Here's a hint for ya - you know the "zombines" that suicide-bomb you with grenades? You can pull the grenade out of their hand with the gravity gun. You could toss it right back at them but that elevator sequence is pretty cramped. It'd probably be best to just lob it out of harm's way.
That's the trick casinos use - issue chips and cards and hide the clocks so that you mindlessly keep plugging in cash.
Then again, this incremental pricing model isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I love buying used games, but sometimes I trade in a game for one third the price I bought it for because I didn't enjoy it. It'd be nice to pay for the first half of a game to see if I like it before shelling out the rest.
I'm a little disappointed to read that MS is changing the ribbon system. Maybe it's because I run at 1280x1024 at home and at work, but I absolutely adore the ribbon system. As rarely as I feel that it takes up too much space, I can always double-click the tabbed heading to minimize it until I click a heading again. I found the admittedly oversized ribbon to be welcoming and easy to read and click. I wish all the Office 2007 programs used it, but some (like Outlook, Visio, and Infopath) keep with the pulldown bar.
I've been using Word for about 10 years and have come to know its little foibles and workarounds and sub-sub-sub menus. That being said, the SECOND time I used Word 2007 I was able to teach others how to use it! It's an absolute triumph of GUI design and I'm really enthusiastic about its final release. I'm also dreading the coming of February when my free beta expires and becomes unusable.
And on the topic of mass migration - don't go nuts with that, Microsoft. Even if a company wants to implement Office 2007 among its entire ranks, interoperability with other shops who will be reluctant to upgrade (due to cost of licensing and training) will mean that.DOC will remain the default file format until, I estimate, at least 2010, unless MS makes a.DOCX interpreter for prior iterations.
With the streets awash with axe murderers, terrorists and paedophiles, staying in and playing games seems like a reasonable response
So why not stick him in a nice safe jail cell? All the real criminals are either on the streets or locked in their bedrooms.
Seriously, they should take a page (just one) from Kevin Mitnick's terms of rehabilitation and take away his internet access for a year or two. If he's an ordinary teen that's a punishment worse than death.
Ah, your post was just like looking in the mirror. I had a very similar setup to you - Sapphire Atlantis 9800Pro (fanless! how's that for progress?), 1GB of DDR333 (later upgraded to 1.5GB of DDR400), and an Athlon 64 3400 pushing it all. Unfortunately for me, socket 754s were on sale the day I bought my CPU and mobo so I got stuck riding the lame pony for over 2 years. However, the 3400 is still a fast processor by today's standards and the 9800 is still hobbling along - especially the 256MB version - so you're good for at least another year. Check out Prey for a surprisingly efficient and old video card-friendly rendition of the Doom 3 engine!
So I scrimped and saved and waited for the right moment to pounce, since, as you said, AGP offerings are pretty slim. I considered the AGP 7900GS but reviews and my favourite local PC shop insisted it didn't give good bang for the buck. So I scrimped some more and at long last I went for the whole shebang. Athlon 64 X2 4200, Asus motherboard with AM2 socket, GeForce 7900GT 256Mb, and 2GB of DDR2 633MHz.
I LOVE my new hardware! I've been playing more of my old games than seeking new ones because, as you say, nothing new has really excited me. But older titles like Doom 3 look freaking breathtaking at high framerates on max quality with 4xAA and 16xAF. Instead of twiddling with minute settings trying to find a happy balance of quality and speed, I can just crank everything to full and slap on AA and start playing at a minimum of 30 frames.
I do my best to buy hardware with longevity in mind, but I never get tired of that new PC sheen. Your machine has no doubt given you years of excellent service but the clock is ticking. I rationalized my purchase by telling myself that socket AM2 and PCI-E are new architectures with tons of upgradability for years to come. I can perk up my machine bit by bit from now on. I even bought an SLI board so that I can nab a second 7900GT when they come down in price. Spend a dollar today and a penny tomorrow, sez I.
My last card, a GeForce 6600GT, ran Oblivion fairly well at 1024x768. Some battle scenes got a little hairy (8 FPS) but indoor areas were nice and smooth with about 80% of the options enabled and maxed.
I hope you like installing third party mods, though. Oblivion is one buggy and unpolished game.
Even if ATI isn't your company of choice, you must admit that a second superpower is very important in the video card market. It helps keep Nvidia's pricing and power in check, and ensures that the industry moves ahead at a good pace.
I loved my Sapphire Atlantis 9800Pro to death, though. It was a very strange dual-slot solution with a huge heat sink that surrounded the whole card. It was huge and unwieldy, but it was the fastest card on earth for a while and my model was completely fanless and noiseless! Good for frying eggs too! But seriously, I flip flopped between the official and Omega drivers and never found myself to be without a solution. Some Nvidia-enhanced games had blockier shadows but that was my only gripe. However, TV-out was far better quality and easier to configure on my previous card, the GeForce 440 MX.
I've decided to pledge no allegiance since both companies have given me excellent results. I'm currently the very proud owner of a BFG GeForce 7900GT but who knows who will make my next card.
HardOCP benchmarks user experience more than raw data. In hardware benchmarks the constant is the PC platform. In HardOCP benchmarks the constant is framerate. If you don't care about how many frames per second you get in Quake 3 at 800x600 you should at least consider HardOCP as a supporting resource.
Here the review talks up the signle X1950 XTX card but finds the CrossFire platfrom from ATI still very under-developed.
Maybe for this brand new card, but I've heard and read from many sources that Crossfire is superior to SLI in many aspects. Supposedly the eternity it took for ATI to release Crossfire paid off as they skipped over many of the growing pains Nvidia experienced. Plus, isn't it true that Crossfire doesn't require 2 of the same make, model, and manufacturer cards like SLI does?
The grass isn't quite so green on the Nvidia side of the fence either. I might not be doing you a favour by telling you this, but Nvidia cards have issues with anisotropic filtering. At a certain distance on slanted planes (like the ground) textures kind of "shimmer" if your perspective moves. ATI has far superior AF that looks sharper for a farther distance, and doesn't shimmer while moving. Most people don't notice this until I tell them.:)
p.s., I don't suppose you use a KVM switch, do you? My friend uses one with a VGA to DVI coupler and he noticed that ghosting around text as well (he has a new widescreen LCD and an ATI X850XL Deluxe or something). He removed the KVM and plugged the DVI right into the video card and everything suddenly looked great!
WoSAT is exactly what I was hoping for when I saw this and a previous/. headline. Thankfully I have a pretty high quality laserdisc rip on DVD. You could likely still find one as well on a rainy day (you know, a day that's a Bit Torrential).
The GeForce 7950 GX2 is the first and only exception to this rule, and is obviously inspired by ATI's recent naming schemes.
There's certainly a lot of borrowing going on in tech companies' marketing departments. It makes sense to an extent so that people know what they're buying and how it stacks up vs competitors' products. The whole Athlon XP (another stolen name) line was numbered to resemble the GHz rate of Pentium equivalents.
You may be right about Nvidia stealing the "50" from ATI, but I thought that name made sense for what it was - 2 x 7900GTX cards in one. It's more than a 7900 but it's not the next gen yet, and there aren't a lot of numbers between 7900 and 8000.
I work at a great company with intentionally lax internet policies. It's definitely for the best.
I'm a tecnical writer and I rely on a great number of resources to get my job done. For instance, I have friends that are engineers, IT professionals, and designers and it saves me a ton of time to be able to speak to these unofficial resources unhindered when I have questions. IM and FTP are far more convenient than email and fax when I need a mockup or schematic. Sometimes I attend webinars that stream on weird ports, and the IT staff is always happy to temporarily tweak the firewall just for me. Other services like telnet and remote desktop come in handy when there's a resource I need that I've forgotten at home.
Even our Exchange spam filter is optional, which is a good thing since on the rare day where I get 1 spam I get 3 emails from the filter telling me about it.
I guess I'd be an "internet native" according to TFA, but even if I wasn't I'd be frustrated by any hinderance on internet connectivity. If my workplace blocked websites, my generation knows to just use a sneaky proxy like Babelfish anyway.
I'm with you 100%. I'm a PC gamer through and though, but I've recently bought some consoles and games. There are definite differences.
If you hate load times then consoles are not for you. If you hate not being able to save anywhere then consoles are not for you. If you hate low resolution displays (even HDTV), low polygons, low quality textures, simplistic games with few buttons, paying for online play, paying for software patches (no Xbox Live = no patches), no mods, little choice in peripherals (no joysticks, for one), and poor if any backward compatibility, then consoles are not for you.
Between Windows XP and DOSBox I can play nearly every PC game I've ever loved over the past 20 years (but not the later DOS games - those are very CPU intensive to emulate). Thanks to dedicated FOSS emulators like SCUMMVM I can play my old 320x200 favourites in glorious antialiased 1280x1024. I can mute the game's music and play my own in the background. I can edit INI and CONF files to change the gameplay however I wish. I can extract PK4 and DAT files and snoop around the core data, extract the music, inject my own voice, and do all kinds of wacky shenanigans. And of course, I can download very professional mods like Classic Doom for Doom 3 and breathe new life or completely new games into old titles and game engines.
Modding shouldn't be blown off either. There are some potentially great games that are terribly ridden with bugs and unpolished interface like Oblivion that are stuck in the broken state on consoles. It may take 35 downloads from a few sites, but by the time you're done modding Oblivion you can finally consider it to be version 1.0 - something Xbox360 users will never see. And of course a little hot coffee can perk you right up!
Console games are great too, don't get me wrong. There are few greater virtual experiences than Katamari Damacy. Grandia II for Dreamcast had surprisingly vibrant graphics with great colours and really outstanding spoken and written dialogue. Resident Evil 4 is quite a masterpiece of design and it has some of the most realistic graphics I've ever seen, even though the consoles it's played on are the weaker of the bunch. These games take full advantage of their platforms and use some clever tricks to skirt their limitations - like doubling pixels in the distance or rendering some objects as sprites instead of 3D models.
However, all these games have occasional save points. This pisses me off to no end. Twice now I've played Resident Evil 4 for a 45-minute stretch without running into a save point and had to turn off the console, losing all my progress. In Super Mario Sunshine I'm prompted to save as many as 10 times per level (about 8 seconds per) if I find blue coins. And cheeses n' rice, why the hell do you need to buy a slow ass memory card if you have an Xbox with a hard drive? Saving sucks donkey balls on every console. I don't know how it's gotten slower since the NES days when they put watch batteries in the cartridges. Forward ever, backward never!
Trite as it may seem, you can see gaming as a toy or as a serious thing. A console is a toy. You pick it up, you play it as it's intended, and you put it back. PC gaming is so much more. You can play the game as intended if you wish, but you can delve into the data, extend or cripple the game, improve the experience with an incremental upgrade, and you can alt-tab out to load up a web page for a hint. PC really isn't much more expensive than consoles, if at all, when you take the television into consideration, so I find that budget argument pretty thin.
Consoles are getting closer to PC with innovations like Wii and HDTV, but they're still a much more static medium than PC. You can settle for scaled-down games that can never be made to look better, or you can play on PC.
I'm sure she didn't make the decision or understand the ramifications - after all, she is a CTO.
This is what I was thinking as I read. Isn't the CTO in charge of planning SANs and switch purchases and IS desktop thin clients? Why would a CTO be responsible for the dissemination of database records? Since this database is the core of one of AOL's primary business efforts, wouldn't that data be the realm of a CIO or CEO?
Methinks the CTO was looking for a golden excuse to retire early.
I must say my negotiating skills have improved vastly since I started playing Guild Wars. I just don't feel as shy to express my opinion of a fair deal. When I started playing the game I was too intraverted to assert myself to even sell any of my hard earned lewt, but as I learned the game and the economy I drew strength knowing I had some background on how things worked. It's really improved my life and I look forward to putting my new skills to the test when my salary is renegotiated at work in a couple of weeks!
Firefox has a tray app? Mozilla had one but I haven't found a Firefox one. Please link me a URL if you know how to install this because that's one app I use often enough to benefit from a resident quickload!
I still say "force" is the right word, though. Installing an app and providing an option buried in menus is not as honourable as asking whether you'd like the memory resident app installed in the first place. Most of those apps must be disabled with msconfig which is a very roundabout procedure and is too complex for most ordinary Windows users.
Unneccesarily memory-resident apps are a big problem in the Windows world. Have you seen a new Dell machine the first time it is turned on?
That was really fascinating! Thanks very much for sharing!
Please tell me if I'm somewhat accurately summarizing this in layman's terms:
Intel has a longer data path to its memory controller but it communicates in simple RISC style commands, while AMD has a shorter data path but communicates in descriptive CISC style commands. Intel benefits from the segregated memory controller because DMA requests (hardware accessing memory, right?) can be handled off-CPU by the northbridge, while AMD CPUs must bear the weight of DMA requests but are saved once again by the short data path?
BS apps like Quicktime are an assault on Windows users, not a result of their "active ignorance". Anyone with an iPod is forced to run Quicktime at all times. You can thank Apple, makers of a popular non-Windows platform you may have heard of, for that gem.
If Windows users installed memory-resident apps implicitly then you can be sure there wouldn't be so many running behind the scenes. Alas, greedy companies like Adobe and Apple and Nero think computers have nothing better to do than be ready to pounce like a jungle cat the moment their bimonthly updates are released.
Long story short, it's not fair of you to hate Windows users for their "passive ignorance". Most Windows users are too dumb to know what's going on behind the scenes, just like most car users are too dumb to know what's going on under the hood. Amongst other things, computers are a tool to do a job - a means to an end. You can use a ratchet for years without knowing that it's getting rusty inside.
You're 100% right, and it's sad how some believe that it is their job to protect Americans from themselves. Unfortunately, Thompson is a lawyer and it's his job to exploit the law to his $benefit$. He has threatened people with legal action for saying less than you have.
The law is for lawyers, not for the populace. The proles of America don't have the years of law school required to defend themselves in the legal universe. It is pure luck that there are sufficiently reputable judges serving America who believe in the spirit of the law, not just the letter, and dismiss claims like Thompson's as unconstitutional.
I wish America that best of luck because that's the best their legal system affords them. Either this will be another RIAA situation where a few rich people can force their morality on the nation, or it will be an exercise in liberty thanks to a judge who comes to work every day to serve the public and do some good. Thankfully Thompson alone, unlike the ??AA, doesn't have the resources to buy the law.
It's pretty surprising to see the legacy architectures being supported - especially considering the do-or-die transition from AGP to PCI-E. I suppose it's handy for 939ers and 478ers to be able to breathe a little life into their aging (but not old) systems. I admit I'm bitter on this subject since I was an early adopter of Athlon 64 and got stuck with a socket 754. My recent upgrade to X2 was a long time coming.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a hint for ya - you know the "zombines" that suicide-bomb you with grenades? You can pull the grenade out of their hand with the gravity gun. You could toss it right back at them but that elevator sequence is pretty cramped. It'd probably be best to just lob it out of harm's way.
1200 points seems somehow cheaper than $15
That's the trick casinos use - issue chips and cards and hide the clocks so that you mindlessly keep plugging in cash.
Then again, this incremental pricing model isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I love buying used games, but sometimes I trade in a game for one third the price I bought it for because I didn't enjoy it. It'd be nice to pay for the first half of a game to see if I like it before shelling out the rest.
I'm a little disappointed to read that MS is changing the ribbon system. Maybe it's because I run at 1280x1024 at home and at work, but I absolutely adore the ribbon system. As rarely as I feel that it takes up too much space, I can always double-click the tabbed heading to minimize it until I click a heading again. I found the admittedly oversized ribbon to be welcoming and easy to read and click. I wish all the Office 2007 programs used it, but some (like Outlook, Visio, and Infopath) keep with the pulldown bar.
.DOC will remain the default file format until, I estimate, at least 2010, unless MS makes a .DOCX interpreter for prior iterations.
I've been using Word for about 10 years and have come to know its little foibles and workarounds and sub-sub-sub menus. That being said, the SECOND time I used Word 2007 I was able to teach others how to use it! It's an absolute triumph of GUI design and I'm really enthusiastic about its final release. I'm also dreading the coming of February when my free beta expires and becomes unusable.
And on the topic of mass migration - don't go nuts with that, Microsoft. Even if a company wants to implement Office 2007 among its entire ranks, interoperability with other shops who will be reluctant to upgrade (due to cost of licensing and training) will mean that
With the streets awash with axe murderers, terrorists and paedophiles, staying in and playing games seems like a reasonable response
So why not stick him in a nice safe jail cell? All the real criminals are either on the streets or locked in their bedrooms.
Seriously, they should take a page (just one) from Kevin Mitnick's terms of rehabilitation and take away his internet access for a year or two. If he's an ordinary teen that's a punishment worse than death.
Ah, your post was just like looking in the mirror. I had a very similar setup to you - Sapphire Atlantis 9800Pro (fanless! how's that for progress?), 1GB of DDR333 (later upgraded to 1.5GB of DDR400), and an Athlon 64 3400 pushing it all. Unfortunately for me, socket 754s were on sale the day I bought my CPU and mobo so I got stuck riding the lame pony for over 2 years. However, the 3400 is still a fast processor by today's standards and the 9800 is still hobbling along - especially the 256MB version - so you're good for at least another year. Check out Prey for a surprisingly efficient and old video card-friendly rendition of the Doom 3 engine!
So I scrimped and saved and waited for the right moment to pounce, since, as you said, AGP offerings are pretty slim. I considered the AGP 7900GS but reviews and my favourite local PC shop insisted it didn't give good bang for the buck. So I scrimped some more and at long last I went for the whole shebang. Athlon 64 X2 4200, Asus motherboard with AM2 socket, GeForce 7900GT 256Mb, and 2GB of DDR2 633MHz.
I LOVE my new hardware! I've been playing more of my old games than seeking new ones because, as you say, nothing new has really excited me. But older titles like Doom 3 look freaking breathtaking at high framerates on max quality with 4xAA and 16xAF. Instead of twiddling with minute settings trying to find a happy balance of quality and speed, I can just crank everything to full and slap on AA and start playing at a minimum of 30 frames.
I do my best to buy hardware with longevity in mind, but I never get tired of that new PC sheen. Your machine has no doubt given you years of excellent service but the clock is ticking. I rationalized my purchase by telling myself that socket AM2 and PCI-E are new architectures with tons of upgradability for years to come. I can perk up my machine bit by bit from now on. I even bought an SLI board so that I can nab a second 7900GT when they come down in price. Spend a dollar today and a penny tomorrow, sez I.
My last card, a GeForce 6600GT, ran Oblivion fairly well at 1024x768. Some battle scenes got a little hairy (8 FPS) but indoor areas were nice and smooth with about 80% of the options enabled and maxed.
I hope you like installing third party mods, though. Oblivion is one buggy and unpolished game.
Even if ATI isn't your company of choice, you must admit that a second superpower is very important in the video card market. It helps keep Nvidia's pricing and power in check, and ensures that the industry moves ahead at a good pace.
I loved my Sapphire Atlantis 9800Pro to death, though. It was a very strange dual-slot solution with a huge heat sink that surrounded the whole card. It was huge and unwieldy, but it was the fastest card on earth for a while and my model was completely fanless and noiseless! Good for frying eggs too! But seriously, I flip flopped between the official and Omega drivers and never found myself to be without a solution. Some Nvidia-enhanced games had blockier shadows but that was my only gripe. However, TV-out was far better quality and easier to configure on my previous card, the GeForce 440 MX.
I've decided to pledge no allegiance since both companies have given me excellent results. I'm currently the very proud owner of a BFG GeForce 7900GT but who knows who will make my next card.
HardOCP benchmarks user experience more than raw data. In hardware benchmarks the constant is the PC platform. In HardOCP benchmarks the constant is framerate. If you don't care about how many frames per second you get in Quake 3 at 800x600 you should at least consider HardOCP as a supporting resource.
Here the review talks up the signle X1950 XTX card but finds the CrossFire platfrom from ATI still very under-developed.
Maybe for this brand new card, but I've heard and read from many sources that Crossfire is superior to SLI in many aspects. Supposedly the eternity it took for ATI to release Crossfire paid off as they skipped over many of the growing pains Nvidia experienced. Plus, isn't it true that Crossfire doesn't require 2 of the same make, model, and manufacturer cards like SLI does?
The grass isn't quite so green on the Nvidia side of the fence either. I might not be doing you a favour by telling you this, but Nvidia cards have issues with anisotropic filtering. At a certain distance on slanted planes (like the ground) textures kind of "shimmer" if your perspective moves. ATI has far superior AF that looks sharper for a farther distance, and doesn't shimmer while moving. Most people don't notice this until I tell them. :)
p.s., I don't suppose you use a KVM switch, do you? My friend uses one with a VGA to DVI coupler and he noticed that ghosting around text as well (he has a new widescreen LCD and an ATI X850XL Deluxe or something). He removed the KVM and plugged the DVI right into the video card and everything suddenly looked great!
I thought King's Quest 2 was only 4-colour CGA. Did Sierra make a redux? With an improved 70 word vocabulary?
By the way, you ARE familiar with the beautiful loving fan remake, right? http://www.agdinteractive.com/
WoSAT is exactly what I was hoping for when I saw this and a previous /. headline. Thankfully I have a pretty high quality laserdisc rip on DVD. You could likely still find one as well on a rainy day (you know, a day that's a Bit Torrential).
The GeForce 7950 GX2 is the first and only exception to this rule, and is obviously inspired by ATI's recent naming schemes.
There's certainly a lot of borrowing going on in tech companies' marketing departments. It makes sense to an extent so that people know what they're buying and how it stacks up vs competitors' products. The whole Athlon XP (another stolen name) line was numbered to resemble the GHz rate of Pentium equivalents.
You may be right about Nvidia stealing the "50" from ATI, but I thought that name made sense for what it was - 2 x 7900GTX cards in one. It's more than a 7900 but it's not the next gen yet, and there aren't a lot of numbers between 7900 and 8000.
This does indeed look like a fantastic video card, but I found this comment from TFA a little funny:
ATI has proven they are a leader and not a follower with the X1950 XTX
No, X1950 XTX, ATI's top of the line card, sounds nothing like Nvidia's top model, 7950GTX.
I work at a great company with intentionally lax internet policies. It's definitely for the best.
I'm a tecnical writer and I rely on a great number of resources to get my job done. For instance, I have friends that are engineers, IT professionals, and designers and it saves me a ton of time to be able to speak to these unofficial resources unhindered when I have questions. IM and FTP are far more convenient than email and fax when I need a mockup or schematic. Sometimes I attend webinars that stream on weird ports, and the IT staff is always happy to temporarily tweak the firewall just for me. Other services like telnet and remote desktop come in handy when there's a resource I need that I've forgotten at home.
Even our Exchange spam filter is optional, which is a good thing since on the rare day where I get 1 spam I get 3 emails from the filter telling me about it.
I guess I'd be an "internet native" according to TFA, but even if I wasn't I'd be frustrated by any hinderance on internet connectivity. If my workplace blocked websites, my generation knows to just use a sneaky proxy like Babelfish anyway.
I respect my company for respecting me.
I'm with you 100%. I'm a PC gamer through and though, but I've recently bought some consoles and games. There are definite differences.
If you hate load times then consoles are not for you. If you hate not being able to save anywhere then consoles are not for you. If you hate low resolution displays (even HDTV), low polygons, low quality textures, simplistic games with few buttons, paying for online play, paying for software patches (no Xbox Live = no patches), no mods, little choice in peripherals (no joysticks, for one), and poor if any backward compatibility, then consoles are not for you.
Between Windows XP and DOSBox I can play nearly every PC game I've ever loved over the past 20 years (but not the later DOS games - those are very CPU intensive to emulate). Thanks to dedicated FOSS emulators like SCUMMVM I can play my old 320x200 favourites in glorious antialiased 1280x1024. I can mute the game's music and play my own in the background. I can edit INI and CONF files to change the gameplay however I wish. I can extract PK4 and DAT files and snoop around the core data, extract the music, inject my own voice, and do all kinds of wacky shenanigans. And of course, I can download very professional mods like Classic Doom for Doom 3 and breathe new life or completely new games into old titles and game engines.
Modding shouldn't be blown off either. There are some potentially great games that are terribly ridden with bugs and unpolished interface like Oblivion that are stuck in the broken state on consoles. It may take 35 downloads from a few sites, but by the time you're done modding Oblivion you can finally consider it to be version 1.0 - something Xbox360 users will never see. And of course a little hot coffee can perk you right up!
Console games are great too, don't get me wrong. There are few greater virtual experiences than Katamari Damacy. Grandia II for Dreamcast had surprisingly vibrant graphics with great colours and really outstanding spoken and written dialogue. Resident Evil 4 is quite a masterpiece of design and it has some of the most realistic graphics I've ever seen, even though the consoles it's played on are the weaker of the bunch. These games take full advantage of their platforms and use some clever tricks to skirt their limitations - like doubling pixels in the distance or rendering some objects as sprites instead of 3D models.
However, all these games have occasional save points. This pisses me off to no end. Twice now I've played Resident Evil 4 for a 45-minute stretch without running into a save point and had to turn off the console, losing all my progress. In Super Mario Sunshine I'm prompted to save as many as 10 times per level (about 8 seconds per) if I find blue coins. And cheeses n' rice, why the hell do you need to buy a slow ass memory card if you have an Xbox with a hard drive? Saving sucks donkey balls on every console. I don't know how it's gotten slower since the NES days when they put watch batteries in the cartridges. Forward ever, backward never!
Trite as it may seem, you can see gaming as a toy or as a serious thing. A console is a toy. You pick it up, you play it as it's intended, and you put it back. PC gaming is so much more. You can play the game as intended if you wish, but you can delve into the data, extend or cripple the game, improve the experience with an incremental upgrade, and you can alt-tab out to load up a web page for a hint. PC really isn't much more expensive than consoles, if at all, when you take the television into consideration, so I find that budget argument pretty thin.
Consoles are getting closer to PC with innovations like Wii and HDTV, but they're still a much more static medium than PC. You can settle for scaled-down games that can never be made to look better, or you can play on PC.
PC FTW!
I'm sure she didn't make the decision or understand the ramifications - after all, she is a CTO.
This is what I was thinking as I read. Isn't the CTO in charge of planning SANs and switch purchases and IS desktop thin clients? Why would a CTO be responsible for the dissemination of database records? Since this database is the core of one of AOL's primary business efforts, wouldn't that data be the realm of a CIO or CEO?
Methinks the CTO was looking for a golden excuse to retire early.
I must say my negotiating skills have improved vastly since I started playing Guild Wars. I just don't feel as shy to express my opinion of a fair deal. When I started playing the game I was too intraverted to assert myself to even sell any of my hard earned lewt, but as I learned the game and the economy I drew strength knowing I had some background on how things worked. It's really improved my life and I look forward to putting my new skills to the test when my salary is renegotiated at work in a couple of weeks!
Ah, thanks very much for this helpful info. Maybe the GP32x is the way to go for me.
Firefox has a tray app? Mozilla had one but I haven't found a Firefox one. Please link me a URL if you know how to install this because that's one app I use often enough to benefit from a resident quickload!
I still say "force" is the right word, though. Installing an app and providing an option buried in menus is not as honourable as asking whether you'd like the memory resident app installed in the first place. Most of those apps must be disabled with msconfig which is a very roundabout procedure and is too complex for most ordinary Windows users.
Unneccesarily memory-resident apps are a big problem in the Windows world. Have you seen a new Dell machine the first time it is turned on?
That was really fascinating! Thanks very much for sharing!
Please tell me if I'm somewhat accurately summarizing this in layman's terms:
Intel has a longer data path to its memory controller but it communicates in simple RISC style commands, while AMD has a shorter data path but communicates in descriptive CISC style commands. Intel benefits from the segregated memory controller because DMA requests (hardware accessing memory, right?) can be handled off-CPU by the northbridge, while AMD CPUs must bear the weight of DMA requests but are saved once again by the short data path?
I'm going to buy a DS specifically for ScummVM. A little touchscreen would be way easier to use than a mouse for those games.
BS apps like Quicktime are an assault on Windows users, not a result of their "active ignorance". Anyone with an iPod is forced to run Quicktime at all times. You can thank Apple, makers of a popular non-Windows platform you may have heard of, for that gem.
If Windows users installed memory-resident apps implicitly then you can be sure there wouldn't be so many running behind the scenes. Alas, greedy companies like Adobe and Apple and Nero think computers have nothing better to do than be ready to pounce like a jungle cat the moment their bimonthly updates are released.
Long story short, it's not fair of you to hate Windows users for their "passive ignorance". Most Windows users are too dumb to know what's going on behind the scenes, just like most car users are too dumb to know what's going on under the hood. Amongst other things, computers are a tool to do a job - a means to an end. You can use a ratchet for years without knowing that it's getting rusty inside.
You're 100% right, and it's sad how some believe that it is their job to protect Americans from themselves. Unfortunately, Thompson is a lawyer and it's his job to exploit the law to his $benefit$. He has threatened people with legal action for saying less than you have.
The law is for lawyers, not for the populace. The proles of America don't have the years of law school required to defend themselves in the legal universe. It is pure luck that there are sufficiently reputable judges serving America who believe in the spirit of the law, not just the letter, and dismiss claims like Thompson's as unconstitutional.
I wish America that best of luck because that's the best their legal system affords them. Either this will be another RIAA situation where a few rich people can force their morality on the nation, or it will be an exercise in liberty thanks to a judge who comes to work every day to serve the public and do some good. Thankfully Thompson alone, unlike the ??AA, doesn't have the resources to buy the law.
It's pretty surprising to see the legacy architectures being supported - especially considering the do-or-die transition from AGP to PCI-E. I suppose it's handy for 939ers and 478ers to be able to breathe a little life into their aging (but not old) systems. I admit I'm bitter on this subject since I was an early adopter of Athlon 64 and got stuck with a socket 754. My recent upgrade to X2 was a long time coming.