It doesn't have to be so negative as that, though.
For instance, I've wondered for the last 10 years or so what the fuck the people that cancelled Firefly were thinking. Ditto with the show Jericho from a few years ago. Both shows had massive outpourings of fan support but got cancelled anyway (Firefly was sabotaged from the outset, in my opinion).
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that didn't wonder what the hell goes on in these meetings where TV and Movie execs come up with their shit. More and more it seems like the good shows get axed, the good movie concepts end up in development hell, and only the crap ends up on both the Big Screen and the small one. Probably why I barely watch TV these days and haven't been to a movie in years...
Not to be a nitpicker, but in 2002 hard drives were already pushing into the hundreds of Gigabytes. I remember having to play games to get my Compaq to recognize my larger-than-137GB Maxtor hard drive working due to the mobo limit...
15 years ago, though, and you're spot on. Hard drives were in the single GB's at that point (and I remember being blown away by my first GB sized hard drive back around then, too..."Oh my God I'll never fill this up!!")
With the recent crackdowns on behalf of the MAFIAA, and the uncertainty of cloud based storage (see the Jotform debacle) I think that the government is doing far more to advance "digital hoarding" than hard drive manufacturers and the ever-increasing size of hdd's.
I have about 4 TB's of external storage, and I've filled about 2.7 TB's of it so far just with stuff that I could stream or re-download but just don't have enough faith that the ability will be there tomorrow. Outside of my personal documents (which I would never trust solely to cloud storage, that's just begging to be screwed one morning after a bullshit domain name seizure) I have a ton of media I just do not want to lose access to again. Plus, add in the ISPs and their bullshit bandwidth caps and "throttling" these days, and you've got even more pressure to keep things local since streaming eats up so much fucking bandwidth.
I think there's a lot of potential with the cloud and streaming media, but it's being hampered by these 20th century media companies and their out-of-date business model. It's stifling innovation, but it seems our government would rather assist them in propping up their business plan than truly innovate. Probably because the innovaters aren't writing such large checks to make sure the government favors them like the MAFIAA does.
Controllers have existed for the PC since the 90's. So have wireless keyboards and mice.
If it really took you until Windows 8 came around to realize the potential of connecting a computer and a television as a viable gaming platform on par with consoles, I wouldn't worry about moron proofing your posts.
Well, they're certainly not doing anything to discourage it when they roll out stupid bullshit like this...
You know an industry is fucked up to the core when customers are treated like adversaries right off the bat. I won't shop in a store where I'm made to feel like a thief the moment I walk in the door, and that's precisely what all this crap does. As a corollary to that, I'm extremely short on sympathy for those that do treat their customers that way and end up with large portions of the population comfortable with ripping them off.
A survey a few months ago found that 70% of people in the U.S. think it's reasonable to share music with family and friends. Now, the RIAA will stamp their feet and gnash their teeth at that, but the fact of the matter is, the majority of the people of this country do not see a problem with it. They can choose to ignore this and throw billions of dollars at court costs and all the other bullshit related to music piracy, or they can start more closely examining why it is that so many people out there don't have any moral compunction trading music back and forth in the first place. I suppose one could say "Well, that just proves that most people are thieves...." but still, when that many people openly do something that is technically illegal, maybe it's time to start examining those laws. If laws are passed that make the vast majority of the population "criminals", then there's obviously something wrong with the laws.
No optical drive at all, download only, is certainly a likely possibility. Then again I've been buying all my PC games like that, so...
I really doubt it.
There are still many, many millions of people out there that are stuck on dial-up and I doubt any of the console developers would throw away that market. An individual game may require high speed internet, but an entire console? I doubt it.
More than likely it'll come with a Bluray drive in it. The only other thing I can possibly see would be them moving to some sort of flash memory medium, now that larger-sized flash drives are so cheap, but I think that they're way too paranoid about piracy to go non-optical.
It is time to move on. Modern technology is capable of much better.
But what about the PIRATES?!?! If it wasn't for them, every game would sell 10 million copies and game developers wouldn't need to focus on the console with it's built in DRM!!! It's all the pirates fault!!!!!!
Believe it or not, some people actually like to tweak things beyond mashing the Ultra Button and calling it good. I generally spend the first hour or so I play any game just tweaking the settings and pushing them as high as I can before the FPS dips too low for my tastes (I'll sacrifice a little quality to get 60 fps over 30 fps on "ultra").
Of course, the number of PC games coming out that even have an appreciable graphics configuration is dwindling rapidly. Graphics options that consist of a slider that says "good - gooder - bestist!" don't cut it unless it's sitting on top of something much more robust for those of us that actually care enough to do these things.
Um, in Windows 7 a TV setup is super easy to implement as well. Also, Windows Vista. And Windows XP. Not sure about Windows ME and beyond because I was firmly in 100 pound CRT monitor territory in those days.
I've been PC gaming on my television since 2005 when I bought my first LCD HDTV. A few years later when the Xbox Wireless Receiver came out it was even better.
I say this because the response from people who don't have problems with their console to those who do is often "well you broke it dumbass".
To be fair, I haven't met anyone in the last few years that didn't immediately assume that an Xbox 360 console failure wasn't because Microsoft builds shitty consoles.
In the beginning, perhaps, the fanboys would go apoplectic over people complaining about 360 failures, but I think by now most everyone knows that an xbox 360 console isn't so much bought as rented for a few years until it dies for no reason at all.
I'm personally on my third. Never got the RRoD, always had the DVD drives burn out and stop working. This is especially frustrating because it's just a standard DVD-ROM in the fucking thing, and I could replace it myself in a second, but Microsoft is a bunch of dickheads and every console is keyed to a particular model DVD drive (which has changed several times over the manufacturing cycle) that you can only get from them. There's methods out there for swapping out the drive controllers and all that shit to do it yourself, but it's all an incredible pain in the ass for something as stupidly simple to replace as an optical drive, and Microsoft wants 40% of the cost of a fucking entirely new console just to spend 15 minutes swapping a DVD-ROM? Give me a break...
That's at least one thing I give Sony kudos for as regards the PS3...you can go buy most any SATA hard drive and slap it into your PS3 with no problems whatsoever if you're looking to either upgrade or replace a burned out hdd. Seems kinda schizophrenic for a company that just cannot resist the temptation to make all their hardware use proprietary bullshit to lock people in but I suppose it's something.
People wonder why I stick to my PC for the majority of my gaming when the consoles are so much cheaper these days, but considering that it's cost me $500 for an Elite and $250 for the two vanilla replacements I've already spent almost as much on the damn consoles as I did on my last build and I can do a fuck of a lot more on this than I can on the consoles. I probably wouldn't have even replaced the console this last time if it wasn't for the 50+ games and the tons of accessories I have for the thing that would end up getting tossed or sold for $1 a piece to some kid at Gamestop...
The MMORPG was Final Fantasy 11, and the new MMORPG is Final Fantasy 14. FFXI was actually pretty good in it's first few years, it was a fucking crushing grind fest as so many JRPGs are, but there was a real sense of accomplishment and a great community behind it (plus playing among people from all over the world and being able to communicate with them via the auto-translate was awesome), but alas, the various missteps by Square Enix, the dwindling population (of which the vast majority was only doing endgame shit), and the general shift to more accessible games that were less of an unrepentant time sink, such as WoW, killed it off.
At it's peak it was fun as fuck, though. It's a shame you never tried it. If it ever goes Free2Play you should check it out.
FFXIV is a flaming pile from what I've heard, graphically it looks nice but it sounds like they basically chose the worst option anytime a decision came up in the game's development and thus they pretty much have to completely remake the mechanics of the game or some shit. Either way I think it has less players than FFXI at this point even though FFXI is almost a decade old so I think that really says something about it.
This. There's a patched version of FF7 out there (Ultima Edition, I think) that runs on XP, so it should be able to run on Windows 7 as well. The graphics are a little painful to look at, but it worked last time I played (a few years ago). Otherwise you could always download a Playstation 1 emulator and an image of the game. Than you'll at least have controller support without having to fuck around with Joy2Key or X-Padder, which can be a bit of a pain in the ass...
So for $2,000 I can choose not to play with my friends, on a small screen, with games distributed the same way you can get them on Xbox, including the drm?
You may want to browse a few computer hardware sights because everything you're bitching about is perfectly simple to do on a PC, and you don't have to spend anywhere near $2000 to build a console equivalent in terms of hardware. If you want freedom, you have to get off your ass and work for it. Sorry if that bothers you, but that's life.
I am far less concerned about a nuclear attack than I am about economic collapse. The former is a long shot at best, very few countries on this earth would tolerate a nuclear attack by anyone against anyone, and would likely unite against the attacker at a level not seen since WWII. I think the vast majority of the world is just too sane to tolerate that shit...
Economic collapse, though, I think is inevitable at this point, so your advice to "Take your ass away from the major cities and the military hot spots and find a nice quiet hideout in a small town near natural resources." is still quite sound. We're not going to have to worry about Chinese or Iranians, we're going to have to worry about bands of criminals, and the major cities are going to be war zones as local gangs openly fight each other in the streets and police (many of which live in the suburbs, and thus have no connection whatsoever with the neighborhoods they're charged with patrolling) are going to vanish the second the paychecks stop coming. Same thing with the military; I have a lot of active duty and retired military in my family and during the last budget showdown and potential government shutdown, when they weren't sure if that month's paychecks for the military were going to go out, pretty much everyone was of the same mindset, "Until I get paid, I'm not doing shit." When the shit hits the fan (and it's gonna), we're gonna be on our own, every man for himself.
Which is why I've started preparing for that eventuality, by stocking up on food, supplies, and most importantly, means of defending ourselves. Some people call me crazy and say I'm treading into Ted Kacynski "move into the mountains and write a manifesto" territory, but there are a hell of a lot less than there used to be a year ago. We're not going to be victims in this house...
Man, I once got through with a few unused razor blades in my carry-on I had left there by mistake. I don't know if it was the cardboard covering or what, but they weren't even inside my bag, it was one of those backpacks with the mesh pockets and you could see them right through it. Got right through.
Meanwhile, my sister-in-law, who is permanently disabled due to being wounded in Iraq, has 10 pounds of metal in her leg, and has to walk with a cane, she gets a ration of shit every single fucking time we go through the airport. They try to take not only her cane, but her damn knee brace every single time, saying it could be used as a weapon, but the best part is, when she complains and makes a scene, they always wave her through, which really makes me want to ask (if I wanted to end up in a windowless room when my plane takes off, that is): If it truly could be used as a weapon and is dangerous, why the fuck is complaining enough to get waved through?And if it's not, why the fuck do they stop her and try to take it from her every time she goes through security?
Why not? Obviously they have a vested interest in making sure that terrorists aren't blowing their planes out of the sky. Put the culpability on them where there can actually be some sort of reaction by the public. As it is now, if a terrorist sneaks through and we have another terrorist attack, what are we gonna get? "Oops, we'll do a thorough investigation, shift a few people around to other departments, and do absolutely fuck all to make sure it doesn't happen again. Sorry America!!"
Any airline that skimps on security won't be able to insure their planes, not to mention the liability for all the wrongful death due to negligence suits that would follow. You think they would take a chance on that happening? I doubt it. The TSA goon with the plastic badge doesn't give a flying fuck. Believe me, I know. I proctored the TSA testing for years, and I assure you, 'test' is a bit of a stretch, not to mention the fact that half the people that sat for the test were either covered in gang tattoos or looked like the "after" pic on those "this is what crystal meth does to you" photos...
I'm not one of those "privatize everything" people, but the TSA is a fucking joke that should be completely defunded and disbanded. Putting active-duty military in there with dogs and SMGs would be more of a deterrent than the TSA and the scanners, and we're already paying them anyway.
Those systems get loaded up and confusing, and the ability to "windows key + type" has been a boon in my position as an IT consultant because I don't have to CARE if they have organized or not.
You always know you're in for a treat when you boot up windows and find about 48 icons on the desktop, 3 of them being Internet Explorer shortcuts alone...Thank God for "windows key + type" in those situations.
When I used XP I was meticulous about organization as well, but after upgrading to 7 you just don't have to be anymore. The clusterfuck of the entire programs list is hidden behind the pinned apps, so it's really out of sight, out of mind, and being able to type-search for apps makes going through Program Files completely unnecessary.
I don't use the quick launch either (with the pinned stuff on the start menu it seems kinda redundant) and I haven't had an icon on my desktop since the Windows 98 days. I'm a minimalist; task bar auto-hides, no icons...just my wallpaper, like a digital photo frame when not in use...
So... yeah. I really love the microtransaction model though I'm pretty confident that I can perform simple addition.
Same here. My first real exposure to it was with Lord of the Rings: Online went F2P, and after playing P2P MMO's for many years, it was nice not to have to deal with the monthly fees and all that shit. Plus, unlike many F2P games, you can grind out the currency (Turbine Points), rather than having to purchase them. It's not as fast or convenient as plugging in a credit card and buying them, but it's really not that bad.
I guess the whole pay to win thing never bothered me, particularly with MMO's. I'm not competitive by nature, and in any MMO, it's damn hard to compete with the no-lifers that inevitably play 24/7 whether it's F2P or P2P, so that never mattered to me anyway. I don't play the game to impress people, I play to have fun, and if some guy has fun buying his way to the top, c'est la vie.
Granted, LotR:O didn't have PvP in the traditional sense, so I suppose constantly getting ganked by someone that paid to win would irritate me...but my non-competitive nature doesn't really lend itself to holding a grudge or getting very angry about stuff like that.
I've used OSX and a few different flavors of Linux (mainly on my HTPC which I frankenstein'd out of parts from old builds I had laying around) but I admit I primarily use Windows as I game a lot.
Still, my point is I don't know what the hell people expect if the Windows 7 Start Menu is so much of a pain for them to use. There's one guy further down the thread complaining about getting lost in the start menu. How the blue fuck does someone get "lost" in the fucking Start Menu and still have the ability to use a goddamned PC in the first place? That's up there with "How the hell did you get the beans above the franks!?" in terms of perplexity...
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It doesn't have to be so negative as that, though.
For instance, I've wondered for the last 10 years or so what the fuck the people that cancelled Firefly were thinking. Ditto with the show Jericho from a few years ago. Both shows had massive outpourings of fan support but got cancelled anyway (Firefly was sabotaged from the outset, in my opinion).
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that didn't wonder what the hell goes on in these meetings where TV and Movie execs come up with their shit. More and more it seems like the good shows get axed, the good movie concepts end up in development hell, and only the crap ends up on both the Big Screen and the small one. Probably why I barely watch TV these days and haven't been to a movie in years...
I'm just looking forward to ripping all my DVD's and boxing them up for good. They take up so much fucking space...
Not to be a nitpicker, but in 2002 hard drives were already pushing into the hundreds of Gigabytes. I remember having to play games to get my Compaq to recognize my larger-than-137GB Maxtor hard drive working due to the mobo limit...
15 years ago, though, and you're spot on. Hard drives were in the single GB's at that point (and I remember being blown away by my first GB sized hard drive back around then, too..."Oh my God I'll never fill this up!!")
With the recent crackdowns on behalf of the MAFIAA, and the uncertainty of cloud based storage (see the Jotform debacle) I think that the government is doing far more to advance "digital hoarding" than hard drive manufacturers and the ever-increasing size of hdd's.
I have about 4 TB's of external storage, and I've filled about 2.7 TB's of it so far just with stuff that I could stream or re-download but just don't have enough faith that the ability will be there tomorrow. Outside of my personal documents (which I would never trust solely to cloud storage, that's just begging to be screwed one morning after a bullshit domain name seizure) I have a ton of media I just do not want to lose access to again. Plus, add in the ISPs and their bullshit bandwidth caps and "throttling" these days, and you've got even more pressure to keep things local since streaming eats up so much fucking bandwidth.
I think there's a lot of potential with the cloud and streaming media, but it's being hampered by these 20th century media companies and their out-of-date business model. It's stifling innovation, but it seems our government would rather assist them in propping up their business plan than truly innovate. Probably because the innovaters aren't writing such large checks to make sure the government favors them like the MAFIAA does.
Not to mention Oil Companies...
Pirate satellites? Are we going to see SOPA 2.0 giving the government the authority to shoot down private satellites?
Again, I've been doing that since the mid 2000's.
Controllers have existed for the PC since the 90's. So have wireless keyboards and mice.
If it really took you until Windows 8 came around to realize the potential of connecting a computer and a television as a viable gaming platform on par with consoles, I wouldn't worry about moron proofing your posts.
Well, they're certainly not doing anything to discourage it when they roll out stupid bullshit like this...
You know an industry is fucked up to the core when customers are treated like adversaries right off the bat. I won't shop in a store where I'm made to feel like a thief the moment I walk in the door, and that's precisely what all this crap does. As a corollary to that, I'm extremely short on sympathy for those that do treat their customers that way and end up with large portions of the population comfortable with ripping them off.
A survey a few months ago found that 70% of people in the U.S. think it's reasonable to share music with family and friends. Now, the RIAA will stamp their feet and gnash their teeth at that, but the fact of the matter is, the majority of the people of this country do not see a problem with it. They can choose to ignore this and throw billions of dollars at court costs and all the other bullshit related to music piracy, or they can start more closely examining why it is that so many people out there don't have any moral compunction trading music back and forth in the first place. I suppose one could say "Well, that just proves that most people are thieves...." but still, when that many people openly do something that is technically illegal, maybe it's time to start examining those laws. If laws are passed that make the vast majority of the population "criminals", then there's obviously something wrong with the laws.
No optical drive at all, download only, is certainly a likely possibility. Then again I've been buying all my PC games like that, so ...
I really doubt it.
There are still many, many millions of people out there that are stuck on dial-up and I doubt any of the console developers would throw away that market. An individual game may require high speed internet, but an entire console? I doubt it.
More than likely it'll come with a Bluray drive in it. The only other thing I can possibly see would be them moving to some sort of flash memory medium, now that larger-sized flash drives are so cheap, but I think that they're way too paranoid about piracy to go non-optical.
It is time to move on. Modern technology is capable of much better.
But what about the PIRATES?!?! If it wasn't for them, every game would sell 10 million copies and game developers wouldn't need to focus on the console with it's built in DRM!!! It's all the pirates fault!!!!!!
Believe it or not, some people actually like to tweak things beyond mashing the Ultra Button and calling it good. I generally spend the first hour or so I play any game just tweaking the settings and pushing them as high as I can before the FPS dips too low for my tastes (I'll sacrifice a little quality to get 60 fps over 30 fps on "ultra").
Of course, the number of PC games coming out that even have an appreciable graphics configuration is dwindling rapidly. Graphics options that consist of a slider that says "good - gooder - bestist!" don't cut it unless it's sitting on top of something much more robust for those of us that actually care enough to do these things.
Um, in Windows 7 a TV setup is super easy to implement as well. Also, Windows Vista. And Windows XP. Not sure about Windows ME and beyond because I was firmly in 100 pound CRT monitor territory in those days.
I've been PC gaming on my television since 2005 when I bought my first LCD HDTV. A few years later when the Xbox Wireless Receiver came out it was even better.
I say this because the response from people who don't have problems with their console to those who do is often "well you broke it dumbass".
To be fair, I haven't met anyone in the last few years that didn't immediately assume that an Xbox 360 console failure wasn't because Microsoft builds shitty consoles.
In the beginning, perhaps, the fanboys would go apoplectic over people complaining about 360 failures, but I think by now most everyone knows that an xbox 360 console isn't so much bought as rented for a few years until it dies for no reason at all.
I'm personally on my third. Never got the RRoD, always had the DVD drives burn out and stop working. This is especially frustrating because it's just a standard DVD-ROM in the fucking thing, and I could replace it myself in a second, but Microsoft is a bunch of dickheads and every console is keyed to a particular model DVD drive (which has changed several times over the manufacturing cycle) that you can only get from them. There's methods out there for swapping out the drive controllers and all that shit to do it yourself, but it's all an incredible pain in the ass for something as stupidly simple to replace as an optical drive, and Microsoft wants 40% of the cost of a fucking entirely new console just to spend 15 minutes swapping a DVD-ROM? Give me a break...
That's at least one thing I give Sony kudos for as regards the PS3...you can go buy most any SATA hard drive and slap it into your PS3 with no problems whatsoever if you're looking to either upgrade or replace a burned out hdd. Seems kinda schizophrenic for a company that just cannot resist the temptation to make all their hardware use proprietary bullshit to lock people in but I suppose it's something.
People wonder why I stick to my PC for the majority of my gaming when the consoles are so much cheaper these days, but considering that it's cost me $500 for an Elite and $250 for the two vanilla replacements I've already spent almost as much on the damn consoles as I did on my last build and I can do a fuck of a lot more on this than I can on the consoles. I probably wouldn't have even replaced the console this last time if it wasn't for the 50+ games and the tons of accessories I have for the thing that would end up getting tossed or sold for $1 a piece to some kid at Gamestop...
That's funny, because to me it always seems like a Kids of the Klan rally or a meeting of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Maybe I just play too many First Person Shooters...
The MMORPG was Final Fantasy 11, and the new MMORPG is Final Fantasy 14. FFXI was actually pretty good in it's first few years, it was a fucking crushing grind fest as so many JRPGs are, but there was a real sense of accomplishment and a great community behind it (plus playing among people from all over the world and being able to communicate with them via the auto-translate was awesome), but alas, the various missteps by Square Enix, the dwindling population (of which the vast majority was only doing endgame shit), and the general shift to more accessible games that were less of an unrepentant time sink, such as WoW, killed it off.
At it's peak it was fun as fuck, though. It's a shame you never tried it. If it ever goes Free2Play you should check it out.
FFXIV is a flaming pile from what I've heard, graphically it looks nice but it sounds like they basically chose the worst option anytime a decision came up in the game's development and thus they pretty much have to completely remake the mechanics of the game or some shit. Either way I think it has less players than FFXI at this point even though FFXI is almost a decade old so I think that really says something about it.
This. There's a patched version of FF7 out there (Ultima Edition, I think) that runs on XP, so it should be able to run on Windows 7 as well. The graphics are a little painful to look at, but it worked last time I played (a few years ago). Otherwise you could always download a Playstation 1 emulator and an image of the game. Than you'll at least have controller support without having to fuck around with Joy2Key or X-Padder, which can be a bit of a pain in the ass...
So for $2,000 I can choose not to play with my friends, on a small screen, with games distributed the same way you can get them on Xbox, including the drm?
You may want to browse a few computer hardware sights because everything you're bitching about is perfectly simple to do on a PC, and you don't have to spend anywhere near $2000 to build a console equivalent in terms of hardware. If you want freedom, you have to get off your ass and work for it. Sorry if that bothers you, but that's life.
I am far less concerned about a nuclear attack than I am about economic collapse. The former is a long shot at best, very few countries on this earth would tolerate a nuclear attack by anyone against anyone, and would likely unite against the attacker at a level not seen since WWII. I think the vast majority of the world is just too sane to tolerate that shit...
Economic collapse, though, I think is inevitable at this point, so your advice to "Take your ass away from the major cities and the military hot spots and find a nice quiet hideout in a small town near natural resources." is still quite sound. We're not going to have to worry about Chinese or Iranians, we're going to have to worry about bands of criminals, and the major cities are going to be war zones as local gangs openly fight each other in the streets and police (many of which live in the suburbs, and thus have no connection whatsoever with the neighborhoods they're charged with patrolling) are going to vanish the second the paychecks stop coming. Same thing with the military; I have a lot of active duty and retired military in my family and during the last budget showdown and potential government shutdown, when they weren't sure if that month's paychecks for the military were going to go out, pretty much everyone was of the same mindset, "Until I get paid, I'm not doing shit." When the shit hits the fan (and it's gonna), we're gonna be on our own, every man for himself.
Which is why I've started preparing for that eventuality, by stocking up on food, supplies, and most importantly, means of defending ourselves. Some people call me crazy and say I'm treading into Ted Kacynski "move into the mountains and write a manifesto" territory, but there are a hell of a lot less than there used to be a year ago. We're not going to be victims in this house...
A PC?
Man, I once got through with a few unused razor blades in my carry-on I had left there by mistake. I don't know if it was the cardboard covering or what, but they weren't even inside my bag, it was one of those backpacks with the mesh pockets and you could see them right through it. Got right through.
Meanwhile, my sister-in-law, who is permanently disabled due to being wounded in Iraq, has 10 pounds of metal in her leg, and has to walk with a cane, she gets a ration of shit every single fucking time we go through the airport. They try to take not only her cane, but her damn knee brace every single time, saying it could be used as a weapon, but the best part is, when she complains and makes a scene, they always wave her through, which really makes me want to ask (if I wanted to end up in a windowless room when my plane takes off, that is): If it truly could be used as a weapon and is dangerous, why the fuck is complaining enough to get waved through? And if it's not, why the fuck do they stop her and try to take it from her every time she goes through security?
The TSA is a fucking joke...
Why not? Obviously they have a vested interest in making sure that terrorists aren't blowing their planes out of the sky. Put the culpability on them where there can actually be some sort of reaction by the public. As it is now, if a terrorist sneaks through and we have another terrorist attack, what are we gonna get? "Oops, we'll do a thorough investigation, shift a few people around to other departments, and do absolutely fuck all to make sure it doesn't happen again. Sorry America!!"
Any airline that skimps on security won't be able to insure their planes, not to mention the liability for all the wrongful death due to negligence suits that would follow. You think they would take a chance on that happening? I doubt it. The TSA goon with the plastic badge doesn't give a flying fuck. Believe me, I know. I proctored the TSA testing for years, and I assure you, 'test' is a bit of a stretch, not to mention the fact that half the people that sat for the test were either covered in gang tattoos or looked like the "after" pic on those "this is what crystal meth does to you" photos...
I'm not one of those "privatize everything" people, but the TSA is a fucking joke that should be completely defunded and disbanded. Putting active-duty military in there with dogs and SMGs would be more of a deterrent than the TSA and the scanners, and we're already paying them anyway.
Those systems get loaded up and confusing, and the ability to "windows key + type" has been a boon in my position as an IT consultant because I don't have to CARE if they have organized or not.
It's been a boon in my position as my family's go-to It is broken...can you make it go?!?" computer tech support slave as well.
You always know you're in for a treat when you boot up windows and find about 48 icons on the desktop, 3 of them being Internet Explorer shortcuts alone...Thank God for "windows key + type" in those situations.
When I used XP I was meticulous about organization as well, but after upgrading to 7 you just don't have to be anymore. The clusterfuck of the entire programs list is hidden behind the pinned apps, so it's really out of sight, out of mind, and being able to type-search for apps makes going through Program Files completely unnecessary.
I don't use the quick launch either (with the pinned stuff on the start menu it seems kinda redundant) and I haven't had an icon on my desktop since the Windows 98 days. I'm a minimalist; task bar auto-hides, no icons...just my wallpaper, like a digital photo frame when not in use...
So... yeah. I really love the microtransaction model though I'm pretty confident that I can perform simple addition.
Same here. My first real exposure to it was with Lord of the Rings: Online went F2P, and after playing P2P MMO's for many years, it was nice not to have to deal with the monthly fees and all that shit. Plus, unlike many F2P games, you can grind out the currency (Turbine Points), rather than having to purchase them. It's not as fast or convenient as plugging in a credit card and buying them, but it's really not that bad.
I guess the whole pay to win thing never bothered me, particularly with MMO's. I'm not competitive by nature, and in any MMO, it's damn hard to compete with the no-lifers that inevitably play 24/7 whether it's F2P or P2P, so that never mattered to me anyway. I don't play the game to impress people, I play to have fun, and if some guy has fun buying his way to the top, c'est la vie.
Granted, LotR:O didn't have PvP in the traditional sense, so I suppose constantly getting ganked by someone that paid to win would irritate me...but my non-competitive nature doesn't really lend itself to holding a grudge or getting very angry about stuff like that.
I've used OSX and a few different flavors of Linux (mainly on my HTPC which I frankenstein'd out of parts from old builds I had laying around) but I admit I primarily use Windows as I game a lot.
Still, my point is I don't know what the hell people expect if the Windows 7 Start Menu is so much of a pain for them to use. There's one guy further down the thread complaining about getting lost in the start menu. How the blue fuck does someone get "lost" in the fucking Start Menu and still have the ability to use a goddamned PC in the first place? That's up there with "How the hell did you get the beans above the franks!?" in terms of perplexity...