You could always freeze yourself until the DRM is gone. Just make sure some asshole doesn't forget to unfreeze you and send you 500 years into the future.
Of course, you could then use your prank phone to dial people in the past and accidentally change the future.
One of the things that I like about Steam is access to the marketplace. There's tons of good stuff on there relatively cheap. Older titles that I never got around to playing... Independent titles I've never heard of... For $5 or $10... And then there's weekly sales that drop the price of more expensive/current games down into the $10-$20 range... And sometimes there'll be a "free weekend" where you can try out some new game for a couple days without paying a cent.
Basically, Steam is the PC version of the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network.
Rumor has is that Activision Blizzard is getting jealous of this and plans to license their new version of Battle.Net (set to launch with StarCraft II) to third parties. Who knows, maybe they'll be successfull, but Steam is entering the Mac market next month, beating Blizzard to what would have been its main advantage.
It may do that if your network goes off while you're connected to Steam, but if you restart Steam, it'll offer to go to Offline mode when it finds it can't connect to Steam's servers.
Incidentally, this is why I don't own Batman: Arkham Asylum, despite it being one of the games of the year 2009. Even the Steam version has SecuROM on it.
on a few games Steam is actually not an option (the retail box has the steam download file so it still needs a steam account to unlock).
Yes, and I realized that after I picked up a copy of Orange Box that my local Best Buy had on clearance as a second birthday gift for my uncle who lives 60 miles away.
Whoops! Said uncle still uses a free dial-up email service (Juno) and has no normal Internet connection.
I'm going to see if he can take his desktop over to his sister's house a few miles away, to use her Comcast cable connection to register and update HL2, HL2Ep1, HL2Ep2 and Portal. But not TF2, because I'm going to tell him not to install it.
2. You're missing the point that you can't judge a contender for a standard based on how many people use it. If that were the case, then the W3C would standardize on IE6 behavior for HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript, and ECMA/ISO would standardize on Microsoft Office (non-Open XML) documents. There's also the fact that, should the W3C choose Theora, Dirac, or something else other than H.264, there's nothing stopping Sony from patching PS3s to support the new standard. To suggest otherwise is, as GP mentioned, short-sighted.
Safari, Chrome, and Opera already have support for H.264. Internet Explorer 9 will have support for H.264.
Firefox is the only major browser that has no plans to support H.264, and H.264 is the de facto standard, particularly since Google also controls the content-side through Youtube.
At this point, Firefox can't beat them... will it join them?
I don't know... Earl Boen as LeChuck in the Monkey Island games is pretty good. Although LeChuck doesn't have that many lines in the first game's remix. He has more in the second game, but only in cutscenes until right before the end of the game; the special edition of MI2 was just announced, so we'll see how well that works.
Yes, they do. Technical documents define what words mean when used in specific contexts, too.
Once such technical document being the Simple Mail Transport Protocol specification (RFC5321), which defines how email is transmitted across the Internet.
Unless you use encryption, there is no envelope.
"SMTP transports a mail object. A mail object contains an envelope and content." --RFC5321 (and RFC2821), section 2.3.1
State leaders also forget they have a state constitution they are supposed to obey. For example in Massachusetts I can find no part of the MA Constitution which grants government power to pass a mandatory "buy insurance or be fined $1500" law. What's next? Buy a Prius or other hybrid, or else be fined by the MA Legislature?
It's funny that you should say that. Last time I checked, a constitution was a document limiting the powers that the federal and state governments have. The catch is that the Federal constitution has an amendment that says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
If the MA state constitution doesn't have any provision like that, to pass unenumerated powers down to the next level (County/Parish (Louisiana)/Borough (Alaska)), the state legislature can pass laws like that.
If you have an ATI or nVidia card with a recent driver, you already have all the software installed that they need to take advantage of that gpu card's processing capabilities.
At least they included Opera. It's a good browser - the only flaw is the constant need to "mask as firefox" or "mask as explorer" since many websites refuse to talk to Opera. I wish there was a universal setting for masking. (shrug) I like the built-in Turbo mode for slow dialup or cellphone connections.
Opera's other problem is the constant (IMO nonsensical) UI changes between versions. At least, in the Windows version.
Opera 9.5 has an apparent decision that people don't like color and shifted the Opera Native theme's icons to black and white. And no, I don't mean gray-scale, I mean black and white (and transparent most likely).
Opera 10.50 removes the menu and puts an Opera icon on the title bar that opens the (only) menu. Oh, and tabs are now on the title bar; although they don't line up correctly in Windows if Opera is not maximized.
I think that's a bit of a gray area. It's unfair to not classify Konqueror and Safari as different browsers just because they use the same rendering engine. I would probably consider a wrapper for the IE6 Active-X control which created tabbed browsing to be a *different* browser. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line though.
What makes you think they were counted as the same browser?
Last time I checked, Konquerer was not exactly a widely used browser (and here comes the important part) that runs on Windows.
and instead, you want the video plugin baked in to the browser?
How exactly is that different?
P.S. ActiveX isn't a browser plugin, but rather MS's bug-riddled implementation of a plugin host, having dumped support for Netscape-style plugins in IE4.
I can eat a bag of M&Ms and drink coke while coding, and I'm sure there are plenty who can scoff pizza, coke and crisps without a problem!
You've got to lick your fingers well to make sure that you don't leave a mess on your keyboard, but other than that the computer "activity" isn't that much of an obstacle for eating.
That may be true while coding, but if you're playing an online game, taking your hands off the keyboard for even a few second means you could lose*. In my experience, most people don't like to lose.
* By lose, I mean have your character die, such as in an MMORPG or FPS.
Not surprisingly though, Havok was strictly licensed to Lucasarts for all of 2009 - no one else could use it. It's only just recently become available. So - for most of 2009, PhysX was the best choice - not only subsidized for using it, but because its competitors weren't actually available.
I'm pretty sure the Source engine (HL2 and its derivitives) by Valve uses Havok. In fact, Havok is mentioned by name on the "Powered by Source" screen, near the bottom.
At least Windows XP SP2 replaced AutoRun with AutoPlay. Devices (other than music CDs) no longer auto-run, instead asking you what you want to do with it, albeit with the AutoRun-specified item at the top of the list.
This was changed further in Windows Vista/7, so that USB/FireWire drives don't even acknowledge that they have an AutoRun option. Which caused U3 to blatantly abuse this by pretending its U3 partition is a CD-ROM.
point 2: No it's not. When the window has been resized it stays resized. I'm using Windows 7 right now, and regardless of which edge I drag it to, as soon as I drag the title bar, the window resizes back to its old size.
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Of course, you could then use your prank phone to dial people in the past and accidentally change the future.
Basically, Steam is the PC version of the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network.
Rumor has is that Activision Blizzard is getting jealous of this and plans to license their new version of Battle.Net (set to launch with StarCraft II) to third parties. Who knows, maybe they'll be successfull, but Steam is entering the Mac market next month, beating Blizzard to what would have been its main advantage.
It may do that if your network goes off while you're connected to Steam, but if you restart Steam, it'll offer to go to Offline mode when it finds it can't connect to Steam's servers.
Incidentally, this is why I don't own Batman: Arkham Asylum, despite it being one of the games of the year 2009. Even the Steam version has SecuROM on it.
Yes, and I realized that after I picked up a copy of Orange Box that my local Best Buy had on clearance as a second birthday gift for my uncle who lives 60 miles away.
Whoops! Said uncle still uses a free dial-up email service (Juno) and has no normal Internet connection.
I'm going to see if he can take his desktop over to his sister's house a few miles away, to use her Comcast cable connection to register and update HL2, HL2Ep1, HL2Ep2 and Portal. But not TF2, because I'm going to tell him not to install it.
No, Microsoft is trying to use IE9 as a wedge to get people to buy Windows 7, so it uses Direct2D (introduced in Vista SP2).
Safari, Chrome, and Opera already have support for H.264. Internet Explorer 9 will have support for H.264.
Firefox is the only major browser that has no plans to support H.264, and H.264 is the de facto standard, particularly since Google also controls the content-side through Youtube.
At this point, Firefox can't beat them... will it join them?
I thought Left 4 Dead 2 was censored enough after its initial rejection to receive an M15+ in Australia.
I don't know... Earl Boen as LeChuck in the Monkey Island games is pretty good. Although LeChuck doesn't have that many lines in the first game's remix. He has more in the second game, but only in cutscenes until right before the end of the game; the special edition of MI2 was just announced, so we'll see how well that works.
I wouldn't say Half-Life one has the best voice acting. Although it's not really bad.
Valve did a pretty good job for all their Source-based games, though.
(OK, yes, the voices in Team Fortress 2 are a bit comical, but they fit the various class' personalities.)
Yes, they do. Technical documents define what words mean when used in specific contexts, too.
Once such technical document being the Simple Mail Transport Protocol specification (RFC5321), which defines how email is transmitted across the Internet.
"SMTP transports a mail object. A mail object contains an envelope and content." --RFC5321 (and RFC2821), section 2.3.1
None of which the government can use against you in court (because of the 4th amendment), which is what this is about in the first place.
It's funny that you should say that. Last time I checked, a constitution was a document limiting the powers that the federal and state governments have. The catch is that the Federal constitution has an amendment that says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
If the MA state constitution doesn't have any provision like that, to pass unenumerated powers down to the next level (County/Parish (Louisiana)/Borough (Alaska)), the state legislature can pass laws like that.
If you have an ATI or nVidia card with a recent driver, you already have all the software installed that they need to take advantage of that gpu card's processing capabilities.
Newer windowing systems no longer draw the screen as a single 2D object. This includes X (Compiz), OSX, and Windows.
Opera's other problem is the constant (IMO nonsensical) UI changes between versions. At least, in the Windows version.
Opera 9.5 has an apparent decision that people don't like color and shifted the Opera Native theme's icons to black and white. And no, I don't mean gray-scale, I mean black and white (and transparent most likely).
Opera 10.50 removes the menu and puts an Opera icon on the title bar that opens the (only) menu. Oh, and tabs are now on the title bar; although they don't line up correctly in Windows if Opera is not maximized.
What makes you think they were counted as the same browser?
Last time I checked, Konquerer was not exactly a widely used browser (and here comes the important part) that runs on Windows.
and instead, you want the video plugin baked in to the browser?
How exactly is that different?
P.S. ActiveX isn't a browser plugin, but rather MS's bug-riddled implementation of a plugin host, having dumped support for Netscape-style plugins in IE4.
Yes, that would be stupid.
"little_naked_girl.jpg" on the other hand...
On one side of the pond at any rate.
I just assumed it was the patent about compiling everything into fake instructions for a slow virtual machine.
The only thing that's changed since the early 90s is the "slow" part.
That may be true while coding, but if you're playing an online game, taking your hands off the keyboard for even a few second means you could lose*. In my experience, most people don't like to lose.
* By lose, I mean have your character die, such as in an MMORPG or FPS.
I'm pretty sure the Source engine (HL2 and its derivitives) by Valve uses Havok. In fact, Havok is mentioned by name on the "Powered by Source" screen, near the bottom.
At least Windows XP SP2 replaced AutoRun with AutoPlay. Devices (other than music CDs) no longer auto-run, instead asking you what you want to do with it, albeit with the AutoRun-specified item at the top of the list.
This was changed further in Windows Vista/7, so that USB/FireWire drives don't even acknowledge that they have an AutoRun option. Which caused U3 to blatantly abuse this by pretending its U3 partition is a CD-ROM.