Hah, that letter in response to them is quite possibly one of the best (forgive the term) ownage letters I have ever seen. Very classy "if you fuck with me, you will regret it" letter.
Today at 6:00am, the FBI conducted an unwarranted early morning raid of our 2323 Bryan Street Datacenters, on the 7th and 24th floors.
A lie in the very first sentence? Sorry, fail. As myself and a few others pointed out yesterday when this story first popped up, sounds like something fishy is going on at Core IP.
The didn't take an entire data center, they took an entire customer out of a datacenter. That customer was coreip. coreip resells rackspace. coreip only has 50 machines. This puts things in perspective to me.
Exactly. Despite/.'s kneejerk reaction that the FBI is in the wrong on this one, no one here knows for sure what was on the warrant and why.
Reading between the lines, Core IP's machines were seized because Core IP itself is the target of the investigation.
Under what circumstances do you send 15 police cars and a SWAT presence to the home of the CEO of a IT firm?
As an engineer, I've had a hand in some pretty cool things but on a personal level, one of the things I still recall fondly is building a hovercraft from scratch for a 10th grade class project.
I ended up using a tarp with holes spaced about half an inch apart attached to a particle board to create a plenum chamber. One leaf blower to a hose through a hole in the board to fill the chamber. One more leaf blower for propulsion. The whole thing was about 1.5m by 2meters and was just enough to hold myself up. Was a bitch to control though.
Those of you commenting "my city of X in Y country has had this for years!" have not read TFA.
Burning the methane that is a byproduct of one form of wastewater treatment is neither novel or new. Many, if not most, of these types of wastewater treatment facilities produce a net energy surplus, which is more often than not inputted to the power grid. If you live in a modern city in a developed nation, it would be unusual for your city not to have one or more of these type of facilities.
But that is not what the article is about. The article is about using heat pumps to harness the heat differential between sewage pipes and the ground. At the end of the pipe level, this IS somewhat novel and innovative.
I work for and with several charitable international NGOs and mission hospitals in the developing world, mostly in East/Central Africa. I'm not the IT guy for any of these organization but in addition to my medical work, I often end up wearing the general purpose geek hat.
Although I've moved to OS X for most of my general purpose computing needs, I've been involved in the Linux/OSS community since the mid 90s. I would love to be able to recommend Linux/OSS solutions to any of the organizations I work with but in all good conscience, I can't. Fact of the matter is that anywhere I go in the developing world, i can find some guy somewhere with enough MS/Windows exposure to train to do some basic admin. Throw in some Windows only donor reporting software for funding requirements and it ain't gonna happen.
Where the hell am I going to find a competent Linux sysadmin/IT manager in the the smaller cities when I have trouble finding a guy who can barely admin Win2k/2k3 in the capital cities of Kampala/Nairobi/Kabul/etc?
One of the charitable hospitals I work with just had Cisco donate a lot of networking equipment. That's great. Only the their IT guy is barely getting by with Win2k server. He's now going to learn IOS? What's the cost of bringing in a guy who knows what he's doing and/or capable of learning? Not exactly shunning open source but you get the gist of the problem. (This was one of the few cases where it actually would have been and was cheaper to go OSS (OpenWRT + WRT54G/L).)
I'm trying to find a DBA right now to migrate a hospital Access/Jet DB to something more robust. Why is it in Access? Because no one knows anything else. I'm probably going to have to go to Nairobi or Dubai to find someone who's even capable of doing an assessment, much less implementing a full on rdb.
If I could find someone to implement OSS accounting, inventory tracking and 100% Outlook/Exchange/Office compatible software AND have teh expertise to implement and sustain those systems, I'd recommend it and have it done in an instant. Unfortunately, the practical realities override whatever philosophical inclinations I may have.
The way you handle teddy bears in a children's hospitals is you give one to the kid and he or she takes it home. It's the model we use here in some of the NGO hospitals where I've worked. The downside of this is that when you have a toy company wanting to make a donation, you have to tell them that unless the toy can be easily sterilized, they should be prepared to donate a LOT.
And I'm also glad that Penny Arcade was finally convinced to alter the red cross they were using as a part of their symbol. Although I admire and respect what Gabe and Tycho were trying to do, I tried for a while to convince them that it wasn't appropriate. While many assume that the Red Cross symbol (trademark in a way) is in the public domain but it is not. For a while there, PA/CP was in violation of the Geneva Conventions. There are some of us who use/have used the Red Cross as a symbol of protection in insecure areas and its inappropriate use diltutes that power.
I see more cool/nifty/innovative CE gadgets coming from S.Korea these days than Japan.
Re:FPS Games Fail A LOT
on
Game Breakers
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry to say this dude, but you missed the boat. With the exception of a few games, the truly great FPSs are on the PC, not on a console, which is what your post seems to be directed towards.
Despite it's weaknesses, there's a reason Counterstrike alone generates more server traffic than the entire country of Italy.
If you consider yourself a true fan of the the FPS genre, you should worry less about a less than optimal platform and control scheme - consoles, and play FPSs on the PC, where your points have already been addressed. Which isn't to say that consoles don't have great games and aren't hours of fun but unless you're gaming the depths of the PC FPS scene, you're not really a true fan of the genre.
I don't mean to sound like an elitist. Hell, I don't do much gaming anymore, much less serious league gaming. But in this case, I feel that it's very much true.
Although I can see the point you're trying to make and respect your efforts, even you have not broken out of your first world mindset, either.
Four rooms and a roof? You can get by with just a roof. Paper/pencils? Paper can expensive and not reusable. Slate and chalk first, paper and pencil for stuff you want to keep around.
The reality is that not a single one of these fanboys understands what is going on in these places. The problems many times are a complicated set of issues that can't be solved in one single step. It requires a lot of work, over time, to get things rolling. Its quite sad, really, because its perpetuating false hope and making a lot of selfish people feel good about themselves in the process.
Let them do what they can with what they know. At least they're contributing to something that might lead to solutions in the future.
Do I think it's unrealistic and they're chasing rainbows? Absolutely.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I work in children's hospitals and refugee camps in the poorest, most conflict ridden areas of the world. Can I think of a single practical place to start distributing these laptops? Not really. For the amount of money that's being spent to develop this, I could use it to physically help many more children not just develop skills and knowledge but survive from day to day.
But then again, I was never going to see that money in the first place. I might as well be frustrated at people who can afford private jets. It's their money, not mine. If some ultra-rich old fart wants to spend 50M USD Sengalese yellow bellied horned toads, let him. My first reaction would be to ask him to spend that money on saving some fellow human beings but at the end of the day, it's his money to spend the way he wants.
These "fanboys" want to spend their time, their money, their energy on a less than efficient but ultimately noble solution? Let them.
And yet here you are wasting your time ranting on/.
Seriously, get over it. People give what they are able to give. The people who started this project don't know how to get potable water to the middle of a desert or properly distribute condoms and sex education to AIDs-ravaged Africa. Nope. They know how to make computers. That's how they can help.
So quit bitching about other people not offering the right kind of help to the poor. You are not the arbiter of what sort of help is best to offer. Spend your time examining your own charitable works. Make improvements there and, for God's sake, stop criticising others who are actually doing some good in the fucking world. You aren't helping things.
Fuckin-A-Men.
I work in Africa doing many facets of public health work in and around refugee camps. Potable water and HIV education and prevention are both a part of what I do. Not everyone is cut out for it. Every other day, I question myself, too.
I see a lot of wasted money and misdirected resources. (Don't get me started on the fraction of HIV/AIDS money that could be diverted to really solve some problems.) But hey, if a bunch of geeks want to get together and try to help out, let them. At least it's a noble cause and something will be learned along the way. Its not like that money was probably going to something else anyway.
Got news for you. In much of the developing world, there are no books either.
I've lectured at medical schools in Africa where an entire class shares a few 30 year old anatomy books. What hope is there for the younger children, I don't know.
BTW, as far as I know, there is one children's library in the entire geographical region of east Africa in Addis Ababa. One.
I'm not sure how I feel about the 100 USD laptop. Sometimes I'm against it, sometimes I see no harm in it. What I do think is disappointing is that Slashdot and the tech community can't put their money where there mouth is.
Depends where you are. I'm an engineer and an epidemiologist. I work in and around IDP/refugee camps in developing countries and conflict areas. I do a lot of things, but I'm usually a water and sanitation guy, either building the system, investigating an outbreak or once I've figured it out, trying to stop it and stop it from happening again.
Having a tech do it is great, but when you're the only guy around who remotely knows what he's doing, you're down in that pit latrine yourself.
Whether I'm wearing my engineer's hat or my epidemiologist hat, it's likely to get a bunch of people poo on it.
Google can't be treated the same way as an individual consumer for the simple reason that Google has the ultimate nuclear weapon. It's like that old joke, "Woman, if you don't shut your yapping, I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat!"
If all the big players are 800 lbs gorillas, Google is a 5-ton elephant.
What you're failing to factor is that the hardcore uber gamers and geeks who keep up with Slashdot and the major tech/gaming sites are the ones who recommend to their friends and family what to buy, particularly for the more expensive pieces of hardware.
I don't know how big this effect is universally, but I almost universally recommend against buying Sony to my friends and family and have been doing so for a while now. Most of them tend to listen because as biased as my geekview tends to be, I know more than they do about anything tech related.
My guess is that the fortunate accident he's referring to is Jean Louis Gassee of Be Inc pricing itself too high and Apple going back to Steve Jobs and NeXT.
That, and kids nowadays seem to have almost preternatural reflexes on video games.
I've watched my nephews play, and both of them can process more screen information and do more accurate controls than I ever could. Granted, I'm getting closer to 40, and games used to have two buttons and a joystick.:-P
They're not only better than you at processing screen information and controls, but they're probably also better than you at visualizing 3D space on a 2D medium. In neurosurgery, surgeons of my generation or younger who grew up playing video games pick up endoscopies fast. On the other hand, older surgeons or those who never played games take longer to get comfortable or never get comfortable at all.
The problem with Doom 3 is that once you're past the first few stages of the game and you actually start to engage the incredible pattern recognition machine called your brain, the game starts to lose it's sense of suspense. You start to recognize the triggers and patterns you realize just how cheap and unoriginal the scares and thrills are. The first time the lights go out and a monster jumps out at you from a closet, you freak out. The tenth time, you're thinking, "Not this shit again." This is followed by the thought, "Why the hell are all these monsters camped out in closets waiting for me to pick up X?" The high bullshit factor started by the inability to hold a gun and a flashlight at the same time gets unbearable right about then when it dawns on you that this game took the cheap route in trying to create excitement. Once you start thinking like that while you're playing, game over.
Like I said, first few levels were great. I was so into it that I had a nice long firefight with my reflection in a mirror but it fades to fast too be considered a good game.
If you want to play an FPS that can keep a jaded gamer such as myself engaged all the way through, try F.E.A.R. Surprises are actually unexpected and its scares are almost never cheap. I played Counter-Strike at the CAL-i level, which means I have some pretty keenly honed FPS instincts. If I get hit from behind while I'm in FPS mode, I can turn 180 and pop a headshot as matter of reaction. With F.E.A.R. there were many moments where I found myself jumping and looking over my shoulder IRL. Now a game that brings out THAT level of engagement is truly great.
What you say about essentially paying for your reward is very true. I like driving games and I liked GT's simulation aspect but that wasn't what made me replaying the game for weeks and months. I played because like many others I knew who were GT addicts, half the fun is in collecting cars. Why drive around the same racetrack hundreds of times hoping to be rewarded with the GT One or an F-1 car when you can just buy it? They're taking the reward and replacing it with a transaction.
It'll be interesting to see how they actually do this and if it actually works out.
It depends on what points are being missed. I used to be a huge Sony fanboy, as I believe a lot of the posters here on/. were. Since we're here and keeping up with the "latest developments," and are painfully aware of every one of Sony anti-consumer efforts, we've turned against them.
I bought a PSX when FF7 released. I didn't go to class for a week. My roommate and I camped out at a Best Buy in the middle of nowhere along with 150 other geeks. Between those two consoles and Counter-strike, video games probably cost me at least half a grade point from college to grad and med school.
I'm still an avid video gamer. I will not be buying a PS3. Recently, my resentment of Sony has grown to the point where I will not buy Sony products at all. I AM going to buy a Wii.
I don't think I'm alone in this boat and I think in the coming few years, Sony will realize just how badly they screwed up by pissing off and turning off what was once one of the more loyal and fanatical userbases that consumer electronics ever had. Well, not including Apple, but Apple is Apple.:)
Yep. HF is straight up deadly. Eating away your flesh is the least of your worries when 3% covereage with.1M solution is enough to kill you in 48 hours. It's not a pleasant way to go, either.
I used to work with HF in my lab when I was a grad student. Let me tell you, you start to follow lab safety procedures REAL careful like.
Hey, here's a novel idea. If you don't understand the nature of the problem then either ask questions or jacking your jaw.
It looks like you missed the day in high school when everyone else was taught free market economics. This is a little bit more complicated than that, but here's what it amounts to:
Would you buy the M4 for $16000? Would you buy the AK for $16000? What about the Deagle? No? Then neither will most other people, especially when other guns are available for much cheaper. What will the guns cost? The simple answer is that whatever players in general are willing to pay for them, IN TERMS OF ITS CAPABILITIES. Do players think the UMP is worth whatever price it is? (Haven't played in a while.) No. How do you know? Because almost nobody uses the UMP. What if it cost $900? Hmm. That's a really cheap SMG.
The first few weeks to a few months will be weird as the market sorts itself out. Eventually, the guns will cost what the players think they are worth.
Second, you have the option of turning auto-update off in Steam. Find the servers playing the version you want. They're out there so quit your bitching and solve some problems for yourself.
Third, if you are so enamored with what you think is the perfect game and really, really hate change, go play CS 1.6. It hasn't changed in years. The rest of us are getting off of that iceberg.
Seriously, listening to some of you guys moan, you'd think Valve was going about replacing your left testicles with a pink Furby.
That SSGT was a moron. If she'd just been patient and put herself on the wait list, she could have had military surgeons do breast augmentation for free.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah, that letter in response to them is quite possibly one of the best (forgive the term) ownage letters I have ever seen. Very classy "if you fuck with me, you will regret it" letter.
Today at 6:00am, the FBI conducted an unwarranted early morning raid of our 2323 Bryan Street Datacenters, on the 7th and 24th floors.
A lie in the very first sentence? Sorry, fail. As myself and a few others pointed out yesterday when this story first popped up, sounds like something fishy is going on at Core IP.
The didn't take an entire data center, they took an entire customer out of a datacenter. That customer was coreip. coreip resells rackspace. coreip only has 50 machines. This puts things in perspective to me.
Exactly. Despite /.'s kneejerk reaction that the FBI is in the wrong on this one, no one here knows for sure what was on the warrant and why.
Reading between the lines, Core IP's machines were seized because Core IP itself is the target of the investigation.
Under what circumstances do you send 15 police cars and a SWAT presence to the home of the CEO of a IT firm?
My guess, something fishy's going on at Core IP.
As an engineer, I've had a hand in some pretty cool things but on a personal level, one of the things I still recall fondly is building a hovercraft from scratch for a 10th grade class project.
I ended up using a tarp with holes spaced about half an inch apart attached to a particle board to create a plenum chamber. One leaf blower to a hose through a hole in the board to fill the chamber. One more leaf blower for propulsion. The whole thing was about 1.5m by 2meters and was just enough to hold myself up. Was a bitch to control though.
Those of you commenting "my city of X in Y country has had this for years!" have not read TFA.
Burning the methane that is a byproduct of one form of wastewater treatment is neither novel or new. Many, if not most, of these types of wastewater treatment facilities produce a net energy surplus, which is more often than not inputted to the power grid. If you live in a modern city in a developed nation, it would be unusual for your city not to have one or more of these type of facilities.
But that is not what the article is about. The article is about using heat pumps to harness the heat differential between sewage pipes and the ground. At the end of the pipe level, this IS somewhat novel and innovative.
I work for and with several charitable international NGOs and mission hospitals in the developing world, mostly in East/Central Africa. I'm not the IT guy for any of these organization but in addition to my medical work, I often end up wearing the general purpose geek hat.
Although I've moved to OS X for most of my general purpose computing needs, I've been involved in the Linux/OSS community since the mid 90s. I would love to be able to recommend Linux/OSS solutions to any of the organizations I work with but in all good conscience, I can't. Fact of the matter is that anywhere I go in the developing world, i can find some guy somewhere with enough MS/Windows exposure to train to do some basic admin. Throw in some Windows only donor reporting software for funding requirements and it ain't gonna happen.
Where the hell am I going to find a competent Linux sysadmin/IT manager in the the smaller cities when I have trouble finding a guy who can barely admin Win2k/2k3 in the capital cities of Kampala/Nairobi/Kabul/etc?
One of the charitable hospitals I work with just had Cisco donate a lot of networking equipment. That's great. Only the their IT guy is barely getting by with Win2k server. He's now going to learn IOS? What's the cost of bringing in a guy who knows what he's doing and/or capable of learning? Not exactly shunning open source but you get the gist of the problem. (This was one of the few cases where it actually would have been and was cheaper to go OSS (OpenWRT + WRT54G/L).)
I'm trying to find a DBA right now to migrate a hospital Access/Jet DB to something more robust. Why is it in Access? Because no one knows anything else. I'm probably going to have to go to Nairobi or Dubai to find someone who's even capable of doing an assessment, much less implementing a full on rdb.
If I could find someone to implement OSS accounting, inventory tracking and 100% Outlook/Exchange/Office compatible software AND have teh expertise to implement and sustain those systems, I'd recommend it and have it done in an instant. Unfortunately, the practical realities override whatever philosophical inclinations I may have.
The way you handle teddy bears in a children's hospitals is you give one to the kid and he or she takes it home. It's the model we use here in some of the NGO hospitals where I've worked. The downside of this is that when you have a toy company wanting to make a donation, you have to tell them that unless the toy can be easily sterilized, they should be prepared to donate a LOT.
And I'm also glad that Penny Arcade was finally convinced to alter the red cross they were using as a part of their symbol. Although I admire and respect what Gabe and Tycho were trying to do, I tried for a while to convince them that it wasn't appropriate. While many assume that the Red Cross symbol (trademark in a way) is in the public domain but it is not. For a while there, PA/CP was in violation of the Geneva Conventions. There are some of us who use/have used the Red Cross as a symbol of protection in insecure areas and its inappropriate use diltutes that power.
I see more cool/nifty/innovative CE gadgets coming from S.Korea these days than Japan.
I'm sorry to say this dude, but you missed the boat. With the exception of a few games, the truly great FPSs are on the PC, not on a console, which is what your post seems to be directed towards.
Despite it's weaknesses, there's a reason Counterstrike alone generates more server traffic than the entire country of Italy.
If you consider yourself a true fan of the the FPS genre, you should worry less about a less than optimal platform and control scheme - consoles, and play FPSs on the PC, where your points have already been addressed. Which isn't to say that consoles don't have great games and aren't hours of fun but unless you're gaming the depths of the PC FPS scene, you're not really a true fan of the genre.
I don't mean to sound like an elitist. Hell, I don't do much gaming anymore, much less serious league gaming. But in this case, I feel that it's very much true.
Although I can see the point you're trying to make and respect your efforts, even you have not broken out of your first world mindset, either.
Four rooms and a roof? You can get by with just a roof.
Paper/pencils? Paper can expensive and not reusable. Slate and chalk first, paper and pencil for stuff you want to keep around.
Let them do what they can with what they know. At least they're contributing to something that might lead to solutions in the future.
Do I think it's unrealistic and they're chasing rainbows? Absolutely.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I work in children's hospitals and refugee camps in the poorest, most conflict ridden areas of the world. Can I think of a single practical place to start distributing these laptops? Not really. For the amount of money that's being spent to develop this, I could use it to physically help many more children not just develop skills and knowledge but survive from day to day.
But then again, I was never going to see that money in the first place. I might as well be frustrated at people who can afford private jets. It's their money, not mine. If some ultra-rich old fart wants to spend 50M USD Sengalese yellow bellied horned toads, let him. My first reaction would be to ask him to spend that money on saving some fellow human beings but at the end of the day, it's his money to spend the way he wants.
These "fanboys" want to spend their time, their money, their energy on a less than efficient but ultimately noble solution? Let them.
Got news for you. In much of the developing world, there are no books either.
I've lectured at medical schools in Africa where an entire class shares a few 30 year old anatomy books. What hope is there for the younger children, I don't know.
BTW, as far as I know, there is one children's library in the entire geographical region of east Africa in Addis Ababa. One.
I'm not sure how I feel about the 100 USD laptop. Sometimes I'm against it, sometimes I see no harm in it. What I do think is disappointing is that Slashdot and the tech community can't put their money where there mouth is.
Depends where you are. I'm an engineer and an epidemiologist. I work in and around IDP/refugee camps in developing countries and conflict areas. I do a lot of things, but I'm usually a water and sanitation guy, either building the system, investigating an outbreak or once I've figured it out, trying to stop it and stop it from happening again.
Having a tech do it is great, but when you're the only guy around who remotely knows what he's doing, you're down in that pit latrine yourself.
Whether I'm wearing my engineer's hat or my epidemiologist hat, it's likely to get a bunch of people poo on it.
Google can't be treated the same way as an individual consumer for the simple reason that Google has the ultimate nuclear weapon. It's like that old joke, "Woman, if you don't shut your yapping, I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat!"
If all the big players are 800 lbs gorillas, Google is a 5-ton elephant.
What you're failing to factor is that the hardcore uber gamers and geeks who keep up with Slashdot and the major tech/gaming sites are the ones who recommend to their friends and family what to buy, particularly for the more expensive pieces of hardware.
I don't know how big this effect is universally, but I almost universally recommend against buying Sony to my friends and family and have been doing so for a while now. Most of them tend to listen because as biased as my geekview tends to be, I know more than they do about anything tech related.
My guess is that the fortunate accident he's referring to is Jean Louis Gassee of Be Inc pricing itself too high and Apple going back to Steve Jobs and NeXT.
The problem with Doom 3 is that once you're past the first few stages of the game and you actually start to engage the incredible pattern recognition machine called your brain, the game starts to lose it's sense of suspense. You start to recognize the triggers and patterns you realize just how cheap and unoriginal the scares and thrills are. The first time the lights go out and a monster jumps out at you from a closet, you freak out. The tenth time, you're thinking, "Not this shit again." This is followed by the thought, "Why the hell are all these monsters camped out in closets waiting for me to pick up X?" The high bullshit factor started by the inability to hold a gun and a flashlight at the same time gets unbearable right about then when it dawns on you that this game took the cheap route in trying to create excitement. Once you start thinking like that while you're playing, game over.
Like I said, first few levels were great. I was so into it that I had a nice long firefight with my reflection in a mirror but it fades to fast too be considered a good game.
If you want to play an FPS that can keep a jaded gamer such as myself engaged all the way through, try F.E.A.R. Surprises are actually unexpected and its scares are almost never cheap. I played Counter-Strike at the CAL-i level, which means I have some pretty keenly honed FPS instincts. If I get hit from behind while I'm in FPS mode, I can turn 180 and pop a headshot as matter of reaction. With F.E.A.R. there were many moments where I found myself jumping and looking over my shoulder IRL. Now a game that brings out THAT level of engagement is truly great.
Dude, Ninja Gaiden Black was so hard, I died twice before I even opened the box!
What you say about essentially paying for your reward is very true. I like driving games and I liked GT's simulation aspect but that wasn't what made me replaying the game for weeks and months. I played because like many others I knew who were GT addicts, half the fun is in collecting cars. Why drive around the same racetrack hundreds of times hoping to be rewarded with the GT One or an F-1 car when you can just buy it? They're taking the reward and replacing it with a transaction.
It'll be interesting to see how they actually do this and if it actually works out.
It depends on what points are being missed. I used to be a huge Sony fanboy, as I believe a lot of the posters here on /. were. Since we're here and keeping up with the "latest developments," and are painfully aware of every one of Sony anti-consumer efforts, we've turned against them.
:)
I bought a PSX when FF7 released. I didn't go to class for a week. My roommate and I camped out at a Best Buy in the middle of nowhere along with 150 other geeks. Between those two consoles and Counter-strike, video games probably cost me at least half a grade point from college to grad and med school.
I'm still an avid video gamer. I will not be buying a PS3. Recently, my resentment of Sony has grown to the point where I will not buy Sony products at all. I AM going to buy a Wii.
I don't think I'm alone in this boat and I think in the coming few years, Sony will realize just how badly they screwed up by pissing off and turning off what was once one of the more loyal and fanatical userbases that consumer electronics ever had. Well, not including Apple, but Apple is Apple.
Yep. HF is straight up deadly. Eating away your flesh is the least of your worries when 3% covereage with .1M solution is enough to kill you in 48 hours. It's not a pleasant way to go, either.
I used to work with HF in my lab when I was a grad student. Let me tell you, you start to follow lab safety procedures REAL careful like.
Hey, here's a novel idea. If you don't understand the nature of the problem then either ask questions or jacking your jaw.
It looks like you missed the day in high school when everyone else was taught free market economics. This is a little bit more complicated than that, but here's what it amounts to:
Would you buy the M4 for $16000? Would you buy the AK for $16000? What about the Deagle? No? Then neither will most other people, especially when other guns are available for much cheaper. What will the guns cost? The simple answer is that whatever players in general are willing to pay for them, IN TERMS OF ITS CAPABILITIES. Do players think the UMP is worth whatever price it is? (Haven't played in a while.) No. How do you know? Because almost nobody uses the UMP. What if it cost $900? Hmm. That's a really cheap SMG.
The first few weeks to a few months will be weird as the market sorts itself out. Eventually, the guns will cost what the players think they are worth.
Second, you have the option of turning auto-update off in Steam. Find the servers playing the version you want. They're out there so quit your bitching and solve some problems for yourself.
Third, if you are so enamored with what you think is the perfect game and really, really hate change, go play CS 1.6. It hasn't changed in years. The rest of us are getting off of that iceberg.
Seriously, listening to some of you guys moan, you'd think Valve was going about replacing your left testicles with a pink Furby.
That SSGT was a moron. If she'd just been patient and put herself on the wait list, she could have had military surgeons do breast augmentation for free.