Why are games supposedly provided as a service instead of a product? As in, a fully-featured product with the vast majority of the content already there upon release? Seems like each game these days is supplied incomplete and the rest comes through DLCs after release.
Take Tomb Raider: Underworld for example. There have been two DLC chapter addons available for it (and only for the Xbox 360), and these chapters aren't simply side chapters - they're actually a continuation of the story line which was part of the ORIGINAL GAME. In other words, if you didn't have an Xbox 360 and/or didn't purchase these DLCs, you wouldn't actually "finish" the game as it was suppose to be finished. The story would be incomplete. So screw anyone who thought that buying TRU would mean a full game, nah, you have to PAY for the full story line! Now given the DLCs were in part funded by Microsoft, I'm not surprised they're only available for the 360, and it wouldn't have mattered much if they were just side quests that didn't continue the story. But they do.
I don't mind bonus packs that cost a bit but provide extra features, but I do mind cash grabs that seem to emphasize the "release early, finish development later" mentality. Works somewhat for open-source content but shouldn't be tolerated for paid products.
I notice that whenever someone recommends sticking with Active Directory, they apologies for recommending it.
It's amusing because they're apologizing for recommending the best solution in this situation, which is EXACTLY what a good commenter should do. They have nothing to apologize for, and so I guess their apologies are more for the fanboys than anyone else who cares about a good result.
Just admit it - OSS doesn't always work, so making a suggestion which involves using Microsoft technologies is nothing to be ashamed of. It shows you aren't an idiot and prefer the best solution as opposed to a Slashdot friendly solution.
I guess I'm just strange, enjoying hearing from friends.
Then use Facebook, and it becomes such a part of daily life you won't have to wait for Christmas to find out about how your distant friends are doing. That's what it's for.
An awe-inspiring exemplification of the term 'lock-in.'
Believe it or not, but a lot of people actually LIKE lock-in, whether it be software or formats. The reasoning is simple - it reduces choices because everyone else is using it.
That and the fact most people haven't actually experienced many disadvantages. Everyone uses.doc remember, nobody uses anything else (for very large values of "nobody" of course). Everyone uses Office, and they either pay for it, get a discount through their business, or just pirate it. It's only Slashdot geeks who can't comprehend why their stance hasn't taken ground.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek, I really do...
This part confuses me. I used to "hate" Microsoft too, until I realized this was due to me hanging around Slashdot too much. In reality, I concluded that I would have so much pent-up hate for one company it would be very damaging to me, since Microsoft ain't going anywhere. Plus, what's the point? The alternatives suck in my opinion - OpenOffice is clumsy to use, Ubuntu is useless since no matter what kernel version/Intel graphics drivers I use, it's slower than VISTA for goodness sake and develops graphics corruption over time (a major regression, but since there's no financial incentive to provide quality code, this will keep on happening I expect.)
I give up hating Microsoft because their software just works, and works well with what everyone else in the world is using, at least compared to Linux. I WISH this wasn't the case, but putting my hands over my eyes isn't helping anymore.
The thing is, you don't actually notice any real difference in how the indexing works with WS4, it's all back-end. It's suppose to be more efficient that the search/indexing code that came with Vista. I know it can be annoying when installed in XP, but since its predecessor was already integrated into Vista it should be an improvement.
If you still hate it, disable the Indexing service.
When I was in kindergarten, my parents were called up to attend a meeting with my teacher. The teacher had noticed I was being particularly irritable, twitching my head a lot, unable to keep still, and so not being able to remain focused on what I was suppose to be doing. I was being continually distracted and annoyed by something the teacher couldn't work out, so his diagnosis was that I had a learning disability and required medication/therapy.
Fortunately, the parents were suspicious of this, and so they asked me why I was having trouble keeping still. My answer? The little tag on the back inside of my shirt was annoying me by always flicking my neck. They cut the tag off, and the problem went away.
So this teacher, who didn't even bother to try and simply ASK me why I couldn't keep still, jumped to the conclusion that I had a learning/behavioral disability and needed treatment through drugs and therapy. I believe this was before the era of ADD/ADHD (or at least before they invented a name for the condition), but the conclusion was the same. I'm proud of my parents for not listening to this idiot.
People have come up with many interesting ways to play that game. I'm not talking about mods even, but things to do in the vanilla game that makes things either more of a challenge, or gives you new ways to tackle obstacles:
* Attach a grenade (doesn't matter which type) low enough for you to jump on, attach another grenade above it and jump onto that, then crouch and remove the first grenade since your arms are just long enough to do so. Then attach a new grenade, jump, remove the previous one, and repeat to get anywhere you require. Sounds laborious but can be used to scale walls very quickly with practice.
* Play entirely non-lethal, or as non-lethal as the game mechanics will allow. This might seem impossible because there's a certain point in the game where you need to escape from UNATCO, but the exit door's key is only obtained after killing a certain augmented agent. The game does not and was not intended to have a non-lethal means of dealing with this problem, but some creative players found an exploit that would forcibly open the door with her still alive (hint - involves gas grenades)
* Play entirely with stealth. NEVER get into a confrontation, avoid everyone. If someone has to die, do so with a silenced weapon and with no-one around. Hide the body.
* Play weaponless, with the exception of a crowbar or knife for breaking boxes but never for combat. Use your wits, skills and other items in your inventory to solve problems.
* Play without using medpacks, health bots or the regeneration augmentation. Use only food and drinks to heal yourself, which includes the drunken booze effect as a "punishment" for getting shot up.
* Play without augmentations (not even with the build-in light). Spend skill points on environmental skills to use ballistic/camo armor longer, use flares and flare darts for light, etc.
And of course
* Play as an asshole who pisses everyone off, and kills everyone that the game will allow.
It's among others how Picasa and Google Earth work on Linux.
I already knew Picasa in Linux was just the Windows version in the wrapper, but Google Earth was always expressed as being a native Linux build. Every time I've tried it though, the GUI has always looked very out of place and using its own toolkit, almost as if... it was running via a WINE wrapper too. I always knew that something was odd about GE in Linux, and now I'm not as surprised to know it's not as native as people say it is.
It's always been slower than the Windows version too. Pitty; I know Google supports Linux and open source to a degree, but with the high-profile apps like GE, Picasa and Chrome, it's always been WINE-wrapped or non-existent (Chromium is not a direct release from Google). It'd be nice to see a change.
You're getting confused with Autoplay, they're not actually the same thing
Autoplay is what brings up the dialog box based on the contents of the media Autorun is the method by which the autorun.inf file on the media is executed automatically.
You could normally disable autoplay easily, but autorun.inf files would still run. That doesn't happen anymore.
Flash is also crap in Linux. I simply can't watch anything in YouTube without tearing/major lag when moving the mouse when viewing fullscreen, whereas in Windows on the same hardware it's perfect.
I don't count a half-assed version of a product as "supported". Yes it's Adobe's fault, but knowing who to blame doesn't fix the issue with what to choose right now.
The only solution is to kill AutoRun completely. It should not exist. It has no good reason for existing. The only thing it really does is by its nature a security hole. Just shut it off already.
They have, in Windows 7.
Despite what a lot of the morons in Slashdot think, Microsoft does listen to people's complaints.
Absolutely agree with this - sex is the remedy. Make the point that the guy isn't getting any and you are (hopefully), and it'll probably hurt enough to get him to start thinking about what he's missing out on by spending all his time playing Pirates.
Sex is an integral part of almost all humans, and we need it. Use this to your advantage.
As a result, nobody in my school department ever tried to figure out how to use LaTeX (well, I did, but that's because I'm already a geek who has no problem with the learning curve and would rather just have a better tool)
When the time came to write up my Master's thesis, my supervisor told me that I HAD to use LaTeX. If I used Word, he'd kill me (I presume he was joking, but I was never really sure). So I used LaTeX. I liked the results, but the time it took to learn how to get things working and looking exactly as I wanted was considerable, and even then I had to make compromises.
It was probably a good idea to do it using LaTeX instead of Word, but I can tell you one thing - I was the ONLY postgrad engineer in my group who wrote their thesis using LaTeX. Most people can't afford the time it takes to learn a new typesetting program, and since everyone knows Word, most people would just boot it up and get straight to work. I can't blame them.
So where can I buy this DOSBox? As a good capitalist I have my credit card ready for purchase, but I can't seem to find a price list anywhere. All I hear is that it opens sauce, or something like that.
Oh and before anyone notices, the Masters and the research associate stuff somewhat overlapped which is why when added, the total time appears like 9 years instead of 8. Call it overloading.:)
I did Computer Engineering and chose to undertake a Masters. Cost me 8 years of Uni all up (4.5 for the undergrad, 1.5 for working as a research associate, and then 3 for the Masters - in that order obviously).
During my Masters I did extra research associate work, as well as tutoring/marking and other Uni work. During the final year of my Masters I spent time looking for jobs. What did I learn? The industry doesn't appear to give a shit about the extra study, only experience matters. I thought that the Masters would show that I was prepared to forgo the easy path of getting a job in the persuit of hoaning my skills, but as it turns out, the private sector cares more about industry experience. I thought that once prospective employers saw my Masters (or at least Masters in progress at the time), it would be a beacon for attention. Didn't seem to turn out quite like I expected.
Eventually I got a job working in IT (go figure, but at that stage I was pretty happy to get something at least), though I'm FINALLY on my way to working in the defense industry as a proper engineer, once my clearance comes through. Perhaps the Masters itself will make more of an impact in the long term, but it sure as hell didn't help me in the short.
Indeed, and I wish I could say that I would also not buy hardware which didn't support Linux. However, I don't want to be left behind due to my persistence in disregarding technology that other people use which gives them an advantage over my ideological reasons for not wanting such technology.
Or put another way - limiting my ability to interact with the same level of capability as my colleges because I'm stubborn is a way to get left behind in the world.
I guess the reason why I'd never switched to Linux is because of shit like this? It's too tiring to have to fight against the lack of commercial and vendor support - very few businesses have any faith in it for the desktop. This means I continually hesitate if I'm going to be buying a car navigation unit, phone, web cam or any other peripheral because I will be expecting it NOT to work in Linux. If it somehow does, it generally is only after a lot of work googling and running weird scripts in a terminal.
eg. Eever tried synching a Blackberry in Linux? In Windows it's easy - install the BlackBerry Desktop Software and away you go. In Linux, or Ubuntu at least, you have to follow all this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=190938 . Yeah, really gonna happen for the non-geek end user. It's true that this is entirely the vendor's fault for not supporting Linux, but the problem is that for the hardware people WANT to use, very few do. So what would most people do, go without? Shit no, they'll run Windows and alieviate the stress and hardship.
THAT'S why even on a netbook, Linux will always come second-best.
Even I (a soon to be unemployed law school graduate) didn't think that I could make this argument with a straight face even for tons of money.
Some people are great lawyers for a reason - they can distance themselves from logic and common sense and still present a case, so long as the price is right. Having said that, I'm not I'd want to have anything to do with them on a personal basis, as I feel their humanity would have been sucked out by the profession.
Plus they have a remarkable tolerance for popups - the amount of pcs I get asked to look at because they're 'a bit slow' that are utterly riddled with spyware, maladware and a notification area that fills half the start bar, and are hitting swap space as soon as they boot up...
I know, it's ridiculous!
Today I was looking at a teacher's personal laptop, waiting for it to complete the logging in process after entering user credentials in Windows XP. My laptop can cold boot, run POST, boot Vista, log into my account, show the desktop and complete loading of all startup programs/services, then shutdown and power-off, and that entire process would STILL have been quicker than this guy's laptop finishing its startup after user login. Not to mention it was using 100% of one of the cores continusly and no process was showing the cause.
I kept reiterating to him, this isn't normal! How can you have been working like this for so long? Turns out he agreed, and was planning to buy a new laptop. Doesn't matter that nothing's physically wrong with the current one, and I can guarantee a reformat/reinstall would show an amazing difference. But I suppose throwing cash at new hardware is one way to fix things.
My only complaint is how much it is beginning to resemble MS Office; nice for adoption rates, bad for innovation.
At least MS Office is TRYING something innovative (eg. experimenting with a new GUI). OpenOffice just copies the interface of older versions of MS Office. Where the innovation again?
Hell they don't even have a friggin APPLY button on their dialog windows. They should get the basics working before moving to something "innovative".
Slashdot Mirror
Why are games supposedly provided as a service instead of a product? As in, a fully-featured product with the vast majority of the content already there upon release? Seems like each game these days is supplied incomplete and the rest comes through DLCs after release.
Take Tomb Raider: Underworld for example. There have been two DLC chapter addons available for it (and only for the Xbox 360), and these chapters aren't simply side chapters - they're actually a continuation of the story line which was part of the ORIGINAL GAME. In other words, if you didn't have an Xbox 360 and/or didn't purchase these DLCs, you wouldn't actually "finish" the game as it was suppose to be finished. The story would be incomplete. So screw anyone who thought that buying TRU would mean a full game, nah, you have to PAY for the full story line! Now given the DLCs were in part funded by Microsoft, I'm not surprised they're only available for the 360, and it wouldn't have mattered much if they were just side quests that didn't continue the story. But they do.
I don't mind bonus packs that cost a bit but provide extra features, but I do mind cash grabs that seem to emphasize the "release early, finish development later" mentality. Works somewhat for open-source content but shouldn't be tolerated for paid products.
I notice that whenever someone recommends sticking with Active Directory, they apologies for recommending it.
It's amusing because they're apologizing for recommending the best solution in this situation, which is EXACTLY what a good commenter should do. They have nothing to apologize for, and so I guess their apologies are more for the fanboys than anyone else who cares about a good result.
Just admit it - OSS doesn't always work, so making a suggestion which involves using Microsoft technologies is nothing to be ashamed of. It shows you aren't an idiot and prefer the best solution as opposed to a Slashdot friendly solution.
Then use Facebook, and it becomes such a part of daily life you won't have to wait for Christmas to find out about how your distant friends are doing. That's what it's for.
Believe it or not, but a lot of people actually LIKE lock-in, whether it be software or formats. The reasoning is simple - it reduces choices because everyone else is using it.
That and the fact most people haven't actually experienced many disadvantages. Everyone uses .doc remember, nobody uses anything else (for very large values of "nobody" of course). Everyone uses Office, and they either pay for it, get a discount through their business, or just pirate it. It's only Slashdot geeks who can't comprehend why their stance hasn't taken ground.
This part confuses me. I used to "hate" Microsoft too, until I realized this was due to me hanging around Slashdot too much. In reality, I concluded that I would have so much pent-up hate for one company it would be very damaging to me, since Microsoft ain't going anywhere. Plus, what's the point? The alternatives suck in my opinion - OpenOffice is clumsy to use, Ubuntu is useless since no matter what kernel version/Intel graphics drivers I use, it's slower than VISTA for goodness sake and develops graphics corruption over time (a major regression, but since there's no financial incentive to provide quality code, this will keep on happening I expect.)
I give up hating Microsoft because their software just works, and works well with what everyone else in the world is using, at least compared to Linux. I WISH this wasn't the case, but putting my hands over my eyes isn't helping anymore.
The thing is, you don't actually notice any real difference in how the indexing works with WS4, it's all back-end. It's suppose to be more efficient that the search/indexing code that came with Vista. I know it can be annoying when installed in XP, but since its predecessor was already integrated into Vista it should be an improvement.
If you still hate it, disable the Indexing service.
When I was in kindergarten, my parents were called up to attend a meeting with my teacher. The teacher had noticed I was being particularly irritable, twitching my head a lot, unable to keep still, and so not being able to remain focused on what I was suppose to be doing. I was being continually distracted and annoyed by something the teacher couldn't work out, so his diagnosis was that I had a learning disability and required medication/therapy.
Fortunately, the parents were suspicious of this, and so they asked me why I was having trouble keeping still. My answer? The little tag on the back inside of my shirt was annoying me by always flicking my neck. They cut the tag off, and the problem went away.
So this teacher, who didn't even bother to try and simply ASK me why I couldn't keep still, jumped to the conclusion that I had a learning/behavioral disability and needed treatment through drugs and therapy. I believe this was before the era of ADD/ADHD (or at least before they invented a name for the condition), but the conclusion was the same. I'm proud of my parents for not listening to this idiot.
Wow, that's a pretty interesting writeup, thanks for that!
People have come up with many interesting ways to play that game. I'm not talking about mods even, but things to do in the vanilla game that makes things either more of a challenge, or gives you new ways to tackle obstacles:
* Attach a grenade (doesn't matter which type) low enough for you to jump on, attach another grenade above it and jump onto that, then crouch and remove the first grenade since your arms are just long enough to do so. Then attach a new grenade, jump, remove the previous one, and repeat to get anywhere you require. Sounds laborious but can be used to scale walls very quickly with practice.
* Play entirely non-lethal, or as non-lethal as the game mechanics will allow. This might seem impossible because there's a certain point in the game where you need to escape from UNATCO, but the exit door's key is only obtained after killing a certain augmented agent. The game does not and was not intended to have a non-lethal means of dealing with this problem, but some creative players found an exploit that would forcibly open the door with her still alive (hint - involves gas grenades)
* Play entirely with stealth. NEVER get into a confrontation, avoid everyone. If someone has to die, do so with a silenced weapon and with no-one around. Hide the body.
* Play weaponless, with the exception of a crowbar or knife for breaking boxes but never for combat. Use your wits, skills and other items in your inventory to solve problems.
* Play without using medpacks, health bots or the regeneration augmentation. Use only food and drinks to heal yourself, which includes the drunken booze effect as a "punishment" for getting shot up.
* Play without augmentations (not even with the build-in light). Spend skill points on environmental skills to use ballistic/camo armor longer, use flares and flare darts for light, etc.
And of course
* Play as an asshole who pisses everyone off, and kills everyone that the game will allow.
All good fun. :)
I already knew Picasa in Linux was just the Windows version in the wrapper, but Google Earth was always expressed as being a native Linux build. Every time I've tried it though, the GUI has always looked very out of place and using its own toolkit, almost as if... it was running via a WINE wrapper too. I always knew that something was odd about GE in Linux, and now I'm not as surprised to know it's not as native as people say it is.
It's always been slower than the Windows version too. Pitty; I know Google supports Linux and open source to a degree, but with the high-profile apps like GE, Picasa and Chrome, it's always been WINE-wrapped or non-existent (Chromium is not a direct release from Google). It'd be nice to see a change.
You're getting confused with Autoplay, they're not actually the same thing
Autoplay is what brings up the dialog box based on the contents of the media
Autorun is the method by which the autorun.inf file on the media is executed automatically.
You could normally disable autoplay easily, but autorun.inf files would still run. That doesn't happen anymore.
Flash is also crap in Linux. I simply can't watch anything in YouTube without tearing/major lag when moving the mouse when viewing fullscreen, whereas in Windows on the same hardware it's perfect.
I don't count a half-assed version of a product as "supported". Yes it's Adobe's fault, but knowing who to blame doesn't fix the issue with what to choose right now.
They have, in Windows 7.
Despite what a lot of the morons in Slashdot think, Microsoft does listen to people's complaints.
Absolutely agree with this - sex is the remedy. Make the point that the guy isn't getting any and you are (hopefully), and it'll probably hurt enough to get him to start thinking about what he's missing out on by spending all his time playing Pirates.
Sex is an integral part of almost all humans, and we need it. Use this to your advantage.
When the time came to write up my Master's thesis, my supervisor told me that I HAD to use LaTeX. If I used Word, he'd kill me (I presume he was joking, but I was never really sure). So I used LaTeX. I liked the results, but the time it took to learn how to get things working and looking exactly as I wanted was considerable, and even then I had to make compromises.
It was probably a good idea to do it using LaTeX instead of Word, but I can tell you one thing - I was the ONLY postgrad engineer in my group who wrote their thesis using LaTeX. Most people can't afford the time it takes to learn a new typesetting program, and since everyone knows Word, most people would just boot it up and get straight to work. I can't blame them.
Once it became obvious we needed more girls.
So where can I buy this DOSBox? As a good capitalist I have my credit card ready for purchase, but I can't seem to find a price list anywhere. All I hear is that it opens sauce, or something like that.
Oh and before anyone notices, the Masters and the research associate stuff somewhat overlapped which is why when added, the total time appears like 9 years instead of 8. Call it overloading. :)
I did Computer Engineering and chose to undertake a Masters. Cost me 8 years of Uni all up (4.5 for the undergrad, 1.5 for working as a research associate, and then 3 for the Masters - in that order obviously).
During my Masters I did extra research associate work, as well as tutoring/marking and other Uni work. During the final year of my Masters I spent time looking for jobs. What did I learn? The industry doesn't appear to give a shit about the extra study, only experience matters. I thought that the Masters would show that I was prepared to forgo the easy path of getting a job in the persuit of hoaning my skills, but as it turns out, the private sector cares more about industry experience. I thought that once prospective employers saw my Masters (or at least Masters in progress at the time), it would be a beacon for attention. Didn't seem to turn out quite like I expected.
Eventually I got a job working in IT (go figure, but at that stage I was pretty happy to get something at least), though I'm FINALLY on my way to working in the defense industry as a proper engineer, once my clearance comes through. Perhaps the Masters itself will make more of an impact in the long term, but it sure as hell didn't help me in the short.
That's my 2c.
Indeed, and I wish I could say that I would also not buy hardware which didn't support Linux. However, I don't want to be left behind due to my persistence in disregarding technology that other people use which gives them an advantage over my ideological reasons for not wanting such technology.
Or put another way - limiting my ability to interact with the same level of capability as my colleges because I'm stubborn is a way to get left behind in the world.
I guess the reason why I'd never switched to Linux is because of shit like this? It's too tiring to have to fight against the lack of commercial and vendor support - very few businesses have any faith in it for the desktop. This means I continually hesitate if I'm going to be buying a car navigation unit, phone, web cam or any other peripheral because I will be expecting it NOT to work in Linux. If it somehow does, it generally is only after a lot of work googling and running weird scripts in a terminal.
eg. Eever tried synching a Blackberry in Linux? In Windows it's easy - install the BlackBerry Desktop Software and away you go. In Linux, or Ubuntu at least, you have to follow all this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=190938 . Yeah, really gonna happen for the non-geek end user. It's true that this is entirely the vendor's fault for not supporting Linux, but the problem is that for the hardware people WANT to use, very few do. So what would most people do, go without? Shit no, they'll run Windows and alieviate the stress and hardship.
THAT'S why even on a netbook, Linux will always come second-best.
Some people are great lawyers for a reason - they can distance themselves from logic and common sense and still present a case, so long as the price is right. Having said that, I'm not I'd want to have anything to do with them on a personal basis, as I feel their humanity would have been sucked out by the profession.
I know, it's ridiculous!
Today I was looking at a teacher's personal laptop, waiting for it to complete the logging in process after entering user credentials in Windows XP. My laptop can cold boot, run POST, boot Vista, log into my account, show the desktop and complete loading of all startup programs/services, then shutdown and power-off, and that entire process would STILL have been quicker than this guy's laptop finishing its startup after user login. Not to mention it was using 100% of one of the cores continusly and no process was showing the cause.
I kept reiterating to him, this isn't normal! How can you have been working like this for so long? Turns out he agreed, and was planning to buy a new laptop. Doesn't matter that nothing's physically wrong with the current one, and I can guarantee a reformat/reinstall would show an amazing difference. But I suppose throwing cash at new hardware is one way to fix things.
It took you five minutes to click the orb on the top left?
Sometimes I wonder how many people here actually have decent problem solving skills.
At least MS Office is TRYING something innovative (eg. experimenting with a new GUI). OpenOffice just copies the interface of older versions of MS Office. Where the innovation again?
Hell they don't even have a friggin APPLY button on their dialog windows. They should get the basics working before moving to something "innovative".