Yes, in an ideal world, all drivers would devote 100% of their attention to driving safely and not distract themselves.
Unfortunately, in practice, people are going to zone out, talk to their passengers, mess with their radio, etc. I'd much rather have them ask their car for a song or directions than have them look down to adjust the radio dials or check a map. That's what this technology is trying to address, and I would guess it will eventually make us safer, should they get it adopted and used in a widespread fashion.
Years ago (about 1998-1999), I played Team Fortress Classic on my Thinkpad with the trackpoint (nipple). It does actually work fairly well once you get used to it, and for some time afterward I preferred it to the touch pad. I seem to recall early touch pad implementations to be somewhat poor, as well, at least compared to the Thinkpad I was used to; this has undoubtedly improved since then.
My current laptop is a Macbook Pro, and I use the multitouch scrolling and context-sensitive click capabilities of it frequently enough that I don't think a trackpoint would be effective for it. If the hardware had two discrete buttons and some capability for scrolling with the trackpoint, I would probably want one of them over the touch pad.
That's a wonderful point, except that the article and the grandparent poster are complaining about HD-DVD. You know, the non-Sony format.
Personally, I don't really care who or what wins this stupid high-def format war, so long as it goes away. I suppose I'm technically in the Blu-Ray camp (I unexpectedly received a PS3 over the holidays), but mostly I just want to purchase high-definition movies without worrying about which studios are supporting which type of disc.
Well, I was going to comment on all the other posts relating horror stories of the requirements in other states, but in Wisconsin it's actually quite reasonable. According to the Department of Regulation and Licensing, you must:
pass a 100-question exam on Wisconsin statues and codes relevant to private investigation
be employed by a private detective agency (presumably you could form your own)
be insured or bonded
be over 18 years old
submit to a background check (fingerprinting) and have no criminal record
This doesn't seem to be too much of a burden for interested computer forensics specialists. Your mileage may vary in other states, naturally.
Having "enjoyed" airline travel over the holidays this year, I suppose I can comment a bit on what I dislike about the state of airport security in the US these days.
Mostly, I feel it's rather demeaning. I used to travel a lot in the late nineties, when security was much less invasive, and I feel that it's no safer today than it was back then. There have been many instances of prohibited materials being slipped past TSA security, and oftentimes the regulations are overly restrictive and do little to nothing to improve actual security. I'm not going to be hijacking an airplane with my Swiss Army keychain (1" blade). I don't feel that I should be hassled about taking off my shoes for the X-ray machine when I've just watched eight people go through the metal detector without doing so. If we're going to have substantial airport security (which I would suggest is not necessary), it should be evenly enforced by well-paid, well-trained individuals with policies that are shown to have an impact. What we have now does little more than inconvenience travelers and provide a false sense of security.
This may be middle class whining, but I feel that it's not unreasonable.
Really? I imagine that it varies with your threshold settings, but you seem to imply there's a lot of non-text content on the page (which is presumably not affected).
Checking this story with Firebug, I see 143 KB total (127 KB cached). That's using the old-style comment display, not the Javascript-enabled version. Mind you, Firefox supports gzipped pages, so it's entirely possible that if you're using a browser which doesn't, you'll see much higher numbers.
This topic is of some interest to me, as I'm a web developer by trade and I've been experimenting with ways to reduce the bandwidth requirements for some of the sites I produce.
Radiohead is British, but Slashdot is written in American English. Considering that you typically follow the grammar rules of your own nationality rather than the nationality of the subject, I would say there's no error here.
Although Intel's Linux driver support is pretty good on the whole, the integrated OS is a feature of the ASUS motherboard and isn't a product of Intel's good will toward Linux.
Why is there a consistent negative vibe around IE7, calling it a "forced update" and so on?
Speaking as a web developer, IE7 makes my life a hell of a lot easier. It's not perfect (it's not even great), but it's definitely better than IE6. If all the people still using IE magically became IE7 users, at least I wouldn't have to worry about some of the retarded things like the lack of alpha PNG support. I can understand that you might not want to upgrade if you're a business with a variety of web apps that rely on IE6--my heart goes out to you--but I would really like to see it pushed on the home user. Another legitimate complaint, of course, is that the GUI for IE7 is not what I would call intuitive; I do wish Microsoft had provided a version with IE6's GUI but IE7's rendering engine.
We should be trying to make the web incrementally better whenever possible, instead of making snide remarks because it's not a 100% solution.
If I'm interpreting their statistics correctly--and it's possible that I'm not--the overall number of lawsuits has dropped by 50%, but the overall cost of settlements has only dropped 23%. This suggests to me that although the incidence of lawsuits was substantially reduced, the cost per lawsuit rose quite a bit.
This is all well and good if you're one of the doctors whose possible lawsuit never happens because you apologize, but it doesn't help you very much if you get the asshole patient who uses your apology to ream you in court. From a personal, hedging-my-bets point of view, not making the apology is the less risky course of action.
My guess is that they're complaining about it now because it's a much more convincing (from a legal perspective, anyways) to complain about something that has been or is being done now, rather than something that will/may be done in the future.
After all, it would be rather simple for Microsoft to say that every feature in Vista was subject to change (which they did say, and did change many features, I might add). Then, after the issue had been dismissed once, Google would have had an even harder time bringing it up again. Now, as to whether or not this is a good move, I'm somewhat split.
I suspect that Google doesn't want to be the next Netscape and give up their leadership position due to, well, a combination of things, one of which was Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position. I don't necessarily agree with the way they're handling it, but I suppose they've got to spend their lawyer dollars somewhere--at least they're not attacking a random open source project for infringement of some sort.
The NES had "optional" upgrades. These Elite features are optional: nothing more. If there was a "penultimate NES", it would include a Zapper, R.O.B., Action Pad, NES Satellite, and maybe other things I'm forgetting. Remember, that system also sold in different level "trims". Hell, the overwhelming majority of NES titles had additional memory banking hardware in each cartridge to enable the game to access more than 64K of memory.
Genesis: Penultimate would have: Genesis, Master System adapter, Sega CD, 32X.
Why are these "penultimate" versions? Are there some features being left out here and saved for the "ultimate" version or what?
I'm all for getting riled up and everything, but you know, it's rather more likely that Yahoo is pushing IE7 on anyone who's not running IE7 (so Firefox, Safari, IE6 or lower, etc) instead of specifically trying to get you to switch from Firefox.
This isn't really shocking or terrible or anything, as it seems like Yahoo has a branded download of IE ("IE7 Optimized for Yahoo" is visible in one of the screenshots) and doesn't have a branded version of the other browsers. Does it really matter what browser they advertise?
Actually, according to the Wikipedia article (far from exhaustive, I know, but with the recent release of Splinter Cell 4 I'm not about to start sifting through Google for it), the original Splinter Cell was developed by Ubisoft Montreal. French Canada, yes, but not France.
*Did anyone catch how in the original Splinter Cell, your boss urges you to collect more evidence because "If we're going to go to war over this, the evidence needs to be SOLID" ? Yes, France, we get it.
On this note, although the original Splinter Cell was released in Nov. 2002, right as the United States was gearing up for the Iraq war, I don't think they really meant this as a subtle dig at U.S. foreign policy. My memory of the media/public response at the time is rather spotty, but I don't feel that the U.S.'s decision to invade Iraq was really questioned until a reasonable amount of time after it had occurred. Since the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq wasn't signed into law until Oct. 16, 2002, I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't portrayed too negatively at the time. Additionally, I highly doubt that Ubisoft was going through a game that was due to be released in a month and adding anti-war/anti-U.S. propaganda to it.
The book was published in January of 2006, and I found it to be as timely as can be expected from a computer/internet book. A few of the screens look a little different (the AdSense color-scheme chooser has changed), but none of the info seems to be harmfully wrong. Perhaps the biggest sins are those of omission. The AdSense API is not mentioned, and the AdSense Calendar did not make the cut, either. However, as I write this review, these new features are only a few weeks old, so Davis can hardly be blamed.
Being that the book was published in January 2006, as stated, why even mention the fact that it doesn't include features that you yourself admit are only a few weeks old now, in November? Did you expect the author to look into the future and write about features that didn't exist yet? This paragraph seems pretty much like filler to me...
Judging by the screenshots, I'd be pretty surprised if the game has anything to do with the SCUMM engine. Even if it did, it's highly doubtful that it would 'just work' on ScummVM.
That being said, I'm looking forward to this quite a bit; I've got my Gametap subscription primed!
"FINE, LEAVE, BUT DON'T EXPECT FOR ME TO WELCOME YOU BACK LATER!" This is the vibe I got from the fact that they have a policy of deleting characters on inactive accounts after as few as 3 months.
I totally agree with you on that count, it's absolutely retarded that they delete your characters after three months--worse, they don't even actually delete them, they just make them inaccessible to you. That's right, you can in fact call PlayOnline support and have a character reactivated up to three months after it's initially deleted (whether you pushed the button yourself or they automatically did it), so you have a total of six months to reactivate. But wait, there's more! Even though they refuse to restore a character after more than six months, they've run a promotion twice now (it's currently ongoing, even) called Return Home to Vana'diel that will allow you to restore any character. They clearly have the data stored, they just decide arbitrarily to restrict your access to it. Go figure.
Completely killing your PlayOnline registration is something I'd never heard of is even more ridiculous.
They don't actually do this, but their whole PlayOnline system is so confusing I'm not at all surprised some people might think that. The confusing thing is that when you sign up for FFXI, you actually get two accounts: one, your in-game account, is what you'd expect, and the other one is an account with PlayOnline. The PlayOnline account is considered a separate, free account that happens to be required to play FFXI. However, when you cancel FFXI, you're also likely to cancel PlayOnline too, since it's referred to as a "subscription." You can reactivate your PlayOnline account at any time with the original registration details (no need to purchase another copy), but you do get something to the effect of "Your PlayOnline account has been cancelled, yadda yadda" when you try to log in. Like I said, it's totally retarded.
Now, all that being said, I do enjoy FFXI. I've been an off-and-on player since the NA PC release (having played numerous other MMOs like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, A Tale in the Desert, etc, during the off times) and it does keep me coming back. I'm definitely far from hardcore--my highest job is level 67--and I wouldn't play it without my friends, but it does offer a much more compelling group dynamic than any of the other MMOs I've played. Unfortunately, that means its solo game is essentially non-existent, and it definitely shows its age after four years on the market without any substantial engine changes, not to mention the fact that its control scheme on the PC is essentially mapping your keyboard to a controller (it's actually a reasonable layout, once you get used to it, but don't expect, well, any mouse use). In the end, whether or not you enjoy FFXI depends heavily on your personality and the people you play it with. Ideally, you'd start with five like-minded friends whose playstyles happen to map into a nice party setup (ha!); in that case, I'd say it's the perfect MMO.
Okay, I'm done laughing at that last sentence now.
It kept selling very well with addons such as Opposing Forces, Counter Strike and a few others. Half Life 2 however puts the modding capabilities into the hands of the common man.... For HalfLife 1, you could make maps and what not, but modding wasn't as popular is it is now.
I'm afraid that I think you're entirely incorrect. First off, one of your examples of an 'add on,' Counter-Strike, was initially a user created mod that went through many iterations (7 major public beta versions, for example) before it was picked up and distributed commercially by Valve. Day of Defeat went through a similar process. Much of what's available commercially for Half-Life 2 also started as a free mod (e.g. Red Orchestra).
Looking at www.planethalflife.com's hosted sites, I see a total of four mods hosted for Half-Life 2 and well over twenty for Half-Life 1. Most of the announcements on the front page relate to mods that were already released for Half-Life 1 which are now producing sequels that run on the Half-Life 2 engine. I also remember playing many Half-Life 1 mods, including Wizard Wars, Science and Industry, Holy Wars, The Wastes, Snark Wars, Sven Co-op... the list goes on and on.
I would like to take a moment to make it clear that I'm not denigrating the modding capabilities that Valve has provided with Half-Life 2. Indeed, although they took their time in releasing the tools, they seem to be comparable if not better than what was released for working with Half-Life 1. You might think that Half-Life 2 mod development is phenomenally more popular than Half-Life 1 development looking at the current development numbers, but who expects people to create new mods for a game that's more than six years old, particularly one whose sequel has been out for more than a year? Also, bear in mind that many of the mods that are announced, set up websites, etc., never get past the "posting nice concept art and renders to the front page" phase, whereas all the mods I mentioned for Half-Life 1 were released and playable at some point.
I agree with you that the mod scene for Half-Life 2 looks promising, but Half-Life 1's mod community was definitely more than you're giving it credit for. Or, to quote a friend, "Modding wasn't popular back in Half-Life 1? I wonder what the fuck I was playing for 6 years."
They're offering the masking software because some unscrupulous OEM (the sort who sells people pre-built computers with $7 power supplies so they know they'll be back in the shop soon) will buy these rebranded Celerons and sell them to consumers as the real deal.
I'd imagine that they don't really worry about masking it on non-Windows OSes, since the proportion of users that buys a machine from a vendor like this and puts Linux or something on it is likely rather small. The people buying from this sort of vendor aren't techies, or even really mass market; techies would be buying parts individually (and hopefully from a reputable vendor) or, like the majority of consumers, buying from Dell or HP or whichever big OEM is offering the best deal at the time.
This is an annoying, amoral practice, but it's not really any different from scams in any other industry. The solution is, as always, to buy from people you know and trust and avoid Comps'R'Us, no matter how sweet the deal seems.
Competent people are prepared for the incompetent, so the use of force is their first choice. They just don't take it until their other options are gone.
So their first choice is a lot like their last choice, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, in an ideal world, all drivers would devote 100% of their attention to driving safely and not distract themselves.
Unfortunately, in practice, people are going to zone out, talk to their passengers, mess with their radio, etc. I'd much rather have them ask their car for a song or directions than have them look down to adjust the radio dials or check a map. That's what this technology is trying to address, and I would guess it will eventually make us safer, should they get it adopted and used in a widespread fashion.
Years ago (about 1998-1999), I played Team Fortress Classic on my Thinkpad with the trackpoint (nipple). It does actually work fairly well once you get used to it, and for some time afterward I preferred it to the touch pad. I seem to recall early touch pad implementations to be somewhat poor, as well, at least compared to the Thinkpad I was used to; this has undoubtedly improved since then.
My current laptop is a Macbook Pro, and I use the multitouch scrolling and context-sensitive click capabilities of it frequently enough that I don't think a trackpoint would be effective for it. If the hardware had two discrete buttons and some capability for scrolling with the trackpoint, I would probably want one of them over the touch pad.
That's a wonderful point, except that the article and the grandparent poster are complaining about HD-DVD. You know, the non-Sony format.
Personally, I don't really care who or what wins this stupid high-def format war, so long as it goes away. I suppose I'm technically in the Blu-Ray camp (I unexpectedly received a PS3 over the holidays), but mostly I just want to purchase high-definition movies without worrying about which studios are supporting which type of disc.
Blah, statutes, not statues. I even previewed the damn thing and missed that.
Well, I was going to comment on all the other posts relating horror stories of the requirements in other states, but in Wisconsin it's actually quite reasonable. According to the Department of Regulation and Licensing, you must:
This doesn't seem to be too much of a burden for interested computer forensics specialists. Your mileage may vary in other states, naturally.
Having "enjoyed" airline travel over the holidays this year, I suppose I can comment a bit on what I dislike about the state of airport security in the US these days.
Mostly, I feel it's rather demeaning. I used to travel a lot in the late nineties, when security was much less invasive, and I feel that it's no safer today than it was back then. There have been many instances of prohibited materials being slipped past TSA security, and oftentimes the regulations are overly restrictive and do little to nothing to improve actual security. I'm not going to be hijacking an airplane with my Swiss Army keychain (1" blade). I don't feel that I should be hassled about taking off my shoes for the X-ray machine when I've just watched eight people go through the metal detector without doing so. If we're going to have substantial airport security (which I would suggest is not necessary), it should be evenly enforced by well-paid, well-trained individuals with policies that are shown to have an impact. What we have now does little more than inconvenience travelers and provide a false sense of security.
This may be middle class whining, but I feel that it's not unreasonable.
The post you replied to was a reply to a -1, Flamebait comment that said Firefox was IE with a few more bells and whistles.
I don't blame you for this; Slashdot handles the threading of filtered comments rather poorly.
Really? I imagine that it varies with your threshold settings, but you seem to imply there's a lot of non-text content on the page (which is presumably not affected).
Checking this story with Firebug, I see 143 KB total (127 KB cached). That's using the old-style comment display, not the Javascript-enabled version. Mind you, Firefox supports gzipped pages, so it's entirely possible that if you're using a browser which doesn't, you'll see much higher numbers.
This topic is of some interest to me, as I'm a web developer by trade and I've been experimenting with ways to reduce the bandwidth requirements for some of the sites I produce.
Holy shit, the joke cut his head off!!!
Radiohead is British, but Slashdot is written in American English. Considering that you typically follow the grammar rules of your own nationality rather than the nationality of the subject, I would say there's no error here.
Although Intel's Linux driver support is pretty good on the whole, the integrated OS is a feature of the ASUS motherboard and isn't a product of Intel's good will toward Linux.
There was a previous Slashdot feature specifically covering that, if you want more information.
Why is there a consistent negative vibe around IE7, calling it a "forced update" and so on?
Speaking as a web developer, IE7 makes my life a hell of a lot easier. It's not perfect (it's not even great), but it's definitely better than IE6. If all the people still using IE magically became IE7 users, at least I wouldn't have to worry about some of the retarded things like the lack of alpha PNG support. I can understand that you might not want to upgrade if you're a business with a variety of web apps that rely on IE6--my heart goes out to you--but I would really like to see it pushed on the home user. Another legitimate complaint, of course, is that the GUI for IE7 is not what I would call intuitive; I do wish Microsoft had provided a version with IE6's GUI but IE7's rendering engine.
We should be trying to make the web incrementally better whenever possible, instead of making snide remarks because it's not a 100% solution.
If I'm interpreting their statistics correctly--and it's possible that I'm not--the overall number of lawsuits has dropped by 50%, but the overall cost of settlements has only dropped 23%. This suggests to me that although the incidence of lawsuits was substantially reduced, the cost per lawsuit rose quite a bit.
This is all well and good if you're one of the doctors whose possible lawsuit never happens because you apologize, but it doesn't help you very much if you get the asshole patient who uses your apology to ream you in court. From a personal, hedging-my-bets point of view, not making the apology is the less risky course of action.
My guess is that they're complaining about it now because it's a much more convincing (from a legal perspective, anyways) to complain about something that has been or is being done now, rather than something that will/may be done in the future.
After all, it would be rather simple for Microsoft to say that every feature in Vista was subject to change (which they did say, and did change many features, I might add). Then, after the issue had been dismissed once, Google would have had an even harder time bringing it up again. Now, as to whether or not this is a good move, I'm somewhat split.
I suspect that Google doesn't want to be the next Netscape and give up their leadership position due to, well, a combination of things, one of which was Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position. I don't necessarily agree with the way they're handling it, but I suppose they've got to spend their lawyer dollars somewhere--at least they're not attacking a random open source project for infringement of some sort.
Why are these "penultimate" versions? Are there some features being left out here and saved for the "ultimate" version or what?
I'm all for getting riled up and everything, but you know, it's rather more likely that Yahoo is pushing IE7 on anyone who's not running IE7 (so Firefox, Safari, IE6 or lower, etc) instead of specifically trying to get you to switch from Firefox.
This isn't really shocking or terrible or anything, as it seems like Yahoo has a branded download of IE ("IE7 Optimized for Yahoo" is visible in one of the screenshots) and doesn't have a branded version of the other browsers. Does it really matter what browser they advertise?
Actually, according to the Wikipedia article (far from exhaustive, I know, but with the recent release of Splinter Cell 4 I'm not about to start sifting through Google for it), the original Splinter Cell was developed by Ubisoft Montreal. French Canada, yes, but not France.
On this note, although the original Splinter Cell was released in Nov. 2002, right as the United States was gearing up for the Iraq war, I don't think they really meant this as a subtle dig at U.S. foreign policy. My memory of the media/public response at the time is rather spotty, but I don't feel that the U.S.'s decision to invade Iraq was really questioned until a reasonable amount of time after it had occurred. Since the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq wasn't signed into law until Oct. 16, 2002, I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't portrayed too negatively at the time. Additionally, I highly doubt that Ubisoft was going through a game that was due to be released in a month and adding anti-war/anti-U.S. propaganda to it.
Being that the book was published in January 2006, as stated, why even mention the fact that it doesn't include features that you yourself admit are only a few weeks old now, in November? Did you expect the author to look into the future and write about features that didn't exist yet? This paragraph seems pretty much like filler to me...
Judging by the screenshots, I'd be pretty surprised if the game has anything to do with the SCUMM engine. Even if it did, it's highly doubtful that it would 'just work' on ScummVM.
That being said, I'm looking forward to this quite a bit; I've got my Gametap subscription primed!
I totally agree with you on that count, it's absolutely retarded that they delete your characters after three months--worse, they don't even actually delete them, they just make them inaccessible to you. That's right, you can in fact call PlayOnline support and have a character reactivated up to three months after it's initially deleted (whether you pushed the button yourself or they automatically did it), so you have a total of six months to reactivate. But wait, there's more! Even though they refuse to restore a character after more than six months, they've run a promotion twice now (it's currently ongoing, even) called Return Home to Vana'diel that will allow you to restore any character. They clearly have the data stored, they just decide arbitrarily to restrict your access to it. Go figure.
They don't actually do this, but their whole PlayOnline system is so confusing I'm not at all surprised some people might think that. The confusing thing is that when you sign up for FFXI, you actually get two accounts: one, your in-game account, is what you'd expect, and the other one is an account with PlayOnline. The PlayOnline account is considered a separate, free account that happens to be required to play FFXI. However, when you cancel FFXI, you're also likely to cancel PlayOnline too, since it's referred to as a "subscription." You can reactivate your PlayOnline account at any time with the original registration details (no need to purchase another copy), but you do get something to the effect of "Your PlayOnline account has been cancelled, yadda yadda" when you try to log in. Like I said, it's totally retarded.
Now, all that being said, I do enjoy FFXI. I've been an off-and-on player since the NA PC release (having played numerous other MMOs like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, A Tale in the Desert, etc, during the off times) and it does keep me coming back. I'm definitely far from hardcore--my highest job is level 67--and I wouldn't play it without my friends, but it does offer a much more compelling group dynamic than any of the other MMOs I've played. Unfortunately, that means its solo game is essentially non-existent, and it definitely shows its age after four years on the market without any substantial engine changes, not to mention the fact that its control scheme on the PC is essentially mapping your keyboard to a controller (it's actually a reasonable layout, once you get used to it, but don't expect, well, any mouse use). In the end, whether or not you enjoy FFXI depends heavily on your personality and the people you play it with. Ideally, you'd start with five like-minded friends whose playstyles happen to map into a nice party setup (ha!); in that case, I'd say it's the perfect MMO.
Okay, I'm done laughing at that last sentence now.
Ah, my apologies--I recalled playing RO with UT2004 and somehow assumed their latest release was a HL2 mod since it was on Steam.
Thanks for the correction!
It kept selling very well with addons such as Opposing Forces, Counter Strike and a few others. Half Life 2 however puts the modding capabilities into the hands of the common man. ... For HalfLife 1, you could make maps and what not, but modding wasn't as popular is it is now.
I'm afraid that I think you're entirely incorrect. First off, one of your examples of an 'add on,' Counter-Strike, was initially a user created mod that went through many iterations (7 major public beta versions, for example) before it was picked up and distributed commercially by Valve. Day of Defeat went through a similar process. Much of what's available commercially for Half-Life 2 also started as a free mod (e.g. Red Orchestra).
Looking at www.planethalflife.com's hosted sites, I see a total of four mods hosted for Half-Life 2 and well over twenty for Half-Life 1. Most of the announcements on the front page relate to mods that were already released for Half-Life 1 which are now producing sequels that run on the Half-Life 2 engine. I also remember playing many Half-Life 1 mods, including Wizard Wars, Science and Industry, Holy Wars, The Wastes, Snark Wars, Sven Co-op... the list goes on and on.
I would like to take a moment to make it clear that I'm not denigrating the modding capabilities that Valve has provided with Half-Life 2. Indeed, although they took their time in releasing the tools, they seem to be comparable if not better than what was released for working with Half-Life 1. You might think that Half-Life 2 mod development is phenomenally more popular than Half-Life 1 development looking at the current development numbers, but who expects people to create new mods for a game that's more than six years old, particularly one whose sequel has been out for more than a year? Also, bear in mind that many of the mods that are announced, set up websites, etc., never get past the "posting nice concept art and renders to the front page" phase, whereas all the mods I mentioned for Half-Life 1 were released and playable at some point.
I agree with you that the mod scene for Half-Life 2 looks promising, but Half-Life 1's mod community was definitely more than you're giving it credit for. Or, to quote a friend, "Modding wasn't popular back in Half-Life 1? I wonder what the fuck I was playing for 6 years."
They're offering the masking software because some unscrupulous OEM (the sort who sells people pre-built computers with $7 power supplies so they know they'll be back in the shop soon) will buy these rebranded Celerons and sell them to consumers as the real deal.
I'd imagine that they don't really worry about masking it on non-Windows OSes, since the proportion of users that buys a machine from a vendor like this and puts Linux or something on it is likely rather small. The people buying from this sort of vendor aren't techies, or even really mass market; techies would be buying parts individually (and hopefully from a reputable vendor) or, like the majority of consumers, buying from Dell or HP or whichever big OEM is offering the best deal at the time.
This is an annoying, amoral practice, but it's not really any different from scams in any other industry. The solution is, as always, to buy from people you know and trust and avoid Comps'R'Us, no matter how sweet the deal seems.
Except that you had it right the first time...
Competent people are prepared for the incompetent, so the use of force is their first choice. They just don't take it until their other options are gone.
So their first choice is a lot like their last choice, eh?