The first thing I do when I install XP is disable Luna and all the graphical tweaks except for show window contents while dragging. XP is nice and snappy and stable when you make it look like 95!
I think my next card will be an M-Audio Revolution. I bought one of their USB MIDI DJ controllers and I'm very pleased with the product, extensive manuals, and software. The Revolution is primarily a sound production card but it supports EAX, A3D, and Directsound.
I've been using Sound Blaster products since the get go - the Sound Blaster 1.0 - and I was VERY dissatisfied with the customer service they gave me. Time to give my dollar for the little guy.
You're lucky ATI helped you at all. I bought an OEM Sound Blaster Audigy (standalone, not with a PC) and Creative refuses to give me the time of day even though it's supposed to be under warranty! They told me that OEM products don't match Creative's specifications so they can't be sure that their advice will adversely affect me. Beware of products that don't come in a pretty cardboard box!
I expect that Dell will always remain a workplace brand, with dreams of gaming. They know how to treat businesses, but they don't have the first clue when it comes to gamers. And with Alienware now a Dell brand, I'm expecting it to slowly die as a gaming brand.
Worse yet, I expect Dell to be one of the main reasons why casual users switch to Mac. Proprietary hardware plus all that bloatware that tries to sell you stuff every time you run it gives a terrible impression of the PC world. I see many noobs paying top dollar to Mac just to be rid of Dell's adware because they don't know better.
Actually, despite the fact that it was released on PC several years after its Xbox release, and despite the fact that it looks as dated as it is, it surprisingly runs like molasses on today's beefiest machines. Many PC game review magazines used Halo as a benchmark for new PCs since it really put them to the test.
In my naive and trusting youth I bought an AGP video card for my Dell P3 600 just to get home and find no AGP port! So I traded my card in for a PCI version and plugged 'er in. The thing wouldn't boot, made no telltale POST beeps, nothing. I unplugged the video card and everything worked fine again. So I gave Dell a ring and asked them how to install a PCI video card in my model. After listening to 5 minutes of page flipping the tech told me nobody had ever asked that question and he was unable to help me. When I asked who could help me he said he'd have to ask his supervisor, who knew nothing as well. Luckily my neighbourhood computer store was kind enough to break policy and give me a $130 store credit for the video card.
My sister's friend is almost completely computer illiterate and therefore very virus-prone. She got a nasty one and called Microsoft for advice. When they asked her for her product key they determined that she was using a pirated copy of WinXP. They told her she was ineligible for any support from Microsoft, but that they would help her this once. They spent nearly an hour explaining how she likely got a virus, walked her through installing the scanner, and waiting while it did its thing. I was damn impressed when she told me about it.
You're absolutely right. Why are gold farmers often against the TOS, but something like this isn't? It just means the richest people will have the most powerful characters. Why screw with our suspension of disbelief by correlating real money with game money?
Games make the player the storyteller
on
Once Upon A Game
·
· Score: 1
Games allow the player to tell their own story as they play. For instance, no two people will play an RPG the same way so every character has its own tale of success or failure. Or, two friends play Virtua Tennis every day for a year and the underdog, after losing 80% of games, has a huge upset victory in a championship. How about, in Vice City you assassinate the Hatian gang leaders at their comerade's funeral, his thugs give chase and blast your car until it's a careening fireball, so you steer it around toward the gang and bail out seconds before it explodes, killing your attackers in one fell swoop!
The interactivity of games is what makes them oranges to movies' apples. A good game is one that YOU tell stories about, and your story is like no one else's.
Case in point, my coworker just told me a great story about an experience in Oblivion.
The theif's guild sent him and 2 other thieves on a race to steal someone's diary. He followed one of the thieves to the location and watched as she stole the diary. It was too late at night to return the diary so he followed her all the way home, sticking to the shadows, and waited behind her house until she fell asleep. He then picked the door lock, snuck into her bedroom, and stole the diary off her table. The next night he gave the diary to the guildmaster.
The changes are designed to better align Microsoft's desktop and Internet software teams and get products to market faster
I thought it was delayed because of DirectX 10 and game\media\PVR issues. Now that 60% is being rewritten will hardware manufacturers like ATI have to ditch their millions of dollars of R&D and start their Vista drivers from scratch?
So you need to buy physical medium to access your online profile and data? Yikes!! That's like swiping your driver's license into a computer to check your Gmail.
yuh huh. I believe I qualified in my "arrogant" initial statement that I am speaking subjectively. If you want me to speak for others I'll email you when my yogi graduates me from astral projection university.
I happen to think 'standard' windows GUIs are ass-ugly, and the iTunes software is nice... again, complete subjectivity. What steep learning curve? I find the software easy to use. Then again, for me, a GUI is a GUI. I couldn't care what platform it's on. I've been using them for 20 years.
Granted, subjective opinion on my part. My arguments on this topic are applicable to many cross-platform apps (damn you GAIM! you're so close to perfect!). I simply expected better Windows customization from Apple (ok, I just smacked myself in the head for saying so) considering the vast number of Windows users who use their software. I'm a freelance PC repair tech and MANY of my clients call me just to install their new iPods and software. Many Windows users get very frustrated with iTunes because it is so different from other Windows apps. It's a valid argument made by many people, but of course, like you, many people embrace that very difference. Even RealPlayer, which sucks donkey balls, has a more Windows-standard interface. In short, ramming the Mac interface down the throats of Windows users is a gamble.
And by full screen I only meant that it's friggin huge. Even windowed it takes most or all of the screen. Yes, I personally use a geeky tiny media player (www.foobar2000.org) but even compared to the very popular Winamp, iTunes is ginormous. I resent that even when you use it as a basic audio player it still steals the whole screen instead of functioning as an anciallary "applet". I also resent that the iPod is a huge hard drive but you can only interact with it through iTunes. Open MP3 players are more like a Muvo in that they are USB thumb drives that also happen to play music. You can't deny that portable storage is something the average user can benefit from, and is a service iPod could provide better than solid state drives if the software didn't limit this functionaltiy. (please correct me if I'm wrong about this)
And I stand behind my claims -- openness and more versatility aren't what most of the consumers are looking for. Perceived functionality is what they want, and being versatile enough
On second thought I think you're right. If the player supports non-DRM in addition to Apple proprietary DRM then I'm satisfied with that ethically. I've agreed from the start that France is misguided on their contrary opinion.
So yes, the iPod isn't for me. But I still argue that other solutions would be a better fit for most people who own one, or that the iPod could be that better fit if the firmware and software weren't so pigeonholed. Sufficiently diplomatic?
I think France is being dumb for demanding.... what ARE they demanding exactly? I don't think DRM is necessarily a field that requires standardization. A BOINC project would crack that in a week. You and I and TFA are just splitting hairs though. I think a bigger issue for all governments to focus on is my aforementioned complaint about price fixing. Lower prices would alleviate the issue of piracy which would reduce all the hubbub about DRM.
That brings up another point! What the hell is the point of a memory card when you have a hard drive!? So you can continue your 60 hour RPG at your friend's house? How sociable!
Arcade could have been so much more if MS had included a bigger hard drive. People would love to download full retail games, not only smaller games like Mutant Storm and Geometry Wars, but their diskspace will be severely limited to only a couple of titles at a time. If only the internet were faster, Live users could subscribe to streamed games. Alas, that's too much to hope for in this generation of consoles.
Try reading the rest of it and you'll ansewr your own question below.
Do you think that, perhaps, just maybe, many people, say, the 90% or whatever who buy iPods, perhaps have slightly different priorities than you, instead of being uninformed?
No I don't. Do you think the vast majority of people who buy computers make informed decisions? Or do they buy the first thing they recognize that suits their needs?
Of course the iPod is absolutely perfect for some people. I'm not saying it's a bad player. I'm saying that whoever it's targeted for is not the majority. There are far better players to suit the needs of the average joe that cost a lot less and have no DRM.
It's tough for me to see things from the layman's perspective since I'm relatively more informed, but I think there are some foibles of the iPod that are universally unsavoury:
- The whole battery fiasco was ridiculous. We've all heard horror stories of $120-odd battery replacements that can only be done by Apple by mail. I admit I haven't paid attention to whether or how Apple has remedied this.
- Maybe I'm alone on this one but I don't see any benefit for the average person to carry any more than 5 gigs of music with them at any one time (and 5 gigs is a VERY generous round-up). Unless you work 40-hour shifts in a coal mine what's stopping you from deleting some songs and putting on some new ones? Even a 20-gig device is swatting a fly with an ICBM.
- I think the nano is a huge ripoff for the features\price, and I don't get the shuffle at all - calling a shortcoming a feature is pure marketing tripe.
- A friend of mine who owns an iPod is furious because he was forced to format his computer and he can't copy his music from his iPod back to the hard drive because Apple assumes he stole it. He found a free ITMS alternative, but as you say, he didn't buy an iPod to muddle with third-party software.
- The iTunes software might be nice on Mac but on Windows it's atrocious. Some of the drag-and-drop functionality is pretty innovative, but the whole design is so nonstandard in the Windows world that it has a steeper learning curve and creates inaccurate expectations about UI in Windows. Having a fullscreen audio player makes no sense either. Also, requiring Quicktime to be resident in memory at all times is ludicrous.
- Steve Jobs is arguing against tiered pricing per song. Wee. The douche charges $10 for an album encoded in a locked-in file format. Not an album, for that would mean to me some kind of displayable medium and maybe some liner notes; $10 buys you a couple of bits. I'm more in favour of a site like www.allofmp3.com which charges (fairly) by the megabyte.
- Despite the leaner distribution model, artists see no gain in profits. ITMS is proven to be no better for indie artists in any capacity other than scope of distribution. The store was forced to remove from their website the claim that they are fair to artists.
- Any complaints I make about how solid the unit is physically have been done to death so I'll leave it at that. As an admittadly clumsy individual I could never trust myself with a HDD-based portable device, which summarizes most of the iPod lineup.
I bought a no-name solid state MP3 player last year and I couldn't be happier with it. It's a tiny thing with a fold-out USB plug - just stick it into a WinXP machine and copy files (MP3, OGG, WMA, or store any computer files\folders) into the drive folder that automagically opens. The thing has a microphone, a line-in jack, an AM\FM radio that can be recorded to MP3 immediately or set like a VCR, and even a little penlight! Plus it came with power and audio cables, earbuds (worthless), a faux-leather case, and a printed manual. It runs about 40 hours on a single AA, and even longer if I listen to the radio. Considering the price I was totally astounded at the features, ease-of-use, and engineering behind this tiny behemoth. Plus, (uber geek alert) when I backed up the entire file structure and formatted it I ran Tom's Root Boot off of it, though it has enough storage for Knoppix!
I stand behind my claims. iPod is the champion of the uninformed. There are sturdier, more accessible, "open" devices that are more versatile and economical.
But just the same, our arguments are congruent. I don't think iPod should have to change its device or business model for any reason. Apple has every right to make the products they make, however they choose to make them. There's no shortage of competition that meets the French government's criteria.
So France is against proprietary technology? I personally hate the iPod, iTunes, and ITMS, but I don't think they should be banished outright. People have a choose what to purchase and if they like being locked into an overpriced, overhyped, fragile product with expensive proprietary replacement parts then they have every right.
The Antec Sonata cases come with rubber grommets, a 120mm low RPM fan, and a TruPower PSU which is dual fan but extremely quiet. It's definitely not as economical as DIY (cost me $120 Canadian) but it's a great all-in-one package with custom fitted parts. My Sonata (first series) is almost completely silent, even while gaming. Its only shortcoming (other than price) is that there's no hooks to help fold back cables, and the PSU doesn't have detachable plugs, so you have to do some anaconda wrestling to tame the jungle.
Great suggestion! Since you can't crash cars in this game and you can restart your lap whenever you want it's a great choice for noobs. This game is even fun to lose!
DS is indeed a great game to play with a less experienced gamer. It's got a reasonable learning curve due to the simplified levelup scheme, and it's inexpensive. It's also handy that 2 people can play online (LAN or internet) with the same CD key. Beware online though - it's rife with cheaters.
This isn't just a simple DDoS because DNS servers point many other resources to the attack target. This makes this a Distributed Reflective Denial of Service Attack, or DRDoS. I published an article on this topic in 2600 Hacker Quarterly magazine in 2004. I was a network\security student when I wrote it so it might not teach you ubergeeks anything new.
I was flipping through an early 90s game magazine the other day and saw a doozy. The ad was for a pinball game called Balls of Steel. It showed a woman's arm holding 2 large steel balls and the caption said "You need these to play". That one spawned a lot of complaints.
You have to apprciate the reasoning of such ads, though. They're placed in magazines and they know people just flip right past them so they have to put something engaging enough to make them stop flipping for 3 extra seconds. That Hitman ad is indeed pretty bad though. Their previous ads just showed the bald monkey protagonist looking placid. I guess you need sex in ads even if it's, er, dead sex.
Slashdot Mirror
The first thing I do when I install XP is disable Luna and all the graphical tweaks except for show window contents while dragging. XP is nice and snappy and stable when you make it look like 95!
/ uptime.0.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7022/1036/1600
I think my next card will be an M-Audio Revolution. I bought one of their USB MIDI DJ controllers and I'm very pleased with the product, extensive manuals, and software. The Revolution is primarily a sound production card but it supports EAX, A3D, and Directsound.
& ID=pciinterfaces
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list
I've been using Sound Blaster products since the get go - the Sound Blaster 1.0 - and I was VERY dissatisfied with the customer service they gave me. Time to give my dollar for the little guy.
You're lucky ATI helped you at all. I bought an OEM Sound Blaster Audigy (standalone, not with a PC) and Creative refuses to give me the time of day even though it's supposed to be under warranty! They told me that OEM products don't match Creative's specifications so they can't be sure that their advice will adversely affect me. Beware of products that don't come in a pretty cardboard box!
I expect that Dell will always remain a workplace brand, with dreams of gaming. They know how to treat businesses, but they don't have the first clue when it comes to gamers. And with Alienware now a Dell brand, I'm expecting it to slowly die as a gaming brand.
Worse yet, I expect Dell to be one of the main reasons why casual users switch to Mac. Proprietary hardware plus all that bloatware that tries to sell you stuff every time you run it gives a terrible impression of the PC world. I see many noobs paying top dollar to Mac just to be rid of Dell's adware because they don't know better.
Actually, despite the fact that it was released on PC several years after its Xbox release, and despite the fact that it looks as dated as it is, it surprisingly runs like molasses on today's beefiest machines. Many PC game review magazines used Halo as a benchmark for new PCs since it really put them to the test.
In my naive and trusting youth I bought an AGP video card for my Dell P3 600 just to get home and find no AGP port! So I traded my card in for a PCI version and plugged 'er in. The thing wouldn't boot, made no telltale POST beeps, nothing. I unplugged the video card and everything worked fine again. So I gave Dell a ring and asked them how to install a PCI video card in my model. After listening to 5 minutes of page flipping the tech told me nobody had ever asked that question and he was unable to help me. When I asked who could help me he said he'd have to ask his supervisor, who knew nothing as well. Luckily my neighbourhood computer store was kind enough to break policy and give me a $130 store credit for the video card.
My sister's friend is almost completely computer illiterate and therefore very virus-prone. She got a nasty one and called Microsoft for advice. When they asked her for her product key they determined that she was using a pirated copy of WinXP. They told her she was ineligible for any support from Microsoft, but that they would help her this once. They spent nearly an hour explaining how she likely got a virus, walked her through installing the scanner, and waiting while it did its thing. I was damn impressed when she told me about it.
You're absolutely right. Why are gold farmers often against the TOS, but something like this isn't? It just means the richest people will have the most powerful characters. Why screw with our suspension of disbelief by correlating real money with game money?
Games allow the player to tell their own story as they play. For instance, no two people will play an RPG the same way so every character has its own tale of success or failure. Or, two friends play Virtua Tennis every day for a year and the underdog, after losing 80% of games, has a huge upset victory in a championship. How about, in Vice City you assassinate the Hatian gang leaders at their comerade's funeral, his thugs give chase and blast your car until it's a careening fireball, so you steer it around toward the gang and bail out seconds before it explodes, killing your attackers in one fell swoop!
The interactivity of games is what makes them oranges to movies' apples. A good game is one that YOU tell stories about, and your story is like no one else's.
Case in point, my coworker just told me a great story about an experience in Oblivion.
The theif's guild sent him and 2 other thieves on a race to steal someone's diary. He followed one of the thieves to the location and watched as she stole the diary. It was too late at night to return the diary so he followed her all the way home, sticking to the shadows, and waited behind her house until she fell asleep. He then picked the door lock, snuck into her bedroom, and stole the diary off her table. The next night he gave the diary to the guildmaster.
The changes are designed to better align Microsoft's desktop and Internet software teams and get products to market faster
I thought it was delayed because of DirectX 10 and game\media\PVR issues. Now that 60% is being rewritten will hardware manufacturers like ATI have to ditch their millions of dollars of R&D and start their Vista drivers from scratch?
Just what the FBI needs! Cleartext transmissions transmitted wirelessly over the public cloud! (insert GPG fanboy banter below)
So you need to buy physical medium to access your online profile and data? Yikes!! That's like swiping your driver's license into a computer to check your Gmail.
Blah blah blah j'accuse, blah blah j00==00b3r
... again, complete subjectivity. What steep learning curve? I find the software easy to use. Then again, for me, a GUI is a GUI. I couldn't care what platform it's on. I've been using them for 20 years.
yuh huh. I believe I qualified in my "arrogant" initial statement that I am speaking subjectively. If you want me to speak for others I'll email you when my yogi graduates me from astral projection university.
I happen to think 'standard' windows GUIs are ass-ugly, and the iTunes software is nice
Granted, subjective opinion on my part. My arguments on this topic are applicable to many cross-platform apps (damn you GAIM! you're so close to perfect!). I simply expected better Windows customization from Apple (ok, I just smacked myself in the head for saying so) considering the vast number of Windows users who use their software. I'm a freelance PC repair tech and MANY of my clients call me just to install their new iPods and software. Many Windows users get very frustrated with iTunes because it is so different from other Windows apps. It's a valid argument made by many people, but of course, like you, many people embrace that very difference. Even RealPlayer, which sucks donkey balls, has a more Windows-standard interface. In short, ramming the Mac interface down the throats of Windows users is a gamble.
And by full screen I only meant that it's friggin huge. Even windowed it takes most or all of the screen. Yes, I personally use a geeky tiny media player (www.foobar2000.org) but even compared to the very popular Winamp, iTunes is ginormous. I resent that even when you use it as a basic audio player it still steals the whole screen instead of functioning as an anciallary "applet". I also resent that the iPod is a huge hard drive but you can only interact with it through iTunes. Open MP3 players are more like a Muvo in that they are USB thumb drives that also happen to play music. You can't deny that portable storage is something the average user can benefit from, and is a service iPod could provide better than solid state drives if the software didn't limit this functionaltiy. (please correct me if I'm wrong about this)
And I stand behind my claims -- openness and more versatility aren't what most of the consumers are looking for. Perceived functionality is what they want, and being versatile enough
On second thought I think you're right. If the player supports non-DRM in addition to Apple proprietary DRM then I'm satisfied with that ethically. I've agreed from the start that France is misguided on their contrary opinion.
So yes, the iPod isn't for me. But I still argue that other solutions would be a better fit for most people who own one, or that the iPod could be that better fit if the firmware and software weren't so pigeonholed. Sufficiently diplomatic?
I think France is being dumb for demanding.... what ARE they demanding exactly? I don't think DRM is necessarily a field that requires standardization. A BOINC project would crack that in a week. You and I and TFA are just splitting hairs though. I think a bigger issue for all governments to focus on is my aforementioned complaint about price fixing. Lower prices would alleviate the issue of piracy which would reduce all the hubbub about DRM.
Well, what better way to use Xbox Live?
BTW, what's the cheat code in your sig?
That brings up another point! What the hell is the point of a memory card when you have a hard drive!? So you can continue your 60 hour RPG at your friend's house? How sociable!
Arcade could have been so much more if MS had included a bigger hard drive. People would love to download full retail games, not only smaller games like Mutant Storm and Geometry Wars, but their diskspace will be severely limited to only a couple of titles at a time. If only the internet were faster, Live users could subscribe to streamed games. Alas, that's too much to hope for in this generation of consoles.
Any post that opens like that has GOT to be good!
Try reading the rest of it and you'll ansewr your own question below.
Do you think that, perhaps, just maybe, many people, say, the 90% or whatever who buy iPods, perhaps have slightly different priorities than you, instead of being uninformed?
No I don't. Do you think the vast majority of people who buy computers make informed decisions? Or do they buy the first thing they recognize that suits their needs?
Of course the iPod is absolutely perfect for some people. I'm not saying it's a bad player. I'm saying that whoever it's targeted for is not the majority. There are far better players to suit the needs of the average joe that cost a lot less and have no DRM.
It's tough for me to see things from the layman's perspective since I'm relatively more informed, but I think there are some foibles of the iPod that are universally unsavoury:
- The whole battery fiasco was ridiculous. We've all heard horror stories of $120-odd battery replacements that can only be done by Apple by mail. I admit I haven't paid attention to whether or how Apple has remedied this.
- Maybe I'm alone on this one but I don't see any benefit for the average person to carry any more than 5 gigs of music with them at any one time (and 5 gigs is a VERY generous round-up). Unless you work 40-hour shifts in a coal mine what's stopping you from deleting some songs and putting on some new ones? Even a 20-gig device is swatting a fly with an ICBM.
- I think the nano is a huge ripoff for the features\price, and I don't get the shuffle at all - calling a shortcoming a feature is pure marketing tripe.
- A friend of mine who owns an iPod is furious because he was forced to format his computer and he can't copy his music from his iPod back to the hard drive because Apple assumes he stole it. He found a free ITMS alternative, but as you say, he didn't buy an iPod to muddle with third-party software.
- The iTunes software might be nice on Mac but on Windows it's atrocious. Some of the drag-and-drop functionality is pretty innovative, but the whole design is so nonstandard in the Windows world that it has a steeper learning curve and creates inaccurate expectations about UI in Windows. Having a fullscreen audio player makes no sense either. Also, requiring Quicktime to be resident in memory at all times is ludicrous.
- Steve Jobs is arguing against tiered pricing per song. Wee. The douche charges $10 for an album encoded in a locked-in file format. Not an album, for that would mean to me some kind of displayable medium and maybe some liner notes; $10 buys you a couple of bits. I'm more in favour of a site like www.allofmp3.com which charges (fairly) by the megabyte.
- Despite the leaner distribution model, artists see no gain in profits. ITMS is proven to be no better for indie artists in any capacity other than scope of distribution. The store was forced to remove from their website the claim that they are fair to artists.
- Any complaints I make about how solid the unit is physically have been done to death so I'll leave it at that. As an admittadly clumsy individual I could never trust myself with a HDD-based portable device, which summarizes most of the iPod lineup.
I bought a no-name solid state MP3 player last year and I couldn't be happier with it. It's a tiny thing with a fold-out USB plug - just stick it into a WinXP machine and copy files (MP3, OGG, WMA, or store any computer files\folders) into the drive folder that automagically opens. The thing has a microphone, a line-in jack, an AM\FM radio that can be recorded to MP3 immediately or set like a VCR, and even a little penlight! Plus it came with power and audio cables, earbuds (worthless), a faux-leather case, and a printed manual. It runs about 40 hours on a single AA, and even longer if I listen to the radio. Considering the price I was totally astounded at the features, ease-of-use, and engineering behind this tiny behemoth. Plus, (uber geek alert) when I backed up the entire file structure and formatted it I ran Tom's Root Boot off of it, though it has enough storage for Knoppix!
I stand behind my claims. iPod is the champion of the uninformed. There are sturdier, more accessible, "open" devices that are more versatile and economical.
But just the same, our arguments are congruent. I don't think iPod should have to change its device or business model for any reason. Apple has every right to make the products they make, however they choose to make them. There's no shortage of competition that meets the French government's criteria.
Then again, rereading
So France is against proprietary technology? I personally hate the iPod, iTunes, and ITMS, but I don't think they should be banished outright. People have a choose what to purchase and if they like being locked into an overpriced, overhyped, fragile product with expensive proprietary replacement parts then they have every right.
The Antec Sonata cases come with rubber grommets, a 120mm low RPM fan, and a TruPower PSU which is dual fan but extremely quiet. It's definitely not as economical as DIY (cost me $120 Canadian) but it's a great all-in-one package with custom fitted parts. My Sonata (first series) is almost completely silent, even while gaming. Its only shortcoming (other than price) is that there's no hooks to help fold back cables, and the PSU doesn't have detachable plugs, so you have to do some anaconda wrestling to tame the jungle.
Great suggestion! Since you can't crash cars in this game and you can restart your lap whenever you want it's a great choice for noobs. This game is even fun to lose!
DS is indeed a great game to play with a less experienced gamer. It's got a reasonable learning curve due to the simplified levelup scheme, and it's inexpensive. It's also handy that 2 people can play online (LAN or internet) with the same CD key. Beware online though - it's rife with cheaters.
This isn't just a simple DDoS because DNS servers point many other resources to the attack target. This makes this a Distributed Reflective Denial of Service Attack, or DRDoS. I published an article on this topic in 2600 Hacker Quarterly magazine in 2004. I was a network\security student when I wrote it so it might not teach you ubergeeks anything new.
http://hyppy.zapto.org/DRDoS-Spyrochaete.html
I was flipping through an early 90s game magazine the other day and saw a doozy. The ad was for a pinball game called Balls of Steel. It showed a woman's arm holding 2 large steel balls and the caption said "You need these to play". That one spawned a lot of complaints.
You have to apprciate the reasoning of such ads, though. They're placed in magazines and they know people just flip right past them so they have to put something engaging enough to make them stop flipping for 3 extra seconds. That Hitman ad is indeed pretty bad though. Their previous ads just showed the bald monkey protagonist looking placid. I guess you need sex in ads even if it's, er, dead sex.
Well, considering how publicly TPB belittles the companies who send them legal threats I think you're right.