Why are you using a tele for landscape? I generally use my 24mm 2.8 (ancient manual Sigma) for landscape, and I've had my eye on a 15mm prime for a bit too. For landscape you want wide (or ultra wide), for models you want tele, for street shooting you want "normal" (40-50mm, though I prefer 24-28mm for this too).
Fringing depends on the lens, not how large the aperture is. Worst case, you have to stop the 1.4 down to 2.8, to clean up the picture and regulate CA, and generally a fast lens hits the sweat-spot before the largest aperture of a comparable slower lens. Faster also give you more options, and more versatility. I might never want to go to 1.4, but its there just in case.
I agree with your sentiment though. Speed isn't the be-all-end all, the quality of the glass is. I'm a Pentax shooter, and they have two (three now) recent 50's, a 1.4 and a 1.7. I own the slower lens, and had to hunt for it a bit since it takes pictures I find more aesthetic than the 1.4 (better contrast, renders a bit warmer, sharp wide open, where the 1.4 needs to be stopped down a bit). And old Leica 50mm 2.0, or a Zeiss Jenna 2.8 will probably take better pictures, and have better glass, than my 1.7 or the 1.4. Sadly the Leica and the Zeiss cost 10x what I paid for my lens. Some lenses are almost mythic in their quality, seek these out instead of hunting for mere numbers.
Lens porn aside, you want to compare actual images (RAWs if you can find them), and read both subjective and objective reviews.
GP mentioned "sizes" when it's just one single sized region.
Was that just a beta thing, or are they really limiting it to a one size, small, map? Not having map sizes, or having tiny map sizes, would be deal breaker. It would kill megatropolises, and planning suburbs, which was a major part of the fun (for me). Not having a terrain editor also scares me a bit. I hardly ever used it, but it was a nice thing to have for custom maps, and for people going for real cities.
I'm hoping that it isn't as bad as it seems. I'm going to be reading/watching every review I find after release...
I don't mind V, that much. But I generally play it more "casually" than I played the other games. Its fun to dip into on a small map with 3-4 other civs. Its a good way to kill an evening. For "hardcore" I still reach for GalCiv2, which is a good way to kill a week.
The 4x genre isn't doing to well right now. There are some good but shallow games (Endless Space, Warlock), and some deep but horribly implemented games (SotS 2, Fallen Enchantress), but nothing that is actually just plain deep and good. Civ 5 is about as close as we get right now. I suppose the Total War Shogun games could be considered good, but they really aren't my style, transitioning to the tactics bits are too jarring for me.
Vanilla Civ 5 kind of sucks, outside of being a fun casual game. Gods and Kings does a lot to make it stand up to civ 3-4. Not quite, but at least competent.
For some reason I've completely forgot about SC 3k. My brain goes straight from 2000, to 4. I know I played it. I'm sure I enjoyed it. But...
There is a nice line between safe (boring), and feeling like rnd has a personal vendetta against you. I could ask a bunch of questions, but I suppose I'll just follow the project. It sounds very promising, especially with different worlds and hazards. And epidemics, now that would be something awesome, especially with our current level of hardware and knowledge. Thats something I don't think anyone has done yet (outside of zombie-type games), and would be awesome in a city sim.
Civil Wars would be a horrible idea. Your busy conquering those pesky Roman infidels, and suddenly Ulan Batur, your main military hub, starts a war of independence. I suppose that the "anarchy" mechanics are supposed to symbolize that.
New civs popping up would be awesome, though. But mechanically it would be rather hard to make them relevant at any point after mid-game, since at that point you're pretty stable and advanced. It would be odd if they popped up as advanced as the average civ at that time, too. I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be cool.
I suppose I'd like them to include more "fine grain stuff", perhaps a version of Civ with every mechanic from every game included. From religion to spy-craft, to pollution and fallout. Perhaps even a changeable terrain, to we could have disasters, or global warming.
I just really want to be able to kill France's musketeers with my space marines though.
I'm probably going to throw a couple bucks your way. I'd love a version Outpost 2 that doesn't make me want to bash my head into a wall. I always REALLY wanted to like those games, but they were so bad. Outpost 1 was... decent, I suppose. Outpost 2 is still the hardest game I've ever played. If you could make it over half an hour without moral collapsing, the economy collapsing, and a volcano erupting in the middle of your settlement, you felt like a god.
Are you going to have a disaster slider? Please... I still have PTSD from those games.
Did you miss the point where I'm going to pick it up in a bargain bin, or Steam Sale? I'm not going to pirate it, and I'm not going to boycott it. Boycotts mean zero sales, which can be confused for zero demand. Piracy just makes you an entitled ass waving around post hoc excuses for your behavior. I'll wait until its $20, and then grab it. Depending on the reviews, of course. If they are bad (which it seems like they might be), then I won't grab it.
Notice I said reviews, not the internet hive mind. The internet hive mind thinks the world is on a perpetual state of collapse, and everything anyone does is the worst thing "EVAR". The internet hive mind told me to not buy Diablo 3, and I did, I enjoyed it for a good 100 hours (more shallow than Diablo 2, no reply value, but fun for the through nightmare). I don't actually mind always on-line games, if it adds something. Yes, Diablo 3 annoyed me, until I realized that playing pugs was more fun. the new SimCity has some value added bits. It isn't a deal breaker to me, I live in town with 99.999% uptime, and no caps. I don't play on the road (thats why God invented iPods and books). I should also be boycotting Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2 right now, because I need to be on the internet? It just doesn't bother me much, except on an ideological level. I don't like DRM, but it has been a fact of life as long as I've been gaming, and for the most part its so much nicer than it was when I was a kid. Remember the silly wheels, and "whats the 15th word, in the seventh line, of page 52" crap?
It isn't a big deal. All I care about is if the game is fun. Its a game, not a manifesto. Life is too damn short to really give a shit.
Sounds good! Though it is scarily reminiscent of Outpost 2. I kind of think that we're living in one of the best times for gaming right now, not because of the big studios, but because indie devs. Probably over 60% of the games on my computer are indies, and they are probably at around 40% by play time, now...
I won't miss highways... I always hated them, since they were big, inflexible, and a pain to plan in advance. They also didn't have enough benefit to be worth the hassle. I generally stuck with a single ring road of them, or a single one running from border to border. Mostly I ignored them.
That said, looking at the EA forums does make me very worried. I used to enjoy SimCity on mostly a causal level, farting around with cities then sending UFOs after them when I got bored. This game sounds good for that. But occasionally I enjoyed trying to actively make the most efficient city I could, micromanaging as much as I could to maximize my statistics. For $60, I expect to do able to play both ways. I suppose I'll either wait for really good reviews (doubtful), or pick it up on sale at some point. Which is sad, since the interaction features sound pretty cool. And there really hasn't been anything to scratch my SimCity itch since SC4. I really wanted to like CitiesXL, but it is so bland and boring.
That was always the endearing thing about the Civ games, I love them in spite of themselves. They always feel "kludgy". I think it might because they are pretty complicated, and they try to shove as much stuff under the hood (its a civ simulation, its a tabletop wargame, its educational, its a resource management game, its a social simulator, its turn based strategy...) as humanly possible. You generally have to fight with the interface for an hour or so, then you get sucked into a 10 hour gaming session. I've noticed all "4X" games fall into this, none of them have good UI, or well explained features. This has been true since Master of Orion. I've been playing GalCiv for almost a decade, and still have no clue if I'm missing something important that might be hiding behind an option, hidden on a screen I've never seen before.
How would design an easy and intuitive interface for a game as complicated as Civ?
And, too be honest, I think the creaky complexity is part of the appeal for some. 4X and strategy gamers generally relish the appearance of complexity as a thing in itself. Have you seen some of the more niche 4X games out there? There is software running at NASA or CERN with more usability, and less options. Hardcore strategy gamers are masochists, at heart.
I read somewhere that it had odd problems and instability issues... If it doesn't, I'm off to Steam... unless I can find some disks somewhere...
If this is true, I revise my point: why bother getting a new one, when you can just plat SimCity 4? Whats the difference between a new game, and a game you haven't touched in almost 10 years?
This is a modern "Beta", and not a bona fide beta, i.e. a publicity beta. Its just like the "beta" for Diablo 3, limited content ("so, if anything is broken after the first half, of the first act or clvl 15, how will you ever know?"), the game is already finished, and they really don't care about feedback, they just want you to talk about it and post videos on Youtube. I was in the Guild War 2 beta at roughly the same time as the D3 beta, and they continually asked for feedback and bugs, they encouraged you to post every flaw or concern on the forums, and generally the devs were very receptive to all comments (outside of the whining ones). In short, it was an actual testing beta.
SimCity had a closed beta, and this was probably the real beta, where bugs got fixed, and feedback submitted (and generally ignored). Right now your just supposed be intrigued, and preorder, and perhaps tell your friends that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Though why anyone ever pre-orders anything is a complete mystery to me.
To be fair... This is sort of inevitable with the Civ and SimCity franchises...
There has been a ton of Civ games, and pretty much all of them have been good. Yes, some were better, some were worse, but all of them were good. So what can you really do to improve it, outside of graphics? Why would I ever move beyond FreeCiv or Civ 4? Civ has pretty much covered everything now, and the only thing I really want is the Near Future stuff that was in Call To Power, along with the Religion stuff in Civ 4 and Civ 5 Gods and Kings.
SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?
These are OLD franchises, probably among the oldest, if not they oldest gaming franchises that are still being made. Civ came out in 1991, and SimCity in 1989. I still have the original disk for the C64 version.
The always on bit does suck, though. And makes me mad, I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software, and all the clones are pretty bad or boring (CitiesXL, almost good.). I will probably still buy it, though I will grumble the whole time.
The main Guild Wars 2 file is 16,107,164,376 bytes, I think some of WoW's files were that big or larger. Some of Skyrim's files run around 2-3Gb, as do some of Diablo III's. Games are some of the worst offenders of file size abuse. I've had some monolithic cache files approach 10+Gb. I've seen some Bluray rips floating around that were 10-12gb.
*choke* You actually believe that? Please tell me that the internet mangled more sarcasm?
EVERYONE manipulates their user counts. Do you think/. has over 2 million users? Real, active users? How many dummy accounts do you think Facebook has? How many inactive accounts? Hell, I still have a MySpace account (completely full of fake info) because they made it hard to delete it, I haven't touched it in over 5 years. There was an article on here, awhile back, claiming that around 50% of Facebook accounts were connected to real people. Do you think those services where you can buy 10,000 likes or followers actually get "real live humans" to lend their services?
Further, this "accounts" thing ignores individuals, which would be a more useful metric. Some of my Facebook friends have 4-5 accounts now, some for promoting bands of businesses, some that they changed (divorce, name change, disassociating with people, hiding, etc..) Hell, I have two Facebook accounts, one that I completely forgot the password too, and one I half-heartedly use. I also have two Google+ accounts (but according to the metrics of this study, only one would be counted as "active").
Everyone inflates user counts... Its par for the course in the internet world.
They only have 7300 Likes on Facebook [facebook.com]. Don't you find it a little odd that they have over 136x more of them on G+? I see only a few possibilities:
Or the networks have very different populations. Google+ is VERY nerd heavy. Facebook is full of "average joes", and your parents.
G+ has also pretty much supplanted Flickr for the place to post photos and talk to photographers. The photo community there is absolutely huge, and Google actively works within the community. The Linux, tech, and science communities are pretty active too. That said, I don't have a single friend who uses it, and all I really ever post is photos.
To be honest, though, I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics are true, even if they don't match my anecdotal evidence... 300 million people isn't that much really, given the total population. Also who knows how popular it is outside the US? It might be like Android, #2 in the US, but completely dominating within the global market. Maybe its the most popular social network in India, that would give it easily 300 million users... No clue.
I'm also sure there is some fudging of numbers. It doesn't matter that much, since Facebook is notorious for doing it as well. Wasn't there am article a while back claiming that 50% of Facebook users weren't real people, or active.
None of my real life friends have actually moved to Google+ from Facebook, but oddly, the community on Google+ is better. Less lively, but also less crap (went to the store today... here is a baby picture... here is a 3 year old meme... here is some religion fluff... here is a horoscope... I like poker.).
Google+ sucks as a network of friends, but its pretty nice for communities. Both the tech/nerd communities, and the photography communities are thriving. Google+ is the new Flickr, and they actively work on it, sponsoring all sorts of events and hangouts, and actively courting popular online personalities. Its paid off. The tech, geek, and science communities are also pretty healthy.
On Facebook I would never follow/like/whatnot someone who isn't a personal friend. One Google I only follow people who are interesting, even if they are complete strangers. They are pretty much two completely different things.
I've never seen a lot of problems with Open/LibreOffice having trouble with MS documents, unless they were extremely complicated ones. These days, I usually open such things in Google Docs, and again, I never see any trouble.
It garbles them often enough to make life a pain for her. I fully understand that isn't really LibreOffice's fault, since MS has a pretty terrible standard, and doesn't like interoperability. To be fair, many of my problems with Linux isn't really the fault of the OS, driver issues sit firmly on the people who write the drivers and companies that make the hardware, software issues generally lie on the devs, and the compatibility problems is because no one develops for Linux because it doesn't have the market share to make it profitable. I'd say the OS is actually pretty mature, especially if you go with serious distros like Debian. I don't trust Canonical with updates, they get too many "ideas" to make their OS truly good, a problem I fear MS is getting into now with their new "Rapid" release cycle; I don't want "revolutionary" I want functional. There is still some inbuilt hurdles, but they are rapidly disappearing (having control over repos without any fuss, a better effort on simplifying things and naming thing so normal people can instantly get it, etc..)
If two companies started to develop for Linux, I'd just ship pretty quickly. Adobe (might happen), and Microsoft (ha!).
So now you're going to complain about problems Linux had a decade ago?
A decade ago? It was in Hardy Heron, which was 2008, which was less than five years ago. About 4 years ago my old HP laptop decided no not have working wifi with Ubuntu, no matter how much work. About two years ago my old HP laptop decided not to have working Wifi without some work. And on Natty (2011, 2 years ago) it was pretty much 100% impossible to to HDMI audio out on some chips, no matter what (when through about 100 different webpages, with variations of a solution that only worked half the time, on the exact same chipset (Nvidia ION).
That shows you have some sort of ulterior motive in painting Linux as hard-to-use, when these days it certainly isn't. Needing to find new repositories? Having to debug hardware driver problems? This isn't 1999, it's 2013. You obviously are either a troll or you haven't used Linux in a decade to complain about these things. This isn't about "picking sides", it's about being a fucking liar.
2008 isn't 1999, and 2011 most certainly isn't a decade ago. And yes, to keep things up to date (by the software's standards, not a repo maintainers) requires adding repos. This is, granted, mainly a Debian problem, never had much of an issue with OpenSuse. I'm currently running OpenSuse Tumbleweed on a laptop less than 3 feet from my left hand, which apparently means that I might be a time traveler. Though I am sad that I have to live in 1999 or 2003, those years were shit, can I have 2006 or 1996?
I don't have an ulterior motive. I wish Linux the best, I WANT the so-called "year of the linux desktop" to come. I want Linux to have a bigger marketshare, and a large body of mainstream developers. But to get there it can't sit back and go "yup, good enough". We have to look at its faults, and see what other systems do better. You have to be critical. Linux, like everything else in the world, has problems. It isn't perfect. It will never be perfect. And there never will be the one OS to rule them all.
Further, you misread me, a lot. I never said Linux was bad (this is/. I put in tons of disclaimers), I never said it was inferior, in itself, to anything else. I just said it still isn't really at the point where I want my parents to install it yet (and, if you are observant, I said the exact same thing about Win 8 in this discussion). Linux is easier to use than it has been at any point in its history, and it is getting better rapidly thanks to th
Last I heard, you had to hunt down a bunch of driver discs or download them from mfgr websites. How many people ever install Windows anyway? Why is it the Windows fans always gloss over this fact?
Yes, on my last install I needed to grab 4 driver files from manufacturer webpages. It would have been less if I was using typical hardware (have a gaming GPU, a keyboard with some extra keys, a special mouse, and a dedicated sound card... none of these are typical).
My last laptop, an HP Pavillion, didn't like Linux. Or Linux didn't like it. There always will be hardware variance. Just because something works flawlessly for you, doesn't mean it will for everyone. I'm also sure that there were people who had problems with Windows, I had a friend who paid for beer working on bad Vista installs, or trying to get hardware with only Vista drivers to work with XP.
It works fine for us. It only has problems with Office files if you have to exchange files with MS Office users a lot. We don't; this is for home use. People at home writing up their own documents and such don't exchange files with other people. I'm not addressing business use here, as you seem to be.
My girlfriend needs them for school. She's working on her masters, so it is a pretty big deal. When I was in school I had the same problems with OpenOffice, which pretty much lead to me discarding my Linux box for a Mac. A lot of people actually need compatibility with de facto standards.
What about them? They work fine. I've never had a problem.
So you missed the time when Ubuntu started messing with them, and this messed up the sound on tons of people's computers, forcing them to use kludgy, unstable, workarounds? You upgrade, and *poof*, you loose basic functionality, with no easy way to really get it back (especially for normal folk). This was a couple years ago, before the slow creep of arbitrarily messing with DEs (If Windows 8 to 7 is bad, Gnome 2 to Shell or Unity is far worse).
Honestly, by now you seem like a MS shill claiming to be a Linux fan, but inventing bullshit problems that don't really exist, and which normal users do not encounter in normal use.
Wow, I don't like your favorite OS as much as you, and thus I am a "shill". Nice. When can I get that nice fat check from MS? Or Apple or SUSE, since I often point out their strengths of Windows, as well. Everyone who makes operating systems should give me some money, really, since I generally tell people that all of them are good, and you should pick them based on your needs, and subjective taste. This isn't good enough, I should pick sides, and support my team no matter what. Sadly I find OS loyalty to be utterly moronic, and a complete waste of time. I use Windows primarily right now, because it fits my needs. I've used both OS X and Linux as a primary OS when they fit my needs better. Judging from my history, in another year or two I'll be back to using something else as my main OS.
In the end, your opinion is your opinion; and mine is mine. They are worth exactly the same in the grand scheme of things: nothing whatsoever. Just because you like something doesn't make it better than anything else objectively. Windows gets my tasks done, so it is a good OS for me. Linux doesn't right now, so it isn't a good OS from me. OS X could get my job done as well, so it also is a good OS. This is all that matters, can I get the stuff done that I want/need to get done. I don't really give a shit about who made my tools or how pretty their philosophy is, I only care that they work. And I sure as hell don't have brand loyalty to whoever made my tools, if someone makes a better or cheaper one, I'll get it in a heart beat. Obviously I am the shill, since I'm not invested in the OS "wars", and actually find them to be the dumbest thing in modern history.
I am so goddamn sick of these "shill" and "fanboy" memes. Your argument
Why do Linux people get so damn defensive what you say that Linux isn't perfect? Seriously, Linux isn't for everyone. Nothing is, so expecting an OS to be different is a bit strange.
Oh please. They don't need to know any of this stuff, any more than they need to know it to use Windows... my (non-technical) wife...
You don't need to, sure... But it will come up. Just like you don't need to know the difference between a browser and a page to do anything, it turns into a little slice of hell when you need to support anything. Your WIFE, this means you probably live with her, and you probably are the guy doing all the support. My goal in life is to have everyone in my life as self-sustaining as humanly possible when it comes to computers. Sure, not knowing the difference is fine for users, but it isn't find for me, since I'm going to have to actually figure out what the hell they broke. With Windows and OS X, the shell and the kernel are synonymous, so the difference is mostly academic.
Again, please.. I LIKE Linux, and I USE Linux. Linux is bloody great. But, just like saying "OS X isn't for me" isn't a statement on the worth of the OS or its users, saying "Linux might not be right for x" doesn't have any reflection of the OS or its users either.
Huh? WTF are you talking about?
Hmm.. Last time I installed Linux on my laptop I got to spend several hours hunting down solutions to both sound and wifi problems, which involved hours of reading forums, often with contradictory solutions, and snarky assholes ("RTM, herp-derp!"), then it involved installing strange things with strange names; not "sound driver for xxx", but "xxx_afps_rnddevice231-ddfsoundpoop_4455534344432011." and "gRandomnonsemse". It still didn't work as well as any OS X or Windows install, since Wifi and Sound still mysteriously died. This wasn't that single laptop, this is true of EVERY SINGLE TIME I've installed Linux on almost any hardware. I'm a nerd, I can work it out, my parents aren't, they can't. Also your wife just using LibreOffice and Firefox isn't good enough for some people. My father does tons of online research in obscure government databases for his living, and thus needs strange plugins, extensions, and such, some of which aren't even really supported on Windows anymore (this bit of code was last updated in 2002, and only fully supports 98se). Also, LibreOffice is crap, absolutely. Sure, its high principles, and it gets the job done, but it still doesn't play nicely with Office. And yes, thats MS' fault, but who really cares? Browsers suck, since often you need to go much with repos just to get updates, and I really don't know how well my parents with deal with having to add repos, typing in yet more arcane gobbledygook, and hoping it doesn't break anything else (it can, and does. I've tried to keep Chromium up to date on a distro that really just wanted a 6 month old version to be standard, and it pretty much required a reinstall of almost everything). Further, the most common "friendly" distro does random crap, and forces people to do random crap. Do I have to mention ALSA? Pulse Audio? Forcing people to use Unity, where, in supporting my parents, the difference between DE and kernel would pop up. Also, if you have to hop into CLI more than once a decade, your OS is a failure, these days.
Don't get me wrong, Linux has made some great strides, and I really, REALLY, hope it eventually becomes accepted. It isn't there yet. At least to the point where I'm happy having my parents use it. I have better things to do with my life than help people with computers for free.
Microsoft being run into the ground would be MORE competition in the OS market.
When I read statements like "run into the ground" it makes me think you want then to be basically dead. In the end, we basically agree.
Though, I do hope that Windows Mobile picks up, and fights some market share from Android and iOS. Especially if the go the Apple way, and have great hardware (mostly) but for a for a good price. Android itself is solid, but the manufacturers of actual hardware are generally horrible, and having another Apple in the market might force them to actually do a good job on support and development.
What issues? The fact that there's no single standard desktop environment? Why is that a problem? No one ever says that Microsoft and Apple should have the exact same desktop environment/widget set/ABI or that any other part of their OSes should be standardized by some neutral organization. So why is it a problem that Linux has variety?
Never really said having multiple DEs/distros was a problem. What I mean was that Linux isn't perfect either. I, personally, like the variety in Linux. I'm glad I can use KDE, and ignore Gnome Shell and Unity. Same with XFCE. I'm happy that there are several very well supported, and well developed distros to choose from, though it can be a bit overwhelming at time. The last time I tried to muck around with my primary Linux install, I spent about a week trying on different combos (OpenSuse/KDE won, this time). This isn't everyone's cup of tea though, and you have to admit it is a bit overwhelming to some. My parents would be hopeless, for example. I can't imaging having to explain the difference between a shell and a kernel to them, when they still haven't figured out the difference between a webpage and a web browser.
Linux also has the problem (in some eyes, not mine, and perhaps not yours) where you have to spend a lot of time working with the OS itself. You have to think about Linux, and not the task at hand. This has gotten much better, but I still view it as an issue. I still have to spend a bit too much time mucking around in command lines, and figuring out how specific bits of hardware might work. Also, there is no interface guidlines (or ones that anyone follows, at least), so much of the software is a bit of a mess. Nice for nerds like us, but terrible for people who haven't been using computers for decades.
Please notice, I'm not attacking Linux. I quite like Linux.
Thats the thing I like about the choices right now, there is something different for everyone, and everything is pretty much competent. I would love Linux, OS X, and Windows to share 33% of the market (or less, allowing for some nice upstarts). I would love it if OS X played nice, so everything can be installed on the same hardware (easily). Up until recently I've been running all three on various computers in my house. OS X got uninstalled, and my MacMini sold on Craigslist, lately, since the OS, and Apple were moving in directions I didn't like (and have been for some time now). But it was the best HTPC possible, and it almost was a small computer mounted in a kitchen cabinet for managing recipes, iTunes, and television while cooking. Windows are on both me and the girlfriends main "money maker" computers. I need Lightroom and Photoshop (and Adobe Camera Raw, and the like), and she needs Office. So there is no way to really get rid of these. I also game a bit, so I need Windows for that. My laptop, and my girlfriends netbook run Linux, though lately their functionality has been supplanted by tablets (running the same kernel, at least).
I'm happy with this. Look at how many features are being developed and copied by the others right now. Even with Win 8's faults, it represents something nice, MS is trying to innovate. Why? Because Apple and Linux are starting to breath down their necks.
Valve only has what, 3 games on Steam for Ubuntu? Its a long way off.
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Why are you using a tele for landscape? I generally use my 24mm 2.8 (ancient manual Sigma) for landscape, and I've had my eye on a 15mm prime for a bit too. For landscape you want wide (or ultra wide), for models you want tele, for street shooting you want "normal" (40-50mm, though I prefer 24-28mm for this too).
Fringing depends on the lens, not how large the aperture is. Worst case, you have to stop the 1.4 down to 2.8, to clean up the picture and regulate CA, and generally a fast lens hits the sweat-spot before the largest aperture of a comparable slower lens. Faster also give you more options, and more versatility. I might never want to go to 1.4, but its there just in case.
I agree with your sentiment though. Speed isn't the be-all-end all, the quality of the glass is. I'm a Pentax shooter, and they have two (three now) recent 50's, a 1.4 and a 1.7. I own the slower lens, and had to hunt for it a bit since it takes pictures I find more aesthetic than the 1.4 (better contrast, renders a bit warmer, sharp wide open, where the 1.4 needs to be stopped down a bit). And old Leica 50mm 2.0, or a Zeiss Jenna 2.8 will probably take better pictures, and have better glass, than my 1.7 or the 1.4. Sadly the Leica and the Zeiss cost 10x what I paid for my lens. Some lenses are almost mythic in their quality, seek these out instead of hunting for mere numbers.
Lens porn aside, you want to compare actual images (RAWs if you can find them), and read both subjective and objective reviews.
Have you used a pro, or even semi-pro camera lately?
Image quality is more than just megapixels.
God bless the internet. The crack works on purchased copies right?
GP mentioned "sizes" when it's just one single sized region.
Was that just a beta thing, or are they really limiting it to a one size, small, map? Not having map sizes, or having tiny map sizes, would be deal breaker. It would kill megatropolises, and planning suburbs, which was a major part of the fun (for me). Not having a terrain editor also scares me a bit. I hardly ever used it, but it was a nice thing to have for custom maps, and for people going for real cities.
I'm hoping that it isn't as bad as it seems. I'm going to be reading/watching every review I find after release...
I don't mind V, that much. But I generally play it more "casually" than I played the other games. Its fun to dip into on a small map with 3-4 other civs. Its a good way to kill an evening. For "hardcore" I still reach for GalCiv2, which is a good way to kill a week.
The 4x genre isn't doing to well right now. There are some good but shallow games (Endless Space, Warlock), and some deep but horribly implemented games (SotS 2, Fallen Enchantress), but nothing that is actually just plain deep and good. Civ 5 is about as close as we get right now. I suppose the Total War Shogun games could be considered good, but they really aren't my style, transitioning to the tactics bits are too jarring for me.
Vanilla Civ 5 kind of sucks, outside of being a fun casual game. Gods and Kings does a lot to make it stand up to civ 3-4. Not quite, but at least competent.
For some reason I've completely forgot about SC 3k. My brain goes straight from 2000, to 4. I know I played it. I'm sure I enjoyed it. But...
These days truly are the best days to be a gamer.
There is a nice line between safe (boring), and feeling like rnd has a personal vendetta against you. I could ask a bunch of questions, but I suppose I'll just follow the project. It sounds very promising, especially with different worlds and hazards. And epidemics, now that would be something awesome, especially with our current level of hardware and knowledge. Thats something I don't think anyone has done yet (outside of zombie-type games), and would be awesome in a city sim.
Civil Wars would be a horrible idea. Your busy conquering those pesky Roman infidels, and suddenly Ulan Batur, your main military hub, starts a war of independence. I suppose that the "anarchy" mechanics are supposed to symbolize that.
New civs popping up would be awesome, though. But mechanically it would be rather hard to make them relevant at any point after mid-game, since at that point you're pretty stable and advanced. It would be odd if they popped up as advanced as the average civ at that time, too. I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be cool.
I suppose I'd like them to include more "fine grain stuff", perhaps a version of Civ with every mechanic from every game included. From religion to spy-craft, to pollution and fallout. Perhaps even a changeable terrain, to we could have disasters, or global warming.
I just really want to be able to kill France's musketeers with my space marines though.
"i will probably still buy it" ... for under $20. Depending on reviews.
I'm probably going to throw a couple bucks your way. I'd love a version Outpost 2 that doesn't make me want to bash my head into a wall. I always REALLY wanted to like those games, but they were so bad. Outpost 1 was... decent, I suppose. Outpost 2 is still the hardest game I've ever played. If you could make it over half an hour without moral collapsing, the economy collapsing, and a volcano erupting in the middle of your settlement, you felt like a god.
Are you going to have a disaster slider? Please... I still have PTSD from those games.
Did you miss the point where I'm going to pick it up in a bargain bin, or Steam Sale? I'm not going to pirate it, and I'm not going to boycott it. Boycotts mean zero sales, which can be confused for zero demand. Piracy just makes you an entitled ass waving around post hoc excuses for your behavior. I'll wait until its $20, and then grab it. Depending on the reviews, of course. If they are bad (which it seems like they might be), then I won't grab it.
Notice I said reviews, not the internet hive mind. The internet hive mind thinks the world is on a perpetual state of collapse, and everything anyone does is the worst thing "EVAR". The internet hive mind told me to not buy Diablo 3, and I did, I enjoyed it for a good 100 hours (more shallow than Diablo 2, no reply value, but fun for the through nightmare). I don't actually mind always on-line games, if it adds something. Yes, Diablo 3 annoyed me, until I realized that playing pugs was more fun. the new SimCity has some value added bits. It isn't a deal breaker to me, I live in town with 99.999% uptime, and no caps. I don't play on the road (thats why God invented iPods and books). I should also be boycotting Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2 right now, because I need to be on the internet? It just doesn't bother me much, except on an ideological level. I don't like DRM, but it has been a fact of life as long as I've been gaming, and for the most part its so much nicer than it was when I was a kid. Remember the silly wheels, and "whats the 15th word, in the seventh line, of page 52" crap?
It isn't a big deal. All I care about is if the game is fun. Its a game, not a manifesto. Life is too damn short to really give a shit.
Sounds good! Though it is scarily reminiscent of Outpost 2. I kind of think that we're living in one of the best times for gaming right now, not because of the big studios, but because indie devs. Probably over 60% of the games on my computer are indies, and they are probably at around 40% by play time, now...
"Moral is Terrible."
I won't miss highways... I always hated them, since they were big, inflexible, and a pain to plan in advance. They also didn't have enough benefit to be worth the hassle. I generally stuck with a single ring road of them, or a single one running from border to border. Mostly I ignored them.
That said, looking at the EA forums does make me very worried. I used to enjoy SimCity on mostly a causal level, farting around with cities then sending UFOs after them when I got bored. This game sounds good for that. But occasionally I enjoyed trying to actively make the most efficient city I could, micromanaging as much as I could to maximize my statistics. For $60, I expect to do able to play both ways. I suppose I'll either wait for really good reviews (doubtful), or pick it up on sale at some point. Which is sad, since the interaction features sound pretty cool. And there really hasn't been anything to scratch my SimCity itch since SC4. I really wanted to like CitiesXL, but it is so bland and boring.
That was always the endearing thing about the Civ games, I love them in spite of themselves. They always feel "kludgy". I think it might because they are pretty complicated, and they try to shove as much stuff under the hood (its a civ simulation, its a tabletop wargame, its educational, its a resource management game, its a social simulator, its turn based strategy...) as humanly possible. You generally have to fight with the interface for an hour or so, then you get sucked into a 10 hour gaming session. I've noticed all "4X" games fall into this, none of them have good UI, or well explained features. This has been true since Master of Orion. I've been playing GalCiv for almost a decade, and still have no clue if I'm missing something important that might be hiding behind an option, hidden on a screen I've never seen before.
How would design an easy and intuitive interface for a game as complicated as Civ?
And, too be honest, I think the creaky complexity is part of the appeal for some. 4X and strategy gamers generally relish the appearance of complexity as a thing in itself. Have you seen some of the more niche 4X games out there? There is software running at NASA or CERN with more usability, and less options. Hardcore strategy gamers are masochists, at heart.
I read somewhere that it had odd problems and instability issues... If it doesn't, I'm off to Steam... unless I can find some disks somewhere...
If this is true, I revise my point: why bother getting a new one, when you can just plat SimCity 4? Whats the difference between a new game, and a game you haven't touched in almost 10 years?
This is a modern "Beta", and not a bona fide beta, i.e. a publicity beta. Its just like the "beta" for Diablo 3, limited content ("so, if anything is broken after the first half, of the first act or clvl 15, how will you ever know?"), the game is already finished, and they really don't care about feedback, they just want you to talk about it and post videos on Youtube. I was in the Guild War 2 beta at roughly the same time as the D3 beta, and they continually asked for feedback and bugs, they encouraged you to post every flaw or concern on the forums, and generally the devs were very receptive to all comments (outside of the whining ones). In short, it was an actual testing beta.
SimCity had a closed beta, and this was probably the real beta, where bugs got fixed, and feedback submitted (and generally ignored). Right now your just supposed be intrigued, and preorder, and perhaps tell your friends that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Though why anyone ever pre-orders anything is a complete mystery to me.
To be fair... This is sort of inevitable with the Civ and SimCity franchises...
There has been a ton of Civ games, and pretty much all of them have been good. Yes, some were better, some were worse, but all of them were good. So what can you really do to improve it, outside of graphics? Why would I ever move beyond FreeCiv or Civ 4? Civ has pretty much covered everything now, and the only thing I really want is the Near Future stuff that was in Call To Power, along with the Religion stuff in Civ 4 and Civ 5 Gods and Kings.
SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?
These are OLD franchises, probably among the oldest, if not they oldest gaming franchises that are still being made. Civ came out in 1991, and SimCity in 1989. I still have the original disk for the C64 version.
The always on bit does suck, though. And makes me mad, I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software, and all the clones are pretty bad or boring (CitiesXL, almost good.). I will probably still buy it, though I will grumble the whole time.
The main Guild Wars 2 file is 16,107,164,376 bytes, I think some of WoW's files were that big or larger. Some of Skyrim's files run around 2-3Gb, as do some of Diablo III's. Games are some of the worst offenders of file size abuse. I've had some monolithic cache files approach 10+Gb. I've seen some Bluray rips floating around that were 10-12gb.
Also Facebook stats aren't manipulated.
*choke* You actually believe that? Please tell me that the internet mangled more sarcasm?
EVERYONE manipulates their user counts. Do you think /. has over 2 million users? Real, active users? How many dummy accounts do you think Facebook has? How many inactive accounts? Hell, I still have a MySpace account (completely full of fake info) because they made it hard to delete it, I haven't touched it in over 5 years. There was an article on here, awhile back, claiming that around 50% of Facebook accounts were connected to real people. Do you think those services where you can buy 10,000 likes or followers actually get "real live humans" to lend their services?
Further, this "accounts" thing ignores individuals, which would be a more useful metric. Some of my Facebook friends have 4-5 accounts now, some for promoting bands of businesses, some that they changed (divorce, name change, disassociating with people, hiding, etc..) Hell, I have two Facebook accounts, one that I completely forgot the password too, and one I half-heartedly use. I also have two Google+ accounts (but according to the metrics of this study, only one would be counted as "active").
Everyone inflates user counts... Its par for the course in the internet world.
They only have 7300 Likes on Facebook [facebook.com]. Don't you find it a little odd that they have over 136x more of them on G+? I see only a few possibilities:
Or the networks have very different populations. Google+ is VERY nerd heavy. Facebook is full of "average joes", and your parents.
G+ has also pretty much supplanted Flickr for the place to post photos and talk to photographers. The photo community there is absolutely huge, and Google actively works within the community. The Linux, tech, and science communities are pretty active too. That said, I don't have a single friend who uses it, and all I really ever post is photos.
To be honest, though, I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics are true, even if they don't match my anecdotal evidence... 300 million people isn't that much really, given the total population. Also who knows how popular it is outside the US? It might be like Android, #2 in the US, but completely dominating within the global market. Maybe its the most popular social network in India, that would give it easily 300 million users... No clue.
I'm also sure there is some fudging of numbers. It doesn't matter that much, since Facebook is notorious for doing it as well. Wasn't there am article a while back claiming that 50% of Facebook users weren't real people, or active.
None of my real life friends have actually moved to Google+ from Facebook, but oddly, the community on Google+ is better. Less lively, but also less crap (went to the store today... here is a baby picture... here is a 3 year old meme... here is some religion fluff... here is a horoscope... I like poker.).
Google+ sucks as a network of friends, but its pretty nice for communities. Both the tech/nerd communities, and the photography communities are thriving. Google+ is the new Flickr, and they actively work on it, sponsoring all sorts of events and hangouts, and actively courting popular online personalities. Its paid off. The tech, geek, and science communities are also pretty healthy.
On Facebook I would never follow/like/whatnot someone who isn't a personal friend. One Google I only follow people who are interesting, even if they are complete strangers. They are pretty much two completely different things.
I've never seen a lot of problems with Open/LibreOffice having trouble with MS documents, unless they were extremely complicated ones. These days, I usually open such things in Google Docs, and again, I never see any trouble.
It garbles them often enough to make life a pain for her. I fully understand that isn't really LibreOffice's fault, since MS has a pretty terrible standard, and doesn't like interoperability. To be fair, many of my problems with Linux isn't really the fault of the OS, driver issues sit firmly on the people who write the drivers and companies that make the hardware, software issues generally lie on the devs, and the compatibility problems is because no one develops for Linux because it doesn't have the market share to make it profitable. I'd say the OS is actually pretty mature, especially if you go with serious distros like Debian. I don't trust Canonical with updates, they get too many "ideas" to make their OS truly good, a problem I fear MS is getting into now with their new "Rapid" release cycle; I don't want "revolutionary" I want functional. There is still some inbuilt hurdles, but they are rapidly disappearing (having control over repos without any fuss, a better effort on simplifying things and naming thing so normal people can instantly get it, etc..)
If two companies started to develop for Linux, I'd just ship pretty quickly. Adobe (might happen), and Microsoft (ha!).
So now you're going to complain about problems Linux had a decade ago?
A decade ago? It was in Hardy Heron, which was 2008, which was less than five years ago. About 4 years ago my old HP laptop decided no not have working wifi with Ubuntu, no matter how much work. About two years ago my old HP laptop decided not to have working Wifi without some work. And on Natty (2011, 2 years ago) it was pretty much 100% impossible to to HDMI audio out on some chips, no matter what (when through about 100 different webpages, with variations of a solution that only worked half the time, on the exact same chipset (Nvidia ION).
That shows you have some sort of ulterior motive in painting Linux as hard-to-use, when these days it certainly isn't. Needing to find new repositories? Having to debug hardware driver problems? This isn't 1999, it's 2013. You obviously are either a troll or you haven't used Linux in a decade to complain about these things. This isn't about "picking sides", it's about being a fucking liar.
2008 isn't 1999, and 2011 most certainly isn't a decade ago. And yes, to keep things up to date (by the software's standards, not a repo maintainers) requires adding repos. This is, granted, mainly a Debian problem, never had much of an issue with OpenSuse. I'm currently running OpenSuse Tumbleweed on a laptop less than 3 feet from my left hand, which apparently means that I might be a time traveler. Though I am sad that I have to live in 1999 or 2003, those years were shit, can I have 2006 or 1996?
I don't have an ulterior motive. I wish Linux the best, I WANT the so-called "year of the linux desktop" to come. I want Linux to have a bigger marketshare, and a large body of mainstream developers. But to get there it can't sit back and go "yup, good enough". We have to look at its faults, and see what other systems do better. You have to be critical. Linux, like everything else in the world, has problems. It isn't perfect. It will never be perfect. And there never will be the one OS to rule them all.
Further, you misread me, a lot. I never said Linux was bad (this is /. I put in tons of disclaimers), I never said it was inferior, in itself, to anything else. I just said it still isn't really at the point where I want my parents to install it yet (and, if you are observant, I said the exact same thing about Win 8 in this discussion). Linux is easier to use than it has been at any point in its history, and it is getting better rapidly thanks to th
Last I heard, you had to hunt down a bunch of driver discs or download them from mfgr websites. How many people ever install Windows anyway? Why is it the Windows fans always gloss over this fact?
Yes, on my last install I needed to grab 4 driver files from manufacturer webpages. It would have been less if I was using typical hardware (have a gaming GPU, a keyboard with some extra keys, a special mouse, and a dedicated sound card... none of these are typical).
My last laptop, an HP Pavillion, didn't like Linux. Or Linux didn't like it. There always will be hardware variance. Just because something works flawlessly for you, doesn't mean it will for everyone. I'm also sure that there were people who had problems with Windows, I had a friend who paid for beer working on bad Vista installs, or trying to get hardware with only Vista drivers to work with XP.
It works fine for us. It only has problems with Office files if you have to exchange files with MS Office users a lot. We don't; this is for home use. People at home writing up their own documents and such don't exchange files with other people. I'm not addressing business use here, as you seem to be.
My girlfriend needs them for school. She's working on her masters, so it is a pretty big deal. When I was in school I had the same problems with OpenOffice, which pretty much lead to me discarding my Linux box for a Mac. A lot of people actually need compatibility with de facto standards.
What about them? They work fine. I've never had a problem.
So you missed the time when Ubuntu started messing with them, and this messed up the sound on tons of people's computers, forcing them to use kludgy, unstable, workarounds? You upgrade, and *poof*, you loose basic functionality, with no easy way to really get it back (especially for normal folk). This was a couple years ago, before the slow creep of arbitrarily messing with DEs (If Windows 8 to 7 is bad, Gnome 2 to Shell or Unity is far worse).
Honestly, by now you seem like a MS shill claiming to be a Linux fan, but inventing bullshit problems that don't really exist, and which normal users do not encounter in normal use.
Wow, I don't like your favorite OS as much as you, and thus I am a "shill". Nice. When can I get that nice fat check from MS? Or Apple or SUSE, since I often point out their strengths of Windows, as well. Everyone who makes operating systems should give me some money, really, since I generally tell people that all of them are good, and you should pick them based on your needs, and subjective taste. This isn't good enough, I should pick sides, and support my team no matter what. Sadly I find OS loyalty to be utterly moronic, and a complete waste of time. I use Windows primarily right now, because it fits my needs. I've used both OS X and Linux as a primary OS when they fit my needs better. Judging from my history, in another year or two I'll be back to using something else as my main OS.
In the end, your opinion is your opinion; and mine is mine. They are worth exactly the same in the grand scheme of things: nothing whatsoever. Just because you like something doesn't make it better than anything else objectively. Windows gets my tasks done, so it is a good OS for me. Linux doesn't right now, so it isn't a good OS from me. OS X could get my job done as well, so it also is a good OS. This is all that matters, can I get the stuff done that I want/need to get done. I don't really give a shit about who made my tools or how pretty their philosophy is, I only care that they work. And I sure as hell don't have brand loyalty to whoever made my tools, if someone makes a better or cheaper one, I'll get it in a heart beat. Obviously I am the shill, since I'm not invested in the OS "wars", and actually find them to be the dumbest thing in modern history.
I am so goddamn sick of these "shill" and "fanboy" memes. Your argument
Why do Linux people get so damn defensive what you say that Linux isn't perfect? Seriously, Linux isn't for everyone. Nothing is, so expecting an OS to be different is a bit strange.
Oh please. They don't need to know any of this stuff, any more than they need to know it to use Windows... my (non-technical) wife...
You don't need to, sure... But it will come up. Just like you don't need to know the difference between a browser and a page to do anything, it turns into a little slice of hell when you need to support anything. Your WIFE, this means you probably live with her, and you probably are the guy doing all the support. My goal in life is to have everyone in my life as self-sustaining as humanly possible when it comes to computers. Sure, not knowing the difference is fine for users, but it isn't find for me, since I'm going to have to actually figure out what the hell they broke. With Windows and OS X, the shell and the kernel are synonymous, so the difference is mostly academic.
Again, please.. I LIKE Linux, and I USE Linux. Linux is bloody great. But, just like saying "OS X isn't for me" isn't a statement on the worth of the OS or its users, saying "Linux might not be right for x" doesn't have any reflection of the OS or its users either.
Huh? WTF are you talking about?
Hmm.. Last time I installed Linux on my laptop I got to spend several hours hunting down solutions to both sound and wifi problems, which involved hours of reading forums, often with contradictory solutions, and snarky assholes ("RTM, herp-derp!"), then it involved installing strange things with strange names; not "sound driver for xxx", but "xxx_afps_rnddevice231-ddfsoundpoop_4455534344432011." and "gRandomnonsemse". It still didn't work as well as any OS X or Windows install, since Wifi and Sound still mysteriously died. This wasn't that single laptop, this is true of EVERY SINGLE TIME I've installed Linux on almost any hardware. I'm a nerd, I can work it out, my parents aren't, they can't. Also your wife just using LibreOffice and Firefox isn't good enough for some people. My father does tons of online research in obscure government databases for his living, and thus needs strange plugins, extensions, and such, some of which aren't even really supported on Windows anymore (this bit of code was last updated in 2002, and only fully supports 98se). Also, LibreOffice is crap, absolutely. Sure, its high principles, and it gets the job done, but it still doesn't play nicely with Office. And yes, thats MS' fault, but who really cares? Browsers suck, since often you need to go much with repos just to get updates, and I really don't know how well my parents with deal with having to add repos, typing in yet more arcane gobbledygook, and hoping it doesn't break anything else (it can, and does. I've tried to keep Chromium up to date on a distro that really just wanted a 6 month old version to be standard, and it pretty much required a reinstall of almost everything). Further, the most common "friendly" distro does random crap, and forces people to do random crap. Do I have to mention ALSA? Pulse Audio? Forcing people to use Unity, where, in supporting my parents, the difference between DE and kernel would pop up. Also, if you have to hop into CLI more than once a decade, your OS is a failure, these days.
Don't get me wrong, Linux has made some great strides, and I really, REALLY, hope it eventually becomes accepted. It isn't there yet. At least to the point where I'm happy having my parents use it. I have better things to do with my life than help people with computers for free.
Microsoft being run into the ground would be MORE competition in the OS market.
When I read statements like "run into the ground" it makes me think you want then to be basically dead. In the end, we basically agree.
Though, I do hope that Windows Mobile picks up, and fights some market share from Android and iOS. Especially if the go the Apple way, and have great hardware (mostly) but for a for a good price. Android itself is solid, but the manufacturers of actual hardware are generally horrible, and having another Apple in the market might force them to actually do a good job on support and development.
What issues? The fact that there's no single standard desktop environment? Why is that a problem? No one ever says that Microsoft and Apple should have the exact same desktop environment/widget set/ABI or that any other part of their OSes should be standardized by some neutral organization. So why is it a problem that Linux has variety?
Never really said having multiple DEs/distros was a problem. What I mean was that Linux isn't perfect either. I, personally, like the variety in Linux. I'm glad I can use KDE, and ignore Gnome Shell and Unity. Same with XFCE. I'm happy that there are several very well supported, and well developed distros to choose from, though it can be a bit overwhelming at time. The last time I tried to muck around with my primary Linux install, I spent about a week trying on different combos (OpenSuse/KDE won, this time). This isn't everyone's cup of tea though, and you have to admit it is a bit overwhelming to some. My parents would be hopeless, for example. I can't imaging having to explain the difference between a shell and a kernel to them, when they still haven't figured out the difference between a webpage and a web browser.
Linux also has the problem (in some eyes, not mine, and perhaps not yours) where you have to spend a lot of time working with the OS itself. You have to think about Linux, and not the task at hand. This has gotten much better, but I still view it as an issue. I still have to spend a bit too much time mucking around in command lines, and figuring out how specific bits of hardware might work. Also, there is no interface guidlines (or ones that anyone follows, at least), so much of the software is a bit of a mess. Nice for nerds like us, but terrible for people who haven't been using computers for decades.
Please notice, I'm not attacking Linux. I quite like Linux.
Thats the thing I like about the choices right now, there is something different for everyone, and everything is pretty much competent. I would love Linux, OS X, and Windows to share 33% of the market (or less, allowing for some nice upstarts). I would love it if OS X played nice, so everything can be installed on the same hardware (easily). Up until recently I've been running all three on various computers in my house. OS X got uninstalled, and my MacMini sold on Craigslist, lately, since the OS, and Apple were moving in directions I didn't like (and have been for some time now). But it was the best HTPC possible, and it almost was a small computer mounted in a kitchen cabinet for managing recipes, iTunes, and television while cooking. Windows are on both me and the girlfriends main "money maker" computers. I need Lightroom and Photoshop (and Adobe Camera Raw, and the like), and she needs Office. So there is no way to really get rid of these. I also game a bit, so I need Windows for that. My laptop, and my girlfriends netbook run Linux, though lately their functionality has been supplanted by tablets (running the same kernel, at least).
I'm happy with this. Look at how many features are being developed and copied by the others right now. Even with Win 8's faults, it represents something nice, MS is trying to innovate. Why? Because Apple and Linux are starting to breath down their necks.
Valve only has what, 3 games on Steam for Ubuntu? Its a long way off.