So apart from the *latest* ATI drivers not working, old apps not being compatible, the VM having "quirks" with multiple monitors, not being able to ping certain apps to the taskbar, over-simplifed menus making it difficult to find things, annoying libraries, Sharepoint misbehaving, and the fact that UAC annoyed you so much you disabled it, it sounds REALLY GOOD! (that was sarcasm).
Now imagine you're a business - working backwards, your OS security is annoying or needs to be turned off, Sharepoint doesn't work like it should, menus make it difficult to find things, the apps-thing is minor, you can't necessarily run VM programs on multiple monitors, old apps have compatibility problems and simple things like graphics drivers can still BSOD the system. Why the hell should I upgrade my business again? Oh yes... I can right-click on a DHCP lease to turn it into a reservation. Cheers for that.
(Warning: post contains sarcasm, but sentiment is heartfelt).
"They don't even have to please the majority in order to make money."
Bing-bing-bing-bing. We have a winner.
So the company makes money because people *want* the content, and are willing to pay for it. That's your answer. You're not going to stop that until things change. So either: Don't buy DLC for yourself, buy it for yourself and live with it, or stop whining about it. It's like saying that the companies that sell cars should provide breakdown cover with them. Of course they *could*. But the majority of their customers are quite happy to buy the car without that and either not have breakdown cover, or to pay for their own. You can't expect the companies involved to make a loss-making decision for the sake of, as you point out, the minority of fans.
Rule #1 of paying for ANYTHING: if you're not satisfied with the terms, don't buy it. It's as simple as that. If you feel hard done by, boycott the company, maybe send them an email. If you want to buy the game but not the DLC, do just that. Of COURSE the company won't care, you're one person, but then you're giving that money to either yourself or to companies that DO operate how you want. You won't change the world, but you won't have anything to whine about and won't be supporting companies that "rip you off". Problem solved.
Then your problem is early-adoption, not PC's. I don't buy computers, I wait until people give them to me (e.g. if it's cheaper just to buy a new machine for them) or they're so ridiculously cheap that people get me them for Christmas etc.
Why on earth you'd *ever* pay $500 for a graphics card, I have no idea. And ESPECIALLY not for a sound card. I was a gamer in the DOS days (23 hand-configured seperate config.sys configurations in DOS 6.22, for various games that were far too picky), I've been a gamer ever since but hell - I've never paid more than about £50 ($100-ish) for a component, certainly don't do that even three or four times a year and yet am more than happy with the 57 games on my Steam account. I bought a DVD-Writer. In fact, I still have every original CD or DVD drive I've ever owned still in one of my old PC's. The very first 2xSpeed CD reader that I bought second-hand YEARS ago still works perfectly, as do all the intermediates (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD/CD-RW, etc.) because I use them for convienent copying of CD's and as a mini CD-server when necessary. What the hell you do to wear them out I have no idea.
How do I do it? I stagger my entertainment. Want to play a game? Wait a year until it's on budget release and/or I have a PC capable of playing it (I don't buy PC's just to play a game, it's the last thing on my life). Save money on the PC, save money on the game, save money spent on worthless games (because they've been out for a year by then and everyone knows if they're crap).
Consoles work the same - buy them a year after release - cheaper, more games, no problems. Your problem is not console vs PC.. that's just a lifestyle choice of convenient vs hackable. Your problem is "MUST HAVE NOW!" versus "It's a game". I LOVE the SNES, I adore the games. So I emulate them on PC. Still have the thing tucked away somewhere but I gave up last time I tried to plug it in because my TV is a pig to re-tune. So I emulate those games on the same PC as I play Half-life 2, etc. It's just more convenient than a bunch of obscure, fragile consoles with stupid batteries in the cartridges.
"True 3D" for a start - it was horribly blocky from what I remember and added little to the game. Syndicate does need a "view from N/S/E/W" button, though, it has to be said. It was 3D for the sake of 3D.
Not at all sure about the more convincing atmosphere.
Destructible buildings? Okay.
But Syndicate Wars was such a distraction in terms of the leap from the previous episode that it was always going to be disliked. Give me 2D isometric anyday. Syndicate wasn't about "atmosphere" - it was about a quick, simple game.
(At one point, there was even a series of articles by a Bullfrog programmer in a UK games magazine that introduced C and how to draw Syndicate sprites on the screen and get them to move around, etc.)
Syndicate should stay in its hallowed ground of excellence, standing on the rotting corpse of Syndicate Wars. Remaking that game (and especially in 3D, not matter how "ground-breaking" at the time) should be deemed blashpemy.
Same here. I've went through my history the other day and, including my original Half-life / Counterstrike purchases way back when it was still a new game (I used the CD-Keys to activate my Steam account), I've spent about £300 and I currently have 59 games sitting on that account. Now, about 10-15 of them I'll never, ever play again (they were bundled for free, or limited technology demos, etc.). About 20 of them I owned previously and played to death. But just my L4D stats (ONE GAME) show that I've played hundreds of hours for that money... it's the best bargain I've ever had.
And each month I re-buy a big pack of games that I probably own 2 or 3 of already (just bought the Indie game pack despite already owning Gish, mainly because Gish has a HORRIBLE activation system otherwise) just so that I have them "forever". I don't really care about them being around in fifty years time but the current convenience of not having to dig out a CD, of loading up my steam account while at a friends and downloading the original UT, etc. far outweighs the potential cost if they disappear in, say, less than 10 years from now.
What I *really*, *really*, want is all the current "ancient" budget titles to appear on Steam - the C&C's, Red Alert, Master of Magic/Orion, etc. Even if it's just another "Throw it into DOSBox" bodge like the UFO series, I don't really care. I have the CD's of them all but they come to about 8-10 CD's which I don't want to have to keep storing / reinstalling / reconfiguring on different machines just to load up and play a game. Oh, and Bridge Construction Set (same authors as Gish, with same horrible activation system).
I think the relevant word is "can", not "has". It has the potential to do the same thing but doesn't seem to have made it that far. Provable but not proven?
And besides that, from the very article you linked to, I can spot a number of problems - such that isn't just written in one language and translated to a final, provable "one language + assembly" like the main article, but several (and a lot more than the bare minimum necessary to boot a kernel, it seems). It's kind of mid-way to what the main article has achieved.
"I suspect there is never such a point, if you're raising your child properly."
Possibly not. But kids *can* be very testing.
"people shouldn't be having kids if they're uncomfortable with their motivations for sex or uncomfortable teaching a child basic things about life."
I think you've confused "between certain ages" with "ever"... There's going to be a point where I'm going to have to explain basic sexual intercourse to my child. I don't think that point is within the next 5-6 years. Until then, she will get a child-like answer. Some people are uncomfortable discussing the thing at all, it doesn't make them bad parents (e.g. what if their sexual history is unpleasant?). Ideally, yes, we should all be able to do this but I think this isn't important enough to say they "shouldn't have kids".
"I think most of that discomfort with teaching kids about sex is largely fear of other adults thinking their child knows too much or is talking inappropriately."
That's a part of it, certainly. I think more difficult is the belief that kids will want to go off and try it if you explain in too much detail, especially given the "sex is fun" but "you're not old enough yet"... explain that in the wrong way and the kid will be shinning down the drainpipe at midnight to find someone to try it with - it's like gold to a child, that sort of statement.
And sadly, I'm not a school inspector, which is why I moved into private education (and found the situation to be worse!). However, on the scale of things I've seen said to children, that's pretty minor to be honest. I'm fairly certain some teachers have the ambition of ruining the children's lives (as do some parents!).
First, there's a point at which that three-year-old brat has asked "Why?" too many times today. Then, there's the point at which the parent doesn't feel comfortable explaining topics like sex to a child within certain age ranges. Then, there's parents that aren't really interested in helping their child learn - just to be quiet and let the parent be a person in their own right again. Then, there's parents who know the answer but can't express it in a child-friendly way (MUCH harder than it looks when it's off-the-cuff and out-of-the-blue... this is why good teachers are so rare). Then, there's the parents who don't know.
I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of all of those categories, but to say they are all part of the last one is totally untrue.
However, more worrying is that in my work with schools, I've come across all of the above categories of TEACHER. That's a lot more scary. I regularly see kids told off for daring to ask "Why?" or "Why not?" and, yes, some of them are just deliberately being annoying but I've witnessed no end of kids that are shut out of learning because the teacher "needs" to have a chat, text their husband, fill in paperwork, go to lunch, etc.
If a kid has a genuine question, answer the damn question, or they will give up asking anything at all. That just breeds zombies, not brains. And you know that zombies can't survive without an adequate quota of brains around.
Reading past a "scratch" is actually designed into the error correction of all CD's... if my Coding Theory course serves me correctly, it could survive something like 600 consecutive binary errors (and less random errors) in each kilobyte on the actual disk without actual data loss. Plus you have to identify the exact sector where your key resides, and scratch/crack through it in an "accidental" way, which obscures the key such that it isn't at ALL useful for decryption (every a small subset of the key would cut the amount of brute-force required substantially), but such that if a key IS discovered (elsewhere in the PC) that you can say "see, that disk did have a bit of it but it was scratched" rather than "Ha, ha, that wasn't the key, is was random data/blank/modified".
Playing "let's mess about" with the law by using the latter tactic isn't at all useful when charges of perjury, obstructing the course of justice, etc. are added into the mix - you'll do more time for them then you do for failing to reveal your key if it's suspected that you did it deliberately. If you do this for the scenarios described, you better be DAMN sure that you obscured the real key in a way that make it more difficult to read (which is basically impossible... even a few consecutive bytes of the key would help immensely - each bit of the real key they have cuts the key-search brute-force time by a factor of 2, I should think) and you'd be more likely to be giving them a lot more than that by playing such games.
Never store the key, destroy the key entirely upon discovery or store the key securely and give it to them. Don't faff about by coming up with fancy obfuscation techniques for a key that "appear convincing"... computer forensics teams can just read the pits off the worst of CD's and reconstruct enough of the key to make it a waste of time - they know a blank CD from a real CD, they know how to reconstruct the error-correction algorithms (probably with a greater degree of success than your CD-reader does - I wouldn't be surprised if a decent mathematician couldn't use the knowledge of a badly-damaged bit-stream that has some form of error-correction, even if insufficient to reconstruct the data, and put it to good use in limiting what keys, etc. to check), they might even be able to pick up on "deeper" forensic evidence on the CD's pits (e.g. burnt slightly larger than need be, CD's that are unreadable on any CD-reader, or previous overwrites of a CD-RW). It's all a question of effort, and if terrorism is involved, you just KNOW they think it's worth the effort.
And if your key is discovered by other means (e.g. they spend 2 years trying to crack it while you're inside on other charges) and doesn't match the one you "claimed" was the key... that's gotta mean you don't get out for possibly decades.
If it got to the point where you're in court, they will happily pay the £1000 or so that it would cost to read even a cracked CD. And when they found it was blank, they would impose a harsher sentence for lying in the first place.
It's much harder to "destroy" the entire CD that just cracking it. You would almost literally have to set it on fire in order that they couldn't say "well, we recovered 90% of the data from the various shards and found nothing but zeroes".
"Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again."
(Or, more likely, not... the community "invented" this years ago... it's called an album torrent. Pity you weren't interested in selling it to us back then).
I don't buy music anyway, because what little I listen to I already own or get *extraordinarily* cheaply by other, legitimate, means. So I don't really care.
Okay, what a bad piece of reporting. Report a story and then pad it out with irrevelant and subjective personal details? If you want to "attack" the man verbally, your story has enough to do so without needing to comment on the state of his house or family. It's like a child's snipe at one of their ex-friends, it's appalling to think that an adult wrote it.
Yes, he's an idiot. Yes, he *will* get caught and have consequences against him if/when actual evidence turns up. Yes, he is taking advantage of gullible people but that's not entirely their fault - walk out into the street any time of day and you'll find someone that you can take advantage of somehow, if you're mean enough. But to lower yourself to personal attacks on his personal lifestyle, housing, amount of friends etc. is being no better than himself.
You know what? I couldn't make it past the first page of that personal attack - I had to skim to the end to see if there was any actual point to the story (which there didn't seem to be). Grow up.
Fair comments on your first three but the last implies that you DON'T know the answers, aren't coming across as interested etc... my point is that you should shouldn't be wasting their time reciting previous answers.
I had an interview for a job, about nine months ago (I started to dislike my previous job, and applied for another while there in order to make the gap seamless - I was offered a raise not to leave). They had a list of (I think) 23 projects that they wanted to do. By the time we were through number 11, they had provoked enough of my background story for them to ALREADY know whether I could handle the other projects. I was literally saying, "Um, yes, I think we've covered that" about eight or nine times and they were saying it for the remainder. It's called selling yourself, but not over-selling yourself. I could have waffled on for ten minutes about the projects but it would have been a waste of all our time. After the list of projects, they had some more questions. We skipped about half. At the end, we both asked each other if they were any more questions. Nope. They saw who I was, I knew what I was walking into, we were happy.
Yes, I got the job (by miles, according to the recruitment agent they hired to find candidates, the big boss, and the other person in the interview - not bad considering I pushed back a ton of more experienced candidates at the last minute)... I'm still in it.
Any employer who honestly believes you're interested in the job because you asked a random question at the end of it, really needs to stop being in the interviews. Questions do come from enthusiasm, but if they are enthusiastic, they will already have known all the answers long before that last 30 seconds of the interview.
P.S. When I witness it myself, it often reminds me of those people that you get on certain projects - where they are out of their depth, not contributing much and feel that they should - so they bring up "issues", which everyone knows are a non-factor but that you then have to spend hours discussing round in circles to make them feel important. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world to feel like that when I hear a question at the end of an interview.
Not really. We have become much more "Americanised" in the last few decades. In fact, every single business concept ever present in the US has come to Britain eventually - a lot of places aspire to be "just like a US company" (because, obviously, that means they'll be succesful...:-P ). If we differ, it's in slight ways only... it's not like trying to do business in Japan/China where the culture is *vastly* different.
I'll ask a couple of my US-living-in-UK friends and see what they think but I'm pretty sure they'd agree with me.
If you can't answer that, how on earth do you fill out your resumes/applications? The entire job process is about selling yourself not because "I'm good" but because "I can do this job better than the other candidates". You should be asking yourself that question with every interaction with that employer - when you're reading the job post, when you reply to it, when you fill out the application form, when you are in the interview, that question is the only relevant one that you tailor every answer to.
The reason you were asked it is because they want to see who is stumped by it because they DIDN'T do their research and probably don't know why the company should hire them - they were just hoping for a lucky "yes". Anyone else should be able to answer that with answers to other questions they've been asked... "Well, like I say, I think I can provide X, Y, Z... I think I've shown that you'll get a dedicated worker, my refereneces will back up the fact that I've been doing this sort of work for years with good results, and I think I can provide a lot of what you say your company needs like..."
Okay, I'm actually damn good at interviews. This is blowing my own trumpet, but it's true. I've beaten people vastly more qualified, more experienced and less demanding in salary because I can hold my own in an interview. In fact, I change jobs rather than mess about with the internal politics of pay-rises, even in credit crunches. It makes life more interesting.
I have *never* asked a question at the end of an interview. I've always said "No, I think you've covered everything I need to know" because, by then, they HAVE, or I've done my research already. Asking a smarty-pants question is likely to lose you respect too.
"What is the (official) dress code?"
You're looking at it. You're probably wearing it. You're talking to people who are wearing it. It's pretty irrelevant anyway, because if you're required to wear anything different (e.g. uniform, stricter dress because you're dealing with public etc.) then they will TELL you that or you will already know. And what are you going to do? Say "Oh, no... I couldn't wear that" and forgo the job? And 99.9% of places are the same anyway - smart or smart/casual unless you're public-facing.
"What about my resume caught your eye?"
A good question. For your first month of working. In the interview, it's just too long-winded to explain and they might well be reluctant to discuss details of their hiring process.
"What hardware/software am I expected to use at my desktop (e-mail, OS, editor, source control, etc.)?"
You'll have been told by the job description. You should also have been shown round the place by then, even if it's just "and this is our coding floor". Personally, I usually insist on pre-interview tours if it's at all possible but most places have done this for me automatically - why would you ever want to take a job at somewhere you've never even SEEN the inside of? I gain the most information by seeing where I'm supposed to work and walking through the building to get to it - H&S violations (Cramped working conditions, no fire extinguishers, etc.)? Spotted them. Employees slacking off/arguing? Spotted them. People wasting time in boring meetings? Spotted them. The person I'm replacing? Probably sitting at the same desk or be the one showing me around.
Plus, the people in interview might not want to get into those sort of details because it will take too long. They just want to get on through their candidates and start deciding. Also, by asking, it's like you're questioning their choice. You're being paid to do the job, you have to damn well learn whatever software they want anyway. All this question does is provoke a feeling that you won't be happy/productive if it's not your "favourite".
"Are there team lunches or get-togethers?"
AKA "I want to socialise, waste time, claim that I'm team-building". If you want a team lunch, you'll have one. If you don't then you won't. This is nothing to do with the job unless it's pushed "from above" but you can't tell people how to eat their lunch and you wouldn't want to work anywhere that did. It's probably the "best" of your questions, though.
"What are your goals for the next six months, one year, three years?"
Brilliant question. For THEM to ask YOU. You're basically questioning their dedication / long-term plans in a roundabout way. They will raise eyebrows at this question.
"What ticket/issue tracking system do you use?"
See above about software/hardware.
"Do you have separate build/stage/QA/etc. environments?"
You will know this by the end of the interview/tour or you haven't done your research properly. It probably tells you in the job description. If they say no, you're implying that you know or work better. If they say yes, you're making yourself look an idiot by not knowing that.
"How do you keep track of documentation?"
See hardware/software question and the above. If they say "we don't", you should already know that and will come across as superior. If they say, we use
More crap to distract from presenting information in a hyperlinked environment.
More crap to have to have a control to switch off.
More crap that won't work on X amount of browser combinations.
More crap that'll stop working due to mysterious bugs and stop me being able to actually do what I want on a website (as it is, Javascripts on at least one network sometimes "capture" the entire mouse click anywhere on a page and use it to open up a link... it's rare and probably just a bug but it pisses me off. Also, those sites where they mess up the framing, or don't take account of layering etc. and you end up fighting to click on the thing you want)
More crap that'll just get in the way of parsing a HTML for relevant links, related images etc. and displaying them in a search engine.
More crap that's been possible for YEARS if you really wanted to do it, you just had to be clever and write a bit yourself or steal someone's code.
More crap that'll slow my average web browsing session with 20+ tabs down to the speed of a Commodore 64.
More crap that'll just make me stop visiting your website. It's very simple.
Avid L4D player... haven't even SEEN most of those, let alone had them affect my gameplay.
"being blocked by the smallest obstructions"
Nope. Not really. Standard hitboxes etc. like any other game in it's genre as far as I can tell.
"hunters literally bouncing off of other players when lunging"
Er... nope... not unless the survivor hits you or you get some SERIOUS lag.
"(I once landed and STOOD on someone's head after a pounce without tackling)"
I'll take your word for it, but I've only ever seen this happen in high-lag situations and when it "caught up", the hunter had been scratching the face off someone for all that time in "reality" (i.e. according to the server).
"the unspeakably fucking AWFUL survivor AI that will sit around with it's thumb up the ass while a hunter eats your intestines"
They want to push rather than shoot... it's a flaw, admittedly. But the bots are quite good... I've actually gotten better times on Survival with 2 bots and another human than I have with 4 humans. Rare but it happens.
"survivors hanging off of the edge of something when the ground is two feet below them"
Agreed, this should be a simple check of just how far you would fall and MAKE you fall if it wasn't going to hurt you quite a bit, rather than hang on. Hardly affect the majority of games though... don't fall off and stay away from edges because of smokers anyway.
"smoker tongues breaking for no discernible reason at all"
Smoker missed / player SHOT the tongue / player bashed the tongue / something moved through the tongue. Never seen anything else do it.
"lousy anti-cheat protection"
After playing CS for years (still do), I am relieved to say that in a year of gameplay I haven't even SEEN anyone I suspect of cheating. I call bullshit or bad player identifying good player as a "cheater".
"bugged instakill zones with smokers"
Not really a "bug", so much as playing on the limits of the map / technology... you're just hitting edges of the map, etc. Could possibly be fixed by a map tweak but it must be incredibly hard to stop such smoker-kills in general (like the one across the edges in the unfinished hospital levels)
"The tank's hit window sometimes being ridiculously narrow for such a massive monster with huge, beefy arms that swing very wide"
What the hell are YOU shooting at? I've never witnessed anything like that.
However, to me, sleep time, boot time, shutdown time, etc. mean *nothing*, even on my XP laptop. Opening the lid on my laptop, however, and browsing to a new website takes seconds. And I have OpenVPN running over WPA2 in order to access the Internet, which has to renegotiate it's connection with the WAP and server every time it goes into sleep - I don't even notice any pause, it's just a slight swapping of the disk that slows anything down but that's just Windows "logging back in". And run an POP3 client - why on earth would you want to keep logging into Gmail via HTTP and via IE, for goodness sake? Just use... Opera both notifies me of and downloads any new GMail on the same account without any hassle at all... anyway...
Connecting to wifi uber-fast? How vital. Those two seconds you save over me on every disconnection must really be important to you to upgrade the entire OS for. And I have God-knows how many layers of things running over wifi (Zonealarm only lets OpenVPN through, which allocates it's own IP via DHCP seperate to the IP given to the wireless adaptor from the PC running over the other end of the house via the Linksys WAP in between running WPA2 - and that's if I just use the minimum).
I don't get DNS errors, either, but that's more an application issue than an OS issue (any idiot can program it to just wait for 30 seconds and keep retrying if there's an error).
"7 works better then XP for my laptop, and when all I do is read web sites, and do a little coding, I have no problems at all with 7."
Good for you. Some people use their computer. Some people even choose their OS upgrades based on the usage of their computer too, rather than upgrade for little reason other than to read websites within a fraction of a second less than under XP when waking from sleep.
"running off of a flash drive was slow"
State the obvious.
The fact is that Windows 7 isn't necessarily "bad"... it's just not necessarily as good as previous incarnations for the vast majority of people. It's much worse if you actually USE your computer and have setups of programs that have been installed for years (like, say, most home users?) where you DO NOT want to reinstall or upgrade just because of minor niggles like "it takes a second or two to log onto the wireless". Seriously, could you find a more petty example? You're basically sounding like upgrading a PC to Windows 7 gets me the equivalent of moving one metre closer to my AP.
Windows 7 is probably a good OS. But you think I'm PAYING (not everyone has MSDN or wants it or even cares) to UPGRADE my entire machine (I'm in the EU, which means wiping it back to bare metal which I've never had to ever do previously with any machine except in the case of hardware failure) so that I can resume from sleep in a second or so less? This is why people troll you.
Gave my wife a Linux machine last year. (Wife is computer novice, first learned about PC's at 20-something, now 30-something and got her job because she pointed out the errors and inconsistencies on the Excel exam in the interview to get her current job - damn I can teach IT...)
It boots to desktop, has one of those horrible pre-made Linux distros on it (Yeurk... give me Slackware any day - I need to customise). She hasn't needed to use the CLI (or me) for *anything*. Anything at all. It all just works. Hasn't been updated since the day she got it except for the web browser (Opera, which wasn't installed by default). She does her work on OO, she browses all the time, scans images/photos and uploads stuff to eBay, we talk on Pidgin, Skype etc. with webcam, voice, etc. Bought a 3G stick for my laptop, lent it to her for a week while she was away - she plugged it in, it detected it, created a connection, she just clicks and selects and it dials and sets her up for Internet without having to TOUCH the CLI.
Granted she doesn't do a lot of "technical" stuff but I believe that was your point. The only thing that pisses her off is that Flash is a bit old but I can't be bothered to upgrade it for her and have warned her about just updating things willy-nilly, rather I'll wipe it with a better distro at some point. But even that upgrade is in all the GUI update software if she wanted to take the risk herself.
It's likely that she would break the hardware before she ever needed to see the CLI.
So, sorry, but you're wrong. I can show you countless people I've put on Linux desktops who don't even know what a CLI is, let alone how to work it, and they manage just fine.
Don't live by books, live by your brain. Books can help provide inspiration but you're not stupid... your brain knows if/when there's something wrong and how to fix it. People normally run off and cry to their friends in order to be told what they already knew. You know this. You know if the marriage is working or not. You know if you want to / need to work at it or not. To be honest, a marriage you need to "work at" in any way probably wasn't started on the best footing ("I don't really love you any more, darling, but let's work at it"? It's almost like saying "I don't find you sexually attractive any more but let's keep trying and see if I can keep it up" - Oh, and marriages based on sex aren't really marriages).
Ignore therapists, books, courses, "relationship counselling" (Yeurk!), all the other nonsense... live your lives together and be happy for as long as you both can and, if you can't, see what can be done to fix it. Sometimes that means divorce is actually the best way to find happiness for you both... so be it.
"I'm doing this because I read it in a book" comes nowhere near "I'm doing this because I want to make you happy".
Now run off and enjoy married life with your geek girl, you lucky sod.
Slashdot Mirror
So apart from the *latest* ATI drivers not working, old apps not being compatible, the VM having "quirks" with multiple monitors, not being able to ping certain apps to the taskbar, over-simplifed menus making it difficult to find things, annoying libraries, Sharepoint misbehaving, and the fact that UAC annoyed you so much you disabled it, it sounds REALLY GOOD! (that was sarcasm).
Now imagine you're a business - working backwards, your OS security is annoying or needs to be turned off, Sharepoint doesn't work like it should, menus make it difficult to find things, the apps-thing is minor, you can't necessarily run VM programs on multiple monitors, old apps have compatibility problems and simple things like graphics drivers can still BSOD the system. Why the hell should I upgrade my business again? Oh yes... I can right-click on a DHCP lease to turn it into a reservation. Cheers for that.
(Warning: post contains sarcasm, but sentiment is heartfelt).
"They don't even have to please the majority in order to make money."
Bing-bing-bing-bing. We have a winner.
So the company makes money because people *want* the content, and are willing to pay for it. That's your answer. You're not going to stop that until things change. So either: Don't buy DLC for yourself, buy it for yourself and live with it, or stop whining about it. It's like saying that the companies that sell cars should provide breakdown cover with them. Of course they *could*. But the majority of their customers are quite happy to buy the car without that and either not have breakdown cover, or to pay for their own. You can't expect the companies involved to make a loss-making decision for the sake of, as you point out, the minority of fans.
Rule #1 of paying for ANYTHING: if you're not satisfied with the terms, don't buy it. It's as simple as that. If you feel hard done by, boycott the company, maybe send them an email. If you want to buy the game but not the DLC, do just that. Of COURSE the company won't care, you're one person, but then you're giving that money to either yourself or to companies that DO operate how you want. You won't change the world, but you won't have anything to whine about and won't be supporting companies that "rip you off". Problem solved.
Then your problem is early-adoption, not PC's. I don't buy computers, I wait until people give them to me (e.g. if it's cheaper just to buy a new machine for them) or they're so ridiculously cheap that people get me them for Christmas etc.
Why on earth you'd *ever* pay $500 for a graphics card, I have no idea. And ESPECIALLY not for a sound card. I was a gamer in the DOS days (23 hand-configured seperate config.sys configurations in DOS 6.22, for various games that were far too picky), I've been a gamer ever since but hell - I've never paid more than about £50 ($100-ish) for a component, certainly don't do that even three or four times a year and yet am more than happy with the 57 games on my Steam account. I bought a DVD-Writer. In fact, I still have every original CD or DVD drive I've ever owned still in one of my old PC's. The very first 2xSpeed CD reader that I bought second-hand YEARS ago still works perfectly, as do all the intermediates (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD/CD-RW, etc.) because I use them for convienent copying of CD's and as a mini CD-server when necessary. What the hell you do to wear them out I have no idea.
How do I do it? I stagger my entertainment. Want to play a game? Wait a year until it's on budget release and/or I have a PC capable of playing it (I don't buy PC's just to play a game, it's the last thing on my life). Save money on the PC, save money on the game, save money spent on worthless games (because they've been out for a year by then and everyone knows if they're crap).
Consoles work the same - buy them a year after release - cheaper, more games, no problems. Your problem is not console vs PC.. that's just a lifestyle choice of convenient vs hackable. Your problem is "MUST HAVE NOW!" versus "It's a game". I LOVE the SNES, I adore the games. So I emulate them on PC. Still have the thing tucked away somewhere but I gave up last time I tried to plug it in because my TV is a pig to re-tune. So I emulate those games on the same PC as I play Half-life 2, etc. It's just more convenient than a bunch of obscure, fragile consoles with stupid batteries in the cartridges.
Simple. Stop paying for it.
If people pay money for something, that's because they think it's worth that money (eBay syndrome). If you get "more" for free on the PC, use a PC.
"True 3D" for a start - it was horribly blocky from what I remember and added little to the game. Syndicate does need a "view from N/S/E/W" button, though, it has to be said. It was 3D for the sake of 3D.
Not at all sure about the more convincing atmosphere.
Destructible buildings? Okay.
But Syndicate Wars was such a distraction in terms of the leap from the previous episode that it was always going to be disliked. Give me 2D isometric anyday. Syndicate wasn't about "atmosphere" - it was about a quick, simple game.
(At one point, there was even a series of articles by a Bullfrog programmer in a UK games magazine that introduced C and how to draw Syndicate sprites on the screen and get them to move around, etc.)
Syndicate should stay in its hallowed ground of excellence, standing on the rotting corpse of Syndicate Wars. Remaking that game (and especially in 3D, not matter how "ground-breaking" at the time) should be deemed blashpemy.
DOSBox re-release? YES! Crappy remake/sequel? No.
Same here. I've went through my history the other day and, including my original Half-life / Counterstrike purchases way back when it was still a new game (I used the CD-Keys to activate my Steam account), I've spent about £300 and I currently have 59 games sitting on that account. Now, about 10-15 of them I'll never, ever play again (they were bundled for free, or limited technology demos, etc.). About 20 of them I owned previously and played to death. But just my L4D stats (ONE GAME) show that I've played hundreds of hours for that money... it's the best bargain I've ever had.
And each month I re-buy a big pack of games that I probably own 2 or 3 of already (just bought the Indie game pack despite already owning Gish, mainly because Gish has a HORRIBLE activation system otherwise) just so that I have them "forever". I don't really care about them being around in fifty years time but the current convenience of not having to dig out a CD, of loading up my steam account while at a friends and downloading the original UT, etc. far outweighs the potential cost if they disappear in, say, less than 10 years from now.
What I *really*, *really*, want is all the current "ancient" budget titles to appear on Steam - the C&C's, Red Alert, Master of Magic/Orion, etc. Even if it's just another "Throw it into DOSBox" bodge like the UFO series, I don't really care. I have the CD's of them all but they come to about 8-10 CD's which I don't want to have to keep storing / reinstalling / reconfiguring on different machines just to load up and play a game. Oh, and Bridge Construction Set (same authors as Gish, with same horrible activation system).
I think the relevant word is "can", not "has". It has the potential to do the same thing but doesn't seem to have made it that far. Provable but not proven?
And besides that, from the very article you linked to, I can spot a number of problems - such that isn't just written in one language and translated to a final, provable "one language + assembly" like the main article, but several (and a lot more than the bare minimum necessary to boot a kernel, it seems). It's kind of mid-way to what the main article has achieved.
"I suspect there is never such a point, if you're raising your child properly."
Possibly not. But kids *can* be very testing.
"people shouldn't be having kids if they're uncomfortable with their motivations for sex or uncomfortable teaching a child basic things about life."
I think you've confused "between certain ages" with "ever"... There's going to be a point where I'm going to have to explain basic sexual intercourse to my child. I don't think that point is within the next 5-6 years. Until then, she will get a child-like answer. Some people are uncomfortable discussing the thing at all, it doesn't make them bad parents (e.g. what if their sexual history is unpleasant?). Ideally, yes, we should all be able to do this but I think this isn't important enough to say they "shouldn't have kids".
"I think most of that discomfort with teaching kids about sex is largely fear of other adults thinking their child knows too much or is talking inappropriately."
That's a part of it, certainly. I think more difficult is the belief that kids will want to go off and try it if you explain in too much detail, especially given the "sex is fun" but "you're not old enough yet"... explain that in the wrong way and the kid will be shinning down the drainpipe at midnight to find someone to try it with - it's like gold to a child, that sort of statement.
And sadly, I'm not a school inspector, which is why I moved into private education (and found the situation to be worse!). However, on the scale of things I've seen said to children, that's pretty minor to be honest. I'm fairly certain some teachers have the ambition of ruining the children's lives (as do some parents!).
First, there's a point at which that three-year-old brat has asked "Why?" too many times today.
Then, there's the point at which the parent doesn't feel comfortable explaining topics like sex to a child within certain age ranges.
Then, there's parents that aren't really interested in helping their child learn - just to be quiet and let the parent be a person in their own right again.
Then, there's parents who know the answer but can't express it in a child-friendly way (MUCH harder than it looks when it's off-the-cuff and out-of-the-blue... this is why good teachers are so rare).
Then, there's the parents who don't know.
I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of all of those categories, but to say they are all part of the last one is totally untrue.
However, more worrying is that in my work with schools, I've come across all of the above categories of TEACHER. That's a lot more scary. I regularly see kids told off for daring to ask "Why?" or "Why not?" and, yes, some of them are just deliberately being annoying but I've witnessed no end of kids that are shut out of learning because the teacher "needs" to have a chat, text their husband, fill in paperwork, go to lunch, etc.
If a kid has a genuine question, answer the damn question, or they will give up asking anything at all. That just breeds zombies, not brains. And you know that zombies can't survive without an adequate quota of brains around.
Or, they are just renewing their trademarks? Or they are planning to pump some old stuff out through Steam, etc.?
Why does "trademark application" have to equal "writing a sequel"?
Because that scratch isn't the entire CD?
Reading past a "scratch" is actually designed into the error correction of all CD's... if my Coding Theory course serves me correctly, it could survive something like 600 consecutive binary errors (and less random errors) in each kilobyte on the actual disk without actual data loss. Plus you have to identify the exact sector where your key resides, and scratch/crack through it in an "accidental" way, which obscures the key such that it isn't at ALL useful for decryption (every a small subset of the key would cut the amount of brute-force required substantially), but such that if a key IS discovered (elsewhere in the PC) that you can say "see, that disk did have a bit of it but it was scratched" rather than "Ha, ha, that wasn't the key, is was random data/blank/modified".
Playing "let's mess about" with the law by using the latter tactic isn't at all useful when charges of perjury, obstructing the course of justice, etc. are added into the mix - you'll do more time for them then you do for failing to reveal your key if it's suspected that you did it deliberately. If you do this for the scenarios described, you better be DAMN sure that you obscured the real key in a way that make it more difficult to read (which is basically impossible... even a few consecutive bytes of the key would help immensely - each bit of the real key they have cuts the key-search brute-force time by a factor of 2, I should think) and you'd be more likely to be giving them a lot more than that by playing such games.
Never store the key, destroy the key entirely upon discovery or store the key securely and give it to them. Don't faff about by coming up with fancy obfuscation techniques for a key that "appear convincing"... computer forensics teams can just read the pits off the worst of CD's and reconstruct enough of the key to make it a waste of time - they know a blank CD from a real CD, they know how to reconstruct the error-correction algorithms (probably with a greater degree of success than your CD-reader does - I wouldn't be surprised if a decent mathematician couldn't use the knowledge of a badly-damaged bit-stream that has some form of error-correction, even if insufficient to reconstruct the data, and put it to good use in limiting what keys, etc. to check), they might even be able to pick up on "deeper" forensic evidence on the CD's pits (e.g. burnt slightly larger than need be, CD's that are unreadable on any CD-reader, or previous overwrites of a CD-RW). It's all a question of effort, and if terrorism is involved, you just KNOW they think it's worth the effort.
And if your key is discovered by other means (e.g. they spend 2 years trying to crack it while you're inside on other charges) and doesn't match the one you "claimed" was the key... that's gotta mean you don't get out for possibly decades.
If it got to the point where you're in court, they will happily pay the £1000 or so that it would cost to read even a cracked CD. And when they found it was blank, they would impose a harsher sentence for lying in the first place.
It's much harder to "destroy" the entire CD that just cracking it. You would almost literally have to set it on fire in order that they couldn't say "well, we recovered 90% of the data from the various shards and found nothing but zeroes".
"Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again."
(Or, more likely, not... the community "invented" this years ago... it's called an album torrent. Pity you weren't interested in selling it to us back then).
I don't buy music anyway, because what little I listen to I already own or get *extraordinarily* cheaply by other, legitimate, means. So I don't really care.
Okay, what a bad piece of reporting. Report a story and then pad it out with irrevelant and subjective personal details? If you want to "attack" the man verbally, your story has enough to do so without needing to comment on the state of his house or family. It's like a child's snipe at one of their ex-friends, it's appalling to think that an adult wrote it.
Yes, he's an idiot. Yes, he *will* get caught and have consequences against him if/when actual evidence turns up. Yes, he is taking advantage of gullible people but that's not entirely their fault - walk out into the street any time of day and you'll find someone that you can take advantage of somehow, if you're mean enough. But to lower yourself to personal attacks on his personal lifestyle, housing, amount of friends etc. is being no better than himself.
You know what? I couldn't make it past the first page of that personal attack - I had to skim to the end to see if there was any actual point to the story (which there didn't seem to be). Grow up.
Fair comments on your first three but the last implies that you DON'T know the answers, aren't coming across as interested etc... my point is that you should shouldn't be wasting their time reciting previous answers.
I had an interview for a job, about nine months ago (I started to dislike my previous job, and applied for another while there in order to make the gap seamless - I was offered a raise not to leave). They had a list of (I think) 23 projects that they wanted to do. By the time we were through number 11, they had provoked enough of my background story for them to ALREADY know whether I could handle the other projects. I was literally saying, "Um, yes, I think we've covered that" about eight or nine times and they were saying it for the remainder. It's called selling yourself, but not over-selling yourself. I could have waffled on for ten minutes about the projects but it would have been a waste of all our time. After the list of projects, they had some more questions. We skipped about half. At the end, we both asked each other if they were any more questions. Nope. They saw who I was, I knew what I was walking into, we were happy.
Yes, I got the job (by miles, according to the recruitment agent they hired to find candidates, the big boss, and the other person in the interview - not bad considering I pushed back a ton of more experienced candidates at the last minute)... I'm still in it.
Any employer who honestly believes you're interested in the job because you asked a random question at the end of it, really needs to stop being in the interviews. Questions do come from enthusiasm, but if they are enthusiastic, they will already have known all the answers long before that last 30 seconds of the interview.
P.S. When I witness it myself, it often reminds me of those people that you get on certain projects - where they are out of their depth, not contributing much and feel that they should - so they bring up "issues", which everyone knows are a non-factor but that you then have to spend hours discussing round in circles to make them feel important. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world to feel like that when I hear a question at the end of an interview.
Not really. We have become much more "Americanised" in the last few decades. In fact, every single business concept ever present in the US has come to Britain eventually - a lot of places aspire to be "just like a US company" (because, obviously, that means they'll be succesful... :-P ). If we differ, it's in slight ways only... it's not like trying to do business in Japan/China where the culture is *vastly* different.
I'll ask a couple of my US-living-in-UK friends and see what they think but I'm pretty sure they'd agree with me.
If you can't answer that, how on earth do you fill out your resumes/applications? The entire job process is about selling yourself not because "I'm good" but because "I can do this job better than the other candidates". You should be asking yourself that question with every interaction with that employer - when you're reading the job post, when you reply to it, when you fill out the application form, when you are in the interview, that question is the only relevant one that you tailor every answer to.
The reason you were asked it is because they want to see who is stumped by it because they DIDN'T do their research and probably don't know why the company should hire them - they were just hoping for a lucky "yes". Anyone else should be able to answer that with answers to other questions they've been asked... "Well, like I say, I think I can provide X, Y, Z... I think I've shown that you'll get a dedicated worker, my refereneces will back up the fact that I've been doing this sort of work for years with good results, and I think I can provide a lot of what you say your company needs like..."
Okay, I'm actually damn good at interviews. This is blowing my own trumpet, but it's true. I've beaten people vastly more qualified, more experienced and less demanding in salary because I can hold my own in an interview. In fact, I change jobs rather than mess about with the internal politics of pay-rises, even in credit crunches. It makes life more interesting.
I have *never* asked a question at the end of an interview. I've always said "No, I think you've covered everything I need to know" because, by then, they HAVE, or I've done my research already. Asking a smarty-pants question is likely to lose you respect too.
"What is the (official) dress code?"
You're looking at it. You're probably wearing it. You're talking to people who are wearing it. It's pretty irrelevant anyway, because if you're required to wear anything different (e.g. uniform, stricter dress because you're dealing with public etc.) then they will TELL you that or you will already know. And what are you going to do? Say "Oh, no... I couldn't wear that" and forgo the job? And 99.9% of places are the same anyway - smart or smart/casual unless you're public-facing.
"What about my resume caught your eye?"
A good question. For your first month of working. In the interview, it's just too long-winded to explain and they might well be reluctant to discuss details of their hiring process.
"What hardware/software am I expected to use at my desktop (e-mail, OS, editor, source control, etc.)?"
You'll have been told by the job description. You should also have been shown round the place by then, even if it's just "and this is our coding floor". Personally, I usually insist on pre-interview tours if it's at all possible but most places have done this for me automatically - why would you ever want to take a job at somewhere you've never even SEEN the inside of? I gain the most information by seeing where I'm supposed to work and walking through the building to get to it - H&S violations (Cramped working conditions, no fire extinguishers, etc.)? Spotted them. Employees slacking off/arguing? Spotted them. People wasting time in boring meetings? Spotted them. The person I'm replacing? Probably sitting at the same desk or be the one showing me around.
Plus, the people in interview might not want to get into those sort of details because it will take too long. They just want to get on through their candidates and start deciding. Also, by asking, it's like you're questioning their choice. You're being paid to do the job, you have to damn well learn whatever software they want anyway. All this question does is provoke a feeling that you won't be happy/productive if it's not your "favourite".
"Are there team lunches or get-togethers?"
AKA "I want to socialise, waste time, claim that I'm team-building". If you want a team lunch, you'll have one. If you don't then you won't. This is nothing to do with the job unless it's pushed "from above" but you can't tell people how to eat their lunch and you wouldn't want to work anywhere that did. It's probably the "best" of your questions, though.
"What are your goals for the next six months, one year, three years?"
Brilliant question. For THEM to ask YOU. You're basically questioning their dedication / long-term plans in a roundabout way. They will raise eyebrows at this question.
"What ticket/issue tracking system do you use?"
See above about software/hardware.
"Do you have separate build/stage/QA/etc. environments?"
You will know this by the end of the interview/tour or you haven't done your research properly. It probably tells you in the job description. If they say no, you're implying that you know or work better. If they say yes, you're making yourself look an idiot by not knowing that.
"How do you keep track of documentation?"
See hardware/software question and the above. If they say "we don't", you should already know that and will come across as superior. If they say, we use
More crap to distract from presenting information in a hyperlinked environment.
More crap to have to have a control to switch off.
More crap that won't work on X amount of browser combinations.
More crap that'll stop working due to mysterious bugs and stop me being able to actually do what I want on a website (as it is, Javascripts on at least one network sometimes "capture" the entire mouse click anywhere on a page and use it to open up a link... it's rare and probably just a bug but it pisses me off. Also, those sites where they mess up the framing, or don't take account of layering etc. and you end up fighting to click on the thing you want)
More crap that'll just get in the way of parsing a HTML for relevant links, related images etc. and displaying them in a search engine.
More crap that's been possible for YEARS if you really wanted to do it, you just had to be clever and write a bit yourself or steal someone's code.
More crap that'll slow my average web browsing session with 20+ tabs down to the speed of a Commodore 64.
More crap that'll just make me stop visiting your website. It's very simple.
Your assumption would be wrong. It was just general sentiment.
Avid L4D player... haven't even SEEN most of those, let alone had them affect my gameplay.
"being blocked by the smallest obstructions"
Nope. Not really. Standard hitboxes etc. like any other game in it's genre as far as I can tell.
"hunters literally bouncing off of other players when lunging"
Er... nope... not unless the survivor hits you or you get some SERIOUS lag.
"(I once landed and STOOD on someone's head after a pounce without tackling)"
I'll take your word for it, but I've only ever seen this happen in high-lag situations and when it "caught up", the hunter had been scratching the face off someone for all that time in "reality" (i.e. according to the server).
"the unspeakably fucking AWFUL survivor AI that will sit around with it's thumb up the ass while a hunter eats your intestines"
They want to push rather than shoot... it's a flaw, admittedly. But the bots are quite good... I've actually gotten better times on Survival with 2 bots and another human than I have with 4 humans. Rare but it happens.
"survivors hanging off of the edge of something when the ground is two feet below them"
Agreed, this should be a simple check of just how far you would fall and MAKE you fall if it wasn't going to hurt you quite a bit, rather than hang on. Hardly affect the majority of games though... don't fall off and stay away from edges because of smokers anyway.
"smoker tongues breaking for no discernible reason at all"
Smoker missed / player SHOT the tongue / player bashed the tongue / something moved through the tongue. Never seen anything else do it.
"lousy anti-cheat protection"
After playing CS for years (still do), I am relieved to say that in a year of gameplay I haven't even SEEN anyone I suspect of cheating. I call bullshit or bad player identifying good player as a "cheater".
"bugged instakill zones with smokers"
Not really a "bug", so much as playing on the limits of the map / technology... you're just hitting edges of the map, etc. Could possibly be fixed by a map tweak but it must be incredibly hard to stop such smoker-kills in general (like the one across the edges in the unfinished hospital levels)
"The tank's hit window sometimes being ridiculously narrow for such a massive monster with huge, beefy arms that swing very wide"
What the hell are YOU shooting at? I've never witnessed anything like that.
I am glad that you're happy.
However, to me, sleep time, boot time, shutdown time, etc. mean *nothing*, even on my XP laptop. Opening the lid on my laptop, however, and browsing to a new website takes seconds. And I have OpenVPN running over WPA2 in order to access the Internet, which has to renegotiate it's connection with the WAP and server every time it goes into sleep - I don't even notice any pause, it's just a slight swapping of the disk that slows anything down but that's just Windows "logging back in". And run an POP3 client - why on earth would you want to keep logging into Gmail via HTTP and via IE, for goodness sake? Just use... Opera both notifies me of and downloads any new GMail on the same account without any hassle at all... anyway...
Connecting to wifi uber-fast? How vital. Those two seconds you save over me on every disconnection must really be important to you to upgrade the entire OS for. And I have God-knows how many layers of things running over wifi (Zonealarm only lets OpenVPN through, which allocates it's own IP via DHCP seperate to the IP given to the wireless adaptor from the PC running over the other end of the house via the Linksys WAP in between running WPA2 - and that's if I just use the minimum).
I don't get DNS errors, either, but that's more an application issue than an OS issue (any idiot can program it to just wait for 30 seconds and keep retrying if there's an error).
"7 works better then XP for my laptop, and when all I do is read web sites, and do a little coding, I have no problems at all with 7."
Good for you. Some people use their computer. Some people even choose their OS upgrades based on the usage of their computer too, rather than upgrade for little reason other than to read websites within a fraction of a second less than under XP when waking from sleep.
"running off of a flash drive was slow"
State the obvious.
The fact is that Windows 7 isn't necessarily "bad"... it's just not necessarily as good as previous incarnations for the vast majority of people. It's much worse if you actually USE your computer and have setups of programs that have been installed for years (like, say, most home users?) where you DO NOT want to reinstall or upgrade just because of minor niggles like "it takes a second or two to log onto the wireless". Seriously, could you find a more petty example? You're basically sounding like upgrading a PC to Windows 7 gets me the equivalent of moving one metre closer to my AP.
Windows 7 is probably a good OS. But you think I'm PAYING (not everyone has MSDN or wants it or even cares) to UPGRADE my entire machine (I'm in the EU, which means wiping it back to bare metal which I've never had to ever do previously with any machine except in the case of hardware failure) so that I can resume from sleep in a second or so less? This is why people troll you.
Gave my wife a Linux machine last year. (Wife is computer novice, first learned about PC's at 20-something, now 30-something and got her job because she pointed out the errors and inconsistencies on the Excel exam in the interview to get her current job - damn I can teach IT...)
It boots to desktop, has one of those horrible pre-made Linux distros on it (Yeurk... give me Slackware any day - I need to customise). She hasn't needed to use the CLI (or me) for *anything*. Anything at all. It all just works. Hasn't been updated since the day she got it except for the web browser (Opera, which wasn't installed by default). She does her work on OO, she browses all the time, scans images/photos and uploads stuff to eBay, we talk on Pidgin, Skype etc. with webcam, voice, etc. Bought a 3G stick for my laptop, lent it to her for a week while she was away - she plugged it in, it detected it, created a connection, she just clicks and selects and it dials and sets her up for Internet without having to TOUCH the CLI.
Granted she doesn't do a lot of "technical" stuff but I believe that was your point. The only thing that pisses her off is that Flash is a bit old but I can't be bothered to upgrade it for her and have warned her about just updating things willy-nilly, rather I'll wipe it with a better distro at some point. But even that upgrade is in all the GUI update software if she wanted to take the risk herself.
It's likely that she would break the hardware before she ever needed to see the CLI.
So, sorry, but you're wrong. I can show you countless people I've put on Linux desktops who don't even know what a CLI is, let alone how to work it, and they manage just fine.
Don't live by books, live by your brain. Books can help provide inspiration but you're not stupid... your brain knows if/when there's something wrong and how to fix it. People normally run off and cry to their friends in order to be told what they already knew. You know this. You know if the marriage is working or not. You know if you want to / need to work at it or not. To be honest, a marriage you need to "work at" in any way probably wasn't started on the best footing ("I don't really love you any more, darling, but let's work at it"? It's almost like saying "I don't find you sexually attractive any more but let's keep trying and see if I can keep it up" - Oh, and marriages based on sex aren't really marriages).
Ignore therapists, books, courses, "relationship counselling" (Yeurk!), all the other nonsense... live your lives together and be happy for as long as you both can and, if you can't, see what can be done to fix it. Sometimes that means divorce is actually the best way to find happiness for you both... so be it.
"I'm doing this because I read it in a book" comes nowhere near "I'm doing this because I want to make you happy".
Now run off and enjoy married life with your geek girl, you lucky sod.