There seem to be a lot of people confused by the fact that Valve is releasing two seperate things for HL2 this fall.
The first is Lost Coast - a 15 minute playable tech demo that includes some side story for the HL universe based in the HL2 timeframe. It is free and targeted for high-end systems. If you don't ever play it you won't miss much as it's not insanely important to the overall story - HL3 will still make sense.
The second is Aftermath - a full expansion. My guess is that this will take about 1/2 to 3/4 the time of the original HL2. It will probably cost about $15-$20 from Steam, and eventually may get a boxed release (from interviews it sounds like probably coupled with whatever the next expansion they do will be which sounds like maybe something with vehicles) for $20-$40 depending on what comes with it. This is an integral part of the HL universe and takes place (from the sounds of it) almost immediately after the original. It will incorperate HDR technology, as will every expansion and HL add-on from Valve from here on out. It will also expand the AI capabilities of the engine, again updateing the Source engine for future content.
Don't like the ads? There are two things you can do to protest. You could drop your subscription, never play anything with ads, and grumble about it on forums while the majority of people ignore them and play. You lose out on some fun, everyone else keeps doing their thing. Advertising finds it's home in games, people get used to it, and 10 years from now it looks like movie theaters today with all the advertising that happens there.
The other is my preferred method. Use the advertising model to protest. Make it cost more than it's worth to the advertiser. Create a bot that constantly goes from one ad to another, racking up seconds of view. Get everyone in your clan to spend 10 minutes doing nothing but watching ads every session so the cost of the ads will go up greatly. A few people creating protester scripts and unleashing them to the masses so that you can set it to watch ads all day while at work/school means many, many hours of ads being charged back to the advertising company. The method of advertising becomes very expensive yet the marketing departement does not show that it provides increased revenue. Upper management cans the advertising method as it is now nothing more than a money-hole.
The advertisements are showing up due to the "almighty dollar", why not use the dollar to send them away? I can't afford to buy the adspace and leave it blank, and I still want to play games. If I can do something to get rid of the ads I will - but I won't drop all video games and spend hours on a forum complaining that there's advertising in all the games I used to play.
It needs some solid state storage http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=24 80 to be a good quiet PC. Then the only thing left is the CD-ROM drive, but if you rip everything from another computer and use strictly USB flash drives you could have a wonderfully quiet PC.
OK, first off, no, I'm not worried about microcode virii. (This may be flamebait otherwise) What's interesting though is how some people are pointing out that an update containing malaciousness wouldn't be a problem since it would be erased on reboot, but then no one is mentioning that it would be re-loaded also.
If somehow a person were to make a microcode virus and it got flashed in as a new update (very unlikely) what would then happen? Your 'puter wouldn't work, so you'd reset - knowing that this would clear the micro-code and allow it to be re-loaded. On boot, your 'puter goes to load it's micro-code, and loads the current set of instructions, the malicious one you placed on there. Unless you happened to have a flash utility that would restore your old instructions before the new ones are loaded - your 'puter would now be useless, at least the moboard. (That is where the instructions are stored right? I don't know alot about the low-level goings-on of 'puters like this, but that's what I gleaned from the article and other posts.)
My roomate and I are useing WaveLan Silver cards at home. We're using them to share a cable modem connection. He switches one card between his his Linux laptop and windows game box no problem, and I can use mine whether in windows or linux as the server/router. We'd like to get another card an set a dedicated server up - but can't affor it at the moment. My older brother really liked our setup and has since gotten Wavelan for his home also. He's connecting a Linux server with an iMac and having no problems. He also has a Win2K box using wireless. All of the needed software came with the WaveLan cards (The Mac one is an airport card - but based on the WaveLan architecture.)
Both my brothers and my home networks run at 11Mbs, not 2 as the article claims. This isn't that new either - so the article would have to be very old to have been written with (then) current info and just be outdated.
As far as the advantage of wireless, using my roomates laptop we can surf the web from the park across the street. My older brother lives only 10 blocks away, so we have talked about putting some booster antennas on our roofs and seeing if we can get our wireless networks to talk to each other. With a booster we could also use the laptop from the retail area across the highway from our place to surf the net. Imagine doing real-time price comparison, or surfing the web while eating at a restaurant - all through your home network and cable modem. Not only that, but since both mour place and my brothers were already built, the routing of wires would've been a pain.
Am I the only one that saw from the start that to share a call you'd simply remove the wristband and pass it to the person who want's to talk - and they'd stick their own finger in their ear? It's kinda disturbing that everyone seems to be going straight for the idea of sticking their fingers in some elses ear....
I think the majority is wrong here...
on
High-Speed Greed
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· Score: 1
From what I got out of the two articles AT&T is gonna charge merchants a per-transaction commision-style fee for referrals. Web-based advertising referalls that is. it would be impossible for it to happen any other way. So while the vast majority here rant and rave about some form of internet tax being imposed by AT&T, it's really nothing more than a change in how they charge their advertising. Tracking it becomes a non-issue because of the contract you'd have to sign to get the advertising space they're selling.
My first impression was that they were going to try something like if Chevy were to charge Wal-Mart for me driving to the store in my car, but what's really happening is if Chevy charged Wal-Mart a commision on what I buy there after driving to the store in my car that has an ad for it on the dashboard. The differance is a little subtle, and the articles didn't do much to define exactly what was happeneing.
Not to sound like "chicken little"...
on
Me-Commerce
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· Score: 1
This is of course an obvious find, but the implications relate highly to previous/. discussions. If and when the IT field becomes saturated and we lose this job-seekers market the people that won't get fired are the ones qualified to more than just perl, or java, or whatever or chosen specialty may be. This means that those of us with bachelors will be able to keep our job as we could be utalized in more than one way.
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The first is Lost Coast - a 15 minute playable tech demo that includes some side story for the HL universe based in the HL2 timeframe. It is free and targeted for high-end systems. If you don't ever play it you won't miss much as it's not insanely important to the overall story - HL3 will still make sense.
The second is Aftermath - a full expansion. My guess is that this will take about 1/2 to 3/4 the time of the original HL2. It will probably cost about $15-$20 from Steam, and eventually may get a boxed release (from interviews it sounds like probably coupled with whatever the next expansion they do will be which sounds like maybe something with vehicles) for $20-$40 depending on what comes with it. This is an integral part of the HL universe and takes place (from the sounds of it) almost immediately after the original. It will incorperate HDR technology, as will every expansion and HL add-on from Valve from here on out. It will also expand the AI capabilities of the engine, again updateing the Source engine for future content.
Don't like the ads? There are two things you can do to protest. You could drop your subscription, never play anything with ads, and grumble about it on forums while the majority of people ignore them and play. You lose out on some fun, everyone else keeps doing their thing. Advertising finds it's home in games, people get used to it, and 10 years from now it looks like movie theaters today with all the advertising that happens there.
The other is my preferred method. Use the advertising model to protest. Make it cost more than it's worth to the advertiser. Create a bot that constantly goes from one ad to another, racking up seconds of view. Get everyone in your clan to spend 10 minutes doing nothing but watching ads every session so the cost of the ads will go up greatly. A few people creating protester scripts and unleashing them to the masses so that you can set it to watch ads all day while at work/school means many, many hours of ads being charged back to the advertising company. The method of advertising becomes very expensive yet the marketing departement does not show that it provides increased revenue. Upper management cans the advertising method as it is now nothing more than a money-hole.
The advertisements are showing up due to the "almighty dollar", why not use the dollar to send them away? I can't afford to buy the adspace and leave it blank, and I still want to play games. If I can do something to get rid of the ads I will - but I won't drop all video games and spend hours on a forum complaining that there's advertising in all the games I used to play.
It needs some solid state storage http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=24 80 to be a good quiet PC. Then the only thing left is the CD-ROM drive, but if you rip everything from another computer and use strictly USB flash drives you could have a wonderfully quiet PC.
OK, first off, no, I'm not worried about microcode virii. (This may be flamebait otherwise) What's interesting though is how some people are pointing out that an update containing malaciousness wouldn't be a problem since it would be erased on reboot, but then no one is mentioning that it would be re-loaded also. If somehow a person were to make a microcode virus and it got flashed in as a new update (very unlikely) what would then happen? Your 'puter wouldn't work, so you'd reset - knowing that this would clear the micro-code and allow it to be re-loaded. On boot, your 'puter goes to load it's micro-code, and loads the current set of instructions, the malicious one you placed on there. Unless you happened to have a flash utility that would restore your old instructions before the new ones are loaded - your 'puter would now be useless, at least the moboard. (That is where the instructions are stored right? I don't know alot about the low-level goings-on of 'puters like this, but that's what I gleaned from the article and other posts.)
My roomate and I are useing WaveLan Silver cards at home. We're using them to share a cable modem connection. He switches one card between his his Linux laptop and windows game box no problem, and I can use mine whether in windows or linux as the server/router. We'd like to get another card an set a dedicated server up - but can't affor it at the moment. My older brother really liked our setup and has since gotten Wavelan for his home also. He's connecting a Linux server with an iMac and having no problems. He also has a Win2K box using wireless. All of the needed software came with the WaveLan cards (The Mac one is an airport card - but based on the WaveLan architecture.) Both my brothers and my home networks run at 11Mbs, not 2 as the article claims. This isn't that new either - so the article would have to be very old to have been written with (then) current info and just be outdated. As far as the advantage of wireless, using my roomates laptop we can surf the web from the park across the street. My older brother lives only 10 blocks away, so we have talked about putting some booster antennas on our roofs and seeing if we can get our wireless networks to talk to each other. With a booster we could also use the laptop from the retail area across the highway from our place to surf the net. Imagine doing real-time price comparison, or surfing the web while eating at a restaurant - all through your home network and cable modem. Not only that, but since both mour place and my brothers were already built, the routing of wires would've been a pain.
Am I the only one that saw from the start that to share a call you'd simply remove the wristband and pass it to the person who want's to talk - and they'd stick their own finger in their ear? It's kinda disturbing that everyone seems to be going straight for the idea of sticking their fingers in some elses ear....
From what I got out of the two articles AT&T is gonna charge merchants a per-transaction commision-style fee for referrals. Web-based advertising referalls that is. it would be impossible for it to happen any other way. So while the vast majority here rant and rave about some form of internet tax being imposed by AT&T, it's really nothing more than a change in how they charge their advertising. Tracking it becomes a non-issue because of the contract you'd have to sign to get the advertising space they're selling. My first impression was that they were going to try something like if Chevy were to charge Wal-Mart for me driving to the store in my car, but what's really happening is if Chevy charged Wal-Mart a commision on what I buy there after driving to the store in my car that has an ad for it on the dashboard. The differance is a little subtle, and the articles didn't do much to define exactly what was happeneing.
This is of course an obvious find, but the implications relate highly to previous /. discussions. If and when the IT field becomes saturated and we lose this job-seekers market the people that won't get fired are the ones qualified to more than just perl, or java, or whatever or chosen specialty may be. This means that those of us with bachelors will be able to keep our job as we could be utalized in more than one way.