Most Gliders use it to farm gold. Using a Bot to farm gold is against the game rules. Rules say if you play, you must play with a sack of meat behind the keyboard, not with a program emulating keystrokes.
So, it's called 'cheating', and cheaters should be strung up to the lampposts by the street for people to mock for being immature pricks.
Should WoW be a single player game, I Couldn't care less - cheating in a single player game is fine - you are cheating only yourself. In a multiplayer game - especially one with a persistent gameworld - cheating should not be tolerated.
And Blizzard can't tolerate them - if cheaters take over, the vast majority (those playing by the rules) give up and cancel their accounts, and blizzard wants the money from the 6M+ honest players rather than few thousand idiots who do anything to 'get ahead' in a game.
Yes, you can argue Blizzard's game has parts that are not fun, and WOWGlider lets you bypass the 'unfun' parts, but thats like arguing that in Chess it's unfun that your opponent also has the Queen piece, and to bypass the 'unfun' part you cheat and toss your opponent's Queen off the board. If you think WoW is not fun, nobody is forcing you to play. You just should not cheat.
And it most definitely is not undetectable. His own boards have dozens of pages of posts from his customers who got their accounts banned for using WOWGlider.
Funniest are the morons who whine how their other accounts got banned too - stuff like 'I only glided on one (farming) account, they wtfpwned my main account too!!!' (duh, TOS says Blizzard can nuke all your accounts if you violate it)
Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules. So props to Blizzard if they actually try to bury him in legal crap - he'd deserve something much worse, but sadly judges don't toss people into jail for hacking game clients with the intent of ruining the game for all players.
Good to hear. It was an example of a potential problem program. I'm sure there are others that will crop up that a major portion of home users considers 'essential'.
McAfee and Symantec are whining about 64Bit Vista. Kaspersky & co are talking about the 32bit version, which has no PatchGuard.
Of course this is all mostly academic. PatchGuard will ensure that 64bit Vista will be marginalized. Numerous apps will fail because of it - you only need a thing like DaemonTools not working, and big portion of MS home target market will drop the 64 bit version like a rotten fruit.
Control freaks running corporate envinroments will use 64bit, as will users that specifically need more than 4 gigs of ram. Rest won't. Major system builders won't put 64bit Vista as preinstalled, as it would generate a big pile of extra support calls for no tangible benefit.
Symantec and McAfee are pissed if they have to release their security products with 'wont work on 64bit vista' stickers. Especially if at the same time OneCare will work fine. It will imply inferiority, even if in the real world there is no difference, because home users won't adopt the 64bit version, at least not until major home apps start asking for more than 4 gigs of ram (and we're still at least 4-5 years away from that)
DAOC claimed that 'no this won't affect DAOC, Warhammer Online has whole different dev team on another floor of the same building'.
While this may be mostly true, any real dev investment to DAOC went downhill fast after that. Yes, they still have people fixing exploits and they are releasing a small expansion later this year, but there has been no real development after Catacombs was launched to the core game systems. DAOC has been broken as far as gameplay is concerned since bit after TOA launch, and Catacombs just broke it a bit more. No real effort has gone towards fixing it. Many of the original dev team have moved on to other companies.
See Cryptic Studios - many gone from there too. Part may be NCsoft-mandated downsizing (they took a huge blow when Auto Assault was a massive flop) of the CoV/CoH devteam, but either way the end result is the same.
CoH/CoV had a nice combat system. However, the character development curve was badly designed - you get fewer and fewer new abilities as you go up in levels, while levelling gets slower and slower - most players gave up well before maximum level, as there was nothing new to gain, and while rolling alts was fun for a while, they shot their own foot in the most spectacular way by introducing 'storyline' in CoV newbie zones - essentially forcing EVERY SINGLE ALT of yours to level thru EXACT SAME BORING MISSIONS during the first 20 levels or so.
CoH at least had several starting zones and several starting mission lines. No such luck with the Villains side - so nobody could be bothered with more than one or two Villains alts before the initial grind thru the on-rails noob zones caused the players to basically slit their wrists and hit/cancel.
Plus neither game had no endgame what so ever. Kinda critical flaw in a MMO.
WoW would've flopped like a dead duck had they left out every 10+ man instance in the game. CoH/CoV is a bit like that.
Dead as in no longer actively developed or improved. Only on life support to try to maximize the ability to milk out as much from the initial investment in the R&D prior to launch.
Yes, they are promising the world in the next four 'issues'. Talk is cheap. Note how very very vague their plans are...
Problem is, while the text was nice in CoH/CoV, the actual mission was always the same. Kill all baddies, click glowy thingy or kill boss. There was little REASON to read the text. Heck, when they did 'kidnap' missions for CoV, they didn't even bother to redo animations - it's same as 'rescue' missions in CoH side, with the 'kidnap victim' happily following you around the mission map.
CoH/CoV are dead. They will continue to run the life support and token 'additions' as long as it's financially sound, but it's obivious that Cryptic's main devs will concentrate on the new stuff.
Just look at DAOC after Warhammer Online was announced. I rest my case.
Cryptic never had enough devs to actually develop City of Heroes forward from it's intial smack-endless-piles-of-baddies-with-mad-AE-attacks gameplay. The game has zero content.
Yes, they relesed an expansion, that copypasted half the powers from Heroes side, and dropped another pile of nearly contect-free stuff and told people to go level again from zero.
Also, a superhero game with a license is the silliest idea ever. Either you have 200 spidermans zipping around (beyond silly), or you can't allow players to play 'name' characters, at which point the whole point of a license goes out of the window. People play license games to 'be the hero' so to speak, and that doesn't work in a MMO. The concept is just broken out of the gate.
Expect a weak ripoff of City of Heroes with marvel (tm)(R)'s added all around, with some weak license-tieins like 'name' heroes giving missions to the player characters, and maybe villains as bosses to whack. With zero endgame gameplay at launch and nearly zero post-launch content.
MMOs live and die on the _gameplay_, not any license or logo, and while Cryptic did prove with CoH/CoV that they can make a workable superhero combat system that's cool for roughly two weeks, they also proved they couldn't design their way out of a paper bag beyond the combat system. All the bolted-on stuff has been broken - PvP was riddled by extra rules and special pvp nerfs to powers, base system was so badly designed it was unusable to most of the playerbase and the 'crafting' introduced in CoV was so bad it makes EQ2's crafting system look great in comparison.
WoW upped the bar on the amount of content and gameplay required to keep people hooked on a MMO. And even WoW faces constant whines how there's not enough to do. I can't blame people for trying, but I sincerely doubt Marvel Online will be a success - if it even gets out of the gate (Microsoft has a tendency to kill off/sell off MMO projects when their beancounters get the willies during development)
It's a port, so most of the assets are already done. Why not do a port of a 'big' title for a launch which is most likely going to be low on games, and take in some easy cash?
Every new console launch has it's share of easy ports raking in the launch madness - when people buy just about anything just to get another game for their shiny new thingy (since there's like 5 titles to choose from)
I will repeat myself: Vista is quite a bit more than a reskinned XP.
No, it's not perfect (hey, it's a Microsoft product), and it will most likely have it's fair share of new holes, but MS has definitely done a lot more than when they reskinned 2K as 'Windows XP' (*that* was a reskin job).
Sadly if one of the major uses for the PC is gaming, 98 is obsolete, and 2K is starting to have some (rare) issues - mostly due to braindead programming or deliberate 'breaking' of apps to require XP. So for gaming, currently you have to have 2K or XP, and XP has less 'oddball' issues without any real drawbacks.
And in the future, with DX10 getting no backport, you will either get Vista, or scrap PC as a gaming platform.
I have no hurry to swap to Vista - it's still unfinished and probably will need it's fair share of patches and fixes post-launch before it becomes usable. However, Microsoft will make sure it will, in the end, be mandatory for gamers. I just hope most stupid bits are fixed by then, essential applications have catched up, and any builtin drm crap neutered by third parties.
And yes, I agree that x64 version, with it's compatibility issues and draconian driver signing regime is basically DOA. Unless Microsoft changes their policy before launch, it will set back adoption of 64bit Windows back another 5 years or so. Things just won't work - hardware developers can't be assed to get signatures, and will just ignore 64 bit version, and applications requiring low level access (firewalls and DRM workarounds come to mind) will just not work, driving userbase to ignore the whole crap.
What will be interesting is the NEXT version of Windows, whatever that might be. 32bit Vista, while it does change the defaults towards taking (some) control of the system away from the average user, it still is possible to reconfigure it to keep the user at the driver's seat. Yes, some bits of kernel are being walled off in the name of security, but as long as unsigned code can be loaded at 'root' level (drivers and similar bits), there are ways around it. They may be convoluted and cause pain for, among other things, firewall developers, but the system isn't locked down in this regard.
Vista's x64 version on the other hand has the first bits of "I'm sorry, mr. Bill Gates and his borg collective say you can't do that" included with mandatory driver signing and other 'security' around the kernel, and it's obivious in the future MS will continue to try to push users down that slippery slope, until some day we need to get MS's approval to do anything on _our_ computers.
x64 Vista is dead as a doorknob as general purpose OS, but it's successor may be the tipping point where you either install Windows and give control to MS, or you install something else and actually get to decide what your computer does. In the meantime, 32bit Vista is coming, and for the most of the computer users of the world, you most likely have to adapt. OEMs will make sure of it, making XP 'vanish' off new computers as soon as it's feasible.
It will be interesting to see the mess with 32bit vs 64bit Vista on OEM systems. One would imagine MS would push the installation of x64 version on OEM systems with 64bit CPUs (umm, basicaly all of them?), but if the OS refuses to work with lots of very common stuff with no way to fix them (say, Daemon Tools and similar programs relying on low level access come to mind, plus lots of hardware with no signed drivers), the OEMs have a support nightmare on their hands... Can't wait to watch THAT trainwreck over the next year or so.
... and they provide no application-level outbound filtering.
Which is pretty much needed in today's "every program wants to call home" world. I want to decide what a (new) program gets to do as far as the network connection goes.
I do have a firewall box between my computers and the world, but it only protects against inbound junk. It's impossible to manage against outbound threats without application-level blocking.
Yes, in theory one could program a box to do stateful packet inspection and block specific applications you want to keep from calling home, but it's almost impossible to know which new program wants to do it (and using what rules) short of running a network analyzer on the firewall box, and always analyzing the traffic after installing each new application. While some ubernerd might enjoy such setup, I just want the damn thing to work and be easy to administrate.
Software application-level firewall is a *bit* more practical in offering outbound control. And there is no working solution for Vista (yet). And yes, I'm discounting the MS 'firewall' on purpose. It sucks less than XP firewall, but it still sucks.
This is yet another good reason to avoid upgrading for now.
Personally, one of the major reason why I haven't taken RC1 into actual use beyond testing it a bit is lack of compatible 3rd party firewall.
Then again.. situation was pretty similar when Win2K came out - early on nothing was compatible. XP was easier because it is effectively a reskinned Win2K, and 99% of Win2K apps worked out of the box - even security products.
Vista is quite a bit more than a reskinned XP, as lots of stuff under the hood has been reworked, and again it's just like Win2K - nothing works intially, but I'm sure over time the problem is going to be fixed. In fact, it's surprising how good the situation is, considering official launch is still several months away.
Full price of DVD, except you don't get the box nor the DVD (and most likely none of the DVD extra features), and you can't even burn the DVD from the DRM-infected file you spent ages to download.
Sure, this is going to be a HUGE hit.
Not.
To be fair, I don't think Apple's pricing is going to work either.
Because the braindead system can be r00ted using a memory card - if a specially prepared card is in at boot, it can boot from the card and utterly pwn the software inside.
Logic being 'ease of updating', but the safeguards in place against inserting something other than an authorized, verified and certified update are close to nonexisting.
So, in essence, if you have access to the memory card slot, some time, and capability to reboot the machine, you can pwn the election. And it will most likely be untraceable.
It used to be that you had to replace it with an identical model. However, in the real world that does not work (it can be hard to find an identical replacement for a 6 month old board, let alone 2-3 years old). Microsoft would LOVE for it to be this way, but it would be blatantly illegal unfair licensing term. Effectively it would deny repairs of a failed computer in many cases without re-buying a license.
This was the main reason why I asked about this from Microsoft, and while initially they said the board would have to be 'identical or manufacturer's warranty-replaced similar board' (and at one point they claimed it _had_ to be in-warranty replacement, so once hardware warranty had expired, that's that...), I pressed the issue. I was then told 'effective immediately' any board would be ok, as long as the reason for the replacement was a defect in the original board.
So, if you do have to make a phone activation after board swap, magical words are 'I replaced the motherboard due to a defect', and always use the product key on the sticker, not the one your installation media might automagically use (they generally don't match on OEM recovery CDs, long convoluted reason why not, but the one on the sticker does allow you to get it working via the phone activation)
I work at a VAR and went thru a very long and convoluted email exchange with Microsoft about this.
The end result is: OEM is tied to a computer. However, you can change anything except the motherboard, and it's still the same computer. You can also exchange the board if it's due to a 'defect'.
And 'defects'... well, accidents happen. It's a dangerous world.
Only drawback is that once you do change motherboard, you are required to activate the copy over the phone, and if it was a big-name OEM (those that don't normally ask for product key when you use the recovery disc), you may have to replace the key that's on the OEM sticker with a replacement issued by MS phone support. But in the end, the license is still valid - as long as the board swap was due to 'defect' (or, essentially, if you lie it was due to a defect). So in reality OEM is transferrable, if you know what you are doing.
Dunno about other markets, but in Finland name brand media PCs keeled over and died due to immense suckage of Windows Media Center Edition.
- No official support for DVB-C cards (large chunk of the country gets TV using cable, and DVB-C), cutting down potential market - No support for DVB subtitling (used by finnish national broadcasting company YLE), decimating the leftover market - Generally crappy DVB support - and analog transmissions end next year over here - Horrendously complicated install on selfbuilt systems (whitebox PCs are more common over here than in many other countries) coupled with difficulties in actually obtainining MCE legally without buying an OEM system.
Most 'Media PCs' built over here tend to be selfbuilt, using linux or WinXP with separate software, and it's non-trivial to set one up, so they are still a niche market.
I'm sure the big name OEMs will try again when they get Vista with MCE features, and proper DVB-T/DVB-C and DVB subtitling support.
It's anybodys guess at this point. PS3 is so overpriced at launch that it's no longer a done deal by a longshot. It all depends on what each console has to offer to gamers next holiday season. Xbox 360 has suffered due to lack of good exclusive titles, which supposedly is getting fixed this winter. At the same time PS3s launch lineup is still very much in the dark.
PS3 may still turn out to be the biggest turkey in the universe of game consoles, or it might pwn everything. At 300$ at launch it would absolutely surely wipe floor with everything.
At 599$, with crippled version having no HDMI, nobody knows what happens yet.
My personal bet is that X360-Wii -combo will beat PS3 for the first year, until lot more games are ready, and Sony, after bleeding for a while, goes for broke and drops the price. HD DVD/Blu-ray fight will be an irrelevant sideshow, as the movies are way overpriced and offer no serious benefits unless you buy a super-expensive TV. Whoever first gets the standalone player price down and offers more *movie* features wins. Additionally, if, say, HD-DVDs DRM gets cracked first, and people can start making 'backups' of their HD content bit like you can muck with DVDs today, Blu-ray will insta-lose the fight right there unless they can counter with technical merits (none so far, the formats are almost identical) or price (not likely with sony).
Slashdot Mirror
Most Gliders use it to farm gold. Using a Bot to farm gold is against the game rules. Rules say if you play, you must play with a sack of meat behind the keyboard, not with a program emulating keystrokes.
So, it's called 'cheating', and cheaters should be strung up to the lampposts by the street for people to mock for being immature pricks.
Should WoW be a single player game, I Couldn't care less - cheating in a single player game is fine - you are cheating only yourself. In a multiplayer game - especially one with a persistent gameworld - cheating should not be tolerated.
And Blizzard can't tolerate them - if cheaters take over, the vast majority (those playing by the rules) give up and cancel their accounts, and blizzard wants the money from the 6M+ honest players rather than few thousand idiots who do anything to 'get ahead' in a game.
Yes, you can argue Blizzard's game has parts that are not fun, and WOWGlider lets you bypass the 'unfun' parts, but thats like arguing that in Chess it's unfun that your opponent also has the Queen piece, and to bypass the 'unfun' part you cheat and toss your opponent's Queen off the board. If you think WoW is not fun, nobody is forcing you to play. You just should not cheat.
And it most definitely is not undetectable. His own boards have dozens of pages of posts from his customers who got their accounts banned for using WOWGlider.
Funniest are the morons who whine how their other accounts got banned too - stuff like 'I only glided on one (farming) account, they wtfpwned my main account too!!!' (duh, TOS says Blizzard can nuke all your accounts if you violate it)
Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules. So props to Blizzard if they actually try to bury him in legal crap - he'd deserve something much worse, but sadly judges don't toss people into jail for hacking game clients with the intent of ruining the game for all players.
Good to hear. It was an example of a potential problem program. I'm sure there are others that will crop up that a major portion of home users considers 'essential'.
Apples and oranges.
McAfee and Symantec are whining about 64Bit Vista. Kaspersky & co are talking about the 32bit version, which has no PatchGuard.
Of course this is all mostly academic. PatchGuard will ensure that 64bit Vista will be marginalized. Numerous apps will fail because of it - you only need a thing like DaemonTools not working, and big portion of MS home target market will drop the 64 bit version like a rotten fruit.
Control freaks running corporate envinroments will use 64bit, as will users that specifically need more than 4 gigs of ram. Rest won't. Major system builders won't put 64bit Vista as preinstalled, as it would generate a big pile of extra support calls for no tangible benefit.
Symantec and McAfee are pissed if they have to release their security products with 'wont work on 64bit vista' stickers. Especially if at the same time OneCare will work fine. It will imply inferiority, even if in the real world there is no difference, because home users won't adopt the 64bit version, at least not until major home apps start asking for more than 4 gigs of ram (and we're still at least 4-5 years away from that)
It's exactly the same thing as DAOC.
/cancel.
DAOC claimed that 'no this won't affect DAOC, Warhammer Online has whole different dev team on another floor of the same building'.
While this may be mostly true, any real dev investment to DAOC went downhill fast after that. Yes, they still have people fixing exploits and they are releasing a small expansion later this year, but there has been no real development after Catacombs was launched to the core game systems. DAOC has been broken as far as gameplay is concerned since bit after TOA launch, and Catacombs just broke it a bit more. No real effort has gone towards fixing it. Many of the original dev team have moved on to other companies.
See Cryptic Studios - many gone from there too. Part may be NCsoft-mandated downsizing (they took a huge blow when Auto Assault was a massive flop) of the CoV/CoH devteam, but either way the end result is the same.
CoH/CoV had a nice combat system. However, the character development curve was badly designed - you get fewer and fewer new abilities as you go up in levels, while levelling gets slower and slower - most players gave up well before maximum level, as there was nothing new to gain, and while rolling alts was fun for a while, they shot their own foot in the most spectacular way by introducing 'storyline' in CoV newbie zones - essentially forcing EVERY SINGLE ALT of yours to level thru EXACT SAME BORING MISSIONS during the first 20 levels or so.
CoH at least had several starting zones and several starting mission lines. No such luck with the Villains side - so nobody could be bothered with more than one or two Villains alts before the initial grind thru the on-rails noob zones caused the players to basically slit their wrists and hit
Plus neither game had no endgame what so ever. Kinda critical flaw in a MMO.
WoW would've flopped like a dead duck had they left out every 10+ man instance in the game. CoH/CoV is a bit like that.
Dead as in no longer actively developed or improved. Only on life support to try to maximize the ability to milk out as much from the initial investment in the R&D prior to launch.
Yes, they are promising the world in the next four 'issues'. Talk is cheap. Note how very very vague their plans are...
Problem is, while the text was nice in CoH/CoV, the actual mission was always the same. Kill all baddies, click glowy thingy or kill boss. There was little REASON to read the text. Heck, when they did 'kidnap' missions for CoV, they didn't even bother to redo animations - it's same as 'rescue' missions in CoH side, with the 'kidnap victim' happily following you around the mission map.
Also CoV/CoH was badly overinstanced.
CoH/CoV are dead. They will continue to run the life support and token 'additions' as long as it's financially sound, but it's obivious that Cryptic's main devs will concentrate on the new stuff.
Just look at DAOC after Warhammer Online was announced. I rest my case.
Cryptic never had enough devs to actually develop City of Heroes forward from it's intial smack-endless-piles-of-baddies-with-mad-AE-attacks gameplay. The game has zero content.
Yes, they relesed an expansion, that copypasted half the powers from Heroes side, and dropped another pile of nearly contect-free stuff and told people to go level again from zero.
Also, a superhero game with a license is the silliest idea ever. Either you have 200 spidermans zipping around (beyond silly), or you can't allow players to play 'name' characters, at which point the whole point of a license goes out of the window. People play license games to 'be the hero' so to speak, and that doesn't work in a MMO. The concept is just broken out of the gate.
Expect a weak ripoff of City of Heroes with marvel (tm)(R)'s added all around, with some weak license-tieins like 'name' heroes giving missions to the player characters, and maybe villains as bosses to whack. With zero endgame gameplay at launch and nearly zero post-launch content.
MMOs live and die on the _gameplay_, not any license or logo, and while Cryptic did prove with CoH/CoV that they can make a workable superhero combat system that's cool for roughly two weeks, they also proved they couldn't design their way out of a paper bag beyond the combat system. All the bolted-on stuff has been broken - PvP was riddled by extra rules and special pvp nerfs to powers, base system was so badly designed it was unusable to most of the playerbase and the 'crafting' introduced in CoV was so bad it makes EQ2's crafting system look great in comparison.
WoW upped the bar on the amount of content and gameplay required to keep people hooked on a MMO. And even WoW faces constant whines how there's not enough to do. I can't blame people for trying, but I sincerely doubt Marvel Online will be a success - if it even gets out of the gate (Microsoft has a tendency to kill off/sell off MMO projects when their beancounters get the willies during development)
PS3 has a main target market. PS2 owners. Oblivion is not available for PS2.
It's a port, so most of the assets are already done. Why not do a port of a 'big' title for a launch which is most likely going to be low on games, and take in some easy cash?
Every new console launch has it's share of easy ports raking in the launch madness - when people buy just about anything just to get another game for their shiny new thingy (since there's like 5 titles to choose from)
The pictures released so far are from the first tests of the camera - done last MARCH.
New pictures will start coming soon (november?), as the orbit circularization has been completed, but none has been released yet.
Sorry, you are a misinformed troll.
o ws_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
I will repeat myself: Vista is quite a bit more than a reskinned XP.
No, it's not perfect (hey, it's a Microsoft product), and it will most likely have it's fair share of new holes, but MS has definitely done a lot more than when they reskinned 2K as 'Windows XP' (*that* was a reskin job).
Sadly if one of the major uses for the PC is gaming, 98 is obsolete, and 2K is starting to have some (rare) issues - mostly due to braindead programming or deliberate 'breaking' of apps to require XP. So for gaming, currently you have to have 2K or XP, and XP has less 'oddball' issues without any real drawbacks.
And in the future, with DX10 getting no backport, you will either get Vista, or scrap PC as a gaming platform.
I have no hurry to swap to Vista - it's still unfinished and probably will need it's fair share of patches and fixes post-launch before it becomes usable. However, Microsoft will make sure it will, in the end, be mandatory for gamers. I just hope most stupid bits are fixed by then, essential applications have catched up, and any builtin drm crap neutered by third parties.
And yes, I agree that x64 version, with it's compatibility issues and draconian driver signing regime is basically DOA. Unless Microsoft changes their policy before launch, it will set back adoption of 64bit Windows back another 5 years or so. Things just won't work - hardware developers can't be assed to get signatures, and will just ignore 64 bit version, and applications requiring low level access (firewalls and DRM workarounds come to mind) will just not work, driving userbase to ignore the whole crap.
What will be interesting is the NEXT version of Windows, whatever that might be. 32bit Vista, while it does change the defaults towards taking (some) control of the system away from the average user, it still is possible to reconfigure it to keep the user at the driver's seat. Yes, some bits of kernel are being walled off in the name of security, but as long as unsigned code can be loaded at 'root' level (drivers and similar bits), there are ways around it. They may be convoluted and cause pain for, among other things, firewall developers, but the system isn't locked down in this regard.
Vista's x64 version on the other hand has the first bits of "I'm sorry, mr. Bill Gates and his borg collective say you can't do that" included with mandatory driver signing and other 'security' around the kernel, and it's obivious in the future MS will continue to try to push users down that slippery slope, until some day we need to get MS's approval to do anything on _our_ computers.
x64 Vista is dead as a doorknob as general purpose OS, but it's successor may be the tipping point where you either install Windows and give control to MS, or you install something else and actually get to decide what your computer does. In the meantime, 32bit Vista is coming, and for the most of the computer users of the world, you most likely have to adapt. OEMs will make sure of it, making XP 'vanish' off new computers as soon as it's feasible.
It will be interesting to see the mess with 32bit vs 64bit Vista on OEM systems. One would imagine MS would push the installation of x64 version on OEM systems with 64bit CPUs (umm, basicaly all of them?), but if the OS refuses to work with lots of very common stuff with no way to fix them (say, Daemon Tools and similar programs relying on low level access come to mind, plus lots of hardware with no signed drivers), the OEMs have a support nightmare on their hands... Can't wait to watch THAT trainwreck over the next year or so.
... and they provide no application-level outbound filtering.
Which is pretty much needed in today's "every program wants to call home" world. I want to decide what a (new) program gets to do as far as the network connection goes.
I do have a firewall box between my computers and the world, but it only protects against inbound junk. It's impossible to manage against outbound threats without application-level blocking.
Yes, in theory one could program a box to do stateful packet inspection and block specific applications you want to keep from calling home, but it's almost impossible to know which new program wants to do it (and using what rules) short of running a network analyzer on the firewall box, and always analyzing the traffic after installing each new application. While some ubernerd might enjoy such setup, I just want the damn thing to work and be easy to administrate.
Software application-level firewall is a *bit* more practical in offering outbound control. And there is no working solution for Vista (yet). And yes, I'm discounting the MS 'firewall' on purpose. It sucks less than XP firewall, but it still sucks.
This is yet another good reason to avoid upgrading for now.
Personally, one of the major reason why I haven't taken RC1 into actual use beyond testing it a bit is lack of compatible 3rd party firewall.
Then again.. situation was pretty similar when Win2K came out - early on nothing was compatible. XP was easier because it is effectively a reskinned Win2K, and 99% of Win2K apps worked out of the box - even security products.
Vista is quite a bit more than a reskinned XP, as lots of stuff under the hood has been reworked, and again it's just like Win2K - nothing works intially, but I'm sure over time the problem is going to be fixed. In fact, it's surprising how good the situation is, considering official launch is still several months away.
Problem is, you won't get it 'now' on a download store.
You get it in a couple of hours. Or with crap quality.
Full price of DVD, except you don't get the box nor the DVD (and most likely none of the DVD extra features), and you can't even burn the DVD from the DRM-infected file you spent ages to download.
Sure, this is going to be a HUGE hit.
Not.
To be fair, I don't think Apple's pricing is going to work either.
Because the braindead system can be r00ted using a memory card - if a specially prepared card is in at boot, it can boot from the card and utterly pwn the software inside.
Logic being 'ease of updating', but the safeguards in place against inserting something other than an authorized, verified and certified update are close to nonexisting.
So, in essence, if you have access to the memory card slot, some time, and capability to reboot the machine, you can pwn the election. And it will most likely be untraceable.
You are not chinese.
WoW has different pricing model in some parts of Asia.
This is no longer true.
It used to be that you had to replace it with an identical model. However, in the real world that does not work (it can be hard to find an identical replacement for a 6 month old board, let alone 2-3 years old). Microsoft would LOVE for it to be this way, but it would be blatantly illegal unfair licensing term. Effectively it would deny repairs of a failed computer in many cases without re-buying a license.
This was the main reason why I asked about this from Microsoft, and while initially they said the board would have to be 'identical or manufacturer's warranty-replaced similar board' (and at one point they claimed it _had_ to be in-warranty replacement, so once hardware warranty had expired, that's that...), I pressed the issue. I was then told 'effective immediately' any board would be ok, as long as the reason for the replacement was a defect in the original board.
So, if you do have to make a phone activation after board swap, magical words are 'I replaced the motherboard due to a defect', and always use the product key on the sticker, not the one your installation media might automagically use (they generally don't match on OEM recovery CDs, long convoluted reason why not, but the one on the sticker does allow you to get it working via the phone activation)
I work at a VAR and went thru a very long and convoluted email exchange with Microsoft about this.
The end result is: OEM is tied to a computer. However, you can change anything except the motherboard, and it's still the same computer. You can also exchange the board if it's due to a 'defect'.
And 'defects'... well, accidents happen. It's a dangerous world.
Only drawback is that once you do change motherboard, you are required to activate the copy over the phone, and if it was a big-name OEM (those that don't normally ask for product key when you use the recovery disc), you may have to replace the key that's on the OEM sticker with a replacement issued by MS phone support. But in the end, the license is still valid - as long as the board swap was due to 'defect' (or, essentially, if you lie it was due to a defect). So in reality OEM is transferrable, if you know what you are doing.
Dunno about other markets, but in Finland name brand media PCs keeled over and died due to immense suckage of Windows Media Center Edition.
- No official support for DVB-C cards (large chunk of the country gets TV using cable, and DVB-C), cutting down potential market
- No support for DVB subtitling (used by finnish national broadcasting company YLE), decimating the leftover market
- Generally crappy DVB support - and analog transmissions end next year over here
- Horrendously complicated install on selfbuilt systems (whitebox PCs are more common over here than in many other countries) coupled with difficulties in actually obtainining MCE legally without buying an OEM system.
Most 'Media PCs' built over here tend to be selfbuilt, using linux or WinXP with separate software, and it's non-trivial to set one up, so they are still a niche market.
I'm sure the big name OEMs will try again when they get Vista with MCE features, and proper DVB-T/DVB-C and DVB subtitling support.
Have you opened a big-name OEM box nowdays?
It's basically non-serviceable, unless you buy overpriced parts from the OEM.
Yes, you can swap hard disks and optical drives, and maybe add/replace RAM, but otherwise they are full of servicing pitfalls.
It's anybodys guess at this point. PS3 is so overpriced at launch that it's no longer a done deal by a longshot. It all depends on what each console has to offer to gamers next holiday season. Xbox 360 has suffered due to lack of good exclusive titles, which supposedly is getting fixed this winter. At the same time PS3s launch lineup is still very much in the dark.
PS3 may still turn out to be the biggest turkey in the universe of game consoles, or it might pwn everything. At 300$ at launch it would absolutely surely wipe floor with everything.
At 599$, with crippled version having no HDMI, nobody knows what happens yet.
My personal bet is that X360-Wii -combo will beat PS3 for the first year, until lot more games are ready, and Sony, after bleeding for a while, goes for broke and drops the price. HD DVD/Blu-ray fight will be an irrelevant sideshow, as the movies are way overpriced and offer no serious benefits unless you buy a super-expensive TV. Whoever first gets the standalone player price down and offers more *movie* features wins. Additionally, if, say, HD-DVDs DRM gets cracked first, and people can start making 'backups' of their HD content bit like you can muck with DVDs today, Blu-ray will insta-lose the fight right there unless they can counter with technical merits (none so far, the formats are almost identical) or price (not likely with sony).