They might own their software but you own your computer, and you paid for access to the game. If Valve cuts you off because of you installed a no-CD patch on YOUR computer, can't you take them to small claims court and get your $60 back?
The story doesn't totally suck, and the atmosphere, graphics and sound make up for it. You get a real feeling of desolation and despair, you're really "in" the game.
But the game is pretty linear. There are "side explorations" you can choose to go on. For example, if you're driving down a highway and pass an old run-down house, you can choose to stop there and explore or keep going. Stuff like that.
There really aren't that many FPS games that aren't linear, having a strong cinematic experience requires a certain amount of linearity if you want the player to be in the right place at the right time with the right weapons and equipment, to experience your cool action sequence.
Comrade Scooturo wounded, crankshaft problems
on
A New Elena Story
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· Score: 1
Excellent article, very interesting. This girl certainly has an interest in anthropology, history, and alcohol!
It'll be interesting to see how people that are redirected to longer routes to get around traffic handle the inconvenience. Let's just hope we're still given the choice to drive manually.
But I wouldn't be surprised if driving manually will eventually be forbidden because it compromises the presumably better safety of automatic driving. It may first be forbidden on interstate highways. With automatic driving, all vehicles could be moving the same (presumably high) speed. I could easily see a consistent 90mph.
Prints are not the answer. They're a dead-end medium. Computer make perfect digital copies, your master copies must remain on a digital storage device.
I have 4 hard drives in my system. When I upgrade a hard drive, I copy everything from the old drive to the new one. I also do my own little RAID with important directories such as my photographs and MP3s, by copying them to another drive.
I still have files and programs from DOS days on my hard drive(s), but that's not a storage problem because drives keep getting bigger and bigger, and older programs are tiny by comparison to new ones.
I must be one of those 20% of devils. Best Buy pissed me off so bad when I was buying my mom a $500 e-Machine computer that I go out of my way NOT to shop there. It took me 45 minutes to get out of there. All I wanted to do was take a computer off the shelf and check out, but it was much more complicated than that. The saleslady kept pushing the extended warranty, software packages, and various services. They wanted to open up the computer in their service department to check out it because "e-Machines have a high rate of returns." Well if they're so bad why are you selling them? She had no answer for that.
Then more pleas for the extended warranty, software, and other crap. When I refused the extended warranty the second time I actually had to talk to her supervisor to let him hear for himself that I really didn't want it. The saleslady stressed that they aren't on commission, but I found later their managers ARE.
Finally (with escort of the sales lady) I was allowed to check out. If it wasn't for the price and the fact my mom needed the computer, I would have walked off. The good news is the cheapo e-Machine is still happily running years later.
If Best Buy doesn't like people who take advantage of rebates, then they shouldn't offer rebates. They're a pain in the ass anyway. And Best Buy shouldn't sell products at a loss to attract customers, because some customers will buy only the low-priced products. Pretty simple.
As far as people returning products for a refund, that's a service that people expect and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for Best Buy not to allow it.
Personally it seems to me that if Best Buy can make billions of dollars a year and give those 20% of people who will go to extra trouble to save money good deals, why worry about it?
You can copy software. You can't copy hardware. People want a good deal.
So they copy software and look for the cheapest hardware that does what they want.
I don't see how the price of the hardware makes much difference except maybe on the off chance that people spending less on hardware might buy more software. But it's much more complicated than that.
What's the big deal about voting machine fraud? If you see any fraud being commited, just write an NEGATIVE SCRIPT to offset those fraudulent votes. That way we'll keep the election nice and balanced.
I turn my computer on in the morning when I get to work and off when I leave work. Win98SE usually crashed once a day, but WinXP has only crashed 4 or 5 times in the last year. A BIG improvement.
I do a lot of gaming at home, Win98SE used to crash a lot on certain games, now with the same hardware XP hardly ever crashes. Plus load times are much better too.
XP is a bit bloated in it's default config, but turn off system restore and all that junk and it's a very good OS.
Yeah I'd definitely like to be orbiting in something inflatable with all the space junk of the last 45 years and assorted meteors flying around at 160,000mph.
It's a nice looking unit but any of those 256MB or 512MB players are just a toy compared to the gigabytes and thousands of songs you can put on a hard drive based player.
Sure hard drives can fail but I've had a normal 3.5 inch 40GB WD hard drive in my Dension DMP3 car player for 2 years now. It's gone through a full range of winter and summer weather and ~30 miles of daily driving, and it's still going strong. Even if it failed today I'd rather buy a $40 hard drive every few years rather than get by with ~64 songs on a solid-state player.
This is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a long time. I don't think I would have gone there but the pictures are amazing.
It also reminds me of a book called "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart. It's one of my favorite books. Most of the US population is wiped out by a disease, leaving only a small number of survivors. They raid grocery stores for canned food, drive whatever car they want on freeways littered with deserted cars, and live in whatever house they want. As time goes by, the electricity starts flickering and finally goes off, the water stops flowing, things gradually break down. Eventually they learn to raise food for themselves and seek out other survivors.
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They might own their software but you own your computer, and you paid for access to the game. If Valve cuts you off because of you installed a no-CD patch on YOUR computer, can't you take them to small claims court and get your $60 back?
According to our stats we've had 36,000 unique visitors this month. Here are the browser stats:
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The 0% hits were down in the hundreds and must have rounded down to 0.
The story doesn't totally suck, and the atmosphere, graphics and sound make up for it. You get a real feeling of desolation and despair, you're really "in" the game.
But the game is pretty linear. There are "side explorations" you can choose to go on. For example, if you're driving down a highway and pass an old run-down house, you can choose to stop there and explore or keep going. Stuff like that.
There really aren't that many FPS games that aren't linear, having a strong cinematic experience requires a certain amount of linearity if you want the player to be in the right place at the right time with the right weapons and equipment, to experience your cool action sequence.
Excellent article, very interesting. This girl certainly has an interest in anthropology, history, and alcohol!
It'll be interesting to see how people that are redirected to longer routes to get around traffic handle the inconvenience. Let's just hope we're still given the choice to drive manually.
But I wouldn't be surprised if driving manually will eventually be forbidden because it compromises the presumably better safety of automatic driving. It may first be forbidden on interstate highways. With automatic driving, all vehicles could be moving the same (presumably high) speed. I could easily see a consistent 90mph.
Prints are not the answer. They're a dead-end medium. Computer make perfect digital copies, your master copies must remain on a digital storage device.
I have 4 hard drives in my system. When I upgrade a hard drive, I copy everything from the old drive to the new one. I also do my own little RAID with important directories such as my photographs and MP3s, by copying them to another drive.
I still have files and programs from DOS days on my hard drive(s), but that's not a storage problem because drives keep getting bigger and bigger, and older programs are tiny by comparison to new ones.
I see I'm not alone!:
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/BestBuyT
I must be one of those 20% of devils. Best Buy pissed me off so bad when I was buying my mom a $500 e-Machine computer that I go out of my way NOT to shop there. It took me 45 minutes to get out of there. All I wanted to do was take a computer off the shelf and check out, but it was much more complicated than that. The saleslady kept pushing the extended warranty, software packages, and various services. They wanted to open up the computer in their service department to check out it because "e-Machines have a high rate of returns." Well if they're so bad why are you selling them? She had no answer for that.
Then more pleas for the extended warranty, software, and other crap. When I refused the extended warranty the second time I actually had to talk to her supervisor to let him hear for himself that I really didn't want it. The saleslady stressed that they aren't on commission, but I found later their managers ARE.
Finally (with escort of the sales lady) I was allowed to check out. If it wasn't for the price and the fact my mom needed the computer, I would have walked off. The good news is the cheapo e-Machine is still happily running years later.
If Best Buy doesn't like people who take advantage of rebates, then they shouldn't offer rebates. They're a pain in the ass anyway. And Best Buy shouldn't sell products at a loss to attract customers, because some customers will buy only the low-priced products. Pretty simple.
As far as people returning products for a refund, that's a service that people expect and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for Best Buy not to allow it.
Personally it seems to me that if Best Buy can make billions of dollars a year and give those 20% of people who will go to extra trouble to save money good deals, why worry about it?
http://www.sacredfools.org/CrimeScene/Images/S4/we bb_morgan.jpg
So does that mean that Morgan Webb isn't her real name?
You can copy software. You can't copy hardware. People want a good deal.
So they copy software and look for the cheapest hardware that does what they want.
I don't see how the price of the hardware makes much difference except maybe on the off chance that people spending less on hardware might buy more software. But it's much more complicated than that.
If people are letting NPD MusicWatch Digital monitor their files, are they going to be the people who have large stores of "questionable" MP3s?
If MusicWatch is just monitoring file sharing networks, maybe less people are sharing MP3s because they're worried they'll get sued.
But I guess I wouldn't. I might dual-boot just to check it out, but at work I develop Win32 programs and at home I play games.
Why couldn't you just use an old printer?
There will be mods. I know DOD will be out for HL2. I'm sure DM people will do a DM mod, and we'll see the usual Rocket Arena and Jailbreak.
Don't worry kids.
What's the big deal about voting machine fraud? If you see any fraud being commited, just write an NEGATIVE SCRIPT to offset those fraudulent votes. That way we'll keep the election nice and balanced.
I turn my computer on in the morning when I get to work and off when I leave work. Win98SE usually crashed once a day, but WinXP has only crashed 4 or 5 times in the last year. A BIG improvement.
I do a lot of gaming at home, Win98SE used to crash a lot on certain games, now with the same hardware XP hardly ever crashes. Plus load times are much better too.
XP is a bit bloated in it's default config, but turn off system restore and all that junk and it's a very good OS.
I assume they're talking about foreground applications as opposed to background processes.
Check your XP Task manager to see the difference.
Yeah I'd definitely like to be orbiting in something inflatable with all the space junk of the last 45 years and assorted meteors flying around at 160,000mph.
If you ever get a chance to see TMBG live, do it! Their live show rocked, unlike their studio recordings, IMO.
It's a nice looking unit but any of those 256MB or 512MB players are just a toy compared to the gigabytes and thousands of songs you can put on a hard drive based player.
Sure hard drives can fail but I've had a normal 3.5 inch 40GB WD hard drive in my Dension DMP3 car player for 2 years now. It's gone through a full range of winter and summer weather and ~30 miles of daily driving, and it's still going strong. Even if it failed today I'd rather buy a $40 hard drive every few years rather than get by with ~64 songs on a solid-state player.
Guess it will be a little more risky to make out in the back row now.
This is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a long time. I don't think I would have gone there but the pictures are amazing.
It also reminds me of a book called "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart. It's one of my favorite books. Most of the US population is wiped out by a disease, leaving only a small number of survivors. They raid grocery stores for canned food, drive whatever car they want on freeways littered with deserted cars, and live in whatever house they want. As time goes by, the electricity starts flickering and finally goes off, the water stops flowing, things gradually break down. Eventually they learn to raise food for themselves and seek out other survivors.
What could I possibly have to say to my browser?