In daggerfall, you don't start out as a criminal. You're set on a mission by the emperor, and your boat crashes during a storm. You start the game just waking up from it in Privateer's Cove with your ship destroyed.
You know, I completely empathize with you. With that said, get a decent damn computer. Probably half your problem right there. Usually when someone has multiple problems with multiple different games consistantly like that.. It's not the games.
The rest of your comments I agree with all the way. I've actually stopped buying games completely. I think the last one I bought was over a year ago, and was neverwinter nights. I've actually adopted a 'borrow and see' policy. It goes like this: You borrow the game from a friend, and if you actually LIKED it, well. You buy it. If you don't, well. You uninstall it and return it to said friend.
That way, you don't reward the asshats pounding out games like Doom 3784: Yet More Demons Spawn From the Weapons Lockers Behind You, but reward inventive games like. Hmmm. Got me.
I won't even get started on the exceedingly annoying, crappity copy protection they thrust on us. It's not like it actually STOPS someone from pirating the damn thing. It just makes me hop on over to gamecopyworld and find the fixed cd image (Not the actual cd, just a cd image the game believes is the correct cd), and use daemontools so I don't have to juggle discs.
In fact, I hope Running With Scissors makes a new postalesque game. Except instead of "Parents against Games" or "Burn Books Save Trees" Protestors, they should include office buildings that are parodies of copy protection scheme companies so we can at least get our jollies off when we go on a rampage through it, smacking the exec's heads off with a shovel. THAT would be fun.
Mostly I think people (Or at least everyone I know) tends to play Strategy/Roleplaying games on the PS2, and if you look at it's library, that's what seems to be the most popular titles.
I actually own all three, and while I could find alot of really interesting new RPGs and Strategy games for the PS2, all I could find for the Xbox were regurgitated PC games and for the GC they were virtually non-existant.
It's interesting to note that after owning my Xbox for over 2 years, I still only own three games for it. And two of them are Halo.
And with hundreds of distros, dozens of windowmanagers and people forking apps because one doesn't have a big red button, the linux world is any different?
Sure, once everyone gets together and agrees on which version of everything to standardize on, then what you say has merit. Although I also think it was prophesized in the bible. Something mistakenly taken as the second coming?:)
I haven't read it yet, but I wonder if it mentions anything like the linux BIOS project one awhile back where it states that "The computer isn't yet ready for C code...":)
125 wats x2 for the GFX cards. 100 Wats x4 for the fastest dualcore opterons. 15 wats x 10 for the 15krpm SCSI:s. 10 wats x 16 for ram. Soundcard,chipset,network, DVD writer. 40 wats total.
From what I remember, the vast majority of the time there WAS a solution to the mystery. Maybe Mulder didn't always come out and say "We figured out that space aliens shaped like bananas dressed up in pajamas came up with a soul-sucking jingle to sell stuffed animals to crazy people!". But they'd at least imply a solution of some kind. Granted, it's been 5 years since I've seen an episodes, so I could be very wrong..
Pretty much any game with multiple threads. What games have multiple threads? Just about any game written with the modern OSes in mind, as well as some older ones.
Sure, right now the bulk of the threading is probably for I/O, but you'd be amazed at how CPU-intensive seemingly innocuous things such as sound mixing can be. That one alone is something that is incredibly easy to spawn a new thread for and drastically improve the performance of games. Some games also have seperate threads for visual effects processing, or ai processing, physics, etc. There's no magic list of games out there that would currently benefit from multi core systems or what specific things in them are threaded. However as someone who has used dual proc (and recently dual core) boxes for many many years, the performance is very noticable in doing just about anything on OSes that take advantage of it.
In windows 2k/xp/2k3, just look in the task manager and you'll see how many threads what has running. It's actually kind of suprising how many threads some apps use.
There's always Neverwinter Nights. You still have to buy the game, but there's dozens and dozens of different worlds all free to play on.
There's also the MUDs of old, or some 'free' MMORPGs, but generally speaking they make it a pain in the arse to play for 'free' (ie: Runescape's fencing off easy ways to get to places and then making a door that 'donators' can go through is one example of this, while people playing for free have to go the long, long, long long way around).
Also, Anarchy Online is free for the base client+world, no monthly fee, don't have to pay for the client. You can download it off their website of via their own bittorent tracker. You have to pay the monthly fee if you want to play with any of the expansions, but you don't NEED them to experience the vast majority of the fiction.
I'd suggest some websites with free MMORPGs, but those have gone downhill the past couple years as well. Well, at least the ones I knew about and used frequently.
Just a mild disclaimer: I'm not a MS fan. I don't even use windows in any of my servers. But I do have *legal* copies of most windows flavors and variants at work for testing purposes.
That said, apparently you're not really aware of the 'lineage' of windows OS'. Windows XP is based off of NT4. Windows Server 2003 is based off of Windows XP. Sure, 2k3 is probably a better OS than XP Pro, but for this kind of thing, I don't really see the problem. You're not going to get more or less stable with 2k3 than XP Pro.
In fact, they are *so* similar that the drivers written for either OS work with each other. Ie, Win2k3 -> XP. Or XP -> Win2k3. Hell, even the 64-bit drivers work that way.
If you're going to copy/paste the friggin article into the summary for slashdot, make sure you also copy/paste the money symbols and/or edit out the bits so that it actually makes sense when you say "7 million/ ($8 million)"
I wonder if they actually still teach writing in school? Oh, that's right, they teach leetonix. "I r 2 l33t 2 wri73 gud". But then again, maybe that's why some of us don't bother reading the blurb text anyways and just read comments and occasionally the actual article.;)
I don't think the popularity of linux in a place is tied to if they have their own distro. Otherwise, it'd be like the ONLY used OS in most of the western world. With it's 500 distros and all.:P
I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Some hardware manufacturer's CANNOT release source for their drivers because at least part of it is under an NDA or some kind of restrictive license.
Also, your other comment is just crazy. Why would you change the interface 'in order to prevent people from not making their drivers open source'. Um, wouldn't that ALSO force people to fiddle with their drivers everytime someone decides to poke something and ends up breaking everything else? Doesn't it make sense to make it as easy as possible for people to create and maintain their drivers for linux? Ever think that MAYBE the reason why they choose to primarily and in some cases exclusively develop windows drivers is also BECAUSE linux's driver interfaces changes on whim whenever because someone thought it'd be fun?
And let's not forget cancelling the US farmer subsidies, which do cost billions too (way more in fact), so that agricultural societies in Africa and elsewhere can actually sell their food at a competitive price AND market their way out of poverty?
The MAIN reason the farming subsidies are there is to stabilize the price of agricultural goods within the US. If you've noticed, while other things fluxuate crazily depending on what's going on, agricultural products and products they're based on usually stay at about the same price and if they do go up, they go up at a much, much slower rate. THAT is the goal of subsidizing the industry. To stabilize it.
Yes, it sucks for foreigners, but I can at least say that it's main purpose is not to fsck over the rest of the world. We still DO import other unprocessed food products. Beef and poultry from Canada, Oz, and the UK amongst others. Fruits, etc from south america and wherever. Its easy to find foreign produce here. Its also very easy to find CHEAP produce as well. And that's due to the subsidies.
1) gaim - works for yahoo/msn/aim. Has smilies. my girlfriend loves it.:P
2) firefox - supports windows media, quicktime, realplayer
3) mplayer - grab the all codecs version, watch whatever you want. Actually performs better than any other player out there. And its FREE.
4) Yea, that was lacking the last time I checked (over a year ago) as well, but at least it seemed to support reading great. Just toss up a fileserver or something or use smbfs/samba and you can share all your crazy movie collections.:)
You messed up, though. You were doing so well. What you should've done was go find someone that WOULD put linux on there instead of telling you to go fark yourself.
Then, you could've told them 'I really wanted that linux laptop, but instead I bought a shiny new blatronix 5000 that's not only approximately the same machine, but costs less, comes with a blank partition by default AND I get the installation media in case something happens. Maybe next time I'm in the market for a laptop you guys will be able to provide that service for me.' And then DO IT.
You completely blew the oppertunity to help drive the market. You know why they don't have a linux offering or a blank partition + install media policy? Its because people like you whine and moan about it, and then *buy it anyways*. Geez. I wish I had moderator points, I'd mod one of the other replies up.
Personally, I feel the Crossfire solution has far too many drawbacks for the benifits. Not only do you require a special motherboard, but now you also need a special Crossfire capable video card. The second card can be any card, but the RAM buffer should be the same size, otherwise it will defualt to the lowest value for both cards. The external cable adds some nice external heft to the system, as well.
How is that different from SLI? You need to make sure BOTH cards are SLI-capable, AND you need an SLI-capable MB otherwise, guess what? No SLI.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't most games have visual cues to that effect? I always turn the rumble crap off in all my games. It's more annoying than actually helpful imo.
Unfortunately, since CPU increases aren't scaling as fast as HD ones, a proc that can actually RUN vista is still another decade off...
In daggerfall, you don't start out as a criminal. You're set on a mission by the emperor, and your boat crashes during a storm. You start the game just waking up from it in Privateer's Cove with your ship destroyed.
IIRC It's actually Octopodiculous. Or was that some kind of spell from the Harry Potter series? Hmm...
Where are these tactical nukes when you need them? I'm sure they'd stop after their head offices get turned into a pile of molten slag..
You know, I completely empathize with you. With that said, get a decent damn computer. Probably half your problem right there. Usually when someone has multiple problems with multiple different games consistantly like that.. It's not the games.
The rest of your comments I agree with all the way. I've actually stopped buying games completely. I think the last one I bought was over a year ago, and was neverwinter nights. I've actually adopted a 'borrow and see' policy. It goes like this: You borrow the game from a friend, and if you actually LIKED it, well. You buy it. If you don't, well. You uninstall it and return it to said friend.
That way, you don't reward the asshats pounding out games like Doom 3784: Yet More Demons Spawn From the Weapons Lockers Behind You, but reward inventive games like. Hmmm. Got me.
I won't even get started on the exceedingly annoying, crappity copy protection they thrust on us. It's not like it actually STOPS someone from pirating the damn thing. It just makes me hop on over to gamecopyworld and find the fixed cd image (Not the actual cd, just a cd image the game believes is the correct cd), and use daemontools so I don't have to juggle discs.
In fact, I hope Running With Scissors makes a new postalesque game. Except instead of "Parents against Games" or "Burn Books Save Trees" Protestors, they should include office buildings that are parodies of copy protection scheme companies so we can at least get our jollies off when we go on a rampage through it, smacking the exec's heads off with a shovel. THAT would be fun.
Mostly I think people (Or at least everyone I know) tends to play Strategy/Roleplaying games on the PS2, and if you look at it's library, that's what seems to be the most popular titles.
I actually own all three, and while I could find alot of really interesting new RPGs and Strategy games for the PS2, all I could find for the Xbox were regurgitated PC games and for the GC they were virtually non-existant.
It's interesting to note that after owning my Xbox for over 2 years, I still only own three games for it. And two of them are Halo.
And with hundreds of distros, dozens of windowmanagers and people forking apps because one doesn't have a big red button, the linux world is any different?
Sure, once everyone gets together and agrees on which version of everything to standardize on, then what you say has merit. Although I also think it was prophesized in the bible. Something mistakenly taken as the second coming?
I haven't read it yet, but I wonder if it mentions anything like the linux BIOS project one awhile back where it states that "The computer isn't yet ready for C code..." :)
I just rounded few PEAK consumption figures.
125 wats x2 for the GFX cards.
100 Wats x4 for the fastest dualcore opterons.
15 wats x 10 for the 15krpm SCSI:s.
10 wats x 16 for ram.
Soundcard,chipset,network, DVD writer. 40 wats total.
1000 wats total,
Using a spellchecker cuz it's watts: Priceless
I wonder when the six million dollar man remake comes out?
:)
Well, that wouldn't be terribly interesting. Just a show about some guy who had to goto the ER for four hours..
Maybe the "Six Billion Dollar Man" would be interesting. THAT I would like to see..
From what I remember, the vast majority of the time there WAS a solution to the mystery. Maybe Mulder didn't always come out and say "We figured out that space aliens shaped like bananas dressed up in pajamas came up with a soul-sucking jingle to sell stuffed animals to crazy people!". But they'd at least imply a solution of some kind. Granted, it's been 5 years since I've seen an episodes, so I could be very wrong..
Pretty much any game with multiple threads. What games have multiple threads? Just about any game written with the modern OSes in mind, as well as some older ones.
Sure, right now the bulk of the threading is probably for I/O, but you'd be amazed at how CPU-intensive seemingly innocuous things such as sound mixing can be. That one alone is something that is incredibly easy to spawn a new thread for and drastically improve the performance of games. Some games also have seperate threads for visual effects processing, or ai processing, physics, etc. There's no magic list of games out there that would currently benefit from multi core systems or what specific things in them are threaded. However as someone who has used dual proc (and recently dual core) boxes for many many years, the performance is very noticable in doing just about anything on OSes that take advantage of it.
In windows 2k/xp/2k3, just look in the task manager and you'll see how many threads what has running. It's actually kind of suprising how many threads some apps use.
There's always Neverwinter Nights. You still have to buy the game, but there's dozens and dozens of different worlds all free to play on.
There's also the MUDs of old, or some 'free' MMORPGs, but generally speaking they make it a pain in the arse to play for 'free' (ie: Runescape's fencing off easy ways to get to places and then making a door that 'donators' can go through is one example of this, while people playing for free have to go the long, long, long long way around).
Also, Anarchy Online is free for the base client+world, no monthly fee, don't have to pay for the client. You can download it off their website of via their own bittorent tracker. You have to pay the monthly fee if you want to play with any of the expansions, but you don't NEED them to experience the vast majority of the fiction.
I'd suggest some websites with free MMORPGs, but those have gone downhill the past couple years as well. Well, at least the ones I knew about and used frequently.
Why not just force them to choose a 'strong' password to begin with? I'm sure Strongbad and his Lappy 486 could give ya a legs-up on it. :)
Just a mild disclaimer: I'm not a MS fan. I don't even use windows in any of my servers. But I do have *legal* copies of most windows flavors and variants at work for testing purposes.
That said, apparently you're not really aware of the 'lineage' of windows OS'. Windows XP is based off of NT4. Windows Server 2003 is based off of Windows XP. Sure, 2k3 is probably a better OS than XP Pro, but for this kind of thing, I don't really see the problem. You're not going to get more or less stable with 2k3 than XP Pro.
In fact, they are *so* similar that the drivers written for either OS work with each other. Ie, Win2k3 -> XP. Or XP -> Win2k3. Hell, even the 64-bit drivers work that way.
If you're going to copy/paste the friggin article into the summary for slashdot, make sure you also copy/paste the money symbols and/or edit out the bits so that it actually makes sense when you say "7 million/ ($8 million)"
;)
I wonder if they actually still teach writing in school? Oh, that's right, they teach leetonix. "I r 2 l33t 2 wri73 gud". But then again, maybe that's why some of us don't bother reading the blurb text anyways and just read comments and occasionally the actual article.
I don't think the popularity of linux in a place is tied to if they have their own distro. Otherwise, it'd be like the ONLY used OS in most of the western world. With it's 500 distros and all.
I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Some hardware manufacturer's CANNOT release source for their drivers because at least part of it is under an NDA or some kind of restrictive license.
Also, your other comment is just crazy. Why would you change the interface 'in order to prevent people from not making their drivers open source'. Um, wouldn't that ALSO force people to fiddle with their drivers everytime someone decides to poke something and ends up breaking everything else? Doesn't it make sense to make it as easy as possible for people to create and maintain their drivers for linux? Ever think that MAYBE the reason why they choose to primarily and in some cases exclusively develop windows drivers is also BECAUSE linux's driver interfaces changes on whim whenever because someone thought it'd be fun?
It's not wrong... It's just that, well... It's not correct. I'm sorry.
1) Just as long as legistlators are held responsible for loopholes in the law. "It's not illegal to steal candy from a baby? Who'da thought?"
2) Security consultants are held responsible for when their 'advice' is totally wrong.
I'm sure I can think of a few more. As long as we're spreading the blame around, lets spread it around 'bout everything equally.
And let's not forget cancelling the US farmer subsidies, which do cost billions too (way more in fact), so that agricultural societies in Africa and elsewhere can actually sell their food at a competitive price AND market their way out of poverty?
The MAIN reason the farming subsidies are there is to stabilize the price of agricultural goods within the US. If you've noticed, while other things fluxuate crazily depending on what's going on, agricultural products and products they're based on usually stay at about the same price and if they do go up, they go up at a much, much slower rate. THAT is the goal of subsidizing the industry. To stabilize it.
Yes, it sucks for foreigners, but I can at least say that it's main purpose is not to fsck over the rest of the world. We still DO import other unprocessed food products. Beef and poultry from Canada, Oz, and the UK amongst others. Fruits, etc from south america and wherever. Its easy to find foreign produce here. Its also very easy to find CHEAP produce as well. And that's due to the subsidies.
1) gaim - works for yahoo/msn/aim. Has smilies. my girlfriend loves it. :P
:)
2) firefox - supports windows media, quicktime, realplayer
3) mplayer - grab the all codecs version, watch whatever you want. Actually performs better than any other player out there. And its FREE.
4) Yea, that was lacking the last time I checked (over a year ago) as well, but at least it seemed to support reading great. Just toss up a fileserver or something or use smbfs/samba and you can share all your crazy movie collections.
You messed up, though. You were doing so well. What you should've done was go find someone that WOULD put linux on there instead of telling you to go fark yourself.
Then, you could've told them 'I really wanted that linux laptop, but instead I bought a shiny new blatronix 5000 that's not only approximately the same machine, but costs less, comes with a blank partition by default AND I get the installation media in case something happens. Maybe next time I'm in the market for a laptop you guys will be able to provide that service for me.' And then DO IT.
You completely blew the oppertunity to help drive the market. You know why they don't have a linux offering or a blank partition + install media policy? Its because people like you whine and moan about it, and then *buy it anyways*. Geez. I wish I had moderator points, I'd mod one of the other replies up.
Personally, I feel the Crossfire solution has far too many drawbacks for the benifits. Not only do you require a special motherboard, but now you also need a special Crossfire capable video card. The second card can be any card, but the RAM buffer should be the same size, otherwise it will defualt to the lowest value for both cards. The external cable adds some nice external heft to the system, as well.
:P
How is that different from SLI? You need to make sure BOTH cards are SLI-capable, AND you need an SLI-capable MB otherwise, guess what? No SLI.
Otherwise you seem to be on the right track.