Steam is heavily bugged, easily overcome, and irritating.
Heavily bugged: That's a bit of an overstatement. The friends list doesn't work, but that's pretty much the only bug I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure someone will point me to some 3 page buglist somewhere, but I haven't noticed anything but the friend's list, so the other "bugs" seem pretty irrelevant to me.
Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Irritating: This may be true, but you can always just stick it in offline mode and forget about it.
As for why Valve continues to use it. Just look at the content updates of the last week or two for that answer. Official maps released, bugs fixed, SDK updated, community informed (through the new weekly updates), and users tracked. These are all things that Valve wants to do, and Steam does those things quite well.
I have no idea how you're post was modded +4 insightful (especially with your second to last sentence being anything but on topic).
Steam isn't perfect for all users, but it serves its purpose. If you don't like it go into offline mode and never come back, otherwise boycott Valve games...
Instead, I suggest trying to kill him with a massive dose of radiation.
If Stan Lee and his ilk have taught us anything it's that radiation doesn't kill you, it just gives you super powers. So unless Marvel Enterprises wants a super powerful 82 year old on their asses, I think paying up is their only option..
I doubt the little CPU in the iPod is robust enough to provide any kind of voice recognition support. Not to mention those little mic accessories aren't exactly Hi-Fi, they're just unpowered microphones IIRC. Besides, this won't be the smallest software sweet, and I'm definitely not willing to give up a couple hundered mb's of space on my DAP just to look like a fool yelling at it belligerently...
The way I see it one of two things needs to happen before this becomes truely feasible:
1) Voice recognition software needs to become much more effiecient.
-or-
2) The low power\ultra compact CPU's in DAP's need get significantly more powerful..
This kind of tech is a little too CPU intensive for a normal Digital Audio Player CPU (some of them can't even keep up with Vorbis) so I don't think there's much of a chance this will make it into any kind of portable player, which is a pity. There are plenty of situations (at the gym, biking, canoeing) in which this could be useful.. provided it works, of course.
Not a big loss, I guess, voice recognition software has always been a little sketchy (although I'm sure it's improved since my first experiences with it) and I doubt this will be all that usable in a convertable or even a sedan with numerous open windows. Nice idea, but I don't see it being any kind of revolutionary success..
Hate to burst your bubble, but the "fanbase" you've seen on their forums is mostly 12-17 year olds and the only "CS" they know is, well, Counter-Strike..
The only video game AI that I can remember meeting the formal definition were the pets in Black and White. Not that there's anything wrong with that, devs shouldn't waste their time producing a fully cognitive being simply to play CS (hell, I barely think while I blast away, why should the bots bother?)
I hate posting a "me too" but in this case, I can't resist. That game was the pinnacle of adventure gaming, and one of my favourite games of all time. It was pure genius..
Yeah, you have to use either RMM or RMM Lite (a java based app, transfers and controls the Karma over the Ethernet port in the dock) to transfer/edit files. Also, if you want to transfer non-music files you have to use "Rio Taxi". Not much experience with it (since my Karma is full) so I have no idea how well it works.
MSC support *was* promised in a future firmware update, but apparently making sure all of the RioDJ features work properly is taking some time (or it's been dropped, who knows).
I like Rio Music Manager, though. It's a very stable app, doesn't run anything in the background (ala iTunes), and in general doesn't do anything I don't want it to do. It's not the huge "Buy Music/Sort Music/Play Music/Play Movies" mess that iTunes is (I hate large programs:\ )...
Hope that's helpful, more information on the Rio players can be found at Riovolution (forums are useful, read/post on them before buying any DAP).
There's a similar community for the iRiver (descent little player, MSC compliant) somewhere, but I seem to have lost it. Perhaps google can help you.
Couldn't help but notice your use of "sleek" in each of your little points. Sleekness is all the iPod has going for it, IMHO.
1) Poor battery life 2) Poor format support (Vorbis? FLAC?) 3) Poor playback (no EQ, no Gapless playback) 4) Poor feature set (No FM, no voice recorder, nothing that sets it apart features-whys) 5) Still more expensive than most other players
It's a fine player for your average music listener, but it's hardly the geeky plaything a DAP can (and IM(Geeky)O should:) ) be.
The iPod puts out fairly accurate low end when its hooked up to a stereo.
Yeah, but he was complaining about the iPod not having the power to drive his headphones, not his stereo (in which case it would be docked). Many an audiophile would agree that those preset "equalizer" settings aren't nearly precise enough to properly drive a larger set of Cans..
In fact, here's a graph that shows the problems that low impedance headphones can have when driven by an iPod (or similar DAP, in this case the iPod was used). Many DAPs have this "problem" and it can be remedied (to my ears at least) with a real parametric EQ...
I've managed to rip my entire (along with a few samplings from buddies, but don't tell the RIAA) music collection of about 300ish albums. It's much less time consuming than you apparently think.
Cdex or EAC are the two apps I'm most familiar with (stay away from MusicMatch, it's bloated beyond belief) and I'm sure someone else can offer even more options. Both of these programs will rip/encode (into FLAC, LAME MP3, or Ogg Vorbis)/tag in a single click of the mouse. As long as you've got a web connection they'll look up the tag information via CDDB and even set up your ripped files into a directory structure (artist/album/ or year/artist/album or... well.. pretty much anything) to keep all those MP3's organized. Heck, even if that fails there are programs like The Godfather that can help you mass edit and identify those tags you forgot to get the first time..
I don't know if it's any harder to transfer these files to an iPod than the AAC's you get off iTunes, but I haven't heard any complaints about it so I'm sure it's intuitive enough. Personally, I prefer my Rio Karma for its vorbis/flac support as well as gapless playback (even on MP3's, which don't natively support gapless playback).
Heck, most players (not my Karma, but I digress) are recognized as external USB hard drives (via MSC, so they should even work on Linux) nowadays. All you have to do is drag and drop your MP3's onto the disk (possibly a specific directory, but still no big deal).
Anyway, I'm rambling.. Bottom line is, ripping your CD collection is terribly easy, and with hard drive prices what they are, you really have no reason NOT to back up your collection (FLAC is best for archiving purposes, once again keeping in mind that storage is dirt cheap these days).
Even if Kazaa is shut down by these new laws (or some others already on the books or in the queue*) will it really affect P2P traffic?
Personally, I don't even use Kazaa anymore; it's so overrun with half downloaded songs and mislabeled files that it's nearly useless and better alternatives are already in place to grab the standard should/when Kazaa fall(s). In fact, cleaning out the dregs that the Kazaa network has become will only increase the efficiency of the P2P machine.
Sites like Suprnova and Shareconnector verify the content before providing links to the torrent or donkey file, eliminating the possiblity of a mislabeled or otherwise misleading file. Sure, the speed can be slightly slower, but faster alternatives (Bearshare, Ares) are also available for the speed freaks. And unlike Kazaa, these newer apps are willing to share networks, rather than trying to corner the market.
Napster showed us that killing a single app (even one as prevalent as Napster was) hardly interferes with the P2P machine, I don't think any legislation will manage to slow it down.
If the software is indeed totally unusable or any kind of serious hindrance, then it won't last. Sure, games like HL 2 and Doom 4 will sucker gamers into buying them regardless of the distribution methods used, but games that aren't sequels to classics won't have this luxury.
Ultimately, the consumer will decide whether these systems fail or succeed, and because of this Developers (or Publishers) will have to ensure that the consumer is satisfied with their online distribution (or, as you put it, Steam-esque system). Besides, this isn't exactly a cheap system to implement. Valve spends loads of cash on bandwidth for Steam, and many titles simply can't afford the kind of infrastructure this kind of system requires.
In the end I don't think these systems will impede my enjoyment of games, and if it does get out of hand.. well.. Agh, time to play pirate!
Oh, and it won't take some bug-ridden piece of spyware to keep me away from DNF:P
An excellent point. Valve doesn't have to provide us with a multiplayer network, and many devs drop support a few years after the game has been released.
Look at the Myth series, bungie.net was taken down a short while after Microsoft bought bungie. Sure, a couple third party networks have sprung up in the community (Marius Net and Play Myth) but the game is not longer officially supported and thus the communities no longer grow.
Valve could have left HL 1 for dead after 6 years of support, and I don't think gamers could argue they had no right to do so. Ultimately, the HLDS system costs valve money, no way to force them to keep paying it well after the game has passed its prime..
Download the game from steam and I'm willing to bet your problem will be fixed. The only people that I've found to have the bug you're talking about purchased it at retail.
I heard tell of some kind of diagnostic tool, I think it's been released. Try running that or redownloading the game. If that fails, call VU, as the problem has to do with their copies of the game, not the ones Valve has distributed over Steam.
I think the main problem right now is that people aren't having the "same" stuttering bug. I'm willing to bet that your bug is less minor than the one fixed with the patch (this bug made the game nearly unplayable, everytime a sound played there'd be a 1-2 second pause).
I couldn't agree more. The reason I can't make the switch to Firefox is that it feels so much more sluggish than Opera. I don't have any speed tests to prove what I "feel" but after a half year or so of using Opera, I can't stand to lose it's responsiveness (same goes for the newer versions of IE, way too slow feeling).
I've got nothing against Firefox, but Opera's responsiveness is worth the money to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Steam is heavily bugged, easily overcome, and irritating.
Heavily bugged: That's a bit of an overstatement. The friends list doesn't work, but that's pretty much the only bug I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure someone will point me to some 3 page buglist somewhere, but I haven't noticed anything but the friend's list, so the other "bugs" seem pretty irrelevant to me.
Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Irritating: This may be true, but you can always just stick it in offline mode and forget about it.
As for why Valve continues to use it. Just look at the content updates of the last week or two for that answer. Official maps released, bugs fixed, SDK updated, community informed (through the new weekly updates), and users tracked. These are all things that Valve wants to do, and Steam does those things quite well.
I have no idea how you're post was modded +4 insightful (especially with your second to last sentence being anything but on topic).
Steam isn't perfect for all users, but it serves its purpose. If you don't like it go into offline mode and never come back, otherwise boycott Valve games...
Here is a mirror for the trailers, so you can avoid the lines and registration of Fileplanet. No torrent, sorry.
Haven't found a torrent of the beta, either. Hopefully someone can dredge one up.
Instead, I suggest trying to kill him with a massive dose of radiation.
If Stan Lee and his ilk have taught us anything it's that radiation doesn't kill you, it just gives you super powers. So unless Marvel Enterprises wants a super powerful 82 year old on their asses, I think paying up is their only option..
I doubt the little CPU in the iPod is robust enough to provide any kind of voice recognition support. Not to mention those little mic accessories aren't exactly Hi-Fi, they're just unpowered microphones IIRC. Besides, this won't be the smallest software sweet, and I'm definitely not willing to give up a couple hundered mb's of space on my DAP just to look like a fool yelling at it belligerently...
The way I see it one of two things needs to happen before this becomes truely feasible:
1) Voice recognition software needs to become much more effiecient.
-or-
2) The low power\ultra compact CPU's in DAP's need get significantly more powerful..
This kind of tech is a little too CPU intensive for a normal Digital Audio Player CPU (some of them can't even keep up with Vorbis) so I don't think there's much of a chance this will make it into any kind of portable player, which is a pity. There are plenty of situations (at the gym, biking, canoeing) in which this could be useful.. provided it works, of course.
Not a big loss, I guess, voice recognition software has always been a little sketchy (although I'm sure it's improved since my first experiences with it) and I doubt this will be all that usable in a convertable or even a sedan with numerous open windows. Nice idea, but I don't see it being any kind of revolutionary success..
Hate to burst your bubble, but the "fanbase" you've seen on their forums is mostly 12-17 year olds and the only "CS" they know is, well, Counter-Strike..
The only video game AI that I can remember meeting the formal definition were the pets in Black and White. Not that there's anything wrong with that, devs shouldn't waste their time producing a fully cognitive being simply to play CS (hell, I barely think while I blast away, why should the bots bother?)
I hate posting a "me too" but in this case, I can't resist. That game was the pinnacle of adventure gaming, and one of my favourite games of all time. It was pure genius..
Yeah, you have to use either RMM or RMM Lite (a java based app, transfers and controls the Karma over the Ethernet port in the dock) to transfer/edit files. Also, if you want to transfer non-music files you have to use "Rio Taxi". Not much experience with it (since my Karma is full) so I have no idea how well it works.
:\ )...
MSC support *was* promised in a future firmware update, but apparently making sure all of the RioDJ features work properly is taking some time (or it's been dropped, who knows).
I like Rio Music Manager, though. It's a very stable app, doesn't run anything in the background (ala iTunes), and in general doesn't do anything I don't want it to do. It's not the huge "Buy Music/Sort Music/Play Music/Play Movies" mess that iTunes is (I hate large programs
Hope that's helpful, more information on the Rio players can be found at Riovolution (forums are useful, read/post on them before buying any DAP).
There's a similar community for the iRiver (descent little player, MSC compliant) somewhere, but I seem to have lost it. Perhaps google can help you.
Couldn't help but notice your use of "sleek" in each of your little points. Sleekness is all the iPod has going for it, IMHO.
:) ) be.
1) Poor battery life
2) Poor format support (Vorbis? FLAC?)
3) Poor playback (no EQ, no Gapless playback)
4) Poor feature set (No FM, no voice recorder, nothing that sets it apart features-whys)
5) Still more expensive than most other players
It's a fine player for your average music listener, but it's hardly the geeky plaything a DAP can (and IM(Geeky)O should
The iPod puts out fairly accurate low end when its hooked up to a stereo.
Yeah, but he was complaining about the iPod not having the power to drive his headphones, not his stereo (in which case it would be docked). Many an audiophile would agree that those preset "equalizer" settings aren't nearly precise enough to properly drive a larger set of Cans..
In fact, here's a graph that shows the problems that low impedance headphones can have when driven by an iPod (or similar DAP, in this case the iPod was used). Many DAPs have this "problem" and it can be remedied (to my ears at least) with a real parametric EQ...
Rip Vinyl works well for encoding vinyl, helps insert track breaks and things like that. Very simple program.
I've managed to rip my entire (along with a few samplings from buddies, but don't tell the RIAA) music collection of about 300ish albums. It's much less time consuming than you apparently think.
... well.. pretty much anything) to keep all those MP3's organized. Heck, even if that fails there are programs like The Godfather that can help you mass edit and identify those tags you forgot to get the first time..
Cdex or EAC are the two apps I'm most familiar with (stay away from MusicMatch, it's bloated beyond belief) and I'm sure someone else can offer even more options. Both of these programs will rip/encode (into FLAC, LAME MP3, or Ogg Vorbis)/tag in a single click of the mouse. As long as you've got a web connection they'll look up the tag information via CDDB and even set up your ripped files into a directory structure (artist/album/ or year/artist/album or
I don't know if it's any harder to transfer these files to an iPod than the AAC's you get off iTunes, but I haven't heard any complaints about it so I'm sure it's intuitive enough. Personally, I prefer my Rio Karma for its vorbis/flac support as well as gapless playback (even on MP3's, which don't natively support gapless playback).
Heck, most players (not my Karma, but I digress) are recognized as external USB hard drives (via MSC, so they should even work on Linux) nowadays. All you have to do is drag and drop your MP3's onto the disk (possibly a specific directory, but still no big deal).
Anyway, I'm rambling.. Bottom line is, ripping your CD collection is terribly easy, and with hard drive prices what they are, you really have no reason NOT to back up your collection (FLAC is best for archiving purposes, once again keeping in mind that storage is dirt cheap these days).
I thought satan kept the lands outside America warm all year round?! This is most confusing news..
Canawah!?
Even if Kazaa is shut down by these new laws (or some others already on the books or in the queue*) will it really affect P2P traffic?
Personally, I don't even use Kazaa anymore; it's so overrun with half downloaded songs and mislabeled files that it's nearly useless and better alternatives are already in place to grab the standard should/when Kazaa fall(s). In fact, cleaning out the dregs that the Kazaa network has become will only increase the efficiency of the P2P machine.
Sites like Suprnova and Shareconnector verify the content before providing links to the torrent or donkey file, eliminating the possiblity of a mislabeled or otherwise misleading file. Sure, the speed can be slightly slower, but faster alternatives (Bearshare, Ares) are also available for the speed freaks. And unlike Kazaa, these newer apps are willing to share networks, rather than trying to corner the market.
Napster showed us that killing a single app (even one as prevalent as Napster was) hardly interferes with the P2P machine, I don't think any legislation will manage to slow it down.
* denotes bad P2P joke
Let's see if the same tactics work for my karma:
/cross fingers
I proclaim that by the year 2010 Linux servers will reach $42 billion!
Mod parent "-1, Failed Calculus"
The average rate of growth is not 1/0, dude, it's 100,000/(time from launch)
"43,000 video game 'cartridges'" does seem like an awful lot though.
And you call yourself a nerd...
Get out of slashdot! You do not belong here!
Well.. I guess you can stay... but be more forgiving of nerdly excess.
If the software is indeed totally unusable or any kind of serious hindrance, then it won't last. Sure, games like HL 2 and Doom 4 will sucker gamers into buying them regardless of the distribution methods used, but games that aren't sequels to classics won't have this luxury.
:P
Ultimately, the consumer will decide whether these systems fail or succeed, and because of this Developers (or Publishers) will have to ensure that the consumer is satisfied with their online distribution (or, as you put it, Steam-esque system). Besides, this isn't exactly a cheap system to implement. Valve spends loads of cash on bandwidth for Steam, and many titles simply can't afford the kind of infrastructure this kind of system requires.
In the end I don't think these systems will impede my enjoyment of games, and if it does get out of hand.. well.. Agh, time to play pirate!
Oh, and it won't take some bug-ridden piece of spyware to keep me away from DNF
An excellent point. Valve doesn't have to provide us with a multiplayer network, and many devs drop support a few years after the game has been released.
Look at the Myth series, bungie.net was taken down a short while after Microsoft bought bungie. Sure, a couple third party networks have sprung up in the community (Marius Net and Play Myth) but the game is not longer officially supported and thus the communities no longer grow.
Valve could have left HL 1 for dead after 6 years of support, and I don't think gamers could argue they had no right to do so. Ultimately, the HLDS system costs valve money, no way to force them to keep paying it well after the game has passed its prime..
Download the game from steam and I'm willing to bet your problem will be fixed. The only people that I've found to have the bug you're talking about purchased it at retail.
I heard tell of some kind of diagnostic tool, I think it's been released. Try running that or redownloading the game. If that fails, call VU, as the problem has to do with their copies of the game, not the ones Valve has distributed over Steam.
I think the main problem right now is that people aren't having the "same" stuttering bug. I'm willing to bet that your bug is less minor than the one fixed with the patch (this bug made the game nearly unplayable, everytime a sound played there'd be a 1-2 second pause).
You can always turn auto updating off in Steam.
Main Steam Menu=>Play Games=>Right Click Game=>Properties=>Automatic Updates
Seems to me that this kind of thing should be fairly straight forward. I mean, sending millions of e-mails can't exactly be done "quietly" can it?
Why didn't they make silicon based processors? Sand has been around forever..
I couldn't agree more. The reason I can't make the switch to Firefox is that it feels so much more sluggish than Opera. I don't have any speed tests to prove what I "feel" but after a half year or so of using Opera, I can't stand to lose it's responsiveness (same goes for the newer versions of IE, way too slow feeling).
I've got nothing against Firefox, but Opera's responsiveness is worth the money to me.