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User: VGPowerlord

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Comments · 4,725

  1. Re:Total, utter gobshitery on Valve's Battle Against Cheaters · · Score: 1

    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).

  2. Re:The casualties of the battle are ... on Valve's Battle Against Cheaters · · Score: 1

    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.

  3. Re:superserious on Valve's Battle Against Cheaters · · Score: 1

    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...)

  4. Re:When do people get this on 86% of Windows 7 PCs Maxing Out Memory · · Score: 1

    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).

    Heck, Windows itself uses more processes than 4.

  5. Re:When do people get this on 86% of Windows 7 PCs Maxing Out Memory · · Score: 1

    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.

  6. Re:Well... on FCC Proposes 100Mbps Minimum Home Broadband Speed · · Score: 1

    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.

  7. Re:On The Other Hand on How Easy Is It To Cheat In CS? · · Score: 1

    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)
     
        public static methods (alphabetically ordered)
        protected static methods (alphabetically ordered)
        private static methods (alphabetically ordered)
     
        constructors (ordered by number of arguments, then variable names alphabetically)
        getters/setters (ordered by field name)
     
        public methods (alphabetically ordered)
        protected methods (alphabetically ordered)
        private methods (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.

  8. Re:LOL on Windows Patch Leaves Many XP Users With Blue Screens · · Score: 1

    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.

  9. Re:Smashing my keyboard! on Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest · · Score: 1

    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. ;)

  10. Re:Has RTF been fixed? on OpenOffice 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    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.

  11. Has RTF been fixed? on OpenOffice 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    "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.

  12. Re:Clippy on OpenOffice 3.2 Released · · Score: 1
  13. Re:Fawks on Blizzard Previews Revamped Battle.net · · Score: 1

    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.

  14. Re:Smashing my keyboard! on Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest · · Score: 1

    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...)

  15. Re:Smashing my keyboard! on Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:Fawks on Blizzard Previews Revamped Battle.net · · Score: 1

    "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!"

  17. Re:Why on Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate" · · Score: 1

    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.

  18. Re:Why on Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate" · · Score: 1

    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."

  19. Re:He hates mobile phones?! on Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate" · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but it turns out that, in English, Nokia means "Don't buy South Korean cars."

  20. Re:Makes sense to me. on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 1

    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...

  21. Re:What did you expect? on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For them to support the original console for another decade? The console was released in '01!

    And more importantly, its replacement was released in '05!

  22. Re:Life expectancy on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Doom is still being played online.. that's about 17 years and still going?

    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.

  23. Re:Well... on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 1

    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...)

  24. Re:Well... on Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down · · Score: 1

    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.

  25. Re:news flash on How Infighting Hampers Innovation At Microsoft · · Score: 1

    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!