It makes marketing sense. BT know full well it's possible to do this already but they also know that a lot of people will believe hype and a lot more people like 'free things' and they also also know that people won't bother checking if they can currently do this, so if people fall for it, which some will, it's basically a win-for-them situation.
BT are lying theiving scum that have exploited the British public with their monopoly for years.
Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap
I absolutely agree. I don't know what layer 3 is to be honest however my old job had ISDN 64k and then BT Broadband 512k. They charged £80 a month(!) for the 512k and it would hang on for about 20 mins then die, and even when hanging on the datarate was appaling, listening to even low bw radio was just dire.
It frequently needed a router (modem) reboot.. repeat for several times during the day.
Even the 64k managed to fall off several times a day - and not the idle-cutoff, it would just die at random intervals.
BT's adverts stating they are "reliable" are just bollocks. And this isn't a one off either, I know a guy who's signed up for BT (no idea why) and he keeps getting cutoff at random.
There are loads of alternatives out there, telewest is good but as stated the upload is low. I personally use Zen internet, it's a little more expensive than the rest (but you get a gig of webspace) and I can stay on 24 hours and get 5 gig a day every day. I believe plusnet and others are good too.
But seriously, stay away from BT, you might get free calls but you'll pay for em in service.
I don't know about the stability I haven't stayed on any distro for long enough (I only got VPC a couple of days ago), but yeah the sound is out. There are instructions out there to configure it though. I just love the fact I don't have to have a boot menu 3 screens long
This sounds a lot like MS Virtual Machine which lets you run different operating systems.
It sets up single-file hard drives which you can delete if you don't want em.
Right now I have windows 3.11(!) + 95 + 98 + me + 2k + longhorn beta + xp + 3 distros of linux + dos 6.22 all as seperate images.
Sadly it doesn't do mac but despite it's limitations (it uses a seriously old emulated gpu and sound), it has at least let me get linux onto the net without a fuss (couldn't even get linux to install my modem before)
You're not alone. Gta2 had two things going for it: Gangs and intelligence. You had to juggle between the gangs and not do too many things for one for fear of being attacked by the other. On the other hand running over heaps of over-angry gang members was so much fun
Gta 3+VC had the 3d but sadly lost both the gang approach and the aiming for a score approach and replaced it with a linear story. Overall, much less challenging.
So yeah overall GTA2 was more enjoyable because it was so easy to vary.
What I find curious about this whole entire thing is the reason keeps changing
Firstly it started off as WMDs, which are now proved to be complete crap
Then it turned into Osama and Iraq were working together which has not only not been proved, but I believe it was made official this week that there was no link
Then it turned suddenly to regieme change, yeah that's a good one lets throw out one dictator.. and put in one that's several thousand miles away
The problem with the regieme change is there are loads of other countries that are far far worse than Iraq but we like to keep those quiet.
It basically all comes down to the fact that whichever of the many reasons you choose to believe, this was an immoral and illegal war in the opinion of most people, and the US and UK governments think we're all so stupid that we'll just swallow whatever they say. And the sad thing is, a lot of us will.
What's worrying is this: I've watched part of the debates, and I watched some of question time last night. People were heckling and jeering opinions that didn't match their own. No one in the USA (and this is the viewpoint of a fair few UK people) seems to ever listen. Everyone believes whatever they choose to beleive, usually on one-sided evidence and refuses to listen to the other side. Unfortunately, those people are then allowed to vote.
I just hope that whatever does happen, someone keeps their brain in gear, because only when all the world leaders come up from their bunkers and see there is no one and nothing left to rule over, will they realise that nobody wins a war. Nobody.
and in other news, all the processing power from all the combined graphics cards was still not quite enough to think up some new (and hopefully funny for a change) slashdot jokes.
Today, NVIDIA is launching its GeForce 6200. We were told of the launch at the last minute with only a few days to prepare and to deal with the usual last minute changes that follow these rushed launches. This has happened four or five times in the past year. It's always the same, with no time to do thorough testing, constant last minute changes, and a rush to print. If we were cynical, we'd have to think that the companies involved do not want us to have time to do thorough testing.
Often the product's drivers are not ready, special editions or in beta stage and testers are struggling to keep up with last minute updates. Almost every instance results in what we now believe to be a disservice to the consumer.
Today, we announce that we are not going to play that game again.
It is a disservice to our readers to rush testing just because a vendor wants to get a big PR launch.
It is a disservice to our readers to constantly deal with last minute, rushed products that may have little to do with finally shipping products -
It is a disservice to our readers to constantly deal with products weeks or months before the products become available to the market.
It is a disservice to our readers to cave in to the pressure that comes from the expectation by vendors that every online review will appear on a single day giving them a big bang opening day.
NVIDIA and ATI have a right to pursue their own PR strategies, but the back-to-back launches and launch day competition is getting ridiculous.
It does not make one company better than the other.
It does not make for better products.
It does not make for objective reporting.
It does not make for better product availability
So, we will review the GeForce 6200, and do it with pleasure. We are excited about the product. However, we will do it with our usual attention to detail, and will take the time to evaluate it properly. Not because we can't rush a review out and be like everyone else. We'll take the time to do the right thing because that's no less than the consumer deserves.
Maybe everyone has lost sight of the fact that all the analysis that is done is supposed to serve the consumer, the interested reader and to help them make informed decisions.
We think it is time to get off the carousel of chicanery, and get back to basics.
05 score: 790. The top end scores (with seriously fast pcs at em) are 7000, some people have tried to run this on a fx5200(!). The lowest is a couple hundred.
It's very VERY demanding. Makes my £100 gpu look crap. I'd like to see a video of this running smoothly.
Re:MOD PARENT UP! EXEMPLARY POST! HOLY FUCKING SHI
on
Dear Microsoft Windows ...
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
x86 compatible processor with SSE support, 2GHz
512MB of RAM
1.5GB of free hard disk space
Windows® 2000/XP with the latest updates & Service Packs
DirectX®9.0c or later
DirectX®9.0 compliant graphics adapter that has 128MB of memory and is capable of PixelShader 2.0 or higher
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6
So dya think this'll run ok on my 486?
Seriously though, they haven't made it clear what the 2ghz mark refers to - Intel or AMD although I assume Intel.
I am looking forward to running this on here (amd 2.2g, 1g ram, Nvidia 5700U) although I think it will struggle... hopefully *grin*
Someone's hot off the mark submitting this. The game was only out... oooh bloody ages ago (well ok a week or two, but in gaming, that's ages - just ask the half life 2 crew).
Ok whine over, it's a great game. Love it. Maxis have certainly paid a LOT of attention to getting things much better than S1. It still has some flaws, particularly in the sims AI but it is a lot better, a lot engrossing and draws you in much more. I got bored of S1 a long time ago and S2 is getting quite addictive.
Ahh yeah I gotcha. Does the same here with hotmail although I use OE to deal with hotmail.
Have you tried the various msn related sites mess.be and others, see if they have patches or hacks to change it?
The set default progs and settings thing in control panel (xp sp1 onwards) lets you move inet explorer off the default html list.
Any links I get in msn are sent to opera which is registered as the default http/html
Technically you buy a copy of the software and a license to use it so I should imagine under some law or other you can request a replacement disc. As you've already paid for the license you should only get charged minimum rate for a disc.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes marketing sense. BT know full well it's possible to do this already but they also know that a lot of people will believe hype and a lot more people like 'free things' and they also also know that people won't bother checking if they can currently do this, so if people fall for it, which some will, it's basically a win-for-them situation.
Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap
I absolutely agree. I don't know what layer 3 is to be honest however my old job had ISDN 64k and then BT Broadband 512k. They charged £80 a month(!) for the 512k and it would hang on for about 20 mins then die, and even when hanging on the datarate was appaling, listening to even low bw radio was just dire.
It frequently needed a router (modem) reboot.. repeat for several times during the day.
Even the 64k managed to fall off several times a day - and not the idle-cutoff, it would just die at random intervals.
BT's adverts stating they are "reliable" are just bollocks. And this isn't a one off either, I know a guy who's signed up for BT (no idea why) and he keeps getting cutoff at random.
There are loads of alternatives out there, telewest is good but as stated the upload is low. I personally use Zen internet, it's a little more expensive than the rest (but you get a gig of webspace) and I can stay on 24 hours and get 5 gig a day every day. I believe plusnet and others are good too.
But seriously, stay away from BT, you might get free calls but you'll pay for em in service.
That site has appaling html coding, rendering in firefox is even worse than /.
I don't know about the stability I haven't stayed on any distro for long enough (I only got VPC a couple of days ago), but yeah the sound is out. There are instructions out there to configure it though. I just love the fact I don't have to have a boot menu 3 screens long
MS's virtual server allows linux distro's. See my other comment here
It sets up single-file hard drives which you can delete if you don't want em.
Right now I have windows 3.11(!) + 95 + 98 + me + 2k + longhorn beta + xp + 3 distros of linux + dos 6.22 all as seperate images.
Sadly it doesn't do mac but despite it's limitations (it uses a seriously old emulated gpu and sound), it has at least let me get linux onto the net without a fuss (couldn't even get linux to install my modem before)
Anyway plug over, that's what it sounds like.
Gta 3+VC had the 3d but sadly lost both the gang approach and the aiming for a score approach and replaced it with a linear story. Overall, much less challenging.
So yeah overall GTA2 was more enjoyable because it was so easy to vary.
Firstly it started off as WMDs, which are now proved to be complete crap
Then it turned into Osama and Iraq were working together which has not only not been proved, but I believe it was made official this week that there was no link
Then it turned suddenly to regieme change, yeah that's a good one lets throw out one dictator.. and put in one that's several thousand miles away
The problem with the regieme change is there are loads of other countries that are far far worse than Iraq but we like to keep those quiet.
It basically all comes down to the fact that whichever of the many reasons you choose to believe, this was an immoral and illegal war in the opinion of most people, and the US and UK governments think we're all so stupid that we'll just swallow whatever they say. And the sad thing is, a lot of us will.
What's worrying is this: I've watched part of the debates, and I watched some of question time last night. People were heckling and jeering opinions that didn't match their own. No one in the USA (and this is the viewpoint of a fair few UK people) seems to ever listen. Everyone believes whatever they choose to beleive, usually on one-sided evidence and refuses to listen to the other side. Unfortunately, those people are then allowed to vote.
I just hope that whatever does happen, someone keeps their brain in gear, because only when all the world leaders come up from their bunkers and see there is no one and nothing left to rule over, will they realise that nobody wins a war. Nobody.
Piss off is this flamebait, it's hillarious. If only I had mod points my friend...
They shoulda run 3dmark 05 on these cards you know. Woulda been funny to see them smoking.
Office hasn't had 12 versions anyway has it, didn't Word jump from 2 to 6, excel from 3 to 6 then they finally merged it into office 6 onwards?
and in other news, all the processing power from all the combined graphics cards was still not quite enough to think up some new (and hopefully funny for a change) slashdot jokes.
Today, NVIDIA is launching its GeForce 6200. We were told of the launch at the last minute with only a few days to prepare and to deal with the usual last minute changes that follow these rushed launches. This has happened four or five times in the past year. It's always the same, with no time to do thorough testing, constant last minute changes, and a rush to print. If we were cynical, we'd have to think that the companies involved do not want us to have time to do thorough testing.
Often the product's drivers are not ready, special editions or in beta stage and testers are struggling to keep up with last minute updates. Almost every instance results in what we now believe to be a disservice to the consumer.
Today, we announce that we are not going to play that game again.
NVIDIA and ATI have a right to pursue their own PR strategies, but the back-to-back launches and launch day competition is getting ridiculous.
So, we will review the GeForce 6200, and do it with pleasure. We are excited about the product. However, we will do it with our usual attention to detail, and will take the time to evaluate it properly. Not because we can't rush a review out and be like everyone else. We'll take the time to do the right thing because that's no less than the consumer deserves.
Maybe everyone has lost sight of the fact that all the analysis that is done is supposed to serve the consumer, the interested reader and to help them make informed decisions.
We think it is time to get off the carousel of chicanery, and get back to basics.
1gb PC2700 Ram
Nvidia 5700 Ultra overclocked
05 score: 790. The top end scores (with seriously fast pcs at em) are 7000, some people have tried to run this on a fx5200(!). The lowest is a couple hundred.
It's very VERY demanding. Makes my £100 gpu look crap. I'd like to see a video of this running smoothly.
actually, I think it was just a joke
x86 compatible processor with SSE support, 2GHz
512MB of RAM
1.5GB of free hard disk space
Windows® 2000/XP with the latest updates & Service Packs
DirectX®9.0c or later
DirectX®9.0 compliant graphics adapter that has 128MB of memory and is capable of PixelShader 2.0 or higher
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6
So dya think this'll run ok on my 486?
Seriously though, they haven't made it clear what the 2ghz mark refers to - Intel or AMD although I assume Intel.
I am looking forward to running this on here (amd 2.2g, 1g ram, Nvidia 5700U) although I think it will struggle... hopefully *grin*
I even submitted how there was trouble with copying software and The Sims 2 6 days ago.
Ok whine over, it's a great game. Love it. Maxis have certainly paid a LOT of attention to getting things much better than S1. It still has some flaws, particularly in the sims AI but it is a lot better, a lot engrossing and draws you in much more. I got bored of S1 a long time ago and S2 is getting quite addictive.
Yeah like that's impressive compared to this
Ahh yeah I gotcha. Does the same here with hotmail although I use OE to deal with hotmail.
Have you tried the various msn related sites mess.be and others, see if they have patches or hacks to change it?
The set default progs and settings thing in control panel (xp sp1 onwards) lets you move inet explorer off the default html list.
Any links I get in msn are sent to opera which is registered as the default http/html
Yeah but even a buck a track for 10 x 192 non protected mp3 is still pretty good.
Or those little dongle wotsits you had to shove in your serial port, then put the mouse in them. Just to run autocad
Technically you buy a copy of the software and a license to use it so I should imagine under some law or other you can request a replacement disc. As you've already paid for the license you should only get charged minimum rate for a disc.
Don't use Norton if you wanna use Freegate?
and drop?