F1 is insane. I'm a huge fan, have been for 20 years.
Go back just ten years and you'd see how different the wheel is. Just a couple of buttons. Now it's like the flight deck of a fighter. Fitting, given F1 cars have more in common with planes than cars.
I highly recommend checking out "The Secret Life of Formula One" if you can. It's a Discovery Channel documentary about F1. If this article interests you, you'd LOVE that three part documentary.
Sadly, F1 these days is crap compared to 20 years ago. A lot of that is caused by the march of technology.
I just get pissed of with it being called "theft". Not sure WHAT it should be called, but theft is the removal of property from the person or persons ownership. To be theft, the item has to be out of the owners posession and entirely in the posession of the thief. Obviously making a copy of some source code means it never left the owners property.
When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?
Not saying it's right or anything. As much the code being spread on the net amused the piss out of me (for the underhanded way the beta test of CS 1.6 was handled by Valve), it was wrong. I don't want anyone thinking I'm condoning it. I'm more commenting on how the legal definitions of crimes need to updated, since this clearly isn't theft when you get down to the actual definition of what constitutes theft. Hell, breaking and entertaing is probably a more apt charge.
You know I'm surprised no other company with a game ridiculously late has tried this route. "Honestly, the code was stolen." I mean really, the game is so damn late, blaming the system compromise for the delay of HL2 is the equivalent of saying "the dog ate my homework".
Funny. I was a BIG PSX addict, and a few weeks back, on the spur of the moment, I slapped a bid on a Dreamcast on Ebay and won it. Been playing tons of stuff on it and amazes me it died.
I'm still stuck in the 16 bit retro days (SNES/Genesis).
The time of the brain dead FPS is over though. The fanboys will run out and buy Doom 3, and then shell out stupid amounts on new hardware required to run it well... I have no doubt it will sell great guns, but ONLY because it's the mighty Carmack.
Id have released little more than tech demos disguised as games since Quake.
Re:You've some good points...
on
Is Swap Necessary?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
If you've just got a box sitting not doing much, in other words not serving pages, SQL or whatever, you can run with minimal ram. My laptop has 24 megs of ram. I did have a 100 meg swap partition, but needed the space for a particular huge DOS game I wanted installed, so nuked it and converted it to DOS. Booted Linux and checked the ram usage and most of the ram was used.
However, when I ran a program, the amount of used ram DROPPED.
Of course in an environment where the system gets hammered, it's all very well talking about how cheap ram, but so is hard disk space. Is it really worth not setting up a bunch of swap space? What if a rogue process munches it's way through the ram while you're away? Would it not be better to have swap space and have it so the system can run, albeit not very well, than just die on you?
I don't know, I ain't a sys admin, but performance issues aside, I don't see why you should risk it. I'd rather have swap partitions on a hardcore system than not.
It's a bit much to say that without deathmatch, the PC may be a dead platform. RTS is a genre as equally powerful as FPS (or at least it was back in the late 90's).
Doom was a classic. The reason I jumped to PC gaming. Can't say Doom 3 interests me in the slightest. Too little, too late.
Bozell is a media whore. If I recall, is he not the person behind the Parents Television Coalition? I remember the PTC, back when wrestling was a big thing (a few years ago) went after the then World Wrestling Federation, convincing sponsors to pull out of the show etc... The PTC were also responsible for getting wrestling linked to some cases of a child killing another with a "Wrestling move".
If I remember the story correctly, in the end, the then WWF sued, won a substantial amount of damages, and the PTC was forced to issue a public apology.
It's been a while now, but I almost certain this is the same dickhead.
What with this and the arrest last week of someone who tried to bring down all that is good and right by writing an anonymous P2P app...
Man, I used to have a thing for Japan and love the culture etc... But this recent nonsense with their aggressive (even by US standards) enforcement of copyright is just nuts! I mean the guy who wrote the P2P will most likely be JAILED for it!
This pretty much confirms that no, there was nothing Earth shattering.
If I recall, it was pimped on this very site a couple of weeks back that Sega had a huge announcement that would shock the industry or some such hyperbole.
The rumours then were that the new XBox would be Sega branded. I guess not.
Yes, but it's all scaremongering. The idiots who own the disks that rotted probably store them in the sink or something. I know people who have had CD's fail. It was because they're slobs who don't store them properly. I mean there's care instructions with the damn things for a reason.
Still, funny to think CD was pimped, what, 25 years ago now, as an indestructible format. I'll never forget this "audio CD's never skip" nonsense put to rest when in 1983, a store was demoing using a Pointer Sisters album I think it was that was playing the same second of song over and over and over... What was more amusing was the fact that people at the store just left it doing that for about 45 minutes.
It's pretty sad... Two weeks ago there was another article. On that article I posted words to effect of "Every few weeks Slashdot runs another article about how awful CD's are for lasting backups of data"... And here we again.
As I said back then, when CD's started to reach mainstream, there were stories like this. One I remember is how the ink used to print on CD's would eat through the disk in 7 years...
Yes, this is why the albums I bought in 1989, one of which was printed in 1987, are still just fine.
Championship Manager: The new versions added so much new stuff it was tough to resist.
Warcraft 3: Never bought the first two.
Well, there's Myth 2, but I was introduced to that via a free review copy so didn't technically buy it.
The worst case of "sequelitis" is EA Sports. The same game every year, occasionally with more than an updated roster.
Triva fans: Did you know that the voice that says "It's in the game" is David Hayter, writer of the X-Men movies, and voice of Solid Snake in the "Metal Gear Solid" games? I only learnt that the other day.
I hate sequels in forms of entertainment. It shows a dirth of creativity and originality. I couldn't care less about Half Life 2. Just like I don't care about Doom 3. Been there, done that. How about having some original ideas instead of just churning out more of the same?
Say what you will, when you get right down to it, Half Life 2 is a first person shooter with a good story, and it's the sequel to a first person shooter with a good story.
This is why I'm rapidly losing interest in games. I've been a gamer for over 20 years now... But I'm just losing interest when all that's coming down the pike is more of the same. Don't get me wrong, the games aren't BAD... But when you get fed apples all the time, you really long for an orange or too...
Halo was HIGHLY touted for the PC... Only to be snatched away when MS drove a stake through the heart of Bungie and had them join the realms of the damned.
I see Doom 3 is listed as being for the XBox, at least first. (I had heard somewhere it might be exclusive but I can't remember if it was on a reputable site.)
I think the reason this has gained attention is the PS2 etc... have never had an exclusive which was swiped from the PC. The XBox has.
That's a load of rubbish. I'm a bigtime gamer, and I ran Windows 98 for two years with stuff coming and going, tons of games etc... Never had any issues at all. Performance always stayed about the same.
Erm... Surely once it was fixed it stayed fixed didn't it? That seems like a real weird reason to reinstall. I had an issue with a sound driver causing issues with my onboard sound chip (I don't give a toss about fancy soundcards. My machine makes sound, that's all I care about) and once that was fixed it was fine.
Please explain (seriously) how come this compatibility led to you having to reinstall every two months.
I can vouch for that too. I have a system from 1997 that came with Windows 95 and I have *NEVER* reinstalled Windows on it. Never had too. One occasions the hard drive went mad and the idiots at tech support told me I had to reformat, but I ignored their advice and fixed it myself. (Just required getting it up enough to get to Windows to run Scandisk so I could have it fix errors without my input.)
The system was in hardcore daily use until 18 months ago when I actually got a new one.
XP on my current system... ERK! The system is getting slower and slower and slower. I think a reinstall is on the horizon, which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fucking system registry, meaning 90% of all my installed software will promptly go tits up due to not being "installed" properly.
Do a search for Winpatrol on Google. Freeware program that monitors all the places software can be set to run on startup, and pops up a little box telling that an application is trying to add itself to startup, and you can confirm or deny as needed.
Great little program.
With Real's crap, since it tries install for startup EVERY TIME you run the program, I've just gone in and renamed the.exe files so it can't. Real still works just fine. (Which leads me to wonder exactly WHY they have it install all this crap.)
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F1 is insane. I'm a huge fan, have been for 20 years.
Go back just ten years and you'd see how different the wheel is. Just a couple of buttons. Now it's like the flight deck of a fighter. Fitting, given F1 cars have more in common with planes than cars.
I highly recommend checking out "The Secret Life of Formula One" if you can. It's a Discovery Channel documentary about F1. If this article interests you, you'd LOVE that three part documentary.
Sadly, F1 these days is crap compared to 20 years ago. A lot of that is caused by the march of technology.
Ah yes, that old stalwart. Mail fraud.
I just get pissed of with it being called "theft". Not sure WHAT it should be called, but theft is the removal of property from the person or persons ownership. To be theft, the item has to be out of the owners posession and entirely in the posession of the thief. Obviously making a copy of some source code means it never left the owners property.
When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?
Not saying it's right or anything. As much the code being spread on the net amused the piss out of me (for the underhanded way the beta test of CS 1.6 was handled by Valve), it was wrong. I don't want anyone thinking I'm condoning it. I'm more commenting on how the legal definitions of crimes need to updated, since this clearly isn't theft when you get down to the actual definition of what constitutes theft. Hell, breaking and entertaing is probably a more apt charge.
You know I'm surprised no other company with a game ridiculously late has tried this route. "Honestly, the code was stolen." I mean really, the game is so damn late, blaming the system compromise for the delay of HL2 is the equivalent of saying "the dog ate my homework".
Funny. I was a BIG PSX addict, and a few weeks back, on the spur of the moment, I slapped a bid on a Dreamcast on Ebay and won it. Been playing tons of stuff on it and amazes me it died.
I'm still stuck in the 16 bit retro days (SNES/Genesis).
The time of the brain dead FPS is over though. The fanboys will run out and buy Doom 3, and then shell out stupid amounts on new hardware required to run it well... I have no doubt it will sell great guns, but ONLY because it's the mighty Carmack.
Id have released little more than tech demos disguised as games since Quake.
If you've just got a box sitting not doing much, in other words not serving pages, SQL or whatever, you can run with minimal ram. My laptop has 24 megs of ram. I did have a 100 meg swap partition, but needed the space for a particular huge DOS game I wanted installed, so nuked it and converted it to DOS. Booted Linux and checked the ram usage and most of the ram was used.
However, when I ran a program, the amount of used ram DROPPED.
Of course in an environment where the system gets hammered, it's all very well talking about how cheap ram, but so is hard disk space. Is it really worth not setting up a bunch of swap space? What if a rogue process munches it's way through the ram while you're away? Would it not be better to have swap space and have it so the system can run, albeit not very well, than just die on you?
I don't know, I ain't a sys admin, but performance issues aside, I don't see why you should risk it. I'd rather have swap partitions on a hardcore system than not.
It's a bit much to say that without deathmatch, the PC may be a dead platform. RTS is a genre as equally powerful as FPS (or at least it was back in the late 90's).
Doom was a classic. The reason I jumped to PC gaming. Can't say Doom 3 interests me in the slightest. Too little, too late.
Bozell is a media whore. If I recall, is he not the person behind the Parents Television Coalition? I remember the PTC, back when wrestling was a big thing (a few years ago) went after the then World Wrestling Federation, convincing sponsors to pull out of the show etc... The PTC were also responsible for getting wrestling linked to some cases of a child killing another with a "Wrestling move".
If I remember the story correctly, in the end, the then WWF sued, won a substantial amount of damages, and the PTC was forced to issue a public apology.
It's been a while now, but I almost certain this is the same dickhead.
The mere FACT that people were arrested for such things shows there's something majorly messed up.
What with this and the arrest last week of someone who tried to bring down all that is good and right by writing an anonymous P2P app...
Man, I used to have a thing for Japan and love the culture etc... But this recent nonsense with their aggressive (even by US standards) enforcement of copyright is just nuts! I mean the guy who wrote the P2P will most likely be JAILED for it!
That's one messed up society...
This pretty much confirms that no, there was nothing Earth shattering.
If I recall, it was pimped on this very site a couple of weeks back that Sega had a huge announcement that would shock the industry or some such hyperbole.
The rumours then were that the new XBox would be Sega branded. I guess not.
Amidst all this E3 coverage, prior to the show Sega said they had something Earth shattering to announce at E3...
Did I miss it or something? I don't recall seeing one thing about Sega.
Yes, but it's all scaremongering. The idiots who own the disks that rotted probably store them in the sink or something. I know people who have had CD's fail. It was because they're slobs who don't store them properly. I mean there's care instructions with the damn things for a reason.
Still, funny to think CD was pimped, what, 25 years ago now, as an indestructible format. I'll never forget this "audio CD's never skip" nonsense put to rest when in 1983, a store was demoing using a Pointer Sisters album I think it was that was playing the same second of song over and over and over... What was more amusing was the fact that people at the store just left it doing that for about 45 minutes.
It's pretty sad... Two weeks ago there was another article. On that article I posted words to effect of "Every few weeks Slashdot runs another article about how awful CD's are for lasting backups of data"... And here we again.
As I said back then, when CD's started to reach mainstream, there were stories like this. One I remember is how the ink used to print on CD's would eat through the disk in 7 years...
Yes, this is why the albums I bought in 1989, one of which was printed in 1987, are still just fine.
It's all bullshit.
Doing better than me. I've not played a game to completion since 1987. (Paul Woakes classic "Mercenary".)
I've only ever bought two sequels.
Championship Manager: The new versions added so much new stuff it was tough to resist.
Warcraft 3: Never bought the first two.
Well, there's Myth 2, but I was introduced to that via a free review copy so didn't technically buy it.
The worst case of "sequelitis" is EA Sports. The same game every year, occasionally with more than an updated roster.
Triva fans: Did you know that the voice that says "It's in the game" is David Hayter, writer of the X-Men movies, and voice of Solid Snake in the "Metal Gear Solid" games? I only learnt that the other day.
I hate sequels in forms of entertainment. It shows a dirth of creativity and originality. I couldn't care less about Half Life 2. Just like I don't care about Doom 3. Been there, done that. How about having some original ideas instead of just churning out more of the same?
Say what you will, when you get right down to it, Half Life 2 is a first person shooter with a good story, and it's the sequel to a first person shooter with a good story.
This is why I'm rapidly losing interest in games. I've been a gamer for over 20 years now... But I'm just losing interest when all that's coming down the pike is more of the same. Don't get me wrong, the games aren't BAD... But when you get fed apples all the time, you really long for an orange or too...
My guess? Night Trap 2: This Time It's Not Crap
Think about the exclusives they've had though.
Halo was HIGHLY touted for the PC... Only to be snatched away when MS drove a stake through the heart of Bungie and had them join the realms of the damned.
I see Doom 3 is listed as being for the XBox, at least first. (I had heard somewhere it might be exclusive but I can't remember if it was on a reputable site.)
I think the reason this has gained attention is the PS2 etc... have never had an exclusive which was swiped from the PC. The XBox has.
Nothing on Earth would make me buy an XBox.
That's a load of rubbish. I'm a bigtime gamer, and I ran Windows 98 for two years with stuff coming and going, tons of games etc... Never had any issues at all. Performance always stayed about the same.
Erm... Surely once it was fixed it stayed fixed didn't it? That seems like a real weird reason to reinstall. I had an issue with a sound driver causing issues with my onboard sound chip (I don't give a toss about fancy soundcards. My machine makes sound, that's all I care about) and once that was fixed it was fine.
Please explain (seriously) how come this compatibility led to you having to reinstall every two months.
I can vouch for that too. I have a system from 1997 that came with Windows 95 and I have *NEVER* reinstalled Windows on it. Never had too. One occasions the hard drive went mad and the idiots at tech support told me I had to reformat, but I ignored their advice and fixed it myself. (Just required getting it up enough to get to Windows to run Scandisk so I could have it fix errors without my input.)
The system was in hardcore daily use until 18 months ago when I actually got a new one.
XP on my current system... ERK! The system is getting slower and slower and slower. I think a reinstall is on the horizon, which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fucking system registry, meaning 90% of all my installed software will promptly go tits up due to not being "installed" properly.
Thanks a fucking lot, Microsoft...
Do a search for Winpatrol on Google. Freeware program that monitors all the places software can be set to run on startup, and pops up a little box telling that an application is trying to add itself to startup, and you can confirm or deny as needed.
.exe files so it can't. Real still works just fine. (Which leads me to wonder exactly WHY they have it install all this crap.)
Great little program.
With Real's crap, since it tries install for startup EVERY TIME you run the program, I've just gone in and renamed the
I have an idiot "friend" who makes the same claim about Windows. "Yeah, sure dude, it's the size of the userbase that causes all the viruses."
What's really disturbing is everyone turns to this smacktard for computer advice.
I used to love Leechget, but sadly it has gone rather badly down the crapper.
For big files that there's only one of, I just the cmd in XP and use WGET to download.
For multiple files... Well, sadly, I've yet to find a decent freeware download manager.
Filezilla is great. So is their FTP server as well.