Yeah, those stupid poor people, they can't even afford to drop $700 on a clearly superior 64GB SLC drive, even though an MLC drive suits their requirements just as well for less than a quarter of the price. What a bunch of assholes, they're clearly just SSD brand whores, and are probably imagining that they'll be drowning in pussy just by casually dropping "SSD" and "X25" in a conversation.
I thought the prices were way too high too, but if Intel can keep the prices around $200 while doubling the capacity, the new 160GB model might be justifiable for the OS and the I/O intensive programs or games. As it stands, the 80GB is almost too small to be useful nowadays, while the currently 160GB one is way too expensive, while also not being particularly large. As I recall, this update is supposed to take place in Q4, so there's not much longer until we see.
Back when I went to school, I was told that our country, Ukraine, was the center of Europe. To be more exact, I think it was supposed to be some shithole town in the Carpathian mountains, which, if you look where the Ural mountains are, doesn't seem to be too ridiculous.
Certainly it depends, YMMV, and all that. Still, I think that some of the points that you bring up are not actually arguing against a relational database, perhaps just for a slight reorganization of your processes.
I don't know where you get the data from, but anything awk/sed can do, so can Perl. And from Perl (or PHP, if you're lame) it's very easy to load the data into a database
It's easy to connect to an SQL server from the remote machine and either dump everything or just select what you need. You'll need more than notepad.exe to do this, but it's not rocket science. Pivots in Excel can be really useful, but Excel can easily connect to the same database and query the data directly from there and use it for your charts/tables.
Since by this point you'll already have all the data in the db, exporting it to CSV would be trivial. Or you could even skip Google Docs entirely and generate your charts with tools which can automatically query your database.
I agree with your final point though, we really have no idea what would be best for the submitter within the limitations of skills, budget, time, etc. Perhaps flat files are really the best solutions, or maybe stone tablets are.
The old Mustang might be made from 3/4" (whatever that is in real unites) steel, but it's a fucking deathtrap compared to any relatively modern car, including the 2007 mustang. Also, the old, especially pre-'72, HP measurements were pretty much bullshit.
Yep, and it's that Jon St. John. Which makes me think this won't actually be a "Defense of the Ancients" game, but that it's the new Duke Nukem installment. It even starts with a "D", I can't be wrong!
It's not just 2 bucks, it's two bucks each month, and that's the cheap subscription. If you played it for as long as Q3A has been available, you'd be out of 256 bucks, or $512 if you opted for the more expensive option.
Excellent graphics? Are you kidding? Quake live doesn't look very different from the regular Q3. All your other points aren't dependent on the player-milking subscription model either.
So what, this is how the police/prosecutors work. They offer you to plead guilty and accept a relatively small punishment, or threaten you to take through the whole process, possibly taking years and costing a lot of money, with a chance of a much higher punishment. Of course if you decline to plead guilty, they'll be pissed off and there will be a higher chance of getting railroaded.
Quake 3 Arena is an awesome game that, in terms of sheer gameplay, still has no equal. If Id just re-made Quake 3 Arena with updated graphics, but the same gameplay, same customizability, same map-making and mod-ability, it would be a smash hit.
They did, it's called Quake 4. But I agree, this Quake Live think looks like a completely terrible thing that shouldn't even exist, but sadly it gets many new players or returning old players. I mean, pay 2 bucks per month for Freeze Tag, that I've been playing on the regular Q3A for free since forever? I'm glad id has found a new cash cow to support Carmack's space hobby, but fuck this.
Only because relatively few people do that, there is of course nothing impossible here. I drive an 11 year old car myself, but I got it a bit over two years ago.
Did you buy both cars new and drove them for 16/10 years respectively? I doubt it, and in this case, the original purchase price and financing fees don't concern you at all. The car might last for 100 years, but if the original owner sold it off at 5 years (and lots of people do this), then what happens afterwards doesn't concern them either.
Well, duh, this is just a mockup preview to show how the place will look like once the name is officially changed. It just take a while for the money to be transfered in Russia, and even longer for the bureaucrats to get their shit together and replace the signs.
Yeah, some McDonalds definitely do this here in Prague. The last time I was in one in the city center (where all the tourists are, they don't do this everywhere), you could either pay (I think) 5Kc/~25c, or show them a receipt. They usually employ an old lady to check these, so it's not a cheap solution, unless they work for free, or for food.
I doubt they had a daily code though, as it would be pointless since the date of transaction is already printed on all receipts. I mean, who the fuck would bother counterfeiting McDonalds receipts to gain free toilet access for a day?
Whereas, if we take the steps necessary to unbind ourselves from earth, and begin colonizing the local solar-system, nearby stars, etc, we may actually, as a species, live considerably longer, and be around for a significant amount of universe time.
Those complaints don't seem so serious for a $150 device, except maybe the MAC address issue. You're wrong about resistive screens though, I found my old PDA after having used an HTC Desire for a few months, and it was great to be able to feel the screen again, as opposed to having to smudge my finger all over the immovable screen surface of my Desire to do anything. I'd settle for a capacitive/digitizer hybrid though.
Have you tried any media playback? This seems like it could be a pretty nice carputer for the price. I tried putting together something based on mini-ITX but the cost started getting ridiculous once I added everything that would such a thing actually useful. This tablet just seems to be missing a GPS unit, though they're thankfully like 30 bucks nowadays.
Oh yeah, what you say here is close to what I had in mind, but didn't have time to elaborate on originally. It's definitely a tradeoff, had these games used some harsh DRM measures, some people would be turned off from buying it (I claimed that only a few people would care in my OP*), while some of those who would otherwise pirate it, would be unable to do so** and buy the game instead (I didn't claim anything in the OP, but I think this, too, will only be a few people).
As you say, the gain from the former pirates would need to outweigh the loss of former customers. But that's not everything yet, the gain would also need to outweigh the cost of implementing said DRM scheme, and extra support, for when paying customers can't play the game because of the DRM. And the negative word of mouth from these same cases. Of course, the DRM system would need to be really pretty good, otherwise it will get cracked by the first guy with a hex editor, making it worse than useless.
I don't have any numbers to back this up unfortunately, but in my opinion DRM is a useless waste of time for everybody involved. Except the DRM vendors, whore are getting paid for it, but even then they could do something more useful instead.
* See, already a bunch of replies to my post were praising Steam when I clicked "reply". Yeah, ok, it's nice that it copies your savegames and sometimes there are discounts, but sometimes the Steam games are more expensive than retail, and Valve can ban the account and make your purchased games useless. Well whatever, give Gabe your money, he needs it to buy food.
I have to disagree here, I think the first question is correct. You know why? Because most people don't give a shit about DRM, even if they know it exists. If everything comes together just right, there might be a shitstorm of complaints and this might have an effect (like Spore, but being a bad game certainly had a greater effect), but mostly the games are sold just fine with DRM. Look at the consoles, and look at Steam - in many aspects it's actually worse than traditional CD copy protection, but people line up to get their games from Steam because it downloads updates automatically or some such shit.
I don't know how people can doublethink away the idea that Pirates stealing 5x the number of copies being sold legitimately for a top selling game somehow DOESN'T hurt the industry.
Beer is an optional beverage that has not been made an integral ingredient to everything on the store shelf. People do not have to buy beer to fix dinner.
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Yeah, those stupid poor people, they can't even afford to drop $700 on a clearly superior 64GB SLC drive, even though an MLC drive suits their requirements just as well for less than a quarter of the price. What a bunch of assholes, they're clearly just SSD brand whores, and are probably imagining that they'll be drowning in pussy just by casually dropping "SSD" and "X25" in a conversation.
I thought the prices were way too high too, but if Intel can keep the prices around $200 while doubling the capacity, the new 160GB model might be justifiable for the OS and the I/O intensive programs or games. As it stands, the 80GB is almost too small to be useful nowadays, while the currently 160GB one is way too expensive, while also not being particularly large. As I recall, this update is supposed to take place in Q4, so there's not much longer until we see.
Back when I went to school, I was told that our country, Ukraine, was the center of Europe. To be more exact, I think it was supposed to be some shithole town in the Carpathian mountains, which, if you look where the Ural mountains are, doesn't seem to be too ridiculous.
Certainly it depends, YMMV, and all that. Still, I think that some of the points that you bring up are not actually arguing against a relational database, perhaps just for a slight reorganization of your processes.
I agree with your final point though, we really have no idea what would be best for the submitter within the limitations of skills, budget, time, etc. Perhaps flat files are really the best solutions, or maybe stone tablets are.
The old Mustang might be made from 3/4" (whatever that is in real unites) steel, but it's a fucking deathtrap compared to any relatively modern car, including the 2007 mustang. Also, the old, especially pre-'72, HP measurements were pretty much bullshit.
I have a Desire...
Yep, and it's that Jon St. John. Which makes me think this won't actually be a "Defense of the Ancients" game, but that it's the new Duke Nukem installment. It even starts with a "D", I can't be wrong!
It's not just 2 bucks, it's two bucks each month, and that's the cheap subscription. If you played it for as long as Q3A has been available, you'd be out of 256 bucks, or $512 if you opted for the more expensive option.
Excellent graphics? Are you kidding? Quake live doesn't look very different from the regular Q3. All your other points aren't dependent on the player-milking subscription model either.
> He pleaded guilty to this.
So what, this is how the police/prosecutors work. They offer you to plead guilty and accept a relatively small punishment, or threaten you to take through the whole process, possibly taking years and costing a lot of money, with a chance of a much higher punishment. Of course if you decline to plead guilty, they'll be pissed off and there will be a higher chance of getting railroaded.
They did, it's called Quake 4. But I agree, this Quake Live think looks like a completely terrible thing that shouldn't even exist, but sadly it gets many new players or returning old players. I mean, pay 2 bucks per month for Freeze Tag, that I've been playing on the regular Q3A for free since forever? I'm glad id has found a new cash cow to support Carmack's space hobby, but fuck this.
M-class? So is it some kind of Mercedes SUV thing?
Only because relatively few people do that, there is of course nothing impossible here. I drive an 11 year old car myself, but I got it a bit over two years ago.
This study is Canadian, shut up.
Sure, they love their oil too, but this is something you need to check before going on a rant about American "petro-dollar" conspiracies.
If the Prius takes 320,000 miles to break even against a similar conventional car, that it's the Prius that is fairly useless.
Did you buy both cars new and drove them for 16/10 years respectively? I doubt it, and in this case, the original purchase price and financing fees don't concern you at all. The car might last for 100 years, but if the original owner sold it off at 5 years (and lots of people do this), then what happens afterwards doesn't concern them either.
> A more important question: Why not?
Because it's fucking expensive and apparently the only argument in favor is "why not".
Ehm, no. Crysis takes way more than three hours to beat, and has great replay value. Completely the opposite of World of Goo.
Well, duh, this is just a mockup preview to show how the place will look like once the name is officially changed. It just take a while for the money to be transfered in Russia, and even longer for the bureaucrats to get their shit together and replace the signs.
Yeah, some McDonalds definitely do this here in Prague. The last time I was in one in the city center (where all the tourists are, they don't do this everywhere), you could either pay (I think) 5Kc/~25c, or show them a receipt. They usually employ an old lady to check these, so it's not a cheap solution, unless they work for free, or for food.
I doubt they had a daily code though, as it would be pointless since the date of transaction is already printed on all receipts. I mean, who the fuck would bother counterfeiting McDonalds receipts to gain free toilet access for a day?
And that would matter why exactly?
Those complaints don't seem so serious for a $150 device, except maybe the MAC address issue. You're wrong about resistive screens though, I found my old PDA after having used an HTC Desire for a few months, and it was great to be able to feel the screen again, as opposed to having to smudge my finger all over the immovable screen surface of my Desire to do anything. I'd settle for a capacitive/digitizer hybrid though.
Have you tried any media playback? This seems like it could be a pretty nice carputer for the price. I tried putting together something based on mini-ITX but the cost started getting ridiculous once I added everything that would such a thing actually useful. This tablet just seems to be missing a GPS unit, though they're thankfully like 30 bucks nowadays.
Oh yeah, what you say here is close to what I had in mind, but didn't have time to elaborate on originally. It's definitely a tradeoff, had these games used some harsh DRM measures, some people would be turned off from buying it (I claimed that only a few people would care in my OP*), while some of those who would otherwise pirate it, would be unable to do so** and buy the game instead (I didn't claim anything in the OP, but I think this, too, will only be a few people).
As you say, the gain from the former pirates would need to outweigh the loss of former customers. But that's not everything yet, the gain would also need to outweigh the cost of implementing said DRM scheme, and extra support, for when paying customers can't play the game because of the DRM. And the negative word of mouth from these same cases. Of course, the DRM system would need to be really pretty good, otherwise it will get cracked by the first guy with a hex editor, making it worse than useless.
I don't have any numbers to back this up unfortunately, but in my opinion DRM is a useless waste of time for everybody involved. Except the DRM vendors, whore are getting paid for it, but even then they could do something more useful instead.
* See, already a bunch of replies to my post were praising Steam when I clicked "reply". Yeah, ok, it's nice that it copies your savegames and sometimes there are discounts, but sometimes the Steam games are more expensive than retail, and Valve can ban the account and make your purchased games useless. Well whatever, give Gabe your money, he needs it to buy food.
**And that's pretty questionable, really.
I have to disagree here, I think the first question is correct. You know why? Because most people don't give a shit about DRM, even if they know it exists. If everything comes together just right, there might be a shitstorm of complaints and this might have an effect (like Spore, but being a bad game certainly had a greater effect), but mostly the games are sold just fine with DRM. Look at the consoles, and look at Steam - in many aspects it's actually worse than traditional CD copy protection, but people line up to get their games from Steam because it downloads updates automatically or some such shit.
Where's the proof that it does?
Beer is an optional beverage that has not been made an integral ingredient to everything on the store shelf. People do not have to buy beer to fix dinner.
Well, there's still time to fix this!