ___ run so slow?" and they dont realize they have all of the default game graphic settings on, which probably including shadows, realtime lighting, antialiasing, anistropic filtering and such. Understanding what these settings do can GREATLY improve your experience. No, this is not like buying a Radeon 9700, but thats $320, and this is free w/ a little time. Saying that tweaking is useless is like saying that recompiling your kernel is pointless if it works. Don't whine about people bothering to make the most of their hardware, no one is forcing you to do the same.