ATI also brings a new level to "Abandoning support for hardware as soon as we think we can get away with it". I've had one video card and one tv tuner from ATI, each of which I bought right around the introduction of a new Windows version. In both cases, ATI dropped support for the card shortly after. In the case of the video card, they never did release WDM drivers. In the case of the tuner, they released only a version or two that "kind of" worked under 2000 pro and XP, then decided the remaining major bugs were too hard and dropped support.
I've never had this problem with Nvidia, so even if they are slower from time to time, I'll stick with a company that doesn't screw me.
I appreciate the fact that ATI is increasing competition these days, but they'll never get another cent of mine.
Very astute observation. I was struck by the obvious bias in the HEADLINES in that list.
That reminds me, I need to buy more ALCOA stock, I'm sure that tin foil will be flying off the shelves as these guys double up on the cranial shielding...
And a great many of them are also aware of the fact that copyright violation is not the same thing as theft.
It's not "right" but it doesn't deprive anyone of anything, either, no mater what *AA has to say about it. They have not LOST a single thing. THey haven't GAINED anything, either, but in most cases, they wouldn't anyhow.
Now a pirate that SELLS the copyrighted material has committed a crime. No one has a right to profit that way.
Disclaimer: I make my money working for a software company. I detest piracy. I also recognize that piracy doesn't really affect me. We make most of our money from support calls and sales relations with customers. Pirates don't ask for that. Realistically, they cost us nothing.
That is certainly possible. On appeal, the court order can be found improper and illegal. It has happened before, and it can happen again. Some "justices" need to be disbarred. Some deserve more drastic measures than that, but that's another thread...
",,,for now" is a good point. THe RIAA has been trying to kill resale of used CD's for years. If they can only get DRM mandated, they can realize their dream. If ever a group of slimeballs needed to get SARS en masse and die a horrible death that would be them.
I don't fault the artists (by which I do not mean boybands, bubblegum, rap or any of the other shit the RIAA is pushing) that are forced to do business under the RIAA banner in order to get ANY air time at all. I fault the useless functionaries of the RIAA itself.
Alienate your customers. Yea that's a brilliant idea...
I do use Mozilla, however I don't know of any adware that runs on Linux. If I find any, I'll install it as user "TommyTard" who doesn't have rights to wipe his own ass, just for kicks.
Won't run for anyone, but that's kind of the point...
Side note, the Judge in this story isn't the brightest bulb on the old Xmas tree. I expect he'll be drowning whilst staring up in amazement at a downpour any day now... Just like the proverbial retarded chicken. but I'm too kind to his dishonor....
They're far from being leaders in their field. They should welcome support from the open source community. If they don't, refuse to support them in any way. Make them the same sort of pariahs as we have made SCO and see if their attitude changes then...
Advertisers or spammers, these morons ignore the fact that NO ONE is obligated to carry their traffic it there is a reason to believe that it is not legit.
I drop that kind of traffic on the floor. They're welcome to TRY to collect. I guarantee they won't like my legal retalliation..
I'll agree that AC 1 had the best model for keeping people involved. Unfortunately, Turbine proved themselves incapable of fixing annoying client problems, such as portal noise (hearing town chatter from where you portaled in long after you ran far away from the town you portaled into) Hard crashes, inevitably resulting in death where you were virtually guaranteed to lose everythign on your corpse, there were others.
The sad thing is that they managed to KEEP the worst bugs for AC2. I played AC1 on Frostfell longer than I played any other MMORPG. Eventually, the crash bug made me quit. It's no fun playing a game when you're afraid to GO anywhere because you would eventually crash and lose everything you'd worked for, If I lost it due to game factors, like getting legitimately killed that's one thing. Losing it because the client is too fucking unstable is something else.
The fact that they're married to.NET now doesn't help.
Richard Garriot's not involved, therefore this is NOT Ultima. "Francise" and "Licensing" be damned, that man IS the essence of Ultima, good or bad. He's not with the company anymore, so anyone who expects something the quality of, say Ultima IV is sadly mistaken.
It's not tough to argue that when it's not 100% true.
I work for one of the LARGE IT vendors. I am in charge of Unix and Linux testing for my development site. I can tell you unequivocally that we WILL support any distribution or installation that will make us money. That's more than just Redhat and SuSE. I'm not there to sell Redhat licenses and SuSE licenses. I'm there to make sure my product can be sold to as many customers as possible, and that it will work as designed. I'm there to make money for MY employer, not RedHat and SuSE.
I'm sure RedHat and SuSE would LIKE the big publishers to push "ONLY Advanced Server or Enterprise" but in our case, it's just NOT going to happen. Does it make a difference to me if the customer is running a $2500 dollar Advanced server license or a $80 desktop license?
Hell No.
Now our support packages for the Enterprise products are cheaper, I believe, but we're not going to tell a customer "we don't want your money" just because they're a University that standardised on Debian years ago...
We're sure as shit not going to tell them "Go buy SuSE Enterprise server and we'll talk."
Smaller publishers would LOVE for us to say THAT...
SCO is rapidly becoming a pariah, whether they know it or not. As of about a month ago, in fact, we quietly dropped all support for SCO/Caldera Unix and Linux. I doubt we've sold a license for either in over a year, and it's simply a waste of time. The hardware support in SCO Unix is completely rediculous, and not worth the time testing.
I try to not only support the "commercial" distributions, but maintain a list of known working versions of glibc, and the like. This is for a few reasons.
1) Just because RedHat AS 2.1 shipped with glibc version x and Kernel Revision y doesn't mean that those versions will be in place when our software is installed. To an extent, even "commercial distros" are no more useful a rule of thumb for compatibility than any other Linux distribution. Yes we Certify against release versions, but this is the real world. Security and bug fixes being what they are, a Real World BUSINESS installation is not terribly likely to be "as in the box" 3 months later. Every Unix/Linux platform I test is like that.
2) given a list of compatible package revisions, one can reasonably speculate whether it is worth testing/installing the product on something along the lines of Gentoo/Slack/Debian.
We don't necessarily certify those distributions, but you all know as well as I do that you can't tell a System Administrator "sorry, your OS isn't on the approved list" and expect to sell an expensive application. I'd rather our field guys say "it should work. Eval it, and if it does, we'll sell you licenses/whatever."
If they're big enough, I guarantee that they will get support no matter how home brew/non-Commercial their installations are.
3) If a particular package version (stable, mind you) breaks us, there might be a good reason why. At the very least, it should be noted in the bug database for investigation/tracking, supported or not.
True. Also, with everything that's going on, people are starting to get sick of companies raping the legal system and trying to remove all "legal" recourse the consumer might have.
That's not smart.
Sooner or later several "consumers" will get fed up and take any recourse they can get, legal or not.
I wouldn't want to be Darl McBride when THAT happens... Or the head of the RIAA, for that matter.
When "Legal" no longer == "Just", the shit starts to fly.
I only used my MSN Messenger account when I really needed to before. Now I won't use it at all. There are other IM services out there, and Microsoft's wasn't a particularly GOOD one anyhow...
To add a bit to your information (and I wish I had replied to this earlier). The changing of hands with GameShark to MadCatz in the states had less to do with the deal going sour than Interact's parent Recoton going bankrupt. Recoton's main warehouse is a couple miles from my office, and I've scored many an "irregular" deal from their factory outlet. Alas, the outlet store is the last thing open there, desperately clearing the last of their stock.
I was glad that MadCatz picked up the GameShark license, as I have one for every console that I have (save the Xbox), and would have hated to lose support for it.
Not sure what happened to the rest of Interact's stuff...
Not in my experience. Not only is it more expensive/performance, you have to take into account that it does NOT run the most popular games, or a great majority of the most useful commercial business applications. A few nice suites that it does very well don't justify the price that Jobs wants for it.
" Mac runs BSD Unix-like OS, very similar to Linux but you can run photoshop on it."
That's a troll, plain and simple. the GIMP does most of what photoshop does, and If I had to use the commercial version of photoshop, I'd rather dual boot and use windows to run it than cripple myself with MacOS
"Mac laptops kick ass and wireless network is about 10 times easier than that goofy card sticking out of your PCMCIA slot."
Whatever...if it's working for me under Linux, it can't be any easier under OS/X, and I don't give a shit if there's an antenna sticking out of my PCMCIA slot. Plus I can run stuff I actually need, unlike if I was running OS/X.
""wow, only $999? I figured they were $4000 or something."
The ones that are at least a little useful are closer to $2000 than $900. As always with a "base" unit, you get what you pay for.
"ARGH! Why are people so afraid to try a different type of computer? "
Because people need to get WORK done, and they generally can't do it on the Mac and justify the cost. Also because people like to play games, and they DEFINITELY can't play the games they want to play on the mac (unless chess is "good enought", in which case they aren't serious gamers.)
While I'm not fond of Windows and choose not to run it, what I would like to see, is when the little punks that write these sorts of things get caught, the companies like your wifes that lost time because of the exploit sue the writer of said exploit/worm/whatever, and his mommy and daddy, if applicable, and turn them into refrigerator box residents.
Consequences, boys and girls, even it the vulerability is caused by incompetents at Redmond, if you cause DAMAGE by exploiting them, there are consequences. You won't like them. Vandalism is a crime. Vandalism that causes that kind of damage is a FELONY. Kiss any chance of a productive carreer goodbye and learn the holy phrase "Would you like fries with that?" because that's about as far as any l33t virus kiddie is going in life.
Actually it's a worm. The distinction is somewhat blurred in many cases, but this time it's pretty clear.
The intent is irrelevant. Don't release this shit into the wild unles you're prepared to pay in "pound-me-in-the-ass" federal prison. You are responsible for the damage you cause, and if caught, you're pretty much fucked.
A Felony is a Felony. If I leave my wallet in my locked car, and some punk uses an "exploit" involving a coat hanger to unlock the door and steal it, that doesn't make him any less likely to go to jail if caught. Hack the wrong computer with your little "piece of art" and you can disappear and never be heard from again these days. You won't be missed.
Either way, String 'em up. It's not cool, clever, or helpful, kids. Pull this shit, and get caught (and the Feds are LOOKING for you this time) and you won't be able to use anything more technologically advanced than a graphite pencil for about 70 years. Enjoy.
and that's if you allow Flash to be installed on your machine in the first place. I don't, and they didn't have the common sense to provide an alternate, HTML based page, so a big No Sale to them...
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ATI also brings a new level to "Abandoning support for hardware as soon as we think we can get away with it". I've had one video card and one tv tuner from ATI, each of which I bought right around the introduction of a new Windows version. In both cases, ATI dropped support for the card shortly after. In the case of the video card, they never did release WDM drivers. In the case of the tuner, they released only a version or two that "kind of" worked under 2000 pro and XP, then decided the remaining major bugs were too hard and dropped support.
I've never had this problem with Nvidia, so even if they are slower from time to time, I'll stick with a company that doesn't screw me.
I appreciate the fact that ATI is increasing competition these days, but they'll never get another cent of mine.
Very astute observation. I was struck by the obvious bias in the HEADLINES in that list.
That reminds me, I need to buy more ALCOA stock, I'm sure that tin foil will be flying off the shelves as these guys double up on the cranial shielding...
And a great many of them are also aware of the fact that copyright violation is not the same thing as theft.
It's not "right" but it doesn't deprive anyone of anything, either, no mater what *AA has to say about it. They have not LOST a single thing. THey haven't GAINED anything, either, but in most cases, they wouldn't anyhow.
Now a pirate that SELLS the copyrighted material has committed a crime. No one has a right to profit that way.
Disclaimer: I make my money working for a software company. I detest piracy. I also recognize that piracy doesn't really affect me. We make most of our money from support calls and sales relations with customers. Pirates don't ask for that. Realistically, they cost us nothing.
That is certainly possible. On appeal, the court order can be found improper and illegal. It has happened before, and it can happen again. Some "justices" need to be disbarred. Some deserve more drastic measures than that, but that's another thread...
",,,for now" is a good point. THe RIAA has been trying to kill resale of used CD's for years. If they can only get DRM mandated, they can realize their dream. If ever a group of slimeballs needed to get SARS en masse and die a horrible death that would be them.
I don't fault the artists (by which I do not mean boybands, bubblegum, rap or any of the other shit the RIAA is pushing) that are forced to do business under the RIAA banner in order to get ANY air time at all. I fault the useless functionaries of the RIAA itself.
Alienate your customers. Yea that's a brilliant idea...
Doh! So it is. Arigato gozaimasu
I do use Mozilla, however I don't know of any adware that runs on Linux. If I find any, I'll install it as user "TommyTard" who doesn't have rights to wipe his own ass, just for kicks.
Won't run for anyone, but that's kind of the point...
Side note, the Judge in this story isn't the brightest bulb on the old Xmas tree. I expect he'll be drowning whilst staring up in amazement at a downpour any day now... Just like the proverbial retarded chicken. but I'm too kind to his dishonor....
They're far from being leaders in their field. They should welcome support from the open source community. If they don't, refuse to support them in any way. Make them the same sort of pariahs as we have made SCO and see if their attitude changes then...
Advertisers or spammers, these morons ignore the fact that NO ONE is obligated to carry their traffic it there is a reason to believe that it is not legit.
I drop that kind of traffic on the floor. They're welcome to TRY to collect. I guarantee they won't like my legal retalliation..
YOu're stoned, right? YOu actually WANT to get raped more than once on the same purchase?
I'll agree that AC 1 had the best model for keeping people involved. Unfortunately, Turbine proved themselves incapable of fixing annoying client problems, such as portal noise (hearing town chatter from where you portaled in long after you ran far away from the town you portaled into) Hard crashes, inevitably resulting in death where you were virtually guaranteed to lose everythign on your corpse, there were others.
.NET now doesn't help.
The sad thing is that they managed to KEEP the worst bugs for AC2. I played AC1 on Frostfell longer than I played any other MMORPG. Eventually, the crash bug made me quit. It's no fun playing a game when you're afraid to GO anywhere because you would eventually crash and lose everything you'd worked for, If I lost it due to game factors, like getting legitimately killed that's one thing. Losing it because the client is too fucking unstable is something else.
The fact that they're married to
Richard Garriot's not involved, therefore this is NOT Ultima. "Francise" and "Licensing" be damned, that man IS the essence of Ultima, good or bad. He's not with the company anymore, so anyone who expects something the quality of, say Ultima IV is sadly mistaken.
I'll pass on this.
It's not tough to argue that when it's not 100% true.
I work for one of the LARGE IT vendors. I am in charge of Unix and Linux testing for my development site. I can tell you unequivocally that we WILL support any distribution or installation that will make us money. That's more than just Redhat and SuSE. I'm not there to sell Redhat licenses and SuSE licenses. I'm there to make sure my product can be sold to as many customers as possible, and that it will work as designed. I'm there to make money for MY employer, not RedHat and SuSE.
I'm sure RedHat and SuSE would LIKE the big publishers to push "ONLY Advanced Server or Enterprise" but in our case, it's just NOT going to happen. Does it make a difference to me if the customer is running a $2500 dollar Advanced server license or a $80 desktop license?
Hell No.
Now our support packages for the Enterprise products are cheaper, I believe, but we're not going to tell a customer "we don't want your money" just because they're a University that standardised on Debian years ago...
We're sure as shit not going to tell them "Go buy SuSE Enterprise server and we'll talk."
Smaller publishers would LOVE for us to say THAT...
SCO is rapidly becoming a pariah, whether they know it or not. As of about a month ago, in fact, we quietly dropped all support for SCO/Caldera Unix and Linux. I doubt we've sold a license for either in over a year, and it's simply a waste of time. The hardware support in SCO Unix is completely rediculous, and not worth the time testing.
I work for one of the Large publishers.
I try to not only support the "commercial" distributions, but maintain a list of known working versions of glibc, and the like. This is for a few reasons.
1) Just because RedHat AS 2.1 shipped with glibc version x and Kernel Revision y doesn't mean that those versions will be in place when our software is installed. To an extent, even "commercial distros" are no more useful a rule of thumb for compatibility than any other Linux distribution. Yes we Certify against release versions, but this is the real world. Security and bug fixes being what they are, a Real World BUSINESS installation is not terribly likely to be "as in the box" 3 months later. Every Unix/Linux platform I test is like that.
2) given a list of compatible package revisions, one can reasonably speculate whether it is worth testing/installing the product on something along the lines of Gentoo/Slack/Debian.
We don't necessarily certify those distributions, but you all know as well as I do that you can't tell a System Administrator "sorry, your OS isn't on the approved list" and expect to sell an expensive application. I'd rather our field guys say "it should work. Eval it, and if it does, we'll sell you licenses/whatever."
If they're big enough, I guarantee that they will get support no matter how home brew/non-Commercial their installations are.
3) If a particular package version (stable, mind you) breaks us, there might be a good reason why. At the very least, it should be noted in the bug database for investigation/tracking, supported or not.
Second House? You mean the pine box?
True. Also, with everything that's going on, people are starting to get sick of companies raping the legal system and trying to remove all "legal" recourse the consumer might have.
That's not smart.
Sooner or later several "consumers" will get fed up and take any recourse they can get, legal or not.
I wouldn't want to be Darl McBride when THAT happens... Or the head of the RIAA, for that matter.
When "Legal" no longer == "Just", the shit starts to fly.
I only used my MSN Messenger account when I really needed to before. Now I won't use it at all. There are other IM services out there, and Microsoft's wasn't a particularly GOOD one anyhow...
To add a bit to your information (and I wish I had replied to this earlier). The changing of hands with GameShark to MadCatz in the states had less to do with the deal going sour than Interact's parent Recoton going bankrupt. Recoton's main warehouse is a couple miles from my office, and I've scored many an "irregular" deal from their factory outlet. Alas, the outlet store is the last thing open there, desperately clearing the last of their stock.
I was glad that MadCatz picked up the GameShark license, as I have one for every console that I have (save the Xbox), and would have hated to lose support for it.
Not sure what happened to the rest of Interact's stuff...
"Mac is competitive on price."
Not in my experience. Not only is it more expensive/performance, you have to take into account that it does NOT run the most popular games, or a great majority of the most useful commercial business applications. A few nice suites that it does very well don't justify the price that Jobs wants for it.
"
Mac runs BSD Unix-like OS, very similar to Linux but you can run photoshop on it."
That's a troll, plain and simple. the GIMP does most of what photoshop does, and If I had to use the commercial version of photoshop, I'd rather dual boot and use windows to run it than cripple myself with MacOS
"Mac laptops kick ass and wireless network is about 10 times easier than that goofy card sticking out of your PCMCIA slot."
Whatever...if it's working for me under Linux, it can't be any easier under OS/X, and I don't give a shit if there's an antenna sticking out of my PCMCIA slot. Plus I can run stuff I actually need, unlike if I was running OS/X.
""wow, only $999? I figured they were $4000 or something."
The ones that are at least a little useful are closer to $2000 than $900. As always with a "base" unit, you get what you pay for.
"ARGH! Why are people so afraid to try a different type of computer? "
Because people need to get WORK done, and they generally can't do it on the Mac and justify the cost. Also because people like to play games, and they DEFINITELY can't play the games they want to play on the mac (unless chess is "good enought", in which case they aren't serious gamers.)
It's not fear, it's common sense.
While I'm not fond of Windows and choose not to run it, what I would like to see, is when the little punks that write these sorts of things get caught, the companies like your wifes that lost time because of the exploit sue the writer of said exploit/worm/whatever, and his mommy and daddy, if applicable, and turn them into refrigerator box residents.
Consequences, boys and girls, even it the vulerability is caused by incompetents at Redmond, if you cause DAMAGE by exploiting them, there are consequences. You won't like them. Vandalism is a crime. Vandalism that causes that kind of damage is a FELONY. Kiss any chance of a productive carreer goodbye and learn the holy phrase "Would you like fries with that?" because that's about as far as any l33t virus kiddie is going in life.
Actually it's a worm. The distinction is somewhat blurred in many cases, but this time it's pretty clear.
The intent is irrelevant. Don't release this shit into the wild unles you're prepared to pay in "pound-me-in-the-ass" federal prison. You are responsible for the damage you cause, and if caught, you're pretty much fucked.
A Felony is a Felony. If I leave my wallet in my locked car, and some punk uses an "exploit" involving a coat hanger to unlock the door and steal it, that doesn't make him any less likely to go to jail if caught. Hack the wrong computer with your little "piece of art" and you can disappear and never be heard from again these days. You won't be missed.
Either way, String 'em up. It's not cool, clever, or helpful, kids. Pull this shit, and get caught (and the Feds are LOOKING for you this time) and you won't be able to use anything more technologically advanced than a graphite pencil for about 70 years. Enjoy.
and that's if you allow Flash to be installed on your machine in the first place. I don't, and they didn't have the common sense to provide an alternate, HTML based page, so a big No Sale to them...