I was under the impression that Valve already does Hitbox Detection on the server. However, some of their games do lag adjustment based on your ping times (which is why in TF2 you ocassionally see headshots around corners).
Got any evidence for your claims? because I've yet to hear of such a case from any of the people I regularly play with on any VAC-enabled game I own.
My experiences are the same. I have yet to see anyone I know VAC-banned, even the people who I don't like and think should be banned from the game servers I play on.
BTW don't you 81 is a little excessive? I've only got 4 running right now (because I want the machine to run fast, now slow).
er... he said processes, not applications. Windows XP SP3's Task Manager shows 5 applications and 48 processes running on my computer at this very moment. Plus the application count is wrong, because it doesn't count ones that don't currently have a Window (like Outlook).
That's the windows cache system generally, from way back in the NT days... Vista and later SuperFetch is more than that.
It must have changed at some point, because Windows 7 64-bit is considerably snappier at loading programs the second time than the first. Vista 64-bit had nowhere near the speed doing that as Windows 7 64-bit does.
For example, I play Team Fortress 2 a lot. The first time I load it (with Steam already running, so that load time isn't a factor), it takes about 45 seconds. If I close it, then open it again later without rebooting, the load time is approximately 5 seconds.
Now, I have 8GB of RAM in this system, so I have lots of RAM I'm not using at any given point, so it can keep programs like this in memory.
P.S. These times are just the time before the initial switch to Full Screen mode, there is a slight pause for loading after that as well, but that pause isn't any shorter or longer than before.
It's not that we have more people, it's that we have a large amount of people (3rd most populated country in the world, behind China and India) spread across a large area (3rd largest country in the world, behind Russia and Canada).
Americans also have the problem where, although we have money, we don't like to spend it. Especially not to give it to the government for such minor things as infrastructure. A documentary was made a few years ago about the US's infrastructure, named The Crumbling of America.
In addition, this particular part of Infrastrusture, Internet service, was given to private corporations to administer in 1995 by the US's National Science Foundation. This has been shown to be a huge mistake, as these corporations are the reason why Internet service in the US is as slow as it is and costs as much as it does.
When I was grading programming homework a decade or two ago (theoretical physics, oddly enough) it was obvious when people shared their code. The use of spaces, indentation, variable names, curly braces etc. really made each assignment unique, and the people who resorted in copying someone's code almost never bothered to make any changes at all. My solution was to give the first assignment turned in whatever grade it deserved, and each subsequent copy a 0, and that seemed to make short work of the practice. At my current university the response would be significantly harsher.
In college I've had programming instructors who insisted that things had to appear in a specific order.
For instance, in a class meant to teach OO concepts using Java, you had to have the code in the following order. (If you're a C# person, static final is identical to static const, while final may is identical to readonly or const depending on whether a value is specified inline or not.)
package statement import statements
class {
public static final variables (alphabetically ordered)
protected static final variables (alphabetically ordered)
private static final variables (alphabetically ordered)
public static variables (alphabetically ordered)
protected static variables (alphabetically ordered)
private static variables (alphabetically ordered)
public final variables (alphabetically ordered)
protected final variables (alphabetically ordered)
private final variables (alphabetically ordered)
public variables (alphabetically ordered)
protected variables (alphabetically ordered)
private variables (alphabetically ordered)
Variables were expected to be in alphabetical order. Constant names had to be in uppercase, with _ between word (IN_THIS_FORMAT). Variable and method names had to be in Camel Case with a lower-case first letter (inThisFormat). Indents had to be two spaces per indent-level. I don't remember her exact rules for comments, though.
The catch was, this particular class also expected you to come up with your own application idea that used specific programming concepts, including writing a business justification for it. So, it'd be pretty obvious if someone cheated, as the instructor didn't give any ideas in the actual assignment instructions.
(TL;DR) The point of all this is that if the rules are strict enough, and the program is simple enough, there will eventually be overlap, even if unintended.
What I don't understand is why "you can't play games" is supposed to be some sort of universal knock against people who don't use windows. I never played games even when I did use windows, it's just not my thing.
Because a lot of us DO play games.
If I didn't have other things to work on this week, I'd be playing Team Fortress 2 on my PC right now.
It mangles bold and underline in every RTF I've tried across multiple computers. This was as recently as OpenOffice 3.1.
By mangles, I mean it randomly moves the ending for the bold/underline/italics. So, if you close said document and reopen it (in OO.o or any other word processor that opens RTF), everything is underlined until the end of the current line or paragraph (for example). This is really fun to explain to other people.
It got to the point where I would save something in OO.o as RTF (this was a business requirement), then reopen it to see what it ignored this time and I manually needed to fix.
"improved compatibility with open standard (ODF) and proprietary file formats"
So, is it finally able to save RTF files without losing random formatting information?
Actually, I don't care any more. I just sucked it up and bought a heavily discounted copy of Office 2007 and installed it on two of my Windows machines (Desktop and Laptop) instead of dealing with OO.o's document mangling.
Despite "hating" WC3 he probably put a few dozen hours into it (at least) at LANs or possibly even on battle.net.
You know what they say about assuming...
Now, I know I've played War3 over LAN (although never on Battle.Net), in addition to playing completely through some of campaigns.
I'm another person who didn't really like War3. Adding 3D graphics was a good idea. Adding more races and variety was a good idea. Making all units cost at least 2 population units was a bad idea. Halving the population cap was a bad idea. Adding an upkeep system was an even worse idea. Adding Hero units in a vain attempt to try to offset all the previously mentioned deficiencies was the worst idea Blizzard ever had.
War3 plays too much differently from Blizzard's previous games, and my friends and myself quickly went back to Starcraft before eventually moving to one of the Age of Empires games.
I don't know that I've ever had Windows recognize my network card on a fresh install from a non-OEM CD. Makes it hard to get an internet connection, let alone run Windows Update.
On Windows XP, I had one or two computers that did... mostly older ones.
I've only installed Windows Vista on one computer and then Windows 7 on the same computer, and they both recognized the NIC in it. And this computer is newer than Vista is (only slightly, but still...)
I have a laptop that bluescreens with regularity under Windows. The error codes it gives me in the brief seconds before rebooting point to glitches in the hardware (sometimes the RAM, sometimes the video card, sometimes a generic error).
There's a setting to stop that auto-reboot if you want to actually read the message: Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery Settings -> Automatically reboot checkbox.
"I bought your product even though I thought you screwed it up, but if you screw it up again I won't buy it. Honest!"
Actually, wasn't this more of a "I bought one of your products and found out while playing it that it sucked, and if you screw it up again I won't buy the next one. Honest!"
Actually, I was comparing Richard Stallman to Linus Torvalds ("as a fellow geek"), although upon re-reading I can see how I wasn't really clear on that.
Besides, his viewpoint is more likely to be closer to ours, as a fellow geek, than that of Steve Jobs or any such marketeer that gets published by pop media.
You realize that we could apply that to the likes of Richard Stallman, too? The guy who uses wget to print out webpages to read rather than "browsing the web."
I suppose I shouldn't mention that I've clocked almost 600 hours in Team Fortress 2. I got TF2 as part of Valve's Source pack, a (now discontinued) (I think) $80 collection of all their Source games prior to Left 4 Dead.
That's for a set of 11 games: Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2.
So... 600 hours in a game that cost me something like $6-7. That's approximately $0.01 per hour.
I could factor in the cost of my computer, but I use my computer for more than just games: Classes, web browsing, watching movies, software development for personal projects, etc...
Whoops, my bad. Modern Warfare 2 bumped CSS and CS (and TF2) down 1 slot each on Steam's stats (I also thought I hit preview while I went to check on those numbers...)
And yet there are still servers for the 10+-year old Counter-Strike.
In fact, Counter-Strike (classic, not Source) is still one of the top played games on Steam. In the top two, no less. The other game in the top two? Conter-Strike: Source. And Team Fortress 2 places a distant third.
I was under the impression that Valve already does Hitbox Detection on the server. However, some of their games do lag adjustment based on your ping times (which is why in TF2 you ocassionally see headshots around corners).
My experiences are the same. I have yet to see anyone I know VAC-banned, even the people who I don't like and think should be banned from the game servers I play on.
Mr. Gore, can't you please go back to talking about the environment instead of some loony crap?
(OK, so I don't remember how the episode actually goes...)
er... he said processes, not applications. Windows XP SP3's Task Manager shows 5 applications and 48 processes running on my computer at this very moment. Plus the application count is wrong, because it doesn't count ones that don't currently have a Window (like Outlook).
Heck, Windows itself uses more processes than 4.
It must have changed at some point, because Windows 7 64-bit is considerably snappier at loading programs the second time than the first. Vista 64-bit had nowhere near the speed doing that as Windows 7 64-bit does.
For example, I play Team Fortress 2 a lot. The first time I load it (with Steam already running, so that load time isn't a factor), it takes about 45 seconds. If I close it, then open it again later without rebooting, the load time is approximately 5 seconds.
Now, I have 8GB of RAM in this system, so I have lots of RAM I'm not using at any given point, so it can keep programs like this in memory.
P.S. These times are just the time before the initial switch to Full Screen mode, there is a slight pause for loading after that as well, but that pause isn't any shorter or longer than before.
It's not that we have more people, it's that we have a large amount of people (3rd most populated country in the world, behind China and India) spread across a large area (3rd largest country in the world, behind Russia and Canada).
Americans also have the problem where, although we have money, we don't like to spend it. Especially not to give it to the government for such minor things as infrastructure. A documentary was made a few years ago about the US's infrastructure, named The Crumbling of America.
In addition, this particular part of Infrastrusture, Internet service, was given to private corporations to administer in 1995 by the US's National Science Foundation. This has been shown to be a huge mistake, as these corporations are the reason why Internet service in the US is as slow as it is and costs as much as it does.
In college I've had programming instructors who insisted that things had to appear in a specific order.
For instance, in a class meant to teach OO concepts using Java, you had to have the code in the following order.
(If you're a C# person, static final is identical to static const, while final may is identical to readonly or const depending on whether a value is specified inline or not.)
Variables were expected to be in alphabetical order.
Constant names had to be in uppercase, with _ between word (IN_THIS_FORMAT).
Variable and method names had to be in Camel Case with a lower-case first letter (inThisFormat).
Indents had to be two spaces per indent-level.
I don't remember her exact rules for comments, though.
The catch was, this particular class also expected you to come up with your own application idea that used specific programming concepts, including writing a business justification for it. So, it'd be pretty obvious if someone cheated, as the instructor didn't give any ideas in the actual assignment instructions.
(TL;DR)
The point of all this is that if the rules are strict enough, and the program is simple enough, there will eventually be overlap, even if unintended.
Because a lot of us DO play games.
If I didn't have other things to work on this week, I'd be playing Team Fortress 2 on my PC right now.
No, but I can tell you how to see the diagnostic messages from your emsil server when your email goes down!
As for your phone, if you don't see some little bars near the little antenna icon, you need to get a better provider. ;)
It mangles bold and underline in every RTF I've tried across multiple computers. This was as recently as OpenOffice 3.1.
By mangles, I mean it randomly moves the ending for the bold/underline/italics. So, if you close said document and reopen it (in OO.o or any other word processor that opens RTF), everything is underlined until the end of the current line or paragraph (for example). This is really fun to explain to other people.
It got to the point where I would save something in OO.o as RTF (this was a business requirement), then reopen it to see what it ignored this time and I manually needed to fix.
"improved compatibility with open standard (ODF) and proprietary file formats"
So, is it finally able to save RTF files without losing random formatting information?
Actually, I don't care any more. I just sucked it up and bought a heavily discounted copy of Office 2007 and installed it on two of my Windows machines (Desktop and Laptop) instead of dealing with OO.o's document mangling.
It looks you're writing a letter.
You know what they say about assuming...
Now, I know I've played War3 over LAN (although never on Battle.Net), in addition to playing completely through some of campaigns.
I'm another person who didn't really like War3. Adding 3D graphics was a good idea. Adding more races and variety was a good idea. Making all units cost at least 2 population units was a bad idea. Halving the population cap was a bad idea. Adding an upkeep system was an even worse idea. Adding Hero units in a vain attempt to try to offset all the previously mentioned deficiencies was the worst idea Blizzard ever had.
War3 plays too much differently from Blizzard's previous games, and my friends and myself quickly went back to Starcraft before eventually moving to one of the Age of Empires games.
On Windows XP, I had one or two computers that did... mostly older ones.
I've only installed Windows Vista on one computer and then Windows 7 on the same computer, and they both recognized the NIC in it. And this computer is newer than Vista is (only slightly, but still...)
There's a setting to stop that auto-reboot if you want to actually read the message: Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery Settings -> Automatically reboot checkbox.
Actually, wasn't this more of a "I bought one of your products and found out while playing it that it sucked, and if you screw it up again I won't buy the next one. Honest!"
Actually, I was comparing Richard Stallman to Linus Torvalds ("as a fellow geek"), although upon re-reading I can see how I wasn't really clear on that.
You realize that we could apply that to the likes of Richard Stallman, too? The guy who uses wget to print out webpages to read rather than "browsing the web."
Yeah, but it turns out that, in English, Nokia means "Don't buy South Korean cars."
I suppose I shouldn't mention that I've clocked almost 600 hours in Team Fortress 2. I got TF2 as part of Valve's Source pack, a (now discontinued) (I think) $80 collection of all their Source games prior to Left 4 Dead.
That's for a set of 11 games: Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2.
So... 600 hours in a game that cost me something like $6-7. That's approximately $0.01 per hour.
I could factor in the cost of my computer, but I use my computer for more than just games: Classes, web browsing, watching movies, software development for personal projects, etc...
And more importantly, its replacement was released in '05!
No, because Doom couldn't be played online when it first came out. By modem yes, on a IPX/SPX LAN yes, on the Internet no.
Actually, I'm not really sure how you'd play it online now, seeing as how it doesn't use a client/server protocol.
Whoops, my bad. Modern Warfare 2 bumped CSS and CS (and TF2) down 1 slot each on Steam's stats (I also thought I hit preview while I went to check on those numbers...)
And yet there are still servers for the 10+-year old Counter-Strike.
In fact, Counter-Strike (classic, not Source) is still one of the top played games on Steam. In the top two, no less. The other game in the top two? Conter-Strike: Source. And Team Fortress 2 places a distant third.
Yes, but this came from Eric Schmidt, the guy who had anything mentioning his own phone number expunged from Google's indexes.
But wait, doesn't that mean he should have not had it published in the first place? The phone company surprisingly offers a service for that!