Everyone likes to say that you'll buy bridges that don't exist when you claim to have used 64bit XP and not had any serious problems; at least this is the general response I'm given. I also get modded as a troll. Amazing.
Anyway, the only issues I ever had with 64bit XP was that most of the free anti-virus solutions just did not want to support it (which really isn't true anymore). But if you're a responsible user, you probably don't get viruses anyway. Beyond that, just from normal use and gaming I never experienced problems. My HP printer even had beta drivers for it, which worked. I didn't have the full range of features that I had with it under 32bit XP, however I never used most of those options anyway.
Sure, there probably are some legacy programs that didn't run on it, however those are largely irrelevant. Some of those legacy programs won't even run right on 32bit XP or even 2k anyway, so what's their point?
You are purposely being dense. You know very well what they meant. Apple is failing big time because they expect their users to know how to update the firmware for anything. It wasn't hard to figure out.
You are missing the point. Welcome to the fail boat.
Apple has everything tightly locked down, correct? That's why there's a limited number of hardware configurations. So then why couldn't they have just put in some sort of check to see what firmware you had? That way when someone does try to do a manual update, it could tell them that they need to update their firmware and possibly even give them step by step instructions on how to do so (that's a stretch).
I don't expect this kind of service from Microsoft. I mean, it's Microsoft. They don't have to care. Apple should on the other hand have probably thought about that ahead of time. And honestly, Microsoft will do that from time to time with their updates. I know that in order for me to have upgraded to SP1 for Vista, I had to install the latest driver for my on-board LAN (which was newer than the manufacturer was providing at the moment).
Do not let them make you think they are doing you some huge favor by employing you. It's the other way around.
Ah, so very true. I had to remind my bosses of that just very recently. They seemed to think it was acceptable to treat me like dirt and expect me to take it. When I left early for a day because I had enough of the shit, they were threatening to fire me the next day. Either fire me, or don't. Threats mean nothing. I just told him that the company needed me more than I needed that job (both of which are true). I'm still there. It's nice now as none of my bosses will speak directly to me or even look me in the eye. Some assholes just can't stand it when you have them by the balls.
I don't know if I'd find the information here "suspect". There's a lot of knowledgeable people here. For a first choice? Maybe not the best choice, but if you're really stumped and have no place else to turn, I wouldn't say Slashdot is a terrible place to ask a question and get some help.
Some people just get into "writer's block mode", for a lack of a better term, when you have a pressing issue to deal with. I know it happens to me from time to time with my job. I just simply ask people who are more knowledgeable than I am, that I don't have to work with (to eliminate any potential bias) to see if I can hear of any sort of solution. You may not always hear the "correct" ones, but it can help in getting those neurons fired up.
You have completely missed the point of Ask Slashdot. It's just not about doing a 5 minute search and randomly choosing one. The reason people ask this group questions like this is because they want more detailed information from people who have hopefully had hands on experience doing these things. What worked? What didn't? Why did it, or did not work? How was implemented? You may not be able to find that kind of information easily even if you know what to search for. And once you have that information, there are other people to give their insights on what that persons stories. It has the potential to be one big chain of helpfulness.
Sure, it's a cheap and lazy way of getting someone else to do some of your work for you, but it's not generally a bad thing. I know if I was completely clueless about some tech related problem, I'd probably ask here. Wouldn't you?
This is precisely what I was thinking. Are we really to believe that the government won't do some type of censorship in the name of children, etc...? And if it's not censorship, it will be snooping, which they do illegally anyway and get away with. I don't want them having MORE avenues. I'm not being a naysayer because I'm a paranoid twat with a tinfoil hat. I'm being a naysayer because the government already does these type of actions elsewhere. Do we need it in more places that take up our daily lives?
You're missing the point here. Calling it piracy, and thus people who do the act, pirates, is just denigration. It's done to vilify the people more than what they probably deserve.
Why does every asshole think they're being smart by pointing out that for whatever reason, they believe it's not ok to say bad things about your former employer if they were complete cock-wipes?
If a company is run by jerks, every person who has worked for them should tell people to stay away. It's a two way street, and it can bite you in the ass if you don't play nicely. Personally, I'd love to know if a potential entity that I might want services from were like this. It would make me think twice about giving them any sort of money.
Some companies believe they always have the upper hand. Unbeknownst to them, they usually don't. When you let someone good go, everyone who works there will feel it. I doubt it's really easy to find someone who can effectively manage three different groups, and do so right in the middle of some major projects. My guess is that they probably hired at least two people to do his job.
Most of us here probably don't mind working for the man, but when the man fucks us, we will take any opportunity to fuck him even harder.
Outright lies. After being half way through the second page wall o' text, I did some skimming and found certain things to just not ring true. Quoting 2D boy's erroneous numbers, further more quoting the old erroneous old figure over the newer, lower erroneous old figure? Equating DRM to a door lock? Saying that STEAM doesn't work in offline mode? Citing Titan's Quest when that game didn't work right even if you had the retail version? Figures where there's a lot of "unknowns"?
Sure, copyright infringement, which is what I prefer to call it instead of some term to denigrate people, is indeed a problem. But you know what? There's fuck all you can do about it. You can try to slow down the crackers, but when they get the game two weeks before release, you've already failed. When you purposely put in measures which makes the game crash to piss off pirates, you've also failed. When the game doesn't work at retail, guess what? You've failed again!
I suggest to Slashdotters, who typically don't RTFA, to not read it. It's not worth the time or effort.
I'm sorry, but Titan's Quest had a lot of problems that were not piracy related. Even those with a legitimate copy had severe issues getting the game to play. Trying to cite that as an example for negative perception underscores the fact that the developers, or maybe even the producers, rushed the game out before it had proper QA testing.
I forgot automatic updating! It will also automatically update your games for you when a patch is available, and you go to launch the game. This doesn't work with the non-STEAM games on your list, but any other game you bought through STEAM, this works.
Can Install STEAM Anywhere (ties in with previous point)
Integrated Community Features
Large Selection of Games, Both Old and New
Non-intrusive DRM
Works Nicely As A Game Manager (I can put non-STEAM games up on my games list so I can just open up STEAM and launch them through there, all without STEAM's DRM)
I'm sure there are other things that I missed, however STEAM is generally nice. I've never had too many issues with it.
Actually, you can loan them to your friends. Give your login to your friend, tell them to have fun. My buddies and I used to do that all the time. We don't really have a need for it anymore, however.
You're probably correct. How can they be doing so badly? I wonder if this is some lame attempt to grab bail out money since it seems to be all the rage these days, or if people just don't want to spend the money to increase the amount of RAM they have.
And even though sales are up, I'm sure those with older PC's are doing some minimal amount of upgrading over time. I doubt that's dropping off. RAM is insanely cheap. It's an easy upgrade.
If you read TFA, it's the low sales figures for Vista that has their panties in a bunch. Add in another sentence or something in the summary. The thought is incomplete. It's actually not easy to guess what they were trying to get at here with it.
Oh, I get it, you're trying to say I'm full of shit. Cool. Well then you've just volunteered to use your mouth as my potty, if you really feel I'm full of shit.
So which part do you think I'm bluffing on?
With the four GB of RAM, some games just run a little smoother. Some games, it helps to connect to servers faster as more stuff can load faster.
With XP64, I had no issues with drivers. I had no issues with any of the games I used being compatible. 32bit programs? All worked fine except for anti-virus, but then I realized I hadn't had a virus in three years, so I wasn't too concerned. I'm sure there were some other things that didn't work correctly on XP64, but I never personally ran into them.
I found 4GB of RAM to be a pretty nice boon for gaming, especially online gaming. I also had no problems with XP64 when I used it, so I don't get what the hub-bub about it is.
Yes, yes it would. The creators of Fallout were smart enough to create some knock-off's with some added side effects to add immersion into the game. The game has incredible atmosphere in that regard.
Now I haven't been into a B.net lobby in forever, but from what I remember, those banner ads were for their own products. Now with Activision on board, I imagine it will be for Blizzard's and Activision's prodcuts?
Rainbow Six: Vegas did this and it was not any cheaper. (I was lucky enough to have received it as a bundle with a video card.) Every single fucking chance they had, there was some billboard for Intel or some other product. It didn't add any immersion for me, that's for sure. I was actually quite annoyed about it. Even the walls inside the buildings had ads on them. Give me a break.
Ah well, even given that, the only numbers I can readily find are NPD numbers, and they indicate something quite different. It looks quite more favorable if you look at October to October numbers, as the PS3 is barely lagging behind there... However if you look at September to September, the 360 comes out pretty far ahead.
Anyways, my point is I call bullshit on what they've stated. While in some territories at certain points it has outsold more, sales of the PS3 seem to be dwindling.
I threw the Wii in there for fun, showing that even though it is a current gen console with last gen hardware, it can manage to crush what people perceive to be power houses.
Looking at Wikipedia here, as of Septmeber 2008, world wide sales figures between the two:
PS3 - 16.84 million
XBox 360 - 22 million
If you look at the Wii's numbers, it's almost sold as much as both of the PS3 and the 360 put together. (34.55 million) And the Wii has been available as long as the PS3.
I realize that the 360 has been out longer than the PS3 by about a year and a half, but the PS3 sales are dropping at this point. In a month where it should have sold big in the U.S., it couldn't even double the sales, while the 360 and the Wii (which has very surprising numbers) sold by a factor of 2.5 over the previous month.
It would be faulty to call the PS3 a failure, but it just looks like interest in it is starting to wane. I wouldn't consider anything long-term with the PS3. Sony needs to go back to the drawing board and look at what made the PS2 so damn popular that it's still selling two years into the next gen cycle (and selling nearly as much as it's current gen counterpart), and duplicate that success with the PS4.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone likes to say that you'll buy bridges that don't exist when you claim to have used 64bit XP and not had any serious problems; at least this is the general response I'm given. I also get modded as a troll. Amazing.
Anyway, the only issues I ever had with 64bit XP was that most of the free anti-virus solutions just did not want to support it (which really isn't true anymore). But if you're a responsible user, you probably don't get viruses anyway. Beyond that, just from normal use and gaming I never experienced problems. My HP printer even had beta drivers for it, which worked. I didn't have the full range of features that I had with it under 32bit XP, however I never used most of those options anyway.
Sure, there probably are some legacy programs that didn't run on it, however those are largely irrelevant. Some of those legacy programs won't even run right on 32bit XP or even 2k anyway, so what's their point?
You are purposely being dense. You know very well what they meant. Apple is failing big time because they expect their users to know how to update the firmware for anything. It wasn't hard to figure out.
You are missing the point. Welcome to the fail boat.
Apple has everything tightly locked down, correct? That's why there's a limited number of hardware configurations. So then why couldn't they have just put in some sort of check to see what firmware you had? That way when someone does try to do a manual update, it could tell them that they need to update their firmware and possibly even give them step by step instructions on how to do so (that's a stretch).
I don't expect this kind of service from Microsoft. I mean, it's Microsoft. They don't have to care. Apple should on the other hand have probably thought about that ahead of time. And honestly, Microsoft will do that from time to time with their updates. I know that in order for me to have upgraded to SP1 for Vista, I had to install the latest driver for my on-board LAN (which was newer than the manufacturer was providing at the moment).
Do not let them make you think they are doing you some huge favor by employing you. It's the other way around.
Ah, so very true. I had to remind my bosses of that just very recently. They seemed to think it was acceptable to treat me like dirt and expect me to take it. When I left early for a day because I had enough of the shit, they were threatening to fire me the next day. Either fire me, or don't. Threats mean nothing. I just told him that the company needed me more than I needed that job (both of which are true). I'm still there. It's nice now as none of my bosses will speak directly to me or even look me in the eye. Some assholes just can't stand it when you have them by the balls.
I don't know if I'd find the information here "suspect". There's a lot of knowledgeable people here. For a first choice? Maybe not the best choice, but if you're really stumped and have no place else to turn, I wouldn't say Slashdot is a terrible place to ask a question and get some help.
Some people just get into "writer's block mode", for a lack of a better term, when you have a pressing issue to deal with. I know it happens to me from time to time with my job. I just simply ask people who are more knowledgeable than I am, that I don't have to work with (to eliminate any potential bias) to see if I can hear of any sort of solution. You may not always hear the "correct" ones, but it can help in getting those neurons fired up.
You have completely missed the point of Ask Slashdot. It's just not about doing a 5 minute search and randomly choosing one. The reason people ask this group questions like this is because they want more detailed information from people who have hopefully had hands on experience doing these things. What worked? What didn't? Why did it, or did not work? How was implemented? You may not be able to find that kind of information easily even if you know what to search for. And once you have that information, there are other people to give their insights on what that persons stories. It has the potential to be one big chain of helpfulness.
Sure, it's a cheap and lazy way of getting someone else to do some of your work for you, but it's not generally a bad thing. I know if I was completely clueless about some tech related problem, I'd probably ask here. Wouldn't you?
This is precisely what I was thinking. Are we really to believe that the government won't do some type of censorship in the name of children, etc...? And if it's not censorship, it will be snooping, which they do illegally anyway and get away with. I don't want them having MORE avenues. I'm not being a naysayer because I'm a paranoid twat with a tinfoil hat. I'm being a naysayer because the government already does these type of actions elsewhere. Do we need it in more places that take up our daily lives?
You're missing the point here. Calling it piracy, and thus people who do the act, pirates, is just denigration. It's done to vilify the people more than what they probably deserve.
Why does every asshole think they're being smart by pointing out that for whatever reason, they believe it's not ok to say bad things about your former employer if they were complete cock-wipes?
If a company is run by jerks, every person who has worked for them should tell people to stay away. It's a two way street, and it can bite you in the ass if you don't play nicely. Personally, I'd love to know if a potential entity that I might want services from were like this. It would make me think twice about giving them any sort of money.
Some companies believe they always have the upper hand. Unbeknownst to them, they usually don't. When you let someone good go, everyone who works there will feel it. I doubt it's really easy to find someone who can effectively manage three different groups, and do so right in the middle of some major projects. My guess is that they probably hired at least two people to do his job.
Most of us here probably don't mind working for the man, but when the man fucks us, we will take any opportunity to fuck him even harder.
The expansions weren't done by Monolith, but Time Gate Studios. FEAR 2 will be the real sequel.
Outright lies. After being half way through the second page wall o' text, I did some skimming and found certain things to just not ring true. Quoting 2D boy's erroneous numbers, further more quoting the old erroneous old figure over the newer, lower erroneous old figure? Equating DRM to a door lock? Saying that STEAM doesn't work in offline mode? Citing Titan's Quest when that game didn't work right even if you had the retail version? Figures where there's a lot of "unknowns"?
Sure, copyright infringement, which is what I prefer to call it instead of some term to denigrate people, is indeed a problem. But you know what? There's fuck all you can do about it. You can try to slow down the crackers, but when they get the game two weeks before release, you've already failed. When you purposely put in measures which makes the game crash to piss off pirates, you've also failed. When the game doesn't work at retail, guess what? You've failed again!
I suggest to Slashdotters, who typically don't RTFA, to not read it. It's not worth the time or effort.
I'm sorry, but Titan's Quest had a lot of problems that were not piracy related. Even those with a legitimate copy had severe issues getting the game to play. Trying to cite that as an example for negative perception underscores the fact that the developers, or maybe even the producers, rushed the game out before it had proper QA testing.
I forgot automatic updating! It will also automatically update your games for you when a patch is available, and you go to launch the game. This doesn't work with the non-STEAM games on your list, but any other game you bought through STEAM, this works.
I'm sure there are other things that I missed, however STEAM is generally nice. I've never had too many issues with it.
Actually, you can loan them to your friends. Give your login to your friend, tell them to have fun. My buddies and I used to do that all the time. We don't really have a need for it anymore, however.
You're probably correct. How can they be doing so badly? I wonder if this is some lame attempt to grab bail out money since it seems to be all the rage these days, or if people just don't want to spend the money to increase the amount of RAM they have.
And even though sales are up, I'm sure those with older PC's are doing some minimal amount of upgrading over time. I doubt that's dropping off. RAM is insanely cheap. It's an easy upgrade.
If you read TFA, it's the low sales figures for Vista that has their panties in a bunch. Add in another sentence or something in the summary. The thought is incomplete. It's actually not easy to guess what they were trying to get at here with it.
You must be new here. People stopped fully reading summaries ages ago, much less TFA.
Oh, I get it, you're trying to say I'm full of shit. Cool. Well then you've just volunteered to use your mouth as my potty, if you really feel I'm full of shit.
So which part do you think I'm bluffing on?
With the four GB of RAM, some games just run a little smoother. Some games, it helps to connect to servers faster as more stuff can load faster.
With XP64, I had no issues with drivers. I had no issues with any of the games I used being compatible. 32bit programs? All worked fine except for anti-virus, but then I realized I hadn't had a virus in three years, so I wasn't too concerned. I'm sure there were some other things that didn't work correctly on XP64, but I never personally ran into them.
I found 4GB of RAM to be a pretty nice boon for gaming, especially online gaming. I also had no problems with XP64 when I used it, so I don't get what the hub-bub about it is.
Yes, yes it would. The creators of Fallout were smart enough to create some knock-off's with some added side effects to add immersion into the game. The game has incredible atmosphere in that regard.
Now I haven't been into a B.net lobby in forever, but from what I remember, those banner ads were for their own products. Now with Activision on board, I imagine it will be for Blizzard's and Activision's prodcuts?
Rainbow Six: Vegas did this and it was not any cheaper. (I was lucky enough to have received it as a bundle with a video card.) Every single fucking chance they had, there was some billboard for Intel or some other product. It didn't add any immersion for me, that's for sure. I was actually quite annoyed about it. Even the walls inside the buildings had ads on them. Give me a break.
Ah well, even given that, the only numbers I can readily find are NPD numbers, and they indicate something quite different. It looks quite more favorable if you look at October to October numbers, as the PS3 is barely lagging behind there... However if you look at September to September, the 360 comes out pretty far ahead.
September to September
October to October
Anyways, my point is I call bullshit on what they've stated. While in some territories at certain points it has outsold more, sales of the PS3 seem to be dwindling.
I threw the Wii in there for fun, showing that even though it is a current gen console with last gen hardware, it can manage to crush what people perceive to be power houses.
Looking at Wikipedia here, as of Septmeber 2008, world wide sales figures between the two:
PS3 - 16.84 million
XBox 360 - 22 million
If you look at the Wii's numbers, it's almost sold as much as both of the PS3 and the 360 put together. (34.55 million) And the Wii has been available as long as the PS3.
I realize that the 360 has been out longer than the PS3 by about a year and a half, but the PS3 sales are dropping at this point. In a month where it should have sold big in the U.S., it couldn't even double the sales, while the 360 and the Wii (which has very surprising numbers) sold by a factor of 2.5 over the previous month.
It would be faulty to call the PS3 a failure, but it just looks like interest in it is starting to wane. I wouldn't consider anything long-term with the PS3. Sony needs to go back to the drawing board and look at what made the PS2 so damn popular that it's still selling two years into the next gen cycle (and selling nearly as much as it's current gen counterpart), and duplicate that success with the PS4.