Your post is chock-full of exaggerations and false information. You seem to be looking for things to complain about Steam rather than actually looking at what it offers.
I understand steam has lots of appeal to a certain market and set of game genres. If you want all the online features, then it is perhaps not much additional effort and maybe worth the trade-off. But that does not apply to all games, and there is a still a large, and I suspect increasingly unhappy/unserved market of people like myself who would prefer to just buy a game and play it without having to sign up for different services or become forever beholden to some online service that may one day disappear, or change its TOS, or be sold to some larger company with a different agenda. I do not trust steam; I'm astounded that anyone does given the history of online companies. Perhaps that's more of a testament to the younger, more naive demographic that games, especially online games seem to attract.
This is just self-serving claptrap. I buy a game on Steam, it downloads and I play it. It downloaded, installed and patched Left 4 Dead 2 in about 15 minutes which is faster than I could install it from a DVD. I have the games installed on a second hard drive so if I have to format Windows all I need to do is reinstall Steam to the same location as before and I still have all my games, game saves and settings available.
Yes, Valve could suddenly decide to change the TOS so that I have to shove sharpened dildos up my arse every day but let's be realistic and pragmatic about things rather than doom mongering.
Though is there some way I can change the font of a PDF I got onto the device? You can download the PDF of "The Macintosh Way" from the author's web site, but it's very hard to read on the Kindle. You don't seem to be able to change the fonts in a PDF like you can with the regular books. And/or an easy "conversion" of the book to then send the result to the Kindle.
I haven't tried reading PDFs on the Kindle but I have heard that not all of them display very well. If they are made with the Kindle in mind then they are fine.
Again, this is going on what I have read about it rather than experiencing it myself.
So the service runs until it doesn't, and they could have canned it the day after they took my cash? Do you actually think that's reasonable, or do you work in marketing/legal?
They didn't actually do that though so this is irrelevant.
Plants and animals generally don't "still work" at -30C. Only very specialized plants and animals do.
If you purchase a pack of alligators to pull your Iditarod sled across Alaska, not only are you operating them outside their design specs, the clerk has every right to deny you a warranty replacement when yours dies.
If Apple are selling iPhones in Alaska they have no right to deny you a warranty replacement when it fails because of the low temperatures.
This makes you one of the HR morons I was talking about.
10 years working in the field with the new technologies as they roll out ought to be plenty of "experience" in learning new technologies. But you're too stupid to see that.
You are one of the morons that doesn't read the post you are replying to.
Someone with 10 years working in the field with the new technologies as they roll out ought AND a degree is more attractive than the person that doesn't have the degree.
And since you seem to know all about data destruction, please tell us what is the right way to do it.
It isn't simply about destroying the data, it's about making sure it is documented and verified. Same way that a small screw on an aeroplane will cost far more than the one you get in the shop even though they are same thing.
So, you are implying that data storage medium should not be destroyed reliably in blast furnace because... they're not the same as drugs?
Thus, it's wiser to spend 400,000 GBP to destroy them by doing exactly what?
No, I am implying that drugs and this data are vastly different things with completely and utterly different consequences attatched to them. Therefore saying that because destroying drugs has X cost destroying this data properly should cost X.
Obviously, reliable destruction of data costs 400,000 GBP, right?. Please, don't be silly. It's really amusing how people are trying to justify silly things politicians are obviously doing to setup cash for their cronies.
Do you know how seized drugs are often destroyed?
Blast furnace.
And old tampons are flushed down the toilet. Chalk and cheese.
This is the normal way the Tory Party does things. Services that the government could provide are actually business opportunities for private companies. Instead of just having IT wipe the disks why not make an easy £400k for one of your friends in the city?
Of far more concern is the NHS. Why let the NHS perform an operation that could be making some private company some profit?
"Having IT wipe the disks" is not the way to do this.
Lots of drug lords donate enormous amounts of money to their cities neighborhoods. Go look in Columbia. It is one of the reasons they are adored in their own hometowns. Doesn't change the fact that they are drug lords and will kill people to make a profit.
So, perhaps we should look at the TOTALITY of Bill Gates career, rather than just what he did with the money after he got more than he could ever spend.
Yeah, then everyone can see just how stupid it is to compare him with a drug lord.
Having fun isn't a problem. It's this idea that there's anything particularly musical about Rock Band.
But if we have to measure things in "cool" and "fun", I'll wager a sixteen year old who can play in a real rock band with even minimal competency is going to get a lot more chicks than some sixteen year old who has figured out how to press colored buttons in the appropriate sequence.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
If you aren't going to measure a computer game by how much fun it is how else are you supposed to measure it? I'll wager that a sixteen year old who can use soap and can socialise will get more chicks than some bitter wannabe guitarist who is stuck in his room plucking himself to death every weekend.
You must not play WoW then. With the "new world" the 1000's of quests are gone, and now it is more like a console game where you got to go through every frickin quest in a linear fashion.
In what way is the questing anything like a console game? The storytelling is a vast, vast improvement over what Blizzard had in place before. It may have had the appearance of being less linear but really all you were doing was the same thing in different zones. Having to cross half the continent to kill 10 lions rather than just cross the same zone was an awful way to play.
Yeah, so what? How does this make split-screen the only way to have fun with friends?
Remember, that was your original argument. That by not being a fan of split-screen gaming, one must be opposed to having fun with friends. You didn't say anything about friends coming over who specifically wanted to play games that could only be played multiplayer via split-screen.
I think I mistook what you were saying.
It seems like a dubious contention, anyway. Why would a game only be able to played via split-screen? It seems to me that any game which could be played via split-screen could also be played by two separate screens placed side-by-side.
Yes they could but that adds complexity in getting things setup and working.
I meant that split-screen is not the only way to play multiplayer games on a single screen. So, what makes it superior to multiplayer games that don't use split-screen? It certainly doesn't seem as popular in my opinion.
You were claiming that preferring other types of gaming than split-screen means that I don't value fun with friends.
For some games split-screen is the only way to play multiplayer on a single screen.
Well, as someone who at the time was used to playing Quake on a computer with a resolution of at least 800x600 per player on a 15+ inch monitor I had serious issues with playing Goldeneye on the SNES, my friends (who didn't play computer games, only console games) thought it was amazing and couldn't understand why I bitched about the resolution being 360x288 per player or how on a 20" monitor each player's portion of the screen was tiny and blurry.
I can't understand why you bitched about it either. I would play networked games of Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake at college and then sometimes play 4-player Goldeneye on my mates 14" portable TV in the evening without any problems.
Split-screen multiplayer was a hack to enabled multiplayer gaming before consoles were networked, sure some people actually liked it but most people are glad it's gone.
Split-screen hasn't actually gone away and I have never heard anyone wish for that either.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post is chock-full of exaggerations and false information. You seem to be looking for things to complain about Steam rather than actually looking at what it offers.
I understand steam has lots of appeal to a certain market and set of game genres. If you want all the online features, then it is perhaps not much additional effort and maybe worth the trade-off. But that does not apply to all games, and there is a still a large, and I suspect increasingly unhappy/unserved market of people like myself who would prefer to just buy a game and play it without having to sign up for different services or become forever beholden to some online service that may one day disappear, or change its TOS, or be sold to some larger company with a different agenda. I do not trust steam; I'm astounded that anyone does given the history of online companies. Perhaps that's more of a testament to the younger, more naive demographic that games, especially online games seem to attract.
This is just self-serving claptrap. I buy a game on Steam, it downloads and I play it. It downloaded, installed and patched Left 4 Dead 2 in about 15 minutes which is faster than I could install it from a DVD. I have the games installed on a second hard drive so if I have to format Windows all I need to do is reinstall Steam to the same location as before and I still have all my games, game saves and settings available.
Yes, Valve could suddenly decide to change the TOS so that I have to shove sharpened dildos up my arse every day but let's be realistic and pragmatic about things rather than doom mongering.
It used to be that PC gaming drove the industry, so you made your game as amazing for the PC as you could.
I don't ever remember the PC driving the industry. It may have had the best graphics but that is not the same thing at all.
Though is there some way I can change the font of a PDF I got onto the device? You can download the PDF of "The Macintosh Way" from the author's web site, but it's very hard to read on the Kindle. You don't seem to be able to change the fonts in a PDF like you can with the regular books. And/or an easy "conversion" of the book to then send the result to the Kindle.
I haven't tried reading PDFs on the Kindle but I have heard that not all of them display very well. If they are made with the Kindle in mind then they are fine.
Again, this is going on what I have read about it rather than experiencing it myself.
They would have gone absolutely crazy about the iPad! I'm only kind of joking. After checking out my inlaw's Kindle, I'm unimpressed.
Unimpressed in what way? The screen looks just like a paper book and it is far more convenient than normal books.
So the service runs until it doesn't, and they could have canned it the day after they took my cash? Do you actually think that's reasonable, or do you work in marketing/legal?
They didn't actually do that though so this is irrelevant.
What does the initial contract say about it?
amirite
How was school today? Did mummy pack you a nice lunch?
Plants and animals generally don't "still work" at -30C. Only very specialized plants and animals do.
If you purchase a pack of alligators to pull your Iditarod sled across Alaska, not only are you operating them outside their design specs, the clerk has every right to deny you a warranty replacement when yours dies.
If Apple are selling iPhones in Alaska they have no right to deny you a warranty replacement when it fails because of the low temperatures.
but you know what, it's becoming increasingly hard to function effectively without a Facebook account
No, it really isn't.
Yes. I mean no. I mean... I don't know.
What was the question again?
This makes you one of the HR morons I was talking about.
10 years working in the field with the new technologies as they roll out ought to be plenty of "experience" in learning new technologies. But you're too stupid to see that.
You are one of the morons that doesn't read the post you are replying to.
Someone with 10 years working in the field with the new technologies as they roll out ought AND a degree is more attractive than the person that doesn't have the degree.
And since you seem to know all about data destruction, please tell us what is the right way to do it.
It isn't simply about destroying the data, it's about making sure it is documented and verified. Same way that a small screw on an aeroplane will cost far more than the one you get in the shop even though they are same thing.
So, you are implying that data storage medium should not be destroyed reliably in blast furnace because... they're not the same as drugs?
Thus, it's wiser to spend 400,000 GBP to destroy them by doing exactly what?
No, I am implying that drugs and this data are vastly different things with completely and utterly different consequences attatched to them. Therefore saying that because destroying drugs has X cost destroying this data properly should cost X.
Obviously, reliable destruction of data costs 400,000 GBP, right?. Please, don't be silly. It's really amusing how people are trying to justify silly things politicians are obviously doing to setup cash for their cronies.
Do you know how seized drugs are often destroyed?
Blast furnace.
And old tampons are flushed down the toilet. Chalk and cheese.
This is the normal way the Tory Party does things. Services that the government could provide are actually business opportunities for private companies. Instead of just having IT wipe the disks why not make an easy £400k for one of your friends in the city?
Of far more concern is the NHS. Why let the NHS perform an operation that could be making some private company some profit?
"Having IT wipe the disks" is not the way to do this.
Stallman? Is that you?
Right, because as everybody knows, Bill Gates never thinks like that.
No, Bill Gates doesn't think like drug lords do.
Lots of drug lords donate enormous amounts of money to their cities neighborhoods. Go look in Columbia. It is one of the reasons they are adored in their own hometowns. Doesn't change the fact that they are drug lords and will kill people to make a profit.
So, perhaps we should look at the TOTALITY of Bill Gates career, rather than just what he did with the money after he got more than he could ever spend.
Yeah, then everyone can see just how stupid it is to compare him with a drug lord.
Having fun isn't a problem. It's this idea that there's anything particularly musical about Rock Band.
But if we have to measure things in "cool" and "fun", I'll wager a sixteen year old who can play in a real rock band with even minimal competency is going to get a lot more chicks than some sixteen year old who has figured out how to press colored buttons in the appropriate sequence.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
If you aren't going to measure a computer game by how much fun it is how else are you supposed to measure it? I'll wager that a sixteen year old who can use soap and can socialise will get more chicks than some bitter wannabe guitarist who is stuck in his room plucking himself to death every weekend.
This BBC video link shows how fast the flooding is - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12161502
You must not play WoW then. With the "new world" the 1000's of quests are gone, and now it is more like a console game where you got to go through every frickin quest in a linear fashion.
In what way is the questing anything like a console game? The storytelling is a vast, vast improvement over what Blizzard had in place before. It may have had the appearance of being less linear but really all you were doing was the same thing in different zones. Having to cross half the continent to kill 10 lions rather than just cross the same zone was an awful way to play.
Yeah, so what? How does this make split-screen the only way to have fun with friends?
Remember, that was your original argument. That by not being a fan of split-screen gaming, one must be opposed to having fun with friends. You didn't say anything about friends coming over who specifically wanted to play games that could only be played multiplayer via split-screen.
I think I mistook what you were saying.
It seems like a dubious contention, anyway. Why would a game only be able to played via split-screen? It seems to me that any game which could be played via split-screen could also be played by two separate screens placed side-by-side.
Yes they could but that adds complexity in getting things setup and working.
I meant that split-screen is not the only way to play multiplayer games on a single screen. So, what makes it superior to multiplayer games that don't use split-screen? It certainly doesn't seem as popular in my opinion.
You were claiming that preferring other types of gaming than split-screen means that I don't value fun with friends.
For some games split-screen is the only way to play multiplayer on a single screen.
Well, as someone who at the time was used to playing Quake on a computer with a resolution of at least 800x600 per player on a 15+ inch monitor I had serious issues with playing Goldeneye on the SNES, my friends (who didn't play computer games, only console games) thought it was amazing and couldn't understand why I bitched about the resolution being 360x288 per player or how on a 20" monitor each player's portion of the screen was tiny and blurry.
I can't understand why you bitched about it either. I would play networked games of Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake at college and then sometimes play 4-player Goldeneye on my mates 14" portable TV in the evening without any problems.
Split-screen multiplayer was a hack to enabled multiplayer gaming before consoles were networked, sure some people actually liked it but most people are glad it's gone.
Split-screen hasn't actually gone away and I have never heard anyone wish for that either.
Maybe they just don't call it LAN parties anymore. Since everybody started using laptops there is a LAN party whereever you go.
Laptops aren't that common and people don't take them round each other's houses either.