It's not the writers. There are lots of writers in Hollywood who would love to write original stories, and original film ideas get pitched all the time. The suits at the studios often just don't want to take the risk with something new and original because sequels and remakes come with built-in name recognition and are a safer way to ensure a film will make money. Writers have to make a living, so they take whatever jobs they can get, and often that means writing tired, unoriginal sequels and remakes because those are the only jobs available.
You don't lose access to Gmail (or Docs, Calendar, Blogger, or any other Google service that doesn't require Google+) if you're banned from Google+. The only way you can get a full Google-wide ban is if you're caught breaking a Google-wide policy such as spamming or illegal activity. They've also changed their policy so they give you fair warning to change your username before they lock your account, and there's an appeals process in place to get your account back if you do get banned for using a fake username.
They also won't ban you just because your name doesn't match your birth certificate. They're only locking accounts for people who are using obviously fake names.
Here's my question: This article lists some of the domain registrars that are performing shady practices, but what about a list of registrars that are playing by the rules and won't try to screw you over in some way? Or is the entire system such a mess now that there are no good ones left?
All of the other games I've checked that I know have 3rd party DRM also have it listed.
I do agree that it would be nice if Valve would make a stand on 3rd party DRM, though. Steam makes 3rd party DRM redundant, so it's incredibly obnoxious when a game on Steam comes bundled with other DRM software (not that most DRM isn't obnoxious anyway).
That's a bug that they fixed a long time ago. They also changed the training mode since then so you don't have to go through basic control training if you're already an experienced player. Now, you just have a quick little obstacle course that determines whether you understand some basic techniques like rocket jumping, and then it puts you into a quick 10-minute bot match (the difficulty of which is based on how many obstacles you were able to pass in the obstacle course), to determine your skill placement, so it can match you up against players of similar skill.
On top of that, all of Western Digital's performance-tuned "Caviar Black" line of drives are now carrying 5-year warranties (in addition to their enterprise-class and Raptor drives, which have always had 5-year warranties). I used to be a big Seagate fanboy and only bought their drives when possible, but lately I've been a lot more impressed with Western Digital's product lineup. My next hard drive purchase will probably be WD.
The reason these overclocks are significant is that the Phenom wasn't able to reach the clock speeds that AMD originally expected it to, and that's one of the reasons it's had such a hard time competing with the Core 2. They were expecting to be selling 3 GHz Phenoms soon after launch, but the first Phenoms to ship were only 2.3 GHz, and even now the fastest Phenom chip is a 2.6 GHz part that struggles to overclock much past 3 GHz or so regardless of the cooling that's used. Even though clock speed by itself isn't a good indicator of performance, especially when comparing different architectures, if a processor was designed to be competitive at 3 GHz and they're only able to get it to 2.6 GHz reliably, that's a big problem.
If AMD has solved their clock speed limitation issues with the Phenom 2, that may help put them back on track to being competitive again. It's still too early to start celebrating until we see benchmarks, but it's good news nonetheless.
The thing that really struck me about Opera when I started using it many years ago was that, not only was it a faster browser, it also had many innovative features that other browsers at the time didn't have which actually reduced the I/O limitations of browsing (such as container windows (which was always a more powerful solution than simple tabbed browsing), mouse gestures, bookmark nickname shortcuts, and more recently things like Speed Dial), and it made browsing much quicker and easier once you learned its tricks.
Of course, Firefox has implemented most of those features, either in the browser itself or through addons, and with the proper addons, you can make Firefox function very much like Opera, but Opera still seems to be a smoother, more polished experience to me.
They're both great browsers, though, so you really can't go wrong with either one. I tend to switch off between them just to get an idea of how they're both progressing (I've been using the Firefox 3 beta/RC for awhile, and I'm probably going to start to using Opera primarily again for awhile now that 9.5 is out).
From the Anandtech article:
For this launch, we have been given a $50 price range for 8800 GT. NVIDIA told us that there will be no $200 8800 GT parts available at launch, but they should come along after prices settle down a bit. Initially, we thought that the 256MB parts would be $200 and the 512MB parts $250. It turns out that we were mistaken.
Not only that, but we can expect the stock clocked 512MB 8800 GT to hit $200 at the low end. The 256MB part, which won't show up until the end of November, will hit prices below $200. Upon hearing Ujesh Desai, NVIDIA's General Manager of Desktop GPUs, explain this incredible projection, my internal monologue was somehow rerouted to my mouth and I happened to exclaim (with all too much enthusiasm) "you're crazy!" The 512MB GT is $250 currently, but they're expecting it to drop to around $200 once the mad early rush for it slows down and the price settles.
You're right, brand and tech don't make a great game. However, fun, innovative and original gameplay that tests your intellect as much as your reaction speed, a surprisingly captivating story that had me hooked and wouldn't let go, a twisted sense of humor (I don't remember the last time I laughed that much at a game. The computer voice that guides you along is hilarious, and I was laughing at it almost the entire time I was playing), and an all-around high amount of polish do make a great game. Portal may be short (it only takes a few hours to beat), but it was the most refreshing, entertaining few hours of gaming I've experience in a long, long time.
There are a lot of great games that have come out this year and there are even more great games scheduled to come out by the end of the year. No doubt, the second half of 2007 is looking like one of the best times PC gaming (and gaming in general) has seen in years. Even still, I would rank Portal as a more fun experience than any of the other games I've played this year so far, and I'm skeptical that anything coming down the pipe will top that first play-through of Portal for sheer enjoyment factor. After I'd finished the game's story mode, I was stuck on a Portal high for days. It was the same kind of high I get after finishing a really good book for the first time, and that's simply something no other game has done to me.
You call it a tech gimmick fad, but that just tells me that you've missed the point of the game entirely. For me (and nearly everyone else I've talked to who's played the game), it's on track to be my game of the year, if not game of the decade. It seems like the only reason it hasn't been getting 10/10 scores in professional reviews is because of its length, but it was such a fun experience for the few hours it lasted that I'm willing to overlook that.
Whoever modded the parent and grandparent posts Offtopic has obviously never played Portal. If you don't think Portal references are funny, you could mod those comments Redundant, or (preferably) just not mod them at all, but they are not off topic.
I recently re-built my PC, and since I was formatting my hard drive at the same time and was going to have to reinstall my OS anyway, I decided to grab a copy of Vista Home Premium 64-bit for shits and giggles, just to try it out. I'm dual-booting with XP and Vista so I have the option to fall back to XP if I decide I don't like Vista or if there's something Vista can't do that I need XP for.
In the time since I rebuilt this computer, I've booted into XP once, because the Quake 3 installer wouldn't run in 64-bit Vista (though the game itself runs fine, and the error message it gives indicates that it would probably install fine in 32-bit Vista). Other than one compatibility issue with an 8 year old game, I have had zero problems with Vista, and don't have any intention of switching back to XP. In fact, I'm considering wiping XP off my system to free up the hard drive space it's wasting.
Is it worth spending the money to upgrade to Vista from XP for its own sake? Probably not, at least until DirectX 10 games start coming out that actually offer some real benefit from DX10's features (and that's only really a draw for the hardcore gamer market). But I wouldn't turn down a new PC just because it comes with Vista installed instead of XP. In fact, if given the choice, I'd probably opt for Vista.
(Interviewer): Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?
I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.
I don't see this being much use for average users who just wants to make backups of their data or copy a music CD to listen to in their car, but it'd be a really nice thing to have if you want to distribute something on a CD/DVD. You could give it a nice professional looking label without the cost of having it done professionally. For a small business, this could be very valuable.
Because, believe it or not, some people have actually enjoyed the prequels so far. Call me nuts if you like, but I'm looking forward to Episode III.
The first two prequels had their flaws, sure (PM's poor pacing, Jar-Jar; AotC's cheesy dialog), but they're still fun movies. I watch StarWars to see lightsaber fights, giant space battles, and cool action sequences where things blow up, and so far, the prequels have delivered that. I think people are putting the originals up on too high a nostalgia pedestal. Don't get me wrong--they're some of my favorite movies ever, but there's no denying that StarWars is a B-movie, and the prequels reflect that.
As a new Linux user myself, I'd suggest KDE over Gnome if you want to draw new people in. Gnome is an excellent interface, but by my experience KDE seems much more familiar to someone who is used to the Windows environment, and overall it has a somewhat more polished feel to it. That familiarity will make your average user who's never used anything but Windows before much more likely to try it out, rather than giving up from the start because everything looks different than what they're used to.
I'm not sure about the Linux version, but with the Windows version, you have to install a seperate plugin that allows you to save as GIFs. Not a big deal.
That said, I just decided I'd try out GIMP and see what it's like, since people are recommending it. The first thing I noticed is that it has horrid support for my Wacom tablet. I can't click on menu buttons using my stylus, and the brush looks awful when I draw with it (it draws as dots, rather than a connected line). Perhaps there's a way to fix this, but I didn't get a chance to look for one, because the whole program crashed when I tried changing my brush's blend mode.
I downloaded a so-called "stable" release, so this isn't an issue of me using a development version. I seriously cannot see any kind of professional graphics artist using this program for more than ten minutes before giving up and going back to Photoshop. I'm sorry to say I won't be recommending it to anyone, either, at least not until it's been majorly improved.
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It's not the writers. There are lots of writers in Hollywood who would love to write original stories, and original film ideas get pitched all the time. The suits at the studios often just don't want to take the risk with something new and original because sequels and remakes come with built-in name recognition and are a safer way to ensure a film will make money. Writers have to make a living, so they take whatever jobs they can get, and often that means writing tired, unoriginal sequels and remakes because those are the only jobs available.
You don't lose access to Gmail (or Docs, Calendar, Blogger, or any other Google service that doesn't require Google+) if you're banned from Google+. The only way you can get a full Google-wide ban is if you're caught breaking a Google-wide policy such as spamming or illegal activity. They've also changed their policy so they give you fair warning to change your username before they lock your account, and there's an appeals process in place to get your account back if you do get banned for using a fake username.
They also won't ban you just because your name doesn't match your birth certificate. They're only locking accounts for people who are using obviously fake names.
There's a long blog post from a Google VP that goes into a lot of detail on the issue here: https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8zVqU
I learned to write in cursive while I was in school. Then I entered the real world and have never had any use for it since.
Here's my question: This article lists some of the domain registrars that are performing shady practices, but what about a list of registrars that are playing by the rules and won't try to screw you over in some way? Or is the entire system such a mess now that there are no good ones left?
X3: Terran Conflict still has its DRM listed on the Steam page. It's the last item on the list under "Game Details", on the right-hand column:
All of the other games I've checked that I know have 3rd party DRM also have it listed.
I do agree that it would be nice if Valve would make a stand on 3rd party DRM, though. Steam makes 3rd party DRM redundant, so it's incredibly obnoxious when a game on Steam comes bundled with other DRM software (not that most DRM isn't obnoxious anyway).
That's a bug that they fixed a long time ago. They also changed the training mode since then so you don't have to go through basic control training if you're already an experienced player. Now, you just have a quick little obstacle course that determines whether you understand some basic techniques like rocket jumping, and then it puts you into a quick 10-minute bot match (the difficulty of which is based on how many obstacles you were able to pass in the obstacle course), to determine your skill placement, so it can match you up against players of similar skill.
On top of that, all of Western Digital's performance-tuned "Caviar Black" line of drives are now carrying 5-year warranties (in addition to their enterprise-class and Raptor drives, which have always had 5-year warranties). I used to be a big Seagate fanboy and only bought their drives when possible, but lately I've been a lot more impressed with Western Digital's product lineup. My next hard drive purchase will probably be WD.
The reason these overclocks are significant is that the Phenom wasn't able to reach the clock speeds that AMD originally expected it to, and that's one of the reasons it's had such a hard time competing with the Core 2. They were expecting to be selling 3 GHz Phenoms soon after launch, but the first Phenoms to ship were only 2.3 GHz, and even now the fastest Phenom chip is a 2.6 GHz part that struggles to overclock much past 3 GHz or so regardless of the cooling that's used. Even though clock speed by itself isn't a good indicator of performance, especially when comparing different architectures, if a processor was designed to be competitive at 3 GHz and they're only able to get it to 2.6 GHz reliably, that's a big problem.
If AMD has solved their clock speed limitation issues with the Phenom 2, that may help put them back on track to being competitive again. It's still too early to start celebrating until we see benchmarks, but it's good news nonetheless.
The thing that really struck me about Opera when I started using it many years ago was that, not only was it a faster browser, it also had many innovative features that other browsers at the time didn't have which actually reduced the I/O limitations of browsing (such as container windows (which was always a more powerful solution than simple tabbed browsing), mouse gestures, bookmark nickname shortcuts, and more recently things like Speed Dial), and it made browsing much quicker and easier once you learned its tricks.
Of course, Firefox has implemented most of those features, either in the browser itself or through addons, and with the proper addons, you can make Firefox function very much like Opera, but Opera still seems to be a smoother, more polished experience to me.
They're both great browsers, though, so you really can't go wrong with either one. I tend to switch off between them just to get an idea of how they're both progressing (I've been using the Firefox 3 beta/RC for awhile, and I'm probably going to start to using Opera primarily again for awhile now that 9.5 is out).
If I were to buy a new sound card right now, I'd get an HT Omega Claro Plus+. I've heard a lot of good things about that card.
Not only that, but we can expect the stock clocked 512MB 8800 GT to hit $200 at the low end. The 256MB part, which won't show up until the end of November, will hit prices below $200. Upon hearing Ujesh Desai, NVIDIA's General Manager of Desktop GPUs, explain this incredible projection, my internal monologue was somehow rerouted to my mouth and I happened to exclaim (with all too much enthusiasm) "you're crazy!" The 512MB GT is $250 currently, but they're expecting it to drop to around $200 once the mad early rush for it slows down and the price settles.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there.
You're right, brand and tech don't make a great game. However, fun, innovative and original gameplay that tests your intellect as much as your reaction speed, a surprisingly captivating story that had me hooked and wouldn't let go, a twisted sense of humor (I don't remember the last time I laughed that much at a game. The computer voice that guides you along is hilarious, and I was laughing at it almost the entire time I was playing), and an all-around high amount of polish do make a great game. Portal may be short (it only takes a few hours to beat), but it was the most refreshing, entertaining few hours of gaming I've experience in a long, long time.
There are a lot of great games that have come out this year and there are even more great games scheduled to come out by the end of the year. No doubt, the second half of 2007 is looking like one of the best times PC gaming (and gaming in general) has seen in years. Even still, I would rank Portal as a more fun experience than any of the other games I've played this year so far, and I'm skeptical that anything coming down the pipe will top that first play-through of Portal for sheer enjoyment factor. After I'd finished the game's story mode, I was stuck on a Portal high for days. It was the same kind of high I get after finishing a really good book for the first time, and that's simply something no other game has done to me.
You call it a tech gimmick fad, but that just tells me that you've missed the point of the game entirely. For me (and nearly everyone else I've talked to who's played the game), it's on track to be my game of the year, if not game of the decade. It seems like the only reason it hasn't been getting 10/10 scores in professional reviews is because of its length, but it was such a fun experience for the few hours it lasted that I'm willing to overlook that.
Whoever modded the parent and grandparent posts Offtopic has obviously never played Portal. If you don't think Portal references are funny, you could mod those comments Redundant, or (preferably) just not mod them at all, but they are not off topic.
I recently re-built my PC, and since I was formatting my hard drive at the same time and was going to have to reinstall my OS anyway, I decided to grab a copy of Vista Home Premium 64-bit for shits and giggles, just to try it out. I'm dual-booting with XP and Vista so I have the option to fall back to XP if I decide I don't like Vista or if there's something Vista can't do that I need XP for.
In the time since I rebuilt this computer, I've booted into XP once, because the Quake 3 installer wouldn't run in 64-bit Vista (though the game itself runs fine, and the error message it gives indicates that it would probably install fine in 32-bit Vista). Other than one compatibility issue with an 8 year old game, I have had zero problems with Vista, and don't have any intention of switching back to XP. In fact, I'm considering wiping XP off my system to free up the hard drive space it's wasting.
Is it worth spending the money to upgrade to Vista from XP for its own sake? Probably not, at least until DirectX 10 games start coming out that actually offer some real benefit from DX10's features (and that's only really a draw for the hardcore gamer market). But I wouldn't turn down a new PC just because it comes with Vista installed instead of XP. In fact, if given the choice, I'd probably opt for Vista.
Oh no! It's begun!
Trent is in a contract with his label to put out a certain number of albums through them before he can break away and do his own thing.
In the interview that was mentioned in the topic (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html), he says:
(Interviewer): Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?
I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.
I don't see this being much use for average users who just wants to make backups of their data or copy a music CD to listen to in their car, but it'd be a really nice thing to have if you want to distribute something on a CD/DVD. You could give it a nice professional looking label without the cost of having it done professionally. For a small business, this could be very valuable.
Because, believe it or not, some people have actually enjoyed the prequels so far. Call me nuts if you like, but I'm looking forward to Episode III.
The first two prequels had their flaws, sure (PM's poor pacing, Jar-Jar; AotC's cheesy dialog), but they're still fun movies. I watch StarWars to see lightsaber fights, giant space battles, and cool action sequences where things blow up, and so far, the prequels have delivered that. I think people are putting the originals up on too high a nostalgia pedestal. Don't get me wrong--they're some of my favorite movies ever, but there's no denying that StarWars is a B-movie, and the prequels reflect that.
KDE or Gnome (pick just one)
As a new Linux user myself, I'd suggest KDE over Gnome if you want to draw new people in. Gnome is an excellent interface, but by my experience KDE seems much more familiar to someone who is used to the Windows environment, and overall it has a somewhat more polished feel to it. That familiarity will make your average user who's never used anything but Windows before much more likely to try it out, rather than giving up from the start because everything looks different than what they're used to.
Except if you'd actually... hmm, heh, you're right. I missed that one completely. My apologies.
Except if you'd actually RTFA, Microsoft is reducing the price of VirtualPC (to $129 from its original $299), not increasing it.
I'm not sure about the Linux version, but with the Windows version, you have to install a seperate plugin that allows you to save as GIFs. Not a big deal.
That said, I just decided I'd try out GIMP and see what it's like, since people are recommending it. The first thing I noticed is that it has horrid support for my Wacom tablet. I can't click on menu buttons using my stylus, and the brush looks awful when I draw with it (it draws as dots, rather than a connected line). Perhaps there's a way to fix this, but I didn't get a chance to look for one, because the whole program crashed when I tried changing my brush's blend mode.
I downloaded a so-called "stable" release, so this isn't an issue of me using a development version. I seriously cannot see any kind of professional graphics artist using this program for more than ten minutes before giving up and going back to Photoshop. I'm sorry to say I won't be recommending it to anyone, either, at least not until it's been majorly improved.
[dark helmet]
So, I see that your hard drive is as BIG AS MINE! Now... let's see how well you handle it.
[/dark helmet]
Wait, you mean that people who actually work hard make that kind of money? HAHA! Good one! ;-)
No, right now we hate SCO. Disney hating is currently on hold until next week, when we'll re-evaluate our Big Evil Corporation Bashing strategy.