So you must mean that (according to the sf.net software map) the other 20985 projects under the "Microsoft" designation aren't OSS. Oh, and the 3885 MacOS projects, and the 426 BeOS projects, and the 767 PDA projects, and....
Or does OSS mean that it has to work wherever YOU want it to work?
I don't know that the FTC, SEC, or whoever would allow this. Gates is the Chairman of the largest software company in the world, already under allegation of existing as a monopoly. To purchase a large company that makes a competing product I think would be rejected, but I'm not overly familiar with corporate law. He would have a majority position in two companies that directly butt heads. That's not good for competition by any means.
I think of it this way : Warren Buffet owns a crapload of Gillette and Coca-Cola. I don't think he would be allowed to own a majority position in Pepsico, Dr. Pepper, Schick, etc. since they make competing products.
No, the only way this could happen would be for Microsoft to make the purchase. Hey, then you could have the latest Square Enix RPG on the Microsoft Nintendo Gamecbue XBox!
I think the point of testing for methadone in cycling is two-fold:
1. Methadone can be a painkiller, which means that perhaps a cyclist could push harder despite the pain and cramping from lactic acid buildup in the muscles.
2. As mentioned above, methadone is most commonly used to treat heroin addiction, so the presence on methadone NOW could possibly indicate the use of drugs previously in the year.
Regardless of how it got into his system, they have to follow the rules. Accidentally ingested methadone? That's a tad far-fetched, don't you think? What kind of team chef is this guy working with that allows drugs to fall into the pot of pasta? And what kind of team doctor wouldn't be on the lookout for the banned substances when keeping an athlete on a medical regimen?
While I don't agree with the comment in reference to Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond was somewhat on target when he said, "In cycling, there are no miracles, only explanations." There's an explanation for the methadone in Brandt's blood and someday the truth will surface.
I'm one for one with my HP/Compaq experiences. At a past job, I had a series of Evos, first the N600c, then the N620c (or was it the 610?). The first batch of notebooks were pretty good, but once they upgraded us to the 620's a year later, all hell broke loose. We (meaning most of the 20-odd developers) all had USB issues with external drives, blue screens, lockups, etc. I personally had my RAM modules replaces 2 or 3 times, along with my system board in the same amount. Other minor problems existed and all Compaq would do under the corporate warranty agreement was throw replacement parts at the problem. It's finally good to see they are starting to acknowledge SOMETHING is wrong, though I have a feeling that it's more than the 3rd-party memory they're blaming it on.
Now, when I lost my job back in November, I searched around for a good, solid laptop and settled on the ZT3000, which I customized through HP's shopping site. I had a few problems with blue screens when I installed 3rd party RAM (and these problems were well "documented" and discussed on x1000formus. Swaping the memory around the 2 slots fixed the problem. Otherwise, this laptop has been the best machine I've ever owned. It's decently fast for compiling code in Visual Studio.NET, it has a gig of RAM, a WUXGA screen, a nice keyboard, it's thin, light and gets good battery life. I worked a contract for a few months where a set of office mates had these machines (one had the x1000) and they seemed to like the laptops as much as myself. I will freely admit that HP and Compaq have a bit of a reputation in the computer industry, but so far these machines seem to be pretty solid.
Anyhow, that's my story for the HP/Compaq quality debate!
You know, it's cool that "they" are going to spend billions on an elevator to space, but I think it would be cooler if they could keep all 4 elevators in my building working correctly. Nothing like getting stuck, or seeing the Schindler repairman come out twice a week. Maybe he could make good use of some research funds!
I just checked and Hotmail is still showing 2 MB for me. This link still shows a fee of $29.95 a year for 25 MB.
I always thought it ludicrous to pay MSN for more space for one simple reason : the only cause of me exceeding my space limit was all of the spam that I got from having a Hotmail account, and Microsoft is still the only company (that I know of) that counts your junk mail folder against your quota. Why should I give them money to house more crap when it's their insecure system that's the cause of all of my spam?
I think it was a recent patch that allows you to turn off all of the traders except the one you are trying to find. I remember reading it in the news as I was logging in, but I don't remember how long ago that was.
Your TV is probably much larger than your monitor.
My TV is about 13" and my monitor is a 21" flat panel.
Your TV probably has better sound than your PC
See above.
There are a vast number of games that are not RTSes or god games, and some people do enjoy them and aren't interested in RTSes or god games.
Same thing goes for PCs as well
First person shooters are acceptable on modern consoles
Define acceptable. If you mean somewhat funky controls and having the computer auto-aim for you, then sure, I guess that's acceptable. Note : my experience with console FPSes is very minimal.
Your couch is probably more comfortable than your computer chair.
I have a piece-o-crap reclining chair in my living room that smells like a nursing home. But my office has an Aeron chair.
Consoles don't need maintenance. Games don't get patched, hardware doesn't conflict, upgrades don't break things.
This will certainly change as consoles move to be more like mini PCs. And consoles may not need maintenance, but they do break and need to be replaced. Stories of multiple PS2s and Xboxes have floated around this site alone.
Consoles don't need to be upgraded.
Can't really argue with this one, and console games do tend to improve graphically as developers learn to milk a system for all it's worth.
For me, here's the clincher:
I can do my banking on the PC
I can make my living on the PC writing code.
I can entertain my sig-o's kids on the PC.
I can browse the web and chat with my friends.
There is a multitude of other software out there to play with, like audio editing, music playback, video playback, etc.
I'm not stuck with commercial games. I can play Flash-/Java-based games. I can download shareware and demos of most every game published.
Lots of children's and non-gaming entertainment software is available.
Consoles are great, but you can keep a fairly modern PC going for a few hundred bucks a year. I built an Athlon XP 2000-based system 2 years ago and I just upgrade small pieces as time and money allow. Sure, I'll eventually have to start over with a 64-bit something, but I'll have gotten good mileage out of this box. As time goes on more modern games will start to tax my system, but I don't always have to have THE ABSOLUTE latest and greatest, just enough to keep my gaming enjoyable.
Should we start holding parents criminally responsible for the actions of their children?
I think that depends on what the crime is, from the parents' perspective. It is not a crime to let your 12 year old kid watch R-rated movies or even porn! (correct me on the porn part, if necessary) It isn't a crime to let your kid play violent video games, listen to rap music or watch graphic TV. So if a kid goes out and acts out GTA with the neighbor's kiddos, of what crime is the parent guilty? Being a bad parent? What if the parent was being good by letting their child experience a bit of freedom, and that child was being exposed at a neighbor's house? Do you now hold those people responsible?
I think that crimes (let's not get into IP and copyright arguments) are things that are generally, socially accepted faux pas. Very few people will debate that murder, rape, arson, theft, etc. are crimes against society and/or people's personal rights. But being a bad parent has such a broad definition and is subject to so many different viewpoints that I think it is a topic best avoided by the judicial system.
Now, if you want to make it an offense (like a misdemeanor) for providing rated content to an underage child, then you might be able to extrapolate a few laws if those exposed children commit crimes. Even still, you're now subject to a lot of interpretation in enforcing said laws. How would you go about proving that the child committed acts based on his/her exposure to the "illegal" content? Is the parent responsible? What about the retail establishment that may have sold the items to the parent with the child present?
And now we have a huge new argument that can go on forever. I think this is the reason that courts generally stay out of a parent's way unless a childs personal rights are expressly violated.
Even more, if I upgrade my PIII computer to something that can play Doom 3, I'm looking at a (potentially) $2-3K system. For that same $2-3K, I can buy a low-end HDTV, an Xbox, component cables, and play Doom 3 at a nice resoution. This is all assuming that progressive scan is supported.
I think as the price of digital TVs comes down, and the price of consoles remains in the $150-300 range (counting the launch prices), we'll see more developers gravitate in that direction. After all, why would I spend thousands on a computer to play a few games when I can spend the same on a TV and a console. Throw in set-top functionality and I now get more bang for my buck!
In short, developer laziness is what has led to this, and I've heard that from people in the industry.
Developer laziness or feature creep? Think about this : a modern competitive game has to have too much in the way of sensory candy to compete in the market place. You have to upgrade the rendering engine (those fancy water effects), the physics engine, the AI engine, and the sound engine. And you need to be able to render models that are thousands of polygons each. Oh yeah, and now your levels need real-time deformation, so tack on some development time there. Oh, and don't forget to add vehicles as well. And one more thing, levels can be inside AND outside, so make sure your engine can handle that.
That's a lot of work to do in a dev cycle, and we haven't even talked about a scripting engine, mod support, features that the artists and designers request for weapons and enemies. There's the UI that needs to look better than all the others, and the, and the....
In short, I wonder if we consumers haven't gotten too demanding.
In case anyone reads this in the archive, I should mention that Stan Lippman, a former Bell Labs employee who worked closely with Bjarne Stroustrup, is also at Microsoft working as an Architect on VC++. I imagine his contribution is helping advance the C++ tools as well.
Which is why if you look here (middle picture, bottom row) you'll see that the speedometer only goes to 85.
Hey, wait a minute...I think we need a petition here. Spielberg should edit the BTTF trilogy and have Doc Brown say, "IF this baby reaches 88 miles per hour, you MIGHT see some serious shit."
That way we can make sure the film is historically accurate and all.
First off, Herb Sutter joined MS over 2 years ago. He freely admitted that people would think weird of him to join such a company, but Visual Studio.NET's C++ conformance has greatly increased to the point of almost leading the industry. The current C++ compiler is missing a few esoteric language features and the 'export' keyword, but otherwise it compiles complex C++ just fine. This is a massive improvment over their previous offerings and is no doubt attributable to Mr. Sutter's involvement.
So your statement is completely misguided, and I assume that you aren't a C++ programmer that uses MS tools. Otherwise you would laud their efforts to bring the development community a solid (and partially free) tool for use under Windows.
Everyone has all of these theories on white noise and ambient noise and crap during the day. WRONG. I'll tell you the real reason. Train engineers are assholes. I lived next to train tracks for a few years and during the day trains NEVER wailed on their horns. But come night time those f'ers would just sit on the horn for miles. Maybe it's a safety thing, that at night drivers may be sleepy and need advanced warning for a train, but I dunno.
So keep all of your white noise theories and I'll keep my "train engineers are assholes that just want to wake up all of the sleeping people at 3 a.m." theory.
Re:Beware Emissions Inspection
on
Hack Your Ride
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's also required if you take your car in for warranty work. My neighbor has been looking at chips for his VW 20th AE GTI, many of which can be reprogrammed with the light switch, turn indicator arm, etc. Around here most of the guys who install stuff like that on the weekends work at the VW dealership, so they'll know your car when you bring it in, but on the off chance you get a strict tech working on your car, he's not gonna like the fact you changed the engine timings and ran 104 octane racing gas through your pipes. Switching the settings back to normal and keeping everything somewhat secretive can keep the dealership from using that reason to avoid warranty work on your vehicle.
Not to mention that most of the higher performance settings can get expensive since racing gas down here in Texas can run $4-5/gallon. It may be more now that gas prices are starting to climb!
My hunch says anyone who has small kids and doesn't want them to destroy a $40-$80 CD would be a likely candidate for such a mod chip and backup copies.
As a parent, I highly, highly doubt this. Parents with multiple children don't have time for 5 minutes of sex at night let alone sitting in front of a computer trying to make backup copies of some Spongebob Squarepants game. Most of us (our circle of friends with kids) require the younger children (9 or so and under) to ask for assistance before playing a console. The kids of all ages are simply taught how to use the console and the discs, and that not taking care of the discs will result in a game becoming unplayable. Most of us are from the school of thought that children should learn from an early age that they are responsible for their actions, and that expensive items should be treated with care and respect.
Kids have a high propensity to break ANYTHING, so making a backup copy of a $50 game is fine and dandy, but you can't make a backup copy of the $200+ console and the $50 mod chip that you bought to make backup copies so your kids didn't break the game.
Sorry for venturing off into some offtopic territory, but I just don't see that many parents modding a console and spending time doing backups of every game. There are far too many things fighting for parental time, and at the end of the day sex takes preference over burning game discs.
I hear what you mean about the hands-on, physical aspect. Personally, I'm waiting for someone to burn this building down so I can get a job with the wrecking company charged with the cleanup. After all, the guy in the apartment next to me seems happy to do that day in, day out.
Best loot comes from quests: no more 'camp the best drop spot'
I've never understood this philosophy, and it is somewhat flawed with respect to Everquest. Now instead of people camping a single spawn, they're camping multiple spawns looking for multiple "no drop" items to complete a quest. Hang out in some of the bigger zones and listen to people shouting for the rare drops to complete a quest because Sony decided to "fix" camping issues.
Slashdot Mirror
So you must mean that (according to the sf.net software map) the other 20985 projects under the "Microsoft" designation aren't OSS. Oh, and the 3885 MacOS projects, and the 426 BeOS projects, and the 767 PDA projects, and....
Or does OSS mean that it has to work wherever YOU want it to work?
I don't know that the FTC, SEC, or whoever would allow this. Gates is the Chairman of the largest software company in the world, already under allegation of existing as a monopoly. To purchase a large company that makes a competing product I think would be rejected, but I'm not overly familiar with corporate law. He would have a majority position in two companies that directly butt heads. That's not good for competition by any means.
I think of it this way : Warren Buffet owns a crapload of Gillette and Coca-Cola. I don't think he would be allowed to own a majority position in Pepsico, Dr. Pepper, Schick, etc. since they make competing products.
No, the only way this could happen would be for Microsoft to make the purchase. Hey, then you could have the latest Square Enix RPG on the Microsoft Nintendo Gamecbue XBox!
I think the point of testing for methadone in cycling is two-fold :
1. Methadone can be a painkiller, which means that perhaps a cyclist could push harder despite the pain and cramping from lactic acid buildup in the muscles.
2. As mentioned above, methadone is most commonly used to treat heroin addiction, so the presence on methadone NOW could possibly indicate the use of drugs previously in the year.
Regardless of how it got into his system, they have to follow the rules. Accidentally ingested methadone? That's a tad far-fetched, don't you think? What kind of team chef is this guy working with that allows drugs to fall into the pot of pasta? And what kind of team doctor wouldn't be on the lookout for the banned substances when keeping an athlete on a medical regimen?
While I don't agree with the comment in reference to Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond was somewhat on target when he said, "In cycling, there are no miracles, only explanations." There's an explanation for the methadone in Brandt's blood and someday the truth will surface.
I'm one for one with my HP/Compaq experiences. At a past job, I had a series of Evos, first the N600c, then the N620c (or was it the 610?). The first batch of notebooks were pretty good, but once they upgraded us to the 620's a year later, all hell broke loose. We (meaning most of the 20-odd developers) all had USB issues with external drives, blue screens, lockups, etc. I personally had my RAM modules replaces 2 or 3 times, along with my system board in the same amount. Other minor problems existed and all Compaq would do under the corporate warranty agreement was throw replacement parts at the problem. It's finally good to see they are starting to acknowledge SOMETHING is wrong, though I have a feeling that it's more than the 3rd-party memory they're blaming it on.
.NET, it has a gig of RAM, a WUXGA screen, a nice keyboard, it's thin, light and gets good battery life. I worked a contract for a few months where a set of office mates had these machines (one had the x1000) and they seemed to like the laptops as much as myself. I will freely admit that HP and Compaq have a bit of a reputation in the computer industry, but so far these machines seem to be pretty solid.
Now, when I lost my job back in November, I searched around for a good, solid laptop and settled on the ZT3000, which I customized through HP's shopping site. I had a few problems with blue screens when I installed 3rd party RAM (and these problems were well "documented" and discussed on x1000formus. Swaping the memory around the 2 slots fixed the problem. Otherwise, this laptop has been the best machine I've ever owned. It's decently fast for compiling code in Visual Studio
Anyhow, that's my story for the HP/Compaq quality debate!
You know, it's cool that "they" are going to spend billions on an elevator to space, but I think it would be cooler if they could keep all 4 elevators in my building working correctly. Nothing like getting stuck, or seeing the Schindler repairman come out twice a week. Maybe he could make good use of some research funds!
I just checked and Hotmail is still showing 2 MB for me. This link still shows a fee of $29.95 a year for 25 MB.
I always thought it ludicrous to pay MSN for more space for one simple reason : the only cause of me exceeding my space limit was all of the spam that I got from having a Hotmail account, and Microsoft is still the only company (that I know of) that counts your junk mail folder against your quota. Why should I give them money to house more crap when it's their insecure system that's the cause of all of my spam?
This mentality is leading to the death of 2D games on consoles.
I thought the advent of more powerful processors and dedicated 3D chips in consoles led to the demise of 2D gaming, but maybe that's just me.
I think it was a recent patch that allows you to turn off all of the traders except the one you are trying to find. I remember reading it in the news as I was logging in, but I don't remember how long ago that was.
My TV is about 13" and my monitor is a 21" flat panel.
Your TV probably has better sound than your PC
See above.
There are a vast number of games that are not RTSes or god games, and some people do enjoy them and aren't interested in RTSes or god games.
Same thing goes for PCs as well
First person shooters are acceptable on modern consoles
Define acceptable. If you mean somewhat funky controls and having the computer auto-aim for you, then sure, I guess that's acceptable. Note : my experience with console FPSes is very minimal.
Your couch is probably more comfortable than your computer chair.
I have a piece-o-crap reclining chair in my living room that smells like a nursing home. But my office has an Aeron chair.
Consoles don't need maintenance. Games don't get patched, hardware doesn't conflict, upgrades don't break things.
This will certainly change as consoles move to be more like mini PCs. And consoles may not need maintenance, but they do break and need to be replaced. Stories of multiple PS2s and Xboxes have floated around this site alone.
Consoles don't need to be upgraded.
Can't really argue with this one, and console games do tend to improve graphically as developers learn to milk a system for all it's worth.
For me, here's the clincher
- I can do my banking on the PC
- I can make my living on the PC writing code.
- I can entertain my sig-o's kids on the PC.
- I can browse the web and chat with my friends.
- There is a multitude of other software out there to play with, like audio editing, music playback, video playback, etc.
- I'm not stuck with commercial games. I can play Flash-/Java-based games. I can download shareware and demos of most every game published.
- Lots of children's and non-gaming entertainment software is available.
Consoles are great, but you can keep a fairly modern PC going for a few hundred bucks a year. I built an Athlon XP 2000-based system 2 years ago and I just upgrade small pieces as time and money allow. Sure, I'll eventually have to start over with a 64-bit something, but I'll have gotten good mileage out of this box. As time goes on more modern games will start to tax my system, but I don't always have to have THE ABSOLUTE latest and greatest, just enough to keep my gaming enjoyable.Should we start holding parents criminally responsible for the actions of their children?
I think that depends on what the crime is, from the parents' perspective. It is not a crime to let your 12 year old kid watch R-rated movies or even porn! (correct me on the porn part, if necessary) It isn't a crime to let your kid play violent video games, listen to rap music or watch graphic TV. So if a kid goes out and acts out GTA with the neighbor's kiddos, of what crime is the parent guilty? Being a bad parent? What if the parent was being good by letting their child experience a bit of freedom, and that child was being exposed at a neighbor's house? Do you now hold those people responsible?
I think that crimes (let's not get into IP and copyright arguments) are things that are generally, socially accepted faux pas. Very few people will debate that murder, rape, arson, theft, etc. are crimes against society and/or people's personal rights. But being a bad parent has such a broad definition and is subject to so many different viewpoints that I think it is a topic best avoided by the judicial system.
Now, if you want to make it an offense (like a misdemeanor) for providing rated content to an underage child, then you might be able to extrapolate a few laws if those exposed children commit crimes. Even still, you're now subject to a lot of interpretation in enforcing said laws. How would you go about proving that the child committed acts based on his/her exposure to the "illegal" content? Is the parent responsible? What about the retail establishment that may have sold the items to the parent with the child present?
And now we have a huge new argument that can go on forever. I think this is the reason that courts generally stay out of a parent's way unless a childs personal rights are expressly violated.
Even more, if I upgrade my PIII computer to something that can play Doom 3, I'm looking at a (potentially) $2-3K system. For that same $2-3K, I can buy a low-end HDTV, an Xbox, component cables, and play Doom 3 at a nice resoution. This is all assuming that progressive scan is supported.
I think as the price of digital TVs comes down, and the price of consoles remains in the $150-300 range (counting the launch prices), we'll see more developers gravitate in that direction. After all, why would I spend thousands on a computer to play a few games when I can spend the same on a TV and a console. Throw in set-top functionality and I now get more bang for my buck!
I think I know your problem -- you used a 64-bit unsigned integer instead of a 128-bit unsigned interger.
If you laughed at that, quit reading and go back to your code.
In short, developer laziness is what has led to this, and I've heard that from people in the industry.
Developer laziness or feature creep? Think about this : a modern competitive game has to have too much in the way of sensory candy to compete in the market place. You have to upgrade the rendering engine (those fancy water effects), the physics engine, the AI engine, and the sound engine. And you need to be able to render models that are thousands of polygons each. Oh yeah, and now your levels need real-time deformation, so tack on some development time there. Oh, and don't forget to add vehicles as well. And one more thing, levels can be inside AND outside, so make sure your engine can handle that.
That's a lot of work to do in a dev cycle, and we haven't even talked about a scripting engine, mod support, features that the artists and designers request for weapons and enemies. There's the UI that needs to look better than all the others, and the, and the....
In short, I wonder if we consumers haven't gotten too demanding.
In case anyone reads this in the archive, I should mention that Stan Lippman, a former Bell Labs employee who worked closely with Bjarne Stroustrup, is also at Microsoft working as an Architect on VC++. I imagine his contribution is helping advance the C++ tools as well.
with an original output of 130bhp
Which is why if you look here (middle picture, bottom row) you'll see that the speedometer only goes to 85.
Hey, wait a minute...I think we need a petition here. Spielberg should edit the BTTF trilogy and have Doc Brown say, "IF this baby reaches 88 miles per hour, you MIGHT see some serious shit."
That way we can make sure the film is historically accurate and all.
First off, Herb Sutter joined MS over 2 years ago. He freely admitted that people would think weird of him to join such a company, but Visual Studio .NET's C++ conformance has greatly increased to the point of almost leading the industry. The current C++ compiler is missing a few esoteric language features and the 'export' keyword, but otherwise it compiles complex C++ just fine. This is a massive improvment over their previous offerings and is no doubt attributable to Mr. Sutter's involvement.
So your statement is completely misguided, and I assume that you aren't a C++ programmer that uses MS tools. Otherwise you would laud their efforts to bring the development community a solid (and partially free) tool for use under Windows.
Everyone has all of these theories on white noise and ambient noise and crap during the day. WRONG. I'll tell you the real reason. Train engineers are assholes. I lived next to train tracks for a few years and during the day trains NEVER wailed on their horns. But come night time those f'ers would just sit on the horn for miles. Maybe it's a safety thing, that at night drivers may be sleepy and need advanced warning for a train, but I dunno.
So keep all of your white noise theories and I'll keep my "train engineers are assholes that just want to wake up all of the sleeping people at 3 a.m." theory.
Where do you think they found your job?
It's also required if you take your car in for warranty work. My neighbor has been looking at chips for his VW 20th AE GTI, many of which can be reprogrammed with the light switch, turn indicator arm, etc. Around here most of the guys who install stuff like that on the weekends work at the VW dealership, so they'll know your car when you bring it in, but on the off chance you get a strict tech working on your car, he's not gonna like the fact you changed the engine timings and ran 104 octane racing gas through your pipes. Switching the settings back to normal and keeping everything somewhat secretive can keep the dealership from using that reason to avoid warranty work on your vehicle.
Not to mention that most of the higher performance settings can get expensive since racing gas down here in Texas can run $4-5/gallon. It may be more now that gas prices are starting to climb!
When is it going to end that you keep shamelessly promoting your website in every April Fool's Slashdot thread? :^)
OK, I gotta stop reading these crap April Fool's discussions...
http://members.aol.com/hcheaven/articles/cyan/cyan .3.html
It's been known for a while that Cyan used Hypercard.
My hunch says anyone who has small kids and doesn't want them to destroy a $40-$80 CD would be a likely candidate for such a mod chip and backup copies.
As a parent, I highly, highly doubt this. Parents with multiple children don't have time for 5 minutes of sex at night let alone sitting in front of a computer trying to make backup copies of some Spongebob Squarepants game. Most of us (our circle of friends with kids) require the younger children (9 or so and under) to ask for assistance before playing a console. The kids of all ages are simply taught how to use the console and the discs, and that not taking care of the discs will result in a game becoming unplayable. Most of us are from the school of thought that children should learn from an early age that they are responsible for their actions, and that expensive items should be treated with care and respect.
Kids have a high propensity to break ANYTHING, so making a backup copy of a $50 game is fine and dandy, but you can't make a backup copy of the $200+ console and the $50 mod chip that you bought to make backup copies so your kids didn't break the game.
Sorry for venturing off into some offtopic territory, but I just don't see that many parents modding a console and spending time doing backups of every game. There are far too many things fighting for parental time, and at the end of the day sex takes preference over burning game discs.
Why don't you take 3 seconds and read the actual content of this person's question :
Can anyone suggest an avenue through which I can contact Apple in the U.S. for help?
He also said that Apple Australia is the only point of contact in that part of the world since Apple does not sell directly in NZ.
I hear what you mean about the hands-on, physical aspect. Personally, I'm waiting for someone to burn this building down so I can get a job with the wrecking company charged with the cleanup. After all, the guy in the apartment next to me seems happy to do that day in, day out.
Best loot comes from quests: no more 'camp the best drop spot'
I've never understood this philosophy, and it is somewhat flawed with respect to Everquest. Now instead of people camping a single spawn, they're camping multiple spawns looking for multiple "no drop" items to complete a quest. Hang out in some of the bigger zones and listen to people shouting for the rare drops to complete a quest because Sony decided to "fix" camping issues.