I'm not 100% confident that it was the DRM. But Spore doesn't place anything in the system folder, and I erased the directory manually after uninstalling.
Really, you haven't heard McCain and Palin implying that Obama is a terrorist, and the crowds shouting 'Kill Him?'
Of course the election is not actually in the bag, it won't be until election day. But the RNC seems to think McCain doesn't stand a chance, they are withdrawing funding from McCain to focus on House and Senate races that they thought were a sure thing, but are turning into tough contests. McCain is conceding and pulling out of key battleground states. Maybe I was a little trollish in saying, "It's in the bag," but it's not much of a stretch, especially when you look at how the overall numbers reflect on electoral college votes. It's not just a double digit lead, it's a lead in all the key states necessary to win.
I've been playing Spore quite a bit until this weekend, when it simply stopped showing any graphics whatsoever after updating my video drivers. Rolling back to the old drivers didn't help. So I tried reinstalling, and the game would simply crash.
After much futzing around and unhelpful EA support people basically reprinting their FAQ for me, page by page, I figured out the problem. I had patched Spore and uninstalled. But the DRM is never uininstalled, it lurks around forever. When I reinstalled the unpatched version from the CD, it was not what the DRM expected, and it crashed.
EA provides no way to download the patch without running the game, but I found the patch file on gamershell.com. Patching the game let it run without graphics again, and I switched to windowed mode (good like finding the key combo for that in the printed manual or help files) and checked out the graphics settings, uhhh, 170Hz refrsh rate, WTF? Setting it back to 75Hz allowed the game to run once again in full screen mode.
To reiterate: if you patch the game, uninstall, and reinstall the unpatched version, IT WILL NOT WORK, and the only component I can think of that would cause this is the DRM. Thanks EA, for making your paying customers prefer the pirated versions of your programs.
Are you honestly comparing polling these days with polling in the days of Dewey and Truman? You had ONE paper back then calling it a little early and getting it wrong. You have DOZENS of polls showing Obama with a double digit lead.
The Republican base is as fired up as they can possibly get, have you listened to them foaming at the mouth as their leaders egg them on to violence and hate? The Republican 'base' is a tiny group of wingnuts, Republicans have always had to sway independents.
There is also nothing that will stop tens of millions of new voters, who are screened out by traditional polling methods, from coming out to vote for Obama.
I love your unsubtle attempt at reverse psychology, too. Hilariously desperate!
Hey, look, if you are arguing that most politicians, regardless of party, are in the pockets of big business, I'm right with you. But you are trying to pin it all on the Democrats, and right now, they are BY FAR the lesser of two evils. The Republicans have turned into a sad parody of their true ideals.
First, I don't know of any countries with socialized medicine where the government is the only provider. Second, our system turns away people all the time. Third, there aren't a million healthcare companies, and what few there are would rather collude than compete, making our health care some of the most expensive and least effective in the first world.
They don't love Obama, if they did, they would be crowing about how the election is already in the bag. Democrates have over 270 electoral votes, within the margin of polling error. It's a done deal, we've won the presidency. The only question is, will Democrats take a filibuster proof supermajority in both houses? If the media were really liberal, instead of greedy, they would tell the truth. But a tight race means more viewers, so they continue to make it seem closer than it is.
Haha, nice one. You really don't understand what 'socialist' means, do you? What form of government is the collusion of large business and government, with nationalist and religious sentiments? Fascism, not socialism.
Second, you are terribly confused. Corporations are run by graduates of ivy league schools, who come from wealthy families and are not at all liberal.
The technical elite of the Internet have always had an anarchist slant. It's in the nature of the network, and "The Medium is the Massage," as Marshal McLuhan said. But the Internet enabled two decidedly different branches of anarchism: the individualist anarchists such as American Libertarians, Minarchists, and the like on one side, and the social anarchists such as Anarcho-Syndicalists and Mutualists on the other.
The individualist anarchists were epitomized by the early newsgroup admins, IMHO. The open source movement provides examples of both. The political conflict seen on Slashdot is often more a product of this schism than it is of traditional American left-right divisions. Not that I think the majority of Slashdot's audience would identify as anarchist, but we have always been a very vocal minority.
Funny, but stop to think about it. You really don't think there's much tech-geek to car-geek crossover? What real engineer hasn't tinkered on an engine? It's in the fricken' title!
I think we need a new poll.
Highest level of car tinkering: * The carwash changes my air freshener for me * I've changed my own oil * I've changed spark plugs and sensors * I've performed a brake job * I've rebuilt an engine * I've rebuilt a transmission * I've got a garage full of custom stroked and bored hotrod lead sleds. * What with gas prices, I have to ride a CowboyNeal to work, you insensitive clod!
Personally, I've rebuilt an engine in a 1971 Volkswagen van, which falls about at the level of brake job for most other cars. I jest, it took about a week. I wouldn't touch a transmission, though, even if I had the tools.
I know a tech nerd who does have a garage full of custom and rebuilt cars, though. And I mean a big garage, he probably has about fifteen cars by now. Including a 1922 Pierce-Arrow he completely rebuilt.
We don't need proof. All we need to do is introduce enough doubt in the public mind to screw Palin and McCain's chances. Which we've done. He heh, you idiots are SO going to lose this election in a landslide. See ya at the polls, loser!
Nice to meet you, Mr. Pot. I'm Kettle. I know operaghost from way back. He's a right wing libertarian. He has me foe'd for not thinking the same as him. He deserves a good tweaking. It's not like my original post was all that insulting, really. Not compared to how you're acting anyway.
I am a confrontational asshole, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. It seems like Palin tried to hide immoral actions by using a different email. Why don't you try to refute the point that not everything legal is moral instead of instigating an ad hominem?
You mean the ones that were actually government agents, paid to disrupt lawful protest? We did it in the sixties and seventies with COINTELPRO, why would anyone think we're not doing it now?
I also like Buddhism because it simply doesn't think certain questions are important. Is there a God? Not important. Afterlife? Ditto. An individual soul? Who knows, who cares? The present moment? Ah, well, that we can agree exists, let's talk about that.
Now, if we can only figure out what to say during orgasm. "Oh, Darwin!" just doesn't have the same ring to it...
The whole point of nihilism, in my opinion, is that given there is no knowable ultimate meaning to life, we are free to create our own meaning. Given your background, I have a book to recommend, don't know if you've heard of it, called A Course in Miracles.
It starts from a Christian perspective, but it veers, in my opinion, into a very Buddhist-like philosophy and practice. I found the separate workbook, which contains one short meditative exercise per day for a year, to be very helpful in confronting the essential, and terrifying, freedom that we have to create our own reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not 100% confident that it was the DRM. But Spore doesn't place anything in the system folder, and I erased the directory manually after uninstalling.
Really, you haven't heard McCain and Palin implying that Obama is a terrorist, and the crowds shouting 'Kill Him?'
Of course the election is not actually in the bag, it won't be until election day. But the RNC seems to think McCain doesn't stand a chance, they are withdrawing funding from McCain to focus on House and Senate races that they thought were a sure thing, but are turning into tough contests. McCain is conceding and pulling out of key battleground states. Maybe I was a little trollish in saying, "It's in the bag," but it's not much of a stretch, especially when you look at how the overall numbers reflect on electoral college votes. It's not just a double digit lead, it's a lead in all the key states necessary to win.
And neither did mine until I a.) installed an updated video driver and b.) reinstalled from CD after patching.
I've been playing Spore quite a bit until this weekend, when it simply stopped showing any graphics whatsoever after updating my video drivers. Rolling back to the old drivers didn't help. So I tried reinstalling, and the game would simply crash.
After much futzing around and unhelpful EA support people basically reprinting their FAQ for me, page by page, I figured out the problem. I had patched Spore and uninstalled. But the DRM is never uininstalled, it lurks around forever. When I reinstalled the unpatched version from the CD, it was not what the DRM expected, and it crashed.
EA provides no way to download the patch without running the game, but I found the patch file on gamershell.com. Patching the game let it run without graphics again, and I switched to windowed mode (good like finding the key combo for that in the printed manual or help files) and checked out the graphics settings, uhhh, 170Hz refrsh rate, WTF? Setting it back to 75Hz allowed the game to run once again in full screen mode.
To reiterate: if you patch the game, uninstall, and reinstall the unpatched version, IT WILL NOT WORK, and the only component I can think of that would cause this is the DRM. Thanks EA, for making your paying customers prefer the pirated versions of your programs.
Are you honestly comparing polling these days with polling in the days of Dewey and Truman? You had ONE paper back then calling it a little early and getting it wrong. You have DOZENS of polls showing Obama with a double digit lead.
The Republican base is as fired up as they can possibly get, have you listened to them foaming at the mouth as their leaders egg them on to violence and hate? The Republican 'base' is a tiny group of wingnuts, Republicans have always had to sway independents.
There is also nothing that will stop tens of millions of new voters, who are screened out by traditional polling methods, from coming out to vote for Obama.
I love your unsubtle attempt at reverse psychology, too. Hilariously desperate!
Hey, look, if you are arguing that most politicians, regardless of party, are in the pockets of big business, I'm right with you. But you are trying to pin it all on the Democrats, and right now, they are BY FAR the lesser of two evils. The Republicans have turned into a sad parody of their true ideals.
Citation needed.
First, I don't know of any countries with socialized medicine where the government is the only provider. Second, our system turns away people all the time. Third, there aren't a million healthcare companies, and what few there are would rather collude than compete, making our health care some of the most expensive and least effective in the first world.
They don't love Obama, if they did, they would be crowing about how the election is already in the bag. Democrates have over 270 electoral votes, within the margin of polling error. It's a done deal, we've won the presidency. The only question is, will Democrats take a filibuster proof supermajority in both houses? If the media were really liberal, instead of greedy, they would tell the truth. But a tight race means more viewers, so they continue to make it seem closer than it is.
Haha, nice one. You really don't understand what 'socialist' means, do you? What form of government is the collusion of large business and government, with nationalist and religious sentiments? Fascism, not socialism.
Second, you are terribly confused. Corporations are run by graduates of ivy league schools, who come from wealthy families and are not at all liberal.
Any correspondence regarding any program getting Federal funding would fall under the Federal FOIA.
You can find that information here:
http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title40.htm
specifically here:
http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title40/Chapter25.htm
and the definitions of the terms are here:
http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title40/Chapter21/Section150.htm
My reading of it? The emails pertaining to state business are public records that must be preserved.
The technical elite of the Internet have always had an anarchist slant. It's in the nature of the network, and "The Medium is the Massage," as Marshal McLuhan said. But the Internet enabled two decidedly different branches of anarchism: the individualist anarchists such as American Libertarians, Minarchists, and the like on one side, and the social anarchists such as Anarcho-Syndicalists and Mutualists on the other.
The individualist anarchists were epitomized by the early newsgroup admins, IMHO. The open source movement provides examples of both. The political conflict seen on Slashdot is often more a product of this schism than it is of traditional American left-right divisions. Not that I think the majority of Slashdot's audience would identify as anarchist, but we have always been a very vocal minority.
Funny, but stop to think about it. You really don't think there's much tech-geek to car-geek crossover? What real engineer hasn't tinkered on an engine? It's in the fricken' title!
I think we need a new poll.
Highest level of car tinkering:
* The carwash changes my air freshener for me
* I've changed my own oil
* I've changed spark plugs and sensors
* I've performed a brake job
* I've rebuilt an engine
* I've rebuilt a transmission
* I've got a garage full of custom stroked and bored hotrod lead sleds.
* What with gas prices, I have to ride a CowboyNeal to work, you insensitive clod!
Personally, I've rebuilt an engine in a 1971 Volkswagen van, which falls about at the level of brake job for most other cars. I jest, it took about a week. I wouldn't touch a transmission, though, even if I had the tools.
I know a tech nerd who does have a garage full of custom and rebuilt cars, though. And I mean a big garage, he probably has about fifteen cars by now. Including a 1922 Pierce-Arrow he completely rebuilt.
A mecha? I think it nics anything it wants to, really.
Mmmmm, socialized donuts...
Dah, comrade, our evil plan to take over America is almost complete! Mwahahaha!
We don't need proof. All we need to do is introduce enough doubt in the public mind to screw Palin and McCain's chances. Which we've done. He heh, you idiots are SO going to lose this election in a landslide. See ya at the polls, loser!
You are ten times the asshole I ever was, and I really don't give a crap what you think. Why are you wasting your time?
Nice to meet you, Mr. Pot. I'm Kettle. I know operaghost from way back. He's a right wing libertarian. He has me foe'd for not thinking the same as him. He deserves a good tweaking. It's not like my original post was all that insulting, really. Not compared to how you're acting anyway.
I am a confrontational asshole, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. It seems like Palin tried to hide immoral actions by using a different email. Why don't you try to refute the point that not everything legal is moral instead of instigating an ad hominem?
You mean the ones that were actually government agents, paid to disrupt lawful protest? We did it in the sixties and seventies with COINTELPRO, why would anyone think we're not doing it now?
Well I know how much you love the government, so anything the government says is legal must be morally correct, right?
I also like Buddhism because it simply doesn't think certain questions are important. Is there a God? Not important. Afterlife? Ditto. An individual soul? Who knows, who cares? The present moment? Ah, well, that we can agree exists, let's talk about that.
Now, if we can only figure out what to say during orgasm. "Oh, Darwin!" just doesn't have the same ring to it...
The whole point of nihilism, in my opinion, is that given there is no knowable ultimate meaning to life, we are free to create our own meaning. Given your background, I have a book to recommend, don't know if you've heard of it, called A Course in Miracles.
It starts from a Christian perspective, but it veers, in my opinion, into a very Buddhist-like philosophy and practice. I found the separate workbook, which contains one short meditative exercise per day for a year, to be very helpful in confronting the essential, and terrifying, freedom that we have to create our own reality.