Man, it's a good thing here in the U.S. we don't have any overzealous regulator deciding what kinds of power adapters we should have on mobile phones. Here in the U.S. every vendor decides to make their own unique adapter, with their own unique configuration, and their own labelling, and their own connector, so that we have to have the latest power adapter for every phone every time we upgrade.
Looking over the dozens of adapters I've had to buy over the years, it's great that I can have such a variety of choices. Each of these dozen products clearly demonstrates competition at work. In fact, some companies compete so hard they don't even put the name of the phone on the power adapter, so even though the connectors look alike I have to doublecheck all their UL listings to see which one applies to each phone so I don't burn it out every time I plug it in!
What's great is that, now, some vendors are even creating better lock-in techniques. Some USB adapters I have work on some phones and some devices but not on others. Some old adapters fit perfectly but produce error messages on other devices. As a result I have an awesome drawer filled with tons of high-end technology and I get to sift through it to find the advanced technology I need to run my phone.
The best part is that, if I forget my adapter, the company makes tons of profits on selling after-market power adapters! They make so much money on those $30 aftermarket adapters that they can afford to drop their prices elsewhere! That's why I pay $150 per month for my cellphone service when most poor Europeans pay a few dozen Euros each month for their highly regulated mobile phones.
Living without regulation is really the best way to go. I mean, my mobile phone company charges $15 per month for unlimited text messages, and their profits are so good I get all sorts of benefits from working with them! So many benefits that I can't list them all here.
Next, can you figure out what scam artist posted all of those "Real Estate Investor Seeks Apprentice 20k Per Month" signs last year? All the signs used to be identical, but they now show things like "Buy Foreclosed Houses" instead.
I'm still just as confused as anyone. What is Sophie? Is it a video player? Is it an ebook reader? Is it a web browser?
If it's none of the above, and if it's a totally new product that solves a totally new problem, what is the problem it's trying to solve? What does it do that's new or better than other products?
Sure it sounds nice to be able to say "define whatever operators I like!". But in practical use, in the real world, maintaining a program is much more important than being able to name some rarely used operator an indecipherable set of words. This is partly why day to day business is done in Java and.NET; because the language provides clear, legible names for everything. It takes longer to type ".ToString()", but it is readable and predictable.
I would have a much easier time trying out wacky new languages if they would stop trying to compress their keywords down to the smallest number of keystrokes and instead concentrated on making the code more readable. Perl and Haskell exist because people think playing with syntax is fun, when it isn't.
A well designed class library will get the job done for you in any language. There's nothing you wrote there that couldn't be done in C# or Java or C++.
However, no, none of the languages I use have a keyword reserved for "(parMap rnf)" nor does it have a wacky double-exclamation mark that means something silly like "use only the Xth element". Frankly, I would prefer my language to use human readable words rather than chicken scratches. We're not trying to optimize the file size of your source code here. Bytes on disk are virtually free. What we are trying to optimize is the amount of programmer time to build, maintain, test, document, and understand these software programs.
So the best players will have by far the best gear, and the slightly less-good players will have less-good gear, and the not-good players will have awful gear no matter how hard they try?
If there was ever a story destined to get the "goodluckwiththat" tag, this one is it.
If we can't throw anyone in jail for torturing US citizens in blatant violation of all laws, morals, ethics, and good judgment, how can we possibly hold someone accountable for spying on our phonecalls?
Sure, we all know it's completely, obviously, 100% illegal for the government to spy on Americans' phonecalls without bothering to get warrants. But this country operates in a reality distortion field. We used to hold our politicians accountable to the law. But now anytime a politician does something illegal, prosecuting them is somehow "political" and some narrowminded partisans will leap to any politician's defense regardless of how much wrong they've done.
Prosecuting a politician is indeed political. But please punish them in a manner that's appropriate to the crime. Bill Clinton deserved a fine or probation for his perjury. George Bush deserves 25 years to life for ordering innocent people imprisoned and tortured without any due process.
Every year, when we get close to the election, tons of people come out of the woodwork and say, "Both candidates are evil, I've lost my will to vote, I'll vote third party. Why can't they ever nominate someone good?"
If you recall, tons of people said "Both Al Gore and George Bush are lame politicians" in 1999. Many of those people didn't vote. And simply because Al Gore seemed dull, we lost out on the chance to have a politician who really cared about environmental issues and who would have applied some moderation to the response to terrorism instead of going cowboy.
The trouble is, people, in general, are flawed. The sheer number of decisions a person has to make each and every day means that some of them will be wrong. It's simply not possible to find "a good candidate," because every human being has made a mistake in the past. Part of the reason Senators don't usually become Presidents is that they have a solid, visible voting record and lots of conflicting demands on their votes, so that anyone can point to and say "Haha! This one decision was wrong! You can't be trusted!" By contrast, Governors and Generals seem to have less visible records, so people can't play the "gotcha" game as often.
Please stop thinking that an election is a chance to find a perfect person and vote for him or her. That's not the way elections work; if you keep waiting for a perfect candidate you'll never vote. Elections work by presenting you with candidates, and you get to judge which of them you think will do the best job.
I'll confess this: in 1999, I listened to the candidates and decided that I would be a John McCain supporter. I decided to support him because I looked at Bill Bradley, Al Gore, George Bush, and him, and I decided McCain seemed like the best leader. Unfortunately, after the election, everything I learned about McCain gradually turned negative and everything I learned about Al Gore reinforced his solid reputation. In this campaign, I know a little about Obama and (I think) a fair amount about McCain. Both of them have had to abandon their key supporters to reach across the aisle and compromise with others, but I find McCain's decisions more wrong than Obama's.
Obama showed great courage not backing a junkie's-quick-fix approach to gasoline prices. McCain supports creationism / intelligent design in schools. McCain sponsored an amendment to ban torture, and then meekly backed away when George Bush announced that he'd ignore the law.
I'm voting for Obama. I may not agree with everything he does, but I think he's the best person to repair the damage that Bush has done to our country.
I want to second this concept. Back in 1998, when I started a company of my own, I insisted that my partners and I purchase a $500 MSDN license so we could do current development on Microsoft platforms.
In 2004, when I joined a company that was well funded by venture capitalists, they required that I cost-justify the $2000 MSDN license cost. I argued that we were developing consumer applications and we needed the license.
In 2007, I can no longer justify $3500ish for MSDN. It just doesn't work anymore. They offer reduced versions of MSDN, each of which eliminates all the reasons why a person would subscribe to MSDN. They offer only 10 application installs for your $3500. They offer only a few OS installs. After you've installed a few, they stop letting you install more development copies and insist that you call them for more authorization. It just doesn't work anymore, and I'm sad because I really liked being able to develop code without artificial roadblocks in my path.
For a long time, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. However, in a recent debate, I heard the following exchange. This is paraphrased, but the message should be clear.
The moderator asked, "How can we support free trade with countries that do not have the same standards for protecting their citizen's rights and environment?"
Hillary Clinton replied with a few long sentences about rights, dignity, being firm, trading fairly, and all that.
Barack Obama replied, "I don't see how we have any leverage on human rights while Guantanamo Bay is still open."
The man has clearly and succinctly replied in a non-politician's manner. He made it clear that he regards Guantanamo Bay as a stain on our national character. And he indicated why simply talking about fair trade won't change things by itself.
I am a single issue voter at this point. I will vote for whomever will restore our national dignity, integrity, and sense of fair justice after years of imprisoning people for years without trial and subjecting them to waterboarding. That person is Barack Obama.
Congress has only barely worked up the will to investigate these misdeeds, and I am saddened to realize that Alberto Gonzales' resignation will completely end somehow push everyone to "move on." If ever there was an administration that deserved to be hounded until the end of its days, it would be this one - but they are practicing strategic resignations. Every time there is a lull in an investigation, the official under fire resigns, to be replaced by an equally inept and loyal official who simply isn't under investigation yet. The fact that the obvious target of hatred is gone saps the will of the investigators, and everyone involved gets away with no jail time and no penalties.
In addition to a five player battle mode with dinosaur mounts that grow and have special abilities, you have wild powerups like the ability to throw bombs, kick bombs, sprint, drop bombs in front of you, and launch active bombs as they explode. When you died, you could shoot bombs onto the stage to harass people. When time ran out, blocks and powerups would drop from the sky as the level gradually shrunk down to nothing.
There was also an absolutely insane eight player mode that packed the screen with the most bomberman goodness that's ever been on a TV.
The article doesn't explain anything. Want a real answer?
In the mid-nineties, Blizzard was purchased by Jan and Bob Davidson, the founders of the Math Blaster line of educational CD-ROM titles. Jan and Bob treated Blizzard well. When Blizzard said they wanted to take extra time to polish a game, Jan and Bob let them have the time they need. Each new wave of corporate acquisitions - CUC / Cendant / Havas / Vivendi - has tried to force Blizzard to push out titles early to meet release dates and profit targets, but each time Blizzard has been able to put in a phonecall to key shareholders to get the time they need to make things right.
If you combine this type of financial and moral support with the dedication and perfectionism of the employees of Blizzard, you get good games.
Next time you scroll through a Blizzard title, look at the names in the "Special Thanks" section.
Sounds to me like they're a backup company, and they're achieving 25:1 when backing up Windows servers by skipping all the redundant DLLs. Sounds like the author of this article mistook a real company with ridiculous claims about their backup performance for a magic new algorithm.
Science will never present us with a peer-reviewed study proving once and for all that you should be good to your fellow man
Interesting claim! I have two ideas that may spark some discussion.
Economics is a form of science, and one interesting branch of economic study is the study of cooperation. Some economists study this through statistics and computer modeling (http://www.brook.edu/es/dynamics/models/pd.htm). Some economists and psychologists study this through models of happiness (http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050415-16.htm). Some study this through research into primate behavior (http://www.primates.com/monkeys/fairness.html). The general consensus is that, although a free economic system requires there to be some level of competition, cooperation and mutual assistance are innately bred into us by natural selection, since it helps us achieve things we could not achieve alone.
Philosophy, the study of thought that gave rise to modern scientific theory (http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm), has always been capable of tackling these moral issues. Some of the the best writing on the topic of justice includes John Rawls "Justice as Fairness" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067 4005112/002-0144128-7693626?v=glance), in which he argues that the best possible society is one in which we are all treated fairly. He has a pretty clever way of defining fairness, too. If you dislike Rawls, there are tons of other philosophers to choose from who have created logical arguments for treating men justly - Socrates and Locke are two others you may wish to read, or Hospers if you're into the libertarian thing (although his vision of fairness can occasionally sound a little like the mindless pursuit of wealth).
Science is a process that we can use to evaluate ideas through objective criteria. It makes no difference whether those ideas are biological, astronomical, legal, or moral. As long as we have an objective, measurable goal, we can use the scientific method to try to better understand which ideas work and which ideas don't.
To respond to your rhetorical questions, yes, economics does show us that there is a lot to be gained by eliminating hunger. Philosophy and ethical theory does indeed show us that we can achieve more if we pursue our interests living within a just and fair social framework.
What does make me very sad is when people say that you cannot be a good, moral person if you don't believe in God. Neither one causes the other.
Perhaps some of you might enjoy an alternative review from a local radio station here in Los Angeles.
I received this comment today from a friend who has only recently begun to read Hitchhiker's. I'm taking him to see the movie tonight, so he's been forwarding me little tidbits here and there.
"Anywho, I was listening to 89.7 while flipping thru the radio stations because they had a review on Hitchhikers. And well it wasn't until the end where it said 'tries to explain the meaning of life through primarily darwinian concepts. Because of that it's a 3/5 with parental guidance and couple stars lower w/out.' "
At least Douglas Adams got his point across.
Re:Online connection is _not_ required
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Hi there,
I'm curious to know why this worked. My DSL connection went out yesterday night (bummer, I know) and my working copy of Half-Life 2 turned into a sack of wet mice. Launching HL2 produced the screen that asks to "Retry or use offline mode?" However, no matter what button I pushed, it said "Steam is unable to contact the server. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more information." The suggestion that I should visit their website seemed to be a bit like pouring salt on my wound, but I digress.
What's the magic trick I need to make Steam recognize that my computer is offline? I tried two methods: first I used XP to disable the ethernet connection; second I pulled the cable out of the back of the PC. Neither worked.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine the "hubub" is because it works.
Man, it's a good thing here in the U.S. we don't have any overzealous regulator deciding what kinds of power adapters we should have on mobile phones. Here in the U.S. every vendor decides to make their own unique adapter, with their own unique configuration, and their own labelling, and their own connector, so that we have to have the latest power adapter for every phone every time we upgrade.
Looking over the dozens of adapters I've had to buy over the years, it's great that I can have such a variety of choices. Each of these dozen products clearly demonstrates competition at work. In fact, some companies compete so hard they don't even put the name of the phone on the power adapter, so even though the connectors look alike I have to doublecheck all their UL listings to see which one applies to each phone so I don't burn it out every time I plug it in!
What's great is that, now, some vendors are even creating better lock-in techniques. Some USB adapters I have work on some phones and some devices but not on others. Some old adapters fit perfectly but produce error messages on other devices. As a result I have an awesome drawer filled with tons of high-end technology and I get to sift through it to find the advanced technology I need to run my phone.
The best part is that, if I forget my adapter, the company makes tons of profits on selling after-market power adapters! They make so much money on those $30 aftermarket adapters that they can afford to drop their prices elsewhere! That's why I pay $150 per month for my cellphone service when most poor Europeans pay a few dozen Euros each month for their highly regulated mobile phones.
Living without regulation is really the best way to go. I mean, my mobile phone company charges $15 per month for unlimited text messages, and their profits are so good I get all sorts of benefits from working with them! So many benefits that I can't list them all here.
See, not all government intervention is bad :)
I'm sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences.
I look forward to the day when people like you, who seem to hate scientists for no reason other than that they study science, are proved wrong.
When people who hate smart people for being smart are somehow put in their place.
When it is no longer okay to claim that dumb people are somehow more honest than smart people.
Oh wait - Obama got elected. Maybe we're okay after all. :)
Number of games I've purchased in the past year: 2
Mega Man 9, Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Number of Star Control sequels I would purchase if Paul Reiche III was involved: At least 1. :)
Oh... I didn't realize there was an answer already. Serves me right to ask without googling.
http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/nouveauriche/nouveau_riche_toc.shtml
Next, can you figure out what scam artist posted all of those "Real Estate Investor Seeks Apprentice 20k Per Month" signs last year? All the signs used to be identical, but they now show things like "Buy Foreclosed Houses" instead.
I'm still just as confused as anyone. What is Sophie? Is it a video player? Is it an ebook reader? Is it a web browser?
If it's none of the above, and if it's a totally new product that solves a totally new problem, what is the problem it's trying to solve? What does it do that's new or better than other products?
Sure it sounds nice to be able to say "define whatever operators I like!". But in practical use, in the real world, maintaining a program is much more important than being able to name some rarely used operator an indecipherable set of words. This is partly why day to day business is done in Java and .NET; because the language provides clear, legible names for everything. It takes longer to type ".ToString()", but it is readable and predictable.
I would have a much easier time trying out wacky new languages if they would stop trying to compress their keywords down to the smallest number of keystrokes and instead concentrated on making the code more readable. Perl and Haskell exist because people think playing with syntax is fun, when it isn't.
A well designed class library will get the job done for you in any language. There's nothing you wrote there that couldn't be done in C# or Java or C++.
However, no, none of the languages I use have a keyword reserved for "(parMap rnf)" nor does it have a wacky double-exclamation mark that means something silly like "use only the Xth element". Frankly, I would prefer my language to use human readable words rather than chicken scratches. We're not trying to optimize the file size of your source code here. Bytes on disk are virtually free. What we are trying to optimize is the amount of programmer time to build, maintain, test, document, and understand these software programs.
So the best players will have by far the best gear, and the slightly less-good players will have less-good gear, and the not-good players will have awful gear no matter how hard they try?
If there was ever a story destined to get the "goodluckwiththat" tag, this one is it.
If we can't throw anyone in jail for torturing US citizens in blatant violation of all laws, morals, ethics, and good judgment, how can we possibly hold someone accountable for spying on our phonecalls?
Sure, we all know it's completely, obviously, 100% illegal for the government to spy on Americans' phonecalls without bothering to get warrants. But this country operates in a reality distortion field. We used to hold our politicians accountable to the law. But now anytime a politician does something illegal, prosecuting them is somehow "political" and some narrowminded partisans will leap to any politician's defense regardless of how much wrong they've done.
Prosecuting a politician is indeed political. But please punish them in a manner that's appropriate to the crime. Bill Clinton deserved a fine or probation for his perjury. George Bush deserves 25 years to life for ordering innocent people imprisoned and tortured without any due process.
Every year, when we get close to the election, tons of people come out of the woodwork and say, "Both candidates are evil, I've lost my will to vote, I'll vote third party. Why can't they ever nominate someone good?"
If you recall, tons of people said "Both Al Gore and George Bush are lame politicians" in 1999. Many of those people didn't vote. And simply because Al Gore seemed dull, we lost out on the chance to have a politician who really cared about environmental issues and who would have applied some moderation to the response to terrorism instead of going cowboy.
The trouble is, people, in general, are flawed. The sheer number of decisions a person has to make each and every day means that some of them will be wrong. It's simply not possible to find "a good candidate," because every human being has made a mistake in the past. Part of the reason Senators don't usually become Presidents is that they have a solid, visible voting record and lots of conflicting demands on their votes, so that anyone can point to and say "Haha! This one decision was wrong! You can't be trusted!" By contrast, Governors and Generals seem to have less visible records, so people can't play the "gotcha" game as often.
Please stop thinking that an election is a chance to find a perfect person and vote for him or her. That's not the way elections work; if you keep waiting for a perfect candidate you'll never vote. Elections work by presenting you with candidates, and you get to judge which of them you think will do the best job.
I'll confess this: in 1999, I listened to the candidates and decided that I would be a John McCain supporter. I decided to support him because I looked at Bill Bradley, Al Gore, George Bush, and him, and I decided McCain seemed like the best leader. Unfortunately, after the election, everything I learned about McCain gradually turned negative and everything I learned about Al Gore reinforced his solid reputation. In this campaign, I know a little about Obama and (I think) a fair amount about McCain. Both of them have had to abandon their key supporters to reach across the aisle and compromise with others, but I find McCain's decisions more wrong than Obama's.
Obama showed great courage not backing a junkie's-quick-fix approach to gasoline prices.
McCain supports creationism / intelligent design in schools.
McCain sponsored an amendment to ban torture, and then meekly backed away when George Bush announced that he'd ignore the law.
I'm voting for Obama. I may not agree with everything he does, but I think he's the best person to repair the damage that Bush has done to our country.
I had no idea what the word meant.
Of course we can look it up - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaclava_(clothing)
The answer is that a balaclava is what I normally think of as a "ski mask". Covers the face.
Are you serious? A release candidate for a random open source project is released, and that's news you care about?
Why not just subscribe to an "auto-download-patches" RSS feed and stop taking up space on a news for humans website?
I want to second this concept. Back in 1998, when I started a company of my own, I insisted that my partners and I purchase a $500 MSDN license so we could do current development on Microsoft platforms.
In 2004, when I joined a company that was well funded by venture capitalists, they required that I cost-justify the $2000 MSDN license cost. I argued that we were developing consumer applications and we needed the license.
In 2007, I can no longer justify $3500ish for MSDN. It just doesn't work anymore. They offer reduced versions of MSDN, each of which eliminates all the reasons why a person would subscribe to MSDN. They offer only 10 application installs for your $3500. They offer only a few OS installs. After you've installed a few, they stop letting you install more development copies and insist that you call them for more authorization. It just doesn't work anymore, and I'm sad because I really liked being able to develop code without artificial roadblocks in my path.
For a long time, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. However, in a recent debate, I heard the following exchange. This is paraphrased, but the message should be clear.
The moderator asked, "How can we support free trade with countries that do not have the same standards for protecting their citizen's rights and environment?"
Hillary Clinton replied with a few long sentences about rights, dignity, being firm, trading fairly, and all that.
Barack Obama replied, "I don't see how we have any leverage on human rights while Guantanamo Bay is still open."
The man has clearly and succinctly replied in a non-politician's manner. He made it clear that he regards Guantanamo Bay as a stain on our national character. And he indicated why simply talking about fair trade won't change things by itself.
I am a single issue voter at this point. I will vote for whomever will restore our national dignity, integrity, and sense of fair justice after years of imprisoning people for years without trial and subjecting them to waterboarding. That person is Barack Obama.
Congress has only barely worked up the will to investigate these misdeeds, and I am saddened to realize that Alberto Gonzales' resignation will completely end somehow push everyone to "move on." If ever there was an administration that deserved to be hounded until the end of its days, it would be this one - but they are practicing strategic resignations. Every time there is a lull in an investigation, the official under fire resigns, to be replaced by an equally inept and loyal official who simply isn't under investigation yet. The fact that the obvious target of hatred is gone saps the will of the investigators, and everyone involved gets away with no jail time and no penalties.
Saturn Bomberman was probably the best version in existence, but is hard to find and even harder to get a system to play it on.
http://wso.williams.edu/~aeatonsa/bomb/pixb.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Bomberman
In addition to a five player battle mode with dinosaur mounts that grow and have special abilities, you have wild powerups like the ability to throw bombs, kick bombs, sprint, drop bombs in front of you, and launch active bombs as they explode. When you died, you could shoot bombs onto the stage to harass people. When time ran out, blocks and powerups would drop from the sky as the level gradually shrunk down to nothing.
There was also an absolutely insane eight player mode that packed the screen with the most bomberman goodness that's ever been on a TV.
The article doesn't explain anything. Want a real answer?
In the mid-nineties, Blizzard was purchased by Jan and Bob Davidson, the founders of the Math Blaster line of educational CD-ROM titles. Jan and Bob treated Blizzard well. When Blizzard said they wanted to take extra time to polish a game, Jan and Bob let them have the time they need. Each new wave of corporate acquisitions - CUC / Cendant / Havas / Vivendi - has tried to force Blizzard to push out titles early to meet release dates and profit targets, but each time Blizzard has been able to put in a phonecall to key shareholders to get the time they need to make things right.
If you combine this type of financial and moral support with the dedication and perfectionism of the employees of Blizzard, you get good games.
Next time you scroll through a Blizzard title, look at the names in the "Special Thanks" section.
Sounds to me like they're a backup company, and they're achieving 25:1 when backing up Windows servers by skipping all the redundant DLLs. Sounds like the author of this article mistook a real company with ridiculous claims about their backup performance for a magic new algorithm.
Interesting claim! I have two ideas that may spark some discussion.
Economics is a form of science, and one interesting branch of economic study is the study of cooperation. Some economists study this through statistics and computer modeling (http://www.brook.edu/es/dynamics/models/pd.htm). Some economists and psychologists study this through models of happiness (http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050415-16.htm). Some study this through research into primate behavior (http://www.primates.com/monkeys/fairness.html). The general consensus is that, although a free economic system requires there to be some level of competition, cooperation and mutual assistance are innately bred into us by natural selection, since it helps us achieve things we could not achieve alone.
Philosophy, the study of thought that gave rise to modern scientific theory (http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm), has always been capable of tackling these moral issues. Some of the the best writing on the topic of justice includes John Rawls "Justice as Fairness" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067 4005112/002-0144128-7693626?v=glance), in which he argues that the best possible society is one in which we are all treated fairly. He has a pretty clever way of defining fairness, too. If you dislike Rawls, there are tons of other philosophers to choose from who have created logical arguments for treating men justly - Socrates and Locke are two others you may wish to read, or Hospers if you're into the libertarian thing (although his vision of fairness can occasionally sound a little like the mindless pursuit of wealth).
Science is a process that we can use to evaluate ideas through objective criteria. It makes no difference whether those ideas are biological, astronomical, legal, or moral. As long as we have an objective, measurable goal, we can use the scientific method to try to better understand which ideas work and which ideas don't.
To respond to your rhetorical questions, yes, economics does show us that there is a lot to be gained by eliminating hunger. Philosophy and ethical theory does indeed show us that we can achieve more if we pursue our interests living within a just and fair social framework.
What does make me very sad is when people say that you cannot be a good, moral person if you don't believe in God. Neither one causes the other.
Perhaps some of you might enjoy an alternative review from a local radio station here in Los Angeles.
I received this comment today from a friend who has only recently begun to read Hitchhiker's. I'm taking him to see the movie tonight, so he's been forwarding me little tidbits here and there.
"Anywho, I was listening to 89.7 while flipping thru the radio stations because they had a review on Hitchhikers. And well it wasn't until the end where it said 'tries to explain the meaning of life through primarily darwinian concepts. Because of that it's a 3/5 with parental guidance and couple stars lower w/out.' "
At least Douglas Adams got his point across.
Hi there,
I'm curious to know why this worked. My DSL connection went out yesterday night (bummer, I know) and my working copy of Half-Life 2 turned into a sack of wet mice. Launching HL2 produced the screen that asks to "Retry or use offline mode?" However, no matter what button I pushed, it said "Steam is unable to contact the server. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more information." The suggestion that I should visit their website seemed to be a bit like pouring salt on my wound, but I digress.
What's the magic trick I need to make Steam recognize that my computer is offline? I tried two methods: first I used XP to disable the ethernet connection; second I pulled the cable out of the back of the PC. Neither worked.