Nope, but a person believing that Microsoft is more trustworthy than global community,
That is their opinion. It doesn't mean that they are a Microsoft shill as you claimed.
that.NET runtime is a silver bullet that will kill Ruby, Go and Rust
The AC didn't say.NET would kill those languages, just make them less useful.
person that keeps insisting that MS won't sue anyone over.NET despite the shady language in the license and a number of restrictions (.NET code can only be used to create a runtime adhering to MS specs and for no other purpose)
There is simply no shady language in the license that is going to affect Mono. If they ever decide to change Mono from an implementation of the.NET platform to something else (eg. JVM) whilst retaining Microsoft's code then they could be in trouble. But do really think for a second that they would change the focus of the project like that? Absolutely not.
And yet that is the main message of your post, that if you don't adhere to Microsoft's spec then they could sue. Well Mono is compliant with the licence, so they are not going to get sued.
Also, for this same time.NET has failed to see adoption the likes of Java did, and right now, Microsoft has even more hooks inside their license allowing them to sue the living hell out of anybody, and (Like with Oracle, Google and Java) they can sue if the code used in.NET will be used for anything other than making a fully fledged.NET runtime (that part is straight in their license, no guessing involved here).
So your response to me pointing out that Microsoft hasn't actually sued anyone for the last 13 years despite all the claims that they would is that Java is still bigger and that if you made something that was unlike Mono that you would get sued. How is that counter my claim that saying that using Mono will not get you sued?
Previous comment was regarding Microsoft and open-source in general - this is an answer in general. Commenter said he trusts Microsoft more than RedHat or opensource developers, I pointed out that trust is a personal issue, ability to verify - is more objective.
Irrelevant. You have the ability to verify code from an open source project.
What happened to the Slashdot I used to know? The old crowd is gone, replaced by young 'uns who spent their college years downloading 1000s of music files.
Thanks for calling me a young 'un. Nobody has done that to me in a very long time.
But I have to say that you sound like a leftover hippie from the 60s complaining that everyone who no longer believed in peace and free love had sold out, when in fact they had just grown up. Feel free to complain when Microsoft does something wrong. But after 13 years of predictions of a patent apocalypse, perhaps it is time to face the fact that they are not going to start suing the world for using Mono; especially when there has been cooperation between Mono and Microsoft during its development.
But maybe they still are.
And it all boils down to this. You have no proof in the slightest that they are doing anything wrong or that they intend to. But that doesn't stop the pitchforks coming out because of a feud that dates back decades. Have they done anticompetitive things in the past? Sure. Have they ever turned to litigation after making a public patent promise? No.
Having an open source implementation of.NET and C# legitimises the platform as the standard for Microsoft. They are not going to just turn around and crush it only to suffer a huge PR backlash because they broke their word. And of course, any judge would throw out a claim of patent infringement precisely because they had made public promises about not suing.
You sir, are a great astroturfer and deserve a raise from MS.
That's really another type of FUD; that anyone who says something that isn't completely anti-Microsoft must be being paid to say it.
It has been 10 years since Mono was released and 13 years since.NET was released, and for the entire time there have been the predictions that Microsoft will start suing all and sundry for patent infringement. For that entire time it hasn't happened. For that entire time it has been complete FUD, whether you like it or not.
Well, just recently a very interesting article covering Microsoft "open source.NET" license, you should read up on that, especially MS requiring a license to the patents in the code you contribute, but refusing to grant you license for their code, instead, providing a promise not to sue.
So what? None of that means that Microsoft is going to start suing you for using the Mono CLR and Framework. If you don't like their terms then don't add your own patented code to a.NET Foundation-owned project, but feel free to use Mono without any fear of being sued by Microsoft.
If you really trust Microsot more than RedHat or opensource developers, than please, don't let anyone stand in your way, trust is a personal issue, some people trust ISIS, some - the supreme leader, but some prefer to be able to verify the code themselves, and Microsoft throwing their dying platform into opensource stream, hoping for a revival is very far from transparency and verifiability.
Wow, talk about FUD again. Bringing up ISIS is just a modern version of Godwin's law. And "some prefer to be able to verify the code themselves" is FUD because this is all about open source code released by Microsoft. Of course you can verify the code yourself. Or are you mixing up the completely unrelated non-OSS Windows code that you can't see. How is that relevant to this discussion?
I don't know what the other poster's original point was, but I'm not going to join Steam on the off-chance that it might have a DRM-free version of the game I want.
Nobody has asked you to. This whole thread came about because someone said:
In order to play *any* game bought from Steam, the Steam client must be running and have an internet connection.
Any PC that is powerful enough to decode 1080p video at 60fps is powerful enough to run a game on low settings.
Nobody is going to expect to be able to play at 60fps using this service. If high frame rate is that important to you then obviously have to upgrade your computer and play locally. If, however, you are happy to play games that you could not otherwise hope to play at half that rate (or even less) without having to buy a whole new computer then OnLive could provide a useful service.
The OnLive client required DirectX 9 level hardware, which is still the minimum requirement for most games, so whining about not meeting some shader spec for games is bullshit.
And yet by your own admission, DX9 is not the minimum requirement for all games. Therefore if you want to play a game for which you don't match the minimum requirement... Go on, guess what I'm going to say next! That's right, you could use a service like OnLive!
I'm sure that would have been awesome to play games optimised for a keyboard and mouse on a touchscreen.
Here we go again. You think that just because it might not work for 100% of games' user interfaces then the service is useless. Once again, you don't have to aim for perfection, just something that is good enough. And my point was not how well it work would on those devices, just that it can work on those low-powered CPU/GPUs (and therefore will also work on low-powered PCs too).
And someone can afford a super expensive Smart TV but they can't afford a slightly more expensive PC? Please.
Perhaps they want to be able to play in their living room without having to move their PC. Considering how often console gamers bring up this scenario, it seems to be a popular idea that PC games might like to share too.
Yes, I can for any reasonably aged computer. Of course you knew that, but you're being childish and pedantic.
That all hinges on your definition of reasonably aged. There are games that will not run at all on my computer that are being released right now. My Core2Duo with 2GB RAM and HD5750 video card running on a 32bit version of Windows just won't cope with modern games. It can stream video quite nicely though.
Who says the second person needs a PC? Maybe they are trying to watch a YouTube video on a $50 tablet.
Then you do what any household does that has multiple people sharing one Internet connection and figure it out. If you can do that, or if this imaginary other user doesn't actually exist, then there is nothing wrong with a system like OnLive.
Fuck, you're an idiot and your entire "argument" is complete shit.
And you call me childish? Your entire argument is that if it doesn't work in 100% of households for 100% of games running at a perfect 60fps then the system is useless. You are damning this service just by having unrealistic expectations.
So if you don't expect a service like OnLive to fulfill all your gaming needs (so you still play games locally if your system can handle it), and you wait to play your games when other people aren't trying to watch Youtube, and you don't mind a drop in frame rate and latency, then this system works. All your swearing and name calling will not change this fact.
Most of those titles can be bought on gog.com anyhow.
I just checked the first batch of games up to the letter B. Only 7 out of 42 games are available on GOG. That is nowhere near the definition of the word most.
Be that as it may, that wasn't what the original discussion was about. The question was whether you can play any games without launching the Steam client, not whether you can buy DRM-free versions of games on other sites. Changing the argument after being proven wrong is called shifting the goalposts.
If your graphics adapter is that ancient, it's likely not going to support or be powerful enough to decode the video streams being sent to you via services like OnLive or Gakai and therefore would not be good enough to support their respective clients
And yet that is the entire purpose of OnLive: to allow low-powered computers to play games that have higher requirements. So your assertion that the streaming would require the same level of GPU is obviously false. OnLive worked on mobile devices and smart TVs too - and none of those would have the power to run a modern game.
Excuses are always bullshit, kiddo.
I'll tell you what is bullshit. Coming up with reasons why the site would not work when you obviously hadn't tried it. Do you really think that you can infinitely turn down the graphic levels enough to work on any low-spec system? If that were the case then the minimum system requirements for any game would be a 386 with on-board video.
And why do you need to invent another person who wants to use the Internet line as an excuse to belittle the system? If someone else needs the internet connection and you don't have a really high-spec computer then chances are you also have to share the PC. In that case you wouldn't be able to play any game whether it was locally installed or not.
I'm not a big fan of Steam, and if I have a choice I will always prefer a completely DRM-free option, the the grandparent poster was correct. Here is the list of games that you can run without the client loaded. It only took me a second to find this list with Google. (Actually, that's a lie. I used Bing, but that sounds like something that I shouldn't admit here!)
You still need the client to install them, and if you use the Steam backup/restore facility then you also need the client to be logged in.
This is nothing more than a press release for some software. It's literally an ad for something made by Pixar published on Pixar's website.
Then what would you like to talk about that doesn't involve mentioning any products at all? If you go to a website that talks about "News for nerds, stuff that matters" then you are going to find that the stuff that matters to nerds will often be products that people sell (or in this case, give away). We can't all be MacGyver building our own supercomputers from coconut shells and earwax.
If a story doesn't interest you, or you think that it is just blatant consumerism, then feel free to go do something else like watch another inspirational episode of MacGyver from the MacGyver Complete Series box set, available at a cheap price and with free shipping at Amazon.
It's true that Microsoft have dropped some products quickly (and their support for APIs can be faddish), but they have also supported a lot of products for very long times. In fact, some of your examples seem a bit out of place with Flight Simulator lasting 24 years and Encarta lasting 16 years.
Psst. They have always charged money for the platform. The difference now is that for the next 12 months they will not charge for upgrades. You seem to have it backwards.
People misunderstood the time-limited nature of that offer as it being a subscription service, but that was just wrong. Once you have upgraded to Windows 10 you won't have to pay a cent to keep using that OS on your PC. It will never expire and revert to a subscription system, because if they did that it would be a PR nightmare for Microsoft with allegations of turning the OS into ransomware.
So yes, it is FUD. It is FUD to tell people not to believe what Microsoft is saying now because you have imagined a future where they will suddenly force people to pay for their free product retrospectively. That really is the very definition of FUD.
so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
As the grandparent said, this was just pandering to the specific audience. No, it is not the most important thing for NASA to do any more than companies who claim that "safety is their priority" really care about anything other than their profits. Or bands on tour say that <INSERT_YOUR_STATE> is their most favorite place to be. Or insurance companies who advertise that "we care about you". Or politicians who say... pretty much anything!
The only reason that you are fixated on this is that it gives you something about them Demeeecrats for you to get angry about. Do you have any specific problems with the actions of NASA? Can you even cite even one way that it has actually become a "muslim outreach"?
Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved.
WOOOAH there, friend. That is far from the truth.
By the time Windows 7 was released Vista had enough service packs to make it quite usable, so I don't think that it is fair to say that my statement was far from the truth. There are plenty of people who still claim to this day that Vista was an unusable mess even though that was just the initial teething problem.
And even then, a lot of what was said about the OS was just wrong. I avoided Vista because of what I read about it here. When I finally got a laptop for my wife with it pre-installed, I decided to try it out for a laugh before I wiped it with my XP CD only to find that it was a perfectly capable system. It certainly didn't take 30 seconds to do a directory listing for me. I'm sure that a lot of people had driver issues that caused problems, but the other stuff said about it (like the DRM that was supposed to infest the OS and stop you from doing anything that Microsoft didn't want) was just the product of fantasy.
I guess you could make an argument that Windows 7 was Vista SP3+, but it definitely contained more changes than a SP usually brings - and it definitely wasn't "just Vista".
Of all the examples that I gave of the times when people have said that a version upgrade of Windows gave no real features, I think the Vista to Win7 would have to be either first or second in the list when ordered by plausibility. I think the fact that this claim was made about Xp->Vista (when that was the biggest change in Windows under the hood in nearly a decade) shows that in reality it is a bogus thing to say. I certainly don't say it. I was just pointing out that with each upgrade, someone will make that claim.
Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too
OS X has had the concept of "Hot Corners" for years
The difference there is that if you didn't know about the hot corners, the Mac was a perfectly usable system. On Windows 8, you had no way of getting to the start screen or charms without knowing about them. Without that knowledge, Windows 8 was an unusable system.
I should have been more clear that having the ability to do this is fine, but requiring the user does it as the main interface is not.
A lot of those shortcuts were also on the Windows 7 start menu (unless you turned them off). I don't have a Windows 8.1 system in front of me, but I don't recall anything on it that could not be pinned to the Start Menu. Perhaps some of the direct links into the Control Panel, but that could be done with a bit of fiddling.
"It doesn't print" is a different bug report than "it prints garbage".
That's true. It is also different to "it prints blank pages" and "it emits no pages". "It doesn't print" is vague and unhelpful, because as you said customers lie in bug reports and will therefore say it won't print when it actually prints garbage.
Having been the recipient on many a bug report that was as simple as "it won't print", I know that you almost always have to follow up such general bug reports with questions to narrow down the problem. This is especially the case with printing when the problem may only present with certain documents (something a crash report will not tell you).
But when Firefox doesn't crash it doesn't send that information (obviously). The equivalent of "it won't print" would be "the web page is blank". A rendering error will not trigger the crash reporting system.
However, if a bug report is generated due to a crash in the print spooler then it will be obvious that it didn't print so adding the text "it won't print" provides nothing useful.
Problem 1: Multiple instances of the same program.
This was answered in the link that you provided. Right click on the task bar icon and open a new instance of the application (or access the jump list of recently used files). It works for Windows 7 and 8.
Problem 2: The start screen forces me into a mobile interface.
Yeah, I hate the Metro interface too. But this is the high profile change that they made to Windows 10, so it is already a solved problem.
Problem 3: Windows 8 sends to Microsoft everything we locally search.
It will be interesting how many of Windows 8's less intuitive user interface features will still be around in the final version of Windows 10. My most hated modern user interface idea is the removal of UI hints to simplify the screen. You end up having to try clicking and swiping everything just to see if it does something. Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too
Problem 5: The new paradigm has a negative impact on consumer perceptions. The absolute best way for Microsoft to introduce the changes we've seen with Windows 8 would have been to make them optional at the moment of installation. We could then have chosen the interface that best suits our device.
Well that is what they have done now. I read a great article once on the though process that went on behind the scenes about the new interface. I wish I could find it again, because it put it all into perspective. I will still always hate the Metro interface and the loss of functionality that it brings, but I have been surprised at the change of heart about it that the staff at my company have had about it. They went from hating it to acceptance (and even one who loves it).
Problem 6: Nothing about the new Windows features is necessary.
That gets said about every version of Windows. XP was just a face-lift on 2000. Vista was just XP run as a limited user. Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved. The changes in each version are more noticeable when moving back to an old version. You suddenly realise how many of the new features you use when they suddenly disappear.
Now I write that though (on my Windows 7 computer), I can't think of any examples of things that I miss from Win8 right now.
"It doesn't print" isn't a complete and useful report because it is just one step up from simply saying "it doesn't work". Presumably it does print for some people, so the developers really need to be able to narrow down the problem.
Does it crash as soon as it starts the print process, or does it go appear to generate each page? Does it send anything to the printer (flashing light on printer), but just no pages are emitted? Is it just that blank pages are emitted? Or random garbage characters? There can be many symptoms of not printing, and they would each suggest a problem in a different bit of code.
I haven't read the privacy statement for this, but it would be sensible for the OS to capture recent activity in a bug report, no?
Yes, it does log activity in the beta versions of Windows. It seems that their collective head is in the right place. However, all the logging in the world can't see what has come out of your printer.
As any investor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Then surely this just backs up my point, which was that you can't use the current performance as a guarantee of future results. What I was using the past performance for was as proof of that exact point; not that past warming was proof of future warming but that the current pattern cannot be used as proof of the lack of future warming.
I would further direct your attention to the fact that your link to the satellite data only goes back to about 1970.
Of course it didn't go back a long way. It was a graph showing more detail of the most recent temperatures to demonstrate how noisy the data is that you can't use a short term phenomenon as a predictor of long term trends. It was not the graph that I was referring to throughout the rest of my post about the previous lulls and drops in temperature not being harbingers of the end of global warming. I was looking at a PDF of a graph while I was writing, but I had intended to link to an online version in my post. Rather than me choose one that you might take issue with, why don't you do a Google search and find one yourself. Whichever you choose they demonstrate my point.
The further back you go (prior to around 1930, there wasn't even standardization or widespread training for temperature measurements at weather stations), the less accurate, precise, and available the data becomes.
We have a pretty good picture of temperatures dating back thousands of years from various sources like tree growth patterns and ice core samples. So do you really think that scientists suddenly get all stupid about interpreting the measurements made a hundred years ago? That they can't (or didn't think to) correlate between the various measuring stations at the time and factor equipment problems and local environmental changes?
It is no coincidence that temperature graphs for modern times all start in the mid to late 1800s. That is the time that scientists agree is when accurate enough records began. You might like to say that it is only the last 45 years that we have accurate measurements, but the scientific community would beg to differ on that assertion.
We are a child trying to understand the inner workings of a nuclear power plant even as we struggle to master basic arithmetic.... It does mean that setting public policy based on the level of understanding we have today is foolish and that any attempt to purposely alter the climate through mass engineering efforts is downright suicidal.
Suicidal? How can it be suicidal to reduce our carbon footprint to a level that we had in the past, when obviously we didn't all die out back then - either literally or economically. And they say the AGW proponents are alarmists!!
But if you are right and we really don't know enough about the environment, surely the most sensible approach would be to not keep pumping the atmosphere with substances that we don't know what effect it will have on our climate. Stop doing that until we know more. How can you possibly defend doing otherwise? Surely those children who haven't mastered basic arithmetic shouldn't be trying to build nuclear power plants.
Which Global Warming? The one which stopped 18 Years ago?
No, not that Global Warming, it's another one. You can't say that it has stopped or is dead, because all you need to do is look at a graph of global temperatures to see that this is not unprecedented. The global temperature peaked in 1940 and then didn't reach that point again until 1970. Global Warming didn't stop back then, despite that lull.
In fact, that wasn't a lull, it was more of a plummet then a rise. If you look at the graphs, you will see that the global temperature repeatedly plateaus (or even falls) only to continue warming a few years later.
It is totally premature to try to call the end of a major trend while you are in the middle of it. Just look at how noisy the data is for the period that you mention (which is just one reading). Who is to say that we wont see another step up in the next year or so followed by another plateau at a higher level? It certainly fits the pattern that we have seen in the past.
One could argue that it's Snowden's revelations are hurting the economy. The NSA is supposed to be spying on foreign entities.
If the NSA are supposed to be spying on foreign entities, then it stands to reason that Snowden telling everyone this would not be a huge revelation; it would be just stating the obvious. As such, Snowden could not have hurt the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, but a person believing that Microsoft is more trustworthy than global community,
That is their opinion. It doesn't mean that they are a Microsoft shill as you claimed.
that .NET runtime is a silver bullet that will kill Ruby, Go and Rust
The AC didn't say .NET would kill those languages, just make them less useful.
person that keeps insisting that MS won't sue anyone over .NET despite the shady language in the license and a number of restrictions (.NET code can only be used to create a runtime adhering to MS specs and for no other purpose)
There is simply no shady language in the license that is going to affect Mono. If they ever decide to change Mono from an implementation of the .NET platform to something else (eg. JVM) whilst retaining Microsoft's code then they could be in trouble. But do really think for a second that they would change the focus of the project like that? Absolutely not.
And yet that is the main message of your post, that if you don't adhere to Microsoft's spec then they could sue. Well Mono is compliant with the licence, so they are not going to get sued.
Also, for this same time .NET has failed to see adoption the likes of Java did, and right now, Microsoft has even more hooks inside their license allowing them to sue the living hell out of anybody, and (Like with Oracle, Google and Java) they can sue if the code used in .NET will be used for anything other than making a fully fledged .NET runtime (that part is straight in their license, no guessing involved here).
So your response to me pointing out that Microsoft hasn't actually sued anyone for the last 13 years despite all the claims that they would is that Java is still bigger and that if you made something that was unlike Mono that you would get sued. How is that counter my claim that saying that using Mono will not get you sued?
Previous comment was regarding Microsoft and open-source in general - this is an answer in general. Commenter said he trusts Microsoft more than RedHat or opensource developers, I pointed out that trust is a personal issue, ability to verify - is more objective.
Irrelevant. You have the ability to verify code from an open source project.
What happened to the Slashdot I used to know? The old crowd is gone, replaced by young 'uns who spent their college years downloading 1000s of music files.
Thanks for calling me a young 'un. Nobody has done that to me in a very long time.
But I have to say that you sound like a leftover hippie from the 60s complaining that everyone who no longer believed in peace and free love had sold out, when in fact they had just grown up. Feel free to complain when Microsoft does something wrong. But after 13 years of predictions of a patent apocalypse, perhaps it is time to face the fact that they are not going to start suing the world for using Mono; especially when there has been cooperation between Mono and Microsoft during its development.
But maybe they still are.
And it all boils down to this. You have no proof in the slightest that they are doing anything wrong or that they intend to. But that doesn't stop the pitchforks coming out because of a feud that dates back decades. Have they done anticompetitive things in the past? Sure. Have they ever turned to litigation after making a public patent promise? No.
Having an open source implementation of .NET and C# legitimises the platform as the standard for Microsoft. They are not going to just turn around and crush it only to suffer a huge PR backlash because they broke their word. And of course, any judge would throw out a claim of patent infringement precisely because they had made public promises about not suing.
You sir, are a great astroturfer and deserve a raise from MS.
That's really another type of FUD; that anyone who says something that isn't completely anti-Microsoft must be being paid to say it.
It has been 10 years since Mono was released and 13 years since .NET was released, and for the entire time there have been the predictions that Microsoft will start suing all and sundry for patent infringement. For that entire time it hasn't happened. For that entire time it has been complete FUD, whether you like it or not.
Well, just recently a very interesting article covering Microsoft "open source .NET" license, you should read up on that, especially MS requiring a license to the patents in the code you contribute, but refusing to grant you license for their code, instead, providing a promise not to sue.
So what? None of that means that Microsoft is going to start suing you for using the Mono CLR and Framework. If you don't like their terms then don't add your own patented code to a .NET Foundation-owned project, but feel free to use Mono without any fear of being sued by Microsoft.
If you really trust Microsot more than RedHat or opensource developers, than please, don't let anyone stand in your way, trust is a personal issue, some people trust ISIS, some - the supreme leader, but some prefer to be able to verify the code themselves, and Microsoft throwing their dying platform into opensource stream, hoping for a revival is very far from transparency and verifiability.
Wow, talk about FUD again. Bringing up ISIS is just a modern version of Godwin's law. And "some prefer to be able to verify the code themselves" is FUD because this is all about open source code released by Microsoft. Of course you can verify the code yourself. Or are you mixing up the completely unrelated non-OSS Windows code that you can't see. How is that relevant to this discussion?
I don't know what the other poster's original point was, but I'm not going to join Steam on the off-chance that it might have a DRM-free version of the game I want.
Nobody has asked you to. This whole thread came about because someone said:
In order to play *any* game bought from Steam, the Steam client must be running and have an internet connection.
Any PC that is powerful enough to decode 1080p video at 60fps is powerful enough to run a game on low settings.
Nobody is going to expect to be able to play at 60fps using this service. If high frame rate is that important to you then obviously have to upgrade your computer and play locally. If, however, you are happy to play games that you could not otherwise hope to play at half that rate (or even less) without having to buy a whole new computer then OnLive could provide a useful service.
The OnLive client required DirectX 9 level hardware, which is still the minimum requirement for most games, so whining about not meeting some shader spec for games is bullshit.
And yet by your own admission, DX9 is not the minimum requirement for all games. Therefore if you want to play a game for which you don't match the minimum requirement... Go on, guess what I'm going to say next! That's right, you could use a service like OnLive!
I'm sure that would have been awesome to play games optimised for a keyboard and mouse on a touchscreen.
Here we go again. You think that just because it might not work for 100% of games' user interfaces then the service is useless. Once again, you don't have to aim for perfection, just something that is good enough. And my point was not how well it work would on those devices, just that it can work on those low-powered CPU/GPUs (and therefore will also work on low-powered PCs too).
And someone can afford a super expensive Smart TV but they can't afford a slightly more expensive PC? Please.
Perhaps they want to be able to play in their living room without having to move their PC. Considering how often console gamers bring up this scenario, it seems to be a popular idea that PC games might like to share too.
Yes, I can for any reasonably aged computer. Of course you knew that, but you're being childish and pedantic.
That all hinges on your definition of reasonably aged. There are games that will not run at all on my computer that are being released right now. My Core2Duo with 2GB RAM and HD5750 video card running on a 32bit version of Windows just won't cope with modern games. It can stream video quite nicely though.
Who says the second person needs a PC? Maybe they are trying to watch a YouTube video on a $50 tablet.
Then you do what any household does that has multiple people sharing one Internet connection and figure it out. If you can do that, or if this imaginary other user doesn't actually exist, then there is nothing wrong with a system like OnLive.
Fuck, you're an idiot and your entire "argument" is complete shit.
And you call me childish? Your entire argument is that if it doesn't work in 100% of households for 100% of games running at a perfect 60fps then the system is useless. You are damning this service just by having unrealistic expectations.
So if you don't expect a service like OnLive to fulfill all your gaming needs (so you still play games locally if your system can handle it), and you wait to play your games when other people aren't trying to watch Youtube, and you don't mind a drop in frame rate and latency, then this system works. All your swearing and name calling will not change this fact.
Most of those titles can be bought on gog.com anyhow.
I just checked the first batch of games up to the letter B. Only 7 out of 42 games are available on GOG. That is nowhere near the definition of the word most.
Be that as it may, that wasn't what the original discussion was about. The question was whether you can play any games without launching the Steam client, not whether you can buy DRM-free versions of games on other sites. Changing the argument after being proven wrong is called shifting the goalposts.
So Phoronix has only just noticed this? This was discussed on Slashdot five months ago.
If your graphics adapter is that ancient, it's likely not going to support or be powerful enough to decode the video streams being sent to you via services like OnLive or Gakai and therefore would not be good enough to support their respective clients
And yet that is the entire purpose of OnLive: to allow low-powered computers to play games that have higher requirements. So your assertion that the streaming would require the same level of GPU is obviously false. OnLive worked on mobile devices and smart TVs too - and none of those would have the power to run a modern game.
Excuses are always bullshit, kiddo.
I'll tell you what is bullshit. Coming up with reasons why the site would not work when you obviously hadn't tried it. Do you really think that you can infinitely turn down the graphic levels enough to work on any low-spec system? If that were the case then the minimum system requirements for any game would be a 386 with on-board video.
And why do you need to invent another person who wants to use the Internet line as an excuse to belittle the system? If someone else needs the internet connection and you don't have a really high-spec computer then chances are you also have to share the PC. In that case you wouldn't be able to play any game whether it was locally installed or not.
Name them.
I'm not a big fan of Steam, and if I have a choice I will always prefer a completely DRM-free option, the the grandparent poster was correct. Here is the list of games that you can run without the client loaded. It only took me a second to find this list with Google. (Actually, that's a lie. I used Bing, but that sounds like something that I shouldn't admit here!)
You still need the client to install them, and if you use the Steam backup/restore facility then you also need the client to be logged in.
This is nothing more than a press release for some software. It's literally an ad for something made by Pixar published on Pixar's website.
Then what would you like to talk about that doesn't involve mentioning any products at all? If you go to a website that talks about "News for nerds, stuff that matters" then you are going to find that the stuff that matters to nerds will often be products that people sell (or in this case, give away). We can't all be MacGyver building our own supercomputers from coconut shells and earwax.
If a story doesn't interest you, or you think that it is just blatant consumerism, then feel free to go do something else like watch another inspirational episode of MacGyver from the MacGyver Complete Series box set, available at a cheap price and with free shipping at Amazon.
It's true that Microsoft have dropped some products quickly (and their support for APIs can be faddish), but they have also supported a lot of products for very long times. In fact, some of your examples seem a bit out of place with Flight Simulator lasting 24 years and Encarta lasting 16 years.
Customers get nothing? I think that you will find that customers also get a free upgrade to Windows 10. Everyone is rewarded!
Psst. They have always charged money for the platform. The difference now is that for the next 12 months they will not charge for upgrades. You seem to have it backwards.
People misunderstood the time-limited nature of that offer as it being a subscription service, but that was just wrong. Once you have upgraded to Windows 10 you won't have to pay a cent to keep using that OS on your PC. It will never expire and revert to a subscription system, because if they did that it would be a PR nightmare for Microsoft with allegations of turning the OS into ransomware.
So yes, it is FUD. It is FUD to tell people not to believe what Microsoft is saying now because you have imagined a future where they will suddenly force people to pay for their free product retrospectively. That really is the very definition of FUD.
so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
As the grandparent said, this was just pandering to the specific audience. No, it is not the most important thing for NASA to do any more than companies who claim that "safety is their priority" really care about anything other than their profits. Or bands on tour say that <INSERT_YOUR_STATE> is their most favorite place to be. Or insurance companies who advertise that "we care about you". Or politicians who say... pretty much anything!
The only reason that you are fixated on this is that it gives you something about them Demeeecrats for you to get angry about. Do you have any specific problems with the actions of NASA? Can you even cite even one way that it has actually become a "muslim outreach"?
Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved.
WOOOAH there, friend. That is far from the truth.
By the time Windows 7 was released Vista had enough service packs to make it quite usable, so I don't think that it is fair to say that my statement was far from the truth. There are plenty of people who still claim to this day that Vista was an unusable mess even though that was just the initial teething problem.
And even then, a lot of what was said about the OS was just wrong. I avoided Vista because of what I read about it here. When I finally got a laptop for my wife with it pre-installed, I decided to try it out for a laugh before I wiped it with my XP CD only to find that it was a perfectly capable system. It certainly didn't take 30 seconds to do a directory listing for me. I'm sure that a lot of people had driver issues that caused problems, but the other stuff said about it (like the DRM that was supposed to infest the OS and stop you from doing anything that Microsoft didn't want) was just the product of fantasy.
I guess you could make an argument that Windows 7 was Vista SP3+, but it definitely contained more changes than a SP usually brings - and it definitely wasn't "just Vista".
Of all the examples that I gave of the times when people have said that a version upgrade of Windows gave no real features, I think the Vista to Win7 would have to be either first or second in the list when ordered by plausibility. I think the fact that this claim was made about Xp->Vista (when that was the biggest change in Windows under the hood in nearly a decade) shows that in reality it is a bogus thing to say. I certainly don't say it. I was just pointing out that with each upgrade, someone will make that claim.
Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too
OS X has had the concept of "Hot Corners" for years
The difference there is that if you didn't know about the hot corners, the Mac was a perfectly usable system. On Windows 8, you had no way of getting to the start screen or charms without knowing about them. Without that knowledge, Windows 8 was an unusable system.
I should have been more clear that having the ability to do this is fine, but requiring the user does it as the main interface is not.
A lot of those shortcuts were also on the Windows 7 start menu (unless you turned them off). I don't have a Windows 8.1 system in front of me, but I don't recall anything on it that could not be pinned to the Start Menu. Perhaps some of the direct links into the Control Panel, but that could be done with a bit of fiddling.
"It doesn't print" is a different bug report than "it prints garbage".
That's true. It is also different to "it prints blank pages" and "it emits no pages". "It doesn't print" is vague and unhelpful, because as you said customers lie in bug reports and will therefore say it won't print when it actually prints garbage.
Having been the recipient on many a bug report that was as simple as "it won't print", I know that you almost always have to follow up such general bug reports with questions to narrow down the problem. This is especially the case with printing when the problem may only present with certain documents (something a crash report will not tell you).
But when Firefox doesn't crash it doesn't send that information (obviously). The equivalent of "it won't print" would be "the web page is blank". A rendering error will not trigger the crash reporting system.
However, if a bug report is generated due to a crash in the print spooler then it will be obvious that it didn't print so adding the text "it won't print" provides nothing useful.
Problem 1: Multiple instances of the same program.
This was answered in the link that you provided. Right click on the task bar icon and open a new instance of the application (or access the jump list of recently used files). It works for Windows 7 and 8.
Problem 2: The start screen forces me into a mobile interface.
Yeah, I hate the Metro interface too. But this is the high profile change that they made to Windows 10, so it is already a solved problem.
Problem 3: Windows 8 sends to Microsoft everything we locally search.
This is a configurable option in Windows 8.1, so that isn't a problem.
Problem 4: Functionality isn't everything.
It will be interesting how many of Windows 8's less intuitive user interface features will still be around in the final version of Windows 10. My most hated modern user interface idea is the removal of UI hints to simplify the screen. You end up having to try clicking and swiping everything just to see if it does something. Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too
Problem 5: The new paradigm has a negative impact on consumer perceptions.
The absolute best way for Microsoft to introduce the changes we've seen with Windows 8 would have been to make them optional at the moment of installation. We could then have chosen the interface that best suits our device.
Well that is what they have done now. I read a great article once on the though process that went on behind the scenes about the new interface. I wish I could find it again, because it put it all into perspective. I will still always hate the Metro interface and the loss of functionality that it brings, but I have been surprised at the change of heart about it that the staff at my company have had about it. They went from hating it to acceptance (and even one who loves it).
Problem 6: Nothing about the new Windows features is necessary.
That gets said about every version of Windows. XP was just a face-lift on 2000. Vista was just XP run as a limited user. Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved. The changes in each version are more noticeable when moving back to an old version. You suddenly realise how many of the new features you use when they suddenly disappear.
Now I write that though (on my Windows 7 computer), I can't think of any examples of things that I miss from Win8 right now.
"It doesn't print" isn't a complete and useful report because it is just one step up from simply saying "it doesn't work". Presumably it does print for some people, so the developers really need to be able to narrow down the problem.
Does it crash as soon as it starts the print process, or does it go appear to generate each page? Does it send anything to the printer (flashing light on printer), but just no pages are emitted? Is it just that blank pages are emitted? Or random garbage characters? There can be many symptoms of not printing, and they would each suggest a problem in a different bit of code.
I haven't read the privacy statement for this, but it would be sensible for the OS to capture recent activity in a bug report, no?
Yes, it does log activity in the beta versions of Windows. It seems that their collective head is in the right place. However, all the logging in the world can't see what has come out of your printer.
Seriously just because they burn a few extra watts doesn't mean they need to be fucking illegal.
A few extra watts? That is understating it dramatically.
As any investor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Then surely this just backs up my point, which was that you can't use the current performance as a guarantee of future results. What I was using the past performance for was as proof of that exact point; not that past warming was proof of future warming but that the current pattern cannot be used as proof of the lack of future warming.
I would further direct your attention to the fact that your link to the satellite data only goes back to about 1970.
Of course it didn't go back a long way. It was a graph showing more detail of the most recent temperatures to demonstrate how noisy the data is that you can't use a short term phenomenon as a predictor of long term trends. It was not the graph that I was referring to throughout the rest of my post about the previous lulls and drops in temperature not being harbingers of the end of global warming. I was looking at a PDF of a graph while I was writing, but I had intended to link to an online version in my post. Rather than me choose one that you might take issue with, why don't you do a Google search and find one yourself. Whichever you choose they demonstrate my point.
The further back you go (prior to around 1930, there wasn't even standardization or widespread training for temperature measurements at weather stations), the less accurate, precise, and available the data becomes.
We have a pretty good picture of temperatures dating back thousands of years from various sources like tree growth patterns and ice core samples. So do you really think that scientists suddenly get all stupid about interpreting the measurements made a hundred years ago? That they can't (or didn't think to) correlate between the various measuring stations at the time and factor equipment problems and local environmental changes?
It is no coincidence that temperature graphs for modern times all start in the mid to late 1800s. That is the time that scientists agree is when accurate enough records began. You might like to say that it is only the last 45 years that we have accurate measurements, but the scientific community would beg to differ on that assertion.
We are a child trying to understand the inner workings of a nuclear power plant even as we struggle to master basic arithmetic. ... It does mean that setting public policy based on the level of understanding we have today is foolish and that any attempt to purposely alter the climate through mass engineering efforts is downright suicidal.
Suicidal? How can it be suicidal to reduce our carbon footprint to a level that we had in the past, when obviously we didn't all die out back then - either literally or economically. And they say the AGW proponents are alarmists!!
But if you are right and we really don't know enough about the environment, surely the most sensible approach would be to not keep pumping the atmosphere with substances that we don't know what effect it will have on our climate. Stop doing that until we know more. How can you possibly defend doing otherwise? Surely those children who haven't mastered basic arithmetic shouldn't be trying to build nuclear power plants.
Which Global Warming? The one which stopped 18 Years ago?
No, not that Global Warming, it's another one. You can't say that it has stopped or is dead, because all you need to do is look at a graph of global temperatures to see that this is not unprecedented. The global temperature peaked in 1940 and then didn't reach that point again until 1970. Global Warming didn't stop back then, despite that lull.
In fact, that wasn't a lull, it was more of a plummet then a rise. If you look at the graphs, you will see that the global temperature repeatedly plateaus (or even falls) only to continue warming a few years later.
It is totally premature to try to call the end of a major trend while you are in the middle of it. Just look at how noisy the data is for the period that you mention (which is just one reading). Who is to say that we wont see another step up in the next year or so followed by another plateau at a higher level? It certainly fits the pattern that we have seen in the past.
One could argue that it's Snowden's revelations are hurting the economy. The NSA is supposed to be spying on foreign entities.
If the NSA are supposed to be spying on foreign entities, then it stands to reason that Snowden telling everyone this would not be a huge revelation; it would be just stating the obvious. As such, Snowden could not have hurt the economy.