I have never heard of it, and I realize it may be a false assumption that one does not exist, but I am wondering if FEMA has an official process for calling up Ham Radio Opers to help as part of their disaster plan....
Freelancer does work (in fact its installed on my system complete with mods for Starwars ships etc) Spybot search and destroy also works (Again installed and running on my system)
I can only say that wasn't the case when I tried to use them in the past.
The Gimp has always been flakey at best under windows. It was unstable on windows XP, or I always had some odd crashes with it..
Can't say I had OS specific crashes with the Gimp until Vista, there was one script-fu script that would crash it on all platforms though (no longer the case with the latest version).
I have yet to see a game work becuase of the lack of Directplay implementation..
Less problems for you.
and lets be honest here, how many AAA titles use(d) Directplay
I am not familiar with games by "AAA". I only know of a car company (they don't sell cars) under that name.
It is disapointing that Microsoft removed the 'kill switch'. To me that sends a clear message that they will not fix their Windows Genuine Advantage/Windows activation system to get lower false positives and instead just made it less annoying for users.
It is my belief that they had a large amount of false positives that made many users stop using Vista all together. The fact Microsoft does not fix the false positive problem but just makes it 'less annoying' (such as now it just refuses to install application updates - non security related, microsoft office, free applications from Microsoft) is not very encouraging about the quality of their products.
There are several VERY notable games that look far better under DirectX 10. Crysis, Bioshock, Lost Planet
I checked what you said.
With Crysis the snapshots did not look 'far better'. In some instances like the 'paradise' pictures on that page, I actually preferred the directx9 shots.
Being a user of Vista x64 since febuary, would you care to point out this "lot of 32bit software"?
Here is software I have had issues running under the 64bit version of Vista (had no problem under 32bit), I haven't tried most of these in months:
Freelancer (Microsoft claims this is supported under Vista)
Continuum
The GIMP
SyncTERM (crashed as you tried to connect anywhere)
Spybot Search & Destroy (kept crashing)
That's about all I can remember off the top of my head.
Back to the topic on hand, the only problem I can see that you will get is if anything relies on DirectSound.
DirectPlay is a issue, particularly if the application in question uses DirectPlay's socket system (experienced with applications I had written not working under Vista).
Gutsy Gibbon is not an option for some people, due to its lack of some key software (games, 100% MS Office-compatible suite, driver support).
Gutsy comes by default with Wine
Going for specifically modern games (older games tend to work fine and far too many to list)... Wine can run all the Valve source games, that includes:
half life 2
half life 2: death match
half life 2: ep1
half life 2: ep2
Team fortress 2
Portal
Counter Strike: Source
It can also run:
World of Warcraft
Eve Online
These series of games have native Linux ports:
Unreal
Doom
Quake
The only game modern game I am particulary aware of that has issues (this is from personal experience) is Call of Duty 4, it runs, but certain effects do not work, nor does multi-player or punkbuster. Those issues will likely be fixed very soon anyway.
There are probably a lot more games that could be added to the lists above.
But no, I wouldn't say Gutsy lacks the ability to play good, modern games.
As for a 100% MS office compatible suite. I have installed Office XP directly out of the box under Gutsy, you can also install Office 2003 (but you need to install a few Microsoft runtimes first that Microsoft neglected to include with it). I know Office 2007 does not work with Wine yet.
As for driver support. I've found restricted-manager was more than adequate for the needs of driver support and installation.
The sad thing is that I have been running Wine under Vista to run some applications that just don't want to run under Vista normally (weird runtime errors, crashes etc).
OS X is not as stable as you think. Sure, it's BSD underneath, but on top it's still an operating system.
Actually, the only real BSD part is the BSD subsystem in the kernel. The kernel itself is a horrible mishmash of other kernels stuck together, it's known as the XNU kernel.
It still has drivers that are not 100% fantastic. It still crashes. On some peoples' machines, frequently.
I've experienced this first hand. I am greatly disappointed that for a company that handles the hardware and software, that they don't seem to be able to do better than their competition which doesn't even handle the hardware.
You also ignore the cost of the hardware, which is greater than for those wishing to run either GG or Vista.
The hardware itself is not exactly, more expensive. The fact is, most people want the hardware specs of of the Mac mini, with the ability to just slap in new graphic card, plenty more RAM, new PCI cards. But the only Mac that truly lets you do all that is hell too powerful to the point you would not need to and way too expensive.
Vista Ultimate (which is not $700 but about $200, depending on the dealer) offers a lot more than just a waterfall background. I can't believe I have to go into this, but I will anyway. It has a 3D-accelerated desktop, which means it can move a lot of the processing of windows and redrawing into the GPU, which would otherwise just be sat there, doing nothing, thereby increasing performance of your CPU (which also allows the "waterfall background" to not eat lots of resources).
OS X and Beryl do this. They also do not need such high hardware requirements to do it either.
It has far more aggressive memory-handling techniques, which load apps into and out of memory at certain times to increase their loading times.
I don't know what they did in Vista, but when it takes almost a entire minute to copy a 500kb file, because it's spending most of that time 'calculating' and then instantly copies it.. compared to Windows XP where the equivalent action is just a flicker of the copy dialog on the screen. Something is really wrong. The fact that many people report issues where network
What MS needs to fix is the 'perception' of slow that Vista has. Its bad.
Okay, you're trying to copy a 500kb file somewhere, and Vista's copy window pops up saying "Calculating" for almost a entire minute, before instantly just copying it.
It really is not just a perception. These things seem so obvious to me to be a flaw somewhere, I wonder how quality assurance even passed that. On XP, you would just see the copy window flicker onto the screen and poof and the file would be there.
I think Windows is sold at a fair price. For software that relied upon by so many various applications and hardware, I think it's great value. That said, I think I would pay the same for my Linux system.
I'd wager that some games have had a whole lot more dev work put into them, and have higher quality code, than Vista.
Agreed.
Piracy is a symptom of overpriced software.
Piracy is easy because everyone has that 'friend' or 'friend of a friend' who can get them any software they need. People don't even consider buying software these days I've noticed. They goto the person, speak of their problem (old software and want new) and of course, expect the problem to be fixed for free.
The problem is, they do not have to pay for their software. If you offer a free alternative, they don't want to know in most cases unless it is similar enough (100% the same functionality)... Because they can get the other for free too.
This really hurts the software market (more so than the company they are pirating from), where by competitors will never get any real monetary support, no matter how cheap their products are. Nor will they be able to make their products more appealing by lowering the cost. Software like Adobe's Photoshop, Microsoft Windows are going to likely remain being the dominant software in the commercial, proprietary industry for a very long time.
So far the only real competition I have seen in years to these products come from the opensource community (Linux distributions, Krita, GIMP) and that's mostly because some people put certain philosophies first or are very honest people (who don't pirate) and in some cases (particularly mine), people who just see that software as superior or better suited for their needs.
can't run DirectX 10 (this is the total killer, for games)
Are there any notable games yet for DirectX10 only? So far many games have not been made for DirectX10 because the market of users who have it is too small (at least this is what was said by Valve and others in the past).
Right now, it seems hard for me to find something that doesn't work under Vista
DirectX9's directplay does not work in my experience under Vista.
and expansion to 64 bit seem worth it to me.
A lot of 32bit software just does not run under 64bit Vista. I would suggest you try running a trial version of the 64bit Vista version first before committing.
Would you not play a game like Mario Galaxy - which is the second-highest reviewed game of all time - just because it looks like it is suitable for children?
Being suitable for children and being targeted heavily for children is a different thing all together. I enjoy the "new Super Mario brothers" on my DS, I don't feel the dialog or characters are specifically targeted at a young certain age group.
The question is rhetorical, by the way, and the implication I'm trying to make is that not playing a game because it appear "childish" is extremely strange.
I don't think older women enjoy playing Barbie's whatever adventure somehow. I am talking about games are specifically targeted at a younger age, being suitable for younger ages does not mean that the game hasn't been targeted for higher ages also.
Psychonauts has a deep story, interesting characters, good gameplay, and is amazingly written, yet you disclaim it because it seems childish to you.
As others have pointed out in response to me, the game has a deeper story and so on and apparently 'gets better'. All I have played is the demo (which I mentioned in my first post) and the demo did not leave a good impression on me. The game felt targeted for a younger audience and I lost interest because I got bored.
I was trying to express that I just do not understand your decision not to play a game because it seems suitable for children.
Suitable is not the problem, targeted specifically at that age group is, much like the reason why woman wouldn't play Barbie's something adventure... It's boring.
This is the kind of decision a teenager would make, who feels it necessary to dissociate himself from children.
True, but I am really not embarrassed to do anything I want, to give a example, I'm a furry and find lots of things entertaining. I just don't find a game which feels it's targeted for only a younger age group, much fun. That was the impression I got from the demo of that game.
Are you not going to play Super Mario Galaxy (the second best rated game of all times on gamerankings.com) just because the graphics have too many colors?
You brought up a negative problem where it has 'too many colors'. I'm not even sure how that is possible? I haven't even seen "too many colors" in the trailers.
However, if what you say is true which makes playing the game annoying, then here is your answer: No, I won't play it.
Why is it that anyone who disagrees with the Slashdot groupthink and annoying little trolls like you must be employed by Microsoft? Is that some sort of security blanket you carry around to survive on the internets or something?
Would you please respond to the other sentences, I am far more interested in your responses to those.
Trust me, it's definitely not aimed at children. And even if it were, so what? It's an awesome game. Are you not going to play Super Mario Galaxy (the second best rated game of all times on gamerankings.com) just because the graphics have too many colors?
I never said graphics was everything. But the guy said the graphics were 'great'. I didn't see them as such.
Additionally, I am not going to play Super Mario galaxy because I don't own a Wii.
Perhaps that might be because one of these two games is a few years old and the other is brand new?
I didn't know that at the time I posted, however - I don't believe models were that limited in 2005 and we certainly had bump-mapping back then.
have 8 accounts with 4 banks: US Bank, Bank of America, National City, and Capital Federal and none them work that way.
I guess American banks suck. I've lived in different countries and I can tell for certain that Poland, Germany and the UK banks do not operate that way.
Oh.. there are ways of exploiting them in relative safely. Change the address and order new cards. Phone activation will forward you to an operator because caller ID won't match, but you already got the answers to all the questions. Plus, caller ID could be faked with internet phones. Just punch in the number listed on the account. That might trick their system, but I'm not 100% sure.
I am pretty sure banks have very good systems for dealing with this. Linden lab does not. Additionally banks do not use caller ID, they use ANI (automatic number identification) which cannot be spoofed (at least not without the phone company's cooperation).
No less power than a bank would. Robbery is robbery. No matter who is robbed.
Banks have insurance, banks have additional power in the legal world to persue issues between different countries, reverse charges etc. Linden lab does not. On top of that, it does not have the information to investigate things themselves because they are not handling payments outside of Second life (their bill processor is, and if the person who is stealing the Linden is smart, he'll use one of the 3rd party sites to convert the money). The payment processor is under legal obligation to not provide them information and Linden lab is going to have a problem because they are not even handling the input/export of Lindens in this case.
I really do think it's easier to go after people in Second life than in 'real' banks. Linden lab doesn't even have a proper system for dealing with thieves (as many of us have seen in the past).
Also, stolen accounts can be leveraged against each other. Write bad checks against Victim Joe, deposit to Victim Bob's account, transfer cash from Victim Bob's account to a foreign account registered with fake information. Withdraw as cash. And, it would not be difficult to bribe a bank worker in Mexico, most of asia, and most of Africa.
Yeah.. That sounds really complicated. Compared to just being able to do it with TOR, a bit of scripting and a few click of a mouse to withdraw money without having to involve anyone. I still think the Second life method is more viable for a thief.
I think you've only tried the first half of the game, in which you generally talk with the other kids in the camp.
Sorry, but that is the extent of the demo. I am not going to buy the game if I get a opinion from the demo that I do not like it.
Don't discount it just based on your initial impressions.
As I mentioned earlier, I played the demo. The demo is supposed to give you a feel of the game's worth, if I don't get a valid feel from the demo, they have done something wrong.
Out of curiosity, what constitutes a "grown-up" game?
I don't know really. I just know Psychonauts isn't for me, it feels too childish or teenagerish? - especially when it comes to the dialog of the characters, I really feel it is aimed for a younger audience (as opposed to younger and above).
For example, given a fan of Psychonauts and a fan of Grand Theft Auto, which would you consider to more likely be a mature, intelligent adult?
I have never played GTA. The idea of a game about stealing cars does not appeal to me.
Is it one way or both ways? If it's one way then it hardly matters. Lindens could always be virtually refunded or replaced.
Both ways.
Or... just copy the username and password with a key logger. A general key logger is far simpler and stealing is a lot easier if you know the login info.
Key loggers don't work because many banks (certainly the ones I have used) require you enter part of passwords on the site these days, usually via a on screen display (via mouse clicking) and some require you do mouse clicks.
There is also the fact that when you exploit a 'real' bank, you are more likely to get caught and prosecuted, than if you do it through Second life, you can create a anonymous account, transfer the funds through the various payment websites before Linden lab has had the chance to catch on.
Linden lab also has far less power to go after people unfortunately.
Notice from TinyURL admin: This URL opens a lot of windows with reportedly "distasteful" pictures and has audio saying "Hey everybody, I'm looking at gay porno." It may also crash your browser/computer.
Proceed to this site.
Now if you actually click the link there, you'll get Last Measure, but they've forced an extra step in there just to make trolls like this fail miserably.
I started playing Psychonauts this weekend (on the original Xbox) and my God, is that a great game.
I played the demo version off Steam. I can best describe it as a 3d platform game, a sort of toony -like game... But it felt too childish for my tastes (particularly because it seemed aimed for a younger audience).
Great graphics
The character models, levels didn't look that detailed to be honest. I think in comparison, the toony graphics from team fortress 2 were better.
Slashdot Mirror
It is disapointing that Microsoft removed the 'kill switch'. To me that sends a clear message that they will not fix their Windows Genuine Advantage/Windows activation system to get lower false positives and instead just made it less annoying for users.
It is my belief that they had a large amount of false positives that made many users stop using Vista all together. The fact Microsoft does not fix the false positive problem but just makes it 'less annoying' (such as now it just refuses to install application updates - non security related, microsoft office, free applications from Microsoft) is not very encouraging about the quality of their products.
With Crysis the snapshots did not look 'far better'. In some instances like the 'paradise' pictures on that page, I actually preferred the directx9 shots.
With Bioshock the snapshots did not look so 'far better' either and even articles pointed it out.
I also looked at Lost planet and the same pattern occured (some cases I again preferred the dx9 renderings).
I don't really think the slight 'improvements' in the games Vista is very justifiable.Generally software does not advertise what networking stack they use.
- Freelancer (Microsoft claims this is supported under Vista)
- Continuum
- The GIMP
- SyncTERM (crashed as you tried to connect anywhere)
- Spybot Search & Destroy (kept crashing)
That's about all I can remember off the top of my head.DirectPlay is a issue, particularly if the application in question uses DirectPlay's socket system (experienced with applications I had written not working under Vista).Gutsy comes by default with Wine
Going for specifically modern games (older games tend to work fine and far too many to list)... Wine can run all the Valve source games, that includes:
It can also run:
These series of games have native Linux ports:
The only game modern game I am particulary aware of that has issues (this is from personal experience) is Call of Duty 4, it runs, but certain effects do not work, nor does multi-player or punkbuster. Those issues will likely be fixed very soon anyway.
There are probably a lot more games that could be added to the lists above.
But no, I wouldn't say Gutsy lacks the ability to play good, modern games.
As for a 100% MS office compatible suite. I have installed Office XP directly out of the box under Gutsy, you can also install Office 2003 (but you need to install a few Microsoft runtimes first that Microsoft neglected to include with it). I know Office 2007 does not work with Wine yet.
As for driver support. I've found restricted-manager was more than adequate for the needs of driver support and installation.
The sad thing is that I have been running Wine under Vista to run some applications that just don't want to run under Vista normally (weird runtime errors, crashes etc).
Actually, the only real BSD part is the BSD subsystem in the kernel. The kernel itself is a horrible mishmash of other kernels stuck together, it's known as the XNU kernel.
I've experienced this first hand. I am greatly disappointed that for a company that handles the hardware and software, that they don't seem to be able to do better than their competition which doesn't even handle the hardware.
The hardware itself is not exactly, more expensive. The fact is, most people want the hardware specs of of the Mac mini, with the ability to just slap in new graphic card, plenty more RAM, new PCI cards. But the only Mac that truly lets you do all that is hell too powerful to the point you would not need to and way too expensive.
OS X and Beryl do this. They also do not need such high hardware requirements to do it either.
I don't know what they did in Vista, but when it takes almost a entire minute to copy a 500kb file, because it's spending most of that time 'calculating' and then instantly copies it.. compared to Windows XP where the equivalent action is just a flicker of the copy dialog on the screen. Something is really wrong. The fact that many people report issues where network
It really is not just a perception. These things seem so obvious to me to be a flaw somewhere, I wonder how quality assurance even passed that. On XP, you would just see the copy window flicker onto the screen and poof and the file would be there.
The problem is, they do not have to pay for their software. If you offer a free alternative, they don't want to know in most cases unless it is similar enough (100% the same functionality)... Because they can get the other for free too.
This really hurts the software market (more so than the company they are pirating from), where by competitors will never get any real monetary support, no matter how cheap their products are. Nor will they be able to make their products more appealing by lowering the cost. Software like Adobe's Photoshop, Microsoft Windows are going to likely remain being the dominant software in the commercial, proprietary industry for a very long time.
So far the only real competition I have seen in years to these products come from the opensource community (Linux distributions, Krita, GIMP) and that's mostly because some people put certain philosophies first or are very honest people (who don't pirate) and in some cases (particularly mine), people who just see that software as superior or better suited for their needs.
However, if what you say is true which makes playing the game annoying, then here is your answer: No, I won't play it.
Additionally, I am not going to play Super Mario galaxy because I don't own a Wii.I didn't know that at the time I posted, however - I don't believe models were that limited in 2005 and we certainly had bump-mapping back then.
I really do think it's easier to go after people in Second life than in 'real' banks. Linden lab doesn't even have a proper system for dealing with thieves (as many of us have seen in the past).Yeah.. That sounds really complicated. Compared to just being able to do it with TOR, a bit of scripting and a few click of a mouse to withdraw money without having to involve anyone. I still think the Second life method is more viable for a thief.
There is also the fact that when you exploit a 'real' bank, you are more likely to get caught and prosecuted, than if you do it through Second life, you can create a anonymous account, transfer the funds through the various payment websites before Linden lab has had the chance to catch on.
Linden lab also has far less power to go after people unfortunately.
Processor: Athlon 64 1808 Mhz (single core, no SSE3)
RAM: 1GB
Graphic card: RADEON X600 pro 128 MB
Sound card: NVIDIA nForce Audio
Using resolution 1024x768 for all games.
It's under the minimum requirements to play Call Of Duty 4, but it runs that game really well.
Even so, I don't think the models were really that limited in 2005.