First off I was reluctant about using Steam so on the 16th I decided if I couldn't pickup a copy during my lunch and if I couldn't find one I'd rush home fire up steam and have it d/led by the time I got home.
Well, I was able to get a copy form Best Buy during my lunch (they had TONS left). I decided to leave work about an hour early. After getting home in record time I poped in disc 1 and began to install. After reaching disc 3 and waiting abit longer for disc 3 than I expected I noticed my CD-rom spin down and then fire up again. AFter about 5minutes and several more spin up/downs I decided to checkout what it was installing and where.
Checking steam folder/SteamApps I noticed the creation of the.gcf files.. Well it was VERY slowly creating one of them and then after the spin down it would erase it and start over. So I canceled my install and tried using my CDRW instead of my DVD-ROM with the same results.
So I headed back to best buy (after calling to make sure they had more in stock) picked up another copy and rushed back home. Fired up the installed and held my breath until disc 3 completed. Connected to steam and entered my CD-Key from the back of CD1.
INVALID! So I double check my 0's and O's to make sure I typed it in correct.. INVALID! I kinda alittle more annoyed and then notice the additional (8 or so) characters on the back of CD aren't part of the CD key so I remove them and click OK. Bingo it works and start the actual install process.
After about 10mins of decrypting I'm ready to play. Steam says it's too busy BUT I can still play so I fire up the game. The initial load time is takes alot longer than I'd like and I hope into the settings to update my keys and graphics/sound options. I go to apply my settings an it clicks to reset for the new options. After about 15-30 seconds my PC shuts down completely!
A big loud WTF responce by me and a pushing of the power button back on only to see my PC shut right back down! I repeat the process and get the same outcome! One last try and now I get pissed. I pop the side to check the video card (I just installed a Radeon 9200 2 days ago that I swapped from my parents machine that will never play a game) and it's not even warm. I check my CPU and burn my finger on the heatsync.
That's when I notice the CPU fan power isn't plugged in! I was also going to swap the CPU from my parents machine with mine (since it's slightly better and they don't need that kind of power) but I didn't get around to doing it. So I had my P4 2.5ghz on since Sunday evening running without a CPU fan. Gaaahh God won't let me play this game! So I wait a good 15-20 mins for it to cool down and PLUG IN the damn fan. (This is about 2 hours AFTER first putting in disc 1)
It fires up and I'm just glad my chip isn't dead (but I still have my parents machine next to me so I have a replancement CPU if worst comes to worst) and the game loads up and I can actually play the damn thing! After about 5mins into the game I know the hassle was all worth it!
I'm glad when companies inconvenience their paying customers like this. Because, afterall, I'm sure the mandatory registration will prevent piracy. I just searched and see an activation patch already on IRC.
People need to calm down.. I think all things considered they did a decent job. I mean HL2 is a HUGE game and was going to sell HUGE numbers day 1. How many MMORPGs have latency issues when they open publicly? I'd have to say all of them! And compare the number of people trying to activate HL2 vs a MMORPG. Not to mention they did the impossible and released it WORLDWIDE on the same day instead the usual delay between various countries.
I may not like steam (but I think it's a good idea) and I may not really like some of valve's tatics recently but I think they did one hell of a job on the game and distributing it.
Easy way around corporation income - declare your company to break even and pay yourself your full profits! No corporate taxation, only personal income taxes.
Set your salery to just higher than your corp makes. There has to be some sorta tax benifits for a corp that is losing money:)
I believe Valve had the idea for steam but didn't quite think it would be feasible to release exclusively on steam. Vivendi was not going to pass on signing the distro rights for something as popular as HL2 even if that ment allowing for a clause to let Valve distribute it via steam as a secondary.
Now, I haven't read the contract so I can't really comment on how much steam was taken into account but I'm betting it wasn't a big issue at the time. Does anyone know if discussion of preloading via steam or forcing the user to authenticate even single player mode via steam was in the contract? The game could go gold and and steam could sell millions of copies a week before it hits the shelves. Who's going to wait for a retail copy when they could get it so much sooner? I know I would have a hard time waiting.
Does anyone know what a standard deal is for these distro contracts? Is it pretty much we get exclusive rights to it? Did Vivendi overlook steam as a nice idea but one that just wasn't going to work or did Valve basically break it's contract?
If we look a some of valve's past practices we see both good and bad.. Good being it's huge support for the mod community and bad being it's lieing about release date.
Now one could argue that maybe valve was presured by ATI and the bundling of it's coupon to get the game out the door while the hardware was still top of the line hardware and they just got in too deep but they did lie. Anyone who saw the Anon releases knows it was far from complete.
As for myself, I will most likely purchase a retail copy of the game simply because at the same price I'd like to have a box, manual and pressed disc. Also steam being such a hot issue I really don't want my credit card number sitting in it's DB because of all the hatred for valve right now it's a prime target for hackers.
I don't have problem with the concept of steam, validating a CDkey every time you play online or even a initial validation upon install. However I fail to see the need for the initial install validation. It doesn't really seem to help in any way. I mean I assume it's to prevent piracy but a simple crack which WILL be out a day or two after the release will get around this.
The only logical reason I can find for such a method is maybe to keep the crack away for a few days and force would be pirates to buy the game out of desperation of waiting for a working crack. Piracy is a goofy game, the more creative you get in order to protect your ass the more creative the guy gets to break it.
But the average person my age spends more then half of every day literally doing NOTHING. If that time was spent studying you can be ASSURED that the average level of intelligence amoung them would be higher..,.
There isn't "NOOP" for the brain.. Just becaue somebody isn't learning something you consider useful doesn't mean they're not learning something.
However I do agree most people tend to spend alot of time on things I consider useless.
More knowledgable certainly, but entirely possible to be smarter as well. With his amazing accumulation of knowledge, if he is able to reason and answer questions as quickly as he used to, then one must assume he is also getting smarter because indexing and sorting much more data in the same amount of time would represent a large increase in performance.
Man, I had a hard time typing like that, I detest discussing someone as if they were a machine, but I could think of no better way to make my point.
While I don't detest disccusing someone as if they were a machine I do agree it it has to do with how you index/sort and search.
I tend to think of the brain as a database. Each person creates their tables based on genetics, interests, and experiences.
In the case of an autistic person they create more sub tables for detail on everything they see/hear vs general information. Hence the ability to memorize pretty much every book he ever read.
In a "normal" person I tend to think more of the brain is focused on storing more general information to be able to cope with every situation rather than focusing on specifics. Generally I don't think an autistic person worries about what they have to wear in the morning or what other people think of them.
It brings me to conclude that we nearly have the same capacity for storage in our brains it's just what is choosen to store is very different. In autisic people I consider mostly of it is genetics simply choosing ones interests and actively storing more data on them.
Virutally all doubt could be removed if we simply got rid of the annonymous part. If a voter could verify after the fact his/her vote was indeed included for the correct person we wouldn't have these insane problems not to mention my doubt about the validity of any of these voting machines.
You're forgetting an important alternative: maybe God is just a really lousy engineer. Maybe, in the land of the Gods, our universe is just a third-rate high-school science project. Maybe our God is just an incompetant dumbass!:)
Then i'm totally gonna sue his ass for shotty craftsmanship! Anyone wanna start a class action against God?
Key words: "free will". If you want a bunch of people to have relationships with, it's gotta be out of 'free will'. 'Free will' is not 'free will' if there are no viable alternatives.
Free will always confuses me.. I mean if free will really exists than wouldn't we have complete power? I mean if I truely had free will shouldn't I be able to do anything I want unrestricted? I can't just fly so I have to create a device to allow me to based on the laws of physics.. To me that negatives free will right there..
- God is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that He must not allow imperfection in his sight. To avoid this, all those who are not perfect go to a place without God (Hell) and so will not be in His site.
Hmm, if you're the creator of all things and you're perfect how can you create something that in not perfect?
From anecdotal history, my dad's intel computer died within 2 weeks of him buying it, but me and all my friends' amds are still running.
You're just repeating the same bullshit everyone else is.
Care to be more specific in what actually died? You're sure it was the CPU itself not working? You do realize there are other components that can fail and prevent the system from working correctly besides the CPU. Generally speaking the CPU is the least likely thing to fail on a computer.
So it's AMD's fault you broke it? Did it not occur to you that microchips are fragile?
I didn't break them. Sure I've cracked one or two cores in my day but I'm talking about customers doing their own installs. Because we had to many returned AMD chips with cracked cores we had to impliment a policy that any CPU purchased from us had to be installed by us (for free).
I'm not sure why you weren't fired after snapping the 10th CPU? Or the 100th?
I didn't break the chips.. By DOA I mean turn on the machine get nothing.. As for cracking the core we used to allow customers to do their own CPU installs since we were a parts retailer as well as systems. After quite a few cracked cores we implimented a policey where warrenty was void if you didn't let us install the chip (for free). It was customers who had the issue and no they did not cover this under warrenty when they broke the chip (after the new policy was in place).
I'm simply speaking for experience that AMD chips are much much more likely to not work out the box and we had a number of problems with customers breaking them by attaching the cpu fan/heatsync. I respect AMD as a company and do believe they make a hell of a chip but it's not one I will buy anytime soon until I see previous issues resolved. Again I'm not saying AMD sucks Intel rules! I'm just speaking from experience.
AMD all the way. Intel is alive just because of Dell (among others) and a large reserve of cash. They cost more, do less, and heat your bedroom to boot. But it has 'Intel Inside', so I guess it must count for something...
I worked for a local PC system builder for 7 years (left them about 18 months ago). I can count the number of DOA Intel chips I've seen over the years on one hand. As for AMD chips I've seen somewhere around 1000. I've never had a problem (or heard of) destroying an Intel chip just by attaching a CPU fan. AMD chips are quite easy to crack. I would never own one myself until I see a big change in quality. (AMD did make a hell of a 486 chip btw and I would/did use them back in the day)
this will ever be used. Not because it is dangerous, uneconomical, or anything even remotely having to do with reason. Nay. Rather, because the public has a knee-jerk reaction to the word "nuclear," or "atomic," or "nucular." Fact hardly matters in the opinions of an uneducated, uninformed public.
There are plenty of ways to get around the public. You could simply not tell them about it. If that doesn't work just paint the damn thing red white and blue and rename it Freedom Rocket. And if for some reason that doesn't work (highly unlikely) does the public even bother to follow what NASA does?
I'm going to get modded to -5 for this but fuck it.
Hmm why is it every time somebody says I'm gonna be modded down (or asked to be modded down) they end up being +5? Must just be good old reverse psychology...
Yeah, I mean I once had a girl in a programming class say she'd do *ANYTHING* to pass the class, so I had her buy me dinner in exchange for helping her study, then never saw her again!
A woman says she'll do anything for your help and the best you can think of is dinner? She said ANYTHING! Are you a man or what!?! Think bigger my friend!
Maybe these particular bass cross bred with some frogs.
God I've love to see a fish try.
I run a fish/frog porn site that only cost a moddest 4.95 a month. If you're interested checkout the free tour at http://www.fishfuckingfrogs.com/freetour.html
I would assume people would. Why risk birth defects and various diseases when you don't have to. Isn't messing with our genes just a way to bring back natural selection? If we didn't have all this technology do you really thing our population would be what it is today?
If your child is born with a heart defect you're not going to let it just die are you? If you had to have a transplant and a heart was avaiable you would? So what's really the difference? Other than the aborted part which let's just not discuss:)
Slashdot Mirror
First off I was reluctant about using Steam so on the 16th I decided if I couldn't pickup a copy during my lunch and if I couldn't find one I'd rush home fire up steam and have it d/led by the time I got home.
.gcf files.. Well it was VERY slowly creating one of them and then after the spin down it would erase it and start over. So I canceled my install and tried using my CDRW instead of my DVD-ROM with the same results.
Well, I was able to get a copy form Best Buy during my lunch (they had TONS left). I decided to leave work about an hour early. After getting home in record time I poped in disc 1 and began to install. After reaching disc 3 and waiting abit longer for disc 3 than I expected I noticed my CD-rom spin down and then fire up again. AFter about 5minutes and several more spin up/downs I decided to checkout what it was installing and where.
Checking steam folder/SteamApps I noticed the creation of the
So I headed back to best buy (after calling to make sure they had more in stock) picked up another copy and rushed back home. Fired up the installed and held my breath until disc 3 completed. Connected to steam and entered my CD-Key from the back of CD1.
INVALID! So I double check my 0's and O's to make sure I typed it in correct.. INVALID! I kinda alittle more annoyed and then notice the additional (8 or so) characters on the back of CD aren't part of the CD key so I remove them and click OK. Bingo it works and start the actual install process.
After about 10mins of decrypting I'm ready to play. Steam says it's too busy BUT I can still play so I fire up the game. The initial load time is takes alot longer than I'd like and I hope into the settings to update my keys and graphics/sound options. I go to apply my settings an it clicks to reset for the new options. After about 15-30 seconds my PC shuts down completely!
A big loud WTF responce by me and a pushing of the power button back on only to see my PC shut right back down! I repeat the process and get the same outcome! One last try and now I get pissed. I pop the side to check the video card (I just installed a Radeon 9200 2 days ago that I swapped from my parents machine that will never play a game) and it's not even warm. I check my CPU and burn my finger on the heatsync.
That's when I notice the CPU fan power isn't plugged in! I was also going to swap the CPU from my parents machine with mine (since it's slightly better and they don't need that kind of power) but I didn't get around to doing it. So I had my P4 2.5ghz on since Sunday evening running without a CPU fan. Gaaahh God won't let me play this game! So I wait a good 15-20 mins for it to cool down and PLUG IN the damn fan. (This is about 2 hours AFTER first putting in disc 1)
It fires up and I'm just glad my chip isn't dead (but I still have my parents machine next to me so I have a replancement CPU if worst comes to worst) and the game loads up and I can actually play the damn thing! After about 5mins into the game I know the hassle was all worth it!
Great job on the game valve!
I'm glad when companies inconvenience their paying customers like this. Because, afterall, I'm sure the mandatory registration will prevent piracy. I just searched and see an activation patch already on IRC. People need to calm down.. I think all things considered they did a decent job. I mean HL2 is a HUGE game and was going to sell HUGE numbers day 1. How many MMORPGs have latency issues when they open publicly? I'd have to say all of them! And compare the number of people trying to activate HL2 vs a MMORPG. Not to mention they did the impossible and released it WORLDWIDE on the same day instead the usual delay between various countries. I may not like steam (but I think it's a good idea) and I may not really like some of valve's tatics recently but I think they did one hell of a job on the game and distributing it.
Easy way around corporation income - declare your company to break even and pay yourself your full profits! No corporate taxation, only personal income taxes.
:)
Set your salery to just higher than your corp makes. There has to be some sorta tax benifits for a corp that is losing money
I mean, cockroaches ARE animals. Right?
I dunno if PETA cares.. Look at Fear Factor.. They do alot with insects and stuff and I don't see PETA bitching.
RTFM! oh wait.. downloaded you say? no manual you say?
I believe Valve had the idea for steam but didn't quite think it would be feasible to release exclusively on steam. Vivendi was not going to pass on signing the distro rights for something as popular as HL2 even if that ment allowing for a clause to let Valve distribute it via steam as a secondary.
Now, I haven't read the contract so I can't really comment on how much steam was taken into account but I'm betting it wasn't a big issue at the time. Does anyone know if discussion of preloading via steam or forcing the user to authenticate even single player mode via steam was in the contract? The game could go gold and and steam could sell millions of copies a week before it hits the shelves. Who's going to wait for a retail copy when they could get it so much sooner? I know I would have a hard time waiting.
Does anyone know what a standard deal is for these distro contracts? Is it pretty much we get exclusive rights to it? Did Vivendi overlook steam as a nice idea but one that just wasn't going to work or did Valve basically break it's contract?
If we look a some of valve's past practices we see both good and bad.. Good being it's huge support for the mod community and bad being it's lieing about release date.
Now one could argue that maybe valve was presured by ATI and the bundling of it's coupon to get the game out the door while the hardware was still top of the line hardware and they just got in too deep but they did lie. Anyone who saw the Anon releases knows it was far from complete.
As for myself, I will most likely purchase a retail copy of the game simply because at the same price I'd like to have a box, manual and pressed disc. Also steam being such a hot issue I really don't want my credit card number sitting in it's DB because of all the hatred for valve right now it's a prime target for hackers.
I don't have problem with the concept of steam, validating a CDkey every time you play online or even a initial validation upon install. However I fail to see the need for the initial install validation. It doesn't really seem to help in any way. I mean I assume it's to prevent piracy but a simple crack which WILL be out a day or two after the release will get around this.
The only logical reason I can find for such a method is maybe to keep the crack away for a few days and force would be pirates to buy the game out of desperation of waiting for a working crack. Piracy is a goofy game, the more creative you get in order to protect your ass the more creative the guy gets to break it.
But the average person my age spends more then half of every day literally doing NOTHING. If that time was spent studying you can be ASSURED that the average level of intelligence amoung them would be higher..,.
There isn't "NOOP" for the brain.. Just becaue somebody isn't learning something you consider useful doesn't mean they're not learning something.
However I do agree most people tend to spend alot of time on things I consider useless.
More knowledgable certainly, but entirely possible to be smarter as well. With his amazing accumulation of knowledge, if he is able to reason and answer questions as quickly as he used to, then one must assume he is also getting smarter because indexing and sorting much more data in the same amount of time would represent a large increase in performance.
Man, I had a hard time typing like that, I detest discussing someone as if they were a machine, but I could think of no better way to make my point.
While I don't detest disccusing someone as if they were a machine I do agree it it has to do with how you index/sort and search.
I tend to think of the brain as a database. Each person creates their tables based on genetics, interests, and experiences.
In the case of an autistic person they create more sub tables for detail on everything they see/hear vs general information. Hence the ability to memorize pretty much every book he ever read.
In a "normal" person I tend to think more of the brain is focused on storing more general information to be able to cope with every situation rather than focusing on specifics. Generally I don't think an autistic person worries about what they have to wear in the morning or what other people think of them.
It brings me to conclude that we nearly have the same capacity for storage in our brains it's just what is choosen to store is very different. In autisic people I consider mostly of it is genetics simply choosing ones interests and actively storing more data on them.
Virutally all doubt could be removed if we simply got rid of the annonymous part. If a voter could verify after the fact his/her vote was indeed included for the correct person we wouldn't have these insane problems not to mention my doubt about the validity of any of these voting machines.
You're forgetting an important alternative: maybe God is just a really lousy engineer. Maybe, in the land of the Gods, our universe is just a third-rate high-school science project. Maybe our God is just an incompetant dumbass! :)
Then i'm totally gonna sue his ass for shotty craftsmanship! Anyone wanna start a class action against God?
Key words: "free will". If you want a bunch of people to have relationships with, it's gotta be out of 'free will'. 'Free will' is not 'free will' if there are no viable alternatives.
Free will always confuses me.. I mean if free will really exists than wouldn't we have complete power? I mean if I truely had free will shouldn't I be able to do anything I want unrestricted? I can't just fly so I have to create a device to allow me to based on the laws of physics.. To me that negatives free will right there..
- God is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that He must not allow imperfection in his sight. To avoid this, all those who are not perfect go to a place without God (Hell) and so will not be in His site.
Hmm, if you're the creator of all things and you're perfect how can you create something that in not perfect?
From anecdotal history, my dad's intel computer died within 2 weeks of him buying it, but me and all my friends' amds are still running.
You're just repeating the same bullshit everyone else is.
Care to be more specific in what actually died? You're sure it was the CPU itself not working? You do realize there are other components that can fail and prevent the system from working correctly besides the CPU. Generally speaking the CPU is the least likely thing to fail on a computer.
So it's AMD's fault you broke it?
Did it not occur to you that microchips are fragile?
I didn't break them. Sure I've cracked one or two cores in my day but I'm talking about customers doing their own installs. Because we had to many returned AMD chips with cracked cores we had to impliment a policy that any CPU purchased from us had to be installed by us (for free).
I'm not sure why you weren't fired after snapping the 10th CPU? Or the 100th?
I didn't break the chips.. By DOA I mean turn on the machine get nothing.. As for cracking the core we used to allow customers to do their own CPU installs since we were a parts retailer as well as systems. After quite a few cracked cores we implimented a policey where warrenty was void if you didn't let us install the chip (for free). It was customers who had the issue and no they did not cover this under warrenty when they broke the chip (after the new policy was in place).
I'm simply speaking for experience that AMD chips are much much more likely to not work out the box and we had a number of problems with customers breaking them by attaching the cpu fan/heatsync. I respect AMD as a company and do believe they make a hell of a chip but it's not one I will buy anytime soon until I see previous issues resolved. Again I'm not saying AMD sucks Intel rules! I'm just speaking from experience.
AMD all the way. Intel is alive just because of Dell (among others) and a large reserve of cash. They cost more, do less, and heat your bedroom to boot. But it has 'Intel Inside', so I guess it must count for something...
I worked for a local PC system builder for 7 years (left them about 18 months ago). I can count the number of DOA Intel chips I've seen over the years on one hand. As for AMD chips I've seen somewhere around 1000. I've never had a problem (or heard of) destroying an Intel chip just by attaching a CPU fan. AMD chips are quite easy to crack. I would never own one myself until I see a big change in quality. (AMD did make a hell of a 486 chip btw and I would/did use them back in the day)
Eric
this will ever be used. Not because it is dangerous, uneconomical, or anything even remotely having to do with reason. Nay. Rather, because the public has a knee-jerk reaction to the word "nuclear," or "atomic," or "nucular." Fact hardly matters in the opinions of an uneducated, uninformed public.
There are plenty of ways to get around the public. You could simply not tell them about it. If that doesn't work just paint the damn thing red white and blue and rename it Freedom Rocket. And if for some reason that doesn't work (highly unlikely) does the public even bother to follow what NASA does?
I'm going to get modded to -5 for this but fuck it.
Hmm why is it every time somebody says I'm gonna be modded down (or asked to be modded down) they end up being +5? Must just be good old reverse psychology...
Testing Theory..
Please mod me down
Eric
Yeah, I mean I once had a girl in a programming class say she'd do *ANYTHING* to pass the class, so I had her buy me dinner in exchange for helping her study, then never saw her again!
A woman says she'll do anything for your help and the best you can think of is dinner? She said ANYTHING! Are you a man or what!?! Think bigger my friend!
Have her buy you two dinners!
Maybe these particular bass cross bred with some frogs.
God I've love to see a fish try.
I run a fish/frog porn site that only cost a moddest 4.95 a month. If you're interested checkout the free tour at http://www.fishfuckingfrogs.com/freetour.html
Let me know what you think
two words.. Green chicks
This is sorta free
. an d.whatnot.torrent
http://suprnov.org/Adobe.Premier.Hacked.Cracked
Uh it was a joke guys..
This is sorta free
. an d.whatnot.torrent
http://suprnov.org/Adobe.Premier.Hacked.Cracked
Look again.. I just screwed up my when I was trying to quote
I would assume people would. Why risk birth defects and various diseases when you don't have to. Isn't messing with our genes just a way to bring back natural selection? If we didn't have all this technology do you really thing our population would be what it is today?
:)
If your child is born with a heart defect you're not going to let it just die are you? If you had to have a transplant and a heart was avaiable you would? So what's really the difference? Other than the aborted part which let's just not discuss