How many different kinds of hardware can Windows plug and play these days? How many different chipsets?
Sure, its just drivers..but the ability to run out of the box without issue for millions of people with vastly different configurations, I feel, is a very strong aspect of MS Windows and something no other OS can claim.
The cost savings is almost non-existant. I can get(I HAD one) a standard civic that gets me 30-40mpg, and without the extra initial cost. $5000 = 2000 gallons of gas at $2.50/gal. 35mpg * 2000 = 70000. So if you drive 18,000 miles per year, you start to break even around year 4 of owning the car.
Conservation? The amount of energy and oil in the plastics and other materials used in the production of a car, and where does the OLD car go? Its SO wastefull to buy a new car. Not to mention it still uses gas to operate and oil to lube. Conservation my ass.
Then make it an optional college course. "Life 101".
I'm going to college so I can learn how to make a lot of money doing what I like, and live a happy life. You can force everyone to be educated and live the life you think they should, or you can support every individual's pursuit of happiness. Why do so many students drop out? Because we have stubburn opinionated "intellectuals" who think everyone sould have a favorite poem, regardless if anyone but themselves gives a rats ass about poetry.
Forcing specialization is bad, forcing generalization isn't any better.
The highest ranked educational systems in the world accept this fact and optimizes funding and courses...but America does not. Our teachers waste their time, our government wastes funding, and we degrade our classes and material to bring every student up to a standard level of education that is, relatively speaking, low.
I am a very firm believer in free education, both high school and college, for every citizen. Too allow everybody the equal ability to achieve their potential. But if we are to make that investment, we cannot waste our resources trying to teach people who aren't willing and able to learn.
Laws like No Child Left Behind turn the focus away from encouraging the students who will make this country great by forcing our schools to waste time preparing the unpreparable, or face penalties. How are we losing? We're too focused on general education, throughout our educational system, and not enough attention paid to making each student the best they can be.
I can't quote the specific place I read it, but even if Blizzard didn't say it themselves, its still true:
WoW is Blizzard's cash cow to fund OTHER projects. That doesn't mean they aren't putting their hearts into it, it just means they're going to charge the S--- outa you.
What major developer WOULDN'T want a steady stream of income to pad the investor cushion between big releases.
And as well, if Valve activation servers go down, then obviously they will not care about piracy, so you'll be free to crack/keygen your way to HL2 goodness.
Very reasonable stipulation to say you aren't pirating it.
What if the activation servers go down? Well hell, you better grab your shotgun and stock your basement with Pork & Beans, because who knows when ANYTHING we might rely on goes down. But seriously, IF they don't find a way to eventually turn off activation, start bitching about it then. For now, and the next 5+ years, just play the game.
While your stance is, of course, a good one to have in general; there has to be room for specific exceptions. This is not a case of "you may not install this software on another computer" or "you may not copy the contents of this disk". You CAN do anything you want with the software, so long as you satisify the very reasonable stipulation that you are not pirating it, or using cheat hacks online.
"Yesterday, Valve disabled approximately 20,000 Steam accounts which had been used to try to access Half-Life 2 without purchasing it. The method used was extremely easy for Valve to trace and confirm, and so there is no question that the accounts disabled were used to try and illegally obtain Half-Life 2."
"Second, the number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it."
CD *KEY*. So explain to me why anyone who has a legitimate copy of the game would use a phony CD-KEY?
You admit your own antiquated notion that buying software is like buying a dishwasher. This path of thinking is exactly what allows bad copyright and software laws to keep being created.
If anyone doesn't want to require a CD to play, simply buy it off steam. If you require the confort of "home appliance purchases", then please get out of the way and stop holding up progress.
The pausing you are experiencing in the middle of action sequences is due mostly to save points, not loading. This is mostly a system performance thing. My computer pauses for a 1/2 second(equivilient to Halo save points), my friend's laptop pauses for a good 5 seconds. One could assume the loading is due to a more advanced game, as Halo 2 IS set for console capabilities - the hardware specs of which PCs have long passed....other than hard drive technology which causes long loading times.
Have you ever played Final Fantasy XI? Its a MMORPG. The installing, validating, account creating, and patching process takes about 4+ hours, assuming you have broadband. This is not unheardof for a major release. If anything, major releases call for it. The bigger the release, the most people trying to hack it. Their lengths are more than justified even if they put every user through that hassle...but not every user has that problem. I didn't. And in time it will be even less. Knee-jerk responses to the frustration in the system because they REALLY want to play the game will fade.
I clicked on it at 12am PST on 11/16, and it took about 7 minutes to validate my copy, and I was in. Sure we all know Steam sucks sometimes. For those of us irritated by having the tray icon, that means it takes an extra 30 seconds or so to launch Steam and connect. But who cares? They aren't pushing back our Fair Use rights like every other publisher running a newer gayer version of SafeDisk, which really does no more to stop piracy than requiring a keygen.
With Steam, they are, if anything, doing the entire game industry a service by providing a method to curb piracy, interact with the community, fight hackers, bypass the middleman, and show that you don't need to put all your eggs in the multiplayer basket(ala Blizzard) to do this.
If every developer rented out Steam Space to release their games, I'd be happy.
They say its because of SafeDisk...ever try to CD crack it? I could only find 2. Instructions were something like:
Drag new EXE to directory, keep unsafedisk in another directory. Run unsafe disk and point it to game.icd Test both EXEs it generates and rename the true EXE to shokc2.exe[yes, misspelt]. Run crack and point it to shock2.exe. Now, in softICE[I think its called] edit hex lines....
At about that point I gave up. I own the game, I have the CD, and windows compatability mode doesn't do jack. I'm not learning how to hex edit to play it....
Actually, have you ever gone back and PLAYED the 1st one again? The first one is a terrible game the second time through, other than being able to choose who you betray when.
Even after I put the game down for 2 months, I was amazed at my ability to overlook things because it was such a cool game the first time:
-Melee combat was completely flawed, hitboxes are screwy. -AI is HORRIBLE. -Graphics are lousy. -Gameplay, while offering options, is actually quite linear as dictated by the level design...98% chance you don't have enough ammo or health to go in the front door(although possile) so you take the stealth route. And whenever there is a place in the level you aren't supposed to get past...put a garbage can there, or have a mech standing there to make it SEEM like you could get by and break out, but you can't. -Character was boring himself, only the normal people interacting with him make it at all tolerable.
Voice acting was good.
I think the issue wasn't that it was worse...but that it was the same thing again, and people didn't know how much they hated the first game until they had to play it again.
Actually, here in Utah we have this place called the "Salt Flats". Hundreds of square miles of...nothing. Nothing will ever grow there, nothing lives there...people use it to test land-speed records, and thats about it.
Dig a big hole, dump it in there, put a big fence around it. The danger of transporting it? also political. A few miles away from highly populated areas in Utah is where they dismantle, destroy, and test chemical weapons. They transport this stuff THROUGH THE CITY. The most deadly chems in the world.
All the things we don't want are already happening under our noses...
The thing about FF games, is that everyone remembers their first as the best. Proof enough is that I've met people who played FF8 first, and they think its the best one...when I think only X-2 could surpass it in lameness.
Is FF7 really the best? Who knows. Maybe I'm biased, but best magic system, and best minigames, bar none.
I can't comment on what, but we actually continue to land new contracts all the time, and a couple very large ones....however I don't believe they are quite large enough to make a huge difference for a company that already has so much revenue, but so much overhead.
You are correct in that he was arrested, but you have got the judgement wrong.
You are required to give your name to an officer, but not any form of ID. Hiibel refused to give his name.
"Here, the initial stop was based on reasonable suspicion, satisfying the Fourth Amendment requirements noted in Brown. Further, Hiibel has not alleged that the Nevada statute is unconstitutionally vague, as in Kolender. This statute is narrower and more precise. In contrast to the "credible and reliable" identification requirement in Kolender, the Nevada Supreme Court has interpreted the instant statute to require only that a suspect disclose his name. It apparently does not require him to produce a driver's license or any other document. If he chooses either to state his name or communicate it to the officer by other means, the statute is satisfied and no violation occurs"
You could definately say that. I work for Unisys, and they are moving towards a more 'service-based' business model. Like IBM, they provide a 'solution', not just a product. They find out what you need, they either make or buy a program, install it, support it. Buy the hardware, install it, support it, etc.
While it is trailing in IBM's shoes, its not a bad business model.
Now Unisys is still pretty big, but we did miss expectations for the first time in 4 years, and the stock price dumped, its now ~$9. And our stock is considered 'moderate gain, low-risk'.
Still, I'm new here, so I don't have much info on the "why's" of GIF.
...but the idea stills holds up. You cannot compare our income to theirs. Well besides the fact that very well might live with their parents if they are that poor, but life also costs less. How do we know that $2k there isn't the same as $6k here? That isn't mentioned in this study, either.
So your making $6k/year living at home, and you see something that would be a telephone, video phone, TV, access the internet, and play DVDs and CDs, for $250. Sounds pretty good to me.
Also, nor can you assume the capacity they have for this technology(Did you see the picture of the wooden hut in asia with the fiber internet connection?). These countries are trying to close the divide, and they might also back this project if the test succeeds. What if it were cheaper, or at least the same $250 because the government distributed it instead of retailers? Then, instead of rolling out fiber to every home, they have advanced wireless nodes?
Basically, this is a solid idea not to be blown off because you wouldn't spend $5000 on just a computer.
The Windows thing...sounds good to me. I liked my iPaq, and my xbox has yet to crash on me. In addition, it provides a name brand, and a company capable of producing and living up to the obligations of 4 billion users.
As equally as almost any woman can say sexism lost them a job, or made men question their ability - They could just be...not as good, less qualified, etc. I'm not saying all women are, but it could be in equal percentage as men who have the same problems getting a job, getting respected. Yet somehow its construed as sexism.
I'm sorry, but I have yet to witness a case where a woman worked harder and didn't move up faster than lazy ol' me.
On the topic of Java...I want to know why anyone would make a program for Java, as opposed to C and such?
I honestly don't know much about developing, only experience using the software, and this is what I've noticed:
Java is slow, and often times is used through a (bleh) IE window.
Java in unstable. I've never worked someplace or used a Java program that didn't just memory leak itself to death, or just plain freeze up all the time.
Java needs much more RAM and CPU to run.
Given these points, why would it be considered more cost effective, or overall a better descision to make a Java application? I understand the portability, and thats great for script, but isn't it ultimately a bad choice for a professional, mission critical application?
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Hardware compatability.
How many different kinds of hardware can Windows plug and play these days? How many different chipsets?
Sure, its just drivers..but the ability to run out of the box without issue for millions of people with vastly different configurations, I feel, is a very strong aspect of MS Windows and something no other OS can claim.
The cost savings is almost non-existant. I can get(I HAD one) a standard civic that gets me 30-40mpg, and without the extra initial cost. $5000 = 2000 gallons of gas at $2.50/gal. 35mpg * 2000 = 70000. So if you drive 18,000 miles per year, you start to break even around year 4 of owning the car.
Conservation? The amount of energy and oil in the plastics and other materials used in the production of a car, and where does the OLD car go? Its SO wastefull to buy a new car. Not to mention it still uses gas to operate and oil to lube. Conservation my ass.
I can't believe anyone wants a hybrid....
Then make it an optional college course. "Life 101".
I'm going to college so I can learn how to make a lot of money doing what I like, and live a happy life. You can force everyone to be educated and live the life you think they should, or you can support every individual's pursuit of happiness. Why do so many students drop out? Because we have stubburn opinionated "intellectuals" who think everyone sould have a favorite poem, regardless if anyone but themselves gives a rats ass about poetry.
Forcing specialization is bad, forcing generalization isn't any better.
I am a very firm believer in free education, both high school and college, for every citizen. Too allow everybody the equal ability to achieve their potential. But if we are to make that investment, we cannot waste our resources trying to teach people who aren't willing and able to learn.
Laws like No Child Left Behind turn the focus away from encouraging the students who will make this country great by forcing our schools to waste time preparing the unpreparable, or face penalties. How are we losing? We're too focused on general education, throughout our educational system, and not enough attention paid to making each student the best they can be.
I can't quote the specific place I read it, but even if Blizzard didn't say it themselves, its still true:
WoW is Blizzard's cash cow to fund OTHER projects. That doesn't mean they aren't putting their hearts into it, it just means they're going to charge the S--- outa you.
What major developer WOULDN'T want a steady stream of income to pad the investor cushion between big releases.
-nt-
And as well, if Valve activation servers go down, then obviously they will not care about piracy, so you'll be free to crack/keygen your way to HL2 goodness.
Very reasonable stipulation to say you aren't pirating it.
What if the activation servers go down? Well hell, you better grab your shotgun and stock your basement with Pork & Beans, because who knows when ANYTHING we might rely on goes down.
But seriously, IF they don't find a way to eventually turn off activation, start bitching about it then. For now, and the next 5+ years, just play the game.
Again, point taken.
While your stance is, of course, a good one to have in general; there has to be room for specific exceptions. This is not a case of "you may not install this software on another computer" or "you may not copy the contents of this disk". You CAN do anything you want with the software, so long as you satisify the very reasonable stipulation that you are not pirating it, or using cheat hacks online.
"Yesterday, Valve disabled approximately 20,000 Steam accounts which had been used to try to access Half-Life 2 without purchasing it. The method used was extremely easy for Valve to trace and confirm, and so there is no question that the accounts disabled were used to try and illegally obtain Half-Life 2." "Second, the number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it." CD *KEY*. So explain to me why anyone who has a legitimate copy of the game would use a phony CD-KEY?
You admit your own antiquated notion that buying software is like buying a dishwasher. This path of thinking is exactly what allows bad copyright and software laws to keep being created.
If anyone doesn't want to require a CD to play, simply buy it off steam. If you require the confort of "home appliance purchases", then please get out of the way and stop holding up progress.
The pausing you are experiencing in the middle of action sequences is due mostly to save points, not loading. This is mostly a system performance thing. My computer pauses for a 1/2 second(equivilient to Halo save points), my friend's laptop pauses for a good 5 seconds. One could assume the loading is due to a more advanced game, as Halo 2 IS set for console capabilities - the hardware specs of which PCs have long passed....other than hard drive technology which causes long loading times.
"But what about HL2? Will I still be able to play that in 5 or 10 years time? Or will the authentication servers no longer be there?"
Completely speculative, and in 3 years this argument will be forgotten. -- See, I can speculate, too.
Have you ever played Final Fantasy XI? Its a MMORPG. The installing, validating, account creating, and patching process takes about 4+ hours, assuming you have broadband. This is not unheardof for a major release. If anything, major releases call for it. The bigger the release, the most people trying to hack it. Their lengths are more than justified even if they put every user through that hassle...but not every user has that problem. I didn't. And in time it will be even less. Knee-jerk responses to the frustration in the system because they REALLY want to play the game will fade.
I clicked on it at 12am PST on 11/16, and it took about 7 minutes to validate my copy, and I was in. Sure we all know Steam sucks sometimes. For those of us irritated by having the tray icon, that means it takes an extra 30 seconds or so to launch Steam and connect. But who cares? They aren't pushing back our Fair Use rights like every other publisher running a newer gayer version of SafeDisk, which really does no more to stop piracy than requiring a keygen.
With Steam, they are, if anything, doing the entire game industry a service by providing a method to curb piracy, interact with the community, fight hackers, bypass the middleman, and show that you don't need to put all your eggs in the multiplayer basket(ala Blizzard) to do this.
If every developer rented out Steam Space to release their games, I'd be happy.
But it wont F!#$^*&# run on Windows XP!!!!
They say its because of SafeDisk...ever try to CD crack it? I could only find 2. Instructions were something like:
Drag new EXE to directory, keep unsafedisk in another directory.
Run unsafe disk and point it to game.icd
Test both EXEs it generates and rename the true EXE to shokc2.exe[yes, misspelt].
Run crack and point it to shock2.exe.
Now, in softICE[I think its called] edit hex lines....
At about that point I gave up. I own the game, I have the CD, and windows compatability mode doesn't do jack. I'm not learning how to hex edit to play it....
Actually, have you ever gone back and PLAYED the 1st one again? The first one is a terrible game the second time through, other than being able to choose who you betray when.
Even after I put the game down for 2 months, I was amazed at my ability to overlook things because it was such a cool game the first time:
-Melee combat was completely flawed, hitboxes are screwy.
-AI is HORRIBLE.
-Graphics are lousy.
-Gameplay, while offering options, is actually quite linear as dictated by the level design...98% chance you don't have enough ammo or health to go in the front door(although possile) so you take the stealth route. And whenever there is a place in the level you aren't supposed to get past...put a garbage can there, or have a mech standing there to make it SEEM like you could get by and break out, but you can't.
-Character was boring himself, only the normal people interacting with him make it at all tolerable.
Voice acting was good.
I think the issue wasn't that it was worse...but that it was the same thing again, and people didn't know how much they hated the first game until they had to play it again.
Actually, here in Utah we have this place called the "Salt Flats". Hundreds of square miles of...nothing. Nothing will ever grow there, nothing lives there...people use it to test land-speed records, and thats about it. Dig a big hole, dump it in there, put a big fence around it. The danger of transporting it? also political. A few miles away from highly populated areas in Utah is where they dismantle, destroy, and test chemical weapons. They transport this stuff THROUGH THE CITY. The most deadly chems in the world. All the things we don't want are already happening under our noses...
What an assfag!
The thing about FF games, is that everyone remembers their first as the best. Proof enough is that I've met people who played FF8 first, and they think its the best one...when I think only X-2 could surpass it in lameness. Is FF7 really the best? Who knows. Maybe I'm biased, but best magic system, and best minigames, bar none.
I can't comment on what, but we actually continue to land new contracts all the time, and a couple very large ones....however I don't believe they are quite large enough to make a huge difference for a company that already has so much revenue, but so much overhead.
You are correct in that he was arrested, but you have got the judgement wrong.
You are required to give your name to an officer, but not any form of ID. Hiibel refused to give his name.
"Here, the initial stop was based on reasonable suspicion, satisfying the Fourth Amendment requirements noted in Brown. Further, Hiibel has not alleged that the Nevada statute is unconstitutionally vague, as in Kolender. This statute is narrower and more precise. In contrast to the "credible and reliable" identification requirement in Kolender, the Nevada Supreme Court has interpreted the instant statute to require only that a suspect disclose his name. It apparently does not require him to produce a driver's license or any other document. If he chooses either to state his name or communicate it to the officer by other means, the statute is satisfied and no violation occurs"
You could definately say that. I work for Unisys, and they are moving towards a more 'service-based' business model. Like IBM, they provide a 'solution', not just a product.
They find out what you need, they either make or buy a program, install it, support it. Buy the hardware, install it, support it, etc.
While it is trailing in IBM's shoes, its not a bad business model.
Now Unisys is still pretty big, but we did miss expectations for the first time in 4 years, and the stock price dumped, its now ~$9. And our stock is considered 'moderate gain, low-risk'.
Still, I'm new here, so I don't have much info on the "why's" of GIF.
...but the idea stills holds up. You cannot compare our income to theirs. Well besides the fact that very well might live with their parents if they are that poor, but life also costs less. How do we know that $2k there isn't the same as $6k here? That isn't mentioned in this study, either.
So your making $6k/year living at home, and you see something that would be a telephone, video phone, TV, access the internet, and play DVDs and CDs, for $250. Sounds pretty good to me.
Also, nor can you assume the capacity they have for this technology(Did you see the picture of the wooden hut in asia with the fiber internet connection?). These countries are trying to close the divide, and they might also back this project if the test succeeds. What if it were cheaper, or at least the same $250 because the government distributed it instead of retailers? Then, instead of rolling out fiber to every home, they have advanced wireless nodes?
Basically, this is a solid idea not to be blown off because you wouldn't spend $5000 on just a computer.
The Windows thing...sounds good to me. I liked my iPaq, and my xbox has yet to crash on me. In addition, it provides a name brand, and a company capable of producing and living up to the obligations of 4 billion users.
As equally as almost any woman can say sexism lost them a job, or made men question their ability - They could just be...not as good, less qualified, etc. I'm not saying all women are, but it could be in equal percentage as men who have the same problems getting a job, getting respected. Yet somehow its construed as sexism. I'm sorry, but I have yet to witness a case where a woman worked harder and didn't move up faster than lazy ol' me.
On the topic of Java...I want to know why anyone would make a program for Java, as opposed to C and such?
I honestly don't know much about developing, only experience using the software, and this is what I've noticed:
Java is slow, and often times is used through a (bleh) IE window.
Java in unstable. I've never worked someplace or used a Java program that didn't just memory leak itself to death, or just plain freeze up all the time.
Java needs much more RAM and CPU to run.
Given these points, why would it be considered more cost effective, or overall a better descision to make a Java application? I understand the portability, and thats great for script, but isn't it ultimately a bad choice for a professional, mission critical application?