That is true to some extent, but HP Business Notebooks have all sorts of crazy HP System management software. Maybe some of it is good, I never keep in on a computer long enough to find out. The annoying part is that some of them have components that register as device drives. I'll load up the chipset, Video, LAN, WLAN, Audio, Card Readers and whatever else and always end up with 2 or 3 yellow "Unknown Device" question marks in device manager.
I hate to leave those on as unknown devices. Did I miss a chipset driver or something? One laptop even crashed upon shut down every time until I fixed them. Will the user take a look at his device manager and freak? So I almost always endeavor to get the drivers loaded. Usually this entails downloading some 200 MB "Smart Security" package, installing it, and uninstalling it. The software is gone but the device driver stays, eliminating the Unknowns.
While "jocks" probably ARE less well-rounded than "nerds" (physically as well) the original posters point did make sense. If you have diverse interests you are likely to have a little in common with the "jocks", "nerds", "burnouts", and "preps" or whatever the groups are nowadays.
Back in middle/high school, I was pretty well accepted by everyone. I was in the elite group of nerds due to my interest in science/math/computers/academics in general and D&D/Strategy gaming, I was a pretty good athlete which got me respect from the jocks, and I wore my hair long and went out and caused stupid teenage boy trouble and drank alcohol on occasion, giving me something in common with the burnouts who loved having me around (I think they thought they were corrupting me or something).
Most of all, I was nice to almost all of them. I didn't laugh at the other nerds, I didn't wear my "I see dumb people" shirt and taunt the jocks, I treated the burnouts like they were humans and not just loser dirt bags. You know what? Doing that took far less effort than acting like a jerk to various groups of people.
Now, I wasn't the coolest guy in school but I could still approach almost any other person/group and be met with a smile and a hello. I mostly stuck to my core group of friends who were almost all pretty well rounded and I still stay in touch with most of them to this day, which is cool. The rest of the groups? Meh, have not given them much thought since High School although I have the occasional fond memory.
An.OST file caches local copies of your mailbox for offline use/possibly faster accessing of messages. The file and folder structure of an.OST file cannot be changed and exactly mirrors the folder structure on the exchange server. A.PST file is where you store actual permanent copies of the messages. You can move the files around into folders that don't exist on the exchange server.
Macro virus? Really? I'm just curious, how long ago was that? I don't think I've seen a Macro Virus in a decade or so. Not doubting your statement, I'm just curious.
I've also been running Windows 7 for quite some time. Since the Beta or whatever...two different (Reasonably new) machines. I wanted to run the 64-bit version but it was crashing at least once per day. All too often, after it crashed it simply would not boot into windows until I ran a "Startup Repair". With the 32-bit version, it has been rock solid. I realize the 64-bit crashes were probably driver issues, but I tried tweaking all the drivers to no avail. Maybe it isn't Microsoft's fault that they kept crashing but that hardly matters. If it isn't stable it isn't going to work out.
As far as professional apps for personal use, there might be some type of home/not for commercial use licensing to look into as well. A lot of companies also give you a thirty day trial of their stuff, which is nice if you want to try it "for fun" or happen to need the software for a project you are doing. Adobe is pretty good for that. On different occasions, I needed full versions of Photoshop, Acrobat Professional, and Dreamweaver for just a couple of days. I got them through adobe quickly instead of waiting hours for a torrent and didn't have to feel like a criminal. There are plenty of pieces of software that I have run into that do not have trial periods, have a 24-48 hour trial, or make you wait for them to contact you before giving you a trial. Luckily this seems to be rare nowadays but it is annoying and I admittedly have pirated software in instances like that.
And of course, open source alternatives continue to become more and more viable. My Photoshop trial made me realize I certainly did not need and didn't know how to use the myriad of features, so I use Gimp or Paint.Net for Photoshoppy things. I'd much rather use FOSS software than pirate things.
Selling games is strictly self-serving also. Apparently, you think its fantastic for companies to be driven by greed, but the customers should be selfless? Same old shit as the banks - capitalise the profit, socialise the loss.
Insightful? Seriously? How do you figure that the customers are selfless? "To show off my altruistic tendencies, I am going to sit here and play this really fun video game in hope that I will better all of humanity. Once I blast these last fifty zombies and beat this level, nobody will ever go hungry again and true world peace will be realized at last."
No. You purchase or otherwise obtain a game for selfish purposes. You have free time and want to be entertained and feel this game is a good way of doing so. The game developer needed money. He is a decent developer with some creative ideas and decided that spending his free time creating a game in hopes of turning his free time into money. He could choose to give away the game (And therefore, his time) for free, but doesn't. That doesn't make him selfish. Paying for a game and enjoying it doesn't make a customer selfish. It really is how things work in the real world. People are constantly trading their time for money, and people are constantly trading their money for things that they desire or need.
As opposed to the amount of Opiods being handed out without a real medical exam for generic things like "Chronic Pain"? Prescription Painkiller abuse is really rampant right now. Hydrocodone/APAP is by far the most prescribed drug in America right now, and I imagine that a great deal of those 127 Million Scripts are not being taken as directed. Oxycodone is also on the list at #20. Hydrocodone is more popular because it is only schedule 3 and refills can be written, but there is still a ton of Percocet out there. I'd much rather see people abusing medical marijuana. Maybe it is possible to get addicted to Marijuana. Maybe there are some mild withdrawal symptoms, but they are nothing compared to withdrawal from Opiate derivitives. And safety? If you aren't getting the really strong stuff like Oxycontin, you are getting a mixture of opioid goodness and toxic acetominophen. A pretty common blend of Hydrocodone/APAP is 7.5mg/750mg. Six of those in a day puts a person over the maximum daily recommended dose of 4000mg of APAP. Constant dosing can be very hard on the liver......and that is the "Safer" part of the Vicodin tablet.
You may not like the location bar, but you can just click the folder above your current folder. That isn't difficult. If you've been drilling down, just use the back button. Can't see how that is so difficult.
You can turn off user account control. You can even adjust it so less severe actions don't ask you about it.
As is pointed out, ALT-F4 from the desktop brings up the shutdown menu.
Seriously, you are just looking for reasons to hate Windows at this point. There are more important issues with Windows than the ones you mentioned. If you don't see any other issues, then I'd say Microsoft did pretty good by you.
A 10 hour work week for what type of workers? The guy that works the drill press all day isn't going to suddenly have 30 hours with nothing to do because information is shared. Customer Service people aren't suddenly going to stop getting support calls. The guys driving trucks aren't suddenly going to be able to reach their destination 4 times as fast because information is free. Teachers will not suddenly be teaching 1/4 fewer classes. Police men aren't going to have no criminals to arrest. I think the sad truth here is that you are thinking of some very specific jobs and calling them "Society".
There is also the fact that there is a tremendous gap between a book/software writer and the target audience. Like it or not, marketing plays a vital role in determining how many people your information reaches which is pretty much directly related to how much money you made. Try a little experiment. Spend a bunch of time writing a book. Register a domain name. Create a site with a shopping cart application so people can buy your book. Do not spend a dime on marketing (No google ad words, nothing) and see how many people purchase it. I'd imagine you'd be quite disappointed with the amount of money you receive compared to the time spent creating.
I may not know what I'm talking about here, so if I am wrong, please correct me. Your really nice high end Mobile Phones may have fully features browsers, but there seems to be a bunch of mid range phones that are like "Smart Phone Lite". They have limited mobile web capability, no SMTP/POP/Exchange EMAIL support, and are a heck of a lot cheaper. I would think that a good deal of users just want to occasionally browse an internet page to checks some news headlines, sports scores, stock quotes, or something else without paying top dollar for a smart phone. Until almost all data enabled phones have full featured browsers, we will have mobile site hell.
I can pretty much "Code" in HTML (My ability to conceive an aesthically pleasing design is another matter...) but seriously.....why? If I want to drop an image onto a page, what is the difference between me typing..[img src="./images/gross/goatse.jpg" alt="This is disgusting" width="100" height="100"/] (Note, actual markup mangled because I'm editing in HTML) and Simply dragging and dropping the "Image" control onto the page and typing some stuff in the properties box. Either way I open the page in multiple browsers to see if it looks the way I want it, and it is done. If it doesn't look right, I either have to mess around with the WYSIWYG editor or mess with the HTML myself. Either way pretty much works.
I tend to do most of the really mundane stuff (Like dropping images) using a WYSIWYG editor and then fine tune it "Manually" by messing with the markup. It is easier for me that way. If it is easier for someone else to do the fine tuning using the editor, good for them. That doesn't make them a worse web designer....
I think the issue is in the fact that people seem to be impressed by "Whiz Bang" effects so designers are forced to pour them on. A good example out of my personal experience was early on Craig's List vs. Ebay. I suggested to quite a few people that they use Craig's List instead. They took one look at the site and its minimalist design (Which is awesome, in my opinion) and automatically got the wrong impression. I even had one person tell me "I am not buying my phone from a place that looks like a back alley abortion clinic". Pretty pictures and effects won the day until they realized Ebay was crap and finally listened to me.;)
I can second that. We have a Zoom Wireless G Router in my office that any iPhone/Touch absolutely refuses to connect to. I've had absolutely no problems connecting with a Motorola Q, HTC PPC6800, HTC Touch Pro, or Treo (Don't remember which model). We've tried different strengths of encryption (included "none") and the iPhones just won't connect to it. We brought in a Linksys Wireless Router, they work just fine. I have no idea what the deal is.
I was going to write an aside about business trips, classier escort services, and the like, but I realized I was going waaaaay off topic. If you aren't married and you are bored and on the road, by all means enjoy!
The version of Office he showed is actually "Home and Student". Microsoft didn't do the average Joe too wrong here by releasing this version. If you aren't using it for business, you get Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (No Outlook...but I don't know that many casual users who aren't using web mail) to load on up to three computers in your household for $119. If you actually have three PC's to load it on its $40 each. Very reasonable. I do agree with you about the OEM System Builder license though. If you grab that and toss it on your Dell, you might feel like you are morally superior to those who just downloaded a torrent, but you sure the heck are not legit. I see people misuse OEM software all the time.
I wouldn't say morally superior, but dropping $150 on a date is a lot better than hiring a hooker. After all, you probably get to have a nice steak dinner and some drinks as part of that $150. Heck, maybe the girl isn't a complete airhead or nutcase and you actually end up having a good time before going to get laid.
I've never hired a hooker so I can't be positive, but I'm reasonably certain that I'd be thinking "This woman just wants to get this over with." Going on a date and having a woman that you know, wants to have sex with you seems a lot better in that regard.
Oh crap. I'm way off topic. Uhm, it was an analogy! That's it. See, Michael Dell is the hooker and despite getting paid, he just wants this gross, bloated system off his computer. Uhm, The "Date" is actually some random Windows user who surprised you by paying for the software and wants it to keep running....or.....forget it.
Luck is probably always involved in some degree, I agree with you there. However, in order to even get lucky you need to put yourself in a position to reap the benefits. You'll never get that promotion at work if you show up late and do a shitty job. You'll never be the one that develops the next "Killer App" if you never develop any software.
I hear people complain about their bad luck all the time. "That cop is NEVER there at 3 AM. The one time I am driving drunk and blow that stop sign he happens to be there and I get a DUI. I have the worst luck." "Look at that guy with his awesome wife and children. I wish I could be that lucky. Never mind that I had this really great woman that loved me until I decided I just had to poke my cock into that mush for brains, herpes infested slut. If she hadn't had herpes my girlfriend would have never known. What bad luck." "So I was at work late one night and laid out a line of blow on the bathroom counter. I thought nobody else was working. Who walks in? The President of the company. Can you believe that bad luck?"
I think that you will find if you work hard, treat people decent, obey the law, and avoid situations that can get you in trouble whenever possible that you will find yourself to be more "Lucky" than most people.
I'm probably going to sound like a moron here, but what the heck. Not the first time, not the last. I mentioned that I have been seeing a lot of bulging capacitors on motherboards somewhere else in this thread. I do not have a very strong knowledge of components but it seems to me that those computers with bulging/slightly leaking caps may work fine, but their performance is far worse than would be expected from the machine. Can motherboards "Wear down" in this fashion, making the computer slower as it ages? Or will issues with capacitors be more or less an all or none thing?
Is it just me or has anyone else seen a lot of bulging/leaking capacitors on motherboards lately? Perhaps I was less observant in the past but it is pretty common for me to break open the case of a 3-4 year old machine and see a few capacitors that look like they are about to explode.
I'm curious, is there any good piece of software that can give you information about how the power supply is performing? At least graph what voltage it is supplying to the motherboard or something like that? Obviously an actual physical multimeter is best, but I will help friends with computer problems remotely (If a buddy is having problems on a Tuesday night and I don't want to drive 30 minutes to his house) and being able to do some troubleshooting without touching the hardware would be nice.
You are a 45 year old awesome.Net programmer. You wake up in your moms basement. Do you take a shower or can you go a fifth day without? Your commute to work is realistic. As you are stalled in traffic you have the chance to call the guy in the next lane over that cut you off before that he is a meanie. You walk into the office and see your Boss and that new lunatic they hired that thinks we are all lizard people. You can avoid them or engage in small talk. You sit down at your desk. (At this point you engage in eight straight hours of creating a C#/AJAX based shopping cart application. For real (You get 500 extra experience if it runs in IE6, 7, 8 and Firefox or Opera....that could put you into the next level and unlock the jquery library!) Suddenly, you (As well as your in game avatar) wish you were in a tiny maze of passages all alike about to be eaten by a grue...
No thanks. Although I would like to see more RPG type games overall.
Dude, you totally don't understand beer commercials. They aren't trying to make YOU feel sexy, they are convincing you that it will cause you to be surrounded by sexy girls. That of course, will be the case if you drink enough beers.
At least, that is what happened to me twice back in the college days. The old "2 at 10", "10 at 2" drunken mistake.
Seriously though, I don't think people really need any encouragement to drink beer other than the fact that it gets you drunk!
I think the getting shot thing is totally different, that is game play mechanics. I think others are talking background graphics.
Bear with me here because I have not played Grand Theft Auto, but my understanding is that it is set in the present day and you walk around the streets of large cities. There are going to be buildings in the background. (Note, I have no idea if the quests are even remotely like this) What is the difference if you have a "133t Burger" (or other fictitious company) restaurant or a Mcdonalds Restaurant? What if you are supposed to steal a brand new "Sweet Red Ride" or a Honda Prius? Does it make a difference if a quest is to steal a "New 42 Inch LCD TV" or a Samsung 42" LCD TV?
The sports examples are even easier because those games try as hard as possible to emulate reality, to the point where someone sits down and rates various traits of the real athletes according to how they are in life. The escape from reality is pretending you aren't Joe Clumsy but are actual a combination of Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and Bill Billichick (Patriots coach, however you spell it). You are at Gillette Field already, so the real in game announcers probably start by saying "Todays game features the Colts vs. Patriots at Gillette field." A lot of sports stadiums and arenas have sponsors banners hanging around. Again, in the background only but there. It's all part of the look and feel of a stadium these days.
Now, if you drop that Burger King into Morrowind instead of an Inn, it is something that looks ridiculous in the context and would ruin immersion. You don't expect the Golden Arches to be on the streets of a fantasy era village. It makes no sense, obviously. I don't know what could be done for games not set in the present day that wouldn't be jarring. Now, if the Sports Games started taking actual Commercial Breaks that is a different story entirely...the Advertising should not affect the game play or appear completely out of place.
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That is true to some extent, but HP Business Notebooks have all sorts of crazy HP System management software. Maybe some of it is good, I never keep in on a computer long enough to find out. The annoying part is that some of them have components that register as device drives. I'll load up the chipset, Video, LAN, WLAN, Audio, Card Readers and whatever else and always end up with 2 or 3 yellow "Unknown Device" question marks in device manager.
I hate to leave those on as unknown devices. Did I miss a chipset driver or something? One laptop even crashed upon shut down every time until I fixed them. Will the user take a look at his device manager and freak? So I almost always endeavor to get the drivers loaded. Usually this entails downloading some 200 MB "Smart Security" package, installing it, and uninstalling it. The software is gone but the device driver stays, eliminating the Unknowns.
While "jocks" probably ARE less well-rounded than "nerds" (physically as well) the original posters point did make sense. If you have diverse interests you are likely to have a little in common with the "jocks", "nerds", "burnouts", and "preps" or whatever the groups are nowadays.
Back in middle/high school, I was pretty well accepted by everyone. I was in the elite group of nerds due to my interest in science/math/computers/academics in general and D&D/Strategy gaming, I was a pretty good athlete which got me respect from the jocks, and I wore my hair long and went out and caused stupid teenage boy trouble and drank alcohol on occasion, giving me something in common with the burnouts who loved having me around (I think they thought they were corrupting me or something).
Most of all, I was nice to almost all of them. I didn't laugh at the other nerds, I didn't wear my "I see dumb people" shirt and taunt the jocks, I treated the burnouts like they were humans and not just loser dirt bags. You know what? Doing that took far less effort than acting like a jerk to various groups of people.
Now, I wasn't the coolest guy in school but I could still approach almost any other person/group and be met with a smile and a hello. I mostly stuck to my core group of friends who were almost all pretty well rounded and I still stay in touch with most of them to this day, which is cool. The rest of the groups? Meh, have not given them much thought since High School although I have the occasional fond memory.
An .OST file caches local copies of your mailbox for offline use/possibly faster accessing of messages. The file and folder structure of an .OST file cannot be changed and exactly mirrors the folder structure on the exchange server. A .PST file is where you store actual permanent copies of the messages. You can move the files around into folders that don't exist on the exchange server.
Macro virus? Really? I'm just curious, how long ago was that? I don't think I've seen a Macro Virus in a decade or so. Not doubting your statement, I'm just curious.
I've also been running Windows 7 for quite some time. Since the Beta or whatever...two different (Reasonably new) machines. I wanted to run the 64-bit version but it was crashing at least once per day. All too often, after it crashed it simply would not boot into windows until I ran a "Startup Repair". With the 32-bit version, it has been rock solid. I realize the 64-bit crashes were probably driver issues, but I tried tweaking all the drivers to no avail. Maybe it isn't Microsoft's fault that they kept crashing but that hardly matters. If it isn't stable it isn't going to work out.
As far as professional apps for personal use, there might be some type of home/not for commercial use licensing to look into as well. A lot of companies also give you a thirty day trial of their stuff, which is nice if you want to try it "for fun" or happen to need the software for a project you are doing. Adobe is pretty good for that. On different occasions, I needed full versions of Photoshop, Acrobat Professional, and Dreamweaver for just a couple of days. I got them through adobe quickly instead of waiting hours for a torrent and didn't have to feel like a criminal. There are plenty of pieces of software that I have run into that do not have trial periods, have a 24-48 hour trial, or make you wait for them to contact you before giving you a trial. Luckily this seems to be rare nowadays but it is annoying and I admittedly have pirated software in instances like that.
And of course, open source alternatives continue to become more and more viable. My Photoshop trial made me realize I certainly did not need and didn't know how to use the myriad of features, so I use Gimp or Paint.Net for Photoshoppy things. I'd much rather use FOSS software than pirate things.
Selling games is strictly self-serving also. Apparently, you think its fantastic for companies to be driven by greed, but the customers should be selfless? Same old shit as the banks - capitalise the profit, socialise the loss.
Insightful? Seriously? How do you figure that the customers are selfless? "To show off my altruistic tendencies, I am going to sit here and play this really fun video game in hope that I will better all of humanity. Once I blast these last fifty zombies and beat this level, nobody will ever go hungry again and true world peace will be realized at last."
No. You purchase or otherwise obtain a game for selfish purposes. You have free time and want to be entertained and feel this game is a good way of doing so. The game developer needed money. He is a decent developer with some creative ideas and decided that spending his free time creating a game in hopes of turning his free time into money. He could choose to give away the game (And therefore, his time) for free, but doesn't. That doesn't make him selfish. Paying for a game and enjoying it doesn't make a customer selfish. It really is how things work in the real world. People are constantly trading their time for money, and people are constantly trading their money for things that they desire or need.
As opposed to the amount of Opiods being handed out without a real medical exam for generic things like "Chronic Pain"? Prescription Painkiller abuse is really rampant right now. Hydrocodone/APAP is by far the most prescribed drug in America right now, and I imagine that a great deal of those 127 Million Scripts are not being taken as directed. Oxycodone is also on the list at #20. Hydrocodone is more popular because it is only schedule 3 and refills can be written, but there is still a ton of Percocet out there. I'd much rather see people abusing medical marijuana. Maybe it is possible to get addicted to Marijuana. Maybe there are some mild withdrawal symptoms, but they are nothing compared to withdrawal from Opiate derivitives. And safety? If you aren't getting the really strong stuff like Oxycontin, you are getting a mixture of opioid goodness and toxic acetominophen. A pretty common blend of Hydrocodone/APAP is 7.5mg/750mg. Six of those in a day puts a person over the maximum daily recommended dose of 4000mg of APAP. Constant dosing can be very hard on the liver......and that is the "Safer" part of the Vicodin tablet.
You may not like the location bar, but you can just click the folder above your current folder. That isn't difficult. If you've been drilling down, just use the back button. Can't see how that is so difficult.
You can turn off user account control. You can even adjust it so less severe actions don't ask you about it.
As is pointed out, ALT-F4 from the desktop brings up the shutdown menu.
Seriously, you are just looking for reasons to hate Windows at this point. There are more important issues with Windows than the ones you mentioned. If you don't see any other issues, then I'd say Microsoft did pretty good by you.
Comparing Bing to a Hillbilly house? Now you are making me mad, insulting Hillbillys like that. ;)
A 10 hour work week for what type of workers? The guy that works the drill press all day isn't going to suddenly have 30 hours with nothing to do because information is shared. Customer Service people aren't suddenly going to stop getting support calls. The guys driving trucks aren't suddenly going to be able to reach their destination 4 times as fast because information is free. Teachers will not suddenly be teaching 1/4 fewer classes. Police men aren't going to have no criminals to arrest. I think the sad truth here is that you are thinking of some very specific jobs and calling them "Society".
There is also the fact that there is a tremendous gap between a book/software writer and the target audience. Like it or not, marketing plays a vital role in determining how many people your information reaches which is pretty much directly related to how much money you made. Try a little experiment. Spend a bunch of time writing a book. Register a domain name. Create a site with a shopping cart application so people can buy your book. Do not spend a dime on marketing (No google ad words, nothing) and see how many people purchase it. I'd imagine you'd be quite disappointed with the amount of money you receive compared to the time spent creating.
I may not know what I'm talking about here, so if I am wrong, please correct me. Your really nice high end Mobile Phones may have fully features browsers, but there seems to be a bunch of mid range phones that are like "Smart Phone Lite". They have limited mobile web capability, no SMTP/POP/Exchange EMAIL support, and are a heck of a lot cheaper. I would think that a good deal of users just want to occasionally browse an internet page to checks some news headlines, sports scores, stock quotes, or something else without paying top dollar for a smart phone. Until almost all data enabled phones have full featured browsers, we will have mobile site hell.
I can pretty much "Code" in HTML (My ability to conceive an aesthically pleasing design is another matter...) but seriously.....why? If I want to drop an image onto a page, what is the difference between me typing ..[img src="./images/gross/goatse.jpg" alt="This is disgusting" width="100" height="100" /] (Note, actual markup mangled because I'm editing in HTML) and Simply dragging and dropping the "Image" control onto the page and typing some stuff in the properties box. Either way I open the page in multiple browsers to see if it looks the way I want it, and it is done. If it doesn't look right, I either have to mess around with the WYSIWYG editor or mess with the HTML myself. Either way pretty much works.
I tend to do most of the really mundane stuff (Like dropping images) using a WYSIWYG editor and then fine tune it "Manually" by messing with the markup. It is easier for me that way. If it is easier for someone else to do the fine tuning using the editor, good for them. That doesn't make them a worse web designer....
I think the issue is in the fact that people seem to be impressed by "Whiz Bang" effects so designers are forced to pour them on. A good example out of my personal experience was early on Craig's List vs. Ebay. I suggested to quite a few people that they use Craig's List instead. They took one look at the site and its minimalist design (Which is awesome, in my opinion) and automatically got the wrong impression. I even had one person tell me "I am not buying my phone from a place that looks like a back alley abortion clinic". Pretty pictures and effects won the day until they realized Ebay was crap and finally listened to me. ;)
I can second that. We have a Zoom Wireless G Router in my office that any iPhone/Touch absolutely refuses to connect to. I've had absolutely no problems connecting with a Motorola Q, HTC PPC6800, HTC Touch Pro, or Treo (Don't remember which model). We've tried different strengths of encryption (included "none") and the iPhones just won't connect to it. We brought in a Linksys Wireless Router, they work just fine. I have no idea what the deal is.
I was going to write an aside about business trips, classier escort services, and the like, but I realized I was going waaaaay off topic. If you aren't married and you are bored and on the road, by all means enjoy!
The version of Office he showed is actually "Home and Student". Microsoft didn't do the average Joe too wrong here by releasing this version. If you aren't using it for business, you get Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (No Outlook...but I don't know that many casual users who aren't using web mail) to load on up to three computers in your household for $119. If you actually have three PC's to load it on its $40 each. Very reasonable. I do agree with you about the OEM System Builder license though. If you grab that and toss it on your Dell, you might feel like you are morally superior to those who just downloaded a torrent, but you sure the heck are not legit. I see people misuse OEM software all the time.
I wouldn't say morally superior, but dropping $150 on a date is a lot better than hiring a hooker. After all, you probably get to have a nice steak dinner and some drinks as part of that $150. Heck, maybe the girl isn't a complete airhead or nutcase and you actually end up having a good time before going to get laid.
I've never hired a hooker so I can't be positive, but I'm reasonably certain that I'd be thinking "This woman just wants to get this over with." Going on a date and having a woman that you know, wants to have sex with you seems a lot better in that regard.
Oh crap. I'm way off topic. Uhm, it was an analogy! That's it. See, Michael Dell is the hooker and despite getting paid, he just wants this gross, bloated system off his computer. Uhm, The "Date" is actually some random Windows user who surprised you by paying for the software and wants it to keep running....or.....forget it.
Dude....we aren't free to take water through an airport checkpoint over here. How can ANYTHING you hear out of America amaze you?
Luck is probably always involved in some degree, I agree with you there. However, in order to even get lucky you need to put yourself in a position to reap the benefits. You'll never get that promotion at work if you show up late and do a shitty job. You'll never be the one that develops the next "Killer App" if you never develop any software.
I hear people complain about their bad luck all the time. "That cop is NEVER there at 3 AM. The one time I am driving drunk and blow that stop sign he happens to be there and I get a DUI. I have the worst luck." "Look at that guy with his awesome wife and children. I wish I could be that lucky. Never mind that I had this really great woman that loved me until I decided I just had to poke my cock into that mush for brains, herpes infested slut. If she hadn't had herpes my girlfriend would have never known. What bad luck." "So I was at work late one night and laid out a line of blow on the bathroom counter. I thought nobody else was working. Who walks in? The President of the company. Can you believe that bad luck?"
I think that you will find if you work hard, treat people decent, obey the law, and avoid situations that can get you in trouble whenever possible that you will find yourself to be more "Lucky" than most people.
I'm probably going to sound like a moron here, but what the heck. Not the first time, not the last. I mentioned that I have been seeing a lot of bulging capacitors on motherboards somewhere else in this thread. I do not have a very strong knowledge of components but it seems to me that those computers with bulging/slightly leaking caps may work fine, but their performance is far worse than would be expected from the machine. Can motherboards "Wear down" in this fashion, making the computer slower as it ages? Or will issues with capacitors be more or less an all or none thing?
Is it just me or has anyone else seen a lot of bulging/leaking capacitors on motherboards lately? Perhaps I was less observant in the past but it is pretty common for me to break open the case of a 3-4 year old machine and see a few capacitors that look like they are about to explode.
I'm curious, is there any good piece of software that can give you information about how the power supply is performing? At least graph what voltage it is supplying to the motherboard or something like that? Obviously an actual physical multimeter is best, but I will help friends with computer problems remotely (If a buddy is having problems on a Tuesday night and I don't want to drive 30 minutes to his house) and being able to do some troubleshooting without touching the hardware would be nice.
Oh, that sounds like a big hit.
You are a 45 year old awesome .Net programmer. You wake up in your moms basement. Do you take a shower or can you go a fifth day without? Your commute to work is realistic. As you are stalled in traffic you have the chance to call the guy in the next lane over that cut you off before that he is a meanie. You walk into the office and see your Boss and that new lunatic they hired that thinks we are all lizard people. You can avoid them or engage in small talk. You sit down at your desk. (At this point you engage in eight straight hours of creating a C#/AJAX based shopping cart application. For real (You get 500 extra experience if it runs in IE6, 7, 8 and Firefox or Opera....that could put you into the next level and unlock the jquery library!) Suddenly, you (As well as your in game avatar) wish you were in a tiny maze of passages all alike about to be eaten by a grue...
No thanks. Although I would like to see more RPG type games overall.
Dude, you totally don't understand beer commercials. They aren't trying to make YOU feel sexy, they are convincing you that it will cause you to be surrounded by sexy girls. That of course, will be the case if you drink enough beers.
At least, that is what happened to me twice back in the college days. The old "2 at 10", "10 at 2" drunken mistake.
Seriously though, I don't think people really need any encouragement to drink beer other than the fact that it gets you drunk!
I think the getting shot thing is totally different, that is game play mechanics. I think others are talking background graphics.
Bear with me here because I have not played Grand Theft Auto, but my understanding is that it is set in the present day and you walk around the streets of large cities. There are going to be buildings in the background. (Note, I have no idea if the quests are even remotely like this) What is the difference if you have a "133t Burger" (or other fictitious company) restaurant or a Mcdonalds Restaurant? What if you are supposed to steal a brand new "Sweet Red Ride" or a Honda Prius? Does it make a difference if a quest is to steal a "New 42 Inch LCD TV" or a Samsung 42" LCD TV?
The sports examples are even easier because those games try as hard as possible to emulate reality, to the point where someone sits down and rates various traits of the real athletes according to how they are in life. The escape from reality is pretending you aren't Joe Clumsy but are actual a combination of Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and Bill Billichick (Patriots coach, however you spell it). You are at Gillette Field already, so the real in game announcers probably start by saying "Todays game features the Colts vs. Patriots at Gillette field." A lot of sports stadiums and arenas have sponsors banners hanging around. Again, in the background only but there. It's all part of the look and feel of a stadium these days.
Now, if you drop that Burger King into Morrowind instead of an Inn, it is something that looks ridiculous in the context and would ruin immersion. You don't expect the Golden Arches to be on the streets of a fantasy era village. It makes no sense, obviously. I don't know what could be done for games not set in the present day that wouldn't be jarring. Now, if the Sports Games started taking actual Commercial Breaks that is a different story entirely...the Advertising should not affect the game play or appear completely out of place.