Exactly. How about a VBScript workalike called Web-Basic, with a run-time translator called VB2WB, that runs ActiveX crap through Wine. Something that delicately prances around the patent issues.
Well frankly, the rich can keep the airbags. I'd rather see a rich fuck get killed by a 'life-saving device', while I brace against the steering wheel and wait it out.
Actually I'd prefer if the credit issuers just got rid of the per-transaction fees. They're already making a fortune on interest and various fees, it would only be in their advantage to cut down the merchants' costs, because we all know those fees are aggregated and passed on to the consumers.
Up here in Canada, nearly all computer shops present 'cash-discounted' prices. You end up paying 3% extra if you use a credit card, because that's what Visa/MC are charging the merchants. In the cutthroat competition among parts vendors, the 3% extra is enough to send your customers elsewhere. The irony is that the credit company gets a bigger cut than the retailer! Absurd!
I admit this box is devilishly cool, but something tells me putting 1600$ worth of gear in a box is asking for trouble. What happens when that stupid Enermax power supply goes *POOF* and sends the whole cramped contraption to a fiery death ? It would bring any geek to tears!
The problem with common business sense is that if the product doesn't sell, they won't bother updating the drivers for it. There's no use in throwing money into a failed product, right ? Unfortunately, as the parent poster mentioned the problems with this device are probably all software issues, as has always been the case with Creative Labs drivers. They still don't have the SBLive working 100% even though it's been on the market for 3-4 years. Pathetic.
Well then let's call the new CPU's Adamantium and make sure everyone gets it. But then we'll need to invent an even stronger comic-book supermetal for the next CPU after that.
The law basically said "if it vaguely resembles child porn, or if we think you were intending to produce/traffic/consume child porn, then we throw you in jail just because we can".
Let's generalize to see how stupid this was : "If it vaguely resembles an act of crime, or if we think you were intending to commit a crime, we throw you in jail just because we can".
_NOW_ is it obvious enough ? Child porn disgusts me as much as the next guy, but this decision isn't so much about child porn as it is about basic civil rights. Innocent until proven guilty, someone should plaster that quote all over the parliament's walls.
Apache is eons ahead of IIS in terms of usability and reliability, but the big fat problem is that IIS natively runs VBScript/ASP, while Apache does not (and Chilisoft doesn't always cut the mustard). Lots of companies are somewhat locked-in to IIS because of their existing VBScript code which they're not willing to port to PHP or Perl, either because of ignorance or lack of resources (time, money, brains). If we could somehow create a 99.9% functional VBScript parser for Apache, then Apache could swallow up a very large bunch of IIS users in one quick bite.
Last I heard, Hydrogen was a PITA to carry around because the particles are so tiny they tend to seep through the metal of tanker trucks, which explains why H2-powered cars aren't quite here yet (gas stations aren't setup for it).
It's also absurdly sensitive, such that you probably wouldn't want your typical 17-year-old shit-for-brains gas station clerks handling the stuff.
We already know how to save out all RAM to disk. The problem is in saving the CPU state(s). Hardware needs to be initialized and configured before it can be used efficiently. Someone has to tell the hard drive to switch to ATA/100 bus speeds, and someone has to tell the video card to init the display in 1600x1200. Loading the OS from a memory dump is the easy part.
Lots of people these days are praising USB for this sort of thing. Plug in 2 or more keyboards and mice into a hub, assign each pair to a user and let them share the box. Although nice and simple in theory, it becomes tricky to determine who owns what hardware.
Even more tricky is shielding each user from the other(s). USB being a shared bus, if one user has access to a USB device, he can theoretically access all of them, thus messing or snooping on the other user's interactions. Sure, this is handled in the kernel, but what if they're using different mice ? What if one user wants to plug in another USB device such as a sketch pad ? There are many problems when working with shared resources.
Perhaps a solution to this would be to design a breakout-box that presents each user with a separate set of ports, but that would probably require separate buses as well, to avoid getting them confused in kernel-space (and prevent USB-packet spoofing?!).
Considering the cost of desktop hardware, I don't really see the point in all this anyways. One can easily build a low-end PC for about 500$ (CDN) these days, just add some Cat-5 and you're all set.
Gig-E seems to me like it's DOA. Ethernet is much too complicated to sustain such high speeds. We need something totally redesigned that will take out some of the excess baggage that's been dragged along since the days of 2Mbps glory.
My main gripe is that NICs have always been the most bus-abusive device in a system, unless you pay 5x more for a high-end 3Com card. Heck, we've got Firewire-p2p running circles around 100base-T, partly because the low-level protocol is simpler.
The other catch is that bandwidth is usually inversely proportional to latency. On paper it sounds absurd, since more speed equates to smaller packets that arrive faster. Indeed they do get 'here' faster, but they take longer to process because the CPU is constantly being harassed by the network card running 10x faster than typical 100bT. To cope with this we need fatter packets.
My temporary solution : have two NICs, one Gig-E, the other 100bT or even 10bT, and have them on separate PCI buses. The Gig-E can handle fileserving and other heavy tasks, while the 100bT will take care of low-latency low-throughput tasks, that way you can crank up the MTU size on the Gig-E side to an absurd number on your LAN, and keep your sub-1500 MTU on the internet side for fast pings in Q3A.
The hard part is finding an affordable motherboard with dual PCI buses.
Here's my take on simplifying Akira's plot (since I assume you've all seen it at least once):
"There's this reject with a serious aggression problem. He meets a radioactive mind-melding kid who gives him some damn good PCP (which we don't see of course). Then the neo-cops try to kill him and cover up a big conspiracy, he gets pissed and destroys everything in sight. Everything else you see in the movie is just eye candy." (c) Billco
My heart is praying that this won't turn out to be true, but I know it is inevitable. Akira is a bizarre movie that reaches deep down into the subconscious psyche and grabs our primal instincts : fear, aggression, domination. It's also very f'ing good animation especially for its time. I hope the director doesn't botch it too much, and knows Akira well enough to do it well. The last thing we want to see is another idiot cashing in on a big name. (Blade 2 anyone ?)
simply because they convinced everyone the PS2 was the best thing since sliced bread
Well buddy, I hate to crash on your party, but it IS the greatest thing since sliced bread. It plays DVD's just fine for my non-discerning eyes, it's got great games that play well and look good, and the support for legacy PS1 hardware and software can't be ignored.
Sure, Sony is inclined to sell gadgets and make more money, but that's fine with me because I can elect to not buy those gadgets. The 8mb memory cards have plenty space, much better than the old PS1's 15-slot limit. I've actually backed up my 9 PS1 memory cards on one 8mb card, have about 20 different PS2 game saves, a 2mb dvd player upgrade file and still have about 3.5mb left. I've had this one card for a year and there's still plenty room. 30$ for 8mb sounds like a ripoff to us PC users, but for most people just one card is all they will ever need.
4. Compared to the playstation2, which game in an elegantly small package, had a ridiculously huge selection of games, and controllers that fit my hand, i could see no compelling benefits for buying the xbox. The nintendo system also looked interesting, because of the totally far-out games they were demoing (i'm not sure what is in the water at nintendo HQ... those people have fantastic imaginations.)
Unfortunately that's too common a view. It's like people saying they don't understand why people buy a BMW over a Ford. Both get you where you need to go, one is nicer and comes with more stuff.:)
Indeed, with the same money you can either get a BMW that will attract vandalism and key scratches and traffic jealousy, or you could buy a Ford and trick it out like a hotrod, impress chicks, stun the alpha males and become a local testosterone celebrity.
But back to consoles : Nintendo usually puts out technologically inferior hardware, but more than makes up for it by signing and producing games that are expertly designed with their target market in mind. When the hardware isn't gee-whiz-bang, the coders won't spend all their time wrapping a weak game around what is nothing more than a technology demo, because 90% of the time that's what happens. Give a game developer limited resources and he'll make the most of them. Give the consumers a low-priced console with lots of family-oriented games, and you'll have a bunch of moms buying them for the kids.
On the other end of the spectrum lies the PS2, which is generally seen as a 'pro' console, mainly because its titles are oriented at adults. Just looking at the box you can see they're going for a sleek, modern design. No cartoon heroes here.
And then you've got the XBox, which seems to be stabbing in the dark. They're trying to push beyond the PS2 in terms of graphics but more importantly 'mood'. It's not even competing with Nintendo at all, market-wise. They don't have the Pokemon franchise, they don't have cute simple games, they don't have cute simple interfaces. I don't expect a child to understand a hard drive with 40gb's of saved games and miscellaneous data. I do expect him to understand a Gamecube memory card with a grid of pictures of the various games he plays.
Personally, I have the PS2 and I like it just fine. The software selection suits my tastes quite well, plenty of fast action games and a few good RPGs. That's what the console excels at, and that's what I want, like a tricked-out Ford with a 429 Cobra Jet, rather than a fat assed BMW XBox built for rich old CEO-type pussies. Personality is everything.
I hope they emulated the blue screens of death from the Windows version. Cubase would rock if it didn't crash every 10 minutes. I end up using Logic Audio myself.
Maybe I'm a hardware freak, but I'm personally sick of this integration craze. It's a pain in the fat ass and it drives prices up for nothing.
I'd rather have a plain-jane board with the plain old ports, no onboard sound/video/lan/raid, but a dozen PCI slots (and two AGP), priced at 99$. Integration is good for your idiot uncle's web-surfing box because he will get all the castrated features he wants for a fraction of the price. Integration is bad for Billco the evil hardware freak because he ends up disabling all the onboard stuff anyway, because it _sucks_.
Let me tick off the list:
Onboard sound sucks for many reasons, mainly high CPU usage and poor sound quality.
Onboard video sucks in terms of speed (they're usually PCI devices), and that shared memory thing is just stupid.
Onboard Lan is sometimes OK, although in some cases you'll want a high-end adapter for better latency/throughput/wake-on-lan. I don't mind this one being integrated.
Onboard raid works fine (and saves you a bundle), until you upgrade to a different motherboard. I learned this one too late, as I have an Abit KT7A-raid board (with Highpoint controller). It works great and the speed is excellent, but in a year or two when I upgrade to a DDR-based board, I'll have to spend another 50-60$ extra for the raid option. Had I bought a regular PCI-based Highpoint controller (or just used my old clunky Fasttrak), I could just take it from board to board.
In all cases though, the worst part about integrated gadgets is the drivers. They're hardly maintained and they're always the source of instability in a system. I'd rather buy a PCI card that does the same work and rely on the actual manufacturer to provide drivers and bugfixes, rather than wait for my motherboard vendor to backport the updates to their BIOS or all-in-one driver set.
I second that. On the canadian side, gov't jobs are a godsend. They're relatively easy to obtain if you're decently skilled. The pay rates are somewhat counter-intuitive though : monkeys get 12$/hr (canadian $), senior coders get 30$/hr. In a sense, gov't work lets you start off easy and learn the ropes; then once you're a pro you can either stick around and get a yearly raise and more paid vacation days, or you can leave and try for a higher-paying job in the private sector.
The one thing I hate about gov't work is the bazillion policies. For starters, flex time doesn't exist in the gov't. You sit from 9-5 and that's that. If you're lucky, your manager won't harass you for being 3 minutes late 'according to his watch'. They don't care how well or fast you work, just sit your time out and you'll be fine. And then there's an overly exaggerated concept of "equal opportunity employer" : basically, if you want to increase your chances in a competition, just tell them you're from indian descent, or stroll around in a wheelchair, or pull a Michael Jackson and tell them you were born black. There's some serious reverse-favoritism going on. What's worse, you can bitch at us if you lose on a competition and we're actually forced to give you a second chance. "Exam question #6 was absolutely unfair and incredibly difficult for my incompetent brain. I demand a reevaluation." Now if you asked that to a corporate boss, he'd say "Fuck off you pest!" before you even finished your sentence, which is the way it should be, IMHO.
So, bottom line, gov't employment is second-rate but it's a safe bet because they'll hire just about anyone and the boss won't fire you just because the stock value dropped a quarter-point. And the benefits are usually quite comfortable.
There is a technological solution : anti-RIAA atom bombs that figure out who dies and who's honest. Seems like a more realistic goal than solving famine and achieving world peace.
Starcraft has sucked since 5 minutes into the second mission. They've whored the lame action/strategy genre for long enough. Let's just ask the Bnetd author to take it down and apply his networking knowledge to another game project, perhaps an open-source adventure-type-thing we could all enjoy.
More and more companies are screwing us five ways from friday, why don't we just drop the ball and go play elsewhere ?
I replaced a GeForce 2 GTS card and a Pinnacle Micro DC30 capture card with a single card that gives me better performance, better input/output options AND gives me two Firewire ports.
I hate to say it, but you're a fool for falling for such gimmickry. I'll admit that ATI has the upper hand in the consumer-grade tv-input market, but the gaming performance ain't as hot as they would have us believe.
I would personally have stuck with the Geforce+Pinnacle combo, rather than blow a hefty load a money on a new all-in-one card, simply because you can upgrade your main card and keep the Pinnacle alongside. When you decide your ATI-A.I.W. is obsolete, you'll have to shell out yet another fat wad of cash for another A.I.W.
Heck, I still have an old ATI-TV isa board with a Mach64, using a P200 as a shitty little VCR-like hack. As far as I can tell, TV-Input technology hasn't progressed enough for me to upgrade the old kit.
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Exactly. How about a VBScript workalike called Web-Basic, with a run-time translator called VB2WB, that runs ActiveX crap through Wine. Something that delicately prances around the patent issues.
Hopefully it will find a new home on Sourceforge.
Well frankly, the rich can keep the airbags. I'd rather see a rich fuck get killed by a 'life-saving device', while I brace against the steering wheel and wait it out.
Actually I'd prefer if the credit issuers just got rid of the per-transaction fees. They're already making a fortune on interest and various fees, it would only be in their advantage to cut down the merchants' costs, because we all know those fees are aggregated and passed on to the consumers.
Up here in Canada, nearly all computer shops present 'cash-discounted' prices. You end up paying 3% extra if you use a credit card, because that's what Visa/MC are charging the merchants. In the cutthroat competition among parts vendors, the 3% extra is enough to send your customers elsewhere. The irony is that the credit company gets a bigger cut than the retailer! Absurd!
I admit this box is devilishly cool, but something tells me putting 1600$ worth of gear in a box is asking for trouble. What happens when that stupid Enermax power supply goes *POOF* and sends the whole cramped contraption to a fiery death ? It would bring any geek to tears!
The problem with common business sense is that if the product doesn't sell, they won't bother updating the drivers for it. There's no use in throwing money into a failed product, right ? Unfortunately, as the parent poster mentioned the problems with this device are probably all software issues, as has always been the case with Creative Labs drivers. They still don't have the SBLive working 100% even though it's been on the market for 3-4 years. Pathetic.
Well then let's call the new CPU's Adamantium and make sure everyone gets it.
But then we'll need to invent an even stronger comic-book supermetal for the next CPU after that.
Let me summarize for all the weak minds among us.
The law basically said "if it vaguely resembles child porn, or if we think you were intending to produce/traffic/consume child porn, then we throw you in jail just because we can".
Let's generalize to see how stupid this was : "If it vaguely resembles an act of crime, or if we think you were intending to commit a crime, we throw you in jail just because we can".
_NOW_ is it obvious enough ? Child porn disgusts me as much as the next guy, but this decision isn't so much about child porn as it is about basic civil rights. Innocent until proven guilty, someone should plaster that quote all over the parliament's walls.
Apache is eons ahead of IIS in terms of usability and reliability, but the big fat problem is that IIS natively runs VBScript/ASP, while Apache does not (and Chilisoft doesn't always cut the mustard). Lots of companies are somewhat locked-in to IIS because of their existing VBScript code which they're not willing to port to PHP or Perl, either because of ignorance or lack of resources (time, money, brains). If we could somehow create a 99.9% functional VBScript parser for Apache, then Apache could swallow up a very large bunch of IIS users in one quick bite.
Last I heard, Hydrogen was a PITA to carry around because the particles are so tiny they tend to seep through the metal of tanker trucks, which explains why H2-powered cars aren't quite here yet (gas stations aren't setup for it).
It's also absurdly sensitive, such that you probably wouldn't want your typical 17-year-old shit-for-brains gas station clerks handling the stuff.
We already know how to save out all RAM to disk. The problem is in saving the CPU state(s). Hardware needs to be initialized and configured before it can be used efficiently. Someone has to tell the hard drive to switch to ATA/100 bus speeds, and someone has to tell the video card to init the display in 1600x1200. Loading the OS from a memory dump is the easy part.
Lots of people these days are praising USB for this sort of thing. Plug in 2 or more keyboards and mice into a hub, assign each pair to a user and let them share the box. Although nice and simple in theory, it becomes tricky to determine who owns what hardware.
Even more tricky is shielding each user from the other(s). USB being a shared bus, if one user has access to a USB device, he can theoretically access all of them, thus messing or snooping on the other user's interactions. Sure, this is handled in the kernel, but what if they're using different mice ? What if one user wants to plug in another USB device such as a sketch pad ? There are many problems when working with shared resources.
Perhaps a solution to this would be to design a breakout-box that presents each user with a separate set of ports, but that would probably require separate buses as well, to avoid getting them confused in kernel-space (and prevent USB-packet spoofing?!).
Considering the cost of desktop hardware, I don't really see the point in all this anyways. One can easily build a low-end PC for about 500$ (CDN) these days, just add some Cat-5 and you're all set.
Gig-E seems to me like it's DOA. Ethernet is much too complicated to sustain such high speeds. We need something totally redesigned that will take out some of the excess baggage that's been dragged along since the days of 2Mbps glory.
My main gripe is that NICs have always been the most bus-abusive device in a system, unless you pay 5x more for a high-end 3Com card. Heck, we've got Firewire-p2p running circles around 100base-T, partly because the low-level protocol is simpler.
The other catch is that bandwidth is usually inversely proportional to latency. On paper it sounds absurd, since more speed equates to smaller packets that arrive faster. Indeed they do get 'here' faster, but they take longer to process because the CPU is constantly being harassed by the network card running 10x faster than typical 100bT. To cope with this we need fatter packets.
My temporary solution : have two NICs, one Gig-E, the other 100bT or even 10bT, and have them on separate PCI buses. The Gig-E can handle fileserving and other heavy tasks, while the 100bT will take care of low-latency low-throughput tasks, that way you can crank up the MTU size on the Gig-E side to an absurd number on your LAN, and keep your sub-1500 MTU on the internet side for fast pings in Q3A.
The hard part is finding an affordable motherboard with dual PCI buses.
Yes, the greatest example is how most people are addicted to money, often to the death.
Here's my take on simplifying Akira's plot (since I assume you've all seen it at least once) :
"There's this reject with a serious aggression problem. He meets a radioactive mind-melding kid who gives him some damn good PCP (which we don't see of course). Then the neo-cops try to kill him and cover up a big conspiracy, he gets pissed and destroys everything in sight. Everything else you see in the movie is just eye candy." (c) Billco
My heart is praying that this won't turn out to be true, but I know it is inevitable. Akira is a bizarre movie that reaches deep down into the subconscious psyche and grabs our primal instincts : fear, aggression, domination. It's also very f'ing good animation especially for its time. I hope the director doesn't botch it too much, and knows Akira well enough to do it well. The last thing we want to see is another idiot cashing in on a big name. (Blade 2 anyone ?)
simply because they convinced everyone the PS2 was the best thing since sliced bread
Well buddy, I hate to crash on your party, but it IS the greatest thing since sliced bread. It plays DVD's just fine for my non-discerning eyes, it's got great games that play well and look good, and the support for legacy PS1 hardware and software can't be ignored.
Sure, Sony is inclined to sell gadgets and make more money, but that's fine with me because I can elect to not buy those gadgets. The 8mb memory cards have plenty space, much better than the old PS1's 15-slot limit. I've actually backed up my 9 PS1 memory cards on one 8mb card, have about 20 different PS2 game saves, a 2mb dvd player upgrade file and still have about 3.5mb left. I've had this one card for a year and there's still plenty room. 30$ for 8mb sounds like a ripoff to us PC users, but for most people just one card is all they will ever need.
Indeed, with the same money you can either get a BMW that will attract vandalism and key scratches and traffic jealousy, or you could buy a Ford and trick it out like a hotrod, impress chicks, stun the alpha males and become a local testosterone celebrity.
But back to consoles : Nintendo usually puts out technologically inferior hardware, but more than makes up for it by signing and producing games that are expertly designed with their target market in mind. When the hardware isn't gee-whiz-bang, the coders won't spend all their time wrapping a weak game around what is nothing more than a technology demo, because 90% of the time that's what happens. Give a game developer limited resources and he'll make the most of them. Give the consumers a low-priced console with lots of family-oriented games, and you'll have a bunch of moms buying them for the kids.
On the other end of the spectrum lies the PS2, which is generally seen as a 'pro' console, mainly because its titles are oriented at adults. Just looking at the box you can see they're going for a sleek, modern design. No cartoon heroes here.
And then you've got the XBox, which seems to be stabbing in the dark. They're trying to push beyond the PS2 in terms of graphics but more importantly 'mood'. It's not even competing with Nintendo at all, market-wise. They don't have the Pokemon franchise, they don't have cute simple games, they don't have cute simple interfaces. I don't expect a child to understand a hard drive with 40gb's of saved games and miscellaneous data. I do expect him to understand a Gamecube memory card with a grid of pictures of the various games he plays.
Personally, I have the PS2 and I like it just fine. The software selection suits my tastes quite well, plenty of fast action games and a few good RPGs. That's what the console excels at, and that's what I want, like a tricked-out Ford with a 429 Cobra Jet, rather than a fat assed BMW XBox built for rich old CEO-type pussies. Personality is everything.
I hope they emulated the blue screens of death from the Windows version. Cubase would rock if it didn't crash every 10 minutes. I end up using Logic Audio myself.
Maybe I'm a hardware freak, but I'm personally sick of this integration craze. It's a pain in the fat ass and it drives prices up for nothing.
I'd rather have a plain-jane board with the plain old ports, no onboard sound/video/lan/raid, but a dozen PCI slots (and two AGP), priced at 99$. Integration is good for your idiot uncle's web-surfing box because he will get all the castrated features he wants for a fraction of the price. Integration is bad for Billco the evil hardware freak because he ends up disabling all the onboard stuff anyway, because it _sucks_.
Let me tick off the list:
Onboard sound sucks for many reasons, mainly high CPU usage and poor sound quality.
Onboard video sucks in terms of speed (they're usually PCI devices), and that shared memory thing is just stupid.
Onboard Lan is sometimes OK, although in some cases you'll want a high-end adapter for better latency/throughput/wake-on-lan. I don't mind this one being integrated.
Onboard raid works fine (and saves you a bundle), until you upgrade to a different motherboard. I learned this one too late, as I have an Abit KT7A-raid board (with Highpoint controller). It works great and the speed is excellent, but in a year or two when I upgrade to a DDR-based board, I'll have to spend another 50-60$ extra for the raid option. Had I bought a regular PCI-based Highpoint controller (or just used my old clunky Fasttrak), I could just take it from board to board.
In all cases though, the worst part about integrated gadgets is the drivers. They're hardly maintained and they're always the source of instability in a system. I'd rather buy a PCI card that does the same work and rely on the actual manufacturer to provide drivers and bugfixes, rather than wait for my motherboard vendor to backport the updates to their BIOS or all-in-one driver set.
I second that. On the canadian side, gov't jobs are a godsend. They're relatively easy to obtain if you're decently skilled. The pay rates are somewhat counter-intuitive though : monkeys get 12$/hr (canadian $), senior coders get 30$/hr. In a sense, gov't work lets you start off easy and learn the ropes; then once you're a pro you can either stick around and get a yearly raise and more paid vacation days, or you can leave and try for a higher-paying job in the private sector.
The one thing I hate about gov't work is the bazillion policies. For starters, flex time doesn't exist in the gov't. You sit from 9-5 and that's that. If you're lucky, your manager won't harass you for being 3 minutes late 'according to his watch'. They don't care how well or fast you work, just sit your time out and you'll be fine. And then there's an overly exaggerated concept of "equal opportunity employer" : basically, if you want to increase your chances in a competition, just tell them you're from indian descent, or stroll around in a wheelchair, or pull a Michael Jackson and tell them you were born black. There's some serious reverse-favoritism going on. What's worse, you can bitch at us if you lose on a competition and we're actually forced to give you a second chance. "Exam question #6 was absolutely unfair and incredibly difficult for my incompetent brain. I demand a reevaluation." Now if you asked that to a corporate boss, he'd say "Fuck off you pest!" before you even finished your sentence, which is the way it should be, IMHO.
So, bottom line, gov't employment is second-rate but it's a safe bet because they'll hire just about anyone and the boss won't fire you just because the stock value dropped a quarter-point. And the benefits are usually quite comfortable.
There is a technological solution : anti-RIAA atom bombs that figure out who dies and who's honest. Seems like a more realistic goal than solving famine and achieving world peace.
Starcraft has sucked since 5 minutes into the second mission. They've whored the lame action/strategy genre for long enough. Let's just ask the Bnetd author to take it down and apply his networking knowledge to another game project, perhaps an open-source adventure-type-thing we could all enjoy.
More and more companies are screwing us five ways from friday, why don't we just drop the ball and go play elsewhere ?
Yes! I'll buy one for my girlfriend and 'forget' to change the batteries.
"-Dear Libidomatic, should I get off today ?
-All signs lead to No.
-Oh well, in the meantime I'll go the dishes"
Groovy!
I hate to say it, but you're a fool for falling for such gimmickry. I'll admit that ATI has the upper hand in the consumer-grade tv-input market, but the gaming performance ain't as hot as they would have us believe.
I would personally have stuck with the Geforce+Pinnacle combo, rather than blow a hefty load a money on a new all-in-one card, simply because you can upgrade your main card and keep the Pinnacle alongside. When you decide your ATI-A.I.W. is obsolete, you'll have to shell out yet another fat wad of cash for another A.I.W.
Heck, I still have an old ATI-TV isa board with a Mach64, using a P200 as a shitty little VCR-like hack. As far as I can tell, TV-Input technology hasn't progressed enough for me to upgrade the old kit.
If I had $1M to blow on a sound system, I'd rather invite the fucking band over to my crib for a jam session :)