So Brin now says that it's not important, whether or not the Chinese gov't is behind the attack? WTF? Of course it's important, it makes all the difference in the world if this is state sponsored. And I thought Google was growing a spine, apparently not. Move along, nothing to see here...
Google, you are quickly losing any respect I had left for you.
Re:Not groundbreaking at all, System Shock 2 clone
on
BioShock 2 Released
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· Score: 1
Because before launch, the original Bioshock was touted as the spiritual successor to System Shock.
I have to admit that while I mostly enjoyed Bioshock, it was in no way a real and valid successor to System Shock. I still hold SS2 near the top of a list of the best PC games ever, if not the THE best. Planescape: Torment would occupy the slot next to SS2, just for comparisons sake.
I'm disappointed at the DRM choices on Bioshock 2. If I buy it, and that's a BIG if, I will likely buy the Steam version, as I buy quite a lot of games on Steam. I like it and it just works. There is no perfect DRM, but Steam comes closest for me and doesn't get in the way. Why the hell 2K feels they need 3 layers of DRM is beyond me. I have no use for GFWL, don't want it, don't need it, don't install it on my system. I don't like the idea of activation limits. Case in point, I occasionally fire up SS2 on my game box for a play through. This game is nearly 11 years old. If they had used activation servers back then, my opportunities to play this old game now would be pretty much nil. (I'm intentionally leaving cracks out of this)
Are you trying to defend a consumer-unfriendly business model that should not need to exist in the first place? Of course, consumers *should* understand that you don't get something (cheap subsidized phone) without paying for it somehow (early termination fees). But that doesn't seem to be the case now, does it?
Subsidized phones have only recently been available here in Finland, but they are the rare exception rather than the rule. As an educated consumer, I would rather buy a phone and have the freedom to do what I want with it, rather than be locked into a long-term contract with termination fees. It's why I can buy my phone from *anyone* I want, and use it with *any* service provider I choose. At any time. Without termination fees. Without contracts. Just swap the SIM card. Easy, simple, convenient.
This idea has not caught on in the US yet. Unfortunately, US consumers are not protected like they are in many other countries. The lack of any real news sources in the US compounds the issue, many Americans do not know what happens outside the US and could care less. I should know, as an American living abroad for 10 years. I'm glad I live in the EU where at least there is some sanity and common sense in protecting consumers from abuse by large corps. Agreements and contracts have to be written in easy-to-understand language that is clearly understood by the average consumer. Hiding fees deep in contracts or deliberately obscuring them in legalese is illegal here. All fees have to be presented up front, and clearly, to the consumer.
Consumers must stand up for themselves, rather than letting the corps run the show. They are only working in their own interest to line their pockets with your money. If you, as consumers, let them that is. Stand up for your rights and don't let them run over you.
I find it hard to believe the population of the US puts up with this utter crap called early termination fees. In much of the rest of the civilized world, this is likely illegal. Here in Finland, such fees would have to be clearly indicated to the consumer in the final price of the device, and cannot be hidden deep in contract terms.
Once again, US consumers are getting screwed over by their corporate overlords while the government sits by and does nothing.
You are vastly underestimating Nokia and Maemo. As another poster has already mentioned, once Nokia moves past their current Symbian (cash cow) vs. Maemo (new kid) stage and puts their full weight behind Maemo, Maemo will become a dominant player in the smartphone market. I have no doubt of this.
Believing that Nokia will not succeed is a very limited US-centric view. True, they are just not as strong a player in the US as in the rest of the world. But, remember that Nokia still has the most market share worldwide, far, far more than Android/Google or Apple today. While certainly the "A" teams are growing, they have a long way to go to even begin to compete with the installed base of Nokia. And consider that innovation from Nokia is starting to pick up steam again, especially in the smartphone market outside the US.
Symbian will be replaced by Maemo in the high end smartphone market. I've owned many Symbian based phones over the years and generally they have worked well, although sometimes the UI has been a little slow. I don't dislike Symbian, but I believe it's nearing the end of it's useful life when considering the possibilities of Linux-based Maemo.
What an amazing outbreak of common sense! It's about time at least some of the politicians start to acknowledge that the underhanded, shady, illegal and extremely prejudiced methods used by the media companies are a huge problem. If only the politicians in the US would get this, but somehow I doubt they will. They are too deep in the pockets of the media companies at this point to ever recover.
I was probably playing RPG's before you were a stain in your father's pants. If you understood anything about proper RPG's you would know that you cannot compare one player's game experience with another. Every player makes different choices throughout the game, no 2 games will ever be alike. Unless you cheat by using a walkthrough or hacks.
PC Gamer UK mentioned the difficulty very specifically, as have several other reviews.
I'd have to agree that in many ways games today are easier than in the past, however I too have noticed a swing back towards difficulty in a few titles. Most recently in Dragon Age Origins. Even played on the easy setting, it can be brutally difficult in some parts, the spikes are enormous. I prefer to play my RPG's in real-time, provided the game has such a mode, and while the easy setting in DAO is supposed to allow real-time battles, it is not strictly true. In many cases it still takes a huge amount of micro-management, pausing and tactics to succeed in certain battles, and party selection can be a critical point. If you have somehow chosen the wrong party members, spells or equipment, you will be utterly crushed without mercy. Re-loading saves and re-grouping and re-arming your party are common, even on easy difficulty.
To be honest, the game would be more enjoyable if the difficulty spikes on easy mode were not so severe; several reviewers have also pointed this out. I cannot see playing through this game on the most difficult setting, it would not be enjoyable to me. I'm not saying it should be a walk in the park, a good challenge is welcome, but being brutally beaten time-after-time and re-loading saves again and again is not a good gameplay experience. Adaptive AI is the way to go here, where the game will recognize you have been killed for the 10th time in a row in the last 60 seconds and ease up the difficulty a bit.
Don't get me wrong, this is one of the finest RPG's in quite a long while, and it has a depth and character development that is very enjoyable. This depth and feeling of character development was missing from recent games like Fallout 3 and Bioshock. While these games have some characteristics of RPG's, they are missing a large chunk of what makes a true RPG, and that's what DAO delivers, despite the difficulty.
So now that the finger's been pointed at the BT protocol, does that mean they go after it after they failed to hold the "internets" responsible? I really fear for the long-term survival of the BT protocol due to cases like this. It's going to end up as the scape-goat and ISP's will start to block it since it's obviously only used for illegal activities. I mean the media companies wouldn't lie, would they?
I'm assuming they are talking about banning their use *during* trials, e.g. when the jurors are actually in the jury box or deliberating outside the courtroom. It seems a bit ridiculous to ban use of the devices when jurors are on their own time, outside the trial, at home, commuting, etc. In fact here in Finland it would be against the law to do so since access to the internet has recently been granted a right to all citizens.
I totally agree that such devices should not be allowed during the actual trial or when jury members are "performing their duty" as jurors. I can just image someone trying to sell their "story" to a disreputable publisher (tabloids) by reporting to the publisher, during a major trial.
If you are referring to ATI's proprietary driver, then I'll have to agree with you. I've never been fond of ATI's own proprietary drivers for Windows or *nix, though they have improved greatly over the years. I especially hate the fact that ATI feels it necessary to advertise their own products, inside their drivers. And I'm not talking about "advertising" for the hardware you already have. Add-on TV tuners, latest Radeon cards, etc., have all been advertised within their drivers. No thanks ATI.
Honestly, I still prefer NVIDIA's drivers for their stability and reliability. I have worked extensively with NVIDIA hardware over the past few years in a professional field, utilizing GP-GPU and CUDA. They may not currently have the fastest hardware at the moment, but it works well. And their drivers are solid. I'm not saying NVIDIA's drivers are perfect, they are not, but they generally work well and I have had few issues over the years. I still believe ATI's drivers are a weak point for their hardware, which is currently very good. The UI for the CCC is also poorly designed and looks amateur-ish, imho.
Today, I'd much rather have a solid, closed-source binary driver that "just works", than a much less functional OSS one for ideological reasons. Let's see what happens over the next few years.... it could be interesting.
Having the news more and more "personalized" to what the consumer wants, not what the consumer needs, is essentially like inbreeding for the brain. The outcome is not going to be pleasing in the end.
It's sad that the average attention span is so short these days that many people are only interested in things interesting *to them*. Uninteresting or boring things, which may themselves be very important to society as a whole, do not even show up on the radar because they are not interesting *to them*.
The problem IS the contracts. Unless you just happen to have a legal degree, your average Joe-sixpack consumer cannot decipher them. Obfuscate and confuse seems to be modus operandi when writing cell phone contracts, especially in the US.
I totally agree that reading the contracts is a given for an informed consumer, but unless you are able to understand and comprehend the terms of the contract, you are no better off that the person who blindly sings any piece of paper put in front of them.
You state that the government shouldn't regulate everything, but then give an example of a benefit of such regulation. Interesting.
I'm not pro-regulation either for the most part, but in too many cases large corporations in the US are unfairly taking advantage of the consumer. As an American living abroad, I'm glad I live in Finland where at least we have some consumer protection, unlike the US. I think a lot of the blame falls to ignorance among the general American populace of what goes on in the rest of the world. The steady decline of "real" news reporting and investigative reporting in the US over the past few decades is huge.
News-tainment and celebrity-worship is the rage these days... sadly.
I mean that from 2 points-of-view: 1. Goodbye from me as a paying customer, you will never get me to buy a game infested with this crap. 2. Goodbye Ubisoft, you are literally shooting yourself in the foot with this braindead idea. Pull your head out of your arse before it's too late.
You "tried" a GPS inside a store? How exactly is that supposed to demonstrate the device's capabilities, considering you are standing in one place and the device is unlikely to be able to receive sufficient satellite signals? You do realize how a GPS works, don't you?
No way can you equate how a GPS "works" in that environment with how it performs in the real world, in a moving vehicle.
2 mid-size European cities plus 4 medium-large US cities downloaded to Nokia's Ovi Maps is well under a gig on a microSD card. If you wanted all of NA it's probably a few gigs, but still manageable. Not an issue as far as I'm concerned.
I've been using Nokia's Maps application which does both A-GPS (online) and GPS (offline) for a couple of years now. It has always been free and is a standard feature in many Nokias here in Finland. Same for their PC-based map loading application used to download map packs. This Maps/GPS feature was in my previous E90 communicator from 2007 and a better and improved version is included in my new E75. Navigation (route guidance) was a subscription-based service with the E90 but my E75 includes it in the cost of the device.
Or is this another case of US-model Nokia phones with disabled features mandated by the carriers (tethering, carrier portability anyone?)? I still don't understand why you put up with this.
Here in Nokia's backyard, this is NOT news and we have had it for some time.
With that said, using a smartphone as a GPS while driving is NOT a full replacement for a standalone GPS. It can be useful and helpful if you don't have a standalone GPS, but the smaller display sizes and limited GPS feature set of a smartphone compared to a standalone GPS device just doesn't cut it. For pedestrian and bike navigation, smartphones make sense. For car use I'd much rather have a large 4.3" display on my GPS and I'm not likely to want to carry around a smartphone with a 4.3" display. Use the right tool for the job.
Since the US government is owned and controlled by large corporations through lobbyists and "campaign donations" (otherwise known as bribes, graft or payoffs), aren't the FBI just considered employees of said corporations? So in effect they are just sharing information within the corporation, right? Nothing wrong with that...:)
I work in a medium sized technology company. A couple of years back, the company decided to implement whole disk encryption in all laptops for people who travel. The encryption key was stored in the BIOS on the Dell Latitudes we used. Looking back, it was a pretty big disaster on a several points:
1. Many people lost work stored on their laptops when the disk became unreadable because the encryption could not be "unlocked", probably because a bit got flipped in a sensitive area of the disk. Of course they should have had backups, but the disk had not failed; it was rendered unreadable by the encryption itself not because the disk itself was trashed or damaged. In several cases the persons were traveling when this happened and they were left without a working laptop until they returned home.
2. Most of the laptops were equipped with small, fairly slow hard drives and modest single-core CPU's. Encrypting/decrypting all data to/from the hard disk just added overheard and the machines were even slower than before the encryption was installed. Of course, faster drives and CPU's could have been used but like everything in the modern IT world they were bought "on a limited budget".
3. As I remember, there was no way to easily recover data if the laptop itself failed and the drive was installed into a different laptop, because the encryption key to unlock the encryption was in the BIOS of the dead laptop. Maybe there was a proper recovery solution but at least our IT department didn't know how to do it. Several people lost weeks or months worth of data due to this.
I was one of the lucky ones as a pilot user for workstation-class laptops, and mine was delivered before they started encrypting the laptops. Every time IT asked for the laptop to install the encryption software, I told them I was too busy to surrender the laptop for several hours. In the end, I never got it installed. In the mean time as laptops have been replaced more recently, they are not encrypted. I have a USB hard drive with a TrueCrypt folder on it for sensitive documents/files that I carry with me always. If for some reason, I can't access to my TrueCrypt folder, then at least I still have my laptop for email/web/vpn and I can continue with basic work. I travel a lot and if I were to lose use of my laptop during a business trip it would be a disaster.
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So Brin now says that it's not important, whether or not the Chinese gov't is behind the attack? WTF? Of course it's important, it makes all the difference in the world if this is state sponsored. And I thought Google was growing a spine, apparently not. Move along, nothing to see here...
Google, you are quickly losing any respect I had left for you.
Because before launch, the original Bioshock was touted as the spiritual successor to System Shock.
I have to admit that while I mostly enjoyed Bioshock, it was in no way a real and valid successor to System Shock. I still hold SS2 near the top of a list of the best PC games ever, if not the THE best. Planescape: Torment would occupy the slot next to SS2, just for comparisons sake.
I'm disappointed at the DRM choices on Bioshock 2. If I buy it, and that's a BIG if, I will likely buy the Steam version, as I buy quite a lot of games on Steam. I like it and it just works. There is no perfect DRM, but Steam comes closest for me and doesn't get in the way. Why the hell 2K feels they need 3 layers of DRM is beyond me. I have no use for GFWL, don't want it, don't need it, don't install it on my system. I don't like the idea of activation limits. Case in point, I occasionally fire up SS2 on my game box for a play through. This game is nearly 11 years old. If they had used activation servers back then, my opportunities to play this old game now would be pretty much nil. (I'm intentionally leaving cracks out of this)
Are you trying to defend a consumer-unfriendly business model that should not need to exist in the first place? Of course, consumers *should* understand that you don't get something (cheap subsidized phone) without paying for it somehow (early termination fees). But that doesn't seem to be the case now, does it?
Subsidized phones have only recently been available here in Finland, but they are the rare exception rather than the rule. As an educated consumer, I would rather buy a phone and have the freedom to do what I want with it, rather than be locked into a long-term contract with termination fees. It's why I can buy my phone from *anyone* I want, and use it with *any* service provider I choose. At any time. Without termination fees. Without contracts. Just swap the SIM card. Easy, simple, convenient.
This idea has not caught on in the US yet. Unfortunately, US consumers are not protected like they are in many other countries. The lack of any real news sources in the US compounds the issue, many Americans do not know what happens outside the US and could care less. I should know, as an American living abroad for 10 years. I'm glad I live in the EU where at least there is some sanity and common sense in protecting consumers from abuse by large corps. Agreements and contracts have to be written in easy-to-understand language that is clearly understood by the average consumer. Hiding fees deep in contracts or deliberately obscuring them in legalese is illegal here. All fees have to be presented up front, and clearly, to the consumer.
Consumers must stand up for themselves, rather than letting the corps run the show. They are only working in their own interest to line their pockets with your money. If you, as consumers, let them that is. Stand up for your rights and don't let them run over you.
First post!
I find it hard to believe the population of the US puts up with this utter crap called early termination fees. In much of the rest of the civilized world, this is likely illegal. Here in Finland, such fees would have to be clearly indicated to the consumer in the final price of the device, and cannot be hidden deep in contract terms.
Once again, US consumers are getting screwed over by their corporate overlords while the government sits by and does nothing.
Mod parent +1
You are vastly underestimating Nokia and Maemo. As another poster has already mentioned, once Nokia moves past their current Symbian (cash cow) vs. Maemo (new kid) stage and puts their full weight behind Maemo, Maemo will become a dominant player in the smartphone market. I have no doubt of this.
Believing that Nokia will not succeed is a very limited US-centric view. True, they are just not as strong a player in the US as in the rest of the world. But, remember that Nokia still has the most market share worldwide, far, far more than Android/Google or Apple today. While certainly the "A" teams are growing, they have a long way to go to even begin to compete with the installed base of Nokia. And consider that innovation from Nokia is starting to pick up steam again, especially in the smartphone market outside the US.
Symbian will be replaced by Maemo in the high end smartphone market. I've owned many Symbian based phones over the years and generally they have worked well, although sometimes the UI has been a little slow. I don't dislike Symbian, but I believe it's nearing the end of it's useful life when considering the possibilities of Linux-based Maemo.
What an amazing outbreak of common sense! It's about time at least some of the politicians start to acknowledge that the underhanded, shady, illegal and extremely prejudiced methods used by the media companies are a huge problem. If only the politicians in the US would get this, but somehow I doubt they will. They are too deep in the pockets of the media companies at this point to ever recover.
Hiding behind AC are you?
I was probably playing RPG's before you were a stain in your father's pants. If you understood anything about proper RPG's you would know that you cannot compare one player's game experience with another. Every player makes different choices throughout the game, no 2 games will ever be alike. Unless you cheat by using a walkthrough or hacks.
PC Gamer UK mentioned the difficulty very specifically, as have several other reviews.
I'd have to agree that in many ways games today are easier than in the past, however I too have noticed a swing back towards difficulty in a few titles. Most recently in Dragon Age Origins. Even played on the easy setting, it can be brutally difficult in some parts, the spikes are enormous. I prefer to play my RPG's in real-time, provided the game has such a mode, and while the easy setting in DAO is supposed to allow real-time battles, it is not strictly true. In many cases it still takes a huge amount of micro-management, pausing and tactics to succeed in certain battles, and party selection can be a critical point. If you have somehow chosen the wrong party members, spells or equipment, you will be utterly crushed without mercy. Re-loading saves and re-grouping and re-arming your party are common, even on easy difficulty.
To be honest, the game would be more enjoyable if the difficulty spikes on easy mode were not so severe; several reviewers have also pointed this out. I cannot see playing through this game on the most difficult setting, it would not be enjoyable to me. I'm not saying it should be a walk in the park, a good challenge is welcome, but being brutally beaten time-after-time and re-loading saves again and again is not a good gameplay experience. Adaptive AI is the way to go here, where the game will recognize you have been killed for the 10th time in a row in the last 60 seconds and ease up the difficulty a bit.
Don't get me wrong, this is one of the finest RPG's in quite a long while, and it has a depth and character development that is very enjoyable. This depth and feeling of character development was missing from recent games like Fallout 3 and Bioshock. While these games have some characteristics of RPG's, they are missing a large chunk of what makes a true RPG, and that's what DAO delivers, despite the difficulty.
So now that the finger's been pointed at the BT protocol, does that mean they go after it after they failed to hold the "internets" responsible? I really fear for the long-term survival of the BT protocol due to cases like this. It's going to end up as the scape-goat and ISP's will start to block it since it's obviously only used for illegal activities. I mean the media companies wouldn't lie, would they?
Where is Gordon Freeman when you need him?!?
I'm assuming they are talking about banning their use *during* trials, e.g. when the jurors are actually in the jury box or deliberating outside the courtroom. It seems a bit ridiculous to ban use of the devices when jurors are on their own time, outside the trial, at home, commuting, etc. In fact here in Finland it would be against the law to do so since access to the internet has recently been granted a right to all citizens.
I totally agree that such devices should not be allowed during the actual trial or when jury members are "performing their duty" as jurors. I can just image someone trying to sell their "story" to a disreputable publisher (tabloids) by reporting to the publisher, during a major trial.
If you are referring to ATI's proprietary driver, then I'll have to agree with you. I've never been fond of ATI's own proprietary drivers for Windows or *nix, though they have improved greatly over the years. I especially hate the fact that ATI feels it necessary to advertise their own products, inside their drivers. And I'm not talking about "advertising" for the hardware you already have. Add-on TV tuners, latest Radeon cards, etc., have all been advertised within their drivers. No thanks ATI.
Honestly, I still prefer NVIDIA's drivers for their stability and reliability. I have worked extensively with NVIDIA hardware over the past few years in a professional field, utilizing GP-GPU and CUDA. They may not currently have the fastest hardware at the moment, but it works well. And their drivers are solid. I'm not saying NVIDIA's drivers are perfect, they are not, but they generally work well and I have had few issues over the years. I still believe ATI's drivers are a weak point for their hardware, which is currently very good. The UI for the CCC is also poorly designed and looks amateur-ish, imho.
Today, I'd much rather have a solid, closed-source binary driver that "just works", than a much less functional OSS one for ideological reasons. Let's see what happens over the next few years.... it could be interesting.
I have to wonder why a company like Apple has to apply for trademark protection, hiding behind a proxy? Smells fishy....
Having the news more and more "personalized" to what the consumer wants, not what the consumer needs, is essentially like inbreeding for the brain. The outcome is not going to be pleasing in the end.
It's sad that the average attention span is so short these days that many people are only interested in things interesting *to them*. Uninteresting or boring things, which may themselves be very important to society as a whole, do not even show up on the radar because they are not interesting *to them*.
The problem IS the contracts. Unless you just happen to have a legal degree, your average Joe-sixpack consumer cannot decipher them. Obfuscate and confuse seems to be modus operandi when writing cell phone contracts, especially in the US.
I totally agree that reading the contracts is a given for an informed consumer, but unless you are able to understand and comprehend the terms of the contract, you are no better off that the person who blindly sings any piece of paper put in front of them.
You state that the government shouldn't regulate everything, but then give an example of a benefit of such regulation. Interesting.
I'm not pro-regulation either for the most part, but in too many cases large corporations in the US are unfairly taking advantage of the consumer. As an American living abroad, I'm glad I live in Finland where at least we have some consumer protection, unlike the US. I think a lot of the blame falls to ignorance among the general American populace of what goes on in the rest of the world. The steady decline of "real" news reporting and investigative reporting in the US over the past few decades is huge.
News-tainment and celebrity-worship is the rage these days... sadly.
I mean that from 2 points-of-view: 1. Goodbye from me as a paying customer, you will never get me to buy a game infested with this crap. 2. Goodbye Ubisoft, you are literally shooting yourself in the foot with this braindead idea. Pull your head out of your arse before it's too late.
You "tried" a GPS inside a store? How exactly is that supposed to demonstrate the device's capabilities, considering you are standing in one place and the device is unlikely to be able to receive sufficient satellite signals? You do realize how a GPS works, don't you?
No way can you equate how a GPS "works" in that environment with how it performs in the real world, in a moving vehicle.
Not the best, the "only".
2 mid-size European cities plus 4 medium-large US cities downloaded to Nokia's Ovi Maps is well under a gig on a microSD card. If you wanted all of NA it's probably a few gigs, but still manageable. Not an issue as far as I'm concerned.
I've been using Nokia's Maps application which does both A-GPS (online) and GPS (offline) for a couple of years now. It has always been free and is a standard feature in many Nokias here in Finland. Same for their PC-based map loading application used to download map packs. This Maps/GPS feature was in my previous E90 communicator from 2007 and a better and improved version is included in my new E75. Navigation (route guidance) was a subscription-based service with the E90 but my E75 includes it in the cost of the device.
Or is this another case of US-model Nokia phones with disabled features mandated by the carriers (tethering, carrier portability anyone?)? I still don't understand why you put up with this.
Here in Nokia's backyard, this is NOT news and we have had it for some time.
With that said, using a smartphone as a GPS while driving is NOT a full replacement for a standalone GPS. It can be useful and helpful if you don't have a standalone GPS, but the smaller display sizes and limited GPS feature set of a smartphone compared to a standalone GPS device just doesn't cut it. For pedestrian and bike navigation, smartphones make sense. For car use I'd much rather have a large 4.3" display on my GPS and I'm not likely to want to carry around a smartphone with a 4.3" display. Use the right tool for the job.
Since the US government is owned and controlled by large corporations through lobbyists and "campaign donations" (otherwise known as bribes, graft or payoffs), aren't the FBI just considered employees of said corporations? So in effect they are just sharing information within the corporation, right? Nothing wrong with that... :)
I work in a medium sized technology company. A couple of years back, the company decided to implement whole disk encryption in all laptops for people who travel. The encryption key was stored in the BIOS on the Dell Latitudes we used. Looking back, it was a pretty big disaster on a several points:
1. Many people lost work stored on their laptops when the disk became unreadable because the encryption could not be "unlocked", probably because a bit got flipped in a sensitive area of the disk. Of course they should have had backups, but the disk had not failed; it was rendered unreadable by the encryption itself not because the disk itself was trashed or damaged. In several cases the persons were traveling when this happened and they were left without a working laptop until they returned home.
2. Most of the laptops were equipped with small, fairly slow hard drives and modest single-core CPU's. Encrypting/decrypting all data to/from the hard disk just added overheard and the machines were even slower than before the encryption was installed. Of course, faster drives and CPU's could have been used but like everything in the modern IT world they were bought "on a limited budget".
3. As I remember, there was no way to easily recover data if the laptop itself failed and the drive was installed into a different laptop, because the encryption key to unlock the encryption was in the BIOS of the dead laptop. Maybe there was a proper recovery solution but at least our IT department didn't know how to do it. Several people lost weeks or months worth of data due to this.
I was one of the lucky ones as a pilot user for workstation-class laptops, and mine was delivered before they started encrypting the laptops. Every time IT asked for the laptop to install the encryption software, I told them I was too busy to surrender the laptop for several hours. In the end, I never got it installed. In the mean time as laptops have been replaced more recently, they are not encrypted. I have a USB hard drive with a TrueCrypt folder on it for sensitive documents/files that I carry with me always. If for some reason, I can't access to my TrueCrypt folder, then at least I still have my laptop for email/web/vpn and I can continue with basic work. I travel a lot and if I were to lose use of my laptop during a business trip it would be a disaster.
What did you expect based on his sig?