...you've managed to shoot yourself square in the foot!
I'm not sure when GW turned from being the epitome of gaming excellence and the premier recipient of fan loyalty to being just another corporation packaging product for the dead-eyed taxation/consumption units out there (about 1989, I reckon) but you've really nailed it now. Your decision to allow loyal fans to waste 4 years of their life on the DAMNATUS project and pulling the plug on them just as they finished and were about to release their project is about as despicable an act as I've ever heard. I understand that your intellectual property is important, and that it provides your dependants with food and clothes, but you could have shut them down 3 years, 11 months, and 3 weeks ago. Allowing loyal fans hell-bent on giving you free publicity to continue to completion, to premiere the film, and then shutting them down... well that's pretty damn sadistic.
I enjoyed WH40K:Dawn of War and I was really looking forward to the Warhammer MMORPG, but I think it'll be a cold day in Hell before I buy anything branded GamesWorkshop again.
You could have offered them a one-off licence and then made it clear to any other projects that the rules had changed afterwards, but you guys decided to be hard-nosed. Fine. Reap what you sow.
No regards whatsoever
Gary
p.s. I sent mine to legal@gamesworkshop.co.uk - I figured they deserved it more.
Well, congrats to GW for taking my general disinterest for their products and elevating it to actual dislike of their organization.
Way ahead of you, big man. I used to be a real hardcore fan of GW and, back in the day, I was a subscriber to White Dwarf for a long time but around #110ish things started going badly, badly wrong at the ranch. That's about when they switched their focus from RPGs to the miniatures business. They stopped doing articles on other companies' games and started bigging up Warhammer, Blood Bowl, and WH40K. They even seemed to lose interest in their own roleplaying games. Before that it was a hell of a magazine - fiction, articles, art, and quality all the way. After that it became a big ad you paid for. I had no interest whatsoever in their dinky little toys and I was on a one-way ticket to Alienation City. It was a real shame because a lot of real talent used to contribute.
They seem to be doing well enough out of it but, if such a thing is possible, they sold their soul back at the end of the 80s for their money. Plus the staff in the stores I've visited since are total dicks.
You do realize you can shut off UAC, right? I mean if you're having phyiscal pain from such an unobtrusive question as "are you sure?", either shut it off and stop complaining or grab some Asprin and keep on clicking.
It's not the question itself, it's the snap transition to the darkened security screen and the single dialog for confirmation that irks me - it's just so harsh, especially on a big monitor. I know MS's usability guys want you to really pay attention to the question but the jarring they give you is just too much. The security screen can be disabled but it requires a registry edit - something a non-expert home user might find a bit daunting.
I don't want to switch of UAC - I think it's a good idea. But I think it's definitely been engineered towards system admins deploying standard desktop builds they don't want changed, rather than a more dynamic home/enthusiast/developer model. Understandable as large corporate rollouts are MS's bread and butter but a bit frustrating to me.
Here's how I remember it: I've been using Windows since v1.0. Lovely Gem-like interface. 2.0 didn't even register. Hated how 3.0 - 3.11 forced the user to focus on the Program Manager instead of the files, and really ugly windows. Awful drivers/fiddly as hell installation of any new hardware. Windows95 much prettier, much better interface. First MS OS since 1.0 I didn't hate. Far easier driver installs and stuff. Bliss - first good OS for games/multimedia/just about anything. 2k pretty solid, good for games too. XP, pretty though essentially the same UI but shinier. Vista, not so different from XP but with nasty, hurtful UAC and (so far) crappy, crappy driver support. Especially for sound. Mind you, my standards have gone up over the last 22 years.
And a bloody awful Explorer. I like my files - they're my friends. I like to see that they're looked after and kept together properly in the right social set. They're not just genies to be summoned from within an application's Aladdin's Cave by rubbing the Recently Used Files menu. A good Explorer would have less fiddly controls, especially for navigating the folder hierarchy.
Vista's not bad - I like a lot of the candy - but it's not really better either, particularly for home users and enthusiasts.
That's very similar to the way I got my copy of Vista Business, through the MS Partner Program. I just wanted MS Office for cheap though - bitch and whine all you want but Office 2007 >> OO.o (and prettier too). But Vista is pretty much unusable to 99% of individual users due to intrusive rubbish like UAC and the performance crippling driver model. I tried running Stalker:SOC under Vista and it was a total dog - I have a kick-ass rig and it works fine under XP.
When UAC comes crashing down and switches to the security screen, I get a shock that comes close to physical pain it's that disconcerting. After finishing installing everything I needed to get a basic level of functionality - UAC dialogs on every install - I was close to being shell-shocked. A totally unpleasant experience and not to be recommended.
Previous versions of Windows were evangelised to businesses by enthusiasts (or pirates depending) that got their hands on betas and sold their ability to support the OS to their organisation. My guess is that very few people will want to do that for Vista because they can't get comfy with it at home. MS have forgotten that if people don't embrace, then MS can't extend.
It's been tried before with MSX (to a certain extent) and 3DO. Both of these attempts to standardise a platform for playing games to be manufactured by multiple parties - and they were thrashed in the marketplace. The customers went a different way and platform manufacturers were stuck trying to sell last year's stuff. Any architecture changes to stay competitive are going to have to go through a shed-load of corporate nonsense. Sony can't even get its own divisions to play nicely together.
Mac fans may cry foul here. Also, what do you mean by "platform"? There are so many variants to the PC platform.
How do you make sure you sell stuff? By having something that your competitor doesn't have and the punter wants and doesn't mind paying for. (What the punters really want is more, better stuff for free, but hey...) That's why there's different types of personal computers and that's why there'll always be different console architectures.
There's 2 more reasons: trust and commodification. For trust, think about a predictable division of labour in a reference console platform: Sony do the hardware and MS do the OS/APIs, etc. Do MS want Sony's consumer-hating sneaky shenanigans going on in hardware, undermining their rep (some more)? Would Sony seriously believe that MS is giving them a complete copy of the APIs? They'd both be inventing new books of dirty tricks to screw the other one over to show they have the best stable of first-party titles and services. The console buyer is going to get caught in the crossfire and, knowing this, trusts none of the companies to behave.
And when other manufacturers get in on the act and build their own commodity consoles, cannibalising both Sony and MS's sales, neither of them are ever going to be able to achieve the market supremacy they need to maximise profitability. They could even be forced out of their own market in the long term, like IBM with PCs.
I don't think a common console platform is a viable business model for any of the current players.
Why doesn't Reid try to figure out ways that police officers can be freed from the mountain of paperwork they're forced to create every shift so they can go out on the nosey for scabby crims to smack about/arrest with the minimum necessary force? Then they'd maybe stop some of the muggings where people are getting hurt and killed.
Even if this fingerprinting scheme were adopted, all it'd do is give fences a reason to give the crim buttons for ipod. It wouldn't stop a thing. It might make the muggers more vicious as they'll have to be more prolific to cover their crack tab for the night and really don't want to spend their time asking nicely.
I have to reply to my own comment as I can't just let that be the only thing I say about this horrible tragedy, in this place. People that deserved to live and be happy are dead now, and that saddens me immensely. Our world is poorer for their loss, as it is for every premature death no matter what the cause or justification. My heart goes out to the families of the victims.
And GP: please seek counselling immediately. A cheap joke like that at a time like this is profoundly inappropriate and hurtful. All it will do is cause more alienation and despair.
I don't see any enforcement being possible at all.
The WTO - make it part of the treaty obligations of the Most Favoured Nations that they co-operate in the prosecution of internet-related crimes next time there's a round of negotiations. If they want to play in the US market they'll sign up no problem. Yeah, the US will have to grant some concessions and open up a few more market a bit but there's no shortage of US bucks for Taiwanese ICs or Chinese DVD players. Then it becomes part of the signatory's laws and, when a complaint is made to one treaty signatory's law-enforcement community about an offender in another signatory's jurisdiction, they can either extradite them or prosecute them under their own newly-minted anti-spyware laws. Probably prosecute them themselves to demonstrate what a funky international citizen they are, and can we please have a bigger share of your import market next round Uncle Sam?
Can you see a Chinese ISP telling the People's Armed Police Force to take a hike and get a subpoena when they come calling?
After all, the conventional disk is the only computer peripheral with moving parts.
Ummm... CDs and DVDs (not to mention the blinking-flip 1.4Mb floppy drive I still need to load RAID drivers on XP)? CPU and PSU fans? My printer? My (opti) mouse's buttons? The front door thingy on my PC case? Still lots of moving bits around in conventional PC peripherals that can wear out, 'fraid to say.
Oooh, I dunno about that. As a scot (and, oh dear God, an engineer) I'm not sure his performance will feel like Scotty if he has a genuine Scottish accent - it'd lose the vérité somehow. Maybe if they make him say "braw" and "cannae" a lot... Yeah, that'll work.
I mean seriously who the hell will want a committee designed console? Either it'll be lowest common denominator and be too scabby to play - and you'll be fucked cos there's no alternative - or it'll be an over-engineered, one-size-fits-all beast coming in at the price of a car - and you'll be fucked cos there's no alternative. It's competition that drives innovation, and that's what this daft proposal wants to cripple. Just so the authors don't have to gear up their brain to make a choice. Pathetic.
There's a reason we don't live in a command economy - it doesn't work. Capitalism is all sucky and stuff (and forces me to get out of bed in the morning for Christ's sake) but it's still better than the alternatives.
Re:a 1080p LCD stole my heart
on
Plasma or LCD?
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· Score: 1
Mmmm, I went for the Samsung LE40F too, mostly cos a) I'd had a look on the intarweb and it was getting a lot of good reviews and b) it was in stock in the shop where I finnaly bought it 2 days before Christmas and I could ram it in the back of a taxi and have it home in half an hour. Do I have the buyer's remorse? No! I have the buyer's glee! I got it back home, threw a DVI to HDMI cable between the telly and my PC and, less than a minute later, I had a dual-headed monitor setup ready to rock and roll. Kick ass! Got my XBox 360 and cable STB wired in zero fuss too (apart from having to buy the VGA leads for the XBox as license restrictions on the component signal mean MS won't upscale DVDs past 480p).
The only problem is that the HDMI to DVI connection doesn't seem to be able to support 1920x1080 at 60Hz without introducing a static interference pattern of red dots. Dunno if it's the lead or my crappy Asus mobo. I suspect the mobo, as it's also responsible for random interference on fullscreen 3d rendering. But it works fine at 30Hz interlaced, so I can wait until it's new PC time and I can upgrade my troubles away.
I did have fun going up to sales assistants in the department stores and the CE franchises and going "What real 1080p tellies do you have?" and watching them humiliate themselves with their ignorance. Someone needs to point out to senior British merchandising managers that putting the ugliest, youngest, stupidest, surliest, most poorly paid members of their staff facing the customer is costing them serious green in the long run. Ever get the feeling that British stores believe that they're just entitled to your cash?
I'm still reeling that you took me as being serious enough to warrant a reply... But, I assure you that, in Real Life^TM, I hold the United States as being a more than a mere collection of "glorified strip malls". Apart from being the nation of my dear old mum, I have had a number of very pleasant holidays in NYC, Miami, Key West, and Portland MN (so very cold - reminded me of Aberdeen but with nicer houses and bigger ships and, thank merciful Jebus, no Aberdonians). And, for some inexplicable reason, the US of A seems to have just become a much more friendly place.
In order to drive in a part of town that suffers from congestion, you must pay a 8euro congestion charge. That is insane. Am I the only one that thinks this is rediculous?
And, in the US, you have to pay $8 every 10 frigging feet to use a congested road between the glorified strip malls you call cities. We win! Ahahahahahaha!
But not a frust(r)um! Never that! Only the truly black-hearted minions of Nyarlathotep keep that filthy meme alive! Each utterance is an incantation that tears the dimensions asunder, forms claws of the very fabric of space and time and rips away an irreplaceable part of the memetic victim's mental integrity, delivering the scrap of soul to the master of insanity for his delectation and digestion.
The evocative episode names were what got me hooked. It seems daft, but that someone went to the trouble to preface the production with a title that was metaphorical and intriguing showed that there was a hell of a lot more ambition behind the show than previous brain-damaged sci-fi efforts. And that it had a finite plot helped - you could see there was a definite story to tell. It wasn't an unsatisfying soap opera like Dallas (or, let's face facts, Lost).
... GameTap refuse to sell it to a UK IP address. They won't even let me subscribe to GameTap. Steam don't have these qualms so I reckon I'll just have to keep buying games from their (free! as in beer) online service. Hum ho.
Hope it does well though - Sam and Max are just soooo loveable. But we have money in the UK too (honestly!) and we'd love to help you out with your foreign trade deficit. Cos that's what being pals is about.
Goddamnit, why does every discussion that involves the word 'rights' and a non-US country always have to devolve into an our-constitution-is-bigger-than-your- sucky-parliament-and-can-kick-its-head-in polarised slagging match? If this leads to UK government policy that bars corporations from imposing their DRM bullshit on the UK, then it's a good thing. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Can we wait and see before jumping down each other throats over who's form of government has the biggest swinging dick?
A fallacious argument is because Microsoft is a bunch of pricks that Sony can't be a bunch of pricks too. I cited evidence that antipathy towards Sony extends further than blogs and message boards and your retort is empty rhetoric wrapped in ad hominem attacks on me and my pal. I said nothing in my last post about Microsoft.
No wonder you posted your drivel as AC - you come across as a gutless, astroturfing imbecile.
I mistakenly believed it was relevant to the discussion on anti-muslim sentiment in blogs and thought that he was saying that those who post anti-muslim sentiments encourage the violence against muslims by the blogs' readers. I didn't realise the context in which the cleric made that analogy - he was rationalising raping women who wear brief clothing. Women are symbolised as meat, men are cats. My only consolation in defending that vermin's right to publicise his opinion is that other people can despise him as much as I do now. Am I worried now that I might be picking a fight? Fuck, NO! Any rat bastard who wants to take a pop at me for what I said is welcome to try - it'll give me license to retaliate.
The only way for the mainstream Islamic population - in Australia and beyond - to repudiate this man is to declare him apostate and his teachings heresy. When they say he's to be denied Heaven, that's when I believe they don't condone his opinion.
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I'm not sure when GW turned from being the epitome of gaming excellence and the premier recipient of fan loyalty to being just another corporation packaging product for the dead-eyed taxation/consumption units out there (about 1989, I reckon) but you've really nailed it now. Your decision to allow loyal fans to waste 4 years of their life on the DAMNATUS project and pulling the plug on them just as they finished and were about to release their project is about as despicable an act as I've ever heard. I understand that your intellectual property is important, and that it provides your dependants with food and clothes, but you could have shut them down 3 years, 11 months, and 3 weeks ago. Allowing loyal fans hell-bent on giving you free publicity to continue to completion, to premiere the film, and then shutting them down... well that's pretty damn sadistic.
I enjoyed WH40K:Dawn of War and I was really looking forward to the Warhammer MMORPG, but I think it'll be a cold day in Hell before I buy anything branded GamesWorkshop again.
You could have offered them a one-off licence and then made it clear to any other projects that the rules had changed afterwards, but you guys decided to be hard-nosed. Fine. Reap what you sow.
No regards whatsoever
Gary
p.s. I sent mine to legal@gamesworkshop.co.uk - I figured they deserved it more.
Way ahead of you, big man. I used to be a real hardcore fan of GW and, back in the day, I was a subscriber to White Dwarf for a long time but around #110ish things started going badly, badly wrong at the ranch. That's about when they switched their focus from RPGs to the miniatures business. They stopped doing articles on other companies' games and started bigging up Warhammer, Blood Bowl, and WH40K. They even seemed to lose interest in their own roleplaying games. Before that it was a hell of a magazine - fiction, articles, art, and quality all the way. After that it became a big ad you paid for. I had no interest whatsoever in their dinky little toys and I was on a one-way ticket to Alienation City. It was a real shame because a lot of real talent used to contribute.
They seem to be doing well enough out of it but, if such a thing is possible, they sold their soul back at the end of the 80s for their money. Plus the staff in the stores I've visited since are total dicks.
I don't want to switch of UAC - I think it's a good idea. But I think it's definitely been engineered towards system admins deploying standard desktop builds they don't want changed, rather than a more dynamic home/enthusiast/developer model. Understandable as large corporate rollouts are MS's bread and butter but a bit frustrating to me.
Here's how I remember it: I've been using Windows since v1.0. Lovely Gem-like interface. 2.0 didn't even register. Hated how 3.0 - 3.11 forced the user to focus on the Program Manager instead of the files, and really ugly windows. Awful drivers/fiddly as hell installation of any new hardware. Windows95 much prettier, much better interface. First MS OS since 1.0 I didn't hate. Far easier driver installs and stuff. Bliss - first good OS for games/multimedia/just about anything. 2k pretty solid, good for games too. XP, pretty though essentially the same UI but shinier. Vista, not so different from XP but with nasty, hurtful UAC and (so far) crappy, crappy driver support. Especially for sound. Mind you, my standards have gone up over the last 22 years.
And a bloody awful Explorer. I like my files - they're my friends. I like to see that they're looked after and kept together properly in the right social set. They're not just genies to be summoned from within an application's Aladdin's Cave by rubbing the Recently Used Files menu. A good Explorer would have less fiddly controls, especially for navigating the folder hierarchy.
Vista's not bad - I like a lot of the candy - but it's not really better either, particularly for home users and enthusiasts.
When UAC comes crashing down and switches to the security screen, I get a shock that comes close to physical pain it's that disconcerting. After finishing installing everything I needed to get a basic level of functionality - UAC dialogs on every install - I was close to being shell-shocked. A totally unpleasant experience and not to be recommended.
Previous versions of Windows were evangelised to businesses by enthusiasts (or pirates depending) that got their hands on betas and sold their ability to support the OS to their organisation. My guess is that very few people will want to do that for Vista because they can't get comfy with it at home. MS have forgotten that if people don't embrace, then MS can't extend.
It's been tried before with MSX (to a certain extent) and 3DO. Both of these attempts to standardise a platform for playing games to be manufactured by multiple parties - and they were thrashed in the marketplace. The customers went a different way and platform manufacturers were stuck trying to sell last year's stuff. Any architecture changes to stay competitive are going to have to go through a shed-load of corporate nonsense. Sony can't even get its own divisions to play nicely together.
How do you make sure you sell stuff? By having something that your competitor doesn't have and the punter wants and doesn't mind paying for. (What the punters really want is more, better stuff for free, but hey...) That's why there's different types of personal computers and that's why there'll always be different console architectures.
There's 2 more reasons: trust and commodification. For trust, think about a predictable division of labour in a reference console platform: Sony do the hardware and MS do the OS/APIs, etc. Do MS want Sony's consumer-hating sneaky shenanigans going on in hardware, undermining their rep (some more)? Would Sony seriously believe that MS is giving them a complete copy of the APIs? They'd both be inventing new books of dirty tricks to screw the other one over to show they have the best stable of first-party titles and services. The console buyer is going to get caught in the crossfire and, knowing this, trusts none of the companies to behave.
And when other manufacturers get in on the act and build their own commodity consoles, cannibalising both Sony and MS's sales, neither of them are ever going to be able to achieve the market supremacy they need to maximise profitability. They could even be forced out of their own market in the long term, like IBM with PCs.
I don't think a common console platform is a viable business model for any of the current players.
Why doesn't Reid try to figure out ways that police officers can be freed from the mountain of paperwork they're forced to create every shift so they can go out on the nosey for scabby crims to smack about/arrest with the minimum necessary force? Then they'd maybe stop some of the muggings where people are getting hurt and killed.
Even if this fingerprinting scheme were adopted, all it'd do is give fences a reason to give the crim buttons for ipod. It wouldn't stop a thing. It might make the muggers more vicious as they'll have to be more prolific to cover their crack tab for the night and really don't want to spend their time asking nicely.
And GP: please seek counselling immediately. A cheap joke like that at a time like this is profoundly inappropriate and hurtful. All it will do is cause more alienation and despair.
Stay in alone and go on a killing spree, you worthless piece of shit.
The WTO - make it part of the treaty obligations of the Most Favoured Nations that they co-operate in the prosecution of internet-related crimes next time there's a round of negotiations. If they want to play in the US market they'll sign up no problem. Yeah, the US will have to grant some concessions and open up a few more market a bit but there's no shortage of US bucks for Taiwanese ICs or Chinese DVD players. Then it becomes part of the signatory's laws and, when a complaint is made to one treaty signatory's law-enforcement community about an offender in another signatory's jurisdiction, they can either extradite them or prosecute them under their own newly-minted anti-spyware laws. Probably prosecute them themselves to demonstrate what a funky international citizen they are, and can we please have a bigger share of your import market next round Uncle Sam?
Can you see a Chinese ISP telling the People's Armed Police Force to take a hike and get a subpoena when they come calling?
There's a reason we don't live in a command economy - it doesn't work. Capitalism is all sucky and stuff (and forces me to get out of bed in the morning for Christ's sake) but it's still better than the alternatives.
The only problem is that the HDMI to DVI connection doesn't seem to be able to support 1920x1080 at 60Hz without introducing a static interference pattern of red dots. Dunno if it's the lead or my crappy Asus mobo. I suspect the mobo, as it's also responsible for random interference on fullscreen 3d rendering. But it works fine at 30Hz interlaced, so I can wait until it's new PC time and I can upgrade my troubles away.
I did have fun going up to sales assistants in the department stores and the CE franchises and going "What real 1080p tellies do you have?" and watching them humiliate themselves with their ignorance. Someone needs to point out to senior British merchandising managers that putting the ugliest, youngest, stupidest, surliest, most poorly paid members of their staff facing the customer is costing them serious green in the long run. Ever get the feeling that British stores believe that they're just entitled to your cash?
Doh! Portland ME! Maine! Those 2-letter state code dealies fuck me up... Seriously, isn't is just easier to remember how to spell the state's name?
I'm still reeling that you took me as being serious enough to warrant a reply... But, I assure you that, in Real Life^TM, I hold the United States as being a more than a mere collection of "glorified strip malls". Apart from being the nation of my dear old mum, I have had a number of very pleasant holidays in NYC, Miami, Key West, and Portland MN (so very cold - reminded me of Aberdeen but with nicer houses and bigger ships and, thank merciful Jebus, no Aberdonians). And, for some inexplicable reason, the US of A seems to have just become a much more friendly place.
And, in the US, you have to pay $8 every 10 frigging feet to use a congested road between the glorified strip malls you call cities. We win! Ahahahahahaha!
Hahahahah!
Heh...
Honestly, I only remember it because I thought what an odd word when I first read it.
But not a frust(r)um! Never that! Only the truly black-hearted minions of Nyarlathotep keep that filthy meme alive! Each utterance is an incantation that tears the dimensions asunder, forms claws of the very fabric of space and time and rips away an irreplaceable part of the memetic victim's mental integrity, delivering the scrap of soul to the master of insanity for his delectation and digestion.
Or something... It's just bad and wrong, mmm'kay?
The evocative episode names were what got me hooked. It seems daft, but that someone went to the trouble to preface the production with a title that was metaphorical and intriguing showed that there was a hell of a lot more ambition behind the show than previous brain-damaged sci-fi efforts. And that it had a finite plot helped - you could see there was a definite story to tell. It wasn't an unsatisfying soap opera like Dallas (or, let's face facts, Lost).
Hope it does well though - Sam and Max are just soooo loveable. But we have money in the UK too (honestly!) and we'd love to help you out with your foreign trade deficit. Cos that's what being pals is about.
Goddamnit, why does every discussion that involves the word 'rights' and a non-US country always have to devolve into an our-constitution-is-bigger-than-your- sucky-parliament-and-can-kick-its-head-in polarised slagging match? If this leads to UK government policy that bars corporations from imposing their DRM bullshit on the UK, then it's a good thing. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Can we wait and see before jumping down each other throats over who's form of government has the biggest swinging dick?
No wonder you posted your drivel as AC - you come across as a gutless, astroturfing imbecile.
The only way for the mainstream Islamic population - in Australia and beyond - to repudiate this man is to declare him apostate and his teachings heresy. When they say he's to be denied Heaven, that's when I believe they don't condone his opinion.