But they would also make the game more long-term also - you need only look at the myriads of expansions that TA has had - specific AIs for specific maps, myriads of units...
I also don't ever recall something as simple as screen resolution being adjustable in either Starcraft or Warcraft - you're always stuck at 640x480 (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Yes, despite the continual annoyances of crashing servers and obnoxious players, Blizzard has my monthly $15.
Then you are a fool to yourself. Sorry, but the whole idea of paying $15/month for WoW is that whenever you feel like a game, be it at 3am, you can hop onto a server and play. If those servers are crashing, then you are not being provided with the service that you rightfully purchased. You should be *complaining* to Blizzard about it and if they do nothing, then withdraw your subscription until they do.
I don't play WoW but by just sitting and taking it as a passive consumer, you make it bad for everyone else who does complain to tr to get their money's worth...
Agree totally. Starcraft and Warcraft II are fine but, to my knowledge, have never been tweakable by the Internet community to change or add new units - unlike TA which is still being poke, prodded and modded to this day.
Starcraft and Warcraft II are very good, but TA blows them both completely out of the water.
Warcraft II & Starcraft are two of my favourite RTS games, as are Total Annihilation, Red Alert & C&C. And Heroes Of Might & Magic III is also a superb strategy game, albeit turn based.
Unfortunately, Blizzard & Westwood (with 3D0 & Cavedog no longer being in existence) have made the same stupid mistake that just about every RTS company has made - namely switching 2D graphics for 3D ones.
I don't play WoW but I guess the type of game it is makes it appropriate for 3D - however, any strategy element in Warcraft III, C&C Generals and the *totally appalling* Heroes Of Might & Magic 5 has been ruined by having 3D graphics. As a huge fan of all their predecessors, I found each one of those games unplayable from the point of view that in a strategy game that's laid out correctly, I have no need of camera rotations or zoom in & zoom out features. I just want a good mix of balanced, interesting units & a good computer AI rather than pretty explosions & real-time drawn battle-scenes.
As far as I'm concerned, the reason for inclusion of 3D graphics in strategy games is nothing more than a lame excuse to make money - because everything that can possibly be done in gaming has now been done, there is no originality anymore; consequently, the consumer is sold in-game movies and prettier graphics in order to convince them to buy the new, uninspired games.
So let's not all bow down to the "greatness" of Blizzard just yet, shall we? Sure, they've probably made a very good MMORPG game in WoW but if you're not interested in long-term roleplay (or paying a monthly subscription for any game), then they've done nothing inspiring since Starcraft.
Its a bit like me building your house, but using rotten wood for girders and then charging you subscription for the metal RSJ I use to stop the house from falling down.
Ah, I see you've met my brother-in-law, Bob the builder, then?
From the content of your response, I'm going to assume that you're a US citizen. In which case, apart from being incorrect in some of your statements, you're also unaware of the differences between the US & UK electoral systems - since I'm a UK citizen, I'll explain those.
Firstly, corporate lobbying of political parties is (in my understanding of the US system) far more open and less restrictive than it is in the UK. Here there are very specific laws that cover just how much "sponsorship" a political party gets from external sources during election campaigns and our news has been rife over the amount of "sleaze" going on here with politicians taking back-handers - I'm not aware of such in the US. Besides which, whilst I agree a politican who gets a "sponsorship" from, say, the automotive industry is not going to be too keen voting for legislation limiting vehicle fuel emissions, the fact is that the politician had to get into the "house" in the first place to do that - and it's just votes that achieve that.
Secondly, DRM is a "nice" issue for the UK government to get it's teeth into in order to win some votes. Unlike pumping money into the National Health Service, say, it costs no money and is not going to alienate the well-to-do (who have private health cover & prefer tax cuts) against the less wealthy (who want free health care). DRM is *JUST* about corporations vs. the populace, nothing more. Sure, older people and the majority of the population won't actually care about DRM but the teenagers (= future voters) who download their music (fools!) will care about this issue. So, a government that has less dependancy on corporate sponsorship (and probably NO dependency from the music industry) will see this as an easy win for some valuable votes.
Thirdly, keep the population with lots of disposable income in their pockets and they will let you go do what you like & most of them won't even turn up to the polling stations on election day. However, hit them in their pockets and they'll start to complain and maybe even get you kicked out - after all, it was the "unfair" Poll Tax imposed by Margaret Thatcher that ended her political career.
So whilst I have a cynical viewpoint of politicians and their motives, in this instance it makes *perfect sense* (at least here in the UK) for them to side against DRM - sure, my government is still wasting billions of tax pounds in badly-managed civil expenditure & sending British soldiers to die for the sake of the oil companies, which is why they probably won't get my vote at the next election. But at least on the DRM issue, we both seem to agree.
It all boils down to the mindless consumer cattle-herd flocking to buy the latest gimmick, gadget, CD or movie that has been over-hyped and over-marketed at them. Until these same people get minds of their own & realise that a "thing" you buy has absolutely nothing to do with your own credibility in the eyes of others, then they won't stop throwing good money at bad corporations for crap products.
I love living in a capitalist society where I can spend my hard-earned money on things I like - but I do my research and spend that money carefully and do not consider any one of my possessions as being vital to my existence.
I think you are hinting that I'm perhaps being elitist or snobbish about being an experienced Linux user - but I can definitely assure you I'm not. I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer working in a telecomms company as a support engineer where a large percentage of our products run on Linux - as you can imagine, I'm considered the Linux geek here and I'm constantly being asked questions from people to the point where I've written and presented Linux training material to those people. I enjoy helping people who have Linux questions, even to the point of staying after work to help them build their own Linux machines.
The Linux community, in my experience, is of a similar mindset. Sure, there's zealots there and a few elitist snobs, but the point I'm trying to make is that you won't get "easy to use" software just falling into your lap - if you think a piece of software isn't as easy to use as you want it to be, or you feel it needs an additional feature, then you need to contact the programming team and tell them that - it's not like commercial software where software is designed to sell in as much volume as possible so has to be appealing to as wide a range of potential users as possible.
In some respects, this can actually be detrimental to new users because a coder doing a job just for the love of it is not going to put other users first when it comes to designing interfaces that are easy to use but instead focus on his/her own vision about how that piece of software should look & function. It's perhaps only when that programmer realises the popularity of his/her program that he/she may well consider what those other users want. So Open Source is ALL about communication and asking for what you want.
Personally, I really don't care whether or not Linux is designed for Joe Average or not. I certainly prefer to use a distro that I can run very minimally and cleanly (Gentoo Linux) and I stay away from KDE and Gnome which, in my view, suffer from bloat. However, if those GUIs appeal to new users then I say, great, let them get on with it - me, I use XFCE4 and just install the apps I actually use on top of it but that's the beauty of Linux - use it the way you want...
But I'm certainly not here to make political statements. Yes, I feel each hour spent on Linux is far more productive than each one spent on Windows - but at the same time, if my teenage niece (sorry, I've no kids) comes to me and asks me to fix her Windows PC, I'm not going to lecture her on Open Source and force her to use Linux.
The crux of my argument is that with Linux, you need to know how to help yourself first in terms of knowing who to go to and where to go to for answers - that's all.
Incidentally, you do yourself a big dis-service by thinking your technical skills are plateaued at the age of 51. I'm 44 years old and still learning every day and enjoying it - I'm not aware of any drop in mental ability with increasing age (aside from a dementia disease), if anything, my mental ability has improved because my concentration is much better and I'm more able to filter out dross information from what I really want to know. Sure, we're both of an age where employers are going to no doubt suffer from ageism towards both of us but I've vowed to myself that if I ever leave my current job (which I thoroughly enjoy anyway), I'll just go work for myself. So you're wrong thinking that way...
The original Half-Life was unquestionably one of the best PC games ever made - and with the number of fan-made mods, Counterstrike, etc. it also represents just about the best value for money that can be bought in any game also. I've sat down and replayed the original game & the two expansions several times now.
Half-Life 2 may well have exceeded the original but I have yet to find out as I've never been near it, not even a hacked copy. Why? Because of Steam.
If Google want to offer me a free Search Bar that gives me the option of running in a basic mode or advanced mode where my surfing habits are tracked, that's fine - they've given me something for nothing and the choice to be tracked or not. If another software company wants to offer me some free software on condition I look at some advertisements, that's fine also - I won't install the software but they've been good enough to warn me first, which I appreciate.
Steam, in my experience, is different. Maybe it's changed now but when I tried it a few years ago against Half-Life (1) and Counterstrike as (what I then thought was) a piece of software for getting easy updates to both games, I found it far too intrusive - plus I heard lots of stories about what that piece of software was sending back about my machine to Valve. In the end, I got rid of it and stuck with manual updates.
Sorry, I don't care how good a game is - if I don't trust what that game producer is doing "behind my back", I won't buy it, it's that simple; in just the same way as I won't buy any DRMed CD by even my favourite music artists and I won't rent movies that "self destruct" after a single play.
Unfortunately, it all gets back to the "mindless cattle" consumers amongst us who get totally lost in the hype and marketing around products that make it bad for the rest of us - it's those same people who hand over their rights, and mine, to companies who want nothing more than to crowbar more money from us while treating us all as criminals.
I don't mind going into a shop and paying for a game - whether it's on the day of it's release or on a budget label later on.
I'd prefer NOT to have to insert that CD into my PC every time I play that game but then I can probably find a "No CD" crack on the Internet and keep that CD nice, shiny and unscratched in a dark case somewhere so I put up with that.
I'll endure having to have a registration code for a game because if that game's producers have spent some additional money on hosting some game servers for me to play on, that seems a reasonable way of giving the true customers value for money away from those who decided to copy the game.
But I definitely WILL NOT allow any piece of spyware like Steam to do it's dirty little job of ratting it's way through the contents of my PC & pay for the privelige.
As far as I am concerned, Valve can produce the most stunningly inventive game ever invented and offer to pay me to play it - but if it's got Steam as a back-end, I still won't touch it.
If Microsoft are the OS mafia & Sony are the music thugs, then in third place are the Valve triads....
Plus, if you feel like dancing, how about improving your social skills simultaneously and actually *GO OUT OF THE HOUSE* to join a local salsa/line dancing/[insert dance type here] class and meet some interesting people too?
While I have sympathy, to put it in context HP are consolidating two offices only a single motorway junction apart. I'd say it's about ten minutes from junction 11 to junction 10 along the M4, although getting to Bracknell via the A329 does add a few minutes compared to the Reading office being practically on top of its junction.
Yes, but during the morning and evening rush hours, that single junction adds an additional half-hour to the travel time easily.
she'll realise that expecting a multi-national to keep an office open for her isn't really an option
She's not saying that, I'm not even sure that I even implied that in my original posting. The original statment in the article was that telecommuters would produce more work output being office based whereas I demonstrated that, in the case of my other half, she would actually produce less work output by working in the office than at home.
To be honest I find the idea of an "internal consultant" rather scary.
I don't want to say too much about what she does for obvious reasons - she is part of HP's internal IT infrastructure but she's involved in specific applications support rather than general IT day-to-day server/desktop stuff. "Internal consultant" is a general term for what she does rather than divulging her specific job title. (Call me paranoid but what the hell!)
Although I rarely visit UK high street rip-off merchants like HMV & Virgin, I seem to recall them both having clearly signposted "CD" and "DVD" sections in their stores.
Since a DRM'ed disc does not conform to the CD standard, then surely it is against the Trade Descriptions Act in the UK to place those discs in the audio CD section. Therefore, they should be in a clearly marked separate section as "DRM Media".
In a similar fashion, force Internet vendors like Amazon and Play to advertise those discs not in the "Audio CD" part of their web site but in their own area.
There's no such thing - Google for ExactAudioCopy for Windows, it's never failed on me yet and it's free. On Linux, cdparanoia seems to have equal success with protected CDs.
My other half works for HP, within the IT infrastructure, here in the UK and she is fully aware of this new directive coming out of her employer.
In her internal consulting role, she liases with HP people both in Europe and the USA - consequently, she can start work at 7am (for the Europeans) and finish as late as 9pm (for the Americans). No, she doesn't do a 14-hour day everyday but I would say that she averages out about 10 hours per day and she *does* work all of that time - so whilst she's contracted for a 40-hour week, she easily puts in 45-50 hours a week based on the number of days she works from home currently.
Her current office, in Reading, is about 30 minutes drive from our home - she goes in about twice a week, she tends to start for 8am in the morning and aims to finish about 5pm to the gym on her way home. So whilst she does do 8 hours in the office a day, it's generally less hours per day than working from home.
Now consider this. The Reading campus is closing in July and she (and her colleagues) are being moved to the Bracknell campus, about an additional 30 minutes on her travel time from our house. She will not be able to have her own desk because (apparently) HP have a *shortage* of several thousand permanent desks in the UK - so even when she gets to her office, she's no guarantee of getting a desk.
So, in summary, now that she will have to spend two hours in the car daily (as opposed to one hour twice a week), she will make up that additional travel time from the additional hours she put in at home each week because she sees no reason why her personal & entertainment time needs to suffer - consequently, HP get less work out of her.
Yes, I was a newbie once, like everyone else - and if you are also, then I hope that it won't be for very long because, having made the change to Linux, I hope you'll invest some well-spent time learning about how it works - evern if you never become a shell-scripting expert...
However, whilst the Linux community is friendly & very active, it will not come to you - you need to go to it. This is a mindset change totally from the Windows world where everything is done for you (or at least that's how it's sold to you) - automatic updates, automatic hardware detection, etc. etc. That's no criticism either - if that's the way you want it, then so be it.
Unfortunately, if you switch to Linux purely for political reasons, without learning something at the same time, then you're a complete ass - sorry, but software is *just* about getting a job done as quickly as possible and as easily possible, nothing more. I'll freely admit that I do most of my documents, spreadsheets & presentations in MS Office - it's the software that currently gets those jobs done the quickest for me and because of our corporate licensing at work, I don't pay for it. At the same time, I'm using OpenOffice more and more and there may well come a time when that takes over from MS Office completely.
I don't like Microsoft or Gates and Windows is (at least for 20% of my computing time) a necessary evil. But I also have a job to do and a mind to entertain with games so I'm not "cutting off my nose to spite my face" purely through political motivation.
My only two criteria for buying a notebook for Linux (aside from best value for money) is that the manufacturer publishes detailed hardware specifications (so that I can check how to get wireless, video, etc. cards working under Linux before I consider buying it) and that I'm not paying for an unwanted copy of Windows in with the cost (I'm not sure such a thing exists for notebooks).
As it happens, I purchased a HP nx8220 notebook recently that works pretty much as I want it to - it had XP Pro pre-installed but that was okay because I wanted some mobile gaming capability and I dual boot it with Gentoo Linux where just about all the hardware works (with a bit of tweaking).
Personally, the Lenovo issue is minor - Linux is ready for the "desktop" provided you choose your hardware relatively carefully and are prepared to devote some time to configuring it yourself. However, if you're nothing more than a "fad follower", you shouldn't be using Linux, full stop.
People seem to forget the reasons for using Linux - don't go near it if you want fully compatibility with Windows and commercial games-playing & if you've got no need to embrace the true power of an operating system through scripting & programming at the command line, then you should stay away from Linux.
Far too many people today are verbally anti-Microsoft yet are unwilling to turn those words into actions by investing time learning alternative operating systems to become less dependent on Windows.
Anyone who uses Linux for the "cool" factor alone is a fool - Linux is an amazing environment to work in for flexibility and usability provided that you spend time learning how to embrace its power properly.
As a pragmatist, I'll make the statement that perhaps this is actually a good idea (for a change).
Apart from DVDs of entire concerts, I personally have absolutely *NO* interest or regard more music video - if anything, music video and MTV are a *scourge* on popular music in as much as both have allowed talentless artistes to churn out souless, plasticised music and have it sell in its millions purely because of a video that is deemed as controversial - in that case, a music video serves no other purpose than to advertise the music product.
Going on from this, since most videos are short-lived but expensive productions, I'll make the assumption that the cost of making each video is recouped from the cost of each CD - therefore, part of the cost of every CD I buy goes to making music videos I have no interest in seeing & if those videos were not made, then feasibly the cost of each CD could be cheaper. (Yes, I'm fully aware that the **AA and record companies and blood-sucking, price-fixing bottom feeders who would probably never pass this saving onto the consumer anyway but this is just an idea.)
Not only do you pay them to have your viewing constantly interrupted by advertisements but they also fine you for not connecting YOUR box to YOUR phone line.
Just do like I did - get rid of Sky & spend the money you save on the DVDs instead...
with the obvious exception of PC gaming, for which I keep a 'legacy' w2k install and never let it on the network
You sounded like a pretty technical person until you came out with this "snobbish" comment which, to me, makes absoultely no sense whatsoever.
I'm in a similar situation to you except that I use Linux about 80% of the time and keep a Windows XP machine for a little desktop stuff and for gaming. But I have no qualms about putting XP on my network because I keep it updated and don't use Outlook for email on it - likewise, I virus/spyware check it regularly and don't go to those sorts of places on the Internet where I might download a trojan. As a result, the XP box is secure enough for what I need it for and, to my knowledge, has never had a virus on it.
Sure, as a predominantly Linux user with a lot of UNIX/Linux expertise under my belt, I prefer Linux and my computing time on Linux writing scripts, compiling software and generally tweaking & learning is far more productive than on my Windows machine where I spend so much time running virus checkers and installing upgrades. But I don't view the XP machine as being a "threat" to my Linux ones, it's a "necessary evil" to me, nothing more.
I just find it strange that because I read on Slashdot constantly about how secure the BSD Unixes are (I've no reason to doubt those statements either), you would consider a Windows 2000 machine as a threat to a network of them....
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of rich, under-endowed, single males are expected to queue all night just to get hold of one of the things.
Actually, it's called a HARD... High Altitude Rubber Dildo.
So if Santa Clause flies in his sleigh at a similar height, does that make his descents down chimneys "HOHOHOs"?
Inside your head = fantasy Outside your head = reality
James Bond = inside your head
...is a 50' high elastic band catapult to send the merry little winged trooper on his way!
User added units would wreck that balance.
But they would also make the game more long-term also - you need only look at the myriads of expansions that TA has had - specific AIs for specific maps, myriads of units...
I also don't ever recall something as simple as screen resolution being adjustable in either Starcraft or Warcraft - you're always stuck at 640x480 (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Then you are a fool to yourself. Sorry, but the whole idea of paying $15/month for WoW is that whenever you feel like a game, be it at 3am, you can hop onto a server and play. If those servers are crashing, then you are not being provided with the service that you rightfully purchased. You should be *complaining* to Blizzard about it and if they do nothing, then withdraw your subscription until they do.
I don't play WoW but by just sitting and taking it as a passive consumer, you make it bad for everyone else who does complain to tr to get their money's worth...
Starcraft and Warcraft II are very good, but TA blows them both completely out of the water.
Unfortunately, Blizzard & Westwood (with 3D0 & Cavedog no longer being in existence) have made the same stupid mistake that just about every RTS company has made - namely switching 2D graphics for 3D ones.
I don't play WoW but I guess the type of game it is makes it appropriate for 3D - however, any strategy element in Warcraft III, C&C Generals and the *totally appalling* Heroes Of Might & Magic 5 has been ruined by having 3D graphics. As a huge fan of all their predecessors, I found each one of those games unplayable from the point of view that in a strategy game that's laid out correctly, I have no need of camera rotations or zoom in & zoom out features. I just want a good mix of balanced, interesting units & a good computer AI rather than pretty explosions & real-time drawn battle-scenes.
As far as I'm concerned, the reason for inclusion of 3D graphics in strategy games is nothing more than a lame excuse to make money - because everything that can possibly be done in gaming has now been done, there is no originality anymore; consequently, the consumer is sold in-game movies and prettier graphics in order to convince them to buy the new, uninspired games.
So let's not all bow down to the "greatness" of Blizzard just yet, shall we? Sure, they've probably made a very good MMORPG game in WoW but if you're not interested in long-term roleplay (or paying a monthly subscription for any game), then they've done nothing inspiring since Starcraft.
Ah, I see you've met my brother-in-law, Bob the builder, then?
Firstly, corporate lobbying of political parties is (in my understanding of the US system) far more open and less restrictive than it is in the UK. Here there are very specific laws that cover just how much "sponsorship" a political party gets from external sources during election campaigns and our news has been rife over the amount of "sleaze" going on here with politicians taking back-handers - I'm not aware of such in the US. Besides which, whilst I agree a politican who gets a "sponsorship" from, say, the automotive industry is not going to be too keen voting for legislation limiting vehicle fuel emissions, the fact is that the politician had to get into the "house" in the first place to do that - and it's just votes that achieve that.
Secondly, DRM is a "nice" issue for the UK government to get it's teeth into in order to win some votes. Unlike pumping money into the National Health Service, say, it costs no money and is not going to alienate the well-to-do (who have private health cover & prefer tax cuts) against the less wealthy (who want free health care). DRM is *JUST* about corporations vs. the populace, nothing more. Sure, older people and the majority of the population won't actually care about DRM but the teenagers (= future voters) who download their music (fools!) will care about this issue. So, a government that has less dependancy on corporate sponsorship (and probably NO dependency from the music industry) will see this as an easy win for some valuable votes.
Thirdly, keep the population with lots of disposable income in their pockets and they will let you go do what you like & most of them won't even turn up to the polling stations on election day. However, hit them in their pockets and they'll start to complain and maybe even get you kicked out - after all, it was the "unfair" Poll Tax imposed by Margaret Thatcher that ended her political career.
So whilst I have a cynical viewpoint of politicians and their motives, in this instance it makes *perfect sense* (at least here in the UK) for them to side against DRM - sure, my government is still wasting billions of tax pounds in badly-managed civil expenditure & sending British soldiers to die for the sake of the oil companies, which is why they probably won't get my vote at the next election. But at least on the DRM issue, we both seem to agree.
I love living in a capitalist society where I can spend my hard-earned money on things I like - but I do my research and spend that money carefully and do not consider any one of my possessions as being vital to my existence.
I think you are hinting that I'm perhaps being elitist or snobbish about being an experienced Linux user - but I can definitely assure you I'm not. I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer working in a telecomms company as a support engineer where a large percentage of our products run on Linux - as you can imagine, I'm considered the Linux geek here and I'm constantly being asked questions from people to the point where I've written and presented Linux training material to those people. I enjoy helping people who have Linux questions, even to the point of staying after work to help them build their own Linux machines. The Linux community, in my experience, is of a similar mindset. Sure, there's zealots there and a few elitist snobs, but the point I'm trying to make is that you won't get "easy to use" software just falling into your lap - if you think a piece of software isn't as easy to use as you want it to be, or you feel it needs an additional feature, then you need to contact the programming team and tell them that - it's not like commercial software where software is designed to sell in as much volume as possible so has to be appealing to as wide a range of potential users as possible. In some respects, this can actually be detrimental to new users because a coder doing a job just for the love of it is not going to put other users first when it comes to designing interfaces that are easy to use but instead focus on his/her own vision about how that piece of software should look & function. It's perhaps only when that programmer realises the popularity of his/her program that he/she may well consider what those other users want. So Open Source is ALL about communication and asking for what you want. Personally, I really don't care whether or not Linux is designed for Joe Average or not. I certainly prefer to use a distro that I can run very minimally and cleanly (Gentoo Linux) and I stay away from KDE and Gnome which, in my view, suffer from bloat. However, if those GUIs appeal to new users then I say, great, let them get on with it - me, I use XFCE4 and just install the apps I actually use on top of it but that's the beauty of Linux - use it the way you want... But I'm certainly not here to make political statements. Yes, I feel each hour spent on Linux is far more productive than each one spent on Windows - but at the same time, if my teenage niece (sorry, I've no kids) comes to me and asks me to fix her Windows PC, I'm not going to lecture her on Open Source and force her to use Linux. The crux of my argument is that with Linux, you need to know how to help yourself first in terms of knowing who to go to and where to go to for answers - that's all. Incidentally, you do yourself a big dis-service by thinking your technical skills are plateaued at the age of 51. I'm 44 years old and still learning every day and enjoying it - I'm not aware of any drop in mental ability with increasing age (aside from a dementia disease), if anything, my mental ability has improved because my concentration is much better and I'm more able to filter out dross information from what I really want to know. Sure, we're both of an age where employers are going to no doubt suffer from ageism towards both of us but I've vowed to myself that if I ever leave my current job (which I thoroughly enjoy anyway), I'll just go work for myself. So you're wrong thinking that way...
Half-Life 2 may well have exceeded the original but I have yet to find out as I've never been near it, not even a hacked copy. Why? Because of Steam.
If Google want to offer me a free Search Bar that gives me the option of running in a basic mode or advanced mode where my surfing habits are tracked, that's fine - they've given me something for nothing and the choice to be tracked or not. If another software company wants to offer me some free software on condition I look at some advertisements, that's fine also - I won't install the software but they've been good enough to warn me first, which I appreciate.
Steam, in my experience, is different. Maybe it's changed now but when I tried it a few years ago against Half-Life (1) and Counterstrike as (what I then thought was) a piece of software for getting easy updates to both games, I found it far too intrusive - plus I heard lots of stories about what that piece of software was sending back about my machine to Valve. In the end, I got rid of it and stuck with manual updates.
Sorry, I don't care how good a game is - if I don't trust what that game producer is doing "behind my back", I won't buy it, it's that simple; in just the same way as I won't buy any DRMed CD by even my favourite music artists and I won't rent movies that "self destruct" after a single play.
Unfortunately, it all gets back to the "mindless cattle" consumers amongst us who get totally lost in the hype and marketing around products that make it bad for the rest of us - it's those same people who hand over their rights, and mine, to companies who want nothing more than to crowbar more money from us while treating us all as criminals.
I don't mind going into a shop and paying for a game - whether it's on the day of it's release or on a budget label later on.
I'd prefer NOT to have to insert that CD into my PC every time I play that game but then I can probably find a "No CD" crack on the Internet and keep that CD nice, shiny and unscratched in a dark case somewhere so I put up with that.
I'll endure having to have a registration code for a game because if that game's producers have spent some additional money on hosting some game servers for me to play on, that seems a reasonable way of giving the true customers value for money away from those who decided to copy the game.
But I definitely WILL NOT allow any piece of spyware like Steam to do it's dirty little job of ratting it's way through the contents of my PC & pay for the privelige.
As far as I am concerned, Valve can produce the most stunningly inventive game ever invented and offer to pay me to play it - but if it's got Steam as a back-end, I still won't touch it.
If Microsoft are the OS mafia & Sony are the music thugs, then in third place are the Valve triads....
Plus, if you feel like dancing, how about improving your social skills simultaneously and actually *GO OUT OF THE HOUSE* to join a local salsa/line dancing/[insert dance type here] class and meet some interesting people too?
Well then perhaps those same artists would spend their money more wisely by improving the quality of their *audio* rather than *visual* output...
Yes, but during the morning and evening rush hours, that single junction adds an additional half-hour to the travel time easily.
she'll realise that expecting a multi-national to keep an office open for her isn't really an option
She's not saying that, I'm not even sure that I even implied that in my original posting. The original statment in the article was that telecommuters would produce more work output being office based whereas I demonstrated that, in the case of my other half, she would actually produce less work output by working in the office than at home.
To be honest I find the idea of an "internal consultant" rather scary.
I don't want to say too much about what she does for obvious reasons - she is part of HP's internal IT infrastructure but she's involved in specific applications support rather than general IT day-to-day server/desktop stuff. "Internal consultant" is a general term for what she does rather than divulging her specific job title. (Call me paranoid but what the hell!)
Since a DRM'ed disc does not conform to the CD standard, then surely it is against the Trade Descriptions Act in the UK to place those discs in the audio CD section. Therefore, they should be in a clearly marked separate section as "DRM Media".
In a similar fashion, force Internet vendors like Amazon and Play to advertise those discs not in the "Audio CD" part of their web site but in their own area.
There's no such thing - Google for ExactAudioCopy for Windows, it's never failed on me yet and it's free. On Linux, cdparanoia seems to have equal success with protected CDs.
In her internal consulting role, she liases with HP people both in Europe and the USA - consequently, she can start work at 7am (for the Europeans) and finish as late as 9pm (for the Americans). No, she doesn't do a 14-hour day everyday but I would say that she averages out about 10 hours per day and she *does* work all of that time - so whilst she's contracted for a 40-hour week, she easily puts in 45-50 hours a week based on the number of days she works from home currently.
Her current office, in Reading, is about 30 minutes drive from our home - she goes in about twice a week, she tends to start for 8am in the morning and aims to finish about 5pm to the gym on her way home. So whilst she does do 8 hours in the office a day, it's generally less hours per day than working from home.
Now consider this. The Reading campus is closing in July and she (and her colleagues) are being moved to the Bracknell campus, about an additional 30 minutes on her travel time from our house. She will not be able to have her own desk because (apparently) HP have a *shortage* of several thousand permanent desks in the UK - so even when she gets to her office, she's no guarantee of getting a desk.
So, in summary, now that she will have to spend two hours in the car daily (as opposed to one hour twice a week), she will make up that additional travel time from the additional hours she put in at home each week because she sees no reason why her personal & entertainment time needs to suffer - consequently, HP get less work out of her.
Yes, I was a newbie once, like everyone else - and if you are also, then I hope that it won't be for very long because, having made the change to Linux, I hope you'll invest some well-spent time learning about how it works - evern if you never become a shell-scripting expert...
However, whilst the Linux community is friendly & very active, it will not come to you - you need to go to it. This is a mindset change totally from the Windows world where everything is done for you (or at least that's how it's sold to you) - automatic updates, automatic hardware detection, etc. etc. That's no criticism either - if that's the way you want it, then so be it.
Unfortunately, if you switch to Linux purely for political reasons, without learning something at the same time, then you're a complete ass - sorry, but software is *just* about getting a job done as quickly as possible and as easily possible, nothing more. I'll freely admit that I do most of my documents, spreadsheets & presentations in MS Office - it's the software that currently gets those jobs done the quickest for me and because of our corporate licensing at work, I don't pay for it. At the same time, I'm using OpenOffice more and more and there may well come a time when that takes over from MS Office completely.
I don't like Microsoft or Gates and Windows is (at least for 20% of my computing time) a necessary evil. But I also have a job to do and a mind to entertain with games so I'm not "cutting off my nose to spite my face" purely through political motivation.
As it happens, I purchased a HP nx8220 notebook recently that works pretty much as I want it to - it had XP Pro pre-installed but that was okay because I wanted some mobile gaming capability and I dual boot it with Gentoo Linux where just about all the hardware works (with a bit of tweaking).
Personally, the Lenovo issue is minor - Linux is ready for the "desktop" provided you choose your hardware relatively carefully and are prepared to devote some time to configuring it yourself. However, if you're nothing more than a "fad follower", you shouldn't be using Linux, full stop.
People seem to forget the reasons for using Linux - don't go near it if you want fully compatibility with Windows and commercial games-playing & if you've got no need to embrace the true power of an operating system through scripting & programming at the command line, then you should stay away from Linux.
Far too many people today are verbally anti-Microsoft yet are unwilling to turn those words into actions by investing time learning alternative operating systems to become less dependent on Windows.
Anyone who uses Linux for the "cool" factor alone is a fool - Linux is an amazing environment to work in for flexibility and usability provided that you spend time learning how to embrace its power properly.
Apart from DVDs of entire concerts, I personally have absolutely *NO* interest or regard more music video - if anything, music video and MTV are a *scourge* on popular music in as much as both have allowed talentless artistes to churn out souless, plasticised music and have it sell in its millions purely because of a video that is deemed as controversial - in that case, a music video serves no other purpose than to advertise the music product.
Going on from this, since most videos are short-lived but expensive productions, I'll make the assumption that the cost of making each video is recouped from the cost of each CD - therefore, part of the cost of every CD I buy goes to making music videos I have no interest in seeing & if those videos were not made, then feasibly the cost of each CD could be cheaper. (Yes, I'm fully aware that the **AA and record companies and blood-sucking, price-fixing bottom feeders who would probably never pass this saving onto the consumer anyway but this is just an idea.)
Not only do you pay them to have your viewing constantly interrupted by advertisements but they also fine you for not connecting YOUR box to YOUR phone line.
Just do like I did - get rid of Sky & spend the money you save on the DVDs instead...
You sounded like a pretty technical person until you came out with this "snobbish" comment which, to me, makes absoultely no sense whatsoever.
I'm in a similar situation to you except that I use Linux about 80% of the time and keep a Windows XP machine for a little desktop stuff and for gaming. But I have no qualms about putting XP on my network because I keep it updated and don't use Outlook for email on it - likewise, I virus/spyware check it regularly and don't go to those sorts of places on the Internet where I might download a trojan. As a result, the XP box is secure enough for what I need it for and, to my knowledge, has never had a virus on it.
Sure, as a predominantly Linux user with a lot of UNIX/Linux expertise under my belt, I prefer Linux and my computing time on Linux writing scripts, compiling software and generally tweaking & learning is far more productive than on my Windows machine where I spend so much time running virus checkers and installing upgrades. But I don't view the XP machine as being a "threat" to my Linux ones, it's a "necessary evil" to me, nothing more.
I just find it strange that because I read on Slashdot constantly about how secure the BSD Unixes are (I've no reason to doubt those statements either), you would consider a Windows 2000 machine as a threat to a network of them....