A lot of the people I know will terminate any face to face contact when the phone rings. They have to answer it. Eating dinner, just sat down to a good movie, in the shower, it does not matter what they are doing when the phone rings. They must answer and obey.
A lot of the same people will abort exiting phone calls when call waiting indicates someone else is trying to ring them. This one really does not make sense to me. You call someone on the phone. After a bit call waiting indicates a 3rd party is trying to ring so you terminate the existing conversation to answer the new person. Why bother ringing in the first place?
The AC was right. Even with don't update set, when steam notices an update it will break the game for offline use until the update has been downloaded.
You right. If you buy the boxed version you still have to do the activation bit and have no choice about downloading the updates. At least with the earlier boxed versions there was a bug in the installer where you have to installed cs:s as well as hl2 for the install to work. One install I remember it was about 4 hours from when I ran setup to when I was able to play. Compared to my last install of UT2003 which was 15 minutes from running setup to starting to play.
To get offline mode working you need to have the game at 100% (no brainer). Run the game at least once before you exit from steam (this seems to be important). Then exit steam but don't log out. You still are not guaranteed that offline mode will work.
Don't leave the updating too long. I mainly play the hl1 based games but decided to have quick play with bots in cs:s. Last update was in March. Looks like I have about 10 hours downloading to do before I can play a game again that I was happily playing earlier in the year.
I seem to recall a little option for each Steam game, oh what was it called? Oh yeah.. Do Not Automatically Update This Game.. It's available under Properties (right-click) of any game in Steam. And online games probably should have Automatic updating on, but if you don't like new models and features and bug fixes, then turn it off for your single-player games.
You forgot to mention a couple of things.
1. When you run a game steam turn auto update back on.
2. Even if you have 'Don't update' set and steam notices an update available it makes the game unavailable for offline use. The only way to get the game working offline again is to let steam download the update.
What is the go with stopping software from running just because an update has been announced? Then to make it worse if the update causes problems for you there is no way you can roll back to an earlier version which might have worked fine for you.
The only way to stop steam from updating is to block that programs access to the internet.
Case in point: Simpsons season DVDs. You must press "enter" four fucking times to get past a pointless graphic, just to get to the main menu.
Futurama and Star Gate are no better. With what I had available here it came down to using a dvd player and dealing with the menus or linux box + mplayer + infrared remote. With linux + mplayer combination I have the remote setup so all I have to do is press the number on the remote that corresponds with the episode number we want to watch. No rubbish at the start of the dvd you can not skip and no menus. Bliss. This is how I started watching dvds and was surprised at the crap you have to deal with the first time I saw a dvd in a normal player.
Still keep the dvd player around. There are some dvds that mplayer has trouble with. Problems range from the wrong language being used or the main feature is a later track on the disk an has to be found.
Sounds what you want is something like the set top boxes that we have in Australia. Connect the tv antenna to the set top box to receive digital tv. Then use AV leads to connect to the vcr or tv.
Same tv, same vcr and same tv antenna. The set top box we have was about $140 aud. Also means yet another remote to use.
I don't think I've ever actually known anyone to do the classic accidental rm -Rf / as root
Very early in my linux experience I that. It was an install I wanted to get rid and was wondering how linux would handle the filesystem being deleted from a running system.
The drive containing windows was mounted. Bit of a hint something was wrong when windows would not boot afterwards.
These days I prefer dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda for killing a running system.
Of course, if I were smary, I'd figure out how to make a bit for bit copy using linux, and just boot knoppix on my system every couple of weeks to take a clean snapshot.
I have windows sitting on the 4rd primary partition on the first hard drive in my system. To back up it I cat/dev/hda4 | gzip -9 > backup-19-02-05.gz and to restore zcat backup-19-02-05.gz >/dev/hda4.
As long as I am doing this to the same partition each time it works nicely. It helps to zero fill any unused space on the filesystem first as this will allow the image to be compressed even more.
I've had it hat mice will find ways to get into your desktop since the inside is quite warm, especially on the hard drive. They perform their bodily functions, leave that stuff all over the inside:(
You make me feel better about one of my old computers that died. About 10 years ago there was a mouse plague in this area. One day my 486 was unstable and quickly died. Closer inspection found several of the chipset pins badly corroded and missing bits. With a suspicious stain around the area.
Now, not for the last time, Valve and the Steam forums has shrinked away from their angry customers and shoved the load onto other forums.
The first I remember was when they released hl2dm and at the same time released a forced update for hl2 that killed hl2 for some people. The forums disappeared very quickly that night.
This seems to be normal behaviour. Release an update that stuffs the game for a lot of people and take for forums offline for a bit. At the minimum disable the search feature on the forum so people can not search for any other threads about the same problem.
Is it possible that $50 is more than people are willing to pay?
You in the states or somewhere else? If you just happen be in Australia where do you get your games. It is easy to pay $100 for a game here. This afternoon saw Doom3 or $100 and HL2 (retail box) for $90.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night
on
Steam Users Steamed
·
· Score: 1
1.) If you don't like Steam's "copy protection bullshit," you shouldn't have bought the game. The system requirements list an active Internet connection.
The system requirements only say internet connect required. On the retail box that is both the minimum and recommended requirement. Nothing about active internet connection. The picture of counter strike: source on the back of the box would be enough to get people to think that is what the internet connection was for.
Who would have though that after initial activation (at least 4 hours on dialup) a net connection would have been needed so much for a SINGLE PLAYER game?
As for the stuttering that the initial forced patches introduced, it seems to have settled with the mid January patch. That was another problem, an unwanted patch that stuffed the game for over 1 month with no way of rolling back to the pre patch version. But what was introduced to replaced the stuttering was CS:S crashing when in offline mode but working fine when online.
That is fine until offline mode stuffs up. Once that happens you can not play until you authenticate again.
Then there are the joys of steam telling you there is something wrong with your internet connection after choosing offline mode. Of course there was something wrong with my internet connection. I was not connect to the net at the time.
Get her playing as well. The trick is to have her computer the same spec as yours. If you beat her in a game, especially a fps, and her computer is lower spec than yours that can lead to trouble.
Re:I want to, but should I?
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
However, once activated, you do not need an internet connection.
You are supposed to be able to play without an internet connection. This is a very touchy point with some people. I have had the game 5 days and only the last 2 of them have I been able to consistantly run the game without an internet connection. When I am not connected to the net I still have to wait 4 minutes for steam to timeout when I try running HL2. Was not impressed with the first 3 days of wasting the cost of a phone call to connect to the net just to play a single player game.
Going through the posts on the steam forums I have more success than some.
For the election today in Australia the postal votes certainly are not as anonymous like they were in the past. Previously the votes went into an unmarked envelope which then went into another envelope with your name on it so it could be marked off. This left the vote anonymous.
This time it is not anonymous. You are expected to put your ballot papers into an envelope that identifies you if you do a postal vote.
I vote for the headache showing up after I stop drinking coffee. If I stop drinking coffee I have a rather bad headache within a couple of days. Found this to be repeatable. Sleep and plenty of water helps.
When I have a headache and I have a cup of coffee the headache can be gone by the time the drink is finished. I won't say whether it is the shot of caffeine or if it is psychosomatic but if I have not had a coffee for a bit and have a bad headache a cup of coffee can help quite a lot.
With some of the people we have had on the ballot papers in the past (Keating, Howard, One Nation, Costello) I am surprised that there would not be a number of informal votes.
Apart from the queueing to get your name marked off, less than a minute can be spent in the entire process.
That is where a postal vote comes in. Saves driving 20 minutes each way and having to deal with the rude people shoving how to vote pamphlets at me. Though I have wondered, are postal votes really anonymous?
I have a problem with the first example on that donkey votes page. What if a person really wants to vote that way? It seems like an excuse to invalidate a persons vote just because you don't agree with it.
For a donkey vote I think more along the lines of adding a line to the ballot paper with Homer Simpsons name and putting a number or a tick (depending of the vote type) against his name. At least with this type of vote you know it is not legitimate.
With the manditory voting in Australia I can imagine quite a few invalid votes. Maybe partly because of apathy and you go through the motions so you don't get fined for not voting. But also with some of the elections there is no way you want to vote for any of the candidates that are running for office. Or you just vote in such a way to put the most dispised candidate at the bottom of the list so you hope they don't get in.
I do it because some sites don't allow you in unless you are using a specific browser. http://www.pizzahut.com.au/ is one site I can think of that is picky on what browser they allow on their web site. They only allow ie or a netscape based browser in.
Great, but the full monty is 264 MB. How many people are going to download *that*???
With a download rate of 4K/sec I won't be. That file is not dialup friendly. For some broadband plans it is not even broadband friendly.
At least in Australia you have dialup plans that
can be for less than 10 hours a month
1 isp had a limit of only 70meg a month download
automatic disconnects as low as every 4 hours
You even get broadband plans with a download quota of only 200meg.
I think some of these are reasons why people would not download sich a big file. Even service packs when they were about 100 meg in size I would have think about it and find a time when I would not be wanting the phone and would not blow out any quota (time or download).
Slashdot Mirror
My favourite with this crap is still http://www.pizzahut.com.au/
A lot of the people I know will terminate any face to face contact when the phone rings. They have to answer it. Eating dinner, just sat down to a good movie, in the shower, it does not matter what they are doing when the phone rings. They must answer and obey.
A lot of the same people will abort exiting phone calls when call waiting indicates someone else is trying to ring them. This one really does not make sense to me. You call someone on the phone. After a bit call waiting indicates a 3rd party is trying to ring so you terminate the existing conversation to answer the new person. Why bother ringing in the first place?
The AC was right. Even with don't update set, when steam notices an update it will break the game for offline use until the update has been downloaded.
To get offline mode working you need to have the game at 100% (no brainer). Run the game at least once before you exit from steam (this seems to be important). Then exit steam but don't log out. You still are not guaranteed that offline mode will work.
Don't leave the updating too long. I mainly play the hl1 based games but decided to have quick play with bots in cs:s. Last update was in March. Looks like I have about 10 hours downloading to do before I can play a game again that I was happily playing earlier in the year.
You forgot to mention a couple of things.
1. When you run a game steam turn auto update back on.
2. Even if you have 'Don't update' set and steam notices an update available it makes the game unavailable for offline use. The only way to get the game working offline again is to let steam download the update.
What is the go with stopping software from running just because an update has been announced? Then to make it worse if the update causes problems for you there is no way you can roll back to an earlier version which might have worked fine for you.
The only way to stop steam from updating is to block that programs access to the internet.
Futurama and Star Gate are no better. With what I had available here it came down to using a dvd player and dealing with the menus or linux box + mplayer + infrared remote. With linux + mplayer combination I have the remote setup so all I have to do is press the number on the remote that corresponds with the episode number we want to watch. No rubbish at the start of the dvd you can not skip and no menus. Bliss. This is how I started watching dvds and was surprised at the crap you have to deal with the first time I saw a dvd in a normal player.
Still keep the dvd player around. There are some dvds that mplayer has trouble with. Problems range from the wrong language being used or the main feature is a later track on the disk an has to be found.
Same tv, same vcr and same tv antenna. The set top box we have was about $140 aud. Also means yet another remote to use.
Very early in my linux experience I that. It was an install I wanted to get rid and was wondering how linux would handle the filesystem being deleted from a running system.
The drive containing windows was mounted. Bit of a hint something was wrong when windows would not boot afterwards.
These days I prefer dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda for killing a running system.
I have windows sitting on the 4rd primary partition on the first hard drive in my system. To back up it I cat /dev/hda4 | gzip -9 > backup-19-02-05.gz and to restore zcat backup-19-02-05.gz > /dev/hda4.
As long as I am doing this to the same partition each time it works nicely. It helps to zero fill any unused space on the filesystem first as this will allow the image to be compressed even more.
You make me feel better about one of my old computers that died. About 10 years ago there was a mouse plague in this area. One day my 486 was unstable and quickly died. Closer inspection found several of the chipset pins badly corroded and missing bits. With a suspicious stain around the area.
The first I remember was when they released hl2dm and at the same time released a forced update for hl2 that killed hl2 for some people. The forums disappeared very quickly that night.
This seems to be normal behaviour. Release an update that stuffs the game for a lot of people and take for forums offline for a bit. At the minimum disable the search feature on the forum so people can not search for any other threads about the same problem.
You in the states or somewhere else? If you just happen be in Australia where do you get your games. It is easy to pay $100 for a game here. This afternoon saw Doom3 or $100 and HL2 (retail box) for $90.
The system requirements only say internet connect required. On the retail box that is both the minimum and recommended requirement. Nothing about active internet connection. The picture of counter strike: source on the back of the box would be enough to get people to think that is what the internet connection was for.
Who would have though that after initial activation (at least 4 hours on dialup) a net connection would have been needed so much for a SINGLE PLAYER game?
As for the stuttering that the initial forced patches introduced, it seems to have settled with the mid January patch. That was another problem, an unwanted patch that stuffed the game for over 1 month with no way of rolling back to the pre patch version. But what was introduced to replaced the stuttering was CS:S crashing when in offline mode but working fine when online.
Then there are the joys of steam telling you there is something wrong with your internet connection after choosing offline mode. Of course there was something wrong with my internet connection. I was not connect to the net at the time.
Offline mode is not reliable and easily broken.
Download the latest patch cluster, maybe drop to single user mode and run the cluster. It does all the work for you.
There is a tool that will look at your system and determine what patches you need and do the work for you.
That is when I start losing. Once she gets mad with me she forgets about her health in the game and goes all out to frag me.
Get her playing as well. The trick is to have her computer the same spec as yours. If you beat her in a game, especially a fps, and her computer is lower spec than yours that can lead to trouble.
You are supposed to be able to play without an internet connection. This is a very touchy point with some people. I have had the game 5 days and only the last 2 of them have I been able to consistantly run the game without an internet connection. When I am not connected to the net I still have to wait 4 minutes for steam to timeout when I try running HL2. Was not impressed with the first 3 days of wasting the cost of a phone call to connect to the net just to play a single player game.
Going through the posts on the steam forums I have more success than some.
This time it is not anonymous. You are expected to put your ballot papers into an envelope that identifies you if you do a postal vote.
When I have a headache and I have a cup of coffee the headache can be gone by the time the drink is finished. I won't say whether it is the shot of caffeine or if it is psychosomatic but if I have not had a coffee for a bit and have a bad headache a cup of coffee can help quite a lot.
Apart from the queueing to get your name marked off, less than a minute can be spent in the entire process.
That is where a postal vote comes in. Saves driving 20 minutes each way and having to deal with the rude people shoving how to vote pamphlets at me. Though I have wondered, are postal votes really anonymous?
For a donkey vote I think more along the lines of adding a line to the ballot paper with Homer Simpsons name and putting a number or a tick (depending of the vote type) against his name. At least with this type of vote you know it is not legitimate.
With the manditory voting in Australia I can imagine quite a few invalid votes. Maybe partly because of apathy and you go through the motions so you don't get fined for not voting. But also with some of the elections there is no way you want to vote for any of the candidates that are running for office. Or you just vote in such a way to put the most dispised candidate at the bottom of the list so you hope they don't get in.
I do it because some sites don't allow you in unless you are using a specific browser. http://www.pizzahut.com.au/ is one site I can think of that is picky on what browser they allow on their web site. They only allow ie or a netscape based browser in.
With a download rate of 4K/sec I won't be. That file is not dialup friendly. For some broadband plans it is not even broadband friendly.
At least in Australia you have dialup plans that
can be for less than 10 hours a month
1 isp had a limit of only 70meg a month download
automatic disconnects as low as every 4 hours
You even get broadband plans with a download quota of only 200meg.
I think some of these are reasons why people would not download sich a big file. Even service packs when they were about 100 meg in size I would have think about it and find a time when I would not be wanting the phone and would not blow out any quota (time or download).