Well, it is the guy who called the Vista Beta 1 a train wreck after all, so it's not like it hasn't happened before, and that's why he's the Microsoft reviewer of my choice. I mean, listening to e.g an open source enthusiast isn't going to give you a less biased review, and unfortunately I don't know too many reviewers that use to criticize Microsoft when it's due without for that sake being anti-Microsoft per general philosophy.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft
on
How Vista Disappoints
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· Score: 4, Insightful
People consistently bash Paul Thurrott on pro-Windows forums these days and I find that sad because I think he's one of few people left that write thorough, and actually rather unbiased, reviews of Microsoft products these days. Heck, with this review he even got an MS employee (that I'll avoid naming the username of to not point fingers) to call him a "douchebag" in a one-liner flamebait as an opinion about this entire article. Such non-existant motivation behind a flame can only come from one with little to defend himself with.
Don't worry; we already have a Slashdotter above (currently +4 Insightful no less) that has concluded that a section about them not feeling so "evil" is around 75% longer than the average section length as an argument of things smelling fishy. I'm not sure if the general opinion here is already that this article was planted as as an operation to increase interest in working for Microsoft or not, and I doubt I really want to know.:-S
Aside from the obvious puff-piece nature of this article, it's a bit of a Trojan Horse. Under the auspices of a broad view of what life at Microsoft is like, the author gets to air out the PR spin that Microsoft's Not Evil in seven contrite paragraphs (the average number of paragraphs for each segment is closer to four).
Jeez, you guys never cease to amaze me.
Tin foils hat on again, I suppose. 7 contrite paragraphs you say? Oh my.
Alt-tabbing over to another app during a game is instantaneous and snappy, where on a single-core processor alt-tabbing brings the sounds of "chariots of fire" into your mind as it moves in slow-motion.
That has never happened on my 1 GB system running Guild Wars, TeamSpeak, and IRC. It did a heck of a lot while I had 512 MB though.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
In relation to my sig, the day I will fully respect musicians' preferences to earn money on their music will be the same day my rights to play my purchased music won't be stolen by a third party. I will give you peace and understanding if the feeling is mutual.
They called it Longhorn back in 2000, then renamed it as vista.
When they decide for a code name doesn't matter.
What the target date is set to is what matters if we're still talking six year delays.
A delay is impossible without a target date to miss, or at least a change of plans.
Are you really saying Longhorn/Vista was supposed to be released in 2000 but delayed to 2006?
In that case, you have quite some burden of proof here.;-)
The *first* internal Longhorn alpha build I've heard of was build 3646, built on 2002-06-12. That build was nowhere near complete, and even later builds that were made a bit more public showed up basically like touch-up work to the kernel it was built on.
Yes, Vista will be interesting to see how it goes to me, because if they've had trouble getting Windows 98 users to upgrade to XP, that's nothing compared to what we might see here. Btw, I think you leave out the upgrade to XP, which I saw as a major benefit for plenty of users thanks to the vastly improved stability and performance of the NT kernel. But this feels almost like 2000 -> XP to me, just with slightly more features. There's basically the new protected user mode that's most interesting to me as it's a security redesign rather than a patch, and could have more long standing effects for Windows.
But as for the UI, the new bundled tools there already are free variants of, the new accelerated interface (like XP's is sluggish after turning off the animations!?), there's a lot there I don't care much about.
I wouldn't be surprised if I first have to upgrade to Vista due to the new DirectX 10-only games that are bound to appear in the future. DirectX 10 won't be released for earlier Windows versions as a way for Microsoft to push their operating system.
They aren't silent, I think just rather unsuccessful at gaining momentum and large public recognition on a series of products part of their new online service initiative going under the "Live" name, including Office Live.
Not to mention.NET 2.0, which is the latest version of their widely spanning development API.
There's then Vista, and Office 12 under production, and even IE 7.
Actually, it was quite a while since I last saw MS have this many balls in the air. Whether they're doing well or not at it is another question though, and one that can maybe not be answered well until early 2007 or so when at least IE 7 and Vista is supposed to be done.
If one see Oblivion's current hardware requirements, one should understand why things are like they are.
Sure, new solutions are appearing to more accurately reflect "accurate" physics, but the developers still have to cater for the large masses, not design for today's cutting edge graphics cards only. This game is bad enough as it is already. I have no doubt that if Betheshda could've made assumptions that most of the gamer community would have graphics cards supporting the real-time near physics acceleration, they could've designed for those.
Remember that Oblivion isn't supposed to be a tech preview, but a playable game that's supposed to be fun for a lot of people.
This complaint is maybe better left until 2010 or so, as I have no doubt we'll get much closer to this performane in the average PC in a quite short time.
Re:'We are not the Star Wars company'
on
LucasArts Aims for #1
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, this is sad, and while one could counter with "but adventure gaming is dead!", the same could basically be said before Baldur's Gate was released about CRPG's. But that game made the genre popular again, with tons of Infinity Engine games and expensions, and Neverwinter Nights became popular enough that we now have a sequel to look forward to. I also doubt Star Wars KOTOR was that much a success just for being Star Wars, but more thanks to a good and refreshing storyline. If Star Wars games were automatically popular, we wouldn't have had nearly as many flops.
I have to wonder if this genre isn't just in hibernation like these games were, for companies not daring to put money into developing them. If you haven't played Grim Fandago and are even remotely interested in this genre, I strongly recommend you to do. It gave me many memories like a good book would have done, and like most games won't.
> Apparently the person who submitted this story thinks "delete" and "censor" are synonomous - they are ot.
I see no reason to believe that. They're not synonyms, but they're very closely related words.
What do you mean? You're saying the same thing -- that they aren't synonyms. I don't think many disagrees with them being related, but simply replacing the words isn't right either.
Yeah, the probe isn't sent to find any "proof" of what runaway greenhouse gases can do; this is already known. But many details are not known, and this probe will simply try to improve our knowledge in the area, and *may* be able to apply some of this new knowledge to Earth, to either weaken or strengthen the greenhouse effect theories as for Eath.
I see the problem as being that it will destroy our economy AND THEN after we've reduced our carbon emissions and delayed global warming by ONE YEAR, we won't be able to afford to deal with the INEVITABLE damage from global warming.
The damage may be inevitable, but reduced if not aiding it.
Possibly not; you have to realize the population of China makes even a low rate of pollution per capita much more severe to the country as a whole. Even if Chinese people are doing reasonably well, they'll put a mark in statistics like these. I think we'll just have to accept the most populated in the world has these problems; we can't exactly start killing people for it. Now, what the problem in your stastics is, is that China isn't higher up than US and Europe, showing these countries are polluting considerably worse, and not in line with their populations.
but if you have ever tried dual booting with Windows the first couple of times you always find out that Windows will boot and the other operating system is screwed up.
Well, you'd think that this is the point when Boot Camp come into play. If Windows XP is just supposed to screw up OS X, why are they releasing it in the first place?
Nah, this is an unintented bug in Boot Camp, nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it is the guy who called the Vista Beta 1 a train wreck after all, so it's not like it hasn't happened before, and that's why he's the Microsoft reviewer of my choice. I mean, listening to e.g an open source enthusiast isn't going to give you a less biased review, and unfortunately I don't know too many reviewers that use to criticize Microsoft when it's due without for that sake being anti-Microsoft per general philosophy.
People consistently bash Paul Thurrott on pro-Windows forums these days and I find that sad because I think he's one of few people left that write thorough, and actually rather unbiased, reviews of Microsoft products these days. Heck, with this review he even got an MS employee (that I'll avoid naming the username of to not point fingers) to call him a "douchebag" in a one-liner flamebait as an opinion about this entire article. Such non-existant motivation behind a flame can only come from one with little to defend himself with.
From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google.
Is Gdrive even planned for sure?
Funny to compare with a rumored service in the title if not.
Don't worry; we already have a Slashdotter above (currently +4 Insightful no less) that has concluded that a section about them not feeling so "evil" is around 75% longer than the average section length as an argument of things smelling fishy. I'm not sure if the general opinion here is already that this article was planted as as an operation to increase interest in working for Microsoft or not, and I doubt I really want to know. :-S
Aside from the obvious puff-piece nature of this article, it's a bit of a Trojan Horse. Under the auspices of a broad view of what life at Microsoft is like, the author gets to air out the PR spin that Microsoft's Not Evil in seven contrite paragraphs (the average number of paragraphs for each segment is closer to four).
Jeez, you guys never cease to amaze me.
Tin foils hat on again, I suppose. 7 contrite paragraphs you say? Oh my.
Alt-tabbing over to another app during a game is instantaneous and snappy, where on a single-core processor alt-tabbing brings the sounds of "chariots of fire" into your mind as it moves in slow-motion.
That has never happened on my 1 GB system running Guild Wars, TeamSpeak, and IRC. It did a heck of a lot while I had 512 MB though.
In relation to my sig, the day I will fully respect musicians' preferences to earn money on their music will be the same day my rights to play my purchased music won't be stolen by a third party. I will give you peace and understanding if the feeling is mutual.
They called it Longhorn back in 2000, then renamed it as vista.
;-)
When they decide for a code name doesn't matter.
What the target date is set to is what matters if we're still talking six year delays.
A delay is impossible without a target date to miss, or at least a change of plans.
Are you really saying Longhorn/Vista was supposed to be released in 2000 but delayed to 2006?
In that case, you have quite some burden of proof here.
The *first* internal Longhorn alpha build I've heard of was build 3646, built on 2002-06-12. That build was nowhere near complete, and even later builds that were made a bit more public showed up basically like touch-up work to the kernel it was built on.
Yes, Vista will be interesting to see how it goes to me, because if they've had trouble getting Windows 98 users to upgrade to XP, that's nothing compared to what we might see here. Btw, I think you leave out the upgrade to XP, which I saw as a major benefit for plenty of users thanks to the vastly improved stability and performance of the NT kernel. But this feels almost like 2000 -> XP to me, just with slightly more features. There's basically the new protected user mode that's most interesting to me as it's a security redesign rather than a patch, and could have more long standing effects for Windows.
But as for the UI, the new bundled tools there already are free variants of, the new accelerated interface (like XP's is sluggish after turning off the animations!?), there's a lot there I don't care much about.
I wouldn't be surprised if I first have to upgrade to Vista due to the new DirectX 10-only games that are bound to appear in the future. DirectX 10 won't be released for earlier Windows versions as a way for Microsoft to push their operating system.
Gosh, that's the worst mispelling of six years I've ever seen!
AFAIK, Vista wasn't delayed six years. That seem to rather match the time it has been in development.
But yes, it was likely delayed more than a "few months" at least due to them deciding to throw out the XP kernel and base it on Server 2003's instead.
They aren't silent, I think just rather unsuccessful at gaining momentum and large public recognition on a series of products part of their new online service initiative going under the "Live" name, including Office Live.
.NET 2.0, which is the latest version of their widely spanning development API.
Not to mention
There's then Vista, and Office 12 under production, and even IE 7.
Actually, it was quite a while since I last saw MS have this many balls in the air. Whether they're doing well or not at it is another question though, and one that can maybe not be answered well until early 2007 or so when at least IE 7 and Vista is supposed to be done.
Arrgh! I just see a sequence of ASCII characters now! B... e... h... What the hell did you do!?
If one see Oblivion's current hardware requirements, one should understand why things are like they are.
Sure, new solutions are appearing to more accurately reflect "accurate" physics, but the developers still have to cater for the large masses, not design for today's cutting edge graphics cards only. This game is bad enough as it is already. I have no doubt that if Betheshda could've made assumptions that most of the gamer community would have graphics cards supporting the real-time near physics acceleration, they could've designed for those.
Remember that Oblivion isn't supposed to be a tech preview, but a playable game that's supposed to be fun for a lot of people.
This complaint is maybe better left until 2010 or so, as I have no doubt we'll get much closer to this performane in the average PC in a quite short time.
Yes, this is sad, and while one could counter with "but adventure gaming is dead!", the same could basically be said before Baldur's Gate was released about CRPG's. But that game made the genre popular again, with tons of Infinity Engine games and expensions, and Neverwinter Nights became popular enough that we now have a sequel to look forward to. I also doubt Star Wars KOTOR was that much a success just for being Star Wars, but more thanks to a good and refreshing storyline. If Star Wars games were automatically popular, we wouldn't have had nearly as many flops.
I have to wonder if this genre isn't just in hibernation like these games were, for companies not daring to put money into developing them. If you haven't played Grim Fandago and are even remotely interested in this genre, I strongly recommend you to do. It gave me many memories like a good book would have done, and like most games won't.
> Apparently the person who submitted this story thinks "delete" and "censor" are synonomous - they are ot.
I see no reason to believe that. They're not synonyms, but they're very closely related words.
What do you mean? You're saying the same thing -- that they aren't synonyms.
I don't think many disagrees with them being related, but simply replacing the words isn't right either.
Calling wikipedia an "encyclopedia" is like calling a plate full of turds a gourmet meal.
It doesn't matter; it's intended to be an encyclopedia.
There was an edit to the entry for John Cena, the wrestler recently. In the middle of his bio someone had written "FUCK CENA".
We've been over this discussion on Slashdot several times though, so either you're a troll, not paying attention, or new here.
Sounds like the thinking is that both Serenity and very early HD adopters are geeky, and hence that movie being good geekbait. :-)
Yeah, the probe isn't sent to find any "proof" of what runaway greenhouse gases can do; this is already known. But many details are not known, and this probe will simply try to improve our knowledge in the area, and *may* be able to apply some of this new knowledge to Earth, to either weaken or strengthen the greenhouse effect theories as for Eath.
Of course, any real fan knows the slightly anticlimac answer that there was no special question.
I see the problem as being that it will destroy our economy AND THEN after we've reduced our carbon emissions and delayed global warming by ONE YEAR, we won't be able to afford to deal with the INEVITABLE damage from global warming.
The damage may be inevitable, but reduced if not aiding it.
Perhaps not fair, but necessary to bring pollution levels more in line with population levels.
translation: "refuses to devolve our economy"
:-p
lol... Not to mention how much severe environmental problems would devolve your economy...
So, can we start talking yet?
Possibly not; you have to realize the population of China makes even a low rate of pollution per capita much more severe to the country as a whole. Even if Chinese people are doing reasonably well, they'll put a mark in statistics like these. I think we'll just have to accept the most populated in the world has these problems; we can't exactly start killing people for it. Now, what the problem in your stastics is, is that China isn't higher up than US and Europe, showing these countries are polluting considerably worse, and not in line with their populations.
but if you have ever tried dual booting with Windows the first couple of times you always find out that Windows will boot and the other operating system is screwed up.
Well, you'd think that this is the point when Boot Camp come into play.
If Windows XP is just supposed to screw up OS X, why are they releasing it in the first place?
Nah, this is an unintented bug in Boot Camp, nothing more.
Pirates of the Burning Sea or this one.
I think I'm placing my bets on the former just because movie licenses don't tend to end well.