Unless its so bad that people are downgrading to get rid of it (like what happened with ME)
Actually I got rid of XP to run 2K on my home windows machine. Less memory consumption, faster performance (boots slower, but really who cares - it gets rebooted 2-4 times per month or so) and less holes.
I'll run 2k until stuff i want to run can't be run on it any more. Given that most new games are crappy re-hashes of 15 year old ideas, and anything constructive I can generally do with free tools, i don't see that being any time soon).
Agreed 100%. Copyprotection does not inconvenience 99.9999999% of pirates at all. As I posted previously, it only takes *1* person to crack it (minor inconvenience if they're skilled enough) and host a torrent, and the genie is out of the bottle.
Same thing with product activation, etc - no pirate with the activation hack is inconvenienced, but every legitimate user is, every time they need to re-activate, etc.
But what about the vast majority of people that don't know the intricacies of bitsettings and book types and after toasting a few CDs they give up. Sure, they can get a torrent of the packaged release that circumvents these measures.
But in the end stopping/some/ piracy will result in more money in their pockets.
These days, all it needs is *1* person to crack it, and the rest of the world can potentially download it via bit-torrent (or whatever the p2p flavour of the month is at the time). Burning a CD really isn't that hard - or if you've even got a *slight* clue you simply mount the ISO image with alchohol or whatever.
Yes, copyprotection may stop a few copies getting out but really.... At what cost?
I have yet to meet a pirate who has wanted a copy of a game who has been stopped by copyprotection of any form. I have also yet to meet a pirate who has purchased a game because they couldn't copy it. However, I do know those who have bought a game after copying it, myself included (eg, copying baldurs gate 2 resulted in me buying BG, BG2, ToB, Icewind Dale 1/2, NWN + both expansions - dodgy copy of the original Vampire game made me buy Bloodlines), etc.
Also, there are some copy protection schemes out there that have *prevented me from purchasing* a game. Yes, steam, I'm looking in your direction. No i haven't pirated HL2 either - i've just totally ignored Valve's releases since they've implemented the steam system - and any other publisher who uses it.
I suggest you get your own local test environment (IIS box, Apache box, etc) - regardless of the internet connection being up or down, you'll get far more work/testing done if it's hosted locally.
I think the GP meant that you can migrate your email to a provider not hosted on comcast's network. eg, gmail, hotmail, or pay for your own virtual server and retrieve it from externally via imap/whatever.
... they can do as they wish - and I'm quite sure in their user agreement there are words to the affect of "we reserve the right to withdraw/disrupt service as we see fit".
If you don't like it, you can shift providers.
As I stated above - it's not censorship, it's their privately owned network - they can do as they please.
In practice, whatever I'm using, the clowns here surrounding me will be using Windows for the forseeable future, and I'll still have to hear it.:-\
As pointed out by someone in the original link, the mac startup sound can be turned off... just goes to show that yet again, Microsoft is more interested in branding and forcing things down our throats than actually catering to the customer.
People who send crap to me flagged "high importance" all the time when, in the scheme of things, it just *isn't* get a response time of around 3-5 days.
Others, I will prioritize according to business impact, and the person's attitude. The assholes get bumped to the back of the queue, those who respect my time and don't hassle the shit out of me generally get a much better turn-around time.
Such is life - make mine hell and you'll get it back 5 fold:D
I've never had anything from nintendo crash on me either. Then again, i've never owned any of their hardware:D
However, my PC gaming experience has been pretty good as of late. About the only game in the past 5 years I've had lock-up or crash on me is the original Falcon 4.0.
Now, if you can find a more complex game than that on any platform, you get a cookie:D
Allied Force has been trouble free for me though:)
I don't think the GP was saying that the "programming is hard" is a good cop out - simply that any code that complex WILL start out with a large number of bugs no matter how good your programmers are, and that the problem is management releasing before they get time to fix it - not that the programmers are crap.
Remember: this year's alienware monster is next years budget gaming PC.
Comparing WoW to Crysis is fairly amusing - the graphics in Wow are nowhere near the level of detail as those in Crysis.
Even if you're a budget PC buyer, you should be glad for games like this pushing hardware along. Without the requirements for kick-ass hardware, it won't be developed. Eventually, it all trickles down to budget buyers as well.
Maybe oblivion runs like crap on PC's because the Microsoft/Intel PC platform wasn't designed for games, but business applications and is still feeling the effects of that design decision. The consoles are simply far more efficient gaming machines.
Thats why consoles have far superior hardware specs (in terms of bandwidth, cpu horsepower, 3d geometry processing, audio processing, etc), right?
Oh, crap, they don't.
Your argument might have held water in the early 1990s, but technology has definately moved on.
Bang for buck, consoles are better, yes - but a PC of the day has always had more processing power. By the time the 7 core PS3 is released, we'll have 4-8 core PCs with equivalent or better processing power, mark my words.
It's just too bad that a $300 CPU and a $200 graphics card don't constitute a PC that can play a game - maybe with a case, power supply, motherboard, memory, optical drive and hard drive, you could actually do something with the CPU and graphics card...
No, but none of those components are expensive either. As I posted earlier, some gamers are mid-20s or older, and well paid.
Folks need to stop pretending that PC gaming (at least of new games) is cost effective compared to consoles - it's not and it never will be. That doesn't mean that PC gaming isn't cool and fun (well, as much as any videogaming is "cool"), but it's going to continue to be more expensive for the foreseeable future.
Hmm... I agree, if you're talking new release games - however, PC games from last year/18 months ago are usually better looking/sounding than current console games. If you're willing to wait a little while after release, there's bargains to be had.
Example, I just picked up Morrowind for $9 and Thief - Deadly shadows for $20 (australian $). For comparison, about the cheapest console games you'll find over here are $35-40.
Also, the PC can be used for other things, and is a tax write-off.
As for the "no consoles" thing, they think the 360 is too weak? Are they kidding? There are a lot of people who can't even afford a 360, nevermind the PS3.. and they expect to market their game to the "teenagers with enough free time but also somehow have hojillions of dollars" niche?
I think you under-estimate the modern game market.
There's a significant portion of well-paid, mid-20s to mid-30s gamers out there who *can* afford to buy kick-ass hardware and are also inclined to do so.
And it's not going to be a hardware purchased to "run 1 game", as a PC it used for everything.
Also, give it 18 months after release, and the crysis recommended spec will be equivalent to a base model PC.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I got rid of XP to run 2K on my home windows machine. Less memory consumption, faster performance (boots slower, but really who cares - it gets rebooted 2-4 times per month or so) and less holes.
I'll run 2k until stuff i want to run can't be run on it any more. Given that most new games are crappy re-hashes of 15 year old ideas, and anything constructive I can generally do with free tools, i don't see that being any time soon).
That's not a prediction, that's called sitting on the fence, or not having the balls to make a call :D
Buy quality hardware with decent drivers, don't go for "beta" driver releases, and you're generally fine anyway.
I'd like the option to run *UN* signed drivers thanks - I know better than Microsoft what my needs/priorities are.
Not discounting that, but much of that is common sense for someone who's supposed to be doing web development professionally :D
It's also something you can test after you've developed the page on your nice speedy local connection :)
Waiting for uploads to remote sites, and being crippled when your net connection is out sucks. Why do it?
Same thing with product activation, etc - no pirate with the activation hack is inconvenienced, but every legitimate user is, every time they need to re-activate, etc.
These days, all it needs is *1* person to crack it, and the rest of the world can potentially download it via bit-torrent (or whatever the p2p flavour of the month is at the time). Burning a CD really isn't that hard - or if you've even got a *slight* clue you simply mount the ISO image with alchohol or whatever.
Yes, copyprotection may stop a few copies getting out but really.... At what cost?
I have yet to meet a pirate who has wanted a copy of a game who has been stopped by copyprotection of any form. I have also yet to meet a pirate who has purchased a game because they couldn't copy it. However, I do know those who have bought a game after copying it, myself included (eg, copying baldurs gate 2 resulted in me buying BG, BG2, ToB, Icewind Dale 1/2, NWN + both expansions - dodgy copy of the original Vampire game made me buy Bloodlines), etc.
Also, there are some copy protection schemes out there that have *prevented me from purchasing* a game. Yes, steam, I'm looking in your direction. No i haven't pirated HL2 either - i've just totally ignored Valve's releases since they've implemented the steam system - and any other publisher who uses it.
I suggest you get your own local test environment (IIS box, Apache box, etc) - regardless of the internet connection being up or down, you'll get far more work/testing done if it's hosted locally.
I think the GP meant that you can migrate your email to a provider not hosted on comcast's network. eg, gmail, hotmail, or pay for your own virtual server and retrieve it from externally via imap/whatever.
If you don't like it, you can shift providers.
As I stated above - it's not censorship, it's their privately owned network - they can do as they please.
In practice, whatever I'm using, the clowns here surrounding me will be using Windows for the forseeable future, and I'll still have to hear it. :-\
As pointed out by someone in the original link, the mac startup sound can be turned off... just goes to show that yet again, Microsoft is more interested in branding and forcing things down our throats than actually catering to the customer.
Tell them they're blacklisted and to go hassle someone else about it :)
This is one good thing about having more work than you can finish - you can filter out the fuckwits with higher priority jobs.
Others, I will prioritize according to business impact, and the person's attitude. The assholes get bumped to the back of the queue, those who respect my time and don't hassle the shit out of me generally get a much better turn-around time.
Such is life - make mine hell and you'll get it back 5 fold :D
"grep" is your friend.
Mod parent up. IDEs are no solution to the problem of brain damaged coding practices, they merely hide the problem.
I have yet to see a java app that doesn't suck.
Because, by and large, judging from the quality of Java software I have experienced, they're incompetent?
"real men don't use backups, they just upload to FTP and let the world mirror it".
However, my PC gaming experience has been pretty good as of late. About the only game in the past 5 years I've had lock-up or crash on me is the original Falcon 4.0.
Now, if you can find a more complex game than that on any platform, you get a cookie :D
Allied Force has been trouble free for me though :)
I don't think the GP was saying that the "programming is hard" is a good cop out - simply that any code that complex WILL start out with a large number of bugs no matter how good your programmers are, and that the problem is management releasing before they get time to fix it - not that the programmers are crap.
Comparing WoW to Crysis is fairly amusing - the graphics in Wow are nowhere near the level of detail as those in Crysis.
Even if you're a budget PC buyer, you should be glad for games like this pushing hardware along. Without the requirements for kick-ass hardware, it won't be developed. Eventually, it all trickles down to budget buyers as well.
Thats why consoles have far superior hardware specs (in terms of bandwidth, cpu horsepower, 3d geometry processing, audio processing, etc), right?
Oh, crap, they don't.
Your argument might have held water in the early 1990s, but technology has definately moved on.
Bang for buck, consoles are better, yes - but a PC of the day has always had more processing power. By the time the 7 core PS3 is released, we'll have 4-8 core PCs with equivalent or better processing power, mark my words.
CPU horsepower is cheap. Programmer time is expensive.
If you need to code in assembly to get a game onto the PS3/Xbox360, i'm not surprised many consider it a non-starter.
Example, I just picked up Morrowind for $9 and Thief - Deadly shadows for $20 (australian $). For comparison, about the cheapest console games you'll find over here are $35-40.
Also, the PC can be used for other things, and is a tax write-off.
I think you under-estimate the modern game market.
There's a significant portion of well-paid, mid-20s to mid-30s gamers out there who *can* afford to buy kick-ass hardware and are also inclined to do so.
And it's not going to be a hardware purchased to "run 1 game", as a PC it used for everything.
Also, give it 18 months after release, and the crysis recommended spec will be equivalent to a base model PC.
You *have* seen the screenshots of crysis, right?