You see, the class action lawsuit is how the law is applied.. You can't send the police after a company based on civil laws. It isn't a crime, but it does make them responsible. The class action lawsuit is how the law is enforced, the consumer who was effected by the bad product sues the company, and they get their money back, thus the company is responsible for not delivering on their promises.
IIRC, Black Isle was the actual "producer" of the Baldur's Gate games. They're part of Interplay. They had the D&D license, they wrote the story, they produced the movies, they hired the voice actors, etc. Bioware just wrote the engine and AI and such. I may be wrong, though.
Re:SCO still packs a punch?
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 1
You can only sell short on an uptick, which makes it impossible to drive share prices down by selling short.
I spend so many hours playing this game. There was something VERY addicting about recruiting rangers, elves, thieves, warriors, wizards, paladins, healers, monks, etc and watching them run around killing beasts and buying things.
I loved how that economy worked... The houses and inns would just automatically generate money, and heroes could earn money slaying monsters, then spend it at the market, blacksmith, Wizards' Guild, etc. Then your trusty tax collectors went around collecting money.. It's pretty simple, but it's fun to watch.
I've always been more into the freely available games out there when it comes to Linux.
For big flashy commercial 3d games and such, I generally prefer Windows anyway since I know it'll work right off. (Well, usually anyway:)
In Linux, I like those games made by people with creative minds, but not the money to try to produce a big budget game. These games are frequently much more interesting, and sometimes even more graphically appealing.. (I like cheezy 2d graphics better sometimes, especially if it's a fun game)... in fact, one of my favorite Linux games ever, Koules, had very simplistic graphics, but four of us would huddle around the KB and a joystick and play that game for hours!
I bet you that game had a budget of $0. Development tools, graphics programs and all sorts of useful apps exist for free in Linux.. so anyone with an idea and enough spare time can make something that could be more fun to play than a game with a 10 million dollar budget.
The important bit about fps is not what you can see, but what you can process between each frame that you see... stuff like AI and physics happen in between displayed frames, so the more you're able to push out, the more processing time you have for other stuff.
The biggest problem I see (so far) is that you can't use both at the same time. Say someone calls you and asks if you have a number for so-and-so.. because hey, you're the one with the PDA, so you have all the info.. but you gotta move the phone away from your head to look up the number (or on some, the phone is actually an APPLICATION on the pda, so that it hangs up if you switch to the address book.. this only applies to PalmOS devices, though).. so you can't read the number to them easily.. a device intended to be convenient becomes less convenient.
Not only can you not read off numbers, but you can't enter in the info they're telling you, write down the appointment you're making, etc. You gotta carry around a notepad and a pen to do that, and that defeats the whole point.
Well, just for kicks I through some assembler code together with some SSE2 instructions. (I'm using nasm to do it) It executed just fine on my Athlon XP. I would assume I would get an invalid opcode exception if it didn't support SSE2 instructions.
AFAIK, the Athlon XP already has the SSE2 instructions/registers (Though they call it 3dnow! Professional).. and for those curious, SSE2 is capable of 64bit double precision floating point. 3dnow (old pre-Athlon XP)can only do 32bit single precision floats.. that's why 3dnow isn't all that useful when it comes to real rendering. It's more useful for 3d games and other things that don't need the accuracy of double precision.
You do realize that 1000Mbps is actually faster than most IDE hard drives? (I don't know what kind of drives they have..) The fastest ATA-100 drive I have gets about 35MB/sec at peak.. That's 65MB/sec you can't even really use for file transfers.
Anything above 100baseT isn't really all that useful for induvidual workstations and servers, but it increases throughput for MANY workstations and servers, all sending traffic on the net at the same time.
Also, remember that your PCI bus can only talk at a maximum 133MB/sec (and if you have many peripherals, some of that is already being used), so anything faster than 1 gigabit, and your computer can't even talk that fast.
I would think Fax spamming would be more costly to the receiver... You'd be using a peice of paper for every page they sent you... if you got tons, that could start costing you...
Junk email or snail mail doesn't cost you anything.. (except it uses a tiny portion of your bandwidth) So I doubt they'd ever make spammers pay you for receiving that.
Why would they want to restrict office to Windows? That's where the money would be. Think of how many people could now switch to Linux because they have their MS Office... you'd have to buy a new copy of office for your new linux install... plus those existing linux users who want office (Not sure how many there are)... sounds like they'd make a few billion $ more.
It's getting harder for them to make money of Windows itself.. not as many new systems are being purchased these days, and not so many are going after the new version(s).
Re:My one big issue with the film (SPOILER?)
on
Minority Report
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· Score: 1
Well, some could say it was because the pre-cogs were mistreated.. Locked away in a pool forever, forced to see visions of future murders. That's not exactly a full life.
You know how to diagnose hardware problems.. (Generally speaking, it's pretty easy.. you don't need any fancy equipment.. just old stuff... if you plug in a different graphics card and everything works, it's most likely your graphics card... if you swap hard drives and it works, then it was your hard drive.. it's simple, but you do need old stuff around.. but you can usually find someone to give you or sell you that sort of thing cheap, if you don't have that sort of thing lying around from your previous box.)
The second con you listed can be worrysome, but all you gotta do is be careful and gentle, and everything will be okay. I've installed several CPU's (AMD's, which are the worst) and they're all fine, and I'm certianly no expert.
I've always built my own systems(since '94), and I've been quite happy with the results every time.
That's why I turn my phone off.. That way it's always with me.. if I'm hiking up the nearby mountain (no phones around there, but I still get decent analog coverage.. even digital and pcs some places), I can call someone if there's an emergency, as in someone fell off a rock and broke their leg, but I don't have to worry about anyone from work calling to ask me some inane question about their computer.
Also, I keep a pager with me, so that if anyone does want to get ahold of me with something important, they can page me, and I can decide whether or not I want to call them back. Pagers still have a use, you see.:)
DISCLAIMER: I work for a paging company, so that was a little bit of a plug. Sort of.
Yes, but expenses are really irrelevant to this issue. If you are simply not going to pay for a peice of software you use, it makes no difference if you use it or not. Either way, the software company will not get their $49.99 from you.
What's worse, on every computer I've seen with McAfee virus scan installed when they buy it has a 3 month trial subscription to virus def. updates. So after they've owned their computer for a year, they get the excessive boot delay (and it slows their computer down all the time too, because of "real time scanning"), but they don't get any protection from recent trojans/worms/viruses.
Just nitpicking, but a lot of games don't have those postcards anymore in favor of an electronic registration system. Same deal though, but it saves a postcard.
Everybody I know that runs Linux at home (and I know quite a few, myself included), had a home built computer. (i.e. they bought the individual components and put them all together themselves) I always do that for my home computers.. not so much to save money anymore (though sometimes you can save a few bucks over a name brand box), but I like to have direct control over everything, and be able to open up the box and upgrade or replace any peice of hardware without worrying about voiding the warranty.
How many linux guys (or girls) buy name brand desktop systems? (Laptops are a different story)
Tyan makes some dual-P3 and dual-athlon boards that have 64bit PCI slots.. of course the athlon boards only have 33Mhz PCI slots, and the P3 boards have 66Mhz slots, which more or less doubles your bandwidth again..
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There's a problem with replacing it though.. You see, Phoenix has already made its money by then.. it sold the BIOS to the motherboard manufacturer.
They don't care if you replace their BIOS with an alternative, because they've already sold it to you.
So you can't scare them with that threat.
You see, the class action lawsuit is how the law is applied.. You can't send the police after a company based on civil laws. It isn't a crime, but it does make them responsible. The class action lawsuit is how the law is enforced, the consumer who was effected by the bad product sues the company, and they get their money back, thus the company is responsible for not delivering on their promises.
IIRC, Black Isle was the actual "producer" of the Baldur's Gate games. They're part of Interplay. They had the D&D license, they wrote the story, they produced the movies, they hired the voice actors, etc. Bioware just wrote the engine and AI and such. I may be wrong, though.
You can only sell short on an uptick, which makes it impossible to drive share prices down by selling short.
Nice! Trogdor will even be in there!
I spend so many hours playing this game. There was something VERY addicting about recruiting rangers, elves, thieves, warriors, wizards, paladins, healers, monks, etc and watching them run around killing beasts and buying things.
I loved how that economy worked... The houses and inns would just automatically generate money, and heroes could earn money slaying monsters, then spend it at the market, blacksmith, Wizards' Guild, etc. Then your trusty tax collectors went around collecting money.. It's pretty simple, but it's fun to watch.
I've always been more into the freely available games out there when it comes to Linux.
:)
For big flashy commercial 3d games and such, I generally prefer Windows anyway since I know it'll work right off. (Well, usually anyway
In Linux, I like those games made by people with creative minds, but not the money to try to produce a big budget game. These games are frequently much more interesting, and sometimes even more graphically appealing.. (I like cheezy 2d graphics better sometimes, especially if it's a fun game)... in fact, one of my favorite Linux games ever, Koules, had very simplistic graphics, but four of us would huddle around the KB and a joystick and play that game for hours!
I bet you that game had a budget of $0. Development tools, graphics programs and all sorts of useful apps exist for free in Linux.. so anyone with an idea and enough spare time can make something that could be more fun to play than a game with a 10 million dollar budget.
The important bit about fps is not what you can see, but what you can process between each frame that you see... stuff like AI and physics happen in between displayed frames, so the more you're able to push out, the more processing time you have for other stuff.
I remember AOL when it was Q-LINK.
Those were the days. Of course, there wasn't any "clicking" back then, on the C-64.
(I did have a C-64 mouse, but it was really only used in GEOS)
The biggest problem I see (so far) is that you can't use both at the same time. Say someone calls you and asks if you have a number for so-and-so.. because hey, you're the one with the PDA, so you have all the info.. but you gotta move the phone away from your head to look up the number (or on some, the phone is actually an APPLICATION on the pda, so that it hangs up if you switch to the address book.. this only applies to PalmOS devices, though).. so you can't read the number to them easily.. a device intended to be convenient becomes less convenient.
Not only can you not read off numbers, but you can't enter in the info they're telling you, write down the appointment you're making, etc. You gotta carry around a notepad and a pen to do that, and that defeats the whole point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't expect you'd find steel on a random planet/moon. Iron ore yes, steel, I don't think so.
Well, just for kicks I through some assembler code together with some SSE2 instructions. (I'm using nasm to do it) It executed just fine on my Athlon XP. I would assume I would get an invalid opcode exception if it didn't support SSE2 instructions.
AFAIK, the Athlon XP already has the SSE2 instructions/registers (Though they call it 3dnow! Professional).. and for those curious, SSE2 is capable of 64bit double precision floating point. 3dnow (old pre-Athlon XP)can only do 32bit single precision floats.. that's why 3dnow isn't all that useful when it comes to real rendering. It's more useful for 3d games and other things that don't need the accuracy of double precision.
AOL only seems to give out CD's anymore... I recently got one in a useless 1/2" deep CD tin. How's that for throwing money away?
You do realize that 1000Mbps is actually faster than most IDE hard drives? (I don't know what kind of drives they have..) The fastest ATA-100 drive I have gets about 35MB/sec at peak.. That's 65MB/sec you can't even really use for file transfers.
Anything above 100baseT isn't really all that useful for induvidual workstations and servers, but it increases throughput for MANY workstations and servers, all sending traffic on the net at the same time.
Also, remember that your PCI bus can only talk at a maximum 133MB/sec (and if you have many peripherals, some of that is already being used), so anything faster than 1 gigabit, and your computer can't even talk that fast.
I would think Fax spamming would be more costly to the receiver... You'd be using a peice of paper for every page they sent you... if you got tons, that could start costing you...
Junk email or snail mail doesn't cost you anything.. (except it uses a tiny portion of your bandwidth) So I doubt they'd ever make spammers pay you for receiving that.
Why would they want to restrict office to Windows? That's where the money would be. Think of how many people could now switch to Linux because they have their MS Office... you'd have to buy a new copy of office for your new linux install... plus those existing linux users who want office (Not sure how many there are)... sounds like they'd make a few billion $ more.
It's getting harder for them to make money of Windows itself.. not as many new systems are being purchased these days, and not so many are going after the new version(s).
Well, some could say it was because the pre-cogs were mistreated.. Locked away in a pool forever, forced to see visions of future murders. That's not exactly a full life.
Those cons are negated under these conditions..
You know how to diagnose hardware problems.. (Generally speaking, it's pretty easy.. you don't need any fancy equipment.. just old stuff... if you plug in a different graphics card and everything works, it's most likely your graphics card... if you swap hard drives and it works, then it was your hard drive.. it's simple, but you do need old stuff around.. but you can usually find someone to give you or sell you that sort of thing cheap, if you don't have that sort of thing lying around from your previous box.)
The second con you listed can be worrysome, but all you gotta do is be careful and gentle, and everything will be okay. I've installed several CPU's (AMD's, which are the worst) and they're all fine, and I'm certianly no expert.
I've always built my own systems(since '94), and I've been quite happy with the results every time.
That's why I turn my phone off.. That way it's always with me.. if I'm hiking up the nearby mountain (no phones around there, but I still get decent analog coverage.. even digital and pcs some places), I can call someone if there's an emergency, as in someone fell off a rock and broke their leg, but I don't have to worry about anyone from work calling to ask me some inane question about their computer.
:)
Also, I keep a pager with me, so that if anyone does want to get ahold of me with something important, they can page me, and I can decide whether or not I want to call them back. Pagers still have a use, you see.
DISCLAIMER: I work for a paging company, so that was a little bit of a plug. Sort of.
Yes, but expenses are really irrelevant to this issue. If you are simply not going to pay for a peice of software you use, it makes no difference if you use it or not. Either way, the software company will not get their $49.99 from you.
What's worse, on every computer I've seen with McAfee virus scan installed when they buy it has a 3 month trial subscription to virus def. updates. So after they've owned their computer for a year, they get the excessive boot delay (and it slows their computer down all the time too, because of "real time scanning"), but they don't get any protection from recent trojans/worms/viruses.
Just nitpicking, but a lot of games don't have those postcards anymore in favor of an electronic registration system. Same deal though, but it saves a postcard.
Everybody I know that runs Linux at home (and I know quite a few, myself included), had a home built computer. (i.e. they bought the individual components and put them all together themselves) I always do that for my home computers.. not so much to save money anymore (though sometimes you can save a few bucks over a name brand box), but I like to have direct control over everything, and be able to open up the box and upgrade or replace any peice of hardware without worrying about voiding the warranty.
How many linux guys (or girls) buy name brand desktop systems? (Laptops are a different story)
Tyan makes some dual-P3 and dual-athlon boards that have 64bit PCI slots.. of course the athlon boards only have 33Mhz PCI slots, and the P3 boards have 66Mhz slots, which more or less doubles your bandwidth again..
Those cost anywhere from $220 to about $350