Ironically, when I finished typing up this post, I went to go use AdAware to scan my system for spyware (which I haven't done in a week or so) and the damn GUI crashed right infront of my eyes. At least, the system didn't crash, Explorer restarted and it popped right back up to where it was.
I'm only using Windows because of the games I need to run, and eventually, the development on a Half-Life 2 based modification that I will be doing (whenever Valve gets decides to release their product that is over a year late).
If I had the choice of running Steam on Debian or Gentoo, I'd be there in an instant. I'm going (sometime in the future) purchase a box for Debian/Gentoo. But the truth is, sometimes Windows is needed for development because of the fact that it's the most widely used Operating system (something I wish would change, but I don't control that).
Also need to remember, like the above said, the majority of users out there have absolutely no idea that when upgrading Windows; programs; or anything else, you may need a driver upgrade. Thus, creating the problem of crashing. That coupled with the fact of Spyware, it all leads up to having a shitty system to work with.
The fact also remains, 95 percent (or more) of the people using *nix are power users, know exactly how to avoid problems, when to upgrade drivers, how to properly upgrade programs, etc. The operating system was also built not to need to reboot -- something Windows wasn't (which, I guess, is a design flaw).
I'm not at all a "Windows Fan-boy" in fact; if it wasn't for the need to run games, I'd be running Debian or Gentoo. But sometimes I'm trying to think what causes people to reboot all the time; it has to come down to people needing to install programs, etc.
The only time I need to reboot is when something is installed (and even then, a lot of programs don't need to reboot the system). For example, the last time I rebooted this system is when I installed Norton Antivirus. I've only crashed once (and that was a baddie on my part, I was attempting to use a crappy version of my Camera drivers).
Although, I have to say, getting SP2 installed correctly did cause me to need to repair install. I had a few problems running it, I think it didn't like some of the drivers. SP2 has been the biggest problem, and I'm really regretting every installing it. But hell, whatever.
This system has been running fine for 9 days now, no reboots, no hiccups, etc. I'm running Cacheman in the background to deal with the memory.
I'm waiting for the SDK myself; along with my whole team. It's really a joke that they said that it would be out a month or two before the release of the game, I highly doubt this. It would be nice - but highly unprobable.
Half-Life 2 isn't coming out in the summer, if you were to read the Gabe Newell's comments specifically he said that they were presenting Viviendi with the game in August - therefore, a Fall release. So before you go somewhere and read the facts and bloat, I'm telling you that you're wrong already.
Of course they want to test the game that has been providing them with income for how many years? That's just sensiable. What was even more of a market ploy was that they're going to get hundreds more of Condition Zero units sold because of this. People are going to buy CZ not because it's a good game, or worth it, (it really isn't) but to play the next itlteration of Counter-Strike early. And boy, are they going to be surprised. It's time to ask mommy for a new computer Johnny, becuase you're old POS won't run CS:S at all.
If you go solely by units sold, the Xbox has sold more units than the Gamecube, albeit not much more, but more. Of course you have to target more than the 18-24 year old market; but you can't ONLY target the younger market (ala Nintendo). The only game that comes close being in that range is the Resident Evil series, which apparently isn't selling the console that the range either.
Okay, here we go again. The online gaming market is what is selling the Xbox. Is it making the competition a profit? No it isn't, but are they selling more units than Nintendo because of it? Yes they are. You need to remember, if Nintendo keeps up everything they're eventually going to go under. They need to start getting onto the Online game bandwagon, the market may be small now, but by the next generation of consoles they better have something in place.
Microsoft is doing it right online wise, $10 a month isn't that bad to be able to play everything and have fun with your friends. There's absolutely no lag at all (which is amazing in itself) and they're great games for the system that can be played online. With EA signing on, you'll be able to play your sports titles online as well.
Supporting HDTV should have been a must, and the next generation consoles should support HDTV out of the box. You want to support a future line of products, the more you support, the less people have to buy. This makes them happy. Sony and Microsoft (although you needed an adapter for the Xbox) support DVD playback; a lot of people then didn't need to buy a DVD player.
What are the consoles of the future going to need to survive? Online Multiplayer gameplay, the ability to browse the internet, and the ability to support HDTV (surround sound, etc) out of the box, DVD playback, and not to mention games the appeal to market in the country you're selling the console at (i.e. no Pokemon Colosseum in a country where Halo and Doom3 are clearly going to sell).
Metroid Prime was good, Wind Walkers sucked, Sunshine sucked, and I've never heard of the last game. One game out of the four that you just mentioned are worth buying. Is it worth buying a console for one game? Nope. When Nintendo starts getting better games targetting towards people other than Japs and little kids I'll buy the console; that or I'll wait until N goes under like Sega and buy the console for $50.
And as you can clearly seen, the reason you stated above is not good enough for people to buy the Gamecube. The fact is, the Gamecube is only selling "well" in Japan. Nintendo fails to see that America has a different market for games than Japan (Micrsoft is the same way, Sony is the only one doing it right). If N decides to do the same thing with their next console, they'll be on the same boat that Sega is right now. But yeah, that's right, they have their precious Gameboy.
Not to mention most of them looking better on the PC, including Doom 3. I hate to be a person who has a PC that can play Doom 3 and buys the Xbox version.
Now I don't think this is actually true; they could proabably get away launching the Xbox2 if it was totally backwards compadiable with the original Xbox. They would be stupid not to do this; therefore everyone would be happy upon launch, people can buy the new system and still play their old games, and you're not putting too much pressure on developers to jump on to the new system.
Will it force Sony to bring out their new console? Nope. Definately not. They're already 70+ million units worldwide, Nintendo and Microsoft combined have less than half of that if I'm not mistaken (might have changed since the last time I checked). Microsoft could launch their console two years before Sony does, all Sony needs is the hype and the ability to play 3 generations worth of games to get the gamers. Will they wait two years? Probably not; but they're not going to jump on it, they'll just call Microsoft's bluff.
If Microsoft does launch the Xbox2 (or whatever they end up calling it) they would be better off offering a platform that can play DVDs out of the box, and work as a simple computer. People are just going to hack the damn machine anyway, they mind as well put the basic functionality in there.
What do I mean? Well damn, the PS2 and the Xbox both are able to access the internet but neither has a pop3 mail client or a web browser. How stupid is that? If I had enough money to buy a development kit for either, I would develop the damn thing and sell it for $20 a pop. How hard would it be to port Mozilla over to the Xbox and PS2 and have it running on a disc off bootup - or even as another dashboard entry? Access the internet via the connection provided, and perform all your basic functions. Save various things on to the hard-drive (mail, config, favorites, etc).
All those bright minds at Microsoft and Sony - am I the only one to be thinking about this? It just strikes me as so ridiculious, especially since I'm paying $10 a month for the Xbox Live service on top of my $34.99 cable bill they could at least offer me a place where I can go surf the web and chat.
Okay, there is really no easy way to answer this. It's basically the NTx kernel on a firmware chip; it performs basic operating system functions (hardware access, dashboard functions (which is read from the hard-drive), and game/dvd processing). The reason it's not a true operating system is because the simple fact that you have very little control over what it can do. In fact, without hacking it, you have basically no control over what the operating system does. I suppose people will argue this, but looking at a standpoint of Windows, Linux, and OSX, it's not a operating system - Kernel is a better word.
Now, when you do hack it, and many people do (why not, it's is just a cheap computer) you throw Linux on there with a brand new dashboard and have all the functionality of a computer, plus the ability to play games and watch movies.
Actually, id has written their engines in C since the beginning. Since the quake days, it's been called "QuakeC" if you decide to mod it. I'm not exactly sure why, just guessing they have a lot of types in the language macro'd off so that it's easier for cross-platform.
The new engine, Doom 3 engine, is written in C++. I guess id finally decided to join the bandwagon;p. There's an interview somewhere with Carmack explaining why he decided to make the jump to C++, I just don't remember the link.
Sounds like something is wrong with your system. As I said, I have atleast 5 computers I know of running Steam, various operating systems, and it works fine. It's more than just me. I haven't heard a complaint from anyone I know either.
That's funny because I'm running Steam on several different systems, different hardware configurations, different versions of Windows (hell, even Linux) and it's been running solid for the past few months. Not a crash once.
Now if you consider a game crashing a Steam error, than yes, some of the games have crash errors. But that's not Steam. The only problem Steam has is bandwidth issues - when a big patch is pushed out on the network sometimes it takes a few hours to get the full patch.
We're not back two years ago when the beta came out and everyone thought it was the final version. Steam works fine, stop kidding yourself.
Sure they could. They own the software. But you see, the point is that Valve licensed games to be played by individuals, not for people to make money off of. Windows is licensed to everyone - and for a server enviroment, you need to buy a license for every user connecting to that server.
Okay when is the last time you've run Steam? Steam has been working properly for the past few months - no crashes and quick updates. What more do you want from it? If you have an adequate internet connection it will be fine.
As for Valve not supporting their products; how much more support do you want for a 5 year old game engine? You're lucky they are supporting it at all, the only other company that supports their games as much as Valve is Epic (Unreal series). ID doesn't even come close.
Go ahead and don't support Valve's products; good luck in getting far in the LAN cafe business. The fact is, Counter-Strike is making (and breaking) LAN centers. Tournaments, Clan Matches, and Qualifiers are bringing in the customers.
I wouldn't call them a "money grubbing company." Valve is one of (if not the best) gaming company that supports their community, and their mod communities. As you can see, two mods that were created under the original engine went retail and they hired several developers from the mods (Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat).
Valve has nearly 100 employees (the last time I checked), if you wish them to continue to be in business, you need to remember that they need to pay their employees (as any business). I don't know how many games (not mods) are using the Half-Life engine for licensing (thereby, royalties aren't being brought in from the engine wise). The new Source engine will probably bring them in a lot of cash - but you're talking the salaries of 100 employees, and all the business expenes.
Valve owns Counter-Strike. They bought it, and now have the legal rights to do whatever they wish to it. At this point, I would say that Valve has probably rewritten most of the original code that was once in Counter-Strike. With that said, is the licensing just? Maybe not, Valve should refund all the cybercafe's the money that they spent on the boxed items.
Although, the cybercafe program that Valve has allows all of the Valve's games to be playable for $9/month (per computer)... unless it's been recently changed (I don't have the time [or need] to go check the Steam website). Alot of these cybercafes make more than that per computer, especially coming into the summer season. Tournaments are another thing - more money, more publicity.
I never liked Dvorak anyway, he had a crappy show on TechTV/ZDTV (Silicon Spin) in which he basically just played sides to intice the other people to argue. He can't write worth for shit, and as the above said, he always takes the negative aspect. I'd like to see Dvorak actually write something positive, a review or something. I come to think this guy knows nothing about computers and just writes based upon statistics.
The last analyst report puts PS2 roughly 72 million units, X-box 14 million units, GameCube 12 million units. This is world-wide. The PS2 has sold nearly 3X the number of units as the X-box and the GC combined.
I agree somewhat to this, I am by no means a "Microsoft fan" but I always hate to see the people just itching to blame Microsoft on something. Their PC operating system has what percentage of the market? Of course spammers/trojan horse writers are going to target this operating system.
As the above said, most users are not intelligent enough to know that they have a trojan. The adbanners that are popping up, the several lack of resources, and the general slowness of the operating system just makes them think that the person who they bought it from is a fluke - therefore they call this person (trust me, I'm getting these phone calls while only being in 'business' for a few weeks now).
The *nix community is full of people who are on the 'top of the tier' in both security and computer knowledge - but what does that make up, the top 10%?
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Ironically, when I finished typing up this post, I went to go use AdAware to scan my system for spyware (which I haven't done in a week or so) and the damn GUI crashed right infront of my eyes. At least, the system didn't crash, Explorer restarted and it popped right back up to where it was.
I'm only using Windows because of the games I need to run, and eventually, the development on a Half-Life 2 based modification that I will be doing (whenever Valve gets decides to release their product that is over a year late).
If I had the choice of running Steam on Debian or Gentoo, I'd be there in an instant. I'm going (sometime in the future) purchase a box for Debian/Gentoo. But the truth is, sometimes Windows is needed for development because of the fact that it's the most widely used Operating system (something I wish would change, but I don't control that).
Also need to remember, like the above said, the majority of users out there have absolutely no idea that when upgrading Windows; programs; or anything else, you may need a driver upgrade. Thus, creating the problem of crashing. That coupled with the fact of Spyware, it all leads up to having a shitty system to work with.
The fact also remains, 95 percent (or more) of the people using *nix are power users, know exactly how to avoid problems, when to upgrade drivers, how to properly upgrade programs, etc. The operating system was also built not to need to reboot -- something Windows wasn't (which, I guess, is a design flaw).
I'm not at all a "Windows Fan-boy" in fact; if it wasn't for the need to run games, I'd be running Debian or Gentoo. But sometimes I'm trying to think what causes people to reboot all the time; it has to come down to people needing to install programs, etc.
The only time I need to reboot is when something is installed (and even then, a lot of programs don't need to reboot the system). For example, the last time I rebooted this system is when I installed Norton Antivirus. I've only crashed once (and that was a baddie on my part, I was attempting to use a crappy version of my Camera drivers).
Although, I have to say, getting SP2 installed correctly did cause me to need to repair install. I had a few problems running it, I think it didn't like some of the drivers. SP2 has been the biggest problem, and I'm really regretting every installing it. But hell, whatever.
This system has been running fine for 9 days now, no reboots, no hiccups, etc. I'm running Cacheman in the background to deal with the memory.
AMD64 3400, 1024mb Corsair, Windows XP Pro SP2.
I'm waiting for the SDK myself; along with my whole team. It's really a joke that they said that it would be out a month or two before the release of the game, I highly doubt this. It would be nice - but highly unprobable.
Half-Life 2 isn't coming out in the summer, if you were to read the Gabe Newell's comments specifically he said that they were presenting Viviendi with the game in August - therefore, a Fall release. So before you go somewhere and read the facts and bloat, I'm telling you that you're wrong already.
Of course they want to test the game that has been providing them with income for how many years? That's just sensiable. What was even more of a market ploy was that they're going to get hundreds more of Condition Zero units sold because of this. People are going to buy CZ not because it's a good game, or worth it, (it really isn't) but to play the next itlteration of Counter-Strike early. And boy, are they going to be surprised. It's time to ask mommy for a new computer Johnny, becuase you're old POS won't run CS:S at all.
And then I say, "Get Verizon up here and run my DSL line."
If you go solely by units sold, the Xbox has sold more units than the Gamecube, albeit not much more, but more. Of course you have to target more than the 18-24 year old market; but you can't ONLY target the younger market (ala Nintendo). The only game that comes close being in that range is the Resident Evil series, which apparently isn't selling the console that the range either.
Okay, here we go again. The online gaming market is what is selling the Xbox. Is it making the competition a profit? No it isn't, but are they selling more units than Nintendo because of it? Yes they are. You need to remember, if Nintendo keeps up everything they're eventually going to go under. They need to start getting onto the Online game bandwagon, the market may be small now, but by the next generation of consoles they better have something in place.
Microsoft is doing it right online wise, $10 a month isn't that bad to be able to play everything and have fun with your friends. There's absolutely no lag at all (which is amazing in itself) and they're great games for the system that can be played online. With EA signing on, you'll be able to play your sports titles online as well.
Supporting HDTV should have been a must, and the next generation consoles should support HDTV out of the box. You want to support a future line of products, the more you support, the less people have to buy. This makes them happy. Sony and Microsoft (although you needed an adapter for the Xbox) support DVD playback; a lot of people then didn't need to buy a DVD player.
What are the consoles of the future going to need to survive? Online Multiplayer gameplay, the ability to browse the internet, and the ability to support HDTV (surround sound, etc) out of the box, DVD playback, and not to mention games the appeal to market in the country you're selling the console at (i.e. no Pokemon Colosseum in a country where Halo and Doom3 are clearly going to sell).
Metroid Prime was good, Wind Walkers sucked, Sunshine sucked, and I've never heard of the last game. One game out of the four that you just mentioned are worth buying. Is it worth buying a console for one game? Nope. When Nintendo starts getting better games targetting towards people other than Japs and little kids I'll buy the console; that or I'll wait until N goes under like Sega and buy the console for $50.
And as you can clearly seen, the reason you stated above is not good enough for people to buy the Gamecube. The fact is, the Gamecube is only selling "well" in Japan. Nintendo fails to see that America has a different market for games than Japan (Micrsoft is the same way, Sony is the only one doing it right). If N decides to do the same thing with their next console, they'll be on the same boat that Sega is right now. But yeah, that's right, they have their precious Gameboy.
Not to mention most of them looking better on the PC, including Doom 3. I hate to be a person who has a PC that can play Doom 3 and buys the Xbox version.
Now I don't think this is actually true; they could proabably get away launching the Xbox2 if it was totally backwards compadiable with the original Xbox. They would be stupid not to do this; therefore everyone would be happy upon launch, people can buy the new system and still play their old games, and you're not putting too much pressure on developers to jump on to the new system.
Will it force Sony to bring out their new console? Nope. Definately not. They're already 70+ million units worldwide, Nintendo and Microsoft combined have less than half of that if I'm not mistaken (might have changed since the last time I checked). Microsoft could launch their console two years before Sony does, all Sony needs is the hype and the ability to play 3 generations worth of games to get the gamers. Will they wait two years? Probably not; but they're not going to jump on it, they'll just call Microsoft's bluff.
If Microsoft does launch the Xbox2 (or whatever they end up calling it) they would be better off offering a platform that can play DVDs out of the box, and work as a simple computer. People are just going to hack the damn machine anyway, they mind as well put the basic functionality in there.
What do I mean? Well damn, the PS2 and the Xbox both are able to access the internet but neither has a pop3 mail client or a web browser. How stupid is that? If I had enough money to buy a development kit for either, I would develop the damn thing and sell it for $20 a pop. How hard would it be to port Mozilla over to the Xbox and PS2 and have it running on a disc off bootup - or even as another dashboard entry? Access the internet via the connection provided, and perform all your basic functions. Save various things on to the hard-drive (mail, config, favorites, etc).
All those bright minds at Microsoft and Sony - am I the only one to be thinking about this? It just strikes me as so ridiculious, especially since I'm paying $10 a month for the Xbox Live service on top of my $34.99 cable bill they could at least offer me a place where I can go surf the web and chat.
Okay, there is really no easy way to answer this. It's basically the NTx kernel on a firmware chip; it performs basic operating system functions (hardware access, dashboard functions (which is read from the hard-drive), and game/dvd processing). The reason it's not a true operating system is because the simple fact that you have very little control over what it can do. In fact, without hacking it, you have basically no control over what the operating system does. I suppose people will argue this, but looking at a standpoint of Windows, Linux, and OSX, it's not a operating system - Kernel is a better word.
Now, when you do hack it, and many people do (why not, it's is just a cheap computer) you throw Linux on there with a brand new dashboard and have all the functionality of a computer, plus the ability to play games and watch movies.
Actually, id has written their engines in C since the beginning. Since the quake days, it's been called "QuakeC" if you decide to mod it. I'm not exactly sure why, just guessing they have a lot of types in the language macro'd off so that it's easier for cross-platform. The new engine, Doom 3 engine, is written in C++. I guess id finally decided to join the bandwagon ;p. There's an interview somewhere with Carmack explaining why he decided to make the jump to C++, I just don't remember the link.
Sounds like something is wrong with your system. As I said, I have atleast 5 computers I know of running Steam, various operating systems, and it works fine. It's more than just me. I haven't heard a complaint from anyone I know either.
Quake 3 isn't open source. I was referring to their current unsupported products.
That's funny because I'm running Steam on several different systems, different hardware configurations, different versions of Windows (hell, even Linux) and it's been running solid for the past few months. Not a crash once.
Now if you consider a game crashing a Steam error, than yes, some of the games have crash errors. But that's not Steam. The only problem Steam has is bandwidth issues - when a big patch is pushed out on the network sometimes it takes a few hours to get the full patch.
We're not back two years ago when the beta came out and everyone thought it was the final version. Steam works fine, stop kidding yourself.
Sure they could. They own the software. But you see, the point is that Valve licensed games to be played by individuals, not for people to make money off of. Windows is licensed to everyone - and for a server enviroment, you need to buy a license for every user connecting to that server.
Okay when is the last time you've run Steam? Steam has been working properly for the past few months - no crashes and quick updates. What more do you want from it? If you have an adequate internet connection it will be fine.
As for Valve not supporting their products; how much more support do you want for a 5 year old game engine? You're lucky they are supporting it at all, the only other company that supports their games as much as Valve is Epic (Unreal series). ID doesn't even come close.
Go ahead and don't support Valve's products; good luck in getting far in the LAN cafe business. The fact is, Counter-Strike is making (and breaking) LAN centers. Tournaments, Clan Matches, and Qualifiers are bringing in the customers.
I wouldn't call them a "money grubbing company." Valve is one of (if not the best) gaming company that supports their community, and their mod communities. As you can see, two mods that were created under the original engine went retail and they hired several developers from the mods (Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat).
Valve has nearly 100 employees (the last time I checked), if you wish them to continue to be in business, you need to remember that they need to pay their employees (as any business). I don't know how many games (not mods) are using the Half-Life engine for licensing (thereby, royalties aren't being brought in from the engine wise). The new Source engine will probably bring them in a lot of cash - but you're talking the salaries of 100 employees, and all the business expenes.
Make sure you look at the full picture.
Valve owns Counter-Strike. They bought it, and now have the legal rights to do whatever they wish to it. At this point, I would say that Valve has probably rewritten most of the original code that was once in Counter-Strike. With that said, is the licensing just? Maybe not, Valve should refund all the cybercafe's the money that they spent on the boxed items.
Although, the cybercafe program that Valve has allows all of the Valve's games to be playable for $9/month (per computer)... unless it's been recently changed (I don't have the time [or need] to go check the Steam website). Alot of these cybercafes make more than that per computer, especially coming into the summer season. Tournaments are another thing - more money, more publicity.
I never liked Dvorak anyway, he had a crappy show on TechTV/ZDTV (Silicon Spin) in which he basically just played sides to intice the other people to argue. He can't write worth for shit, and as the above said, he always takes the negative aspect. I'd like to see Dvorak actually write something positive, a review or something. I come to think this guy knows nothing about computers and just writes based upon statistics.
The last analyst report puts PS2 roughly 72 million units, X-box 14 million units, GameCube 12 million units. This is world-wide. The PS2 has sold nearly 3X the number of units as the X-box and the GC combined.
I agree somewhat to this, I am by no means a "Microsoft fan" but I always hate to see the people just itching to blame Microsoft on something. Their PC operating system has what percentage of the market? Of course spammers/trojan horse writers are going to target this operating system.
As the above said, most users are not intelligent enough to know that they have a trojan. The adbanners that are popping up, the several lack of resources, and the general slowness of the operating system just makes them think that the person who they bought it from is a fluke - therefore they call this person (trust me, I'm getting these phone calls while only being in 'business' for a few weeks now).
The *nix community is full of people who are on the 'top of the tier' in both security and computer knowledge - but what does that make up, the top 10%?